Maybe They Should Have Thought More About This

Now you can misplace your phone AND your wallet!

Leather wallet case holster

True Story

My buddy lost his iPod. No idea where he lost it. Until along came a man named Steve...

Steve takes the harlem line train and was on the 6:38 train Wed night. Steve got up at the right time to find my buddy's iPod sitting on a seat near him.

Steve, being the resourceful man he is, contacted Apple on his own and reported the iPod to their customer service department. Apple used the serial number on the back of the iPod to locate the owner (my buddy).

Apple then gave Steve my buddy's home phone number and he proceeded to call, spoke to my buddy's mom (who relayed the message to him) and in less than a day, my buddy walked 12 blocks from our office to pick up the iPod from steve. (Of course my buddy gave him a reward cause that's how he rolls. However, his iPod is priceless to him, so no amount of money could have been enough of a reward for Steve's thoughfulness.)

It puts a lot of faith back in humanity when someone returns something to you...no matter what it is...or how insignificant it could be to another person.

That being said, the two things to keep in mind are:

1) ALWAYS REGISTER YOUR APPLE PRODUCTS!

2) Do your best to return lost property to someone else, because next time it could be your iPod or PDA or camera or wallet...

The Mecca

Yesterday afternoon my boss returned from The Mecca of all things that are music instruments, The NAMM Show. It's bad enough that he is back in the office after giving us a few days of R&R without him, but he didn't bring me a single friggin' giveaway or goodie! I'm the only one in this goddam office who can even be labeled as a "serious" musician - despite my lack of ability - and he can't grab one pair of free drumsticks or one free CD-Rom of recording software or a guitar pick or a keychain or a 6-string hollobody guitar?!

I think I may be sick tomorrow.

Yeah...right now I'm not feeling well tomorrow morning...

Pondering The New Year

I never make New Year's resolutions. There's no point in setting up myself for failure. But lately I've been giving serious thoughts to my goals for 2006. They consist of the following:

1) Get a job that doesn't make me want to kill my boss.
2) Significantly reduce the number of CDs that I copy for co-workers and friends.
3) Learn how to properly play all of the latin percussion instruments I own.
4) Add to my latin percussion lineup.
5) Finish Album #1 with Rocket.
6) Record Album #2 with Rocket, making it 1,000 times better than Album #1.

In keeping with the music theme of Goals 1-6, my last goal is to start producing and mixing albums for independent, up-and-coming artists who have yet to release a full-length album. In other words, I want to be the guy that artists can go to in order to make their demo or first full-length album much better than it would be on their own. The way I figure it, my industry connections + Rocket's musical ability + my musical ability + my production/arranging ideas + my mixing ability + 2 solid project studios = an interesting/profitable/fun concept.

At last!

Well, boys and girls, after 2 stress-filled weekends, I have finally finished recording all the drum parts to my new album. It's not mine alone; my best friend (Rocket) and I have been working on it for about 6 months. He wrote most of the music, I wrote all the drum and percussion parts, I did most of the producing, and we both arranged the songs.

To give you an idea of the sound, our goal was to record an album in the jazz-funk vein -- ala Soulive, Karl Denson, Addison Groove Project. But it quickly became apparant that our rock and pop roots would inevitably seep into the music. So it's more or less a funky, groovy pop album. We also covered a very popular rock tune from the 90's and turned it into a cool, swinging track.

Big props to The Girlfriend, who threw me a BIG bone by letting me setup my full drum kit in the crib for 2 weekends so I didn't have to record my drum parts on a keyboard. Praise Jesus. I will be tracking a whole buttload of percussion parts over the next week or two, and then Rocket and I will mix the final album. I will keep you updated on the status. (We may even create a website and/or MySpace site for your listening pleasure...or displeasure...depending upon how it ends up.)