Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Peter Bauer
177 Plays5 years ago
This is a special episode with SRTN Producer and Editor Peter Bauer!
This episode is quite the happening. It was recorded live at Warbling Creek Studios in the storied lands of Eugene, Oregon. Peter and I talked about the podcast, about music and philosophy. We reflect on the show, where it came from and where it is going.
Peter is a painter, an adventurer, a musical talent, a producer and editor.
Listen to this all the way through!!! Peter's musical projects Blazar, Blotter Paper, and Detour can be found here - http://bit.ly/warblingcreek
The episode features two amazing exclusive tracks to this episode!!!
The first track is LoFi Beat 2 (unnamed loFi project). The final face-melting extended track features the sonic journey called Blazar. The song *Cubensie* will take you towards the Vanishing Point and when the track ends it will drop you off on Exit 42 - otherwise known as the nexus between Something and Nothing.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Vellante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
00:00:17
Speaker
All right. Hey, everybody. This is something rather than nothing. We are here in Warbling Creek Studios, and this is an episode a long time into making professional studios. Peter Bauer, you know him as a producer and editor. Actually, you know, they would know you through your work, but they would also know through the Irish voice of Rachel Lally, Peter Bauer. You know, I can't do an Irish accent. That just came through, right? I can't.
00:00:45
Speaker
My last name's Vellante, I can't do an Irish accent. But Peter, I want you to tell folks about your studio and where the heck we are and what's in it. Give them some visuals, tell them what's going
The Studio's Unique Atmosphere
00:00:59
Speaker
on. Yeah, welcome to my studio.
00:01:02
Speaker
It's great to have you here, Ken. I think we've seen each other in probably a year. We were well equipped to work from the distance before all this happened. Modern world of podcasting. Yeah, generally our work exists texting each other, emailing each other, sharing files online. And we've had this idea to record in the studio a live episode.
00:01:30
Speaker
We're in my studio. It's a home studio. A lot of bands have recorded in here. My band practices and plays in here. And my kids come in here and hang out for some studio time. It's like Cosmos Factory. Yeah. It's like Credence, man. It's like Cosmos Factory. We just need a couple of bicycles in this room. Yeah. That's it, man. You remember Cosmos, right? Credence. Got some bikes next door in the garage.
00:01:57
Speaker
But yeah, this is my little sanctuary. And it's named after the creek that's magically behind our house. You wouldn't think that Eugene would have a creek in the neighborhood, but it does. I spent enough time in the Midwest where a creek is a crick. A crick. Crick. And I think of that from the East Coast. I got it from living in Wisconsin. It was a crick and a rough for a roof. Yeah. Roof.
00:02:26
Speaker
Rough rough you just say rough. Yeah. No living living on the creek Reminds us that we all live downstream. So there we go five minutes after it starts raining the creek really starts raging and depending on the time of year and amount of you know runoff in the stormwater it can get pretty sudsy and soapy and
00:02:49
Speaker
You have to enter the stream somewhere, right? Remember this philosophy podcast. Yeah. It's a good spot though. It's what takes me to sleep a lot at night just listening to the.
00:03:01
Speaker
Let's let's Peter so One of the things for the listeners to know Peter Bowery he you know, he does the the podcast does a wonderful job as a deep love of Deep love of music and we're in a studio and have the studio and he plays music Peter what what?
Experimental Music and Creative Exploration
00:03:23
Speaker
I don't want to say talk about music but like what like
00:03:29
Speaker
What do you do in the studio? Do you dabble? Do you dabble with sounds? Are you making songs? I mean, what the heck do you do? It's like a playground for your interest. So how do you spend your time? Yeah, man. It's definitely a workshop, a little sanctuary, a little Zen retreat. It can be a place to host friends and bring folks together. So it really serves many different roles.
00:03:58
Speaker
You know, sometimes we'll be out here when I when I play with my band, Blazer. It's really experimental. We'll pick a key and kind of go off for Blazer or 25 minutes. And so in some ways, this is a space for exploration and finding sounds and rhythms that
00:04:18
Speaker
transport us beyond where we presently were and I always feel like it's working if I Come back from spacing out. I think oh god I've been playing music this whole time and I Completely disappeared into my own brain and came back in and we're still playing music. That's awesome What was that that do you have to do that more now because of the pandemic? No, seriously, I talked a lot of artists and they're like, you know shit, you know, they're creating art to create a
00:04:43
Speaker
create other planets, create other worlds and inhabit them. I mean, some of them are. I mean, do you find yourself needing to take that trip like musically to be like, hey, this is crazy. I'm going into music land. What's going on with that dynamic? For me, it definitely is an important part of my daily practice.
00:05:05
Speaker
It's an important component of it and I recognize that when it is absent most of all. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I need to create a new song. Maybe it's as easy as picking up a guitar and learning a little cover song for 10 minutes on a break just to stretch that part of the brain.
00:05:24
Speaker
I played clarinet in middle school and high school. And so that, you know, that's like an hour a day of music, you know, in class and then would practice for half an hour at home. Played in high school and was even in jazz band, you know, my senior year. Started at seven in the morning. It was like zero period. So I actually got to school extra early.
00:05:47
Speaker
I played the clarinet though, which isn't really prominently featured in jazz per se. I mean, it has its places and moments perhaps, but it was more just the playing an ensemble, learning how to listen, learning how to process information very quickly, maybe sometimes seeing something for the first time. I was saying to my wife the other day that one of my favorite parts of that experience was
00:06:10
Speaker
Um, sight reading as a band. I feel like we might've even done that at a performance, you know, the band director passing out, all right, here's your parts. And it's, uh, you know, it's a lot of components. It's, it's working as a group. It's listening back to all the different parts and counting on people to be there.
00:06:28
Speaker
And so when I went to college, I went to Oregon State in Corvallis and I didn't want to continue with symphonic bands. I wasn't interested in being marching band. I felt like I had kind of done that.
00:06:43
Speaker
for yourself, you've kind of done that for yourself. Yeah, I wasn't really interested in pursuing it any further. But I remember that Thanksgiving when I came home, I took my dad's acoustic guitar up there because I realized something was missing. And what I, reflecting back, I realized it's suddenly I wasn't playing music for an hour or two a day.
Peter's Musical Journey
00:07:05
Speaker
Right. And here I am living in a new city and new environment, new circumstances, and I didn't have that outlet.
