Crazy Fingers

Dumbek and his boyfriend celebrated their 10th anniversary on Friday. (Dumbek said, “Lord you know they made a fine connection,” which you might have noticed is also the title of this post, and that’s from a song.) Dinger, Dumbek’s boyfriend, posted about the soundrack of his life. For a lot of us, the music of the Grateful Dead is the soundtrack of our lives, which may be why we quote their lyrics on our blogs.

Me, I’m in a mixed relationship (in spite of which, we’ve got a fine connection), but I definitely like seeing two deadheads connecting.

Brian is moving in, officially (i.e., his stuff is moving in) on Monday, and we’re spending the weekend packing up his apartment and making the final preparations in our apartment. I’ll finally get my crap out of the Brian room and put it away, and I’m going to pull a network cable through the wall so he can have access to the internet in there. The cable connections are in the living room. If we hard wire his computer to the cable modem, through a router (rather than use WiFi), he’ll get a 100 mbs connection. Besides, his older G4 Macintosh isn’t WiFi ready and neither of us wants to deal with that.

We went to his friend’s party last night, which was a big cigarette smoking fest. Such a disgusting anachronism! But his friend also gave a recital on his harpsichord (yes, the guy owns a harpsichord and knows how to play it), which was fun (and people didn’t smoke as much while he was playing), and I got to talk to some interesting people.

I visited my aunt in the hospital this afternoon. She’s doing well after her knee replacement. I saw my friend Lex on the street on the way over there, since that’s his neighborhood. It always brightens my day when I run in to him.

Tonight, we had a fire in Brian’s old apartment (he decided not to renew the lease, which ends at the end of the month, so he won’t be subletting it), and we’re going to sleep here one last time. We watched Home at the End of the World on In Demand. (In keeping with the recent theme of “everyone in Chelsea is connected,” I should point out that Michael Cunningham, who wrote the novel and screen play for Home at the End of the World, is one of the people we see around from time to time, both here and in Provincetown.) The movie intensified my desire to experience mushrooms with Brian, which happened to have been the topic of conversation at dinner tonight. He’s not totally on board with the idea. “It’ll deepen our connection,” I said. “We’re already connected,” he responded.

Lord, you know, they made a fine connection.

I just added Lee’s blog to my blogroll. Check out his post with pictures from the Dead shows in 1985 (4/27 and 4/28) at the Frost Amphitheater, at Stanford University. (The second set of 4/27/85 is amazing. Check out the Scarlet>Eyes>GDTRFB. Maybe I’ll post mp3s.)

Lee has been commenting on my blog recently. Turns out, we may know some of the same people.

Last week Oliver posted a list of Allman Brothers songs (and links to mp3 files) he used to entertain himself on a road trip to New Haven. I love the Allman Brothers as much as the next gay boy in Chelsea (I’ll be at the Beacon in March, hopefully with my boyfriend, and if my iPod isn’t playing the Grateful Dead, it’s as likely to be playing the Allman Brothers as it is Neil Young or the Jerry Band). But I really love the Dead. I think I’ve mentioned here that on several occasions, I’ve accosted Oliver on the street and announced the date of the show I was listening to at the time.

So for the past week, I’ve been obsessing about a particular show, 10/27/79 (Cape Cod Coliseum). When I saw Oliver’s “Free Music Tuesday” post last week, I realized I wanted to share two songs from that show which are particularly hot. Dancin’ in the Street > Franklin’s Tower. In total, the two songs run over 30 minutes, because the jams are so smoking hot. The entire show is amazing, but I keep listening to Dancin>Franklins again, especially on the StairMaster or Arc Trainer, which is unusual for me (usually, I listen to shows end-to-end). These two songs are also excellent driving music.

Unlike Oliver, who’s afraid of getting sued because he’s sharing Allman Brothers songs, it’s ok to put these Grateful Dead recordings out there. The Grateful Dead allow us to trade recordings of their concerts, as long as no money changes hands, and as long as its for noncommercial use. After a protracted controversey last fall, which I shall not rehash, it was established that it is ok to trade, online, audience recordings (made from a location in the audience, with microphones and taping equipment the taper brought into the show), but not soundboard recordings (made by plugging in to the band’s sound system, either by someone who bought a ticket to the show, or by the band itself, for archival reasons; many of the Grateful Dead soundboards in circulation were made by the band itself, and put into circulation by Dick Latvala, the band’s archivist, or other people affiliated with the band).

So here it is, for your listening pleasure: Dancin’ in the Street > Franklin’s Tower. It’s about 35 megabytes in all, but it’s worth it. Download both, listen to them back-to-back.

Although I love sharing this music, and turning people on to it, I’m not sure this is something I’m going to do all the time. I’ve only got so much bandwidth.

However, if you want more:

• Dead on Friday — pointers to download sources and interesting commentary.
• The Live Music Archive on archive.org.
• Email me. If you give me a USB drive, I’ll give you all the shows I have in mp3 format (about 600), and it’s all noncommercial and it’s all perfectly legal.

The images in this post are from the Grateful Dead Tickets, Passes, & Laminates site.

As he puts it:

we are everywhere

He maintains a list of every show he’s ever seen.

BlogChelsea published a directory of the “Best of Chelsea.” I agree with a lot of the choices (I love that he included Pier 63, Manhattan Kayak Company, and RUB). (Yesterday, the Best of Chelsea included websites, but not mine; today, mysteriously, the best websites are gone.)

I’ve been busy, settling in to the new job and the new apartment, cooking dinner every night with Brian, etc. I feel like I’m finally developing a new routine, so the details of life will become a little more automatic and I will hopefully have some more time to post. After all the insanity of the last month, Brian and I spent a quiet, unstressed evening at home. It felt like we’re finally starting to relax again. We’ve been bickering a lot less (it was getting pretty dicey for a while when we first moved in to the apartment). I’m remembering my cooking skills, so the whole process of cooking and cleaning up is taking a lot less time than it did three weeks ago. (Well, last night might be an exception. We cooked chicken on the stove. Brian got home before me and marinated it. I cooked it. Grease splattered all over the kitchen. It took an hour to clean it up.)

When Brian finally moves his stuff over, we’ll have two computers, and I won’t have to share, so that will also give me more time for blogging.

I’ve been posting so little, in fact, that friends have been emailing me asking what’s going on, since they’re not getting updates here. (It looks like Bonnie is making excuses, too.)

Tonight, Brian and I are going to the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America’s film series to see two films about city planning:

1. A Fantasy of Forgotten Corners
2. Cities of the Future
Nina Rappaport, co-chair of DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State, architectural and urban critic, and editor of publications Yale School of Architecture, will offer insight towards the topic of these two films, which deal with then current and future city planning.

Landmark Education: I used to be involved, I’m not any more.

My buddy has a website about Landmark. I hadn’t thought about her in years, but she emailed me recently after I posted in alt.fan.landmark, and I had happy thoughts and feelings about her. We’ve known each other online for a decade. She was one of the first people making websites about, and discussing online, Landmark Education. She’s also the first person to inform me about memetics, which has come to comprise a big part of how I think about the world.

And she reads my blog.

If you’re thinking of doing the forum: don’t. At least, read as much as you can from the links in this post (above), and here, and here, before you sign anything.