Silent Night

  • by Drew

See if you can follow this wacko train of thought…

All this truck talk got me thinking about NASCAR. I don’t know, I just associate the big rigs with racing. Is that so wrong? And then I started thinking about this guy Earl who was on of the bosses in the dining hall when I worked there in college. Earl was a big NASCAR fan, and he told me a detailed anecdote about an Eddie Rabbit performance…about 15 years ago. So I thought about the modern performance roster at a race, and realized that a good candidate might be Jessica Simpson (when she takes a break from hawking acne treatments) which reminded me of Christmas a few years back.

It was 2001, the first Christmas after the towers fell. There was a big thing at Rockefeller Center and all sorts of people performed. There was Liz Phair in a tragic performance that involved bad microphones and…well, not the best. And there was that Fireman who did a kind of opera thing.

Then Jessica came out and did Silent Night. And when I say she “did” it. Well, maybe “did it” is the proper way to quote it. I mean, she was pale and blond with massively pver painted lips and she more or less fellated the mic. Maybe this sells records to the good Christian boys and girls, but man, it was seriously tasteless. Yeah dude, good times.

Gift ideas

  • by Drew

Do you celebrate Christmas? I do, so if you want to get me something, I have some ideas. I guess I could list a bunch of high-end novelty items like a Jura Capresso machine and an 8 foot slate-bottom pool table, but then I’d look like a total douche nozzle. So let me go in another direction.

Instead of getting me a gift, consider this – become a patron. A new, modern, contemporary patron of the arts. Let’s face it, my rock star days are behind me. I have a job and a wife and 3 kids and a mortgage. I may need blood pressure medication. I’m not going to be getting backstage lapdances from Miley Cyrus in this lifetime. Nobody is going to be picking all the brown M&Ms out of the bowl in my dressing room.

Still, I believe I have some modicum of talent. And my children agree. There was a time when roomfuls of educated young people also agreed. I miss that. I miss playing my music to a roomful of interested listeners. It bugs me a lot that so many people I know think that wedding bands and tribute bands are the extent of live music outside of stadium shows. Seriously. the concept of checking out an unknown musician is wholly foreign to a large segment of the population.

Shouldn’t we all find this appalling? Shouldn’t we be distressed? I know I am.

So, back on point – I know a few artists and now even a record label that are lobbying for donations. I know of people who are heavy into the barter concept. Not just musicians, but artists in all mediums. Painters, scupltors, writers, whatever. They are soliciting donations, trading finished work for supplies or endorsements, auctioning performances to the highest bidder, etc.

So I have this concept – I have things I want to record. I want to put them down and share them with the world. But I don’t have the spare cash to press a CD and then send half of the run to press outlets and radio stations and the like. I mean, on top of the recording costs and all that. I mean, how can I justify spending thousands on something like that when I have to think about kids’ college funds and filling the tanks with heating oil. I mean, assuming I had the thousands of dollars burning a hole in my pocket.

But if I can make the music and create the package, maybe you can take that and move it for me. Share it, post about it, get free postcards from an internet printer and send them to all your friends. Host a performance and collect gas money. I’ll happily play a show in your living room for a bunch of your friends. We can share a bottle of wine and tell stories. Make me a few t-shirts on your hand screen press and maybe somebody will buy them. Let’s trade on our time and friendship and skillsets and resources. Remember Freshman year in college when everyone on your floor in the dorm was helpful and interested and everything was full of fresh promise? Let’s find that spirit again and do something here.

Maybe we’ll generate interest and some donations and maybe we’ll even have a reason to press a record. Maybe you can do cover art. Maybe you’re good on the phone and can do bookings for me. Hey, most of those great classic rock and roll managers started out as kids with some extra time and maybe some cash who were friends with the band. Let’s do something together. Let’s make something together. What do you think? Can we do something like that?