00:07:12
Speaker
So that sort of moved me in a different direction. Hanging behind you on the wall is a guitar that I bought by selling the clarinet that I had in high school. My parents were great and said, as long as you're selling that instrument to continue your love of music, you're welcome to do that. So I sold the clarinet on eBay and bought that Martin guitar.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah. The ironic thing is I play drums in all the bands that I'm in because I always have friends who are way better at guitar than me. Well, it's good to have really good guitarists, right? That's right. The good problems to have. Yeah. Yeah. So the first band I was in, we were auditioning a drummer and I had that Marshall amp over there and this awesome cheap Fender Strat that I got for like 200 bucks at Guitar Center.
00:08:03
Speaker
We went over there and Ben had an awesome drum set and he played and he's pretty good. And then he's like, mind if we switch? You want to switch? I was like, OK, like I'll sit at the drum kit. And I was pretty good at the drums. I'd never played before, but I didn't know that Ben had like already been in bands before. It was way better at the guitar. Yeah. So he totally shredded. We're like, oh, I guess we thought we were coming here to audition a drummer, but we got a guitar player. Dang.
00:08:30
Speaker
Well, art combos work like that, don't they? I mean, a lot of time in music. I thought I was this, but no, I'm not that. I'm better as this in this constitution of things, right? Yes, and you can imagine my roommate's surprise when here I come into our little two-bedroom apartment, garden-style apartment with a drum set.
00:08:49
Speaker
He's like, what is this? Well, you know, I got to learn the drums now. That's a different angle. That's a different angle. He's like, when we live in an apartment. I was like, oh, I got drum mutes. It's fine. And you put a Marshall Collins poster. You put those right up on the wall right then, man. Phil, right?
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, but uh, well, uh, thanks. Thanks for, uh, for taking us along there. I wanted to ask you, um, well, we obviously had the big philosophy questions, but we want to take a little bit of time of, you know, so like we got this creative, uh, endeavor, you know, creating a podcast and, um, I mean, what, uh, I mean, both of us didn't have an idea of what we were trying. Well, I don't want to say that for you.
00:09:37
Speaker
We didn't know exactly what it was or how to do it. So how do you, when we're first thinking about putting together something that's interviewing artists and looking at creativity, what the heck you think was gonna happen? What do you think it would sound like? What do you think it is?
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, I remember talking to you about it at a staff meeting at lunch. You had known that I had like recorded music and played in bands and you told me that you had an idea for a podcast and, you know, art and philosophy. And we were talking about.
00:10:13
Speaker
what it would take to do it. Setting up a shared drive, what kind of microphone to get. This was before the pandemic. I believe you were using Skype for a lot of the early recordings. A couple of years ago, all the early ones. It would come over as one file, but that's how we figured to get it as clean as possible. We talked about that a couple of times.
00:10:37
Speaker
And then I think after you had done maybe your first or second interview, you just sent me a couple of files like, Hey, check
Organic Development of the Podcast
00:10:45
Speaker
it out. What do you think? And it, I just sort of like did it. Like, I don't know. Like it just started to happen. And then we, we got a really good workflow. And for me, uh, it allowed me to have time in this studio doing, you know, production work, um, on a project that I didn't have to do a lot of work.
00:11:07
Speaker
on to get there to get to get the content like content was there something that you do the work you find the interview you conduct the interview you send me the file and we talk about it you know and we uh like debrief it but um i say it's similar to the difference between maybe recording that i do for myself versus when i have a friend's band in here and recording them
00:11:30
Speaker
I get to sort of sit back and just be behind the board and mix things and focus on the sound and the balance versus bringing in maybe some of those creative components where it's sort of like trying to tap into the signal and bring something in.
00:11:46
Speaker
Yeah, and I wanted to say, and the way you talk about it is about, you know, a creative collaboration in the dynamics of working on something. And of course, in talking to creatives about their process, it's an enjoyable thing to create something about
00:12:06
Speaker
with somebody who's a creator and you're trying to create there's this kind of nice nice piece about it and I have mentioned many times I mean first of all you know with with your talent you know the show being able to you know benefit and be in you know to be as good as it is like in the sense of how you make things but one of the things I really like and I know listeners have is when
00:12:30
Speaker
kind of like moving in between some of those songs and how some of those songs beautiful songs that a lot of the performers have put together just kind of like moving into them and some of the excitement that i feel or the artist feels maybe the audience feels and moving through that sound it's uh i love those episodes i love the power of that music and cutting through that um
00:12:52
Speaker
What is it like putting it all together? I mean, does it feel like at the end it's like, yeah, that's how it should sound. There's that note or whatever. Yeah. The musical episodes in particular are fun to kind of find, you know, in a song. Where is that? Where's the point that it maybe swells to and then work back from there?
00:13:11
Speaker
You know what I mean? So well, there's a nice long instrumental interlude, you know, we can kind of softly fade that up for maybe 15 or 20 seconds, as opposed to something that comes right in, you know, lyrically. So it's fine to it's fun to try to find those bits. But the most amazing thing that's happened. Tens of times, countless times is I always love the way. And you don't do this intentionally, but the way with the intro music,
00:13:40
Speaker
the way that it kind of resolves in and around that first question that we ask a lot of guests. What would you like as a young human? And it's always like this ethereal resolve to
Diverse Topics Explored
00:13:52
Speaker
the keyboard.
00:13:55
Speaker
I don't know. There's it seems like it's intentional. Yeah. And it seems like it lines up perfectly and it does line up perfectly. Right. But it's completely accidental. And that it's that's what's exciting to me. Yeah. Like those are the moments that I chase musically. And so to even be able to find that in editing a podcast of these like wow, things lined up in a perfect way in my brain.
00:14:17
Speaker
Unexpectedly, right? It's like a surprise. Yeah going through going through that one of the one of the cool bits on that
00:14:25
Speaker
listeners know we're gonna be putting together an episode with some alternate takes, some acoustics, some pre-recorded live or new versions of songs from bands we featured or will be featuring including Whitney Ballen, Spoonbender, our friend Sarah Bilt of Coyote, Buell Thomas, Gina Gleason,
00:14:52
Speaker
Gina Gleason, a Baroness, Dirty Princess, and others to be announced. So I'm really excited. Peter, I know we've been talking about that episode, but the reason why I contacted you about doing that episode, which for listeners, we'll hope to have out in the next two or three episodes of the program.
00:15:17
Speaker
Just having some performances or different performances or some energy of just the music. We're going to have some intros and some special guests to intro to tracks, but a little bit of a music treat to enjoy and some variety. So that's one of your thoughts about how that...
