Hall of Fames: Baseball, Rock, etc.

OK. I'm not a baseball sports writer. I do not get to vote on who should get into the baseball hall of fame.

But here's my ballot anyway:

1. Roger Clemens
2. Barry Bonds
3. Scott Rolen
4. Chipper Jones
5. Lou Whitaker
6. Jim Thome
7. Mike Mussina
8. Manny Ramirez
9. Fred McGriff
10. Vlad Guerrero

(Yes, I realize Sweet Lou Whitaker is not on the ballot this year. He was only on the official ballot one year, received less than 5% of the vote and was immediately excluded from future ballots. My ballot doesn't count anyway, so there's no harm in including him.)

I will let others discuss the merit of each player on the 2018 ballot. I'm not that interested in making cases for each of my picks.

However, I will say this about Barry Bonds: 

I didn't become a fan until 2005, well after he had broken the all-time Home Run record. He had been injured most of 2005, and really had no obvious reason to continue playing at that point. He was 40. He was feeling beat up. He had nothing to prove. His team was out of playoff contention. And yet, to me, he proved something very important that year: that he loved baseball enough to come back and play out 2005.

He then went on to play well in 2006 and 2007! 

I mean, if I could have played just two seasons of major league ball and tallied WAR scores of 4.0 and 3.4, I would consider that a pretty decent career. I would hear whispers at parties for THE REST OF MY LIFE of people saying "there goes so-and-so; he played in the majors and had a 7.2 Career WAR."

The thing is, Bonds did that after he turned 40! He already had over 150 WAR, nevermind all the home runs, RBIs, walks, doubles and so on.

By the way, this is intended to be a music blog. So when it comes to the rock hall of fame, who would I vote for? 

I would not vote for anyone, even if I had a vote. I was in the grocery store not long ago when I saw two men a little older than me wearing T-shirts for their favorite classic rock bands. Both bands were on their 3rd or 4th "final" tour, by my count. One claimed the band on his shirt was the "Best Rock and Roll Band of All Time!" They other smiled. I don't think he agreed, but it wasn't worth arguing about.

I find that I am less into bands and more into songs. There are songs that I love. I make a playlist and share it with others. People listen, and either enjoy the songs or they don't. The end. 

Or maybe, just maybe, they don't like a song the first time they hear it, but they listen again and start liking it. 

Or maybe there's music that's very important to me at one time in my life, but I have moved on and now when I hear that song, it doesn't have the same emotional effect. 

But the memory is still there of when that song got me though a tough time. 

How does something that sublte fit into a hall of fame? That's why I wouldn't vote for anyone.

ARE YOU ALIVE? (with a soul down deep inside)

Our mini-van's CD/DVD player burned out one day when my wife was driving back and forth to work. She said it actually started smoking and she was afraid the car would catch on fire. She somehow got the DVD that had been playing to eject, and she left the windows open for a long time to let the smoky odor clear. Likely the DVD motor burned out. We haven't really tried to fix it. As a side effect, the radio also stopped working. UPDATE: One of the students in my wife's art class replaced our radio with one he pulled from the junk yard. He found 4 pennies in the burnt out DVD player, which likely shorted it out. But now it's working again thanks to her student. It's my car now. 

Months later, my wife and I were on our way to a family event when the phrase, "You say my calculations are off by a million or two" popped into my head.

Luckily I had my trusty ukulele with me. On that day I was being the entertainment, playing the songs I'd written on ukulele. I started playing with a chord progression that's very common but never seems to get old: C/Am/F/G. It's been used by the Beatles's "Happiness is a Warm Gun," Santo and Johnny's (in a different key) "Sleepwalk" and more.

As far as the lyrics go, let me start in the middle and explain later.

You say my calculations are
Off by a million or two
Won't you hold me like you did
By the lake on the moon of Naboo
I can't take this indecision
I just need to know
Are you alive, are you alive?

