Steve Ball

Plague of Crafty Guitarists

My dear friend, and South American brother, Marcos Ribas was looking for a copy of the Plague of Crafty Guitarists CD review from last August's Guitar Player magazine. Travis Hartnett to the rescue! Thanks Travis for scanning and sending this through. Hope to get Volume II cooking later this year w/ focus on more traditional 'Crafty' material.

Tobin's 'the Crossing' is still one of my favorite compositions ever, and alone makes this CD worth owning.

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A rough afternoon made for a rather emotional evening, esp. during "I am (not?)..." Nonetheless, the House Concert last night was a smash -- special thanks to Captain Gravel for a great show. Just the right number turned up to fill my little living room to capacity. Great to finally connect TreyG and RichardL in the same room. Roadshow lineup with Curt, Paul, and Travis was a blast. Four voices = bliss. Great to have Curt back in the mix. Heard some feedback that PaulO was really rocking on bass!

I saw some cameras flashing during the evening -- photos will show up here if BTV crew in the audience send me some photos. Also nice that PatrickN could make it in from Whidbey for the show; sounds like we may be doing a show somewhere out on Whidbey again this summer via a friend of Patrick's.

I took some allergy medicine in the late afternoon that wacked my brain out a bit -- I was incredibly thirsty all evening, slamming water during the show, and a bit spacey. Also, forgot to pass the hat, so the poor musicians left rich in experience only.

Ideas brewing for next few House Concerts: TobinB, TravisH, ACE, Roadshow w/ JarodK.

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Amost forgot, PaulO gave me a copy of a bootleg he found somewhere online: Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists, live in Central Park, Aug 6th, 1990. That was one of the largest shows we ever played. Curt was, for some reason, in the audience rather than on stage for that show. Karen and I had just gotten married at the mansion at Claymont exactly one week earlier. I listened and was flooded with memories of those days when my life and energies were fully engaged in mainstream GC activities 24/7. I believe we had just finished recording "Show of Hands" at the Manhattan Center in NYC? The show sounds remarkably fresh -- that was a powerful lineup and a time of much innovation and pretty good 'groupness.' It was also the beginning of the end of the 'Ralph' years and just before the 'Nigel period' kicked in and took us to Europe for our final tours of the first seven years.

Set list from this show includes:

1. Askesis
2. Wall Street
3. Beeline! (early Paul + Hidi piece...!)
4. Intergalactic Boogie Express (named via a TreyG dream!)
5. Patricia - Here Comes My Sweetie
6. Descending Circulation / Burning Siesta (Paul, Herni, Ralph, Steve)
7. Spasm For Juanita (Spazzo Ray + Stevie Ray Juan!)
8. Lark’s Thrak
9. Patricia – This Yes (Dooten Do Dooten - thanks Sandra!)
10. The Breathing Field
11. Bach Circulation
12. An Easy Way (Bert!)
13. Not Digitalis.. ? (GuidoE and DavidP, perhaps a piece by Guido's friend Stone?)
14. The Driving Force (the best Crafty piece ever, 130ish BPM!)
15. Patricia - Listen
16. Hard Times (Ralph, Herni, Paul, Steve)
17. Scaling the Whales (Hidi, Paul, Tobin, Steve!)
18. Jaqueres (Herni, Ralph, Stevie, RF super-fast smash symetrical ending!)
19. Groove Penetration (Tobin!)
20. Patricia - Stop These Bright Colors
21. Circulation
22. Fireplace
23. Asturias
24. Fragments of Skylab (Pietro!)
25. Flying Home (Curt!)
26. Patricia - Will Be Done (title?)
27. Are You Able (to Rock and Roll)? -- (Ralph/Paul/Herni/Steve - chord circulation!)
28. Eye Of The Needle
29. Final Circulation

I need help filling in the names of the pieces that I can't remember... perhaps TobinB, CurtG, HerniN, or PaulR can fill in some of the missing titles? I have set lists and tour diaries I can consult, but that would take some serious archeology in the giant files I've been carrying around since my 'Guitar Craft Services' days.

Update from Paul, Curt, and Tobin! The on stage team was: RF, HideyoM, PaulR, SteveB, RalphG, HerniN, TobinB, SteveJ, BertL, GuidoE, DavidP and PatriciaL. Eddie "never don't wear a belt" G was on sound. Road team was JohnS , KarenT, BettinaN, JackieP, BillVB, YvonneT, PaulK.

