My Hero - My Spouse

Aszani and I recently celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary - and we've been in a committed relationship for 26 years. Obviously, we love each other.

Why is she my hero? ... Because she has such a generous spirit. She believes in people, and trusts them - despite the rough treatment she has occasionally suffered at the hands of what I would characterize as "un-evolved" persons... That is inspiring to me.

Aszani has been working in the birth community for over twenty years - as a doula, labor-delivery nurse, and for the past seven years as a certified nurse midwife.

And she is truly a women's health pioneer. Aszani conceived, designed and opened the first free-standing birth center in Wisconsin in 2002. Madison Birth Center is nationally accredited and recognized as "Baby-Friendly."

Where midwives providing out-of-hospital birth in our region previously hid in the shadows, she did not. Instead, she openly challenged the health care system to change - meeting with insurance executivies, political leaders, and healthcare administrators to educate them about out-of-hospital birth and the benefits of midwifery care. Although acceptance of out-of-hospital birth in Madison's very conservative medical community has been slow, the presence of Madison Birth Center has helped to significantly expand midwifery awareness in our community.

Those who know Aszani, recognize that she is a truly caring person - and you'd be hard pressed to identify any provider who gives more thoughtful attention to the health and well-being of her clients. Unfortunately, that is more rare than it should be! She offers the same gracious care-giving to family, friends and employees. She has worked 80 hours a week - without financial compensation for seven years - so that MBC's resources could be spent first to provide her employees with good pay and working conditions.

Aszani is a special person - and I feel blessed to be her mate.

How I Became A "Dog Person"

This weekend we helped ease our family dog - Abby - into the afterlife. It was very difficult and sad. But it was the right thing to do, at the right time, and we did it the right way. The vet came to our house, and Abby was surrounded and strongly loved up by Aszani, Mo, Dan and me as she lay in one of her favorite spots from where she passed over.

For a number of perfectly legitimate reasons, I was a reluctant dog owner... but Maureen and Dan wore me down and I agreed that we could get one a little over 11 years ago. Aszani did all the research and we found a wonderful breeder of Golden Retrievers. We paid for an upcoming "pick of the litter" - and we picked the friendliest puppy (of the friendliest breed). That's how Abby entered our family, and everyone who met her would join me in affirming her lovely and friendly spirit.

My family and friends all know how much I came to love this dog... She was a great companion to me, and I guess its true - she has turned me into a "dog person."

Here are some of the things I learned from her:

• Give every stranger you meet an open friendly greeting. Some people won't connect with you, but many will and you will receive much affection and friendship in return.
• Walk away from trouble. Some creatures are just nasty, so just avoid them.
• Don't be afraid to approach those that you've angered. Simply express your love, and wait to be forgiven.
• Pursue your pleasures - and your dreams. Even if you never can catch that rabbit.

Peace, sweet dog.

Why I Take the News with a Grain of Salt

Here's some typical "reporting" by Bill Lueders in Isthmus - a free Madison weekly. This is from 15 years ago, but he's an editor there now and his journalism is just as good today!

Being described as a "rabid" anything is not so flattering. Informing the community that I was a "rabid, right-wing activist" was simply amazing. . . My friends found this to be hilarious.

For the record - I have never met, wrote or talked to either Bill Lueders or Anatole Beck.

Click on the image to read a pdf file.


I admired Stuart Levitan's response.

My approach to using iTunes track ratings

I use the track Rating as input to my “fresh mix” playlists. Since my tastes are fluid, I don’t think of the Rating as a “good or bad” judgment - but simply an indication of the frequency with which I want to hear a particular track.

I start all my new music at a 4 rating. Songs that leap out at me, I will bump up to 5 stars. And iff I’ve played out a song, I will eventually down rate it; but never more than one step at a time. Just as frequently, I will find myself hearing an older song that just slays me and will kick up its rating.

Here is the “repeat frequency” allowed in my random mixes for each level:

• 5 stars –not more than once a week
• 4 stars –not more than once a month
• 3 stars –not more than once a year
• 2 stars –not more than every two years
• 1 star – not played in my mix

I find this to be very easy to implement and it can help you enjoy fresh playlists with a really nice mix of “hot tracks” – new and old – and a measure of older songs and obscurities to keep it interesting.

My Favorite Playlist

Okay, I'll admit it - I am a geek. So I thought I'd give you the benefit of my obsessiveness and share the approach I've developed to categorizing my digital music collection.

First off, I don't mess with Genre but simply accept whatever is assigned. But when I import a new CD, I immediately group the rock and electronic tracks into one of a few categories based on the artist and give all tracks a 4 star rating. My main groups are Upbeat (rock), Mellow (rock), Art Rock, Dance (electronica), Chill (electronica), and Ambient (electronica).

If I really enjoy a song and want to hear it again soon, I will bump it up a star. Or if I'm not so keen on it then I mark it down a notch. So every song would get a minimum of three listens before falling to 1 star status. I use the star ratings then to control frequency of play. (1 star songs are not played in any mixes, but I do listen to them in the context of the album.)

