First Trip to LA - seemingly vibeless at first

I rented a car from San fran to meet my friends Andrea, SB, and Raji in LA for Thanksgiving, some shows, and more eating. I've never been to LA! Andrea and SB just moved out there and they're so terribly missed! Also I was there to record the sounds of feral cows that supposedly run free in Santa Monica park--skinny and elusive cows that escaped from a farm. I wanted to take the beautiful coastal drive but I only had time off from work to take the shorter way which was Rt. 5. I still found it beautiful though not exactly interesting. In bumpertobumper holiday traffic I found myself video taping things like tumbleweeds set to whatever songs happened to be on the local radio station. Landscape karaoke.

Rt. 5 Tumbleweed set to some Mexican song.


rare open road no traffic set to another Mexican song.


farm thingee in motion set to BellBivDevoe's Do Me Baby.


Thanksgiving was wonderful and thanks for Andrea's mom's cooking. yum! Then hiking it all off in Santa Monica National Park in search of feral cows and George Clooney.
Wow, looking out over it, LA still has a strong old fashioned movietown feel.

no feral cows were sighted or recorded, but...


We did encounter George Clooney's sexy gate guarded by two harmless looking mutt dogs.


Raji left her underwear there for him. Well no, but apparently someone did.


Raji, inspired by underwear left for George, buys a Starmap.

We drove around in Andrea's Hybrid Prius with a GPS tracker that talked. Her name is Karen. LA seems sprawly but really great...we saw the amazing Magritte Exhibit at the LACMA and the tarpits with great sounds of the earth passing gas. How does one meet another person though with everyone in cars 98% of the time? I think these next pictures are in Laurel Canyons...bugalows and such.


SB's friend Emma's place.


Where rich movie makers meet to greet each other and pick up their fat checks.


watch out for humps in LA.

Sooo much expensive real estate with manicured lawns...so what are the kids up to in this town? Lets go to the Il Corral on Heliotrope "an experimental all-ages artspace devoted to the periphery, where you can be free to enjoy the strangest,newest or most familiar experiences and artists"http://www.ilcorral.net/




ohmy, apparently blackface by white boys. And one guy dressed up like a real estate salesman. ok I guess it must be the cultural backlash i was looking for. The music was not great that night though and we got told we were weird for giggling over a very graphic erotic massage book from the sixties where the male model looked just liked Jesus. What a super video store nearby!! cult faves i didnt know existed.


I wish I had more pics from LA but I was too busy exploring and eating everything.
excellent excellent Magritte show.

"Beautiful Radiant Things"

I lived on E. 13th St. b/t 1st and 2nd Ave for several years and I was happy to find out that Emma Goldman had lived down the next block. The sign always felt a bit more like a warning than a memorial.
Across the street on the same block is a large empty lot that I would always walk by that went through to the other side on 14th and I'd imagine all the wonderful things that could be built there-like more green space. The owners would keep paying to have all the trash removed, but it would just get filled up with garbage and weeds immediately because it has no purpose but to sit there and wait for it's property value to go up for real estate. Friends said that it's been empty for at least a decade.

I decided that it would be a good place to have Emma Goldman Park--a workshop oriented communtity center for gatherings with a playground, a garden, lots of trees for birds, and composting. I looked up the property under government zoning because if it was public property there would be chance to make this happen. Unfortunately it's privately owned by GrossBuilders...yup that's their name.
So my friend David Matorin said he met an artist named Veronica Jay Clay who is doing a Serenading Architecture project and that we should serenade Emma Goldman Park as part of her project. Why not create the large park out of sound with a pop sensibility for the passers by? The lot's history actually included being an old vaudeville theater that Mae West and the Marx Brothers performed at so we thought to include my friend Kamala on accordian. So what took place was me, David Matorin, Kamala Sankaram, and Gabe Moylan breaking into the lot with battery powered equipment and playing and singing for passers by. An official looking person was starting to motion for us to leave but as we started singing he stopped and listened. Kamala was on accordian, me on field recordings, David on effects, Gabe vocals, Che shot some video. I'll try and get the audio up on my website...when i get my website. for now some photos:

