Rhi's Poem Relay for Life Show & The Art of Virtual Reality Conference (05.11.13)

Nothing like jumping back in with both feet! As you know from my recent woeful communiques, I had dental surgery on Monday, and singing was pretty much out of the question for the subsequent few days. Fortunately, my jaw was much more mobile by Saturday morning, for I had a busy schedule planned. I started by doing a full hour of original music at Rhi's Poem for a Relay for Life event, and an hour later, spoke and performed for a conference at UMass Lowell on "The Art of Virtual Reality".

Rhi's Poem/RFL
I love events in SL that are focused on original music. There's nothing wrong with covers; I obviously do most of my own shows with covers comprising over half of my repertoire. But as a whole, seeing artists do their own material offers a far more unique experience for the fans, at least the adventurous ones. February Jinx and Liz Harley had teamed up for a special fundraising event this weekend with an interesting format: half the performance's would be at February's Rhi's Poem, and the other half would be at Liz's Key West. But all of the performances for two full days would be limited to original music. It was great to be included in a cool lineup that included many of my own favorite SL artists!

I was part of a cool lineup of SL musicians, and this was only the first part of the event. Flyer by February Jinx.

Rocking some songs and begging for funds. Photo by Kat.

People seemed to be enjoying the tunes. I had fun performing them. Win. Photo by Kat.

I always have plenty of my own stuff for an hour-long set of originals. This time, I also decided to do a couple of songs from the upcoming album of They Stole My Crayon. I had to admit, before I played "Things Under Trees" for the first time, that it hardly qualified as an original, since the lyrics were by Kat and the music by Bunny. But if I can't cover my own band, there's something amiss in the world.

Rhi's Poem Set List...
Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)
Go Easy on Me (Zak Claxton)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
Perfect Girl (Zak Claxton)
Take The Ride (They Stole My Crayon)
Thanks Anyway (Zak Claxton)
The Sands of Redondo (Zak Claxton)
*Things Under Trees (They Stole My Crayon)
Fade Away (Zak Claxton)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)

Big thanks to February and Liz for putting on this RFL event, and to al the people who helped support the cause!

---

The Art of Virtual Reality
An hour after I wrapped up at Rhi's Poem, I headed over to the sim of Sophia Yates, who'd asked if I could speak at a conference she'd put together at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She'd invited a number of people in various creative arts -- filmmakers, artists, and one rather silly musician -- who all created art that combined real life with the virtual world. The conference was held physically at the university, while the presenters were shown on a live streamed display from SL.

I didn't get to attend much of the event beyond my own section; obviously, I'd been too busy making my art to spend much time talking about it on that day. But in general, the parts I heard were indeed interesting, and according to the organizers, my presentation was well received. I spoke about connecting with an audience, and I covered both the tangible/technical and intangible/emotional aspects of doing that. I know the event was "filmed", so I should be able to repost my section of it sometime soon.

All in all, it was a busy day, and all before 2PM! Still, between the fundraising for RFL and the sharing of knowledge at the conference, I felt pretty good about having done my part to make the world a little cooler.

Dental Records

I spend most of my time on this blog talking about my life as a performing singer-songwriter. Occasionally I talk about general topics that relate to virtual worlds and the like. However, this morning, I'm writing only to distract myself from the pain that is emanating from the entire left side of my head. Why, you ask, am I in pain? Well, yesterday, I had two teeth extracted.

A Brief History of My Mouth
I'm just one of those people who was genetically predisposed to having shitty teeth. I've always taken good care of my teeth. I brush twice daily. I floss often. I use mouthwash. And still, like both of my parents before me, my teeth have never been great, and as time goes by, they certainly haven't improved on their own. I think I had my first root canal when I was about 23, and that was after a good number of cavities that always required fillings when I was a child. It could be said that my current teeth woes are in part the result of all those fillings in my youth, but that speculation is pretty pointless at the moment.