00:15:37
Speaker
How are you expecting it to sound? Yeah, there's a couple of different threads in our podcast that I really appreciate. There's obviously the philosophy thread. There's a painter thread. Yeah. There's a baseball thread, which I love. There's a small but important baseball thread. Yeah, it gets me. And then I think music probably is continuing to expand in sort of the type of content. And I think for this format, for the audio format,
00:16:06
Speaker
you can it's easier to resonate with the emotional content of a musical piece as it's described by the artist you know coming in and coming out in a way that is maybe more difficult to analyze you know a portion of a novel for example or the complexity of an abstract you know painting
00:16:28
Speaker
You know, verbally, it's hard to describe something that's so visual. And so I think that's maybe part of the advantage in some ways that a musical show has in this context for connecting sort of the emotional quality with what the actual art
00:16:46
Speaker
is in and of itself. It's right there for you. I think that we have a really cool range, too, of music. There's definitely, I know that you're a metal guy. Yeah. And that metal doom has definitely influenced the music that I've been playing with my band in a really fun and unexpected way. It seeps in. It does.
Influence of Musical Genres
00:17:09
Speaker
It seeps in a bit, yeah. I played in lots of bands, generally sort of like garage rockings, pretty loud.
00:17:15
Speaker
but there's a heaviness that I really appreciate. Maybe it's a Northwest thing, maybe it's a rainy day thing, but it just sounds cool. It sounds cool, so I forced, or I didn't force, I asked everyone in my band to, let's just detune, let's detune a half step.
00:17:33
Speaker
And it was yeah, it's just fun and then it like, you know, even songs that we played a bunch of times Because they're you know shifted down They sound different. They feel different the instrument responds differently. It sustains differently well, yeah, maybe the emotional Feeling is maybe that heaviness is underscored. Yeah, I think you pick up on on it a bit is uh
00:17:59
Speaker
You know, what's doom? Doom's underneath the blues, or it's the foundation of the blues, or doom is just like abyss where the blues comes from. It's back behind Black Sabbath. It is Black Sabbath. It is the slowed down riffs of some classic
00:18:21
Speaker
rock in some classic metal. Like you said, it's an adjustment and then you're in this land and that's where I mean it seeps in. I'm not... Yeah, it's slow and heavy, but not in a... I don't know. It doesn't drag, so... It's not for everybody, you know, but I think...
00:18:39
Speaker
It's more approachable than maybe people realize. Yeah. You know what I mean? You can ease into it. Like, shoegaze, like rock. Like, that sounds like a really intense thing. And then you hear it. You're like, yeah, this is cool. This sounds like stoner rock music. I love it. Yeah, we need to go to Ash, get Peter, make sure we don't forget the big question. We're going to at least knock one out. So what is art? Yeah.
00:19:06
Speaker
Great question. Listen to lots and lots of answers in this podcast.
What Defines Art?
00:19:13
Speaker
And I think for me, I think there's two components. I think one is intention, like an artist's intent, a person's intent. Am I recording a cover? Am I just recording this for fun? Or is this a song that I'm gonna play for somebody?
00:19:36
Speaker
Maybe those are three different things, depending on the intention that the person brings to what they're doing. The artist themselves and their intent, yes. Yeah, they have... It's almost like you're setting out to do a thing, and the act of the doing is like... Maybe not a precursor, but it's part of it. It's not the whole thing.
00:20:00
Speaker
Because I think the other piece of it is the way that it's received by the viewer or the audience. And so I think sometimes it can be out of sync both ways, where maybe someone says, this is art, and the audience says, no, it's not. Right, kicks it back. This is art. It's almost like you're setting out to do a thing. And the act of the doing.
00:20:26
Speaker
It's like a part of it. It's not the whole thing because I think the other piece of it is the
00:20:48
Speaker
This is art. Like in order to know like you're at the Schnitzer, you know, here or you're up at the Portland Art Museum or at the Louvre. There is a tradition within art since it seems to be an area that we enjoy, but we sometimes rely on experts to say, enter this room.
00:21:08
Speaker
This is a painting. You will have a painting experience. How much time do you spend in front of the painting? Do you look at it from a strange angle? When I go to a museum, I'm on the floor looking up at the ceiling sometimes because I'm looking for things
00:21:23
Speaker
But then there's all this behavior. How long do you hang around a painting? An hour? Right. 10 seconds? What do you do with it? But I think some of the context, when you think about intention, is the context as well. When you see a wonderful work of art that's hanging on a tree in your neighborhood and you see a couple raindrops on it,
00:21:43
Speaker
Do you stop and say, look at that's the most wonderful piece or you'd be like, what the fuck? Why is there like a canvas like in the rain? It doesn't make any sense. Context. So what do you think?
00:21:54
Speaker
You know, what do you think that does to outside of intention, context of what you view something in? I think it helps folks triangulate maybe how they feel about something with the past experience. Maybe these words or this image or this idea helps them then make a value judgment about, I like this, I don't like this. This is threatening to me. This is not threatening. This is weird. Oh, I totally, you know, connect with this. But I think, you know, in the same way that
00:22:24
Speaker
Maybe a narrator can be unreliable. It's like your perception of the context is like the model that you've created for the context. Right. So it like makes sense to you in your Ken world. But like in my Peter world, might not even fit in. Right. And so I think that's why maybe there's disagreement between people of this is art, this isn't art.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, and there there's active, you know, there's active debates and I always view it as in terms of history of philosophy We'll get into something a little more exciting but in history of philosophy all the big All the big philosophers are you if you're gonna if you're gonna be big in history, they all take a crack at what is art I mean Kant did Plato did Aristotle did and not all the philosophers take a crack at it But it's one of those questions have to answer kind of like why are we here? Why is there God? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is
00:23:15
Speaker
uh what the heck is art just that question you know and you have all the classics not the name drop but the big philosophers have to have to handle it so it it draws the the strongest human attention at least an intellectual uh uh there's like an emotional component to it right and that's i think what people are maybe drawn to as they resonate or connect to or you know feel drawn to a painting or a poem or a book or a song or a movie
00:23:44
Speaker
Right. And that's maybe it's that seeking a connection or wanting a connection is very human. Right. Yeah. So maybe that's why we pursue those questions or pursue that. Well, and about those questions, I was curious about your thoughts about the nature of the questions. I think one of the funny parts of the show and one of the things that I enjoy is that
00:24:07
Speaker
questions don't seem to be neutral or maybe they're not always feel neutral. I view them as more neutral in general. I try not to trouble anybody with the question, but the thinking behind me creating the podcast comes from Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls. And she wrote a book called The Art of Asking. And what she described in a very open and revealing and exposing way was that
00:24:36
Speaker
rather than harboring the question or holding it or never asking it, she was gonna take a lot of risk by asking the question. So there's a favorable,
00:24:46
Speaker
Ask the questions ask for help ask for support artists ask for those things to happen. So i've been very influenced by Asking questions i'm a trained philosopher and what she had to say to have the audacity to ask questions Yeah, the nature of the questions themselves.