EAR to the EARTH - Sound and Music Festival - October 2006

The NYSAE co-hosted the Ear to the Earth opening with the Electronic Music Foundation at 3-Legged Dog Gallery in the Financial District that was webcast on free103point9. The idea of the festival was that as musicians and artists we can make a difference through our work for the environment. Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA spoke very engagingly about climate change with Andrea Polli's sonification work. Michelle Nagai discussed NYSAE and our group's mission, history, projects, and events. I spoke briefly about Giant Ear))) and the "social climate of sound and environment". I also DJ'd the opening with Giant Ear))) field-recording archives from the first show, playing works by Peter Cusak, Ben Owen, Edmund Mooney, United States of Belt, and others.

An odd thing happened...Laurie Spiegel arrived as I was setting up and said that she was told that she was to open with her Ferals piece of NYC pigeon photos and bird sounds. Wow, I finally got to meet her but an uncomfortable way to meet her as I was already listed as playing, I flew out from CA mostly for the festival, compiled an hour of material, and her piece was to be installed for the rest of the festival. Fortunately another NYSAEr showed her a program print-out with my name on it because I don't think I would have said anything. Well we listened to each others' sounds and we decided that my sounds would go with her projected bird photos in very Cagean way and Joel should announce that we were experimenting in a very New York kindof way. The photos were great and there were so many people there that it didn't really matter anyway. Though people came up to say nice comments on the sounds and one older woman came up and said that the sound with the visuals was great! hm, when I looked up I saw a photo pop up of R.I.P. on a tombstone while I was playing Children on Swings in Carroll Garden park and often there was a rollercoaster sound with close-ups of pigeons. um, yay!-Laurie said she liked it too. whew. and she said that we have the same minidisk recorder. (me-geek)

The performers included Michelle Nagai and Ben Owen with live performance/live mixed recordings/microtonalness; Ricardo Arias on balloons/field recordings; and Sean Meehan stamping a drum and the surrounding area and leaving it as an installation to be discovered by the audience. Great mixture of good sounds and strong performance aspects. not sure if it carried over to radio very well, but eh.
The rest of the festival sounded pretty wonderful! no time to write it all down!
Please check the Ear to the Earth website for new developments.

some PR about E2TE:

http://nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2006/classicaldance/19745/

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/30/061030gore_GOAT_recordings3

Keynotes of San Francisco - October 2006

I've been out listening and recording. The sounds of San Francisco are easier to isolate in recordings than NYC. Less noiiise, less people. The sounds that reoccur most here seem to be: the underground space whoosh of the BART, the MUNI bus' Star Wars twangy cables, dingy trolleys, clackity cable cars, crows, starlings, town clock, ferry boats, Spanish speakers, street performers, people asking for change, dogs in parks, the ocean shusshing, echos of Native American culture which sounds stronger than on the East Coast...the coyotes in Golden Gate Park. Another unheard sound is of everyone simultaneously cursing in their cars to find parking but come out smiling. lala la. peaceman. People do yell on the streets here but often it's like a fun shout and it's freeform, not so sculpted like cursing on the streets of nyc.



The Transamerica Building at 600 Montgomery Street. The pyramid shape was inspired by how the shape of a tree lets light down into the forest. It might be the tallest building in SF (for now) and it's only fitting that it has its own loud drone. The drone comes from two round concrete vents in front perhaps for the parking garage underground, but I like to think that the building is being serenaded.



drone makers. There is a person in the shot for perspective. won't say what the layout of the concrete things and the pyramid make me think of.



drone makers prettied up for Christmas.

BlogBackUP- This is October 2006

Natural light show across the land while listening to Francoise Bayle inside the car with Jon and Ruth and Joe Semiconductor at Point Reyes, CA--beyond words experience.