To say nothing of the nearly constant rain, we had a fine time camping at
Weston Bend State Park last night. Yeah…camping, I said. We jaunted up to the park late yesterday afternoon, hauling along a tent, a cooler, hot dogs, s’mores ingredients, bug spray and a foreboding sense that the clouds on the horizon really meant business. And they did, sprinkling overhead for
most of the night. It was a basic outing to the campgrounds:
bicycling, burning stuff, and trying to lay low, thereby avoiding the contempt
of the grounds manager who, between sucks of oxygen from a respirator, was
stunningly rude.
To put off more pressing work today, I cooked up little digimentary, a
docu-dramatism depicting our stay. It’s not as long or as essayistic as I
would like it to be, but I wanted to play around with the capture feature on my
camera and see how challenging it would be to run it through my system into a
sampler combining music, stills and video. The mixing software is an old
version of Sony Movieshaker–a standard install on this desktop. It
handled everything with ease, but I wish the audio leveling had greater
precision. Since I’m not in the market for any new software, it’ll have to
do.
A favorite camping memory: In the summers, my brother and
I would pitch tents in the yard, string extension cords to the tents, and
convene long–even overnight–sessions of C64 video-gaming (of course we set up
the computer in tent). It was a kind of portable bedroom wired to the
house; our two large outdoor dogs could come and go as they pleased while we
fought through The Bard’s Tale and Archon. One of those summers, J. slept
outdoors for a month straight.
That was fun and worth the wait!
Liked Something Holy– will look for the CD.. Check out Bruce Cockburn’s music. I’ll bring his interview with Sun Magazine to the “Island”… you can check out an excerpt at sunmagazine.org. From what my son-in-law tells me (J. has additional degrees in music and audio engineering and is quite the blues / rock musician himself) Atlanta is the current music mecca. Check out the Detroit Cobras… esp cd “7 Easy Pieces”. They’re HUGE in London but get little airplay here. They’re kind of retro 60’s rock with a current twist… lead singer has a smooth Patsy Cline voice but is rough and cruel on stage. Your Dad likes them too. Wasn’t able to view the camp clips…”technology has let me down” again…. OH… I am bringing music to the island…can’t live without it.. may even bring the fiddle and accordian.
I’ll look into the Cobras ref, Sybel. Of course, if Dad likes it, well, you know…I grew up listening to his favorite LP’s, which is just to let you know your credibility is slipping. Either that or you’ve nudged him into moments of “hep”-ness. Bring the accordian and the fiddle, give the music rise, and I’ll do my best to clap along (Ph., as you know, is the dancer in the family, not me). Any other clamoring from me will ruin your gig for certain.
Groovy note about J. Audio engineering, eh? Very interesting.
I was mainly experimenting with some new combinations of tech stuff for the vid, Marie. It was fun to put together and surprisingly easy. I continually surprise myself that I’m surrounded by gadgets I *think* I know how to use when I’ve only scratched the surface of their potential.
Very few new rock bands to it for me, but the Cobras are one. Excellent stuff. Also check out another Detroit favorite, the Dirtbombs.