Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

Or: Ableton V Earthwise at The Cub, The Mitch, Pollstar

This is me, Mark Weiss, of Earthwise and Plastic Alto, at Bryant and Poe, about 10 hours ago

In brief, although I am actually wearing briefs, (Calvin Klein snuggies), grey or gray Billabong sweats, K-swiss sneaks, dri fit not my normal South African socks, a Giants t-shirt, a Patagonia grunge outer layer and a knit cap might also be Patagonia has a circle with six crossbars: I read an article about Ableton in Billboard and it says that it is like the new Auto-Tune which was the new Pro Tools, and that 25 million people, on a planet with 8 billion people, are posting music to the internet; whereas I am trying to put on 22 shows this year and 36 next; I’ve done about 500 shows and 1,000 acts in 27 years. When I started I was saying that in contrast to the Top 40 — or Billboard Hot 100 – that there were maybe 10,000 touring acts to choose from, if you are focusing on club-sized shows, although I was a non-nightclub-listening-room. Shoreline was 15,000 and flavor of the month — how many Shoreline shows from their schedule in 1995-2000 are still in the game? I also had a thing I called Quantum Decoherence of Shows, based on something I read in NYT that basically was translated as: if you show up at Cubberley or the Mitch nowadays on a given night, what are the odds there is music there? if you follow any particular band or act or attraction, what are the odds that that act will be at The Cub or The Mitch the day you pop in? Certainly if you do as I did in 1999, or if I do in 2022 as I did in 1999, if you publish a poster — more than on a blog which is deep fake-able — that lists five shows and 11 acts that it seems more like a pattern, if not a quantum decoherence which I guess is somewhere between white noise and the new Ethan Iverson jam.

I’ve done about five Scott Amendola shows this year since summer although it is true that he did not show up at the very first one. He is in the next two shows, or two out of three. 

Anyhow I am sitting at Coupa the next two hours before my workout starts at 11:30 and I plan to flesh out this idea.

Somewhere in there, the timeline of Earthwise Productinons, 1994 thru 2021 and now 2022 onsales or onsale singular, I also used as a metric Myspace which had 2 million acts, most of which had no draw. Very Schodinger cats: how do we know if Myspace still exists? So now between everybody having handheld computers and auto-tune or TikTok there is a lot more people who think they are musicians but I am mostly in the live business so that does not really help me. And I have my Pollstar directory with me and my next task is to literally count the acts. Although I will actually, clever sagacious cat that I am, I will merely count one column of acts and multiply by the number of columns on a page and then the number of pages of acts. But I also preliminarily — BLUF — and nobody says Bottom Line Up Front but Michael McFaul and he’s not off topic here because he and I once went to the Grateful Dead together at the Greek and we ate Turkey. Get it? Wink Wink Nudge nudge S400 whatever the fuck that means. Lost in the Outzen again. 

What I actually am carrying (and I dont know why quotiadian is an internet trope it just is, justice):

