Skif Dank Article

Ed sent me this link about a band we grew up going to see. Over the years we've become friends with them, and on their new album, I'm playing some trumpet parts. I thought the article should be displayed here. World, I give you Skif Dank!:

Skif Dank still poppin' up on local punk scene

Written by: News-Journal Editor
May 28, 2009 10:53 AM | No Comments

Now we know -- Pete Townshend was just kidding when he penned "Hope I die before I get old" way back in 1965. Right, Pete?

Back then Townshend was a 20-year-old pup of a rocker. Do the math: Pete is now past the age of eligibility to sing the Beatles' "When I'm 64."

Here's what Marc Tomestic, drummer with the Daytona Beach rock/ska-punk/pop-punk band Skif Dank, had to say about the "O" thing: "I have contrasting thoughts. I feel old and I am old ... there aren't many bands around here who've been together as long."

That was Tomestic when I interviewed him in January 2000, for a story about how Skif Dank not-so-suddenly found themselves to be THE veteran rock band on the local original music scene.

If band years were calculated like dog years (and they should be), then Skif Dank is now 112 years old.

These days the Dank includes two members who were there when the band first pumped plutonium pellets into their horns and guitars back in 1993: Tomestic and singer-guitarist Billy Bradford. They'll be in action with longtime Dank trombone player Jon "Ceesaw" Cecil and a few new mates as Skif Dank performs at 9 p.m. May 30 at Jack's Stadium Sports Bar and Grill, 2225 S. Ridgewood Ave., South Daytona.

No, Skif Dank hasn't gigged continuously since forming in the era when grunge and Lollapalooza ruled the rock 'n' roll universe. They disbanded in August 2000, played a reunion gig two years later and have been performing and recording intermittently (OK, erratically) ever since.

Still, to put Skif Dank's achievement in perspective, consider: Subtract those two years between breakup and reunion, and the Dank's run is still twice as long as Nirvana's stay on this planet, and two years longer than Led Zeppelin's reign.

The Dank have been a monument to local rock 'n' roll two years longer than the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's museum has existed in Cleveland.

During the first leg of its run (1993-2000), Skif Dank released five independent recordings, toured the country seven times, won two Orlando Music Awards, and kept the banner of original rock flying over Daytona Beach for a longer period than almost any other band.

And they did it all while having to keep their feet in the real world of day jobs and bills due -- which to my mind says something about Bradford, Cecil and Tomestic's rock 'n' roll hearts.

It's one thing for the Mick Jaggers and the Pete Townshends of the world to keep sloggin' on (may the rock gods of Valhalla bless 'em). It's quite another to stare at your busted guitar amp and decide to log a few thousand more miles on your car's bald tires so that you can repair the amp before your next gig.

Of course, all this talk about Skif Dank's longevity would be hollow if their music sucked.

I've been fortunate to hear tracks from the band's upcoming new album. Such awesome, caffeine-laden new songs as "I Got Mine," "Little" and "1KMPH" will make Townshend shake his cane in ska-punk/pop-punk ecstasy.

"Enjoy yourself -- it's later than you think," Tomestic wrote in a recent e-mail to friends and fans announcing this weekend's Skif Dank show.

Now that's a more worthy rock 'n' roll credo than "Hope I die before I get old."

Bob Dylan's John Brown

I never heard this before last night. Bob Dylan........

Alan Watts on Psychedelics

"When you get the message, hang up the phone."



I couldn't have said it better. Thank you, Mr. Alan Watts

Land fantasy

Sand Fantasy

Ilana Yahav is a sand artist. She uses light boards and sand to make motion art. I watched a few of of her creations, and I was so relaxed watching her art. Here is one entitled "Green Dream." Her other work is equally as peaceful.

Information Age Prayer

For all those lazy religious zealots: INFORMATION AGE PRAYER

I like how they sell religious packages.

From the website:

About Information Age Prayer

Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget.

We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying. Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of the subscriber displayed on screen.

At Information Age Prayer we think our service should be used like a prayer supplement, to extend and strengthen a subscriber's connection with God. Traditional prayer is an integral part of this connection and should never be forgone, even after signing up.

