08/18/2016

So it's come to this, Gentle Reader(s). After months of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, hate-mongering and flat-out shameless lying, Donald Trump has now taken to inciting violence against his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and insinuating that our duly elected (and re-elected) president, Barack Hussein Obama, deserves the same. Today this revolting bargain basement demagogue flat out accused Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama of being co-founders of ISIS and advanced the baffling claim that the terrorist death cult 'honors' them. But Hold on a second, one might say—he didn't intend these things to be taken literally. His deranged accusations were intended as metaphor by way of suggesting that the Obama administration's shortsighted foreign policy created a political vacuum which ISIS exploited. But no, Herr Drumpf is beyond any such subtlety—not that subtlety was ever a component of the Trump Trick Bag. Patently absurd though Trump's ISIS accusation may be (and despite Trump later claiming that his ISIS remarks were intended to be sarcastic) it would be foolish to assume that his followers are possessed of the discernment to distinguish between Dumb Donald's dark fantasy world and the one in which sane, reasonable people live.
07/14/2016

Lawdamighty, it's hot. It's hot here, it's hot there, it's hot everywhere it seems. Santa Fe has already been through a period of 90-plus temperatures last month—a week to ten days of that kind of heat is pretty typical in any given year—but now the heat is on once again. It's been 90-ish for the past week and it seems that it will remain as such for another week or so. This in itself is rather exceptional but in concert with this heat wave the summer monsoonal rains have thus far failed to materialize. Last year the afternoon rainstorms began cranking up right on schedule at the beginning of July but as I look out the windows of the blessedly cool Inky Aerie this blazing afternoon there is literally not a cloud in sight. The Weather.com app on my iPhone reports the current humidity at 5%. Impressively desiccative.
07/08/2016

  A thousand pardons are begged of you, Gentle Reader(s), for the regrettable paucity of postage as of late. The usual distractions of travel, beisbol, work, beisbol and more travel have been in play with the addition of summertime bicycular activities, the inevitable result being that time spent wracking of the brain and pounding of the keys has suffered. Back in early June I was getting ready to add my two centimes worth of sentiment regarding the passing of the great Muhammad Ali when events such as the horrific massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and the mind boggling Brexit vote across the pond came crashing down. Next thing you know you're wallowing about in a bewildering swampy slosh of WTFs?? and OMGs!! for which there are no answers and no easy explanations. A bit overwhelming. I attended the Orlando vigil on the Santa Fe Plaza on Monday the 13th, presided over by our estimable Mayor Javier Gonzales and I felt that it did some good. It was a display of solidarity and community in the face of hate and intolerance—a display only, perhaps, but better than doing nothing at all.
06/08/2016

Welcome, Gentle Reader(s), to this latest installment of the standard-bearing blogization of all subterranean Galisteo Street DJ gigs, Matador Playlist. Ask for it by name, accept no substitute. As I apply digits to keyboard to document this latest subsurface scrum I am still recovering from the digital meltdown that I had long feared. Your Humble Narrator employs the use of a number of devices in his various capacities as DJ, art world flunky, frequent traveler, and general participant in 21st century intrawebby lifeways. These include an iPhone, an iPod Touch, an iPad, and three (!) MacBooks. A bit boggling, I know, but it seems to work—generally speaking. The 'generally' portion of that statement came into play when I cranked up MacBook #2—my Matador computer—to stitch together the outline of a playlist for last Thursday night. Upon crankup I was notified that software updates were available for MacBook #2 so I proceeded to install these before digging into my extensive music catalog. MacBook #2 has been showing its age for a while now (about 7 years old, approximately—aeons in computer years) but its workload consists of nothing more than downloading, storing and playing music files—not a lot to ask of any reasonably healthy computational device. Be that as it may...
05/31/2016

Your Humble Narrator has finally returned home to Santa Fe after an extended sojourn in the magical and misbegotten town of his birth, New Orleans of Louisiana. It was a productive trip for which the skyways were forsaken for the byways—specifically, an exhausting 17-hour drive, the primary feature of which was the state of Texas, which, through some woeful miscalculation or oversight, has been rudely placed betwixt and between the states of my procreation and primary residence. Be that as it may, one highlight of my time in New Orleans was a long-considered but oft-delayed pilgrimage to the gravesite of one of my primary musical heroes, Cecil Ingram Connor III, better known as Gram Parsons.
04/26/2016

