Post Pennsic Swag

My earnings at Pennsic having been excellent (despite the odds and my illness), I have invested some of my earnings in some things that I feel I have earned. And I splurged a bit too!

1) "Adri's Dreamflute" in ABS plastic. Back when I was recording Patches I bought a wooden recorder, that I used for the recordings and at occasional gigs afterwards. It's called "Adri's Dreamflute" and is a tweaked version of a large bore rennaissance recorder. The tweaks give it an extended range and sensitivity. I LOVE this recorder, but alas, don't take it out of the house much, because, well, my musical lifestyle is "harsh". Okay, it's downright brutal. My instruments are abused almost as much as I am for the privilege of accompanying me on my musical adventure. So when I *do* want to play it, I alwasy need extra time to warm up, because it's a little bit tricky to milk the highest notes out of it. And since I don't have the time to do that much recorder *practice*, I just tend to stick with the Yamahas, because I can (almost) play them in my sleep. So imagine my delight when I discovered at Pennsic that they're now making *THIS EXACT RECORDER* in ABS plastic. So I gots me one. It had it's debut at PPR last Saturday.
Oh, wow! It's response is a little easier than the wooden one, and it's tone is just a little (almost unnoticeable) less fine.
If I were perhaps the recorder player in Manneheim Steamroller, I could probably tell better, but you get the point.
So for $30 I got a plastic recorder that I can abuse that can really dish out the sound and tone as well as take the abuse.
It sounds better and it's even LOUDER than my Yamaha! I could have spent ten times this much on a recorder and not been as happy!

2) I bought a green flute. I'm currently teaching myself to play regular orchestra style flute, and have one that I like okay. BUT I discovered that some manufacturers have taken to a process that colours the metal. These flutes don't have a great rep for quality, but dammit, they're *pretty*. I own so few instruments that are just pretty. The tone on these guys is supposed to be decent as is their playability. We'll see. If it sounds nice and plays okay, then I have a 2nd tier instrument in my arsenal that's a pretty metallic green with silver keys and fittings. It won't pass for "authentic" in SCA or Renfest settings (unless I'm playing middle eastern music- see previous post to get the joke), but so what? It's *pretty*, and pretty is a reason I don't get to indulge much in in my musical gear.

3) I bought a new digital recorder to transition away from Minidisc when recording my gigs.
Don't get me wrong, I like my minidisc recordings. But I've ruined three recorders (two walkman, on full sized) so far, and minidiscs are getting harder to find, AND in order to do this, I need power and a mixer as well as the recorder.
The Zoom H4 replaces all of that, and records directly into .wav format, AND has built in mics if I don't want to plug my mics in AND has multitrack/overdub capability AND runs on two AA batteries (alkalines giving it ~8 hrs of use) AND (The BIG seller) it has a USB interface such that I can upload files directly, so no more three hour dubbing sessions before I get to edit.
It records onto SD flash media and I bought two 8GB sized cards yesterday that (if the rumours are true) will give me over 4 hours time apiece at 44.1k/16bits (CD quality) stereo.
So, for instance, if I wanted to try again to record at that Beast & Boar, instead of needing to lug the mixer and the MD and the cables AND extension cords in the huge heavy mixing board case, I'd need just two mic cables, my mics, and a stand.
It's small enough too, that I'd not even need an extra table for it.
I'm hoping to try it out this weekend at Constellation Books and the following weekend at Swamp Thynge.
This purchase is truly revolutionary, and I got all the parts of it (the recorder and the disc) for about $50 less than most places advertise it for, simply by doing some aggressive price checking.

4) I ordered the Decemberists' album The Hazards Of Love (which we have) on, get this- LP!
They put out a special gatefold LP edition of the album. This is very indulgent of me, but I LIKE records, and to have one of my favorite modern bands on an actual record is a sweet treat. Yum!

5) A dear old friend recorded Roy Harper's Stormcock for me on a cassette many aeons ago. That cassette died sometime before we moved here to Cheverly. I've been looking for it ever since and nobody but nobody seems to carry it on CD and I just got tired of waiting to see if I'd find it some day somewhere. Dammit, we have intarwebz for this shit, so I went on and found a copy and ordered it. Ta-da!
There are some other albums I had on cassette back in the day that I have lost, most in one of two great disasters:
"The Great Car Flood" or
"The Great Ripoff"
that I didn't have in any other media, so they are still lost to me. I have decided that I will be spending some of my extra pocketmoney this year finally recovering what's left of that list. Most I have back now, but some I don't, and it's really time to fix this grudge a (some of which is over 20 years old) and move on, now that the time is here where "If you want it, someone online has it for you".

6) I've purchased a few other CDs and DVD's too. They're not quite as newsworthy as the other purchases.

