MySpace
myspace music my music  featured playlists  top artists  music videos  karaoke  shows  forums 


MySpace.com | rss | sign in
Beowulf Kingsley



Last Updated: 11/17/2009

Send Message
Instant Message
Email to a Friend
Subscribe

Status: In a Relationship
City: ANN ARBOR
State: Michigan
Country: US
Signup Date: 7/4/2005

Blog Archive
[Older      Newer]
 /  / 
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 

Category: Life
Things are getting soggy around here...we've had about 4 days of straight rain. Sort of reminds me of the Northwest coast! There's a pretty amazing river running through our eastern field, back through some wetlands and over our neighbor's fields, off into the distance...a huge amount of water on the move. Looks pretty crazy, but this often happens. Then for a while the swamps are really swampy, and the frogs all wake up and start their annual Spring Orgy, and we know that the ice and snow are behind us for a bit. Strangely enough, the cats don't seem to want to get out in this stuff.

I've been feeling better and better recently, with more energy and positivity than is usual for my old cynical self, and having a pretty good time all told. Working on new music, spending a little more time in the gym, getting out and seeing friends. After the flu that almost did me in, and the winter that almost did the same, I'm starting to get that Spring vibe. Yeah, it'll freeze tonight, and maybe we'll get buried in snow again for a while, but I sense the warm coming on, and that's a good thing.
Currently listening:
Revolver [UK]
By The Beatles
Release date: 1990-10-25
10:52 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Sunday, March 01, 2009 
The lights go down...music rises from the silence. My head begins to spin. A tumult of sensation overwhelms me, and I'm helplessly off my feet and whirling, whirling through time and space, the lights too bright and the sounds too loud, round and round the maelstrom as I'm tossed ever lower, down into the depths...

Opium dream? Satanic attack? Bad NIN concert flashback? Nah, just a really nasty influenza virus that managed to get under my defences and kick my sad butt this week. Worst I've had in a long time...I can understand how epidemics of this stuff carried thousands and thousands off to the underworld, I felt like I got pretty close. I swear I think at one point I saw some guy in Plutonic robes smiling and beckoning me in, but I started swimming towards the surface and got away this time. Now I'm weak like a little kitten, and it all seems like a strange, very painful nightmare...must buy more oranges.

Looking at my folks old editions of encyclopedia, the Britannica and the good ol' World Book, I used to just thumb through those for fun. Now, amazingly, the same amount of information can just sit in a few GB of your hard drive, or even live accessibly out somewhere in cyberspace for instant retrieval. Although somehow I feel I trust Wikipedia less than Britannica, and I know I can't just open it up and read at random the same way (although I must say I use Wiki all the time). It's like I can't really get a charge buying music online the same way I do when I'm in a (now sadly rare) really good music store, I can't wander around the same right-brained way, stumbling into strange and wonderful stuff accidentally...or by hanging around jawing with the hip Record Store Guy. I was one of those once, by the way...not necessarily hip, but a Record Store Guy. I don't miss all of it, but I do miss turning people on to cool music...

Playing music in a state of high fever is an odd experience. You can't really get anything done, but sometimes you get really strange insights. Running through some chord arpeggios and scale sequences while practicing a tune, and suddenly the patterns of "notes available while passing through time" became really clear. I could see the various interlocking scales and chord tones incredibly clearly, and how various choices could lead to different melodic and harmonic outcomes...and how of course that this is only the very first step. The next goal is to completely assimilate those patterns so that there are infinite options...and then, the transcendence of those patterns and into real freedom. If that sounds a bit Metaphysical, it's because I think it really is! Mastering music as a metaphor for the Spiritual journey...yeah, you've heard it before, but hey, it's my cosmology and I'm stickin' with it. But anything can have that metaphorical cosmology I think...what about that Zen butcher? He did his job so perfectly that his knives never got dull, and his focus on his actions was clearer than the monks in the monastery. But I'm stickin' with the music thing, you get shiny guitars and the chicks dig it.

Perhaps I'm still recovering a little...my mind seems to be wandering. Sometimes that's actually a pretty good thing, and I wonder if maybe a little stumbling around in the right side of the brain might not be just the thing in these strange dark pre-Spring weeks. But I'd much rather do it without the incredible sinus and joint pain, thanks!
10:52 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Saturday, February 21, 2009 

Category: Life
February is a month in Michigan where people are just really hanging on, trying to get through to Spring, still held by the icy teeth of Winter. Some types probably blog more during these periods...I seem to do less. Less is happening. I get to work. I get back. I lie on the couch. Cyn and I try hard not to get in each others way and to respect space, since we work together as well as live together, and that's a kind of wierd vibe. I don't get to the studio to work as much as I should, but still practice with the Mobsters when the weather permits...we've had more than a few rehearsals cancelled due to heavy snow. Today may be such a day. A friend who was looking for a bassist with his new group called last week and I went out and played with them...quite a good Power Pop band, but I don't know if I'll really have the time to do it. I need to try to focus on working with this Swing stuff, and with my own original music, and that just may preclude any other projects.

