Last weekend went something like this:

Wednesday evening - was surfing the net looking for places in San Francisco to perform and to host a CD release party when I randomly and serendipitously came across Neil Lahiri - a film director who was looking to shoot a music video over the weekend.  We talked, I sent him some songs, he liked and came up with a genius concept, but it had to be over the weekend ... he was booked for weeks after that.  Oh, and one more catch ... he lived in L.A.  It's now Thursday AM, about 1 in the morning.

Thursday - frantically trying to make this work.  Looking for a model to play a featured lead role in the shoot, sending texts and emails and posting on different websites.  Trying to work out the logistics of rentng a car, hotels or staying with a friend, etc.  Late Thursday night, a model responds positively, I head over to his place in SF to meet in person.  He's cool, his boyfriend is cool and offers to drive us down!  I don't have to rent a car!  This is all working out.

Friday - shopping for the wardrobe.  I'm broke now.  I mean really really broke.  (So, go pre-order the CD!  )  We're set to leave at 5:30 am.

Saturday - drive down to LA with Armando and Dan.  Meet up with the crew and get make - up done and we start shooting.  13 hours later we wrap.  Exhausted, but we shot in some amazing locations.   I'm on pins and needles to see how it all came out.  It's now being edited and color corrected.

Sunday  night - we arrive home.  I quickly meet a friend to say our goodbyes(he's moving cross country) and at midnight I pack for my business trip that I have to be up for in 3 hours.  

That's how a music video comes together in four days.  What an awesome experience.  AND I met some incredible new people and hopefully made some new friends along the way too.    Why can't every week be an adventure like that? 


 

I was walking to the train station from work in San Francisco yesterday and there was a guy leaned against a brick wall, whom I thought was just chillin’. Out of the clear blue, he popped up as I was walking by and tried to give me a cd. I declined, just out of instinct as if he were a homeless person asking for money, and I heard him cry out as I passed him by, “You never know, you might hear something you like.” And I thought to myself, “doubtful.” Then I wondered, is that the same reaction people have when I approach them randomly with my music? It made me ponder just how am I approaching people with my music in an attempt to find a loyal audience? Clearly there has to be a better way accosting strangers on the street, but there also has to be a better way than going to the same group of people again and again and hoping for a different response. That is surely the definition of insanity.  Well, we all go a little mad sometimes! Seriously, though, I’m going to think on this a bit, and come up with some new ideas for Plastic/Box. If you have any thoughts, I’m all ears!

It's been 2 months since I released "Remind U", so it was past time for another new Junkyard release!  This one is called "Dreamworld", it's another Way Way Back Track as I wrote it when I was 15.  I had originally planned it to be a part of a 20 song opus called "Dark Ages", but of course, that project is ... well, in the dark ages.  But I still liked this song and about 4 others from the project enough to produce someday, and for this song, that day is today.  I hope you enjoy!  It's FREE to download until the next Junkyard release. 

Saturn.

Back home in SF after an awesome Mday break in Baltimore and at "Rehomo" Beach.  There is nothing more relaxing than sitting on the beach by the tide on a perfect day and listening to some tunes. 

So, a few people have now heard the new CD "Plastic/Box" in its entirety and I'm very encouraged by the response!  So, thank U!

Songs I'm digging at the moment:

Commander by Kelly Rowland
That's How Strong My Love Is by Alicia Keyes
Scream and Shout by Kelis

Summer is upon us and I've been commanded to DAANNCE!!
I may throw a couple of my own songs into the summer mix too!    Check back for more Junkyard music and the release of the new CD this summer!

Luv,
Saturn.

So, lots of new stuff going on.  I have a new song in my Junkyard called Remind U.  Be sure to check that out.  Did a photo shoot with Nicholas Smith for the Plastic/Box CD Cover.  I'm thinking I like this one, but I'm not sure.  What do you think?

Now, I've never seen RuPaul's Drag Race, but I saw one of the winners/contestants at the Triple Crown in San Francisco last Friday.  Her name was Shangela and she wore my ass out!  FIERCE is the only way to describe her.  Are the other queens on that show that good?  I might have to start watching!

What did you think of Erykah Badu's new video?  I liked it, I still love her after all these years, but I was shocked at all the vitriolic comments I read on Yahoo.  It's ok to disagree with her choices, but the level or racism and ignorance I read once again floored me.  It's a good reminder that outside my social circle there's a whole lot of wingnuts out there!

My studio software is broke down AGAIN!  I'm committed to dropping a new song in my Junkyard every few weeks though, so I have to get this shit online so I can get back to recording all these hundreds of back catalog songs I've written.  I'm loving this project ... it's almost more fun than putting together an actual CD!

Anyhoo, I'm on the road again for work, another hotel, it's late and I should probably go to bed.  Wait, I have to see if Bill Maher is on tonight ...  Ciao!