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Listening as I type: "Good Dog, Happy Man" by Bill Frisell, recommended by TravisM. Now inspired, so stop listening, and moving onto a new Music Sketch of the day.

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Happy Birthday, Guitar Craft

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first Guitar Craft course that began on March 25th, 1985. Warm wishes to all GC family and friends around the world. TravisM, PaulO and I will be celebrating via a dress rehearsal this evening!

Left phone msgs for RobertF, CurtG, PaulieR, and DebraK. No phone details for BillR -- Hi Bill, where ever you may be. My phone does not call overseas so sending good vibes to HerniN, BettiN, MartyS, FernyK, FernyS, MoniK, ChristianDS, HoracioP, MartinDG, ClaudioLF, PabloM, Al, MarceloO, ValentinaF, ValentinaC, VinkaC, SandraP, BrockP, HeatherP, RChrisM, BillF, MarkP via telepathy. And also somewhere way out there, TruusVE, TonyG, LindyG, TonyA, DionS, MichaelT, Claude+Blanche+MaudeG, SpazzoRalphieG, ArchJ, ScottC, PatriciaL, ScottB, ReinaldoP, LauraG, Kim and JimboC, JonD, AileenB, JohnN, JohnM, KentL, PhyllisL, GuidoE, EduardoG, PietroR, AndrewE, DaveM, MarkT, AdamL, RandyC, NigelG, SanfordP, SteveJ, BillJ, UdoD, YvonneT, PaulK, DavidP, OivindH, StephanR, VictorM, TobinB, JohnS, BertL, HidiM. Not to mention, never far away: BobW, JaxieB, DeanJ, ChrisG, GregM, TravisH, DerekD, BillVB, KarenT, TreyG, and DeborahG. And of course, MGEpumer and ElisabethB. These are a few of the people whose lives were touched and who are now still out there touching lives, six strings at a time.

Curt and Paul both called back -- great to connect. Sitting tomorrow morning, and invited Curt to join an anniversary celebration Roadshow show tomorrow evening! Oh, and 'hi back' to Bob Gerber where ever you are! :)

Also best wishes emails today from MarcosR, LucianoP, and JohnH on three different continents.

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Sign Error

Evening Work: Sign Error (4.5M mp3).

Sometimes, what appears to be a very small mistake near the beginning of a process can generate massive repercussions down the line.

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Continuing to refine an effective 'project review' process at work this past week. And speaking of mistakes, in my friday afternoon RI3 project review, I made the mistake of making a Richard Feynman O-Ring analogy that was inappropriate for the people and project at hand. Certainly, there is a mysterious art and process that allows certain gifted individuals to examine complex systems and zoom into and discover specific causes of problems and failures. There is an even more elusive social art in working with a group to collectively observe and learn from both our successes and mistakes.

I wonder what might be different if (like the engineers designing the space shuttle, for example) human lives depended on the quality and care we applied to every moment of our work?

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Charlie Hewitt

From an archived version of a BootlegTV website, circa June 2000:

Charlie Hewitt, Vice President, Artist Relations As President and Owner of Buzz International Group, Charlie has provided management and consultant services in all areas of Recording Artists' careers, including A&R, recording, publishing, and touring at all levels--festivals, theatres, clubs, and arenas in North America and around the world. Charlie's Buzz clients include Bauhaus, Peter Murphy, Love and Rockets, and KMFDM. In previous jobs, he's worked with David Bowie, The Cure, The Tragically Hip, Goo Goo Dolls, and individual Rolling Stones.

Most recently, Charlie was managing King Crimson business and touring affairs while continuing high tech consulting for a few newer Seattle start-ups. At BTV, Charlie worked v. closely with me, DavidS, RobertF, CurtG, GeorgeM, JohnL, DonM, BillR, BarbaraM and the Artist Relations team in it's first frenzied phase. He was a total professional and a complete pleasure to work with. Charlie was a man of integrity, a man of his word, and he will be sorely missed on this earth.