Reflections During the Pandemic
00:25:04
Speaker
How do you how do you think they in general feel? They're strange questions. They're big questions. Um
00:25:12
Speaker
in a pandemic, ask, why is there something rather than nothing? What is art? How do the questions feel for you? Yeah, I think they're broad. They're wide ranging. And I think they're approachable given the different kind of content that we try to interact with and the types of artists that we try to interact with. I think clearly in the past year,
00:25:40
Speaker
Not everyone, but I'll speak for myself. I've tried to be reflective, reevaluate things within my own life, systems, routines, behaviors, beliefs, attitudes. It's sort of like, and it depends on the week, I suppose. I feel like we've all asked ourselves, what would you do?
00:26:08
Speaker
You know, if you were stuck on an island for a year and in some ways, you know, many of us feel like we're stuck on islands, not all the time, you know, some more than others, some impacted, you know, incredibly psychological component that could be a physical component to the isolation could be both. Yeah. So I think, you know, as maybe a society or a culture or planet, perhaps we're at a more reflective point than we've been at other times in human history as far as
00:26:39
Speaker
sort of what comes next. I don't really particularly subscribe to or believe in any idea of returning to what was, I think will emerge and stepped into what is and what will be, and perhaps some of the things from the past
00:26:57
Speaker
you know, we'll continue to move forward. But I think we're living through a time of tremendous change and have been, you know, for the majority of my adult life, you know, I turned 37 here at the end of the month. So to think of my adult life spanning 9 11, the invention of the iPhone,
00:27:17
Speaker
the COVID pandemic, these are pretty like seismic shifts in the way that, you know, particularly American culture thinks and behaves. So, you know, part of the discussion is, you know, when does a pandemic end or when does it end and people with the vaccine coming around and away from all the political chaos that, you know, there's a foreseeable conclusion to the pandemic.
Democratization of Music Production
00:27:42
Speaker
as we see it. People have been separated from each other. Sounds have been created thankfully because of the use of technology, individual use of technology, musicians, artists. Is there a new sound that's going to come blasting out of this? Do you ever think about
00:28:01
Speaker
What the heck comes up? Because there's been a lot of people doing stuff for a little while that might be coming out. Yeah, I think I would hope that to the extent that folks are able, they're using this time to sort of woodshed hone their craft.
00:28:18
Speaker
everything coming out doom or something yeah really emotional i uh well i'm amazed by uh you know we're we're in my home studio right now um in the 15 years that i've been recording just um the the
00:28:34
Speaker
increase in the technology and the decrease in the price point makes recording at home very accessible for a lot of things. More accessible. More accessible as opposed to feeling like you have to book studio time in order to demo something. Yeah, like you can... I mean, there's been that movement I think for a while, but to think that Billie Eilish's album was recorded at home with
00:29:03
Speaker
Couple thousand dollars worth of gear. In a brilliant piece of art. Yeah, but it's not like that had to be locked away in Abbey Road Studio for six months, right? So I think to your question about what comes out of this,
00:29:17
Speaker
I don't know necessarily that there'll be a new sound, but maybe a refinement of people's instincts, what they had been trying to push forward. I do think that as things begin to open up in more parts of the country, I don't know, I think people are going to go hard for a while.
00:29:39
Speaker
Think I think they're gonna want possible. I think they're gonna go hard nightly for as long yeah, I tell it kind of they're Tired or yeah, I mean we were talking earlier this week You know the tap alcohol sales in America are like at an all-time high even you know previous to when Restaurants were open so you know previously I thought oh people are just drinking at home, but like no like those two things combined
00:30:06
Speaker
So that's probably not a great thing, but to get everybody back together, you know, seeing live music, just to hear live music. That communion. Just that energy. The communion. The feeling of live drums and bass and seeing people dancing and having, like, I think people are gonna really be drawn to that. Simultaneously, I've been obsessing, my brother-in-law just got the Oculus Rift. Yeah, so VR. VR headset.
00:30:37
Speaker
blowing my mind. I put him on the other night, I said, I'm so happy to be alive right now. It was amazing to be alive. What game were you playing? He had this really cool Star Wars game that felt like I was watching a movie and the characters in it sort of guide you through the steps and you're touching and responding to. And I thought, is this the future of concerts?
00:30:57
Speaker
Is this the, like, can I buy, you know, can I spend 125 bucks to get front row at Bruce Springsteen and have the immersive VR? Like, when is that? At what point will that be commonplace, right? For a while then we thought the Tupac hologram was going to be like the wave of the future, right? Yes. But it was like... Like how did things converge? But it was like Polar Express, right? It didn't quite look right. It still looked...
00:31:20
Speaker
Remember that Tom Hanks Christmas movie? Yeah, yeah. It just didn't look right. But there was a name for the effect, though. It was just something that wasn't... We'll have to put it in one of the hashtags. There was a name for the effect. How Polar Express was a little too close wasn't quite that type of thing. There's a name for the effect. Sorry, everybody. We'll put it in later.
00:31:43
Speaker
For now, shorthand is the Polar Express thing. It gets too close. One of my previous bands, The Walnut Collective, our last album we recorded together was called Hologram Jesus. Because we were riffing on the idea, unlike a smoke break between recording tracks. Thinking of Hologram Tupac, what would happen in America if you, at a series of shopping malls, Hologram Jesus appeared?
00:32:12
Speaker
What kind of social impact would that immediately... My mind's blown. I want to say something. My mouth's open. The listeners can't see. My jaw has dropped. Mind blown. Obviously, the people would not believe that it was Jesus, but if it looked hologram good enough,
00:32:29
Speaker
But it wasn't good enough. And so to pull it back to the VR headset, that's amazing to me. And it's not tactile necessarily, but thinking of movies, thinking of concerts. So it's like this simultaneous sort of like dystopian black mirror bent, right? We'll all be plugged into our little pods and we'll be going to our 3D meetings.
00:32:54
Speaker
Right, so that's one possible future, but I lean on this side that people are gonna be so happy to turn their head and look at another human being instead of just looking at little Hollywood squares on the screen. That innate human need for connection, I think, will continue to draw folks together. And so I would imagine, you know, I appreciated the headline that said like the Glastonbury Festival should expand from a week to every weekend for a year.
Memories of Woodstock '94
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah. Just to like pull that whistle, like let out that steam as a society. I was telling. Well, well, in the events that you go to, you know, I left the message, you know, nowadays, what do we do? I left the video message for my brother.
00:33:36
Speaker
And I left a video message for him talking to him about Woodstock 94 that I went to. He was trying to think of the name. He was like, what's that with Perry Farrell and James addiction? And I'm like, ah, it's porno papyrus. I love porno papyrus. Porno papyrus was one of the top 10 live shows I've ever seen in my frigging life. And it was at Woodstock 94. I can remember it like yesterday, mind-blowing performance. So then I started talking about it with them. That's a music experience.
