My hometown concert in Hyde Park, health NY, cheap last Saturday was very sweet and great fun. There is some video to edit and post in time. I’ve played some amazing spots on this tour and just finished the last one at The National Underground in NYC on Friday but playing to old friends is still my favorite thing to do. A couple of them drove down from Rhinebeck to see me at The National. A few more city dwelling friends came back to see me too. Big crowd and a fun set. Having a beautiful time with my family. Sorry that’s gonna end soon. I’ll be in the studio banging out some demos with Helen Avakian the rest of the week and then I’ll start driving south again.
Facebook continues to give me fits, allowing me a very limited number of friend requests each day before they start sending me threatening messages. I realize it’s totally automated on their part. With a billion users I can’t expect to get an answer from a human.
So now we are starting to live in the Sci-Fi world warned about decades ago. But I see we’re spelling that SyFy now. Ever changing answer machine messages that rarely give you the needed options but plenty of insipid music, automated social networks that aren’t actually run by people, help lines that are populated by script-reading part timers on the other side of the globe, cash registers that make it unnecessary to actually know how to make change, infants with breasts, total joint and limb replacement, face transplants, antibiotics that no longer work because we get so much in our meat supply. A voting population that is informed by 24 hour news networks and yet has never been more poorly informed of actual truth.
I’m not thrilled with most of the so called advances we’ve made as a species and society but I am very curious to see where it all goes. You are gonna suggest I write songs about it but I keep resisting. Some words and images just don’t lend themselves well to verse. There are songs about Chevies, for instance, but not so many about Volkswagons I don’t even really want to hear a song with the words Google or e-mail or Facebook in them. I am working on a collection of songs about Denial, however, and some will get at this list since we have allowed these things to happen by denying that they are. Maybe I’ll come out of this week with a few demos to post.
