Introducing Third Moment (plus reflection on a song)

As I’ve noted before, I’ve been blessed to come together with two musicians more talented than myself and form a band, which we call Third Moment.

We spent a few days in February recording some songs in the drummers basement. I moved my digital audio workstation over to his house and we set up a bunch of mics and ran a ton of cables and played our little hearts out.

We did all that for two reasons. One because it’s fun. The other is that we hope to get some paid gigs and most folks want a demo and a media kit.

I spent a good two weeks mixing the material (after moving the DAW back to my house) and put together a little demo we hope to begin shopping around in the next few weeks.

We also created a myspace page where those who so chose can listen to the tunes at will.

Right now there are three instrumental tracks and one song with lyrics.

Two of the instrumental tracks are songs I made up in early ‘08 as part of a project I hoped to record by myself. I was happy the band took to those and others from that project. The third instrumental (What Comes Next) we made up on the spot at practice one day. That’s always a good challenge.

The lyrical song (Inside the Enigma) is another of those songs I wrote a long time ago as a young fella trying to find a path to follow. The specifics behind the song are as follows:

I was 21 or so and had met a couple of freshmen girls at school through some mutual friends. One of them, Melissa, was this bright and fresh, but self-doubting type who came from a well-to-do family down east. I think her dad was an attorney in the small sandhills town she was from. 

She was very worried that she wasn’t living up to her parent’s image of what she should be, and was thinking about quitting school and going home. She was very down, and I felt limiting her horizons because she hadn’t begun to take responsibility for herself. 

I wrote this poem one afternoon and gave it to her right before she left:

You know that fear is an instinct born of hate
So turn about in your sycophantic rage
If you’re old enough to die
Then you’re old enough to play 
So take your fear and generate a way

If I told you fear shows in the lines upon your face
Would you take stock inside the moments that you’ve saved
And if you’re trying to find a definition of the age
Confusion will be the emotion you display

Because inside the enigma
There is always change
Look to foundations they will all remain the same
Inside your mind
Is infinite room to play
And you cannot allow it to be force taken away

Stoic image of the age forget their imposed cage!

Most of all I hope you see
The goal of life is to be happy

I never saw her again after that spring day in 1993. Later that summer, I shared the poem with my best friend Brooks, my soul brother who took so much time back in those days sharing his knowledge of guitar with me. He asked me if he could take the lyrics and write a song for his band. I didn’t hesitate in saying yes and giving him a copy of the words I had scribbled down.

My life went for shit, not for the first or last time, shortly after that and I left school and found myself working in the grinding mill. I think one day in the spring of 1994 I came home from work and Brooks, whom I had not spoken to in several months, had called and left me a message. The message consisted of him reciting the poem.

I hadn’t even thought about the words in the mean time, so I replayed the message several times, jotting the lyrics down on paper. I spent the next few days working out some chords and redoing the lyrics into the form you hear.

It’s amazing how ideas can never really die. Now 15 years later, this song sees the light of day for the first time.

Filed under: Music , jeffrey sykes, Third Moment

A gut-wrenching level of myopia

So I had some time last night and watched a 2007 documentary film on the Iraq war, “No End in Sight“.

Laying aside all questions of partisanship and bias on behalf of the makers of the film, and looking at it from the viewpoint of historical analysis, this film is a must see for any Republican or conservative.

It is a must see because it lays out in rich detail (not to mention adorned with incredible footage from the front lines) the failure and complete lack of rationality behind the Bush administration’s plan for transition.

There is no question that our soldiers and military commanders are the best the world has seen. They haven’t lost a major battle since Kasserine.

But in a fashion that likely exceeds Vietnam for ineptitude, our policy makers in Washington utterly failed to enact and carry out a comprehensive plan.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch the film.

And if you are a Republican, dedicate yourself to never again allowing blind loyalty to a cadre to trump common sense, military history and justice.

Filed under: International, National , Iraq, Jay Garner, Paul Bremmer, War In Iraq

Contrasts

This morning I read in my local paper that 73 percent of students at my local community college are in need of remedial education. That’s reading and math, primarily.

Later in the day I sold a piece of equipment to a customer in China. Their shipping address of “Guangzhou Science City” piqued my interest so I looked it up.

Seems the Chinese have built two “science cities” from scratch as part of a national initiative launched in 1992. One of the science cities is home to 40 universities.

We need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Filed under: International, National, North Carolina , Guangzhou Science City, Rockingham Community College

They want to drill where?

Devastation off the coast of Queensland ruins 40 miles of popular beaches in Australia:

The full scale of the environmental disaster off the Queensland coast has become clearer as the shipping company admitted its earlier estimates of the oil spill’s size were “substantially” wrong and the length and the cost of the clean-up were revised upwards by the State Government.

An oil slick measuring tens of kilometres is staining the shore along Sunshine Coast beaches, Bribie Island and Moreton Island.

Filed under: International, North Carolina , drill here, drill now, north carolina coast, OCS drilling, oil spill

Omnibust?

Democratic Senator Evan Bayh had a thoughtful op-ed piece earlier this week in the WSJ:

The omnibus debate is not merely a battle over last year’s unfinished business, but the first indication of how we will shape our fiscal future. Spending should be held in check before taxes are raised, even on the wealthy. Most people are willing to do their duty by paying taxes, but they want to know that their money is going toward important priorities and won’t be wasted.

Related.

Filed under: National , federal deficit, federal tax policy

Medicaid expansion might be part of the problem

Democratic lawmakers are drawing up plans that generally would expand public programs like Medicaid to cover more low-income Americans while providing subsidies for people with higher incomes to buy health insurance if they lack it. – CQ Politics

I know a handful of medical providers: a surgeon, an OB/GYN and a nurse anesthetist, in addition a a few others.

I’ve been engaging them lately in discussion about the health care system and potential overhauls.

One thing I keep hearing goes like this: why do I want to continue seeing an increasing number of medicaid patients when the reimbursement is so low I can’t even cover my own overhead costs?

In addition, tort reform, malpractice insurance and a bloated administrative branch of the field are all cited as major barriers to health care providers being able to do their job at a price that makes their services affordable.

I think this is a critical discussion, primarily for the budget implications, but also for the fact that our system seems to be in the process of becoming less efficient in terms of service outcomes and more outrageous in costs.

Filed under: North Carolina , health care costs, health care reform, medicaid

Re-engineering the economy

This is a harsh indictment. I don’t think it’s undeserved:

It’s hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president’s policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.

The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents — John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance — President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter’s higher taxes and Mr. Clinton’s draconian defense drawdown.

Filed under: National , federal deficit, federal tax policy, President Obama

Please Come to Arles

Here is another little ditty I made up a year or so ago. I was listening to a lot of Pat Metheny and trying to get this Spanish sounding lick. I shared it with my band mates last year and they liked it so we been playing it a lot at practice.

I took the title from a book about Van Gogh and Gaugin working together in Arles, France.

The performance is not perfect. We’ve been recording in our basement jams and trying to get a demo together so we can get a gig here and there.

I play a little solo bit and hit an Electroharmonix MicroSynth about half-way through in case you are wondering what that sound is.

Filed under: Music