There are a few more items left on the list to go, I may not get or find them all, but this is fun:

- New rims for my van (well, used ones actually) of the smaller size that fit my lug pattern. Why? Because the size I have now is weird, exotic, and nobody seems to make that size tire anymore, not with anything resembling traction in mud.
I *could* keep paying hundreds of dollars extra for tires that suck and get me stuck in fields when I park for an event, or I could pay some extra money now for rims for cheaper tires that actually work for me. Hmm.

- A vibro-slap. (No, it's not anything like *that* gutterminds, even if it sounds like fun) It's a musical percussion device that makes a prolonged series of tiny tinny clacks in rapid succession when you hit it. It figures prominently in the opening of Traffic's "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys".

Weekend okay, happy ending

Friday I finally got to see the new Harry Potter movie. Once again, I'm mildly disappointed at what they had to leave out, but understand that it's *only* a three hour movie.

I *still* think that the Harry Potter series would best be served if they gave it the same treatment that BBC gave the _Chronicles of Narnia_ back in the 80's:

One miniseries per book, roughly one episode per chapter.

The show would have the ratings to merit a decent budget for the special effects, but would not need the huge epic wizbangy stuff they're compelled to do for the cinema, and it would be more intimate, and they could really capture the *mood*.
And real character development. Rowling's characters have real depth to them, and it's a true shame if not a sin that so much of that has to be compressed or omitted.

Despite my wishes, 2nd guesses and other "if-*I*-were-doing-it"s, I rather liked it. Good installment. Yes I cried during that scene near the end.

Saturday was the Storvik Post Pennsic Revel, where despite reports to contrary, I actually mostly had a fine time.
I have a new, terrible joke that I'm telling everyone who I can pounce on lately (yes, *your* time is going to come too!).
And it's such a joy to inflict such pain with such a simple almost obvious and stupid pun. I got to spread the joy at the feast.

I also got to share several bottles of the mead that the Crunchy Frogs gifted me at Pennsic.

The harsh to my buzz was twofold:
1) I asked to perform 1 (one), (ONLY ONE song. One very nice song that would have fit in with their aesthetic and theme, and well, they never seemed to get around to me.

2) I agreed to play music for some dance, and we got to do 15 whole minutes of it.

So, I felt obliged to give myself a little "prima-donna moment". It would have been a fine little moment and over in short order, except that every time I tried to take just a few minutes to vent about it, SOMEONE just seemed to have to need me to move, to move my things, or interrupt me for what-fucking-ever, and so after like four times in a row of this happening, it just set me up to have my irksome escalate a little into orcsome. For the last 20 minutes I was there, I wasn't very pleasant to those in my company, most of whom meant well. Sigh.

The fact is that Storvik, and our little corner of it is jam-packed with musical and entertainment talent of the highest degree, many of whom *could* be full time pros if they'd cared to settle for that impoverished lifestyle. And it seems that pretty much most of it present Saturday nite went under- or non-utilised, and that included Storvik's baronial bard. In the future I'd like to see that be not so much the case as it was, especially since much of the time of the event itself had music coming from an I-Pod.

I also find it somewhat disingenuous that for all the hype and harp about making music and song more "authentic" and all of the flack that comes my way for doing what I do so uncompromisingly "out of period", all of that goes out the window as soon as things go "middle eastern". Modern instruments are totally okay, amplifiers are okay, and modern styles of playing are just fine as long as you're either in G minor or have an occasional flatted 2nd on the tonic. It seems that anything goes, as long as you have someone playing a dumbek with you. I'm not saying I don't like it or that it's not good (and it IS fun!), but if you're gonna fuss at me for my harmonicas being out of period or tell me not to bring amplifiers so that I (or whomever) can actually be *heard* in these acoustically nightmarish white noise marshes of gymnasia that we always seem to wind up in...

But all that kvetching aside, Sunday made up for it in spades.

I went over to the Greenbelt Farmer's market where they were OVERJOYED to have me provide some impromptu musical performance.
I got lots of sun. I played *almost* to my heart's content (there's never enough time for all the good songs). I sold a couple of CDs and made some kickass tips that nearly matched an acceptable Saturday in Alexandria. All in all I had a lovely time. All day long I got compliments, (and tips) and at the end, one of the farmers tipped me in yummy produce.
I'll probably be there again next Sunday too.

It was very reassuring to be reminded that once I find *my* audience that I *am* in fact, worthy.

After that, and quick stop at Shoppers' Food, I made a delivery to the Mom in law of a sizable supply of her favourite apple juice.

Then I went over to Micro Center to purchase SD memory for some of my Post-Pennsic swag of which I'll be posting soon.

Then home where I made some of that yummy produce into dinner for us, and then we watched Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone blow things up, shoot or bash bad guys, wreck vehicles, and quip witty buddy lines to each other on TV.