While I have a number of smart playlists for special purposes, my favorite (and most elaborate) is one called Fresh Mix. My implementation of FreshMix is essentially a random mix within a broad "rock" genre composed of:

• 5 star songs not played in the last 7 days
• 4 star songs not played in the last 30 days
• 3 star songs not played in the last year
• 2 star songs not played in the last 2 years
• New additions

This is a mix that often surprises and delights me! If you are not using Smart Playlists in iTunes, I strongly encourage you to fool around with it. It's fun and you might also find delight in the playlist put together by your "virtual DJ."

Digital Music Encoder and Bitrate Recommendations

When I got my first iPod, I did not realize that the default setting was to rip music in AAC format at 128kbps - which is a very lo-fi bit rate. Once I realized this, I did some listening tests and even on the iPod I could hear a distinct quality difference between 128 and 160kbps. But I could not hear a difference between 160 and 190kbps - so I began ripping at 160kbps in AAC.

[If you've not reset this on your iTunes player, do it right now: Preferences / Advanced / Importing]

All along my friend Ankur was encouraging lossless formats, but I wanted to balance iPod battery life (it takes more juice to play the hi-fi files), storage (lossless requires 10X the storage space), and discernable sound quality (these old ears have been beaten and abused at live rock shows for decades).

Even so, it wasn't long before I needed to buy an external hard drive to store my music files, and when I did I bumped up the bitrate to 190kbps because the marginal storage demand seemed reasonable and why not improve the audio quality (even if I couldn't obviously discern it).

Years have gone by, storage is cheap and I now have a 500GB drive for music files only and an 80 GB video iPod. I've also built a really fine music system for listening to my digital collection (currently 24,000 tracks). So in the last few months I have embraced Ankur's advice - and I am ripping my new music in lossless format using AIFF encoder. My belief is that music affects us on a number of levels - physical, spiritual, emotional - and the full spectrum of recorded sound should not be compressed without necessity.

My advice: always buy the music you enjoy in the greatest audio spectrum possible: CD, LP or lossless digital. If you must buy "lossy digital" - seek out the highest bitrate available.

My Digital Music Journey

My wife and children gave me an 4 gig iPod Mini many years ago, and it turned out to be one of the best gifts I ever received... It nudged me into using my computer as a music server and I immediately began ripping my CDs using iTunes.

The Mini was a great first iPod for me, because it forced me into using Smart Playlists to sync a "fresh" portion of my collection onto the device. I really like this element of the iTunes interface, and the random play features occasionally pull some obscure track from my old recordings that I'd forgotten about completely - but really enjoy a lot upon rediscovery. It helps keep my collection in front of me - rather than just the most recent stuff I've been into.

Nonetheless, I've got a very diverse collection of music and some of it does not really want to be played together randomly! So I began using groupings to provide some additional intelligence to the "smart playlists" that I was constructing. I hope that you utilize this feature of iTunes, which allows you to "program" virtual DJs to put together playlists that refresh themselves. In a sense it provides a crude artificial intelligence of sorts - and by providing a a little "feedback" you can tweak how the iTunes compiles the playlist.

I will say that I am not a fan of the stock iPod earbuds, and replaced them promptly with Shure E3 earbuds (with Shure foam sleeves), which made a huge improvement in sound quality. If you listen regularly to your iPod on headphones, good quality earbuds is one of the best investments one can make.

Well, after I wore out the battery on the iPod Mini, I bought an 80 GB video iPod - which allows me to carry a good portion (but not all) of my music collection with me.

Most recently, I replaced my Dell desktop with a Mac Pro - which is an exceptional computer for use as a music server. And I added a Sonos system to tie the music server into my house stereo as well as my new office listening system.

I'm one of those people who worry that too many young adults today have not been exposed to hi-fi sound, and don't know what they are missing. Digital music can sound like crap - but it also can sound fantastic. It's primarily a function of source bitrate, amplifier quality and speaker quality. You've got to hear the difference!

Founding Madison Music Review

I will soon be coming up on the first anniversary of founding Madison Music Review. Fred got the idea to blog about the shows we were seeing one night when we were at the High Noon together. I quickly agreed, and Ankur was right behind...

We were good friends who regularly went out with one another to shows - as part of a much larger and ever changing body of concert buddies. We already listened to music together, talked about music together, bought music together and saw lots of live music together. .. Now we are also writing about it! . . . Next we'll have to start a band. [That's a joke!]

This has been a really energizing project for me. Previewing upcoming shows always gets me worked up for the performance. MMR also memorializes a lot of the great shows that we are seeing - and its out there for anybody who saw or was interested in the show. Occasionally we also get advance copies of CDs and the chance to interview cool musicians. What could be a better way to spend free time than this?