Bang Bang

  • by Drew

I saw an interesting bumper sticker the other day: BEAR ARMS OR WEAR CHAINS

I thought that was an interesting choice, at least if I’m reading it correctly. And if I’m reading it correctly, these are the two options available to you:

1. Carry a weapon, probably a firearm, or your person at all times.
2. You will be enslaved.

Now, I have to assume that if someone is going to enslave me for not carrying a gun, they, themselves are probably carrying guns with which to enslave me, so… wouldn’t a better policy be DON’T BEAR ARMS AND YOU WON’T WEAR CHAINS. 

OK, I see the problem there. This guy is clearly paranoid or preying on the paranoia of people stuck in traffic behind him. Since you don’t know what nuts out there are carrying guns, you don’t know which nut is going to try to enslave you, so you should carry a gun just in case you need it…for something. For protection, right? So when one of those nasty gun-wielding maniacs seeking to enslave you comes out of the woodwork, you can open a can of whoop on their unsuspecting ass. Right?

Maybe it’s just peer pressure. Maybe during the light of day, the choice presented by this bumper sticker is a little…stark, but think about where he got that bumper sticker. In some wood paneled basement on a friday night, surrounded by greasy men with beer guts and NRA ball caps and salt and pepper stubble on their chins. Upstairs the wives are looking for deals on Ft Lauderdale or Orlando or Destin hotels. Somewhere around the time the corn whiskey replaces the Coors, someone says, “hey fellas, wait till you hear about this bumper sticker I saw.”

OK, maybe I sound like one of those bleeding heart liberals who hates guns and wants to take them away from good, wholesome, down to earth Americans that just feel an automatic weapon is the only way to protect their 4 acres of farmland from the socialist revolution. Fair enough. But you are jumping to conclusions. I actually do not hate guns. I believe it is, in fact, the right of all Americans to own firearms. I think the bearing part should be reserved for times of war or military action or when that American feels legitimately threatened. (For the record, as moving into a duplex three towns away does not constitute such a legitimate threat in my opinion, but that is not the current issue.) 

Anyway, maybe I’m going through this mental exercise for nothing. Maybe I’ve read it all wrong. Maybe it was a typo and the guy is actually into 80s heavy metal music. Maybe the expressed sentiment was Bare arms or wear chains. Like, either go sleeveless and show your flesh or wrap it in links of shiny metal. Yeah, I bet that’s it because he seemed like such a nice man. At least he did from two car lengths behind and one lane over. Real real nice.

The Video Game Song

  • by Drew

I love tennis on the Wii, Carol has occasionally been lost to the world in PC games, Jake is obsessed with the Web-based games on Nick Jr. and Noah has not one, but two learning laptops. Sheesh. There’s a whole lot of gaming going on here. And yet, I never think of us as gamers. I have friends with an XBox or a Playstation who rattle on about the next big hit game. Halo this, Resident Evil that…and I’m like, “Dude, you’re such a loser,” but it’s just not fair, I guess. We all have our digi-love at some time or another.

I can even remember a time, many years ago, when my brother brought home a Nintendo machine. I was still in High School and he was a college freshman. He’d bought it from a classmate for like 20 bucks because the kid had no cash left to get home. The machine ended up a fixture in our den where my mother, of all people, developed a fast and nasty addiction to Super Mario Brothers. I couldn’t get near her for a couple weeks.

It was especially funny because she’d been the one who shied away from all things computer/gaming from the time my father brought home that first Atari console with a jury-rigged cartridge on which we could mount pirated games. Ah, the early days of pre-hacking. It was the Wild West. 

I even have a couple of joysticks I bought in the last few years that are preloaded with those classic games. Some of the arcade versions like Pac-Man and Dig Dug, and some of the classic home games like Centipede and Breakout. Noah especially likes those. And Jake, who when not on the Web is begging to play Monkey Ball Banana Blitz on the Wii, has recently written a song about loving Video Games.