00:34:04
Speaker
All right, so that's a long time ago. I'm curious. Do you tell people that you were at Woodstock? I do. I use that expression. I've struggled throughout my entire life. I could hold up now, but hold up nowadays. I think you can say that. And I think it means for the.
00:34:21
Speaker
It might mean the woodstock that people might know, not the older generation. It's tough to say. The muddy woodstock or the fire, no water woodstock. What I do... What I use... We've like ended up burning everything, right? I remember seeing on MTV... I wasn't involved in none of that. Sheets and plywood being thrown on large. I don't know nothing about nothing. I don't know nothing about nothing about that.
00:34:42
Speaker
No, Woodstock, Woodstock 90, yeah, I usually say Woodstock and then Woodstock 94, but the performances I'll talk about are Porno for Pyros, Peter Gabriel, my girlfriend passing out from Southern Comfort, while Metallica played the loudest set I've ever heard in my human ears existence, she fell asleep.
00:35:07
Speaker
Metallica definitely won. When I got into the show was the GOAT and another band named Jackal who did the chainsaw song which featured a chainsaw as one of the instruments.
00:35:22
Speaker
uh jackal this is the end of the woodstock stories and i'm going in reverse order the lead singer from jackal is i think they might have pulled him off the stage he had pulled down his pants was drinking vodka in smoking a joint in the that that was the end of jackals or close to the end of jackals performance at woodstock i'll get pulled off that's how woodstock
00:35:43
Speaker
began. That's how it started. That's how it started. Hey, I had mentioned some of the some of the musical guests that will be on our concert episode. Really want to give a shout out to our musical guests that we've had on the show over time and all our guests, actually, but talking a lot of music. So just wanted to mention Sean Wynn, the Praetorians, big shout out, Run DMC style. Mackenzie Rogers, Avery R. Young,
00:36:12
Speaker
Kim Gucci, Hawkins, Blackwater, Holy Light, Alicia Angel, Ghost Frog, recent episode with Ghost Frog, that paranormal stoner punk, Death Parade, got an upcoming episode with Randy J.
Impressive Musical Guests
00:36:27
Speaker
Bird and his connection
00:36:28
Speaker
with Doomed and Stoned in band camp. And Doomed and Stoned puts together those Doomed metal scene recordings such as Doomed and Stoned in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Oregon, Washington, everywhere around the world. So nice service that they have there. So we've been blessed, Peter, to have so many musical artists and you and I both being
00:36:57
Speaker
music lovers. It's really been nice, but I think one of the great joys is not only with the music is the eclectic sculptors and painters. And maybe if times we stretch out there, you know, talking about the art of pitching a baseball, hitting a baseball, like art, performance, these type of things, we've really been able to pull from a lot of different areas. Do you think
00:37:26
Speaker
Do you think it makes coherent sense at the end of the day, or is it just really too disparate a constellation in the universe? Going back to what I said, you know, earlier about the questions, I think it...
00:37:39
Speaker
I think those questions create a frame that sort of connects those different satellites and maybe pulls them into orbit together. Because ultimately what we're talking about is process, creativity, inspiration, execution.
00:37:59
Speaker
presentation, interpretation, reaction. So that could be any one of the different mediums that we're talking about. But really trying to grapple with that idea of where do these ideas come from? Where does this creativity come from? Where does this product come from?
00:38:23
Speaker
I think because of the form that you bring to the podcast and the interview, it helps keep these things. Maybe I think of it more as like, maybe not an apartment building. It's completely linear, but maybe more of a villa sprawl down over here. Going off on a certain amount of time. You got a little secret gazebo down over here. The end, or hopefully. What's down this path? That's interesting.
Interest in Interviewing Fortet
00:38:47
Speaker
Hopefully not to completely disappear, maybe. You know, for everybody's sake. Wind around in the woods for too long.
00:38:53
Speaker
Who's, who's, who's the dream interview for the podcast for you and why? Like just, I don't know, the musician or whatever. No, it's like, you mean like, let's, let's, let's do two of them. Let's do it too. Well, right now they got to be alive, right? It's, you know, there's some time and delay, not, not for the morbid humor, but you know, alive people are alive and then historically, who would you want to talk to? With these questions, this format, philosophy, the big questions. Hmm.
00:39:23
Speaker
You know, the musician that I would be
00:39:28
Speaker
particularly interested in talking to. Currently would be a musician who performs under the name of Fortet. Kind of dancey, electronic sample based. But the incredible layers, I'm really drawn to the layers of his work. A lot of Bell's harp. I'm a huge harp fan. I love like Dorothy Ashby and Joanna Neeson. Not easy to pull off, but when it's
00:39:57
Speaker
I don't know, there's something like it's a spiritual connection. It's a magical instrument. The way it resonates is so beautiful. To hear those elements brought into kind of like a dancy groove, it's really interesting to me. But the separate component that I would be really interested in exploring in the context of this podcast is I subscribed to a playlist of his on Spotify.
00:40:20
Speaker
that he updates maybe once a week, probably between five and 15 songs. So what happens from week to week? Well, that's the thing, it's like this is the music that he's listening to, so it's like Sun Ra, it's Pharaoh Saunders, it's Alice Coltrane, it's this wild, wild jazz, it's Miles Davis. Intellectually adventurous as well. And then it's like house music.
00:40:46
Speaker
Like just grinding house music. Yeah. And then maybe it's like, um, hip hop and then like doo wop oldies. Nice. And then like King Tubby 70s, Deb Rege. All right. Drop that name again. Uh, Fortet Fortet. He goes, he has a couple of different projects. He just released an album with, um, Madlib who is a incredible hip hop instrumental producer. Um, uh, Madlib had produced, um,
00:41:19
Speaker
Who's the guy that just died or he died recently in October? Mask guy, MF Doom. Yeah, MF Doom. Okay, so Madlib had produced some of those albums in the early 2000s. And then Fortet had remixed those so they formed this collaboration. And the current album that's out now, it's called Sound Ancestors, I believe, could be wrong. Madlib sent a couple hundred tracks.
00:41:46
Speaker
to Fortet and then Fortet, but just kind of put them together. So it's like his interpretation of this like kind of iconic instrumental lo-fi hip-hop producers, body of work. And so what's interesting to me is like, how do you bring all these disparate
00:42:07
Speaker
inspirations, synthesize it to the core bit that you're most interested in, and then stack that up in a new combination that sounds simultaneously futuristic and old.