The Purple One has left the building. Unbelievable. At the age of 57 the sudden passing of Prince Rogers Nelson strains credulity in a year that has already seen the losses of David Bowie, George Martin, Keith Emerson, Glen Frey, Merle Haggard, Paul Kantner, Paul Bley, Phife Dawg, Pete Zorn, Nana Vasconcelos, Maurice White, Dan Hicks, Prince protégé Vanity, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Papa Wemba, Billy Paul, and Lonnie Mack. 2016 has been a tough year for music greats and it's only April.   In all honesty, as much of a shock as the loss of Prince is it didn't hit me nearly as hard as David Bowie's passing, artsy fartsy white boy that I am, but back in the '90s I was sufficiently inspired to record a minimalist Prince homage, ala Cream (the song is Prime Time Baby and can be found on the 'Music' page of this site). Whether you were tuned into Prince's groove or not, there's no denying that he was one of a very small, elite group of significant artists whose musical talent seems/seemed boundless—the true genius artists who write great songs, play a dizzying range of instruments, sing with expressiveness, passion and distinction, and know how to handle the technical aspects of the recording studio. It's a short list: Bowie, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Todd Rundgren, Prince... that's about all I can think of.
04/23/2016

Back home I am, Gentle Reader(s) after many a long mile logged by land, sea (or river), and air. They say that travel enlarges the mind, and though I have no doubt that They are correct in this assessment, travel can fatigue the mind and body as well. Particularly in the case of international travel when more than just a few time zones are involved. There is an eight hour time difference betwixt and between Santa Fe and Amsterdam and by the time I got home I was feeling every second of it. I like to think of myself as zipping and zooming energetically about the planet much in the manner of my ageless hero Tintin (there he is in effigy below, as purchased at the beautiful Tintin boutique in Brussels), but this trip did, in the end, manage to deal out a bit of an ass whuppin of the jet laggy variety. There were extenuating circumstances in the final chapter (I'll not belabor you with that), but for all of the beautiful things I saw and the adventures I had with Inky Mum it is always good to get back home again. Now that I think of it, it was remiss of me not to acquire an effigy of Snowy to go with my Tintin—I think I was distracted by the neato giant mushroom from The Shooting Star. Darn the luck—I'll just have to go back.
04/07/2016

Gentle Reader(s), Your Humble Narrator reports to you from the Nether regions of the Netherlands, currently abroad the good ship Skirnir sailing the river Rhine betwixt and between the towns of Nieuw Lekkerland and Lekkerkerk on our way to dock up at Kinderdijk. Quite the adventure it has been thus far, escorting the Inky Mum through the paces of international travel and visiting with Brother JB and the Warrior Princess in lovely Amsterdam. The cultural offerings have been coming fast and furious, the food and drink has been coming even fasterer and furiouser, and—generally speaking—a lovely time is being had by one and all. Amsterdam is a extraordinarily vibrant and beautiful city—not exactly a news flash—and Bro JB and the WP are prospering, I am glad to say. As for YHN, I have been prospering too, especially today after having achieving that most elusive commodity of international travel, the Full Night's Sleep.
03/15/2016

As I'm sure you're already aware, Gentle Reader(s), the great Sir George Henry Martin passed away last Tuesday at the age of 90 years. To all reports, Sir George's was a life very well lived. He was respected and beloved by a great many people, not the least of whom was a group of four lads from Liverpool whom Martin met at Abbey Road studios in London on June 6, 1962. After he signed the Beatles to EMI's Parlophone label George Martin went on to produce all of the group's albums, save for the last ('Let It Be,' for which he functioned in a production advisory capacity). Beyond his groundbreaking work with the Beatles, Martin was a key figure in the evolution of the professional recording studio from a stuffy, formal laboratory environment (which in Martin's early days still involved studio engineers wearing ties and white lab coats) to a venue for free form sonic experimentation and creativity. There are other producers who emerged from the 1950s and '60s whose names are as well known as those of the artists with whom they worked (Sam Phillips, Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy and Phil Spector), and some artist/producers whose visions for their own compositions incorporated the possibilities of the studio as a primary element (Brian Wilson, Jimmy Page, Todd Rundgren and Prince prominent amongst them), but George Martin was the true revolutionary. Be that as it may, it took time for the full measure of Martin's contributions to become acknowledged: In the Beatles section of the first edition (1976) of the epochal 'Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll' George Martin doesn't even merit a mention.
01/14/2016

Sometimes it's difficult to know exactly how much someone means to you and how much impact they've had on your life until they're no longer there. Unlike, say, the Beatles, I can recall a pre-David Bowie world. Therefore, I can say without reservation that the world was a much more interesting place with David Bowie in it. Now, sadly, we are in a post-David Bowie world and I am all too acutely aware of how much he meant to me. It would be cool to be able to relate some sort of direct, personal account of Bowie but, alas, I have none. We were once in the same room together, albeit quite a large room, and some people that I know knew him, rather well as it turns out, but for better or worse I never met the man.