It is performed very theatrically, a lot of pseudo vibrato, somewhere between Meatloaf and Journey (the singer and the band, not the meal and the noun) and it consists mostly of singing “I love video games! Video games are so cool.”

There are dance moves too.

I think maybe it’s time to go to the library.

Kiddie Stars

  • by Drew

Noah just said, in his three year old voice, “Daddy has big peanuts.” He had been talking about things he’d like for a snack and he mentioned peanuts. Carol told him we have no peanuts and this was his response. He was, of course, referring to a bag of shelled peanuts I have, but…well, it was pretty hilarious because it sure didn’t sound like he said peanuts.

And this little moment of comic relief got me thinking about child stars, child actors, whatever. I am forced to see dozens of them in various Nickelodeon and Disney vehicles on a more or less daily basis in between episodes of Spongebob or Phineas and Ferb. I am continually blown away by just how untalented most of these kids are. I mean really really untalented.

They all have shows featuring recycled 80s sitcom plots and excruciating, scenery-masticating performances. They all have albums featuring comically over-digitized vocals. They all have music videos modeled on 80s MTV hits. And I can’t help but wonder…where did it all start?

Many of these kids are the unholy progeny of industry tools. Some have a more apparent lineage including my personal favorite target, the soon to be revealed as a young priestess of the dark arts – Miley Cyrus. And the small number of remaining gnomes that don’t have a relative in the biz? They started with overzealous parents and megabucks paid to entertainment lawyers and kiddie agents.

And why…WHY!!!! did they put their kids on this path? Probably because the little monsters had a penchant for cute little smiles and funny little statements. No, Miley probably never said anything about Billy Ray’s penis or peanuts…probably. But still…

I have a great appreciation for those actors and actresses who parlayed early success in the entertainment industry into meaningful vocations somewhere else. Like Mayim Bialik from Blossom who is a mom with a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA. Or Jeff Cohen, who played Chunk in the Goonies. Now he’s a handsome and successful entertainment lawyer.

Isn’t that a lot better and far less pathetic than Keisha Knight Pulliam (Cosby Show) on Fear Factor, or Joey Lawrence (also from Blossom and some other shows) on Dancing With the Stars?

And some of them return to the entertainment biz after a reasonable break. Like Danica McKellar from the Wonder Years. She took a break, got a Math degree from UCLA, then came back with a part on the West Wing. That’s cool. And how can we forget Neil Patrick Harris? after Doogie Howser, he was destined for a lifetime of rehab and Leif Garrett-esque escapades, right? But no…he disappeared. For a long long time. And when he resurfaced it was in Undercover Brother, Harold and Kumar and How I Met Your Mother. He’s a freakin’ rock star!

Maybe if we provide these little douche nozzles a list of degree programs by state they can take a break from indentured servitude to Nickelodeon and Disney…or is it simply in-Disneyed servitude.

No matter, if the mouse will grant them a few years of reprieve, maybe Miley and Haley and Miranda and Demi and all the rest can actually read a book and drink a domestic beer on a second hand couch in a frat house. But, more likely, they’ll just read a script about it while considering the next direct-to-DVD project.

Beautiful

  • by Drew

In a few months we’ll probably be describing days like today as overcast and dreary, wet and yucky. But right now, after all that sub zero winter weather, with a bit of bitter black gravelly snow clinging to the mud, today is one hell of a day. People are driving a little friendlier. Grocery store clerks have a twist of a smile on their lips. The usually deadpan and even a little impatient woman at the pizza place is chatty and, dare I say, almost happy.

It’s a turning point kind of day. It’s the kind of day when you feel like there’s sun-shiny hope on the horizon. It’s a day when you’re feeling less half-empty and a little more half-full. Yeah, my sinuses are still screwed up and my neck and joints are achy, and my nose is a little runny, but who cares – a couple of margaritas will make it all go away.