00:42:20
Speaker
I don't know, there's like a magic to it. It influences you though because I'm in the position which the listeners wanna know of looking at your equipment and just seeing how there were sounds, sounds in tracks, in pieces that were, the only way I would understand them, again, I have a rudimentary understanding of the magic you do is being stacked up together as layers. Yeah, absolutely. That's where it came from.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah, so it's those layers that are interesting to me musically. What about historically? That's the bigger one as far as podcast interview. It's one of those maybe a hack, neat question, but jeez, right? Like who? And I have my answers too, right? Because it's part of my indulgence. Right. Who would be?
00:43:20
Speaker
I'd be really interested in learning from and listening to this guy named Glenn Gould. He's a piano player. Phenomenal piano player, like 50s, 60s, I think he died in the 70s. So precise. So precise. It's like the most
00:43:43
Speaker
Yeah, the hundred percent hundred fight like how do you how do you do that? It's perfect. Right. So, you know, and he particularly was known for having this like staccato style where it wasn't like super heavy or like splatty, you know, piano, but just really delicate and light and.
00:44:03
Speaker
I think that ability to use an instrument to pull out such a dynamic feeling, right? That really intense, high volume, very quiet spread out.
00:44:16
Speaker
I'm really amazed by piano players and people who can separate their mind and body, having your left hand play something that your right hand's not playing. And then you're looking at the pages, reading two lines at once, but it's ahead of what you're playing.
00:44:34
Speaker
I can't separate my mind and body like that, but I'm in awe of people who can. I think it's beautiful. I've seen, it was one time I saw Joey DeFrancesco and he played with everybody. I don't know all the technical terms, but this organ and just seeing his movement is like the best at that particular item, that instrument like in the world. He's done some stuff even recently like Van Morrison and things like that. I saw him at the Jazz Showcase. I believe it is in Chicago, but just seeing the
00:45:04
Speaker
movement and it's just incredible with the piano. It was tough to understand as an immature observer, but I knew something profound was going on. I think another example I had seeing that live was with
00:45:24
Speaker
you know, prior to the pandemic, but there's the Jack London Review in Portland, and there's an ongoing session with Mel Brown, a famous drummer, and it's just an incredible thing to watch. The precision with the drumming and just how I understand like a classic, just wonderful jazz drummer, and just being able to see that is... Yeah, and experience that. I think hearing live drums
00:45:55
Speaker
activate something in the human subconscious unconscious psyche, you're in your DNA.
00:46:06
Speaker
You know, the best part on the drums that I find, and my son's recognizing me, he's like, you love these drums. For me, I found it. And here's what the connection was for me. Again, I don't speak with expert terminology, but it was within, I would say, kind of a progressive doom metal sound. And it was tribal.
00:46:25
Speaker
Yes. It's journeying drums, journeying drums, sometimes two or three of them at the same time, journeying drums as the underbelly, the underpinning of the entire progressive doom metal song. And you go because of the percussion. It's, I would put it akin to when you're camping, it's that the way that your body responds when you hear the crackle of a fire. Whoa.
00:46:56
Speaker
Well, I hear that crackles. You need to put the crackles on. But you're pulled to it, right? That warm, that fire sound. Or just... It's Chris. Just the fact that, you know, when you... I mean, I'm sort of off campfires now. I do a lot of backpacking, you know, with the wildfires in Oregon.
00:47:12
Speaker
Oh gosh. You put a kibosh on that, which is actually way better for the environment. Everything that we bring up still feels too similar. Yeah, remember how we had those wildfires during the
Funding a Musical Journey
00:47:21
Speaker
pandemic? Yeah, it's like still like I was like completely horrified, terrified, wanted to hide, thought I was going to die, hellfire. Yes, those ones. Yes, absolutely. So for me, a dream interview, maybe the reason something rather than nothing was created was to get Taylor Swift.
00:47:37
Speaker
As an interview and you know, I'm a huge fan and a huge defender for reasons which I don't need to indulge myself completely with but one of the things I want to say in the in the context of the show is
00:47:54
Speaker
You end up listening to music over time in your life, and then every once in a while you got your top 10, top 20. What type of mood are you in, right? I'm 48 years old, so what type of mood I'm in, you might hear a different top 10 from me, depending on my mood, depending on how many I drop in there. The last two Taylor Swift albums that she put out and were recorded remotely in a pandemic are so, in general, so completely devastating.
00:48:24
Speaker
intensely, emotionally, driving deep down into the heart, spear sounding, spear piano, spear strings, a starkness that underrides the whole thing, but also some moments are kind of like joy and building up and tempo, but ultimately at its heart is like a deep rumination. And she does more storytelling, so she has auxiliary characters.
00:48:54
Speaker
just on an emotional level. And I don't kind of describe all the music and how it sounds. The way it sounds is kind of the way that I describe.
00:49:04
Speaker
I don't think people know the depths that this album goes into because they're so deceived by, it's not supposed to be that. It's Taylor Swift, how can I have that depth? It comes from a certain source, like, is it really that? And a lot of people have listened to saying, it's really, really that. So I like the...
00:49:26
Speaker
tension between the artist and what they represent in culture and the art object itself. And I would say that these two recent art objects themselves are different, feel different. And so maybe this takes us back to the beginning of our conversation, the difference between the artist and tension.
00:49:44
Speaker
and the audience's reception or interpretation, or their expectation of what it's supposed to be, or what it's allowed to be, or what it can't be. Don't we need to be led? I mean, that's a cynical read. But I find a lot of times that humans need to be led. How am I supposed to interpret the thing that's in front of me? Help me along. I'm nervous to be wrong. I would say the vast majority of people need someone to tell them what to do or think or believe.
00:50:12
Speaker
Or to at least reinforce and reaffirm that what you are currently doing or thinking or believing is accurate. Keep doing that. Yeah, it seems like.
00:50:23
Speaker
culturally, folks need permission and direction. Not everybody, right? A lot of people do. I would say the majority of people do. The vast majority of people do. And part of all of us probably feel the part of everybody. Yeah, that's part of our imprinting as children, right?
00:50:43
Speaker
Right. But isn't it artists? I mean, so are you leading to the point? I mean, isn't it art? I mean, where where you say to break to break some part of that, that that temple or that inertia or whatever, isn't isn't there some part of it where it's like.
00:50:59
Speaker
I can draw you to look at something. Think about the immediacy of photography. Look at this. This is a civil war in Ireland, and look at this violent photo. Look at it. It's an art. It's an activist piece, right? And it thrusts you into it. And I think in that frame, then it pulls you in. It focuses the attention. It maybe helps you think in a new way.
00:51:18
Speaker
And perhaps that's what you're alluding to is the way in which an artist can push their audience forward or at least focus them or force them to maybe consider a different aspect.
