Scatterbrain Sunday Vol 1
Published by Mertz on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 8:58 AM.
I gave this blog the name I did out of a hope for discipline. In my younger days, when I was a more passionate, and I think more accomplished writer, whenever I hit roadblocks or creative dry spells, I would put limits on my writing. I wouldn't allow myself to use adjectives, or limit the number of words I had, etc. etc. There is nothing revolutionary about that. Writers find freedom in limitations all the time. But until you sit down and try it, you never realize how effective that process is.
A Thought and A Song was supposed to mirror that discipline. After trying several blogs that died out like western ghost towns, I thought writing about only one idea and one song in each post would encouage me to post more frequently. It hasn't. Or at least not with the results I wanted.
So today I'm throwing out the general rule of one thought and one song for Sunday posts. Or maybe in a way, I'm creating a new rule. Sunday posts will be a time where I will empty my brain. Any topics I didn't get to earlier in the week I will cover and anything crawling around my skull will also find a home here. I'm not sure about the number of songs I'll post. Anyway, enough buildup. I've got a fresh cup of coffee and an hour before brunch, so here's the first Scatterbrain Sunday:
So long, farewell, you won't be missed
I never thought I would still be in Champaign when the University of Illinois finally retired the chief. I figured it would be another three or four years. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I will not ruin your blissful ignorance. Seriously, I cannot think of a more idiotic thing to fight about that has actually been fought over with the intensity that it has. In fact, I wish I never had to experience five years of hands-on experience with the stupidity that is the Chief, pro-Chief students, anti-Chief activists, shirts, bumperstickers, billboards, protests, sit-ins, on and on and on.
All I know is that after a year of protests and legal challenges, the national media will hopefully stop writing about our racist mascot, and instead focus on all the innovation that goes on here (you know, things like inventing the web browser, creating faster transistors, finding cancer cures, YouTube, etc etc).
And before any rabid Chief lovers find this blog and start posting up negative comments or expousing their devotition to tradition, let me make something perfectly clear. Yes, I view the Chief as a racist mascot, but that's not why I thought it needed to be retired. The debate over the Chief resonated so loudly that our campus became defined by that debate. Without a doubt, that debate needed to take place, but when the noise from that debate drowns out all other discussions on campus and off campus about the University, the value of a mascot has wasted away, tradition or no tradition. The only thing the Chief stands for is loyalty to him or opposition to him. He doesn't represent the University, just the image the University has become stuck with. The only way the noise from this debate will go away is if the Chief goes away too. I'm sure that four years from now, when a new crop of white, suburbanite males come to campus as freshman, they won't feel compelled by "tradition" to keep the pro-chief groups on campus alive anymore.
Ugh, I can't believe I just wasted that many words on the Chief... moving on...
Snow Days... two of them!
When I was a kid, we never got snow days. And to hear the reports, UIUC hasn't shut it's doors because of snow in 30 years. That was shocking to me because the Champaign snow plows are terrible, even if there is an inch of snow on the ground. You think chaos would have errupted sooner. This week we got not one, but two snow days.
To show just how unprepared Champaign as a whole was, this past Tuesday they announced they were no longer going to plow for the day because it was futile. Here are a few pics my roommate snapped:
The front of our building.
A view of Neil St and University Ave, one of the busiest intersections in Champaign. Yes, there are streets there, and no I wasn't kidding about bad snow plowing.
Walnut Street. Another busy street in the heart of downtown. Way to go Champaign plows!
With snowfall and wind drifts, it really did get up to bench level, which was all the more fun to walk thru since the sidewalks were shoveled after the streets were "plowed."
A Thought and A Song was supposed to mirror that discipline. After trying several blogs that died out like western ghost towns, I thought writing about only one idea and one song in each post would encouage me to post more frequently. It hasn't. Or at least not with the results I wanted.
So today I'm throwing out the general rule of one thought and one song for Sunday posts. Or maybe in a way, I'm creating a new rule. Sunday posts will be a time where I will empty my brain. Any topics I didn't get to earlier in the week I will cover and anything crawling around my skull will also find a home here. I'm not sure about the number of songs I'll post. Anyway, enough buildup. I've got a fresh cup of coffee and an hour before brunch, so here's the first Scatterbrain Sunday:
So long, farewell, you won't be missedI never thought I would still be in Champaign when the University of Illinois finally retired the chief. I figured it would be another three or four years. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I will not ruin your blissful ignorance. Seriously, I cannot think of a more idiotic thing to fight about that has actually been fought over with the intensity that it has. In fact, I wish I never had to experience five years of hands-on experience with the stupidity that is the Chief, pro-Chief students, anti-Chief activists, shirts, bumperstickers, billboards, protests, sit-ins, on and on and on.