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The World as it Might Be (Vocal Version)

Evening Work: The World As It Might Be - Vocal Version (6.2M mp3).

the world as it might be
is hard but amazing and firmly unnerving
a concave reflecting outwardly rejecting
and sharp edge detecting and inner selecting
boy: smiling so lazy so borderline crazy
no failing or wailing no trying or bailing
all shut-out and shit-on all sold-out and spray-on
so step-down and shut-up and shut-down the start-up
keep passing the fallacy phallus and policy
take down the breakdown and smile through your smack-down
disturbing perturbing returning unlearning
still riding a windfall while letting the ax fall
a clever clean lover a five leaf red clover
a slack slob a hack job a pleaser a squeezer
a tickler a teaser a stickler a wheezer
no guest-pass or wavier no trespass no savior
so blind he can't see the world as it might be

still out in the yard keeping my plants growing
but you can't see me in the dark, I will start a fire

here we worship the purple while squaring the circle
we stare at our shoes we gain nothing to lose
when we pay the right dues and respect correct hues
and we follow the clues to a sequence of cues
'til we play so much faster a sonic disaster
and mimic the master cast his methods in plaster
and we pay his commission and assume the position
of apostle, physician and accept the condition
of bad timing, bad rhyming and shaming the true
blame the teacher the teaching while grabbing and reaching
for Nick, Kurt, Elliott, and Kevin up singing songs in heaven
where there's no selling or killing or drilling their
braniac maniac mystical messages into the red
now we're sick sucked down dry dated dirty and dead
stuck in sand half in hell buried up to the head
and no starfuck to sell with one podcast a day full of nothing to say
it's the stellar all thriller all killer all filler american way
so let's get this closing show on the road

there is dirt in our blood from girls wrestling in mud
it's desirous a virus to divide or inspire us
spouting truth inside fiction in a food mood prediction
a rapid remission of a previous position
a religious rescission a disastrous decision
so blind that we can't see the world as it might be

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Emailienation

Morning: Catching up on my poor inbox and doing some reading. Remember when it was thought that email might actually bring us closer together instead of inspire a kind of nagging neurosis about all that piles up while we are "away" leading lives, experiencing time together, practicing, writing, recording, and inventing stuff?

Emailienation = email + alienation = the shutdown that occurs when we become overwhelmed by an intimidating backlog of communications, esp. email.

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On a lighter note, please check out the most exciting music+animation I've seen in a long long time. I found it linked from Robert Scoble's blog this morning. V. inspiring. Now, imagine instead of every song simply requiring a it's own 'songtile' so it has a unique (static) identity in your player and library,... what if every song also required a corresponding animation such as this? With this excellent animation, the bar has just been raised.

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The World as it Might Be

Morning Work: The World As It Might Be (6.18M mp3).

"In one sense, this book tries to describe the world as it is, looking at things that at first glance may not seem similar but that are ultimately very much alike. But this book is also about the world as it might be. One of the striking things about the wisdom of crowds is that even though its effects are all around us, it's easy to miss, and even when it's seen, it can be hard to accept. Most of us, whether voters or investors or consumers or managers believe that valuable knowledge is concentrated in very few hands (or rather, in a very few heads.) We assume the key to solving problems or making good decisions is finding that one right person who will have the answer. Even when we see a large crowd of people, many of them not especially well-informed, do something amazing like, say, predict the outcome of horse races, we are more likely to attribute that success to a few smart people in the crowd than to the crowd itself. As sociologists Jack B. Soll and Richard Larrick put it, we feel the need to 'chase the expert.' The argument of this book is that chasing the expert is a mistake, and a costly one at that."

more excellence from The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, by James Surowiecki.

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Dwelling On It

“I think the difference that most artists have, the one’s that I’ve come across, is we tend to think our opinions are a lot more important than other peoples in some way. Often, we tend to think we have the key to something, I don’t think we do at all, I just think we tend to dwell on it more.

We tend to look at the world as some usable substance, more than a non-artist would. I think for many people, just getting through life is enough, that’s a big enough task, let alone having to look at the world and the universe and say: ‘now if I had my way...’.”

- David Bowie

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"NASA employees today are far more likely to have come to the agency directly out of graduate school, which means they are also far less likely to have diverging opinions. That matters because in small groups, diversity of opinion is the single best guarantee that the group will reap benefits from face-to-face discussion. This doesn't mean that the ideal jury will follow the plot of Twelve Angry Men, where a single holdout convinces eleven men who are ready to convict that they are all wrong. But it does mean that having even a single different opinion can make a group wiser."

from The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, by James Surowiecki

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