Mixing, and other such myths

Last week Noah and I were back at Electric Wilburland (aka Willie's House of Innuendo) in Newfield, NY mixing our new album. It's really starting to come together. Pete Sutherland once again lent his superb ear and aura of wisdom and rationality to this process. He's been involved with mixing on both of our most recent projects. Basically, we listen through all the takes of all the instruments on all the songs, more or less one by one; compiling, editing, fine-tuning, adjusting, etc. It can get a little tedious. We'd often spend three or four hours on a single song. But it's also the first time we get to hear our music start to take shape. There was also an abundant supply of humor to go around (although the quality was occasionally questionable). At some point during the week, Pete showed me this incredible video. It's a duet/duel between this incredible blues-rock shamisen (Japenese banjo-type thing) player and three amazing tap dancers. You don't see stuff like that everyday! But now that I'm back I have other things on my mind... namely catching up on the SEASON PREMIER of 24! That is an addictive show. I've been a fan since the first season and I'll admit, there have been ups and downs as far as story plot and characters (Kim's encounter with the mountain lion being the lowest point I can think of). But there's just no other show on TV that is so consistently great. One more fairly unrelated thing to throw in this post: Little Miss Sunshine is a fantastic movie. Sarah and I watched it with Kim and Dan last weekend. It's about this little girl and her horrifically dysfunctional family and their road trip to California. Parts of it are like a slightly more comical version of another one of my favorite movies, The Royal Tenenbaums. Anyway, great acting, very funny, totally worth watching. That's all for now.