It’s an I think I can actually see the end of winter on the horizon day. It’s a hose the salt off the cars day. It’s a finally get the icicle lights off the gutters day. It’s a let the kids ride their bikes on the driveway day. It’s a maybe my wife will let me set off some of those giant fireworks we bought on vacation in Pennsylvania kind of day.  

It’s the kind of day you feel charitable and warm toward your fellow humans. Hell, it’s such a fantastic day that I don’t even think a hunk of plastique rigged with a Patek watch timer, shoved inside a Hello Kitty lunch box and duct-taped to the bottom of the Evil Blimp‘s * car could make me feel any better.

Yup, it’s a good day. Just beautiful.

 *For those of you who were not regular listeners of my WAMH afternoon radio show circa 1994, the reference is to an indie seven inch I played frequently: Rush Limbaugh Evil Blimp by Neighborhood Texture Jam. Yeah, I hate that fat SOB. But even if he did explode today, I don’t think I could be any happier.

The Studio Needs Attention

  • by Drew

After a week of vacation and a couple days of unhappy sickness, I am aching to get back to the studio. My basics are in place and I’m ready to start laying the groundwork for a project or two. A lot of the early work has been setup, especially figuring out how to get the multitracker and mixer – the ersatz heart of the operation – in a prominent position. See, everything has to plug into the heart, and lead out to microphones, amplifiers, or direct to certain instruments. In between there are various bits and pieces of equipment. A little tube emulator, a hum canceller, a compressor, a general digital effects box, and assorted other nonsense. Then there are two sets of monitors and a few other pieces that need to be nearby for output like a cassette deck and a DAT recorder. And don’t forget the headphones. All this is next to my big ol’ PC.

The big problem is that all these connections have to pass right through the “living space” of the studio…and we’re talking a lot of cables. So I’ve come up with a system for suspending cables using some chain usually used to hang planters, some lamp chain, some plastic circles from scarves and another from a kid’s magic trick, aluminum hangers, rubber-coated steel screw hooks, smaller, uncoated screw hooks, wood screws, bent forks, garden twine, eye hooks, magnets, shower curtain clips, push pins, and a chunk of wood from an old mass market retail wine display.

The New New Noise

  • by Drew

A few weeks ago I made some serious upgrades to my home studio. Overdue, perhaps long overdue upgrades. Most notably a new digital hard disk multitracker and some suh-freaking-sweet monitors. I’ve spent every spare moment of the last few weeks trying to get past the learning curve and put tunes to tracks. And I’ve been making some progress – slow but sure – progress you can track on the Noise pages where I’ll post new material and works in progress.

And man, it feels good. I mean, I’ve been away from it too long, and I’ve really been feeling it lately. It’s funny, the absence was not so noticeable, but now that I’ve had a guitar in my hands for hours every day for a couple weeks, I realize there was a hole.

Maybe it’s something like a mid-life crisis, but I don’t really think so. It’s not like I woke up one day and said maybe I should check out a health care career or maybe something in human resources. There’s always real estate. That’s more like my foray into the wine business. <wink>

This, I think, is more of a return to what it once was – what I once was. The hard part has always been reconciling the urge to play with marriage and parenthood and real-job-having-ness. And maybe, I think maybe, I can figure this out. Or die trying.

Or not. I still have a basement full of booze after all.

Online Ed (the only good indians are tame***)

  • by Drew

So I’m still into this online education concept, and I’ve come across some other programs that are pretty cool. While looking at Project Management oriented stuff I came across this Master of Science in Service Management program. Among other things, it has a focus on leadership in business and is offered by Saint Xavier University. Now, I don’t know if this is for me – after all, it has “Science” in the title. I mean, that right there is a pretty solid indication that I should run to the hills with Iron Maiden blasting my personal soundtrack.

What really tracks for me is the MS Nursing degree they offer. No, I’m not saying I’m ready for a career change just yet (though one never knows – and I’m much more likely to go nurse than doctor – think Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents only less DeNiro and more catheters).

