Last Night's Lack of WiFi vs. Tonight's Abundance of Fun

So anyone who tried to tune in last night was met with an annoying blank stare. Turns out The Meadowlark's WiFi was down. Bummer. Apologies. I taped the show, so hopefully we can get some of that footage up on YouTube soon.

Tonight, there will definitely be WiFi, so we'll try it again. Drangefest starts around 5p, but I don't imagine we'll play until later... I may just let the set up run, so feel free to check in anytime between 6p and 9p. You might just get a glimpse of the Drangefest Cornhole Championships!

I'll post highlights at a later date.

Rock.

The links again are UStream.tv and the window below.

Dan Beahm streaming live at 9pm Mountain Time!

Howdy, all. We understand The Meadowlark has wi-fi, so we'll be streaming the show tonight! Tune in by either coming back to this post and clicking below, or by finding us on UStream.tv.

You will have the joy of hearing/seeing the cello stylings of Talia Dicker. We've got some new songs to play, so it should be a good show!

Hope to see you tonight, even if you live fa', fa' away!

More Problems With Thunderbird (suggestions)

I have several domains set up with one master domain at my host (Bluehost). I often check mail securely through Bluehost's shared SSL, therefore the certificate does not match my domain name(s).

Each time I do this, I most "OK" the error message many times (for each e-mail address) in Thunderbird. Why can't Thunderbird remember that I've ok'd this connection (many, many times)?

In addition, if you get sidetracked and aren't there to (nearly) immediately click "ok" to the errors, the servers time out and you have to restart Thunderbird to get it to run smoothly again.

So, to recap, Thunderbird should remember if an SSL has been OK'd or associated with a particular address.

Thanks.

Wanted is an Awful Movie: don't go see it

We went to see Wanted last night.

I would say I'm a pretty big fan of action/adventure movies. But I left the theater extremely disappointed by those involved in this movie. I wish I had my $19.50 back, so I didn't have to feel like I had supported what was being conveyed. I just feel dirty, nay, soiled now.

I couldn't believe the glorification of guns and violence in this motion picture (I can't bring myself to call it a "film"). Not only that, but at the end (not a spoiler) the lead character actually makes a call for people to take control of their lives... by shooting anyone that gets in their way, it would seem. If you've been beaten down, go out and "grow a pair" by shooting everyone. I can't get that perceived message out of my head, especially when thinking about how a teenager (or adult mentally stunted at that age) would see this movie.

I'm not often this bothered by the "shoot 'em up" style. I love movies like Equilibrium (minus the puppy scene), Pulp Fiction, True Romance, things in the vein of Aeon Flux, etc., etc... So it's not that I'm just blanket against movies with shooting (even copious amounts of shooting).

But Wanted glorified it in such a way that I was appalled. They definitely did their fair share of ripping off Fight Club (to a fault). However, even though Fight Club was chock full of graphic violence and anti-establishment sentiment, it felt different. I'm not against challenging norms. I'm not against thinking for yourself. But Wanted just really felt like it was saying, "If you've got problems, young high school lad, find yourself some cool guns and go shoot all those stuffed shirts and phonies that make your life miserable."

I think film makers have a huge responsibility to the masses for which they create entertainment. Those who made Wanted shirked that responsibility big time. Zero redeeming qualities to the story. OK graphics and action, some things we hadn't seen before, but "tricks" that are vastly overshadowed by a horrible glorification of empty violence.

That's my $.02.

...

The e-mail is coming from inside the in-box!

In what appears to be the next level of Spam horror stories, today, when I was searching my "sent mail" in G-mail, I noticed e-mails I had not generated, addressed to my addresses. In other words, it appeared that I had spammed myself.

Yes, that's right, there was Spam from me, to me. I'm not sure how this is possible, but Gmail had better take a serious look at what's going on here. I can understand a spammer simply putting my address into the "from" field, but what we have here, it would appear, is spam from INSIDE my Gmail account. How is that possible?

It's bad enough that people hijack your e-mail address to send spam, and then you get black listed so that you can't send an e-mail to your grandmother because AOL thinks anything coming from your domain must be spam.

Arrrrrrgh!