You can subscribe for yourself, or you can purchase a subscription as a gift to friends or family.

Best tune of the eighties

If you don't know TuxedoMoon, you should be aware that not only they played music in the eighties, but they are its best expression. I'm always amazed at this tune whenever i listen to it. Do you like it ?

Bobby on Improvisation

Thanks Hamutzi for sending that link over. I've been a big fan of McFerrin's ever since I found one of his albums ("Paper Music") many years ago. It's one of his first classical albums where he is combining vocal music with orchestration and taking his first steps as a classical conductor. In my mind, he was always that guy he did "Don't Worry, Be Happy." That album opened me up to what an incredible force he is musically.

I was phishing around his site and read what he wrote on improvisation. As an educator, theatrical improviser, and aspiring musician, I can really connect into what he's pointing towards.

Here it is:
I am passionately committed to improvisation, and don't think that any music student in the country should be allowed to graduate unless they've studies it for a term, a year. They need to get back to their own music making, get past the paper. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven - they were all great improvisers. What we have now has been written down, and we forget that it began as improvisation. In some ways, the best part of their music making has been lost.

Improvisation is basically movement - the courage to take steps. You play one note. And then you play another note. That's it. You just keep going. They don't have to go together melodically, or be in a scale; movement is the important thing. You don't have to know anything about theory, you don't have to know what you're doing. Kids don't. Three, four, five year old kids don't know any music theory when they sing. They don't know what a 'picardi third' is. They don't know what an 'Ionian mode' is. Or a 'Dorian mode'.
Major minor thirds. They just sing.

When you get older, it's harder and harder to improvise. Part of the problem is that judgmental voice that says what you're doing doesn't sound right. I used to have students do drawings of their own 'judges' - and then we'd crumple them up and throw them into the trash. We all have these thoughts, these inhibitions. I had them too; I had to 'exorcise my demons'.

When I was developing my own approach to improvisation, the only thing I had to practice was getting over the fear of doing it. I think that's the only thing that really hampers people from improvising: they're just afraid of looking like a fool or not having enough ideas. It's a risk. Most people are afraid of it. It's like opening a door to a dark room and going in. You don't know what you'll find. But I find that fascinating.
The best way to start improve is to just do it. sing . Improvise every day for about ten minutes. Get a cooking timer, set it up for ten minutes and go. At the end of two minutes you're going to start getting very, very bored. Two minutes are going to go by and you're going to think, 'What is this all about? I don't know how to do this; I don't know what I'm doing, etcetera, etcetera.' Keep going. Don't stop. It's like Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones: keep your hands moving. It's the same with improvisation. Just keep going. Even if you're just singing one note. Go for ten minutes and don't stop. That's it. You just move. Just keep moving. Motion.

You can talk about structure, making it last longer, but you have to start with those first steps. Some people freeze up and stand there, thinking they have nothing to play. You've got everything to play: your morning breakfast cereal, the misunderstanding you had with your teenage son last night before you went to bed, your emotions - you can lay them all!

It doesn't matter where you land. Just the act of leaping is where it's at for me. That's the big lesson: the process. I've heard this from all kinds of people who call themselves artists - that it's not so much the final result, it's the joy of the journey that's the important thing.

voice layers of Bobby McFerrin - Don't worry Be happy

Bobby McFerrin is one of these musicians that somehow are not well known by many people. It might be because people - at least many that I know of - raise their music taste on their first 20th-30th years of youth...

People who study at music schools - they all know Bobby McFerrin, that - much as Stevie Wonder - did wonders to harmonies and nowadays music (and still do).

His website includes a "play ground" for two of his songs, where you can add the layers of the music (all made by his lips, no instruments) - one by one, and understand the beauty of harmoni...
LINK - check it out...

Bubble Wrap

Here's a website that lets you pop that bubble packaging wrap. Fun for hours!

Only in America

I don't even want to tell you what this web site is selling. You have to see for yourself.

http://inventedbyamother.com/

I'm just shocked. My jaw is open, and I'm not quite sure about the universals anymore - gravity, the speed of light, there being a Law & Order episode on TV anytime of day.