All I know is that after a year of protests and legal challenges, the national media will hopefully stop writing about our racist mascot, and instead focus on all the innovation that goes on here (you know, things like inventing the web browser, creating faster transistors, finding cancer cures, YouTube, etc etc).
And before any rabid Chief lovers find this blog and start posting up negative comments or expousing their devotition to tradition, let me make something perfectly clear. Yes, I view the Chief as a racist mascot, but that's not why I thought it needed to be retired. The debate over the Chief resonated so loudly that our campus became defined by that debate. Without a doubt, that debate needed to take place, but when the noise from that debate drowns out all other discussions on campus and off campus about the University, the value of a mascot has wasted away, tradition or no tradition. The only thing the Chief stands for is loyalty to him or opposition to him. He doesn't represent the University, just the image the University has become stuck with. The only way the noise from this debate will go away is if the Chief goes away too. I'm sure that four years from now, when a new crop of white, suburbanite males come to campus as freshman, they won't feel compelled by "tradition" to keep the pro-chief groups on campus alive anymore.
Ugh, I can't believe I just wasted that many words on the Chief... moving on...
Snow Days... two of them!
When I was a kid, we never got snow days. And to hear the reports, UIUC hasn't shut it's doors because of snow in 30 years. That was shocking to me because the Champaign snow plows are terrible, even if there is an inch of snow on the ground. You think chaos would have errupted sooner. This week we got not one, but two snow days.
To show just how unprepared Champaign as a whole was, this past Tuesday they announced they were no longer going to plow for the day because it was futile. Here are a few pics my roommate snapped:
The front of our building.
A view of Neil St and University Ave, one of the busiest intersections in Champaign. Yes, there are streets there, and no I wasn't kidding about bad snow plowing.
Walnut Street. Another busy street in the heart of downtown. Way to go Champaign plows!
With snowfall and wind drifts, it really did get up to bench level, which was all the more fun to walk thru since the sidewalks were shoveled after the streets were "plowed."Like Tony Soprano
I think I want a robe. Just feels like the thing to have for stomping around the apartment on Sundays.
DRM pre-insanity
There has been much talk about getting rid of DRM for online music from Steve Jobs and EMI in the past few weeks. Sometime this week I hope to join the cacophony of online voices weighing in on the issue (with links to some of the better and more relevant pieces). Obviously I'm for stripping away DRM, if for no other reason, it makes my DJing job so much eaiser using Serato.
In the short term though, if iTunes were DRM free I would have posted about the snow on the snow day because I wanted to post a song off of The Smashing Pumpkins Piceses Iscariot to go along with the wintery post. Instead I spent a few hours looking for my CD with no luck. Somewhere, there is a box of CDs hiding from me in my apartment. Too many have gone missing lately.
Daniel Larusso Is Going To Fight?!?!
I just came across a treatise on Pretentious Soup, another of the many blogs out there. Anyway, this piece is called Daniel LaRusso is a No Good, Lying, Worthless Piece of Shit and Other Things. It is so worth a read, it's not even funny (okay, the piece is funny). Make time to read it all and bookmark that blog for part two.
Radio radio
A group of my friends and I go to Radio Maria nearly ever Sunday for their amazing brunch. If you're in Champaign on a Sunday, you definitely need to go there. I'm about to get ready for it, but before I do, it is time for some more coherent thoughts about music and my personal creative output. Happily, I can report I have found some much needed focus. At least I think I have.
Ben Watt Strikes Again
I woke up early this morning for no apparent reason. Last night's gig was a good one. I had two women, one from NYC and one from California react in shock to me saying that I'm a Champaign DJ. They swore I had to be from a big city. That made me feel good. But the night was not anything bonkers, so maybe that's why I didn't feel tired this morning. In fact, it chilled out enough by the end that I was playing Charles Webster style smoothed out, adult deep house. I so desparately wanted to drop in Ben Watt's new remix of The Figurines' "Silver Ponds," but that record is en route from the UK as we speak and I won't get to play it out until this Friday.
That's probably the main reason that when I woke up this morning I headed over to Ben Watt's myspace page. I needed to hear that remix and that's the only place I can find it right now. But in addition to the Silver Ponds fix, I ended up reading some of Ben's blog postings. And if his musical genius didn't cause me enough envy, the man also happens to be an incredibly gifted writer. And once again, Mr. Watt hit something inside me that gave me creative focus.
He's been doing that for years. In the old days when I worked at a radio station in Bloomington, IL. I can vividly remember carting at least four cuts off of Everything But The Girl's Tempremental album. And I must have rewound "Tracey In My Room" about 10 times when the Lazy Dog compilation came in. In fact, that song is the reason why I started paying more attention to deep house over the progressive house I was enamored with at the time. You could chart every musical twist and turn I take, and most likely it was because I heard Ben Watt make that shift first.