Update, July 1, 2008: After some in-depth examination of the issue, I've found the culprit. It would seem that you can easily use Gmail as an outgoing SMTP server without a password, therefore, someone can use your Gmail account for their outgoing SMTP, and the sent mail will appear in your "sent" box. This seems like a major problem that Gmail needs to look into.

Indie Music and Booking

Nobody said it was easy.
No one ever said it would be so hard.

--"The Scientist" by Coldplay

I'm not necessarily the biggest Coldplay fan, but the quote was apropos. And here's the really weird part: as I was typing this, Pandora started playing "The Scientist." It didn't even register at first, because I thought it was in my head for a second, and then it was like, "Oh, that's out loud. What the...?"

Weird.

It's not exactly CBGB's, but it's a livin' (and I'm making people happy. See? they're clapping and smiling!).

The past couple of days, well, weeks actually, I've been thinking about promotion (and booking) a lot. We just finished driving across the country playing in bars and coffee houses, and it was really interesting seeing how different things worked in different places.

The most frustrating thing was how difficult it was to get gigs in my home towns (namely Indianapolis and Columbus, OH). What the freak? I know: some of you will jump to the obvious joke, "It's 'cause they know you suck!" But that's not it, so bite me.

The one place it wasn't true was Champaign, IL, but then, Champaign has always been a hotbed of musical love and openness. Something about that town... people are more willing to help each other out instead of throwing elbows grasping for the brass ring. It serves the musician community. It serves the venue community. It serves the listener community. Pay attention other towns!

Anyway... back to the issue of cold shoulders in the hometowns. These are towns where I can definitely fill a room. No question. Yet the venue owners and booking agents don't seem to care --or more to the point, return calls and e-mails. It was amazing how much of my time was getting gobbled up writing and calling over and over again just trying to get a response. Ridiculous. A musician works really hard, writing, recording, gigging, etc., so when you have to bang your head against a wall in the roll of booking agent as well, it's that much more frustrating. Not to mention, you feel goofy in the first place, selling yourself (as opposed to a booking agent selling someone else), trying to convince people that you're great and that you can fill a room and deliver a great performance. You really have to put yourself out there, so when that push is met with silence or indifference, it feels like a hole in your chest.

However, in some towns (Salina, KS for instance) while the house wasn't necessarily packed, there were a good number of people there, and they were definitely there to hear the music. It was grand. So how did this come about?

Well, once the show was booked (grrr...), it was a matter of finding people and connecting. Not just blanket spamming a population, but looking for someone who you think might actually like your music, and then striking up conversations. It was surprisingly effective, and we made some great friends! (As a side note: I'll discuss this "targeted promotion" in a future post).

So my point? Though you may think that I just like to whine (which admittedly, I do), it's that I'm trying to help other indie musicians by sharing my experience. If you have the means to hire a booking agent for any sort of tour you might be planning, do it. It is well worth the time and money. And a lot of booking agents will work for a reasonable fee, often a percentage, so convincing one booking agent, opposed to many venue owners, that you are worth their time and effort, is probably a pretty good plan. Once you've got somebody you can trust (important!!!) making those phone calls for you, you can work on what's really important.

What's that you say? Writing music? Haahahahahaahhaha. I was speaking of promotion.

(...on to the next post)

John McCain, Self-Proclaimed Environmentalist, Calls for Off-Shore (California) Oil Drilling

what's playing: "Buddy Holly" by Weezer

They've started running these "John McCain stood up to the President for the environment five years ago" ads in Colorado. Maybe they're running them in your state too (since Republicans are now fighting for states they've never had to throw cash at --incidentally my favorite headline this week).

I'm wondering what exactly he did --scold George W. for not recycling his Dr. Pepper can?

These ads only make me realize that John McCain is even more of a shady liar than I thought.

Just last week McCain called for a lift of the 27 year old moratorium on US off-shore oil drilling. Yes, he thinks the solution to our oil problem is drilling for more oil off California. Not only is it wildly irresponsible, it's point blank stupid. The solution is creating an alternative, not trying to find more oil. Any third grader could tell you that. And if you just want to make trucks go (without much regard to environmental impact) we have the technology NOW. You can make diesel from just about ANYTHING.

Unbefreakinglievable.

Here are just a few credible sources on the subject:

• San Francisco Gate
• CNN
• The Washington Post