I liked the first two of the first three Star Wars movies. I didn't mind Jar-Jar Binks in the first movie released in the prequel trilogy. I watched the second prequel episode two times (with different groups of people), and swore to myself in the middle of the second viewing that I would never watch that movie again. I won't even say the name. I don't even know the name. Twice was enough for a lifetime.

But I loved one line from that movie. "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo." I added "on the moon of" because I that's the way I remembered the line, and I like my version better than the actual line. The moon gives it a little extra oomph. I think they actually filmed the scene by the lake, not on another planet or the moon of another planet, but next to a drainage pond in some swank gated community.

We're moving toward a future of human-like robots, or androids. Boston Robotics is basically already there. Eventually the resemblance will be so close that it will fool the eye.

My narrator is coming from the point of view that he's fallen hard for a woman who may or may not be purely mechanical.

The metallic taste of your kisses
The way you hold my hand
With your vice like grip
Your eyes can change color at will
When you smile I get a chill

Are you alive, are you alive? (with a soul down deep inside)

I saw the original animated movie Ghost in the Shell a few years after it came out. I'm pretty sure it was on VHS. I could have seen it in the theatre at the art house cinema with my old roommate, but for some reason I passed. 

Cyborg (human with mechanical enhancements) cops. Guns. Secret governmental agencies. For some reason the description didn't draw me in.

But when I finally watched it, there were so many images that stuck with me. The title sequence showing the assembly of Major Motoko Kusanagi is one of them.

Some say they grew you from a culture
In a laboratory
Inserted your skeleton made of titanium
In a factory
To me you're just the girl next door
Who can lift a thousand pounds or more
Before you become my wife
At the altar won't you ease my mind?

I'm hoping my song comes across as comical: reaching this far into a relationship, recognizing certain characteristics of his fiancée seem a little suspicious but waiting until the very last moment to ask for reassurance that he's not marrying a very good looking major appliance.

Hope this never happens to you.

DOUBLE CALIFORNIA
I was sitting inside the new IKEA on the far north side of Columbus. We had just walked through the bedroom displays, and we were eating late lunch/early dinner. I was drinking coffee. Here's a photograph of the moment the idea came to me:

I had a dream last night
(What did you dream about?)
California broke away
From the United States

That part wasn't so original. I've been hearing that California was due to fall into the Pacific Ocean any day now since I was a little kid.

While it floated in the sky
Like a cell it divided
Redwoods in the corners
Like a bunkbed, it reunited...




Yes, that part was inspired by educational films on cell reproduction coupled with the IKEA bedroom displays.

I had travelled to California for work a few times early in the year, and it was fresh on my mind. The first time was during the prolonged drought. The second time was after a lot of rain had fallen. Before, the landscape was semi-arid, but still beautiful; after, you could see why California has captured our collective imagination for so long.

People always talk about traffic in Los Angeles. In my limited experience going from LAX to Burbank and back, I can say that it really is not much fun.

Double the California girls,
Double the L.A. traffic,
Double the length of the Golden Gate
The sushi is terrific...



Now there's enough for everyone
Double California
Sun and surf and fun
Double California
Twice the G.D.P.
Double California
Enough for you and me
Double the California...

I have heard that California, if it were its own nation, would be the world's 6th largest economy on earth. So there's a sense that the entire United States is dependent on California, agriculturally and otherwise.

Double the fruits and vegetables
Double the wine and mountains
Double the number of celebrities
Begging for attention...

I've been thinking lately that the relationship between celebrity and fan isn't so much the fan worshiping the the celebrity, but the celebrity seeking out those to validate his/her sense of significance.

Now there's enough for everyone
Double California
Sun and surf and fun
Double California
Twice the G.D.P.
Double California
Enough for you and me

Double the California...

If You Spoke Only Russian

Bragging can be lots of things: Brash, arrogant, annoying, self-centered, rude and more.

Can bragging be funny? When we know the brag isn't intentionally vain or even true, like when a little boy wearing new sneakers tells a runner who's on a five mile run that he can beat him in a race.