00:51:31
Speaker
you know, way that a song can be versus what I perceived it to be or expected it to be, you know, based on maybe a past thing. Well, think about on the intention bit, and I want to ask you this because it's one of our favorite podcasts, Six and One, Half a Dozen and the Other, overseas has these thought experiments, right? And I think in philosophy, it's really fun to have this thought experiment. One atypical thought experiment has to do with an artist's intention. So here it is.
00:52:01
Speaker
So the artists, I am a radical feminist right I am tired of the patriarchy I'm tired of everything all my decisions all aspects of my life being viewed through a lens that I feel is dominated by others, and
00:52:18
Speaker
It's highly problematic for me. I'm a feminist and that's that I say that that's bullshit now I'm an artist and in order to advance the feminist cause I'm gonna create this art object that is so vile and so detestable and it's treatment of women that the viewer is going to see this as an art object and See it as a vile thing and I'm gonna activate
00:52:44
Speaker
my cause from what I expect to be the reaction. Okay, so now I'm the artist. My intention is to probably you would assume to create art that is going to further the feminist cause or to attack patriarchy. But here, my intention or the way that I've looked to do this, I am creating a vile piece of a misogynistic piece in order to spur others to action.
00:53:10
Speaker
So on the intent question, is that wrong-headed or should an artist do something like that? What's the saying? Do the ends justify the means? It definitely gets towards that. Similar to people needing to be led
00:53:35
Speaker
I think that's inherently what leaders do is they sort of forge new paths and say, here's a different way to think about something. And so perhaps if you have to use misdirection to get folks to think in a different way.
00:53:57
Speaker
I don't know if it... It's a misdirection. If you give them a riddle, and they solve the riddle, did the riddle matter? It's a Zenkoan, right? These type of things are heuristics. People get pissed off. I can get pissed off at you for coming up to me in the park in Eugene and rattling off a Zenkoan and be like, what the fuck's up with that dude, right? But I might have cracked through my understanding. I might have thought about the Koan for half a second, achieved enlightenment, and you've helped me
00:54:26
Speaker
Like no other human being can help another person. Or it was the end result of your enlightenment as a sentient being. And I think that's what I'm getting to. I think that part of what art attempts to do, perhaps, sometimes, maybe not always, is try to, yeah, crack the egg. Say, look over here, focus on this thing, think about this in maybe a way that you didn't
00:54:49
Speaker
think about it before. Or maybe more importantly, have your beliefs of how you think it is or should be confronted. And then have to, why do I hold these beliefs to be true? No, I enjoy that. So we don't forget on the recording, because we are engaged in a philosophical discussion, which
00:55:10
Speaker
Going back to the Greeks, what we're doing right here, I'd imagine as far as the structure of this, not to make it too highfalutin for anybody. But there is a highfalutin question, of course, that comes along with the show. We need to make sure we get it down on record. Peter Bauer, of course, listeners have been talking to Peter Bauer.
00:55:30
Speaker
conversation. Me, Ken Volante, your host. But Peter Bauer, why is there something rather than nothing? You've produced, edited, put together 73, 70 plus of these dang things. Why is there something rather than nothing? Yeah, each answer is individual, isn't it? For me, I think
00:55:55
Speaker
just sort of because it's been willed to be. And I would, I guess in many ways, subscribe to an existential philosophy that generally, you know, I believe my life to be meaningless, of no purpose, with no intention, other than the meaning
00:56:16
Speaker
that I bring to it and that my life is some total collection of choices that were made that led to a certain outcome, which is called the present moment. Yeah. And so for me, there's a real
00:56:35
Speaker
responsibility, I think that comes with why there's something because it's, yeah, from my point of view, it's because it's what's made. I had a really, uh, powerful experience, uh, in my twenties backpacking, uh, probably the first or second time I had taken mushrooms in a substantial amount. Right. Um,
Psychedelic Reflections on Society
00:57:01
Speaker
you know, so I'm actively choosing to re imprint, you know, reassess my imprinting and my conditioning and was just really struck with this sort of epiphany that this is just all made up.
00:57:19
Speaker
100%. People made it. Capitalism, socialism, communism, Christianity, Islam, marriage, monogamy, family. Constructs of some sort, right? This is of no meaning. It was just made by people and it's reinforced by people. And this agreed upon code that we all live in called society, friends, family. But it's just made up. It's just totally made up. And it's reinforced by us each and every step of the way.
00:57:49
Speaker
every day throughout life. And we're sort of all co-creating this thing called existence together. Whether or not we're active players in that or passive players or programmed players, you know, sort of doing the bidding of others. Is there anything wrong with the, I'm really into the show WandaVision right now. I'm thinking of this, but is there any problem with the sheared fiction? Is there a problem?
00:58:15
Speaker
If it's a fiction, is it? Back to fiction, you share it. Is there any inherent. I mean, I I think that is what it is, right? I mean, that's for my metaphor that I use would be that, you know, we're all living in our own reality tunnel and I'm, you know, constructing meaning based on my lived experience in my tunnel and you're in your Ken tunnel. And then when we go to the supermarket, we're there with all the other reality tunnels that agree that this is
00:58:45
Speaker
how I'm supposed to behave when looking at apples. Or my volume, how I'm supposed to sound, or how I'm supposed to look, what color my hat's supposed to be. Whether I should be wearing sunglasses at midnight or whatever. So I think we're creating these things, we're enforcing these things, but when I think why is there something rather than nothing, I think it's because there was an active choice for there to be something.
00:59:11
Speaker
Um, yeah, well you started you can you can yeah, you can passively there's a will to sure you could you could coast through life but you know, I used to be a middle school teacher and I I would say do you do you feel like things keep happening to you? Right, right to you specifically it's always you isn't it specifically everywhere you go It's just it keeps happening to you. Why why do you think? That is
00:59:37
Speaker
what would you what would you guess right you've been living your life you're 12 years old right you tell me how does it go through your filter how does it go through your filter that that that that whole thing yeah absolutely um one of the big things i want to let everybody know uh peter um and
00:59:56
Speaker
I'll say this in general about the the stuff you create is you create a lot of things you work on the show you create music you know you do stuff with video only paint you do a lot of different things but one of the pieces as far as with what you're comfortable with or
01:00:14
Speaker
Like, are there places, uh, you know, for people to find your, your work, or did you just want to talk a little bit more about your work on the podcast or how do people connect with the things, you know, your art things or what you're up to.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, we should, we should put these all on the program notes so I make sure we get them right. But I have two projects that are personal one one's called detour can find it on Bandcamp detour PDP.