There's a new song in the Junkyard! This one is sentimental, it's the first song I ever wrote as "Saturn". I remember it so clearly ... I was 12 years old, it was just a few weeks before my 13th birthday, I was sitting in history class bored out of my mind and this song came to me. At the time I had aspirations to write a movie (a la Purple Rain) and this song was going to be on the soundtrack. Yeah, I had big plans as a pre-teen! Well, 2 decades later and this song is still special to me as it started the journey for all the hundreds of songs that I've written since then, and now I can share it with others. It's FREE to download right here ... until the next Junkyard song comes out!

This is a wonderful story I just read on Derek Sivers blog (which I love).  It's called "The Night I Met Einstein" by Jerome Weidman.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

When I was a very young man, just beginning to make my way, I was invited to dine at the home of a distinguished New York philanthropist. After dinner our hostess led us to an enormous drawing room. Other guests were pouring in, and my eyes beheld two unnerving sights: servants were arranging small gilt chairs in long, neat rows; and up front, leaning against the wall, were musical instruments. Apparently I was in for an evening of Chamber music.

I use the phrase “in for” because music meant nothing to me. I am almost tone deaf. Only with great effort can I carry the simplest tune, and serious music was to me no more than an arrangement of noises. So I did what I always did when trapped: I sat down and when the music started I fixed my face in what I hoped was an expression of intelligent appreciation, closed my ears from the inside and submerged myself in my own completely irrelevant thoughts.

After a while, becoming aware that the people around me were applauding, I concluded it was safe to unplug my ears. At once I heard a gentle but surprisingly penetrating voice on my right.

“You are fond of Bach?” the voice said.

I knew as much about Bach as I know about nuclear fission. But I did know one of the most famous faces in the world, with the renowned shock of untidy white hair and the ever-present pipe between the teeth. I was sitting next to Albert Einstein.

“Well,” I said uncomfortably, and hesitated. I had been asked a casual question. All I had to do was be I equally casual in my reply. But I could see from the look in my neighbor’s extraordinary eyes that their owner was not merely going through the perfunctory duties of elementary politeness. Regardless of what value I placed on my part in the verbal exchange, to this man his part in it mattered very much. Above all, I could feel that this was a man to whom you did not tell a lie, however small.

“I don’t know anything about Bach,” I said awkwardly. “I’ve never heard any of his music.”

A look of perplexed astonishment washed across Einstein’s mobile face.

“You have never heard Bach?”

He made it sound as though I had said I’d never taken a bath.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to like Bach,” I replied hastily. “It’s just that I’m tone deaf, or almost tone deaf, and I’ve never really heard anybody’s music.”

A look of concern came into the old man’s face. “Please,” he said abruptly, “You will come with me?”

He stood up and took my arm. I stood up. As he led me across that crowded room I kept my embarrassed glance fixed on the carpet. A rising murmur of puzzled speculation followed us out into the hall. Einstein paid no attention to it.

Resolutely he led me upstairs. He obviously knew the house well. On the floor above he opened the door into a book-lined study, drew me in and shut the door.

“Now,” he said with a small, troubled smile. “You will tell me, please, how long you have felt this way about music?”

“All my life,” I said, feeling awful. “I wish you would go back downstairs and listen, Dr. Einstein. The fact that I don’t enjoy it doesn’t matter.”

He shook his head and scowled, as though I had introduced an irrelevance.

“Tell me, please,” he said. “Is there any kind of music that you do like?”

“Well,” I answered, “I like songs that have words, and the kind of music where I can follow the tune.”

He smiled and nodded, obviously pleased. “You can give me an example, perhaps?”

“Well,” I ventured, “almost anything by Bing Crosby.”

He nodded again, briskly. “Good!”

He went to a corner of the room, opened a phonograph and started pulling out records. I watched him uneasily. At last he beamed. “Ah!” he said.

He put the record on and in a moment the study was filled with the relaxed, lilting strains of Bing Crosby’s “When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.” Einstein beamed at me and kept time with the stem of his pipe. After three or four phrases he stopped the phonograph.

“Now,” he said. “Will you tell me, please, what you have just heard?”

The simplest answer seemed to be to sing the lines. I did just that, trying desperately to stay on tune and keep my voice from cracking. The expression on Einstein’s face was like the sunrise.

“You see!” he cried with delight when I finished. “You do have an ear!”

I mumbled something about this being one of my favorite songs, something I had heard hundreds of times, so that it didn’t really prove anything.

“Nonsense!” said Einstein. “It proves everything! Do you remember your first arithmetic lesson in school? Suppose, at your very first contact with numbers, your teacher had ordered you to work out a problem in, say, long division or fractions. Could you have done so?”

“No, of course not.”

