I am an American expat living in Germany. It's a far away land on the other side of the ocean. It's interesting and often weird here. If you read this and want to comment then email me at nate(the at symbol)chillmost.com. If you find any spelling or grammar mistakes, you can keep them.
Went to see Josh Ritter play in Hamburg in the Prinzenbar the other night. The club was really small and there were about 40 people there. He sings country-rock songs about Momma, trains, trucks, prison, and gettin' drunk. He's gonna be big someday.
(How fucking random. A marathon with about 200 runners is going past my front door. Polizei are blocking the street and a crowd has gathered to cheer them on. Man, I need to get to the gym.)
Um anyway, it was an awesome show. We hung out with him a little bit after the show and found him to be a sincerely nice guy. We saw him play here a few months ago without his band, who rock, and we bought a CD. After the show we put it on in the car and the CD was skipping all over the place because something was spilled all over it. We decided we would just exchange it at the next show. After the show we had to deal with his road manager who didn't believe us. He said there was nothing wrong with it and then said if he were to exchange it, what would he do with the one we exchanged? He can't sell it again. I said something like, "If there is something wrong with it, it shouldn't have been sold in the first place." At this point he was getting in my face and accused me of "copping 'tude". M jumped in and said something to this effect: "We have witnesses who heard it as well and can back us up. Could you please just ease our mind and exchange it? If there isn't a problem with it, you can just sell it at the next show. Nothing gained, nothing lost." Josh stepped in and told the road manager to stop sweating us and just give us a new one. Thanks Josh. You rock! He'll be playing with Joan Baez this summer in Hamburg.
(Wha? Now all the runners are coming back up the street from the opposite direction. What's going on out there?)
Howdy
Last weekend I had a good time. M and I went to this thing called the Kulturelle Landpartie. Just southeast of Lüneburg, near Uelzen, there are these artist communities where a lot of "alternative" people live. I'm sure what that meant but I felt like I would fit right in. There were lots of arts and crafts and that sort of thing. Another word I heard describing it was "verzeckt". I don't have a translation for that.
On Monday we went to Lübeck, Travemünde to be exact, and walked on the beach and along the harbor there. It was really nice. We then went to a Greek restaurant in Timmendorfer Strand. A nice way to end the weekend.
I've been working at least a few hours every day in ProTools as well. In fact on the drive up to Lübeck I was a little grumpy because I wanted to stay home and make music on the computer but M made me come. I'm glad she did. The one thing about music production that I have forgotten almost everything about is MIDI. I used it in school and also in Chicago for a few sessions but the last time I really was knee deep in it was in 1999. It is all coming back. I forgot how cool and versatile it was. I'm borrowing/maybe purchasing an old Korg ER-1 Electribe. I use it right now to help sweeten up the beats a little. I control it with MIDI but route the outputs to my mixer. I also route the Stereo out 1-2 from ProTools to the mixer. Then the mixer's stereo output gets sent back into ProTools when I do a mix. Anyway, i'm having a blast with it. A few weeks ago I sent my guitar to a village near Braunschweig to be re-fretted. It was actually about 3 weeks ago and I haven't hard from it since. I'm anxious to get it back so I can record some electric guitar and piss off my neighbors. Was Soll das denn? Heute ist Ruhetag!
Here is an awesome article about Christopher Walken: The New York Times > Magazine > Odd Man In: "'I DON'T. Buy the tomatoes with. The stems. On them. They don't. Degrade. They go. Down the sink. And into the WATER. Then. They get lodged in the throats of little. OTTERS."
