maugorn / Setlists, Acquisitions, _An Inconvenient Truth

Clipper City 8/26/06

01) (inst) Reel Set
02) Leavin' Of Liverpool/(inst) Sailor's Hornpipe/Off To California
03) All For My Grog
04) Cape Cod Girls
05) Haul Her Along
06) Away, Rio!
07) Peter Street
08) Blow The Man Down
09) Strike The Bell
10) Barret's Privateers
11) Mary Ellen Carter
12) Boots Of Spanish Leather
13) Skye Boat Song
14) Rolling Down To Old Maui
15) For My Lady
16) Farewell, Nova Scotia
17) Calypso
18) Octopus' Garden
19) Son Of A Son Of A Sailor
20) Southern Cross
21) Brandy
22) Sailor's Prayer (debut!)
23) Drop Of Nelson' Blood
24) Sailor's Hymn

Comments: I mentioned before that this was a really good cruise. With only rare exception, I and my voice were very on. I think I'm definitely turning a corner where pitch is concerned. I got to debut "A Sailor's Prayer", which I'd heard before, and got reminded that I "must learn this ASAP" at Pennsic. It turns out that the Captain knew the song too. Score!
And the owner was nothing but smiles and a very affectionate pat on the back as he passed by while I was playing. Can't get enough of those Captain and Owner points!
I LOVE this gig!

New Deal Cafe 8/31/06

01) Lily Of The West
02) Heather On The Moor
03) Norwegian Wood
04) Country Life/(inst) Kesh Jig
05) Jamaica Farewell
06) The Wind
07) Rolling Down To Old Maui----req. Sonya
08) Chicken On A Raft-----------req. Steve
09) Sailors' Prayer
10) The Highwayman
11) Can't Find My Way Home
12) Queen Of All Argyle
13) Thomas The Rhymer (debut of "complete" version)
14) Valley Of Strathmore
15) Skinnydippin' Baptism (debut)
16) Puff------------------------req.
17) Romeo And Juliet------------req. Sonya
18) Long Black Veil
19) 1952 Vincent Black Lightning req.Steve
20) Last Night
21) All Along The Watchtower
23) Me And Bobby McGee
24) Best Of All Possible Worlds-req. Sonya
25) Dixie Chicken
26) Wild World------------------req. Greg
27) Octopus' Garden-------------req. Jen

In Attendance

Sonya
Steve
Jen
Greg

I was in a bit of a different mood this time. I didn't start up with my usual warmups, but opted to dive straight into some flashy guitar works. I was also in a much more 'traditional' mood until much later in the set. One thing I'm very glad to finally get to do: debut my "complete" version of "Thomas The Rhymer". I finally found the verses that I felt were missing from the narrative in a lecture on magickal ballads given by RJ Stewart,(bootlegged for me by Viv, whom I don't *always* fight with). Anyway, I knew *of* them, but never found a version *with* them. I thought I'd get to debut it at the CPC gathering, but the audience wanted more singalongy dancy numbers instead of stories, and at Pennsic, my lyric sheet for the song was absconded by gremlins or something, and people weren't tending to listen that close anyway. So I got to debut the song on Thursday.
Another song I got to debut was the "Skinnydipping Baptism". I was digging around in the Mudcat database last week looking for some shanties suggested by a patron from Clipper City , and there in the "S" index I found "Skinnydippin' Baptism". According to the guy who posted it, he's only heard it a couple of times, managed to record it once, did not get the name of the singer, yadda yadda (yeah, uh huh). He didn't have a real melody to post for it, but claimed that it scanned to a couple of songs, none of which I knew. The scansion and structure seemed very typical of your Johnny Cash/Talking Blues Story type song, so I set it to a fairly straightforward chord progression and rhythm in the key of G. It's a great story, and I'll post the lyrics if asked, or you can go to www.mudcat.org and go into the S directory under lyrics.
And again, overall, I and my voice were very "on", which helped me win over alot of the audience who were there who were not my friends and shills.