 

Really I feel like I'm just waiting for the weather to break for good. So ready for it...I'd love to take a walk without freezing something off. Last night the Coyotes were howling again, and I called the barn cats indoors for protection. They ran in pretty quickly, too! I'm sure those Coyotes are hungry and Bitey or Bluto would be a welcome snack. Much as I admire the wild things, I'd like to avoid that.

 

I'm playing my new guitar quite a bit right now...it's made by Agile, a Korean company. Essentially a Les Paul knockoff, I've had a few Paul players tell me it's a good as many an LP. Sounds great and looks crazy...the top is all white pearlescent pickguard finish. I didn't expect it to sound as good as it does, but there's solid mahogany underneath that, and the pickups, hardware and electronics are surprisingly very high quality. And it's less than a tenth the price of a LP...which makes it possible for this particular starving musician to own one. Watch out, Korea is taking over the world...

 

Actually, it feels good to write in this journal again. I think it's easy this time of year to just get torpid and hibernate as much as possible...I know I've done that a lot. But writing kind of gets my internal motor going again, which is important anytime really. Now I've just gotta get out to the studio and finish off those pesky tunes of mine!
Currently listening:
Louis Jordan - No Moe! - Greatest Hits [Verve]
By Louis Jordan
Release date: 1992-08-04
3:03 PM 
3 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Monday, January 19, 2009 

Category: Life
I took a little break from writing after the holidays...I'd just been a bit overwhelmed and there was so much going on. Now that the social obligations are down to a funky few, and the cookies have all been et (back to the gym for me!), and my folks have been packed off on the plane and delivered to Florida's land of Sunshine & Geezers, I've been relaxing a bit and playing catch-up with everything else in my life. Feels good! It's gonna take a little time to decompress...maybe take a holiday from the holidays...

Playing a lot more too, at least on guitar. The Mobsters band is a good impetus for me to woodshed, and I seem to be leaning into the Swing side of my influences again, which is really fun. Mickey Richard, Guitarist and Luthier Extraordinaire, found and gave me an old old old Doghouse Bass last week. Very Cool! It's gonna need some work, but not too much I think. I'm looking forward to stringing it up and working with that thing, maybe do a little Swing Duet action with Mickey...that would be great.

I also went Tech again and got Band-In-A-Box, a cool and kind of frightening tool. It's a software/MIDI/loops program, and what you do is basically type in your chords and time signature, etc, and then bango! The thing starts pumping out a full arrangement with drums, bass, guitar, horns and more. Scary really, but GREAT for practicing. I'd been just running through the Mobsters swing songs at home by myself, but typing them into BIAB and playing with a full band, much more fun! And strangely I find myself playing LESS notes, and leaving a lot more space. If this tool can help me then I'm gonna use it.

At any rate, hopefully I'm back writing again...who knows, perhaps writing songs again too. I find that creative periods can occasionally be goosed into being, but for the most part they come when they will, and I've got to respect that and enjoy it when it's happening. Right now though, I'm off to work again...
8:25 AM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Monday, January 05, 2009 

Category: Life
A new year in a strange century! The earth shifts, and the people wake to unusual changes in their world each day. New technologies appear and bend our lives and minds into bizarre new places, a bold new President prepares to lead this country into the future and who knows where, new arts and musics and more swarm into view to create beauty, chaos and controversy. And, all the while on a shelf in the shed, Kenny's Little Creatures on display.

As for me, I survived the onslaught of the Holiday Season, although barely. I get bombarded by friends and family who appear as if by magic and hijack any plans I may have made to get stuff done, and I have to kind of go with that and keep my seasonal cheer intact at the same time. I think I did pretty well considering...no fatalities (yet)! And there was indeed some good fun had by all. Although we were hampered a bit by some of the crappiest weather I can remember in the Xmas/New Year's period...we were snowed in a few days, iced in a few days more, and then camped out on my parent's floor for three more days when the windstorms knocked out power for about 30,000 people around these parts. Just glad me Ma & Dad were OK! Basically I just stopped over to our farm during the day, fed the completely demoralised cats and weasel, and turned on the generator to pump out the flooded basement, usually twice a day. Cleaning that is big fun! But that's part of the joy of country living. I'm just really glad to have things working again, and to have things a bit quieter. Now maybe I can get some music done again.