“Precisely!” Einstein made a triumphant wave with his pipestem. “It would have been impossible and you would have reacted in panic. You would have closed your mind to long division and fractions. As a result, because of that one small mistake by your teacher, it is possible your whole life you would be denied the beauty of long division and fractions.”

The pipestem went up and out in another wave.

“But on your first day no teacher would be so foolish. He would start you with elementary things - then, when you had acquired skill with the simplest problems, he would lead you up to long division and to fractions.”

“So it is with music.” Einstein picked up the Bing Crosby record. “This simple, charming little song is like simple addition or subtraction. You have mastered it. Now we go on to something more complicated.”

He found another record and set it going. The golden voice of John McCormack singing “The Trumpeter” filled the room. After a few lines Einstein stopped the record.

“So!” he said. “You will sing that back to me, please?”

I did - with a good deal of self-consciousness but with, for me, a surprising degree of accuracy. Einstein stared at me with a look on his face that I had seen only once before in my life: on the face of my father as he listened to me deliver the valedictory address at my high school graduation.

“Excellent!” Einstein remarked when I finished. “Wonderful! Now this!”

“This” proved to be Caruso in what was to me a completely unrecognizable fragment from “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Nevertheless, I managed to reproduce an approximation of the sounds the famous tenor had made. Einstein beamed his approval.

Caruso was followed by at least a dozen others. I could not shake my feeling of awe over the way this great man, into whose company I had been thrown by chance, was completely preoccupied by what we were doing, as though I were his sole concern.

We came at last to recordings of music without words, which I was instructed to reproduce by humming. When I reached for a high note, Einstein’s mouth opened and his head went back as if to help me attain what seemed unattainable. Evidently I came close enough, for he suddenly turned off the phonograph.

“Now, young man,” he said, putting his arm through mine. “We are ready for Bach!”

As we returned to our seats in the drawing room, the players were tuning up for a new selection. Einstein smiled and gave me a reassuring pat on the knee.

“Just allow yourself to listen,” he whispered. “That is all.”

It wasn’t really all, of course. Without the effort he had just poured out for a total stranger I would never have heard, as I did that night for the first time in my life, Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze.” I have heard it many times since. I don’t think I shall ever tire of it. Because I never listen to it alone. I am sitting beside a small, round man with a shock of untidy white hair, a dead pipe clamped between his teeth, and eyes that contain in their extraordinary warmth all the wonder of the world.

When the concert was finished I added my genuine applause to that of the others.

Suddenly our hostess confronted us. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Einstein,” she said with an icy glare at me, “that you missed so much of the performance.”

Einstein and I came hastily to our feet. “I am sorry, too,” he said. “My young friend here and I, however, were engaged in the greatest activity of which man is capable.”

She looked puzzled. “Really?” she said. “And what is that?”

Einstein smiled and put his arm across my shoulders. And he uttered ten words that - for at least one person who is in his endless debt - are his epitaph:

“Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty.”

-- story by Jerome Weidman

I wonder if other artists listen to their songs like 20 times in a row after they've finished up the final mix in the studio.  I dunno, but I always do.  I just finished 2 more songs from "Plastic/Box" today.   So, here I am on Valentines Day (eve anyway) sitting up in my room.  I don't have a date, just my music , but that's all right.  It's sounding  good!   

It's been 2 weeks now and I've FINALLY got my computer back!  I got hit with a nasty malware virus (from a MySpace page no less) at the beginning of February and it's taken this long to get fixed.  It's amazing how dependent I've become on technology.  I was going a little nuts without my laptop.  Anyhoo, it's all good now and I didn't waste any time releasing my new single, "Never Been the Same."  Take a listen and tell me what you think!

I've either forgotten or underestimated how difficult it is to both work full time and do music on the side simultaneously.  I've had three weeks to finish recording all the music parts for the remaining 3 tracks on "Plastic/Box", yet I've only managed to finish one.  These other two songs are kicking my ass!  On "Box" I can't seem to get the drums the way I want them and on "Acid Love", nothing seems to be coming together for me.  The only thing that's working there are the strings and the bass. 

I love that Lady GaGa song "Bad Romance" (I just love Gaga period) and it kind of describes my relationship with my music.   I have no idea why I persist so steadfastly in my musical endeavors, I feel like I'm alone on an island with it sometimes.  Just like Love, it brings me unequaled joy and immeasurable pain all at once.  Now, THAT'S  a bad romance.

So, I'm on my way to the studio to lay vocals for "Yes", the one song whose music I did finish, as well as lay vocals on another Junkyard song.   I've been meeting with choreographers this past week, scouting venues, talking about my music, promoting on Jango, and next week I'll be releasing the new single.  I'm even considering doing another video.  It feels like it did 5 years ago when I was finishing "Deviant", only I'm more controlled and less naive about what to expect once the album is actually finished ... a tree falling in the forest somewhere in the Arctic ... yep, that about sums it up!