In the acquisitions department, first a brief diversion: in case you care and didn't know, Atomic Music lost their lease and is moving this month. They have new digs further north up Rt 1 in that industrial park behind the Sams club just south of Beltsville. Oh! Here's the flyer in my pocket. 10111 Bacon Dr which is parallel to Rt 1 on the right off of Ewing Dr.
Anyway, they've got alot but not all of their stuff moved (big stuff mostly), but they're amassing a pile of stupid little things that they just don't feel like sorting or moving.
So I got a very early model Galaxy Hot Spot monitor for $25. (A monitor speaker that's small and powerful, so it can be right close up to you, take up minimal stage room, and because of it's proximity, be heard better at lower volumes. Better sound, less feedback- SCORE!)
And if you've ever seen the box I carry around my mixer in, you will doubtlessly have commented that that box is on it's last legs. Well, I found a replacement that is a little roomier and a lot sturdier for $35. Considering that I trash-picked the old one, I'm doing good. The new one used to be a DJ turntable case and it even came with a couple of RCA cables left in it. Unfortunately, this expense tapped out the last of my discretionary cash for a bit. I'm going to have to wait a week or too to go back to the CD Depot and snag the _Travelling Wilburys vol 3_ (their rare, out of print SECOND album) that I saw.
And also, since it never hurts to ask, I asked Atomic if they were willing to trade moving help for store credit. And, surprise, surprise, surprise, I'm about the x00th person to ask, and they've long ago already hired some professionals for moving.
But back to the stuff. My mixer and associated gigging stuff is all in the new case, with plenty of room to spare, so I can put in the speaker cables which never fit, and can lay it all out so that most of the stuff is plugged in and set and ready to jump out and make setup fast (which was my original idea). And if I get a chance today to try out the Hot Spot (confirming it works &c), then I won't need to be carrying any of those old crappy sounding home-built monitor wedges around anymore for my solo gigs. And that can start as early as tomorrow morning at Clipper City!!!!!!!!! I'm hoping it can also be useful for Rhianon gigs, but before then I may want to retrofit it with an L-pad for volume control. (It's an early model, before that became standard)

Finally got to see AIT. Okay, yeah, it's preachy and propagandish. But go thru that data and draw another conclusion. I double fucking dogs dare you.
I want to find that Congressman who had the unmitigated gall to call Global Warming a "Hoax" and tie him to a pier in Alexandria and say "Let's see if you're still breathing in a year".

I fear that the prediction I made to

sagesaria when we were out last week that it's probably going to take another generation before something useful actually gets done about this is going to be true. Watching those assholes try to dismiss the data was like watching Kevin Spacey's "Lex Luthor" portrayal. MILLIONS of people are going to be affected, with some ungodly number of them DEAD, and these heartless bozos are fucking OKAY with it, or just too isolated and brainwashed to believe it.

Gore has done a great job being the "Good Cop" on this issue. Now it's time for someone to play "Bad Cop" or "Asshole" and not let go of this, not let it rest, pester everyone with their fingers on the buttons until they relent just so that they can get some sleep, bombard ALL THREE Branches of the Government AND the PUBLIC with the data and the pictures until real steps get taken to get this crap back on track to be fixed. Gore has done his homework and the answers are correct. He now has to take this report and shove it down the teachers', classmates' and principals' throats until we all gag and agree to do what he says.

I thought I was disgusted with my country's leadership and especially the Right Wing.
Now I have lost ALL patience with Conservatism, Republicanism, and all who ally that way.
There is no hoax. There is NO Debate once the FACTS are used. And There is NO threat to America or our way of life greater than you fucking assholes and your obsession with dominance and greed.

That's it. Your party has now lost ALL credibility with me. I will NEVER vote for a Republican, no matter how sensible or moderate he or she may be, because they will be affiliated with the Party whom I will now hold as singularly responsible for putting it's head in the sand and pursuing petty social issues and a trumped up war against straw men rather than change it's mind and actions on an issue of global consequence that renders everything else trivial.

Our homeland, and our homes are already under pressure from YOUR policies and it will only get worse. How many more times are we going to watch people die and entire landscapes, climates, countries, and continents get reshaped before you take your jobs seriously?

I have little patience for politics, but now I'm mad.
So Look out! Just sayin'

Does anyone know who the Majority leaders are so I can mail them some of these choice words?

As for a solution, here's where I will probably disagree with some of my "Greener" oriented friends and colleagues.

I'll start with a quick anecdote about recycling in a group house I used to live in. Our house, by virtue of it's location, size and the makeup of it's occupants was a social hub for a larger social circle. We liked to play RPG's. ALOT. And so several nights a week we'd be host to groups of people who would snack and drink alot of soda. Our neighborhood was fortunate to have a recycling program, and we were an ideal contributor to it.
But we had a problem:
The morning after one of our gaming sessions, it would always be incumbent on one or more of the housemates to clean up and gather all of the trash and especially all of the bottles and cans. If we didn't happen to get up in time after these inevitably late sessions, we'd even risk MISSING getting the recycling to the curb in time. (We'll not go into how the recycling and trash men always timed their pickups for the days after gaming, even when we switched them.) Anyway, we kept asking our guests to get their bottles and cans to the proper bins, but it never seemed to work and inevitably everyone would get all caught up and then it got late and it was time to go home.

