John Hendow

Boo!

Samhain. Halloween. Call it what you like. Today is my favorite day of the year. I love autumn in general, but there is something especially wonderful about 10/31. We even carved a couple of pumpkins this year… Teri carved one with scary frowny eyes, big fangs, and horns; mine has a big silly grin and googly eyes. What can I say? It’s Halloween, and for one day of the year I like to surprise people by NOT being a closet goth. Tomorrow I’ll resume my “normal” activities and get back to reading my recently acquired Clark Ashton Smith book.

We have known since purchasing our house that at some point we’ll replace our inefficient, leaky single-pane aluminum windows. We attend home remodeling shows to get ideas, and this month at the fall remodeling expo in Seattle, we signed up to begin gathering a few estimates. Last weekend we had scheduled a visit from a windows salesperson who spent a few hours performing an energy audit of our house. He also provided an estimate for window replacement. It wound up being educational from two perspectives, one good and one bad. Maybe it would be three perspectives, if you include “the ugly”.

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In the past couple of days I’ve had curious experiences with fairly large companies, involving problems with technology. It’s surprising when such companies overlook seemingly obvious opportunities for service recover, and it makes me wonder what happened to the fine art of paying attention to details.

My position is this: sophisticated technology requires a sophisticated user. Especially if the user is a large corporation.

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Lately I’ve been looking around for a better case for my trusty Warwick Corvette fretless. It came with a reasonably sturdy gig bag, but I wanted something that would offer a little more protection for this instrument. I do have access to an Anvil flight case, but that is overkill for local gigs and adds substantial weight to an already heavy bass. I recently decided to purchase one of the newly redesigned SKB 44 bass cases, which seems to be a good fit for my needs.

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The Preons will be playing at The Sunset Tavern in Ballard on Saturday 11/10. We’ll be on the bill for the early show, probably hitting the stage around 7:00 PM. If you’ve always wanted to hear us, but need to be home before 9:00 PM, this seems like the perfect opportunity…

Over the weekend I redesigned and relaunched my family’s web site. Like this site, it is powered by WordPress 2.3 and I am excited to have a place where my extended worldwide family can post news.

On Thursday 10/18, reggae star Lucky Dube was fatally shot in a hijacking attempt in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was a legitimate reggae superstar, long regarded as the “Bob Marley of Africa. He was South Africa’s largest selling reggae artist, and through his music preached tolerance and peace. During my years in Jumbalassy, I often listened to Lucky Dube and admired the strength and courage he radiated through his conscious music. We were fortunate enough to perform with him and I enjoyed his live music immensely.

His tragic death is sad news on so many levels. I recognize that reggae has long been the voice of oppressed people. Most great reggae artists live in politically unstable environments where desperation is rampant and crime is accepted as a means to getting anything. It breaks my heart that so many visionary reggae musicians have pointlessly died. 

If you are moved to do so, you may send a message of condolence to his family at Lucky@gallo.co.za

This site is powered by WordPress, an open-source blog engine. Last night I spent about 30 minutes upgrading to the most current version, which went smoothly. This process updates the database and most of the site’s back-end files are deleted and replaced. It’s a little unnerving to erase the important files supporting the site functionality, especially when some content in subfolders needs to be retained. Next time I perform this kind of update I might use a more sophisticated file management tool. At any rate, it was simple enough. Welcome to WordPress 2.3…

If you happen to be a Verizon wireless customer, you may wish to know that Verizon will share your CPNI call data unless you speficially call them to opt out. The information being shared doesn’t individually identify customers by name or address, but since it does include call data and services used, it strikes me as inappropriate for them to take this liberty based on an opt-out model.  Originally, telecommunication providors were only allowed to use this data if their customers had explicitly opted in. Recently, telecoms have begun to argue in court that their use of customer data is somehow protected as commercial free speech… as in free speech for the providor, not the speaker (!)

Verizon is increasingly annoying me with their policy changes. This is an example of a policy change that is being slipped under the radar of most customers and doesn’t seem to be getting noticed except by wary users and watchdog groups. Verizon may have the best network, but I’m beginning to consider whether I should renew my contract with them when it expires in a few months.

I quite enjoyed our show this Saturday. It was an evening of seeing great friends and wrapping up Friday’s birthday fun (I somehow turned 44… I’m still not entirely certain how that happened). My friend Edgars made an appearance, having recently earned his computer science degree and joined the brethren of programmer geeks. He is one of those smart guys who knows his way around in the insides of hardware and software. Also making an appearance was my god-daughter Sarah, who isn’t 21. She hung out in the Venus lounge next door and peeked through the doorway to see us play. Her father Patrick is a friend of mine since childhood, and he was visiting us this weekend with his fiancee, so they were both in attendance as well. My good friend Frank made an appearance and provided moral support, along with smart musical observations. Right after we finished loading our gear off the stage, Kellie and Cynthia showed and asked what time we were going on…. it was lovely to see them, and I’ll look forward to seeing them at the next gig.

The Mars bar is cozy and always has a great vibe. Being in a small bar, on a bill with multiple bands always makes for an interesting logistics challenge. We managed to get ourselves set up without much trouble, and left our gear in place since the opening act was a solo acoustic musician. Midway through his set the third band arrived, loading in an impressive mountain of equipment… multiple amps, a big drum set, a cello, Fender Rhodes… the loads of gear kept coming and coming. I wondered if they had knocked over a pawn shop or something. Fortunately they found room for all those items in the various nooks and crannies of the club.

Our set went very well. Josh was full of energy and dug into the songs with passion. Life events have a way of showing up in how we express ourselves. I was glad to see him so intensely “in the moment” at the gig. Janie did a nice job of driving the songs and was especially groovy on Charlie Munden. Brad was great as always. He seems to have a solid sense of when to go for it, and those moments (especially trumpet solos) were wonderful. I had a lot of fun. This may be have been one of my favorite gigs with this band.

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