Leah | Day #020

Originally uploaded by Geof F. Morris

First, let me provide you a musical setting, friends. This track runs about ten minutes, which is far more time than it will take you to read these meager words, but maybe you’ll get to thinking during the guitar solo.

Cindy was 34.

Barry was 29.

Leah was 28.

All of them left us far, far too soon. All of them left us in much the same way—their brains conspiring with their bodies to take them from us long before any of us were ready to see them go. Cindy was my sister-in-law; Noah’s Barry would have been a good friend, I’m sure, had I ever had the chance to make his acquaintance. Leah was an acquaintance, and her husband Jamie is definitely a friend. All three of these men now share the same grief—a lifetime that was to be lived together now suddenly lived apart.

If you aren’t familiar with Over the Rhine, well, I’m sorry for you. The music that should be playing through your computer is, I think, wholly apt for this setting. The lyrics are reprinted, below, in their entirety, with my emphasis:

it makes a difference
when you walk through a room
with that worrisome smile
road weary perfume

but this isn’t the place
and it isn’t the time
for this beautiful delusion
that is robbing me blind

I want to know
I want to know
will it make a difference
when I go

it makes a difference
that I’m feeling this way
with plenty to think about
and so little to say

except for this confession
that is poised on my lips
I’m not letting go of God
I’m just losing my grip

I want to know
I want to know
will it keep you guessing
when I go

what is a love
if the love’s not my own
this is not my home
this is lonely
but never alone

I just want to hold you
in my gaze for awhile
so I can remember
every line around your smile

then I want to know
I want to know
will it make a difference
when I go

For those left behind, picking up the pieces, let me answer the question: YES.

Admittedly, Andy Osenga is a friend of mine. The acoustic EP he did last summer? He played one of my guitars on it. This summer’s EP, also distributed over the ‘net for free, has him playing electric guitars, so … nothing of mine is in there.

That said, he did take some things he and I have talked about and wrote a song out of it. The photo that accompanies it is of a friend of mine, and I hope she won’t kill me if she ever sees it in there. Thankfully, her name doesn’t appear in there … I sent it to Andy for inspiration, not thinking that he’d include it. [Or credit me with it.]

If you like it, send some coin his way:

Andy, thanks. I love you, brother.

I do believe that iTunes 8 has completely changed how I listen to music at work. Now I just come to work, think of a really great song in my catalog, and then hit the Genius button. Let it select 100 songs, and BOOM! Playlist for the entire day. No twiddling needed.

BRILLIANT!

Completely blind, I had Derek throw me a list of winners for my giveaway. I had 28 comments, four of which were ineligible from my reading, so I had Derek pick ten numbers from 1-24 inclusive. I then shifted past the ineligible comment numbers so he couldn’t be accused of cherry-picking [and besides, he had no idea what this was for ... right now, he's sending me his wife's new record in the background, heh].

So, they are:

1 Jason Windsor
3 brandi
7 kieren
10 Jill
23 Hunter
24 ella
19 mikaela
6 Maria Arteaga
13 muruch
18 stephen cavness

All in all, I think that’s fairly well-distributed: four folks I know, six I don’t. I’ll email everyone tomorrow…

This one’s real simple, folks: Elliott Smith would’ve turned 39 today. XO, which I consider his masterpiece, will celebrate it’s tenth anniversary in a little under three weeks. Here’s what I’m gonna do:

If you’ve never owned any of Elliott’s albums and want to give him a try, leave a comment below. If more than ten people chime in, I’ll randomly pick ten names from the comment list. Please leave your real email in the comment form, as that’s the only good way I’ll have to contact you. When August 25th rolls around, I’ll pick my ten names, get the addresses, and get you a copy of XO from Amazon shipped to your location. If you don’t want to give me your address, then put it on your Wishlist and I’ll buy it for you.

Simple enough for you? I’ve often heard it said that if you love something, you’ll give it away for free. I’d love to do that for you, dear reader.

[If you're an Elliott fan and want to link this on your Weblog to help spread the love, that'd be cool. Thanks.]

Update, 7 Aug: Thanks to Chad’s publicity help, I’m definitely now past 10 people. So yeah, keep on commenting … everyone who comments will get an equal chance [so, in other words, commenting a dozen times won't help, and will probably just irritate me]. And for those of you who’ve just jumped in to say that this is cool, thanks. Tell people that you know about it, eh?

It’s been two years since I launched IndieRiver as a bootleg-trading community tracker using BitTorrent. That seems just a little crazy to me. I didn’t think we’d be to 85 shows by now, but we are!
I don’t think I’ve ever told the story, but IndieRiver was a domain that Bryan picked up in early 2006. Around the same time, Ron picked up Indiemand.com, and Casella was pushing what ended up becoming the Square Peg idea. [To be fair, I think this is something that all the Pegs were considering, but I distinctly remember having more discussions about it with Jerry than anyone else.] As you might expect, we decided that it made sense to combine forces; as such, IndieRiver sorta sat on the sidelines, unused, and then when I fell in love with BitTorrent for distribution of allowable concert bootlegs, well … torrent, river, you got it.

It takes a village, people.

As a proponent of NoiseTrade and Matthew Perryman Jones’s Throwing Punches in the Dark, I’d like to offer you the opportunity to get it for FREE.

I am so thankful for hard drives that work.
Three weeks ago tonight, my 500GB miniStack V3 started screeching something awful—clearly beginning its death throes. I ran a quick Time Machine backup, said a prayer, and hoped it would hold together until the backup finished. It did, and as soon as it was done, I pulled the drive out of service and filed an RMA request with Other World Computing, the vendor I’d bought the drive from. I got them the drive off via UPS that Saturday [it was a crazy, crazy week], and I had the replacement drive last Monday.

Except, 111GB into a 305GB file transfer, the replacement drive woke me out of a dead sleep [it had been an even longer week prior, running almost 70 hours in seven days' time]. The new drive was, too, dead. I returned it the next day, and the drive got there on Friday. Monday, my replacement shipped. It arrived today.

Anyhow, I saw that it was at the house a little before three this afternoon, so I took my “lunch” break [one of those days; I was up at 0400, so I'm fading fast now], came home, and put it into service. I was a bit surprised when the drive mounted … already labeled like I wanted, with my data on the drive. “THOSE BASTARDS!” was my first mental thought, but then I read the packing slip. Bad fan in the casing. Ahh. Makes sense, especially for a new-out-of-the-box drive, y’know?

Anyhow, seven hours later, with 305GB moved, I’ve now got tunes again. Wilco’s “Impossible Germany” has never sounded so sweet.

Predictably, this HDD failure came less than ten days after I finished getting all the music off of my old machine. The only backup I had was the Time Machine backup. I’d never really tried TM before this event, and I must say … I’m reasonably impressed. The UI is still a little non-intuitive for me, but that might be because I spend half my day on a PC and sometimes think like a PC guy even on a Mac. Either way, it works. That said, you can imagine that I’m going to get another 500GB HDD ASAP and use SuperDuper! on it. Not having my tunes has been like lopping an arm off, especially with all that’s happened in the last three weeks.