This year has been a good year for me recording-wise. I played drum set on two albums that were released (Tres Femmes and Lis Harvey’s Porcupine), did some virtual beats for one track on VS’s latest release, and did some more recording that hasn’t been released (and might not, who knows). All in all, not too bad.
I wanted to make sure this stuff was here, so I’ve updated my mp3 page with these new works, and some old ones that I just hadn’t put up there. Now you’ll be able to hear just how awful I can be in a variety of settings. I hope to have more stuff to put up there soon. At least one new recording project is slowly happening — keep your fingers crossed.
Sometimes I feel like I need to bring back a site map — there’s quite a lot of stuff here, and I’m sure the little buttons up top aren’t doing much to encourage exploration. Maybe someday.
In addition to preparing for the holidays (shopping has been kind of fun this year, and we’re looking forward to seeing people when we’re in Kalamazoo and New England), I’ve been doing some reading. I don’t feel like writing a full review right now; I just want to plug my friend’s book.
My friend Bob Schoen, who led a band I played with for a little while in Berkeley, wrote a book that he published this year. It’s called What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew About Judaism, and I have to say, it’s good. I was raised Christian, and although I have lots of Jewish friends (a few have converted since I’ve known them), I really didn’t know much about it until I read this book. It’s a good read for anyone who wants to get a good idea of what it means to be a modern Jew. He might have called it Judaism For Dummies, but I guess that’s taken. Anyway, it’s a good book, and you should buy it if you’re interested in learning more about Judaism, you goy you.
My one complaint: the word goyim doesn’t appear anywhere in the book. Apparently it has a negative connotation. I’ll have to track down my Jewish friends who have called me that over the years and smack ‘em around. But honestly, even shiksa (a gentile woman) appears in there!
I’ve also been reading a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s an apparent obsession of Merlin Mann, the author of 43folders.com, a mac-centric website about productivity. I like his website, and he speaks highly of it, I picked it up. It’s a business/self-improvement book, which is not something that normally appears on my reading list (I can think of one other that I’ve read), but I’ve enjoyed it pretty well. The book is like a fleshed-out version of the Good Experience email paper I read a year or so ago. In the email paper, the author says you should file all your email so the inbox is empty, and keep it that way. David Allen encourages you to get all the stuff you really need to do, might need to, or are kind of considering doing (your mental inbox), file all that stuff in a structured, trusted system (he has specific recommendations for what the system should be), and get them out of your mind. That way you always can see what needs to be done, and you don’t have to think about it. Thinking about what I need to do in terms of “next actions”, and writing down things to do right away has already been helpful. At some point when I have a little more control over my workspace — in other words, I’m not living in an apartment I don’t own — I will probably give his system a full, earnest go, and see where it gets me.