Can bragging be endearing? A lot of singers have tried this tactic, like Lou Rawls, claiming that he wasn't bragging on himself, but said, "You're Gonna Miss My Love." And Prince famously said, "I would die for you."

So what if my song's hero started his brag at that level, but added some graphic details?

If you and I
Were being chased by wolves
Or a grizzly bear
That had tasted human blood

I would lay down my life
So you could escape
I would lay down my life
So you could carry on...

OK, so this person isn't really bragging. He's claiming that he would be heroic if one of these unlikely circumstances occurred, claiming virtuous qualities that it seems likely he'll never need to prove.

If you and I were captured
By and alien race
Of murderous lizard men
Out to rule the earth

I would lay down my life
So you could escape
I would lay down my life
So you could carry on...

This one seems even less likely. And yet this guy is trying to take credit for being selfless and sacrificial toward the woman he's trying to impress.

Would you think of me fondly
Remember my face
Tell the children about me?

And would you laugh out loud
Watching the Titanic
It would seem so mild
Compared to what I'd done?

This refers to, of course, Jack giving up his piece of floating debris in the movie Titanic so that Rose can go on living. I wanted my protagonist to brag very blatantly that he wasn't impressed.

Kind of like Charlie Sexton's song "I Am Not Impressed," where he names historical and literary couples, then claims, "I am not impressed/I love you the best." Pretty confident. Maybe not realistic at the age that he wrote the song, but cool anyway.

If I had just left it there, my hero wouldn't have the tenderness needed to complete the effective love boast. So...

If you and I
Were the last man and woman
Left here on earth
And you spoke only Russian

And I spoke only English
Would you try to understand me?

The first part comes from watching the old Twilight Zone series episode called "Two." I really like Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched) and Charles Bronson (The Magnificent Seven) in the roles of the last man and woman left on the planet after an all out war.

Then comes the fun. Our family loves the cartoon series, Kim Possible. We've watched every episode at least ten times. "A Possible Family Christmas," is a real gem, for lots of reasons, but if you listen hard you will find that I borrowed part of Snowman Hank's big song to finish off my own.

Put aside our petty problems
And embrace your fellow man?

Would you think of me fondly
Remember my face
Tell the children about me?

And would you laugh out loud
Watching the Titanic
It would seem so mild
Compared to what I'd done?

For the record, my wife thought the song was funny, which was my goal. Humor is more effective than bragging.

Desperate Grasp


I remember hearing The Smiths for the first time. It was in a record store when vinyl was on the wane, cassettes were on top and CDs were gaining popularity.

It was "This Charming Man." I wasn't sure what it was about exactly, but it sounded so different than what I was used to hearing on the radio that I immediately wanted to hear more.

Many years later, I started playing guitar and writing songs of my own. The Smiths always had sort of a handmade feeling. Not raw like punk, but not slick like the normal radio pop songs the DJs constantly played that said "nothing to me about my life."

I wanted very much to make a song that sounded raw and intelligent and funny and swinging, like The Smiths at their best.

I liked all of their albums, but for me "Louder than Bombs" was their best because it felt B-side-ish, which I think it was to some extent. I listened to it probably too loud on whatever passed for headphones back when I was in high school, and "Rubber Ring" still speaks to me just as clearly and passionately as it did back then. (Click the link to read Jake Brown's post from 2003. Can that year be right? Wow.)

I had been traveling for work more than usual, and I noticed sometimes you would sit next to someone fairly chatty who confided in you maybe as a stranger more than they would someone they actually knew. Or maybe I was that person.

In the final days of a failing company
A business man sat on the plane next to me
He said there'd been questions, irregularities,
Still he'd never done anything knowingly illegal

He met a girl when he was twenty one
He never quite got her face out of his mind
He looked her up lately and her life had come undone
And maybe she'd be happy now to see him

I remember those two verses coming easily. Then the chorus, which sounds overly dramatic but also true.