Anyway, over the years, I've had at least another 4-5 root canals, crowns, and in addition to the typical wisdom teeth removal, one extraction of an unsavable tooth. That extraction was done very well by Dr. Richard Schell here in Redondo Beach, and he did a great job. More on him later. It was all the way back in 2003 when my dentist told me that I had several teeth that still had to go, but another ten years went by before the teeth themselves insisted on my dentist's plans.

Swollen Sunday
It's truly amazing how fast these things can arise. On Saturday, I was feeling terrific, and had a very fun brunch with my family (including my lovely niece, who I hadn't seen in far too long). By Saturday evening, though, I was noticing that in the back left corner of my mouth, there was a foreboding throb going on. Not precisely pain, but definitely a discomfort. My general plan for all things medically related is to sleep on it, and hope my body can work some mystical magic that makes it go away on its own.

That didn't happen this time. Instead, I awoke on Sunday, and the back of my mouth was badly swollen. As in, abscessed. The back molar, which was basically a stub of a tooth that had been previously root canalled and then broken, along with the impacted wisdom tooth behind it that I'd never had taken out, was looking and feeling really badly. It was time to stop fucking around, and do something. We've all heard stories of people who let an infection go too long untreated, and ended up dead (or wishing they were).

Dr. Schell to the Rescue
Not only was it Sunday morning; it was Cinco de Mayo, which is pretty much a bullshit holiday and an excuse for people to drink, but is widely observed here in Southern California. At 8:30AM, I called Dr. Schell's office, and as expected, I got their voicemail. I also left a message on their emergency line (hey, it was feeling and looking like an emergency to me). What I didn't expect was that Dr. Schell called me back within about 15 minutes. He told me to get some fresh hydrogen peroxide and let it soak in my mouth around the affected area, and told me to come into the office the next day. Well, the H₂O₂ helped a lot. The swelling came down considerably, as did the discomfort. That, along with some ibuprofen, let me spend the rest of my Sunday feeling more human. Dr. Schell also advised that if surgery was going to be possible, I couldn't eat or drink anything the next morning. Noted.

On Monday morning, I called the office and got an appointment for 11AM. Conveniently, Dr. Schell is located in the medical center just around the corner from my home; I walked there in five minutes. Upon arriving (and assuring them that I indeed had not consumed any food or beverage that day), they pretty quickly took x-rays and evaluated the situation. Dr. Schell agreed that both teeth had to go (confirming what my dentist had told me a decade before). I called Kat and told her I'd need a ride back (they don't send people off on their own after surgery, which makes sense to me).

Two minutes later, I was on my back in the OR, and I do recall them putting the oxygen mask over my nose. Then, nothing. The next thing I knew, I was getting up from the table, and Kat was there to help me in my semi-conscious state to get to her car and back home. I have little recollection of that part; the effect of anesthesia on short-term memory is pretty weird. Apparently, I asked her the same questions 12 times, which she patiently answered. The rest of the day was pretty rough, but the Vicodin helped.

Getting My Smile Back
I won't be smiling much for a couple of days. If the pain didn't preclude my desire to smile, the swelling in my jaw would prevent it regardless. But I am feeling pretty optimistic about recovering quickly, and about the fact that this procedure, which has been overdue for a decade, is finally done.

By the way, as you may have noticed, I included no pictures in this particular blog post. You can thank Kat for that... she pretty much insisted that you don't need to see my swollen bloody gum sockets. Sorry for those of you who are disappointed. Oh, and my ibuprofen (which I've turned to today instead of being all whacked out on Vicodin) has now kicked in and I'm feeling a lot happier than when I started writing. So, yay for me.

A final note: this was my second experience with oral surgery by Dr. Schell, and both times I've been very impressed. Good staff, nice office, helpful bedside manner, and good follow-up. He's a nice guy who really does seem to care about his patients. If you need extractions, implants and so on here in the South Bay, he's a great choice.

