This week has been weird. It’s been warmer than it should be. It’s like the week of summer that we didn’t have. I just got bitten by a fucking mosquito. These motherfuckers shouldn’t be around any more. Fuck! Weird things have been occurring, but that’s almost normal around here. My roof cam was being obedient yesterday, so that was a nice surprise. I don’t know why I even have a camera on the roof. I think the idea was to survey the neighborhood with an all seeing eye. I do have some cool video from years ago when the snow stacked up overnight. Maybe if the aliens or Jesus appears in the sky, I’ll have a recording of that. It just looks out over a few houses and the Hudson River in the distance, it’s not of any use as a security device unless burglars decide to come in through the roof. They won’t though. The place is too scary looking. Robbers would probably think that they’d end up locked in a dungeon here. It’s not a bad idea actually…
Oh, Jeez. What’s he got in his right hand, is that a giant hook?
I was gonna do some music this weekend, and then it was put off until next weekend, and now it’s put off until the 21st of the month. I haven’t managed to put together the video show for Youtube that I promised about a month ago, because something always goes awry. Last weekend the audio recorder did something weird, and only half the session got on to tape. I tell ya, it’s hard trying to do the whole thing without any help! I need at least two assistants. One to set up the lights and audio, and another to do the video recording. If I had a video person we could actually live stream these events in real time. I’ve got a video switcher that I’ve never used. I simply can’t operate that and play guitar (and sing) at the same time.
The building where 9 was. Usually appearing in the sky was Kerry Packer.
I used to work in TV, so I have somewhat of a clue how things work. It was the last real job I ever had. Anything after that was never anywhere as much fun. I have had lots of different jobs though. I did go back to Channel 9 in a lesser capacity for a while, working in the set design department. I wasn’t designing any sets, more like transporting them from one place to another. My work buddy was Stephen Cummings.
I don’t know how either of us got the job, but we were employed in the moving of these big painted pieces from the carpenter’s and painter’s workshop which was a few blocks away, to the TV studio in Richmond. It wasn’t a particularly hard or challenging job, really. Fairly monotonous actually. We didn’t even have to drive the truck. Stephen was ok to work with, unless he was “carrying against the man”. His observations of things are always entertaining. We quickly became aware that “carrying against your man” was a bad thing to do when lugging large pieces of set around. You had to pick it up on the same side side as the other person so that it didn’t become awkward and unwieldy. It became a theme.
This looks like studio 9 where a lot of sets ended up.
I don’t know what made us both quit, but eventually that job was no more. We had an amusing time though while it lasted. Stephen and I had started writing songs together before this, and continued on with that after our TV gig expired. Stephen was launching his solo career. I wrote the music and and he wrote the lyrics for his first single, “Stuck on Love” which came together at his house in Elwood. The flip side was a tune called “Accordion to Mao”. I think I played keyboards on both of them, I certainly am playing the the keyboards on the A side, apart from the strings which I think are the legendary Fairlight, one of the earliest music workstations with an embedded sampler. It coined the term “sampling” in music. This was also around the time that Go Wild in French was born. Our first bass player and founder member was old Stephen.
Happy Fucking Friday
Stephen – Hopeless romantic that he is…. Stuck on Love