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Okay so get this.

On Thursday I posted about that cool book of modern piano music (published 1963) that I picked up on AbeBooks not long ago. Well you may be aware that I’m a bit of a fan of ABC’s Lost, as is my wife. And this evening we were catching up on the episode that aired last Tuesday. We get to the part where Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) goes into his son’s room, where we learn that David Shephard (Dylan Minnette) is a musician. And bless her keen eye, my wife says to me, “rewind to that poster on the wall.” Sure enough, there’s a poster on the wall that looks like a dead nick of the New Music for the Piano cover that I just scanned the other day. Not only that, the poster on the wall is advertising a concert by someone named M. Gold. I think the fact that one of the composers featured in my book is Morton Gould is credible evidence that someone in the art department also has a copy.

We Lost fans love stuff like this.

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There’s been a resurgence of interest online in 60s-style commercial design, that really evocative screen-print business with the deep cool colours, the kind of stuff Saul Bass made a name for himself with. In the spirit of the zeitgeist (wow, did I just say “in the spirit of the spirit?”) I’ll share the cover of a vintage book I just bought. I read about it on Ethan Iverson’s blog one fine Saturday morning, in this post on Hal Overton, and immediately tracked down a copy on Abebooks and ordered it.

I haven’t uploaded any original music in a while so I thought I’d just toss this one up here for you to listen to and comment on. Recent developments in OS X and Logic Studio necessitated my upgrading my hardware to an Intel system, and to make a long and somewhat geeky story short I’m now running Logic Studio (Logic 8 for the moment), Reason 4, and a complement of Universal Audio plugins off of a MacBook Pro with a UAD-2 Solo/Laptop card jammed into it.

This is the sound of me putting the new system through its paces, and pounding away at the Wurlitzer, which is a great way to relieve stress if you haven’t tried it.

The Reacquaintance

I reserve the right to remix and re-upload this recording tomorrow, and probably several times on the weekend.

I was recently asked to lift Deee-Lite(sic)’s ‘90 dance club hit Groove is in the Heart (long story) and shortly thereafter to swallow the factoid that the “I” sample under the line “I couldn’t ask for another” was from the Green Acres theme song. Unable to substantiate this through text-based searches, I discounted this claim as a barge of lard. But then, through a toxic combination of curiosity and abject boredom, I decided to try and dig up the original music, and to my mild surprise (as good as it gets, sorry) I discovered that this was, in fact, the case – the sample is pitched down a little (full tone? can’t be arsed to check). So, for the benefit of the internet, I hereby declare as FACT: Eva Gabor is a backup singer on Groove is in the Heart. So, that just goes to show… something. Who cares, really. Sample below. Feel free to go and start your own dance-funk cover band. In another city.

eva-i.wav

I got it into my head that I wanted to dig up an old MIDI file that I had created back in the Atari days, for reasons that escape me now. After deciding that hooking up the Atari itself could only lead to disappointment, I tracked down a freeware Windows app called Gemulator, dusted off the original Atari ST diskette, jammed it into a Toshiba USB floppy drive that almost got thrown out in November when we were cleaning out the spare room, connected said floppy drive to an Intel MacBook running XP via Parallels, installed and launched Gemulator, and, as the French say, viola. Of the music I heard when I successfully imported the original Notator files into Logic, I can only say “not so good.” But the exercise itself just goes to show… something, I guess.

Mike Silverman, a.k.a. That 1 Guy, croaked, slapped, stomped, bowed, looped, laughed and howled his way through a bafflingly under-attended set at the Rivoli last night. Accompanying himself on the Magic Pipe – an electrified 2-string proto-bass cyborg made of articulated piping, sample and loop triggers and a valve that spews smoke when things get really exciting – as well as musical saw and talking boot, T1G treated the somewhat subdued audience to his unique outsider-funk stream-of-consciousness poetry, opening with some remarkably contrabass-like arco work that exploded into the Beefheart/Zappa/Waitsenescent “Weasel Pot Pie”, and continuing on a raucous foot-stomping journey through favourites from his CDs Songs in the Key of Beotch and The Moon is Disgusting and closing with his iconic breakout single “One.” Aside from his obvious rhythmic, musical and lyrical talents, T1G manages to merge digital with electro-acoustic without letting anyone get hung up on the technology. While many contemporary performers wrap themselves in their own loops as if weaving incantations, Silverman’s show is a more organic construction – one tends to focus more on his wide-eyed expressions and the blur of his hands while the arrangements seem to build of their own accord, eventually engulfing the tunes unexpectedly as if in an aural backdraft. It’s a sure sign of a soul-deadening recession or a truly random universe (maybe both) when a show this polished and energetic doesn’t even garner an encore. But a remarkably polite and grateful post-show T1G signed CDs with a toothy grin, already planning to return later this summer.

The National Game

I uploaded three Hockey Night in Canada theme contest entries this morning. To rate and comment on them on the CBC Hockey Anthem Challenge site, follow these links:

The National Game
Better Get It In The Net
Precarious (which you’ve heard if you’ve been following my podcast)

You can also get from one entry to another under the “More from Steve Castellano” link once you get there.

Martha Wainwright performs at Harbourfront Stage as part of Canada Day celebrations. She told the all-ages audience that she was wearing red and white to celebrate Canada’s birthday, plus, “I just got my period backstage.” Click on the image to view more pictures on flickr.