Richard Schell, DDS
Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery
510 N. Prospect Ave
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 937-2992

Islands of New England (05.02.13)

Like most things in life, there can be a lot more to performing live music than is apparent on the surface. When you're in the audience watching someone play their instrument and sing, you think, "Wow, that person is so lucky, up there doing what they love and having fun."

Well, it is fun, or at least it should be fun. But while you see that person jumping around the stage and rocking out, here are some things that might be on his or her mind.

"Damn, my hand is cramping. Am I going to make it through the song?"

"Shit. Did I just sing the second verse first? Oh hell, I did. Should I now do the first verse second?"

"Wait... was that my amp making that crackling noise?"

"I knew should have changed strings before this set."

"Did I leave my headlights on?"

And so on. But the challenge, no matter what else is going on, is to stay in the moment and perform to the best of your abilities, regardless of what else is happening around you. I went into my show at the Islands of New England in Second Life yesterday evening after a hell of a day. But ultimately, once you decide to strap on the guitar and step in front of a microphone, you shouldn't treat your audience as your therapist. In fact, the very best therapy to change your rotten mood is to focus on your show, and leave the other stuff behind. Hey, you'll have plenty of time to be a miserable bastard later.

A top-down look at the stage at the Islands of New England. Photo and top photo by Kat.

My view of you. Photo by Kat.

All that having been said, the show at New England was really great, mostly due to the fun group of people who had assembled as my audience du jour. Unlike recent shows, I didn't pullout any brand new tunes. I'd intended to, but the aforementioned Week from Hell kind of precluded any possibility of my having time to choose and practice tunes to the point I'd feel okay about throwing them at an unsuspecting crowd. Despite that, it was a fun one, and I did pull out a few tunes that I hadn't played in ages.

Islands of New England Set List...
If It Makes You Happy (Sheryl Crow)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
Losing My Religion (R.E.M.)
Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
Shine (Zak Claxton)
Landslide (Fleetwood Mac)
For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
Northern Sky (Nick Drake)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
Don't Let It bring You Down (Neil Young)
Walk On the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)

Thanks so much to everyone at IONE who helped me get in a much better mood, especially those who supported my show!
Richy Nervous, cellenia1, Benjalina, Triana Caldera, Sesh Kamachi, Diana Renoir, Jukebox Diesel, Bonnie Revnik, Kat Claxton, and IONE's lovely music manager and host, Christine Haiku!

The Crayon Continues

My great friend and musical collaborator Bunny Knutson posted a link to a satire piece in The Onion awhile back. It was right on the money for people like us. Unfortunately, it's not a happy message.

It could be anything—music, writing, drawing, acting, teaching—it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that once you know what you want to do, you dive in a full 10 percent and spend the other 90 torturing yourself because you know damn well that it’s far too late to make a drastic career change, and that you’re stuck on this mind-numbing path for the rest of your life.

The Onion is a funny satire publication, but this article was a little too close to home to write off as comedy.

I'm a little more optimistic than Bunny in this regard, and the fact is that both of us have managed to make music a part of both our personal passion and our professional lives. That means we're luckier than 90% of other musicians (and other creative people) who work in jobs that have nothing to do with the thing that they enjoy the most. But the part of the Onion article that is undeniably correct is that except for a tiny fraction of a percent of people, no matter how good you are at an art form or how much you care about it, it's likely that you will never be in a position to devote as much time to it as you'd like.

All of this is a preamble to tell you some great news: we made big strides on another song by my "other" musical project, They Stole My Crayon. If you need a reminder, I don't blame you; it's been too long since I even mentioned this band which includes my ladyfriend Kat and Bunny. We went on a flurry of songwriting last fall, but as the Onion article implies, there's just not enough time to set aside for writing and recording to keep the project moving along at an acceptably fast pace.