It seems every time I hit a creative slump, every time I run out of gas and motivation to keep doing this DJing thing, Ben Watt does something that picks me up. Whether it is seeing him live, him putting out a new remix, or even reading his blog today, Ben just has a way of being the spark I need to keep going and push myself.
This couldn't have come at a better time. I've got one gig coming up in Milwaukee on Friday and past that, the future is a wide open hole for DJing. I've got no noteworthy gigs on the horizon. I feel lost on what my sound should be, and playing four hours a week at a lounge with a very particular audience isn't helping that. Furthermore, despite pushes from friends and very clearly understanding that I need to do it to move this DJing thing forward, I cannot find the energy/motivation to produce.
Well, today what Ben Watt did was two things. The first is that for some unknown reason (his blogs have nothing to do with this)... I am going to focus more on the musical side, and less on promotion side of DJing. I'm going to make myself work four hours every day on something directly related to music, either DJing or production. Promotion work will have to come elsewhere, particularly promotion in Champaign.
The second thing is that I am going to demand much higher quality output out of myself. No more half assing it, no more just putting something out to have it out. That goes for gigs, for mixes, for radio appearances, etc etc. And so, on that note, I am posting up a new mix which very well may be my last mix for several months. Anything that I share with the public from the point forward I am going to be 100% proud of.
This mix, while not bad, isn't the best that I could do. I'm actually admitting that in a post (in a very non-DJ egotistical way) as a reminder to myself to only put out what I'm absolutely happy with. So this will be the last mix I post that was "done just to get something done." Let's call it flushing out of my system the old way of doing things. Expect nothing but the best I can do from here on in:
Mertz - Future Purest
Tracklisting:
1. Recloose - Cardiology (Isolee Remix) (Playhouse)
2. Yapacc - Boutique Minimal (Neuton)
3. The Rapture - WAYUH (People Don't Dance No More) (Claude VonStroke Pantydropper Vocal Mix) (Mercury)
4. Chris Harris & Dominic Martin - Dig It (Dom's Mix) (Nordic Trax)
5. Mike Monday - What Day Is It? (Brique Rogue)
6. Claude VonStroke - Who's Afraid of Detroit? (3 Channels Remix) (Dirtybird)
7. Claude VonStroke - Who's Afraid of Detroit? (Tanner Ross Remix) (Dirtybird)
8. Herve - I Am Alright (Dubsided)
9. Dubble D ft. Flora Purim - Switch (Switch Remix) (2020 Vision)
10. Troydon - Drop It (Chuck Daniels Egg Drop Remix) (Spatula City)
11. The Martin Brothers - Stoopit (Christian Martin Remix) (Dirtybird)
12. Solid Groove & Sinden - Din Da Da (Counterfeet)
13. Justin Martin - The Water Song (Buzzin Fly)
14. Dublex Inc - Sound of the Ebu (Swag's Deep & Dark Dub) (Sugarcane)
15. Stereotyp ft. Joyce Muniz - Uepa (Man Recordings)
16. Bonde De Role - Melo Do Tabaco (Radioclit Remix) (Counterfeet)
17. The Grump - Tribal Communication (Stove Top Recordings)
18. J Phlip - Dunno (CDR)
19. Tracey Thorn - It's All True (Martin Buttrich Remix) (Virgin)
What a Sunday... and it's not even three o'clock yet.
I think I want a robe. Just feels like the thing to have for stomping around the apartment on Sundays.
DRM pre-insanity
There has been much talk about getting rid of DRM for online music from Steve Jobs and EMI in the past few weeks. Sometime this week I hope to join the cacophony of online voices weighing in on the issue (with links to some of the better and more relevant pieces). Obviously I'm for stripping away DRM, if for no other reason, it makes my DJing job so much eaiser using Serato.
In the short term though, if iTunes were DRM free I would have posted about the snow on the snow day because I wanted to post a song off of The Smashing Pumpkins Piceses Iscariot to go along with the wintery post. Instead I spent a few hours looking for my CD with no luck. Somewhere, there is a box of CDs hiding from me in my apartment. Too many have gone missing lately.
Daniel Larusso Is Going To Fight?!?!
I just came across a treatise on Pretentious Soup, another of the many blogs out there. Anyway, this piece is called Daniel LaRusso is a No Good, Lying, Worthless Piece of Shit and Other Things. It is so worth a read, it's not even funny (okay, the piece is funny). Make time to read it all and bookmark that blog for part two.
Radio radio
A group of my friends and I go to Radio Maria nearly ever Sunday for their amazing brunch. If you're in Champaign on a Sunday, you definitely need to go there. I'm about to get ready for it, but before I do, it is time for some more coherent thoughts about music and my personal creative output. Happily, I can report I have found some much needed focus. At least I think I have.
