A Wireless Hippie

We stood under the weighty red light of the WDVX "ON AIR" sign, me with my accordion, Ethan armed with a six-string, Katie wielding a fiddle that had curves in all the right places. Behold the garden of trussed-up gyspy tune-flowers. We finally got to press some of these new songs up through the dirt and see them turn green for the first time. I remember watching an old woman in the crowd who kept bobbing her head knowingly as every lyric washed into the microphone with the whispers of l'Eau de Vivre. I had a wild idea that washed up in my mind off a sea of wild ideas, so I asked Red, the DJ, if it would be okay if I simply gave away CDs to everyone there. After they let me, I have to tell you, it's an addiction that grabs your heart with its left hand. I'm so excited to play another show just so I can try and give away some more. That said, the resident hippie has sledged yet another wall of archaic anti-technologism.

As you may have guessed by the elephantine 'widget' on the sidebar, I have joined up with something called NoiseTrade. This is a company started by Derek Webb and Brannon McAllister, among others, for the purpose of creating a new format for sharing songs in this day and age of just-add-water instant life. Despite what you (or I) may think, people do prefer to tote iPods around and isolate themselves in a world of personal soundtrack, as opposed to sitting and listening with all intent to a record through actual speakers. We prefer constant noise as opposed to appreciating music because it is a different sort of reflection of the world's noise than the world itself makes. So, in the interest of letting you hear the art that has been made (hopefully a good bit of that art encourages us, ironically, to unplug), Derek &co. implemented a system in which the buyer pays the artist whatever price the buyer decides. Or, you can email five people about the whole thing and download for free. You can listen to it in your iPod, and then hopefully, you'll come out to hear the artists when they play shows - the connection is much stronger there, I assure you. So we have now eliminated the middle man. No one likes being in the middle anyway.

Thank you guys so much for listening in as we got to be part of a legendary show (locally, at least, the Blue Plate is indeed a legend). When you get to stand on the same stage that has seen David Wilcox, Bela Fleck, Del McCoury, and Mary Gauthier, just to name a few, you oughta get a little nervous. That's what I tell myself anyway. Now, go get on NoiseTrade. There's good music to be heard.