journal . Ben Sommer

Cape Cod

I work on Cape Cod - in Hyannis, which is a big tourist town, and home of the Kennedy Compound, the Joseph P. Kennedy Memorial Ice Rink, the JFK Memorial Museum, and many other tributes to that cockney-mouthed political clan valued most down there for bringing electricity to the area in the 1920s. Back then the Cape used to be populated by salty dog fisherman and just a few rich folk - and Eugene O'Neill. Now there's theme parks, strip malls, Brazilian immigrants, crack cocaine, and homes for $10M. Even the prized National Seashore (which was so designated by President Kennedy) used to be a forest of virgin pine until Porteguese woodcutters cleared it out and the sea breeze covered it over with sand. I like to visit Provincetown to check out the fags in summer. Actually, I'm lucky to have landed such a cush computer job down there, since otherwise Cape Cod Potato Chips is about the hottest thing going.

Meat Machine

My friend and fellow rising-star, Geoff Chirgwin, has released his first album under the name 'MeatMachine'. I play all the 'rock-your-balls-off' guitar solos on the album. He named this first one 'Free Music'. That's because he is charging $0.00 for it. The strategy behind his distribution idea has been the subject of heated debates between us. It involves, primarily, giving away MP3s/Oggs/FLACs of the entire album over the web, while selling hard copies for the cost of manufacturing them. An elaborate copy license was created to encourage others to redistribute the album, either by sharing free files, or by selling CDs themselves, also at cost. This is all based on the idea of Open Source software, which Geoff is really into. I think its a good idea, mostly. A basic problem is that, just as only hard core computer geeks have the wherewithall to download and compile free programs, most potential consumers of 'Free Music' may like the idea of getting it free, but honestly would rather pay a few dollars for the convenience of home delivery than hastle with file downloads and CD burners. Its a question of giving the customer what it wants how it wants it - we're lucky enough that it even wants. Anyway, Geoff is by nature an idea man, and I'm sure he'll get one that makes him rich and famous, even if he misses the mark this time.

Resolution: To try to bike over to the beach for a swim every other night after work.

What Really Rots My Cuticles: Being in a car with my wife when she's driving.

Progress: Finished recording the non-drums portion of Foci Foo. Began recording death-metal-chugga-chugga guitar chords and vocals for Cloaca Maxima. This song will kick ass. More on it later.

Animal Lover or Neurotic?

I own one of four apartments in a 200 year-old house in North Plymouth, MA. It was built as worker housing for the Plymouth Cordage Co., once the largest rope maker in the world. Aside from the incessant summer motorcycle parades outside the front door, its a charming place, though the neighborhood only recently outgrew its seedy, low-class reputation. Proof of this are the Section 8 rowhouses next door, and the brimming colony of feral cats in the woods behind us. Unfortunately, the cats all love to breed under our deck. Last week marks the second helpless kitten I've rescued from coyote oblivion. This week, with the help of the local humane society, I embark on a mission to snip and tube-tie every male and female cat in the area. I think the urge - almost shameful - to empathize with helpless animals over and above helpless or abused humans is a peculiar thing, and may be genetic. Animals seem to me innocent by nature. Even when I hear of another Palestinian psycho making Jewish martyrs out of 9 year-old Israeli schoolgirls, I feel that somehow no one in the exchange is completely innocent. In some way we and our ancestors are all responsible for our present misery.

Neurotic

In one of my beautiful fits of inferiority, I almost gave up the album last week. After embarking on an over-ambitious schedule of music work by 6am, money work by 10am, home work by 7pm, I may have subconsciously set myself up to fail. For the majority of good composers in the world, Genius is not the scarce commodity, work ethic is - and I am a scarce worker. To my musician friends I put on a cocky 'Eminence Front', though I constantly castigate myself with whips for being a lazy ass. Let's be grateful that even the most refined artistes are generally mongoloid in their musical tastes, and they probably won't hold against me any of my shaky rhythms or hoarse vocals. What I need is for my wife-the-massage-therapist to become the Deepak Chopra to Plymouth's social elite, then I could retire to some real liesure.

Resolution: to get to the studio by 6:45am, to do my salt water rinse, to not smile like there's a squirrel loose in my pants.

Progress: more guitar stuff on Foci Foo. Blew $168 on a SansAmp, played some lounge 'ta-ting' with my friend Geoff and his friend Daigo.

So it begins. This is my web journal. I wish I'd started this back in October of last year, when I really got going with the recording process for MishMosh. That was just after the horrible ruptured appendectomy/colonoscopy/abdomen-dredging of September 1. Not a good week. While recovering at my sister-n-law's beach house in Plymouth, Massachusetts I was up early the day of September 11, zoning out to the Today show. Some guy chatting with Katy Couric about his unauthorized bio of Jack Welch. 10 months later I'm sick to death of pundits spouting all about the 'evil ones'. But let's leave off the political…

Technology

Bill G. says "today's technology is providing tools to get the job done better - its revolutionizationing my pocket book my B&M G. Foundation so my Legacy shines so my Shit don't stink…(blah, etc.)".

Maybe Al Gore (Gorebot) did invent the internet. In the 1993 campaign I remember him talking about how getting everyone on the "Information Superhighway" was going to be a priority. Huh? It took me 5 years to figure out "What's the fuss?", and 2 more to become a hardcore Geek. But here I am now - freakin' hopeless.

Geek

My wife Rhonda first bugged me about it a few months ago - "Honey, you weren't so geeky when I first met you". I first caught the bug 3 years ago studying music in Graduate School. Like a seductive whore it whispered to me: "If you only knew the power of the dark side…" I thought I would become the ultimate auteur - composing, performing, recording, and producing my own music. I'd just have to learn a few dirty tricks. The first was a slick accounting maneuver with the Student Loan Marketing Association to secure $3k in no-interest financing for a new computer and assorted gear. The second trick was hooking up with many more $k in cracked software on the Hotline network. The third trick I am still figuring out - learning how to make everything work. But no matter how much I have left to learn, the little voice in my head is always waiting to tell me how a sexy new piece of gear will make my life so much easier.

MishMosh

The name is nonsense, and first showed up as the title to a nouveau-rock minimalist composition of mine from 3 years ago, Holy Mishmosh. I tried to record this heavily involved piece for the new album, but it didn't work. But the spirit of that piece still catches the spirit of my intentions for this new album - something unique, cerebral, emotional, and most of all a sound that's exciting and appeals to our reptillian brain. I think I'm accomplishing this well so far, with the help of several musical techniques that I'm not giving away here, but which will be obvious to the initiated.

Resolution: to not join in the extremely annoying and lemming-like habit of web designers who set their typeface too small to read.

Progress: re-recorded guitar soli section of Foci Foo. Did a clean re-install of my audio workstation. Cat barfed on the couch. Rhonda sat in it, I cleaned it up.