Ben Watt Strikes Again
I woke up early this morning for no apparent reason. Last night's gig was a good one. I had two women, one from NYC and one from California react in shock to me saying that I'm a Champaign DJ. They swore I had to be from a big city. That made me feel good. But the night was not anything bonkers, so maybe that's why I didn't feel tired this morning. In fact, it chilled out enough by the end that I was playing Charles Webster style smoothed out, adult deep house. I so desparately wanted to drop in Ben Watt's new remix of The Figurines' "Silver Ponds," but that record is en route from the UK as we speak and I won't get to play it out until this Friday.
That's probably the main reason that when I woke up this morning I headed over to Ben Watt's myspace page. I needed to hear that remix and that's the only place I can find it right now. But in addition to the Silver Ponds fix, I ended up reading some of Ben's blog postings. And if his musical genius didn't cause me enough envy, the man also happens to be an incredibly gifted writer. And once again, Mr. Watt hit something inside me that gave me creative focus.
He's been doing that for years. In the old days when I worked at a radio station in Bloomington, IL. I can vividly remember carting at least four cuts off of Everything But The Girl's Tempremental album. And I must have rewound "Tracey In My Room" about 10 times when the Lazy Dog compilation came in. In fact, that song is the reason why I started paying more attention to deep house over the progressive house I was enamored with at the time. You could chart every musical twist and turn I take, and most likely it was because I heard Ben Watt make that shift first.
It seems every time I hit a creative slump, every time I run out of gas and motivation to keep doing this DJing thing, Ben Watt does something that picks me up. Whether it is seeing him live, him putting out a new remix, or even reading his blog today, Ben just has a way of being the spark I need to keep going and push myself.
This couldn't have come at a better time. I've got one gig coming up in Milwaukee on Friday and past that, the future is a wide open hole for DJing. I've got no noteworthy gigs on the horizon. I feel lost on what my sound should be, and playing four hours a week at a lounge with a very particular audience isn't helping that. Furthermore, despite pushes from friends and very clearly understanding that I need to do it to move this DJing thing forward, I cannot find the energy/motivation to produce.
Well, today what Ben Watt did was two things. The first is that for some unknown reason (his blogs have nothing to do with this)... I am going to focus more on the musical side, and less on promotion side of DJing. I'm going to make myself work four hours every day on something directly related to music, either DJing or production. Promotion work will have to come elsewhere, particularly promotion in Champaign.
The second thing is that I am going to demand much higher quality output out of myself. No more half assing it, no more just putting something out to have it out. That goes for gigs, for mixes, for radio appearances, etc etc. And so, on that note, I am posting up a new mix which very well may be my last mix for several months. Anything that I share with the public from the point forward I am going to be 100% proud of.
This mix, while not bad, isn't the best that I could do. I'm actually admitting that in a post (in a very non-DJ egotistical way) as a reminder to myself to only put out what I'm absolutely happy with. So this will be the last mix I post that was "done just to get something done." Let's call it flushing out of my system the old way of doing things. Expect nothing but the best I can do from here on in:
Mertz - Future Purest
Tracklisting:
1. Recloose - Cardiology (Isolee Remix) (Playhouse)
2. Yapacc - Boutique Minimal (Neuton)
3. The Rapture - WAYUH (People Don't Dance No More) (Claude VonStroke Pantydropper Vocal Mix) (Mercury)
4. Chris Harris & Dominic Martin - Dig It (Dom's Mix) (Nordic Trax)
5. Mike Monday - What Day Is It? (Brique Rogue)
6. Claude VonStroke - Who's Afraid of Detroit? (3 Channels Remix) (Dirtybird)
7. Claude VonStroke - Who's Afraid of Detroit? (Tanner Ross Remix) (Dirtybird)
8. Herve - I Am Alright (Dubsided)
9. Dubble D ft. Flora Purim - Switch (Switch Remix) (2020 Vision)
10. Troydon - Drop It (Chuck Daniels Egg Drop Remix) (Spatula City)
11. The Martin Brothers - Stoopit (Christian Martin Remix) (Dirtybird)
12. Solid Groove & Sinden - Din Da Da (Counterfeet)
13. Justin Martin - The Water Song (Buzzin Fly)
14. Dublex Inc - Sound of the Ebu (Swag's Deep & Dark Dub) (Sugarcane)
15. Stereotyp ft. Joyce Muniz - Uepa (Man Recordings)
16. Bonde De Role - Melo Do Tabaco (Radioclit Remix) (Counterfeet)
17. The Grump - Tribal Communication (Stove Top Recordings)
18. J Phlip - Dunno (CDR)
19. Tracey Thorn - It's All True (Martin Buttrich Remix) (Virgin)
What a Sunday... and it's not even three o'clock yet.
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