with apologies to Tim O’Brian the vet not the artist manager or the singer

1. checks to Barbara for 11/20 and Bhi for 11/18 to mail;
2. tear sheet from 12/5 NYT “He Ran Without firing a Shot And Ended Up On Death Row” by Dan Barry and Abby Ellin, about Nathaniel Woods of Alabama; equal justice;
3. two unopened recently received financial statements which has nothing to do with music unless you are worried that i will go broke before I complete the 36 shows I am pledging to promote next year in which case you should go straight to EventBrite and buy another ticket to whatever is on sale on my page. And Steve Cohen he of the Continuum Hypothesis fame pointed out that I am now known as Mark Weiss dba Earthwise as a trope;
4. a deck of about 40 index cards with all my upcoming show ideas although they are about two months old by now and need, on another thread to be updated; they are held in place not by gravity or friction per se but by one of those hard plastic live strong bands;
5. An ABBA collection I bought from the bake sale at The Mitch Lib before my last show; I make it a habit to buy something from the FOPAL shop at each show; Not a fan really but just curious: Waterloo, SOS, Mamma Mia. Reminds me that I saw Adam Dorn, Joel Dorn’s son at the Charlie Hunter show in LA, at The Venice West and mentioned Label M one of his dad’s projects and said “Meyer Lansky…” and he said that he didn’t know it was an amalgram, word game. Albert Einstein. it’s like hangman. What’s left: LB or BL I guess. Anybody? I’m going with Jews in the Law for 200, Jack. Would you like the hot one or be branded by ice, sir? 
6. LA Times same date sunday recent, for the crappy article by Bill Plashke about hazing in the Mater Dei football locker room – -which somehow helped me meet two current Foothill College Students cramming for Brian Evans’ final and one said that he was the year ahead of Darrell Page at St. Francis and that it was a racist hoax whereas the other guy who was a t M-A and said he was not on a team said we should not doubt the story of sexual accusers. And I said its a sealed record except the mother of the respondent is writing a book about it all, and read aloud a version of the same story to Lynn Stegner’s class;
7. a poster I took from the bulletin board at Kirk’s at T&C that lists six recent October shows of which I saw two-thirds of one. Never heard of Above and Beyond, two shows, must be EDM. Which relates back to the topic and not this bridge; and digression from digression and didgeridoo played by Scooby Doo John Liddicoat called and mentioned that you can see at a theatre in Seattle a concert film of Nirvana that was filmed at the same hall, like in 1991, like 30 years prior. Or here at the meta-vamp. 
8. Yesterday’s Merc I guess for article on Wiseman. And if that can makes it I will buy his facsimile Wiseman jersey. And I am psyched to know that Brian Bonino ex Preds is now a Shark – when I was at IEBA a music conference in Nashville fall 2019 he got a hat trick. I tried to buy his jersey but ended up bait and switch with a numberless Preds yellow kit;
9. I also bought Fast Company with Amazon Unpacked by TK; on p32 meanwhile there is a reference to Bheki Dude of Curiocity Africa and  Mos Def (“Travellin’ Man”) whereas I was just saying I sat next to Stefon Harris at “Top Dog Under Dog”;
10. Kara Maria, Palette Painting #153;
11. New York Times Style Magazine Hayao Miyazaki — which reminds that I was at LACMA and saw some stuff, TK.
12. NyT magazine per se, re Jalen Lewis 1 6 a hoops phenom and the new business model;
13. MoJo magazine The Beattles special issue; 
14. connie han han solo do the math
15. what makes sammy run?
16. Carla Bley at 85, see also Jules at et;
17. praise for michael lewis — cutting open a TB patient with a pair of shears — hey did I mention that advertorial entered the language in 1946 but not even Webster knew this until at least 1985?
18. I think I counted only 16 of the top 36 Hot 100 songs of all time in Billboard that I can identify or hum from the title.
19. Today’s Merc, Times and Chron;
20. pp 62-66 of Billboard11/20/21 that says that Behles is not a Nazi and his father is not a Nazi so quit saying that we the people will as Maureen Dowd and Steve Wozniak says become pets to our computers and AI —it will be some fuckin’ Nazi making bank and laughing his little who ordered the fried sauerkraut all the way to not the bank not the caribbean but a photo of such, or the last French Lick of strawberry jam in Indiana, feel me but don’t stick your finger up my ass, Jim Harbaugh. Hike on six and a half. Gerhard Get Hard Behles by Steve Knopper photos by Urban Zintel. And I just this morning almost met Peter Thiel but it was just his doppelganger bodyguard cue the late great Whitney Houston we have a problem. 

Later that day: I am editing this. I may have already said this but I told Charlie Hunter I had sat next to his one-time Pound For Pound band-mate Stefon Harris at a Broadway show, but when I rang Stefon’s agent – -partly in response to a false listing of a 2020 show at SFJAZZ that I ended up hearing about a possible Connie Han show. Not Connie Han, solo, but full wookie. 

And1: I was carrying all day a MoJo magazine from way back in November,2021, issue #336 and it has a Beatles compilation that has among 14 other tracks Joshua Redman who I think of by his Berkely and Yale name Joshua Shedroff doing “Let it Be” we presume unreleased or on request or commission and also instrumental although I was impressed by Charlie Hunter singing at Kuumbwa and The Mitch (and The Venice West) and I’ll toot my own horn that a woman came up to Tim Harris and I and lauded our dancing. 

Andand: cue a guy in a mask and a Harvard jacket — crimson natch walking by me to check his head here at Coupa and I realize my minor errata in that Josh turned down Yale Law for Warner Brothers and went, like Jeremy Lin, to Harvard.