Land of 1,000 Dances and WWE

At the request of Keith...

The Grant Study

The Grant Study is a longitudinal study of Harvard graduates from the 1940s that tracked many of them their entire lives. Its purpose was to learn about the lives of these men, but it ended up revealing many complexities in the human condition - what makes us happy and how do we survive through suffering. It's a long article, but very interesting. A person's life and perspective can be completely different (and often is completely different) at age 20, 40, 50, even to the 80s.

Link.

Let's Get Happy

Time just published the 100 most influential people of our time. This was a link sent to me from a dear friend of mine, Ben, who said I helped him become happy through his friendship with me. I thought I'd pass this on. Let's get happy, people!

Nicholas Christakis

By Dan Ariely

Social scientists used to have a straightforward, if tongue-in-cheek, answer to the question of how to become happy: Surround yourself with people who are uglier, poorer and shorter than you are — and who are unhappily married and have annoying kids. You will compare yourself with these people, and the contrast will cheer you up.

Nicholas Christakis, 47, a physician and sociologist at Harvard University, challenges this idea. Using data from a study that tracked about 5,000 people over 20 years, he suggests that happiness, like the flu, can spread from person to person. When people who are close to us, both in terms of social ties (friends or relatives) and physical proximity, become happier, we do too. For example, when a person who lives within a mile of a good friend becomes happier, the probability that this person's good friend will also become happier increases 15%. More surprising is that the effect can transcend direct links and reach a third degree of separation: when a friend of a friend becomes happier, we become happier, even when we don't know that third person directly.

This means that surrounding ourselves with happier people will make us happier, make the people close to us happier — and make the people close to them happier. But social networks don't transmit only the good things in life.

Christakis found that smoking and obesity can be socially infectious too. If his thesis proves out, then the saying that you can judge a person by his or her friends might carry more weight than we thought.

Miracle II Soap

http://www.miraclesoap.com

Divine inspiration led Clayton Tedeton directly to the formula for his original Miracle II Soap and thousands of satisfied users have discovered a multitude of uses. They say it works wonders! Over the past two decades, a host of products emerged from that same inspiration; each miraculous in its own way. Here is Clayton Tedeton's story, in his own words... Testimony of Clayton Tedeton God's Faithful Servant It was God who gave me the formula for the Amazing Miracle II Soap. I awoke one night in July, 1980, to see names of minerals all miraculously flashed on my bedroom wall, along with the formulas on how to mix them. I had been talking to God and He was talking to me. My wife would hear me talking and would ask, "Clayton, what in the world is going on?" And I would tell her, "I don't know, I cannot explain to you what is happening in my life." I talked to God and He said, "I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU SOMETHING THAT EVERY PERSON THAT I HAVE CREATED ON THIS EARTH WILL NEED, AND AS LONG AS YOU GIVE ME THE GLORY, YOU WILL PROSPER AND SEE MY GLORY." One day later at 1:00 a.m., the formulation for Miracle II was miraculously flashed on my bedroom wall. The days following this I began to assemble and mix this product. The voice of God told me what to name it and how to package it. As time passed and all this time the voice of the Lord was saying, "IT'S TIME TO GO TO WORK." At this time, I did not know exactly what to do. In December 1980, I talked to the Lord and said, "I have got to have instructions so that this product can be used." A day later the Lord instructed me to take some of this product to a woman and tell her to use it for everything. I did not know the lady at this time. After three days, she called me and said, "Every time I use this product, the strangest things happen to me, I'm going to have to pray about this." On the 17th day of April 1982 at 9:00 a.m., the lady called me and said, "Mr. Tedeton, for the last two months the Lord has instructed me to write a set of instructions for that product that you brought me. When can you come and pick them up." That day I picked up the instructions and that same day the voice (which I know to have been God), said "YOU CAN RECEIVE WHAT YOU HAVE ALWAYS DESIRED - CONTENTMENT AND PEACE IN YOUR SOUL."

Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
    flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
    went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
    bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.