We Used to be Giants

John Fogerty sings “Got a beat-up glove, a homemade bat, and brand-new pair of shoes / You know I think it's time to give this game a ride / Just to hit the ball and touch 'em all / A moment in the sun / It's-a gone / And you can tell that one goodbye!”

In a previous life it was a badge of honor as a tour manager to barrel into a van with guitar cases, drum kits or even just friends and drive miles and miles to get to a concert.  These days, I am a dedicated equipment manager to my son and his aspiring baseball career.  Instead of a haul from Guitar Center, I find myself loading baseball bats, multiple gloves and catcher’s gear to get to Little League games.

Road-tripping once meant debating classic drive-time conversations like who was more influential, The Beatles or Led Zeppelin as we fought for control over the radio or CD player.  These days, my son and I just take turns playing music for each other on my iPhone that we might like.  Yes – I confess, I slipped DJ Shadow’s collaboration with Run the Jewels “Nobody Speak” into the mix and smiled so big when he hollered at El-P’s flow: “I'm unmentionably fresh, I'm a mensch, get correct / I will walk into a court while it wrecks”.

Traveling to shows also meant a certain amount of pride in performing 8 shows in 7 days, but now it is bragging about 10 games and several practices in 8 days.  Where my mapping skills used to take me to places in Pennsylvania like Media, Millvale and West Chester, these days it is Beaver, Harrison City and Saxonburg.  All special places in their own right, but these days my reason for adventure rivals why people traveled “to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom.”  With a wink and a nod to W.P. Kinsella and Phil Alden Robinson, I arrive at fields innocently.  Walking out to the bleachers; sitting in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon and watching a game and as if I was dipped in magic waters.  It reminds me of all that once was good and it could be again. 

We live in crazy, crazy times but I am taking a lot of positive energy from being socially distant at these games but at the same time rooting on my son and his teammates.  Borrowing from Rage Against the Machine’s song “Renegade of Funk”, these boys believe in each other and are following the mantra, “No matter how hard you try, you can't stop us now".  And just as his team has rallied in the bottom of the 6th inning, I am hoping that we can as people.   

Now instead of wanting to go to a gig at the Williamsport Community Arts Center we have our sights set on a game at Howard J. Lamade Stadium.

Thanks for reading.

Pac-Man Fever

I had never had an MRI before June 2020.    I have now had three, but even with all of the time in the scanner tube, I am still having issues identifying the house band that has been making all the sounds in the background. 

Although when most people hear the letters M.R.I., they think of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, my brain continues to turn to music.  And while some people hear jackhammers or a cacophony, I have been spending my different time intervals in the cylinder-shaped magnet thinking about the uniqueness of the sounds.

Could it have been Daniel Maman, better known by his stage name The Alchemist, trying to get the beats just right?  Tom Morello's 1982 Fender Telecaster practicing for the next Rage Against the Machine reunion gig?  How about everyone’s favorite Count von Count, the mysterious but friendly vampire Muppet from Sesame Street tuning his organ?  Had I simply landed inside of the arcade game Galaga?  Unfortunately, we will never know.  Radiologists are not people of many words (or clearly a sense of humor) and when I asked who got to enter his/hear initials for the game’s high score, I just received blank stares.

For the purpose of this post, let’s think that M.R.I. stands for Multi Recording Interface.  And for those who did not graduate from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA or Belmont University in Nashville, TN, an audio interface is a piece of hardware that expands and improves the sonic capabilities of a computer.  And in my experience, they are an absolutely essential component in audio production.   

Some strong memories jump to the forefront of my mind when thinking of sound recording equipment.  There is my former roommate and childhood friend Danny Marcus recording on a 4-track in the living of our Washington DC apartment.   Another flashback is getting schooled on Pro Tools by Doug Derryberry in his Brooklyn, NY recording studio.  And these days, I have my own equipment sitting in my house in Pittsburgh, as my friend Josh Green joins me from Harlem, NY while we figure out how to use Audacity to record our podcasts.

I know that I am not as talented as Charlotte Gainsbourg, who made the sounds of the MRI scan part of the music itself. Her third album, co-written and produced by Beck, was released in 2010 and titled “IRM,” the acronym for Imagerie par Résonance Magnétique (MRI in French), but what I am doing is trying to keep things in perspective when dissecting a mentally heavy procedure. 

I am not sure when I will have my next one scheduled, and multiple friends have suggested that I request headphones the next time that I have one booked.  I am open to suggestions as to what to listen to, but maybe the soundtrack has already been written?

Thanks for reading!