Why the Grateful Dead was cool... Part I

The Grateful Dead was all about the live concert experience. Deadheads know what I mean. If you never had the chance to enjoy a live Dead show, the experience arose from many elements:

The Music – The Grateful Dead are originals, and are widely recognized as the prototype improvisational “jam band.” Think bebop jazz – John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, et al – when listening. The band pretty much played “full tilt” and because of the extended improvisational breaks, songs were never the same twice. A song that they played for 6 minutes one night, they may play next time for 10 minutes. . .

The Musicians – The Dead were a guitar fan’s “dream band.” Jerry Garcia was certainly one of the most talented improvisational guitar players in rock, and Bob Weir was and is an exceedingly creative rhythm guitarist. And Phil Lesh plays bass as if it were a guitar. (In fact, he frequently played a custom 6-string bass.)

The Band’s Attitude – The Dead were always low-key performers. They never postured, posed or pretended while they played, and a Grateful Dead audience was never asked if they were “ready to rock n’ roll.” They never had a lead singer, and all band members were talented instrumentalists. Stage lighting was dark and subdued, and typically psychedelic.

The Scene – The Dead were never a really popular band, so the people who attended their concerts were predominantly “fans.” When 20,000 people were brought together who know the repertoire and listen closely, it opens up the possibilities for great energy, great music, and a great sense of community.

The Setlist – The Dead played a unique setlist at every show, which was usually determined spontaneously during the show (at least in the early years). Songs transition from one to the other during improvisational jams. And serious fans listen for musical clues as the band builds consensus about what song they will play next. Their active repertoire was over 500 songs, and one of the reasons their fans saw so many shows was that one could go to every show for a month and rarely hear the same song twice.

The Dead had their flaws, and their fans know them. But its become a truism, there was truly nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.

My "deadhead" bona fides

I charactize myself as a deadhead - with a small "d." I make this differentiation because I never followed the band for a tour, I never sold shirts or burritos in the lot, I didn't count the shows I've seen, and rarely traded tapes. But I have been a fan of the music for a long time!

My first show was June 26, 1976 at the Auditorium Theatre, Chicago. (I was 20 years old, children.) The Auditorium Theatre is a super elegant Louis Sullivan building with fantastic acoustics. This was the Dead's first Midwest show following retirement of the Wall of Sound and their two-year hiatus. The crowd was out of its mind, as you can well imagine. . . and Stella Blue literally brought me to tears.

The Wall of Sound - circa 1974 

© Richard Pechner (pechner.smugmug.com)  

I saw them often when they played Chicago area theaters during the 1970’s, including many shows at the Auditorium, the Uptown and the Chicago Theater. And I had many magic experiences.

I began to lose interest in the stadium shows that followed the popularity of "Touch of Grey," and my last show was in Milwaukee at The Mecca on April 16, 1989.

My Daily Nature Break

One of the great blessings that come with caring for a dog is getting out a couple times each day for a walk. I refer to this as my nature break - and I've come to really depend on it to keep me grounded. . . or at least, more grounded. It's just amazing how the natural world can put things into perspective.

Abby has a nice smile - Don't you agree?

There are generally three ways that I walk with my dog, Abby. 1) She follows me on leash (most public spaces); 2) She walks along with me off leash (my home neighborhood); or 3) I follow her (open fields and woods). My favorite is to follow her. It's fun to watch her as she indulges her desire to deeply smell stuff, and she still romps at times.

2007 - The Year of the Music Fest

It actually started for me in Fall '06 when Monica convinced me to join her (and Kent, Mo, Dave et al) at the Austin City Limits Festival. I usually like my concert environments small and intimate and I wasn't sure that I would like the festival scene. But she methodically overcame all my objections. I went for two days, and had a blast. Highlights were seeing Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Brazilian Girls, TV on the Radio, Iron and Wine, Galactic, Sparklehorse...

Jam in the Dam - in March 2007, I traveled to Amsterdam for 10 days with my 19 year old son, Dan. JitD is really special because it is so small - just 1,500 people, it's indoors at the Melkweg, and the invited bands play 2 hour sets each night for 3 nights. Very civilized.

Movement '07 - Ankur has been raving about the Detroit Electronic Music Festival since I've known him. This year, we went together and had a blast. I've always liked club music and electronica. Nonetheless, this felt like an initiation! For photos/reviews, [click here].

Summerfest - I always go in for 2 or 3 dates during this two-week festival. Highlights this year - Femi Kuti, Ratdog. For photos/reviews, [click here].

10,000 Lakes - a very nice camping festival in northerm Minnesota. For photos and reviews, [click here].

Lollapalooza - Practically in our back yard. Highly recommended. For photos /reviews, [click here].

Hello!

I've just added this blog to my website to create a place for collecting my thoughts and opinions. I'm calling it "Turn It Up" because I really enjoy music, particularly live music, and I'm not at all afraid of volume - provided that the sound system is good! But I also think this expression well captures my philosophy of life - which is to give it all that I can, keep trying to stretch myself, and to be as present to the moment as possible.

If you are reading this, I assume that you are a friend or acquaintance that wants to know my viewpoint... Greetings!