Monthly Archives: February 2014

last saturday jenny and i were listening to a repeat broadcast of casey kasem’s american top 40, from feb 21, 1981. on that show casey reads a letter from greg johnson in joplin, mo. greg wanted to know how many remakes (also known as covers) had ever made the countdown in a single week. if you are curious about the answer you can listen here.

click here if the player above isn’t working for you (yes you, mom).

i took a three hour nap this afternoon. sometimes that makes it hard to sleep at night. the older i am, the more memories i have, the harder it gets, and before i know it i start singing like jimmy cliff.

yesterday i synced up a couple of small battery powered synthesizers. it’s cool knowing that i can do this by myself, but it’s more fun when someone else is along for the experimental ride. my ultimate goal is to generate these kind of progressions and engage non-musicians on first fridays. i want them to play something rhythmically or just make beep sounds in the right places. here are a couple of those progressions:
weird slow spy
UFO shuffle

we had a few people drop by the homer’s conference room for mondo beep last friday. elena and jennifer played twinkle twinkle little star on a casio synthesizer that was filtered through a volca keys synth. it was pretty melodic compared to the racket we were making earlier.

it’s the first friday of the month, and artists in the crossroads will set up their indoor displays in a few hours… indoors. normally i would take my boombox, laptop, and beeping gadgets out to the sidewalk, but it’s too cold now for that. tonight mondo beep goes inside the conference room next to homer’s on 80th street. we’ll start making noise around 6pm and keep doing that until you plus me starts playing at 7:30. if you hear an unearthly howl, and you’re not prone to seizures (we might have a strobe light) come inside and jam with us.

the snow started falling around 9am. i was scheduled to teach CPR today, but the class was canceled. homer’s is closing in an hour. i’ve seen one vehicle go down my street. i guess it’s time to burrow in, fry potatoes, and watch netflix… then lose interest, think about getting out, but then just stay home and play synthesizers.