Still, I'm not a quitter. When I found that I had some open time on Sunday, I was very happy to be able to dive back in. I didn't bother showering or changing out of my sweats, and actually started working on music while still in my bathrobe. That's a very good sign! We had a song that up until yesterday was purely the efforts of Bunny and Kat; she'd written some good lyrics for a song called "Things Under Trees", and Bunny had picked up the ball and run with it. The whole reason to be in a band is to get the contributions of a person like Bunny, who will do wonderful things with music that I'd never consider doing in a million years. He wrote the music, created the melody and song structure, and then did a very cool recording of the song, doing all of the parts himself.

And then... nothing. The song sat around for months. I liked it a lot, but for whatever reason, I wasn't hearing in my head how it could be further fleshed out. And then, with no warning or specific inspiration, I awoke yesterday and heard exactly what I wanted to do. I arranged some backing vocals for Kat and I... Bunny's voice is perfect for the lead on this rather spooky song. I feel the backing vocals brought out a cool element to the song, which has blossomed into something more baroque than I'd have earlier expected.

Watching someone work on music has, at most points, all the excitement of watching grass grow, or paint dry. Here's me mixing. Feel the thrill.

We spent a good chunk of the day coming up with parts and singing. After that, while Kat ran out to pick up lunch, I threw down a tiny effected guitar part in the song's coda. I did a quick mix of what we'd done to show Bunny, and was happily relieved when he replied to say that he liked what we'd done. The song is by no means "done", but it's a lot closer than it was when I got up yesterday morning, and I am inspired to move forward onto other songs.

So it goes. Hopefully I can stay on track, and keep Bunny and Kat with me, so we can actually wrap up enough songs and put out an album that we're proud of sometime this year. That's the goal, anyway, and if it has to happen on evenings and weekends, then so be it. I'm not the kind of person who ever wants to look back and regret not doing something that could have been great. Finishing this album is a step in that direction.

The Rabbit Hole (04.27.13)

I'm pretty sure that over the last 6+ years in which I've been performing live music in Second Life, I've played every possible type of virtual venue. Very much like the real world, each place has a distinct vibe, and there's a fascinating phenomenon about those distinctions that people outside of SL might not understand. As a musician, my style as a performer and my choices of repertoire to play is influenced by the differences in places and the people who go to each respective venue. That having been said, I don't think it's very odd that my performance at an online virtual college event is a bit different than, say, a virtual strip club. I'd hope that the real life versions of these would also want different types of musical entertainment.

A couple of weeks ago, my manager Maali asked if I was amenable to performing at the grand opening of an adult sim in SL, and I said I'd be glad to. I did a show at a similar place last year, and if anything, it was anticlimactic in terms of the blatant adult aspects I'd been expecting. It was pretty much like any show I've done before, and that was mostly the case yesterday at the Rabbit Hole.

Photo by Kat.

Photo by Kat.

For one thing, we had a surprisingly good crowd of 30+, and only a couple of my Zaksters were there, meaning it was an opportunity to introduce my music to a bunch of new people. This is always cool. Second, the people who ran the place were nice, and appreciative of my performance. Finally, other than a few rather minor displays of blatant sexual content (it is an adult-rated sim after all), the place felt like any other well-designed SL venue. All in all, it really was a good show, and I'd be happy to play there again. As has been my goal lately, I also used the occasion to pull out a few tunes I hadn't played before.

Rabbit Hole Set List...
Polly (Nirvana)
Lovesong (The Cure)
Broken Day (Zak Claxton)
Lola (The Kinks)
*Boss of Me (David Bowie)
I've Been Waiting for You (Neil Young)
*Closer (Nine Inch Nails)
Perfect Girl (Zak Claxton)
Love Hurts (Everly Brothers)
*It's Good to be King (Tom Petty)
Parallax (Atlas Sound)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)
Mad World (Tears for Fears)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.

Many thanks to the folks who supported my show at the Rabbit Hole!
davidstar204, Rogue Braveheart, DarrowD, Abysinnia, TheaDee, Kat Claxton, Weston Loxely, and Rabbit Hole staff KissMyAzz and Gina Soulstar!

Crows vs. Seagulls

Pretty much every day, right outside my window, there's a war being waged. It gets pretty ugly at times.

