Drive Me to the Moon, Sunday March 21, 2010

Boy those evil hackers must have done a real number on the website because half the links were dead dead dead as of Friday night. At least the front page is now loading without the google skull and crossbones beware all who enter will become zombified-bots warning.

As of today it’s officially not winter anymore and I have a pretty lackadaisical attitude towards writing this month’s column; an uncertain malaise has befallen me. I don’t know exactly why…. the sun is shining, our pear tree is snowing white petals, the vegetable garden has been planted, the backyard isn’t a jungle of 3 foot high weeds, and all I want to do is lay around the picnic table and play my dobro.

Let’s see, what are my other symptoms….no gigs this month, the spring campout is still weeks away, the Father’s Day Festival is even further away, haven’t been to McGrath’s but twice this year…..must be a touch of the spring fever. What I need is a good stiff bluegrass tonic to pull me out of my funk and it just happens that the Infamous String Dusters are playing the Freight tonight. Strong medicine, but unfortunately it will only relieve my symptoms for a few weeks, at least until the spring campout, and hopefully I will be able to attend to get inoculated with a real, full strength dose of some Jammicillin.

Which brings me to another topic….I’ve included my dog in my columns on occasion as one of my important bluegrass buddies. Well ok maybe he’s a reluctant bluegrass buddy that I have to bribe with serious Frisbee time. In any case, one of my other really crucial bluegrass buds is my faithful steed….my truck. I believe that these unsung heros of bluegrass…our trucks and trailers, that carry us, and our gear, down long hot dusty roads to the festivals, deserve better recognition. We have among our CBA members some extraordinary highly visible vehicles that might be even more recognized than their owners, though the only one that comes to mind is a green VW camper whose owners are far from inconspicuous.

My truck isn’t any ordinary truck. Noooo, apart from being a most excellent, reliable bluegrass truck that has carried me to Grass Valley 3 years running, I think it is capable of driving to the moon. Seriously…it is on average about 233,818 miles from the earth’s surface to the moon’s surface and I have about 168,000 miles on my clock…so only 65,818 miles left to make it to the moon….or more accurately to traverse the same distance. My truck is a ’92 Nissan and at my current average of 9,333 miles per year it will only take another 7 or so years. Google tells me it is 151 miles from my house to the Nevada County fairgrounds so if I drive my truck only to the festival, 9,333 miles would be approximately 62 more Father’s Day festivals…..a number that, for mortal reasons, I am not likely to make. But if I include spring and fall campouts, then that number probably comes close to around 20 years…that I could do. Throw in jams, band practices, and gigs, and 7 or so years could be realistic. Now what was that noise I heard coming from my transmission yesterday.

My Computer is Infected with an SFBOT, February 21, 2010

You’ve probably heard of botnets, networks of personal computers enslaved by malicious software viruses to do their evil bidding. Well my personal organic-computerhead, the one that sits on top of my shoulders and controls my every movement (even the words being typed right now), recently became infected by an extraordinary virus that created the infamous SFBOT net. There is no cure for this virus and the only way to leave the BOT net requires shutting down the organic-computerhead and doing a complete system rebuild, which unfortunately has a high morbidity and results in typically unsuccessful reboots. So be forewarned that reading this column might also infect your organic-computerhead and enslave you to the SFBOT net.

This BOT (Bluegrass Old Time) net is peculiar in that the compromised computerheads are often compelled to passively monitor output from groups of other SFBOT infected computerheads. More amazing is that small groups of SFBOT infected computerheads sometimes auto-organize and by a process involving artificial pseudo-intelligence learn how to collectively control the actions of other infected computerheads. If you understand what I just wrote then please let me know so I can figure it out too. Writing gibberish like this is just one symptom of SFBOT infection….the other symptoms are obsessing on themes involving jaded lovers, murdered lovers, lost lovers, footprints in the snow, cold empty cabins, and illegal distilleries.

You might have correctly guessed that I was at an SFBOT show Friday evening and while listening to the music my mind was churning around in the background wondering what I was going to write for today’s welcome. This was more than a little distracting but at the same time changed, perhaps for the better, my awareness of the show and the folks attending. To make things more interesting two of my band mates, Scott and TJ, went with me, actually it was their idea and kind of a boy’s night out to take in some music. Fortunately Scott and TJ have been SF-loBOTomized for a long time, even longer than me, so we fit right in with the other BOTs and their presence always makes for interesting conversation about the show, which usually reflects our musical preferences.

We went to the show at the Noe Valley Ministry….a nice, small venue, my first time there, for a show that promised a bit of old time and a bit of bluegrass. I was looking forward to seeing Crooked Jades, in part because Lisa Berman was playing, an excellent local dobro and claw hammer banjo player that I assisted last summer teaching at the CBA music camp. The show was kicked by the Black Crown String Band and closed by a group of hot pickers from Portland called Jackstraw. Woohooo what a show. The music took us up a hill and down again, there were dancers, even the dancing guy was there. In between sets, folks spent time greeting each other, talking to strangers and even engaging the musicians in conversation. In fact the crowd looked and acted a lot like crowds at events organized by other BOTnets, including the CBABOT virus….a particularly persistent virus that supports the  IBMABOTnet.

Since Scott, TJ, and I are bandmates, we tend to study how other bands perform which provides the proverbial “bottomless pit” of topics for conversation. One thing that made a big impression and created conversation after the show was how the Jackstraw mandolin player broke strings twice on stage over about 30 minutes. This guy is obviously an aggressive mando picker….but you know that you  are in the presence of other pickers when the real thing we were impressed with was how quickly he changed out his broken strings. He broke a string while singing lead and chopping, and while still singing, without missing a beat, he stripped the string off his mando and continued playing. Very cool.

I mentioned above that sometimes SFBOT infected computerheads auto-organize…….my bandmates and I are not immune from that and in fact have been completely overwhelmed by this pathology of the SFBOT virus which has some interesting consequences. For example, our bass player, Fred Cone, commuted from the CBA music camp in Petaluma to Concord to attend band practices for our gig last night at the Swedish American Hall…that is either dedication or obsession…..and probably a little of each.

I could go on and on about BOT nets, give more case studies, investigate the phenomenon ad nauseam but one thing is rapidly becoming apparent. These BOT nets are getting out of control. It is often said that the BOT nets proliferate most frequently in the summer months at BOT net festivals, but it seems obvious to me that the BOT nets are expanding outside their classical seasonal boundaries and will soon infiltrate every level of civilized society. The consequences are serious and will forever disrupt any hope of intelligent discourse between infected individuals. I predict that in the future, BOT infected individuals will form BORGs (Bluegrass and Oldtime Reproductive Groups) and life in the universe, as we know it, will be forever changed. Resistance is futile.