It's true, my upcoming CD has been sidelined by the Holidays, the weather and rehearsals for my new live band, but I've been back dusting off the studio and doing a little polishing of the existing recordings. This should be an interesting one...a little different from the last, with for some reason, a lot more electric piano (well it's just cool) and a good deal of groove-oriented post -beat songs. But as always, I'm not sure what'll happen till I'm done. Maybe it'll end up a Polka CD, I just don't know.

Anyway, a Happy New Year to all, and I hope you are having less travails with life and weather than us. If not, my condolences...please hang in there!

P.S. It's amazing! I wrote this out and the spellchecker only found one misspelled word..."what'll", which I guess isn't even officially a word. Can I be becoming a better speller in my old age? Very strange.
4:30 AM 
2 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Friday, December 19, 2008 

Category: Music
As I lie like a eastern pasha on my silken cushions in my library, fez askew, with the opium smoke wafting above me like the ectoplasmic ghost of Coleridge, I'm musing on my taking on the Front Man/Lead Guitarist role in the Mobsters band. My trusty but insanely unusual Custom Deacon Limited leans against a pillow, its pearlescent pickguard gleaming in the light of the oil lamps. Have I bitten off a bit more than I can chew here? Not, I think, for my bandmates, they seem to like my singing and playing well enough, but for me? I'm pretty picky (usually) about the guitarists I work for...and now I work for myself...I think I've got more shedding to do.

 

I know that I'm hard on myself about trying for excellence in music, but I can't fool myself in knowing where the bar has been placed in the areas that I want to be good at, and they're pretty darn high. I was feeling OK about my playing, and then the other night I went out with some friends to see George Bedard and Bill Kirtchen play...man! What amazing and tasteful musicians they are. Beautiful melodies and harmonies just flow out of those guys so naturally, it's a fantastic thing to see. Makes me realise where the heights are, and wonder about how high up the mountain I can climb. Thing is, I love to learn, I just wish I had a few more lifetimes to work on it all. In those strange hazy conversations I sometimes have with friends the question comes up, what if you had unlimited time to live? I always keep thinking, damn, I'd really have time to become a musician then. I think I could master that chord melody stuff in a couple centuries if I applied myself! And after a bit more of that for guitar I could concentrate on learning composition and orchestration. Then, a few more centuries for anthropology, science, literature...then some time for mysticism, and a millennia or so in meditation...

 

Thing is, my time is a lot shorter than that, and a lot of it is taken up with fairly mundane stuff. So I have to get a lot more focused on what I want to do with the little time I have to do it in! Believe me, I'm working at it. Tomorrow it looks like we'll be snowed in, and I'm planning on spending as much time as I can playing some music. And to anyone who thinks this is like hard work or something, think again! Really, it's as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Although I've played lots of fine music in the nude as well...but perhaps the less said about that the better...
6:39 AM 
2 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Monday, December 08, 2008 

Category: Automotive

December here in Michigan has hit us all hard with its icy fist...temperatures in the low teens at night and not much warmer in the day. Snow and ice make walking difficult and dangerous, and driving is an unpleasantly exciting adventure sometimes. That is if your car will even start! The cold tends to make any minor problem with an automotive system much worse, and several times in the last week my poor Ford Escort just wouldn't respond to my attempts to engage. Fortunately I had a spare vehicle...in the barn here the former resident had left an old army tank from the 50's, purchased no doubt at one of those government auctions. It wasn't running of course, but with a little help from my friend and neighbor Bill we've fixed it up and it's pretty reliable! The thing goes like a champ through the snow, on the road or off it. Bad gas mileage, but fortunately prices are low right now...and although its top speed is only about 60 MPH, people tend to keep out of my way on the highway. Heck, even Hummers give way to a TANK!! They better too...the gun turret is still operational.

OK, well maybe that was a fantasy, but if anyone wants to know what I'd like for Xmas, now you do. And really, it HAS been mighty cold, I'm not kidding about that. All the cats are spending their time on the heating registers or close to them, and I'm not that far away either! Everybody take care out there, driving or walking...and may you have a hot and refreshing beverage waiting when you get to your destination.

11:57 PM 
1 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Friday, December 05, 2008 

Category: Life
OK, OK, OK, I got the lights up here and at my folks house! And at my friend/client Tom's as well. Actually I got my folks lights up in October...they're a lot more work and more elaborate, I should just leave them up all year. Cyn and I will go and get a tree today from our good friend Duke, who drives his trees down from his farm up north and lives for a month in his Airstream trailer up on Washtenaw Avenue purveying them, making most of his cash for the year that way.