FINALLY, the solution presented itself and was so simple we kicked ourselves. We put a big bin/tote in the middle of the gaming area and labelled it "Recycling" in large friendly letters. It was an obvious, large target. And on game nights, the cans and bottles found their way with no problem.
Our cleanup of bottles and cans, at least, became trivial.

The moral: To reverse global warming humans are going to have to make some major changes in how they operate. If we are to implement and encourage these changes we are hampering our efforts if we make people do things that are not just as easy or EASIER than what they do now.
We have to make it easy and attractive to do the right things.
If what we demand people do is inconvenient, or worse yet, makes them unhappy and brings down their standard of living, there will be resistance and resentment. OTOH, if we phase in actions, products, and means that improve peoples' lives as well as have less impact, they will embrace it.

It's not always enough to simply scare and badger people into giving up what they love to do things "your way". (which is how they'll see it)

We NEED TO MAKE IT EASY AND GOOD TO DO THE RIGHT THING.

Tax incentives for installing green technology and programs that help offset the cost of updating to more energy efficient appliances are great door openners. And what's more, when people see a tangible savings, they then embrace the changes.

The other thing we need to focus on, aside from "greener" technologies and lifestyles is to fund basic scientific research. Our whole lifestyle from the late 19th Century and the single thing that enabled the Industrial Revolution (and caused this mess) was the solving of
energy needs for operations on large scales. Harnessing fossil fuels and the amount of energy they yielded versus the production cost is what gave us what we have, which was orders of magnitude over what we had before.

To do the big jobs to create a big society, we needed HUGE amounts of energy that were not available before. And thanks to solving that problem, we enabled the lifestyles of millions of people to rise to levels of ease and liesure that ONLY the upper classes *could* enjoy before. It let us grow cheap food, build housing and infrastructure at unprecedented speeds and at unprecedented rates and created an economy of unimagined proportion.

We have technology and means right here and now that can reverse the amount of C02 in the atmosphere. If we don't want to do it thru physical and chemical means, We have the means to replace every tree we cut with two thru planting, grafting, and genetics. If we have a place to contain that much heat, we can even COOL the planet. None of these ideas are unworkablee except for the SCALE upon which we'd have to operate. And all of these processes take energy, which right now, with rare exception, generate that which we are trying to mitigate. It's certainly sensible to put scrubbers and other means on major polluters to lower the amount of NEW pollution, but we also have to get rid of the OLD pollution too.

The alternative energy sources we have so far are not yielding the bang for the same amount of bucks that petrofuels and coal and natural gas have to date. To change over to them on the scale we'd need to IS right now prohibitively expensive. It is not easy, or even FEASIBLE for enough people to do the right thing.

That's why we need to fund basic research in Chemistry, Physics, and even Genetics.
We need a breakthru. A Breakthru on the same or larger order of magnitute as the breakthru of harnessing fossil fuels was to the 19th Century.
If we can do any of the following:
-find a source of energy a return for extraction on a par or better than our fossil fuel production (My best bet is fusion)
-increase production efficiency of green alternative technology (wind and solar devices have to be built and that takes $ and energy) by an order of magnitude
-increase the efficiency of our energy usage by an order of magnitude

My contention is that we need a breakthru and we need to find it IN OUR LIFETIME. I think that only if we do, do we have a chance of reversing this problem and reastablishing at least a new (but probably not the previous) rough environmental equilibrium.
But we have to do this NOW and until we do this, all of our efforts will be stopgaps, not solutions, because we need to be able to act on a very LARGE scale and that takes energy we do not currently posess or are able to harness.

And the populace at large is not going to embrace or cooperate with radical life changes until and unless they are thrust upon them, UNLESS these changes are as intuitively easy to implement and do as what they do now.
(Unless perhaps the message gets thru and enough people really start to care and act, but I'm not betting on that in the current climate. We don't have enough good examples and role models in our leadership to follow, and too many of them either don't care about or actually will embrace the catastrophes, as it will bolster their power)

If not, it's going to take the Ice Caps melting to spur us into action, and by then it's going to be too late for far too many people.
As I said to my daughter the other day, I really fear that 2026 is the likely and realistic timetable for effective action to begin.

Lots of people wish me and my predictions to be wrong. For once I'm hoping THEY'RE right.