It's crows versus seagulls, and it's hard to say who wins. Both birds can be pretty aggressive, though it's the crow that seems to start the most shit. But do they? It would also seem that the crows are reacting to the seagulls coming in and pillaging their food supplies. I can never tell who to blame for the fighting.

Let's look at the tale of the tape. The gulls are larger, but the crows are smarter. The gulls have a more lethal-seeming beak, but the crows have talons, as opposed to the webbed feet of the gulls. The gulls are bigger individually, but the crows are better at bringing in their friends for an unfair fight. At the end of the day, it's a closer battle than you might imagine.

I will say one thing: the crows don't fuck around. I regularly see them doing a vicious loop maneuver, going up about 20 feet and then dive bombing the gull at full speed. Add that to the previously-mentioned mobbing behavior, and the usual result is that the gull is high-tailing it out of the neighborhood, screaming at full volume, with a couple of crows chasing it off and calling it presumably hurtful names on the way. Also, the crows seem more organized. The gulls tend to cruise in by themselves, but the crows, like some well-trained paramilitary force, stay evenly spaced at various lookout points along treetops, light posts, and electricity poles, waiting for the slightest hint of invasion (and reacting with prejudice when the inevitable gull comes by).

I'm less than a mile from the ocean, and down at the shoreline, the gulls are undoubtedly kings of their domain. But here across the street from my home, at a parking lot of a mini-mall in seemingly sleepy suburbia, I have to acquiesce that the crow is the baddest bird around.

Game: crow.

Boom Pony Beach (04.21.13)

Before I say anything about my show yesterday at the Boom Pony Beach in Second Life, I want to tip my hat to my fans. There aren't a lot of them, at least not the hardcore ones who have come to show after show after show. Some of them have seen the majority of my performances almost since the get-go in 2006. I owe them all much more than I can express here. One thing that I feel that those poor Zaksters have to put up with is the fact that by nature of being on a never-ending tour of the virtual world, I play the same songs pretty often. And of course, I have to hear myself playing those same tunes as well. Despite the fact that I have hundreds of songs in my repertoire between originals and covers, I occasionally get the feeling that we've all heard each of them about three too many times.

So, I'm on a mission to bring in more new material, and that started at the Boom yesterday. I pulled out five covers I hadn't played before, and in subsequent shows, I'll be continuing to add to the list of new tunes. Also, given my connections to the city of Boston, I felt like I should take the opportunity to do a couple of tunes in tribute to that great city. The show itself went very well. We had a good-sized crowd from the get-go, and I was feeling good (which is generally important to my ability to be entertaining). Kiran Sporg and Andi Karsin, who own and run the Boom, are really cool people, and I enjoyed being able to rock their beach on a nice Sunday afternoon.

One thing about playing new stuff: you have no idea how well it will go. That adds to the excitement as a performer. I've also found audiences really don't mind being guinea pigs for song debuts. Photo by Kat.

Sweet Caroline (bom bom bom)! Photo by Kat.

Boom Pony Beach Set List...
Come Around (Zak Claxton)
*Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
Theme from Cheers (Gary Portnoy)
Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
*Our Lips Are Sealed (The Go-Go's)
Thanks Anyway (Zak Claxton)
One (U2)
Things Behind the Sun (Nick Drake)
Mother (Pink Floyd)
*Angry Chair (Alice In Chains)
*Here Comes the Rain Again (Eurythmics)
*Is She Really Going Out With Him (Joe Jackson)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.

Thanks to the great friends and fans who enjoyed new tunes on the beach at the Boom, especially the following who supported my show!
anjali Insoo, Triana Caldera, LilyKierkegard, Kiki Szetey, TheaDee, TheVeryFirst, Kat Claxton, Aurelie Chenaux, Blindboy Gumbo, Selene Setsuko, my manager Maali Beck, and lovely ladies of the Boom, Kiran Sporg and Andi Karsin!