Neil Fein's Blog

The latest Analog has Decisions, a short story by Michael A. Burstein. It's a January/February double issue.

Had some friends over on Sunday morning, for a brunch-n-cartoons. This worked out well, I'd like to do more of these. It's kinda like a Friday night, but caffeine is the intoxicant of choice; 8 people drank 14 cups of coffee. (Thanks again to Judith & Les for the coffee perc.)

Speaking of which, my regimen of no caffeine during the work week is panning out very well. Those nagging headaches have all but gone away, I'm sleeping better, and generally am more relaxed. My doc will likely be pleased at the year-end checkup. Now I'd like to find a superior decaf. (Sorry, Les, while Starbuck's Sumatra is good, Peets puts it to shame.)

And I'd like to point out Peets Coffee & Tea for excellent customer service. They're a specialty roaster out in California that picks out excellent blends of beans and roasts them, mailing them out to you within 1 day of roasting them. They sent out an additional shipment, no charge, when our last shipment got held up in UPS-land somewhere. (The whole point is that it's fresh coffee, not a week old. Yeah, we're coffee snobs.) The downside is that it's not cheap, so choose carefully. ("Blend 101" and "Major Dickason's"(sp?) are our favorites.)

Set list:

She Told It To Me Twice
Eyes Up Front
There's That Song
Never Had A Brother

Good set, the audience seemed to like it. Very few mistakes. We showed at Cleo's at 8pm, and the staff said, "what open mic?" You'd think the waist-high sign outside the front door might have clued them in... They rolled with it well, though, and pulled the house PA out from hiding.

The only down side to performing there is that they don't have an announcer; the acts just walk up and play, there's nothing tieing them together. But the staff is friendly and responsive, the coffee is good; so I'm happy.

The most interesting bit--musically--was that, expecting to play Welcome Home I tuned the guitar down a full step, to D-G-C-F-A-D. In the late afternoon, it was apparent I was nowhere near knowing the lyrics, so I pulled that and came up with a substitute, Martha suggested Eyes Up Front which at least isn't a new song. (Two of my three mistakes were minor lyric bobbles in that song.) But I kept the guitar tuned that way, and even capoed up an extra two frets, I get a nice, open sound with that tuning. Does D-G-C-F-A-D have a name, aside from standard-minus-two?

I was rehearsing Welcome Home over the weekend, and I'm doing much better at it; hopefully next time. --NF 24 Nov 2003

If you poke around on the music page, you'll see demos of Never Had A Brother and There's That Song. They're bare-bones guitar-voice recordings, and the mix isn't perfect. But those of you who haven't seen me play yet have something to listen to.

I'll be at Cleo's Open Mic, over in Highland Park on Saturday night.

My set at the Rutgers Hillel open mic went very, very well, even though there really was no mic. ("Rutgers Hillel Open Floorspace"?) I played Rock Creek, the first time I've played it live; I'll Wait For You; She Told It To Me Twice; and ended with Never Had A Brother.

The audience reaction was great! I had to cut out There's That Song because I was singing without amplification, and that's a looow song.

Rock Creek in particular was good, but I'm told it was hard to hear, as a lot of the song is harmonics and the rest is all fingerstyle. That's really a song for when I'm amplified, and I can turn up to eleven. I was saying in the car that I should write an instrumental that's all flatpicking if I'm in that situation again.

But after the first song, it was obvious the crowd was getting into it. After I broke into the intro of Never Had A Brother, a quiet, fingerstyle song, Matt Salmon (the event organizer) and a few others shushed the crowd out in the hallway; that was very cool. Hey, quiet, I want to hear this!

The Station Agent
Directed and Written by Thomas McCarthy
Starring Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, and Bobby Cannavale
Miramax Films
Rated (R)

The story of Fin, a bitter man and dwarf who moves into a small town after inheriting some property from a friend. The film is very, very good, although I think all the hoo-haa about it is a bit over the top; it's a slice-of-life film, with some very good points to make.

There are three major themes in the film: Walking, trains, and cell phones -- although I think this misses the point a bit, the constant cell-phone cacophony underscores the fact that the main character doesn't carry one of these things.

The characters fill the film. It's an hour and three quarters of character development and damn good acting. There is a plot, but don't worry, it's not one you'd really notice. Even major events in the film pass by almost unremarked; it's all in the journey. Alas, the manager of the theater we were at told us that The Station Agent is only at his theatre through this Thursday. Highly recommended; catch it while you can.

I'll be playing at the Java Joint and Open Mic Night, this Thursday Nov. 20, 9pm at Rutgers Hillel.

Ever since I had the car battery replaced after it died, I've had non-working remotes. As long as the alarm stays off, this isn't really much of a problem, more of an inconvenience.

I found a procedure for resetting the remotes using a paperclip. You use it as a jumper in the diagnostic port, and then turn the electrics on, and then hit both buttons on the remote. (It's a bit more than that, look for the actual procedure before you do this or you could fry your computer.) I was skeptical, but it worked! I'm, like, hi-tech, dude.