This holiday stuff is a little much sometimes, as I wind up having to shift things around with the cleaning biz (everybody's schedule changes at once), and lots of my friend's bands seem to have emergencies where I do sub gigs (I have two this weekend). Plus friends and family descending on us at unexpected times, social obligations popping up like mushrooms on a muggy day, Cyn's got the most crazy busy time of the year for her jewelry business, and there's a general frenzy in the stores. That said, I love this time of year...I love the lights on people's yards, the music, the sense of excitement that I feel everywhere, and maybe there's a little aura of spiritual energy that comes from having the central yearly celebration for at least three major religions happening at once. Plus, there's pie. It's cool.

Another cool thing going on is that I seem to be in another band! The Mobsters have made me an offer I couldn't refuse...looks like I'll be doing the Front Man/Lead Singer/Lead Guitarist duties for this Swing/Funk/Roots ensemble. Sounds like fun to me! They've assured me that I can have full control of the schedule, so I can keep doing my primary caregiver thing with my folks, and I'm hoping that works out well. They're a cool bunch, and I think I can help make it happen with them...I'll keep you posted!

Speaking of my caregiver functions, I'm back and forth this next two weeks (adding another layer into the holiday complexities) driving my Dad back and forth to the hospital for a battery of tests. His mental acuity seems to have taken a dive, and he's had some strange hallucinations. Talking to people who aren't in the room occasionally is kind of disturbing. He's also gotten confused later at night when he goes to bed...the other morning my Mom woke up and found the dishwasher sitting in the bedroom! Somehow he must of confused it with his walker. I asked him if he remembered doing it and he said "No, but I sort of remember thinking 'Man, this thing is hard to push around!'". So we've been off to the neurologists to see what there is to do, if anything, about that. So far the doc has ruled out Alzheimer's, thank God. He said it may be something as simple to address as a vitamin deficiency...so hence the tests. Hopefully he'll be right in that, and Dad won't have to lug that darn dishwasher around.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to having everybody around this Xmastime...it was nice to see my bros on Thanksgiving, and everybody should be here for the December fiesta as well. I'm lucky that everybody can make it and be in reasonable health, we're a pretty close family, even though we're often pretty far away from each other(me on tour in Germany, Aaron out in Poland, Stu working in Chile, etc.). This should be a good time for all! And I hope, for you all as well.
11:10 PM 
0 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 

Category: Pets and Animals
After midnight, and I'm sitting up late listening to the coyotes howling in the field next door. I've been hating Michigan, and the cold, and all, but hearing them I realize what a strange and beautiful place I live in. It's an eerie, wonderful thing...ah, these creatures of the night...what music they make...
10:44 PM 
1 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate
Monday, November 03, 2008 

Category: Life









Just sitting with another cup of coffee, prying my eyes open after a festive evening last night celebrating my Birthday...my 56th! How the hell did that happen? I was 12 last week, 15 or 16 just a little while ago. You blink, turn around a couple of times and Wham! Suddenly there's all this grey hair and stuff. Weird.

Having a Birthday around Halloween (I was actually born an hour after, on All Saint's Day, but I usually celebrate on Halloween) makes for lots of opportunities for festivity, and we certainly took advantage of them last night! There was a musical extravaganza out at the Arbor Brewing Company, a local micro brew club, with our friends the Six Foot Poles (hey, they're from Hamtramick). Cyn and I donned our costumes...we went as the Corporate Clowns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She did some amazing and very disturbing makeup on us...as you can see. We had a gas at the party, the band was great and it was a lot of fun for all! Today, however, for some reason I feel a bit...subdued. Perhaps a side effect of the excellent ABC brews. But you know, it's worth it really.

It's certainly been a year to make me more reflective and maybe a little morbid, with all that's been going on. But if I look back on my life these last 56 years, I realize that I've been pretty fortunate, and I haven't done that badly. I've had the chance to play in wonderful bands, hang out with wonderful people, to do wild and crazy things that lots of other people just dream about. There are a lot of people who love me, I have a wonderful fiance, and a great family. I suppose I have some regrets...I've wasted a lot of time and braincells with drugs and alcohol, especially early on, and I wish often I'd been kinder sometimes to people. But overall, I think I've been pretty OK, and I've had lots of fantastic experiences. This next year I think I just want to try and improve on as many levels as I can...I want to get my recording studio and promotional service together, and try to help other struggling musicians. I want to start working on soundtracks, and to expand my compositional abilities. I want to play music a lot more and with more great musicians, and to grow there as well. And I really want to have more and more fun with Cyn, my family and friends! Life is good, gotta enjoy it as much as possible.
3:36 AM 
2 Comments
(Add Comment) |
Translate