It's a desperate grasp to find anything that lasts
It's a desperate grasp to find anything that lasts

It's a desperate grasp to find anything that lasts

Longer than a young girl's smile...

I thought it would be funny for someone to tell secrets in his sleep, but instead of a lover's name, etc., it would be formulas for making a proprietary plastic.

He nodded off and he spoke in his sleep

Reciting formulas from memory

Exotic plastics and dense French poetry

In an accent that was hauntingly familiar...

When it came to the bridge, I used a snapped off piece of progression that I had made a year or more before trying to imitate part of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World." Actually, it was Nirvana's cover version. I used a noise/synth app on my phone to do the little solo.

We landed and we walked up the gate

He was heading for the city and running late

He turned to me with pain in his eyes

He said "I hope you lead a life without compromise."

Sort of like a charming man who has made his share of mistakes trying to help a stranger not make the same questionable decisions.

Lonely Robot Boy (Horse Called Tomorrow)

I was getting ready for work the other day when the phrase, "I'm just a lonely robot boy..." popped into my head.

At first I thought it was a stray idea that would soon fade. But other related phrases kept coming on the drive to work. 

"I've admired your hinges and servos for some time now," was another line, which made me imagine the robot boy had somehow discovered a female robot. "I admire the chrome of your brow" was the second part to that couplet, but it didn't fit together like I expected.

Then I looked for a place for the robot boy to live. My first thought was an astroid, like in the original Twilight Zone episode, "The Lonely." I spent some time trying to write lyrics to explain how the robot had been abandoned by humans, and so on. Finally, I decided that the robot could just imply his back story, not spell it out.

I'm just a lonely robot boy
Stuck on this forgotten rock
I'll share my battery pack with you
And my charging dock

I've always liked the line, "We'll be together, with a roof right over our heads / We'll share the shelter, of my single bed" from Bob Marley's "Is This Love?" So I adapted it to my robot's circumstances. Sharing a battery pack and charging dock might be the most generous thing a robot boy could do.

I've made my home
In the wreck of this ship
Picked you up on the radar
A curious little blip

I like your hinges
And I admire how
The sunlight caresses
The chrome of your brow

Years ago, my wife and I were watching a movie with our friends Brad and Julia. I think it was the live TV remake of Fail Safe back in 2000. Wow, that's a weird phrase, "Back in 2000." Anyway, there was a scene where the military is tracking a dot on the radar. Other dots are shown in pursuit of the first dot. "Poor little dot," said Julia. That stuck with me.

So the robot boy sees a blip, maybe after hundreds of years not seeing anything on the radar, and it gives him hope. How would a robot boy compliment a robot girl? I would start by admiring her hinges and chrome accents. That's just me.

These mountains remind me
Of a paperback book I read
About a cowboy
And the horse he called Tomorrow

They wandered through the desert
And no matter where they went
They found empty houses
Ghost towns filled with sorrow

There's more than a little WALL-E influence to the imagery and storytelling in this song, but I also wanted to bring in differences, like my robot boy reading paperbacks instead of watching VHS tapes. The books were presumably left behind by humans when they either died out or left for greener planets. I decided to merge that idea with a passing tribute to America's "Horse with No Name."

I already mentioned Bob Marley. I wanted to borrow a line from one of his songs, but I couldn't find a convincing way to use the line I mentioned above. So I turned to "No Woman, No Cry," another beautiful song.

Maybe this isn't the end
Here, little darling, don't shed no tears
Maybe someday
We'll see other suns
The nights can get so cold
But you've got my hand to hold

I hope you enjoy my song. If so, please pass it along to others.

Cuba - In early 2017 we were able to travel to Cuba to visit my wife's extended family in the Guantanamo city area. 

We stayed at the Hotel Guantanamo, which is inside the city. It has an open air lobby, just like resorts I've visited for work in Mexico and Dominican Republic. But it has a more urban vibe. There's an elementary school on one side, a park/square at the front and a neighborhood behind. And it's not near the ocean.