My car is an old, red commuter-style compact car, and it lets a lot of road noise in through its plastic doors and walls. So the noise of the motorcycle blended in at first, but soon the roaring, buzzing drone was unmistakable soon. And I realized I was being passed on the left by a motorcycle. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, keeping an eye on the road and an ear on the radio.

As he continued to pass me, I noticed that the driver, a large and wide man, was wearing a leather jacket too large even for him. The wind took care of that, though, to the point where it looked like he was wearing a jacket filled with air. Topped by a helmet. Despite the impression of mass, I thought, just for a moment, I thought that there might be no driver, just a figure of air.

Then the radio cut in with static, and I reminded myself that this was my forth day in a row without caffeine. I drove to work behind the 'cycle for most of the 35 mph drive.

I just ordered Ina May Wool's latest CD from CD Baby. This email was easily worth the money:

Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Thursday, November 13th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year". We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!


For those of you who know just enough HTML to get you into trouble, stay away from the "Domain Alias" feature at Register.com. I was trying to set it up so you didn't have to type the www before neilfein.com, but it somehow made the site inaccesible to web browsers. Although I was FTPing updates just fine. I'll just have to live with those extra Ws.

As some of you may have heard, the BBC is planning to record and air more Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio shows. This is, at least to me, unexpected and wonderful news. I've been re-listening to my CDs of the original program over the last couple of days since I have to wait until 2004 for the new shows.

I've been spending much of my spare time painting at Craig and Paula's. Craig figures when I get a house we'll actually know how to do this well.

My hands are doing much better.

I'm trying the experioment of giving up caffeine during the week. I figure I'll try this for a month or so, but it's making me very unhappy for the moment. I felt like I was in a fog this morning, which says to me that I don't get enough sleep. (I knew that.)

My downstairs neighbor has been complaining to the landlady about noise again. While I suppose it can't be a picnic living underneath a musician, this is weird since I never, ever play past 10pm. He and I spoke and all is well, but I hate renting.

On the other hand, this is good because it means I've been playing more.

He said I must have a band(!) up here, because he heard a drum. I think that this was when Craig was over two Fridays ago and we played, but again we weren't particularly late. It's that satanic rock-n-roll music on piano and bongos; next thing I'll be getting purple hair.

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My brand-new site is up at www.neilfein.com and it's also the official host of this blog, although Blogspot hasn't figured this out yet; last I checked, they were still hosting it at the old site.

Nonetheless, I suggest bookmarking the new site. There's a link from the main page to the blog, and that link is meant to be the last word in where this blog is living.

My first open mic in a long time, and the first time I've performed since August, went pretty well. I performed I'll Wait For You, then There's That Song seguéd into She Told It To Me Twice. I was scared out of my mind (that's new), but my energy level seemed good and not too many mistakes.

We went to Barbara's birthday party afterwards and I was one of three guitarists there; I had fun playing music, most of it percussion. My right thumb has a black and blue mark that's getting darker, very slowly.

Just to keep it reasonably near the top of this page, I'll post this again: I'll be at Cleo's open mic this Saturday night, in Highland Park, NJ. More info is in this previous post.

As I now have a decent amount of material of my own to choose from (7 songs plus two instrumentals) I'm now in "performance mode"; that means, work on finding more open mics, gigs, making that demo tape, and rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal.

Update, 7 November 2003:

I'm playing a secong "gig", well, sorta. It's a private party after the open mic; I told the people I'd get there after the open mic, but since I'll have a guitar with me anyway... It's also a birthday present for the woman throwing the party.

If we had to have a car break down, this is the time to do it; Martha only really needs a car one or two days a week, and I can take the train those days. Nevertheless, she's planning on calling AAA today to have the car towed to the shop. We were going to try jumping the car last night, but the Noahesque precipitation made that seem like A Very Bad Idea. (Zzzzzap!)

After speaking to both Craig and Grazina, *I've come to the conclusion that there are three possibilities. These are based on my limited understanding of how cars work, so it is not authoritative. For all I know all this stuff is BS and the car works by hamsters running in exercise wheels. In the order of least to most expensive:

As I understand it, the alternator/distributor caps deal with the timing of the spark plugs. This is essentially a wire and a cap and maybe a little else. They're tied up without he rotor somehow, but I don't yet know how. On the other hand:

The battery could be bad, but I think this is unlikely since I replaced it about a year back. Of course, it might now be bad if the problem is:

The alternator. If this part is bad the car will have been running off of straight battery power. If it's been bad for a while, it will also have drained the battery, which might need to be recharged/replaced. Of course, all this could be wrong and the problem could be that:

The electrical system could be bad, or a module of it. This would be A Very Bad Thing and I might junk the car if it is, as this repair might cost more than the car's worth. But I really, really wanted to get the car to 200,000 miles...

I'll keep this post updated if we think of any other possibilities.

Update, 7 November 2003:

We just heard from STS and it's the battery after all. However, I had a new battery put in at the same shop in 2002, so this is partially covered under warranty. What that means is, they charge $2 a month for every month the battery's been in; I'm getting a new battery for $34. Nice! They're also doing an engine flush and an oil change while it's in there.

*= Does anyone know how to do a z with an upside-down circumflex over it? It's a Lithuanian accent that denotes the "zsch" sound, and there are ways to indicate it in, say, Tex.