Seriously, though, this is a pretty compelling program. It’s wild that you can actually consider getting an advanced degree in the nursing field (solid undergraduate work is of course a requirement) through an online program. I mean, as more and more people are making career decisions or changes later in life – like, after they’ve started families and have mortgages and such – an advanced program that is flexible and can work around an individual’s schedule is pretty cool. There really is a world of new opportunities opening up thanks to online culture – and it’s not just centered on porn and wasting time.

And since we’re talking about patient care here, it is cool that they also require some weekend on campus time to complete the program. It’s not just about avoiding the rubber stamp, but I think it also reinforces the human element that is required in health care. It seems Saint Xavier’s is one of only 15 schools recognized as a Center of Excellence in Nursing Education, and the program is fully accredited, and graduates can sit for the Clinical Nursing Leader Certification Exam. Honestly. I have no idea what that is, but it seems comparable to receiving PMP certification as discussed last time.

So even if Nursing is not in my (immediate) future, I am heartened by the impressive leaps I have seen in the online education space since I started working in this business…back when it was barely a business to work in. And it is quite interesting to see some an online curriculum that is well-conceived and has been demonstrated effective in what we once called the “distance learning” space, particularly when the curriculum has nothing to do with the online world. Taking an offline discipline and creating an online learning environment that supports the offline reality – in a very specialized field, no less – that’s just cool.

*** By the way – the title…it’s from the the song Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden. Just in case you think I’ve lost my liberal bias or something.

What is a Producer?

  • by Drew

I am a Producer by title- Executive Producer in fact. The title actually comes from my time in the Advertising biz, and is not nearly so exciting as it might sound. I wish it meant I was producing quality film or classic albums. Instead, in the Web-world it has really come to mean project manager. In the late 90’s there were bazillions of Producers. Thankfully, when the bubble burst, a lot of the bandwagon folks split for the next big thing, because most Producers/Project Managers I had to deal with were boneheads.

In fact, I knew several dozen Producers with varying levels of experience who’d taken classes or earned certificates in the field, and they were some of the worst in the bunch. Of course, this was a time of, again, bandwagon growth, so the real value of these programs are pretty questionable. It’s like a lot of the MBAs I know. Sure, there are some fine biz schools out there, but the lion’s share of academics in the business field have never owned a business, many have not even held jobs outside academia. Remember those funny scenes in Back to school when Rodney talks down the professor with tales of graft, bribery, tax evasion, union “massaging” etc.? Yeah, go into business for yourself for a year or so, you’ll see who really knows what’s up.

So I honestly haven’t given much thought to continuing education in my field. But recently there have been a number of positive changes at my company, and I’ve actually considered taking advantage of some continuing ed opportunities. Maybe it is a good time for me to reconsider certification.

I’ve recently come across St. Joseph’s University, the online arm of a pretty well-respected Jesuit institution. Their PMP Exam Preparation might be the way to go if I’m going to pursue certification. I have only one friend who has done any higher ed study through an online program, so I am curious about effectiveness.

This actually looks pretty solid. The exam itself is administered by a third party, the Project Management Institute, so it has the feel of a real accomplishment, not summer camp with a pop quiz at the end of July. Certification prep is a 24 week program. Lecture, videos, and such parts of the program are expected, and certainly interesting, but I think the most valuable aspect of the training is in case studies.

I have often observed that a lot of people (including a lot of Project Managers) view Project Management as making a schedule, defining a timeline, estimating costs…and then more or less walking away. The reality, however, is that managing a project is managing a series of problems and issues. If it was all about making a schedule and you could expect the people involved to simply follow the schedule, it would be pretty easy. The reality is that there are failures, illnesses, and difficult clients, and only through experience can you learn to anticipate and deal with these kinds of things.

So 24 weeks, three phases – Project Management I, II and PMP Exam Preparation. Looks pretty solid. I just wonder if the boss will pay for it.

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.