Can You Hear Me (I’ve Been Calling All Day)

I disconnected my phone today. For good.

Let’s be honest, the traditional LAN line doesn’t really serve much of a function anyway. I mean, no one calls me on it but telemarketers. And now that I’ve joined the 21st Century with my cellphone and internet broadband connection, well, let’s just say Verizon’s lost another customer to the wireless universe. And they didn’t even protest.

The snipping of old-fashioned phone lines notwithstanding, I do continue to struggle a little bit with modernity. Though I’ve made healthy progress with ProTools, thanks in no part to my supersensitive Samson condenser microphone with phantom power xlr, I’m still not quite at the point where I can record and release in one-fell-swoop. In fact, I’m this close to uploading a new song, ‘Testing 1,2,3 (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah),’ to you, Dear Reader. It’s not a great song, but it’s my first solo ProTools effort. And frankly, it’s more about the effort than the outcome in this case. Anyhow, the last step is the current stumbling block. Right now it’s a 28M aiff file. It needs to be a 3M mp3. And it will be once I get into work and make it so.

The Monday Mix is going to be a new part of the site where I post new songs, experiments, outtakes, b-sides, covers, and other such Benjamin Wagner ephemera every Monday morning. Over time, you ought to have a pretty healthy collection of randomness on your iPod. Hopefully, it’ll whet your whistle for a new album, not dampen your spirits (or sap you wallet — Lord knows I gotta’ pay off this equipment!). In fact, maybe I’ll add a PayPal donation button — seems to do well by Fish. Anyway, it’s coming soon…

Yeah, so that was my Monday: twelve hours at the MTV, a trip to UPS headquarters (with a pint break at Druids), a stop at D’Ag’s for lettuce (the good kind), and home again, home again.

In between? I sent out an email to the band — Tony on bass, Todd on drums, Kevin on keyboards, and Nick on pedal steel — to try and set up a rehearsal for the July 16th Sin-e performance (have you marked your calendar?). And received the good word that The Smith Family will be playing Hank’s in Brooklyn July 22. That and a delicious salad or two (lunch and dinner), and a guy’s got a day pretty well spent. ‘Cuz apparently I’ve got something in common with Mr. Ethan Hawk, who says in the current issue of ‘New York’ that if he “doesn’t do at least one creative thing each day, he considers the day ‘pissed away, useless, wasted.'”

So, I guess today — the first day of summer, the longest and lightest day of the year — was none of the above. Thank goodness.