My brother-in-law, his son and I played music in the lobby and out on the dining patio. We took 3 guitars that we gave to churches in the area a day or so before we left.

One of the highlights for me was being able to play a song with my brother-in-law one night in a second floor restaurant. An excellent singer and guitar player was performing that night in the restaurant, and he entertained us with traditional songs, plus some of his originals.

He heard that we were musicians, so he kindly asked if we wanted to play a something for him. Well, we just happened to have our guitars in the trunk of the 1950s Pontiac parked on the street below. Pretty cool. We only played one song, "Shaving and Daydreaming," restraining ourselves from taking over the gentleman's gig. From the blank stares we received from the folks around us, our Americana sound must have seemed pretty foreign to Cubans.

Later in the week, we traveled to a an ocean resort in Guardalavaca. At a rest stop along the way, a troubadour played songs. Both musicians are featured in the video and their interpretations of "Guantanamera" are the soundtrack.

At the resort, a Canadian woman told us she and her husband had been coming to Cuba for many years, and we were the first Americans she had met there.

I've heard people say that they would like to visit Cuba before it's Americanized. 

I understand what they mean. There's almost no advertising. No fast food. No seat belts in the old cars. Buses are pulled by semi-trailers. Bikes and motorcycles compete on the road with cars. Riding in a horse drawn carriage is not a novelty there. It's a legitimate transportation option. And that's in the city! Everywhere there are kids walking to and from school in their uniforms. 

Even if relations were completely normalized overnight, I don't think Cuba will be Americanized anytime soon.

It would be nice to have some decent ketchup in the hotel restaurants, though. They call it ketchup, but it's really some very thin, watery stuff that only hints at the real thing. I think if we go again, the next time I'll take a bag of Heinz Ketchup packets to leave behind. Who knows. I might start a... revolution.

Flying with a Guitar: Gate Check

I try to take my guitar on business trips so I can play in my hotel room (quietly). I've even played for co-workers at times, but mostly it's just me in my room.

Here's my experience with traveling with my guitar:

Most airlines treat musical instruments and baby strollers as a special category of luggage. It's called Gate Check.

Don't check your guitar with the regular checked baggage. I did that once and the case came out looking like an elephant had sat on it. The guitar was OK.

Take your guitar through security like a carry on. If it's a gig bag, try placing a few rolled up T-shirts under the neck for extra support. I usually loosen the strings to reduce tension on the neck. But I've also forgotten to do this and I've never really noticed any difference.

A few times in Mexico the security people opened the case and asked me if this was my guitar. I said yes and they seemed to approve. They did not ask me to play, however.

At the gate you'll need to walk up to the desk and ask to "gate check" your instrument. They'll put a special tag on the handle and give you a receipt stub. You'll keep the instrument with you while you wait to board.

When it's your turn to board and they scan your boarding pass, sometimes they'll also scan your gate check stub. Not always.

You'll walk down the ramp with your instrument. Just before you get on the plane, you'll hand the guitar to a luggage worker. Or you can just place it next to the door. Usually, somebody's baby stroller is already sitting in the same place. 

The luggage handlers will place your guitar in the plane's luggage compartment. So what's the advantage of gate checking your guitar?

I've observed that they seem to place the instrument on top of the checked luggage, which should be safer than checking it and having it land under a giant pile of heavy bags.

Then when the plane lands, the guitar should be there waiting in the little area just outside the plane door for you to pick up and carry up the ramp.

With smaller instruments like a ukulele, you should be able to carry the instrument on the plane and stow it in the overhead compartment or under the seat in front of you.

There is usually not enough room for a full-size dreadnought guitar, but I have seen someone do it. I guess it depends on how full the flight is.

One time a flight attendant asked if I wanted to keep my guitar in the locker where the flight crew keeps their baggage. That felt pretty cool, but it really wasn't very different from gate check.

Again, I would recommend against checking your guitar with the regular luggage. Have you ever seen the Toy Story 2 airport scene?

Hope this helps my fellow players.

Peace.