I started driving to work this morning, and the Saturn stalled on me in the middle of Campbell Avenue about a hundred meters from the house. And it wouldn't turn over after that, or even growl when I turned the starter.

Right after I reached Martha at home to help me push, I got out and started waved cars around me, as my hazards were all of a sudden acting up as well. A nice person asked if I heeded a push. I said yeah, and in the meanwhile he and his friend pushed me off to he side of the road. He thinks I have a leaking distributor cap.

If it's dried out tonight, I'll know that's the problem. Anyone know about distributor caps? Is this something I can just swap a new one in myself, or should I have a shop do it?

Based on the hazards acting funny, and the fact that the horn isn't working, and the recent strange problems I've been having with the windshield wipers, it sounds more like it's a problem with the electrical system, but I hope I'm wrong about that.

neilfein.com should be online soon, but don't go there just yet. All you'll see is a "coming soon" page and lots of pop-ups. I'll mention it here when it's active.

Daniel had the server end of it hooked up yesterday, and I'm now waiting for my registry to do their bit in hooking the domain to the server. Then I get to figure out FTP publishing in Blogger...

While all I'm going to use it for at first is hosting this weblog, I'd like to get things up there like that set list y'all've seen me post every so often, and a calendar of where I'll be playing. Seeing how infrequently I'm playing will hopefully shame me into getting more gigs.


Update: It's been a day and the site still isn't working. I had to correct a problem with an old domain alias on neilfein.com; but that site is still trying to point to the earthlink servers. The haboger.org domain seems to be pointing to the correct place, but it's getting the generic "Blah" message on that server. --Neil 5 Nov 2003

I'll be at Cleo's open mic this Saturday night, 68 Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, NJ (it's across from the Dunkin' Donuts; Raritan Avenue is AKA Route 27).

Their sign says it starts at 8pm, so I'll be on some time after that. Show at your own risk.

The set list in my previous entry is not what I'll be playing, I'll likely pull three songs from there. The list below is my potential list, and I'm aiming to get it up to ~45 minutes by the end of the year. That works out to two sets of 20-25 minutes each, with a short break in the middle. It's a short set but respectable enough to play out on my own, or as part of a shared venue.

Rock Creek -- guitar
Dance In My Kitchen -- guitar
There's That Song -- guitar or piano
I'll Wait For You -- guitar or piano
Eyes Up Front -- guitar
She Told It To Me Twice -- guitar
Never Had A Brother -- guitar
On the Mall (Processional) -- guitar
Welcome Home -- piano (or guitar in a pinch)

~30 minutes

I think there's an open mic this Saturday night at Cleo's in Highland Park... have to check. I've never done a piano set in public, I'm wondering if I should try that? Maybe I'll Wait For You, Welcome Home, There's That Song? Not sure about There's That Song on piano, it loses a little something. Or I could chicken out and do a guitar set. Will see.

Craig and Paula brought over food on Friday, using our kitchen to cook and assisting us in the consumption of it. Martha kicked them out fairly early (or they left, I forget which) and she spent the rest of the weekend working on her quals. She's meant to turn them in today.

Before C&P left, Craig and I spent some time playing old Ten to Nine songs; we've still got it, and we've even gotten a little better. Old songs like History Spoken and She Flirts, It Hurts still sound good, stilted lyrics and all. I also managed to kill my voice on I Found What You Did Wrong, just like old times; and we did some rough harmonies on the pre-choruses, which isn't. I was briefly tempted to go back to I Found What You Did Wrong and rework it, but when I sat and read through the lyrics I realized I'd have to re-write almost all the verses. I'd rather spend the time and energy working on something new.

After we finished our "oldies jam", I realized that I had cut my right hand up pretty badly. I've been mostly playing piano for the last month or so, and I think the last time I played any serious guitar was on... wait a minute, let me look this up... on October 15th, I used Kate on The Bile Song. So that's two solid weeks without playing any guitars, and before that I was mostly playing fingerstyle stuff on Millicent, the leetle guitar I bought in September. Maybe I write faster on guitar...? It's at the least a slightly different process.

Welcome Home is almost home. I made my last major changes on Friday night/Saturday morning, and I'm now at the point where I'm making teeny, tiny changes and the song is staying more or less the same. In other words, fiddling. The song isn't 100 percent of what I want, but it's as close as I can get it. It also hasn't been easy to write, because it's at least partially about a time in my life that I wasn't very happy.

I read through some of the book Songwriters on Songwriting while sitting in a Barnes and Noble yesterday. It's a collection of interviews of songwriters, some of whom I consider actual writers and some I think are hacks.

I ended up not getting the book because a lot of the interviews are filled with pretentious garbage, but the interview with Paul Simon is noteworthy. He feels that while songwriting is about craft, moments of inspiration are really what it's all about. They won't necessarily make sense to anyone else, and that's okay. It's about feeling right, not a business presentation. I thought that was pretty encouraging; some of my previous experiences have left me feeling that a song is supposed to be an airtight story, all of it understandable to everyone at all times. I've since learned that doing this leaves little room for expression, but having it confirmed is nice.