01:00:45
Speaker
is the name of that project. That's sort of my first solo stuff that I did on my own. It originally started as a dream journal. Those were all the lyrics. I'd been keeping a dream journal for maybe a year or two and then it was the first time I wasn't playing in bands. And so I had some time to work on a solo thing and so I had been working on music and
01:01:09
Speaker
It was a great way to have some lyrics already written for me, to pull it right out of a dream journal. That project in particular has albums based on different points in my life. I think that first dream album, the first one, there was one called Hotel Rooms. I had changed jobs and was on the road more. And so I think it's a five track.
01:01:34
Speaker
Yeah. Just, you know, stuff that I made late at night in a hotel room in different parts of Oregon. Some lo-fi stuff? Yeah, dancey stuff, electronic stuff. Yeah, yeah, okay. A lot of layers. I did one after that I think called... No, it would have been before that called Paternity... or PL, Paternity Leaf. Recorded that just on an iPad and our piano at home and acoustic guitar. Yeah.
01:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, a couple different projects on that. I have another project on Bandcamp called Blotter Paper, which is a really fun one. It's a great project. Thank you. Yeah, Blotter Paper, check it out on Bandcamp and on SoundCloud too. They have very psychedelic noise, distorted, and then I employ sort of
01:02:28
Speaker
William Burrough's cut-up method where after I record the tracks I completely cut it up and reorganized the entire all the things that the guitars and drums and bass and piano has completely reworked and I found that
01:02:45
Speaker
your brain will fill in the blanks and make it seem like there's a pattern and intention and purpose, which is a really interesting thing to sit with. You know, how many, how many chaotic things do we interact with in our personal and professional lives that are actually just total chaos, but our mind tries to bring form to and make it less, less weird, right into a narrative. Yeah. And so this is just an interesting sound experiment to just get kind of out there. Um, that's blotter paper. Um,
01:03:14
Speaker
I got a band called Blazer. We got a couple things on Bandcamp. We strung it all together once. What's Blazer?
01:03:25
Speaker
psychedelic, doomy, shoegaze, stoner, black metal surf rock. Yeah. Jazzy improv. Yeah. I don't know. It's friends I've been playing with for a bunch of years. It comes out of the soil of Eugene, Oregon. Yeah, it's in the rain and the, I think, the dense pot smoke and the wet friend. It's the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, it's a vibe. I think, you know, particular to Oregon, what I've always appreciated is it's,
01:03:53
Speaker
is right there between LA, San Francisco, and Seattle. So you have all these influences that come together. And this funky little town, Eugene's like the biggest little city or the littlest big city that has all these, yeah, it's an incredible place to be. But the way that music gets synthesized here, I think, draws from a lot of different
01:04:18
Speaker
buckets of work. So yeah, that band, Blazer, is a fun project. We're looking at doing some live video performance this spring, which I'll be excited to share. And then, just finally, the work that I do here in the studio. I made a little Google site. I think it's bit.ly forward slash Warbling Creek Studio. We'll make sure we get that right. Yeah, we'll make sure. We'll make sure. Yeah, just recording bands, producing, mixing,
01:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so happy to have you in my proper studio to do this podcast because it's really a special space and coming up on three years of living here and when my wife and I were looking for our next home. My previous house was this 1920s funky two-story house and the studio was out in the garage, which is in the back, uninsulated, unheeded.
01:05:13
Speaker
It's a different experience. It's actually this picture up here on the wall, this panoramic. So we had space heaters in the winter, and it was so hot in the summertime, we'd be just sweating in there. So when we had kids and it was time to move,
01:05:29
Speaker
So we got to have a studio and super fortunate that this actually this space was converted to and used as a studio without me even knowing that it's really serendipitous and as a great name the Whirling Creek Studios in the
01:05:46
Speaker
The panoramic that Peter was referring to is definitely, I'm looking at it as a great rock posters and lights. And you imagine when you hear a garage rock sound, this is right where it comes out of. This is the soil that it comes out of. This is the concrete that's under your feet. Yeah. In this loud. In that photo. I wanted to mention prior to wrapping up, one of the things you said about the music scene and just my, I just wanted to mention my impression since
01:06:13
Speaker
You know, we've been pretty music focused and we could be doing that concert concert or alternate take episode is I Found now i've been around some music scenes, you know, i've had some great experiences around music, you know in new england So i'd be in boston providence have been around providence scene great scene washington dc washington dc punk big shows
Oregon's Music Scene
01:06:39
Speaker
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chicago, Madison, much smaller. Been up to shows in Seattle, and that's where I've seen shows have been around the scene.
01:06:50
Speaker
and get into Oregon and Portland and for my particular tastes, which for live music, I listen to a ton of music, but live music, as you know, I love, I love metal and I love seeing do metal. I love the community. I love it. And it is an embarrassment of riches or has been my time in this state at almost a decade.
01:07:12
Speaker
the scene, the metal scene. I feel it a blessing for me to have resources to be able to go see music, but that they also tend to be great local bands, reasonably priced, where I get to the point where I could see incredible music that I enjoy deeply, reasonably priced, often.
01:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, and it's that good and I just it's a blessing. It's a blessing music-wise Yeah, totally into for for bands to have Audiences that show up, you know consistently. I think that's not to be underlooked and I and I hope you know more people Move in that direction, you know as things begin to open up, you know Whatever that looks like in the next, you know coming months but to go see a play
01:07:56
Speaker
to go see a live show on a Tuesday night, right? Like you don't have to party every night of the week. You can just go check out a show. You know what I mean? I have a couple of spritzers, light spritzers, folks. Yeah, but I think most of us have watched to the end of Netflix by now, you know? And I know it's like the golden age of television. A lot of good stuff out there. Have you seen this? There's so much stuff.
01:08:19
Speaker
Going back to what we were talking about earlier, it's that sort of the lull of the electronic screen and that Oculus Rift 3D immersive experience versus bumping into someone because you were a little too close in line saying, hey, sorry about that. And they turn around and say, hey, no problem. Sorry, man. It's all good. We'll be on a better footing over time.
01:08:45
Speaker
One of the things in finishing up with Peter, I just want to make a couple comments about the podcast. Again, we mentioned that concert episode. We feel a good strong feeling to tap into a lot of the musical creativity.
01:09:01
Speaker
Have a lot of fun episodes coming up with painters. We've got Randy J. Bird, who's a photographer for Doomd and Stone. We've got Mitra Mitchell, fantastic, fantastic painter. And a lot of new musical guests, Spoonbenders, who actually be on the concert.
01:09:25
Speaker
But, you know, just want to thank all the artists, honestly, I mean, Peter and I are creatives, all the artists that have been on this show, this is really kind of the focus of the show. And while we do it is kind of uplift, you know, a lot of independent, a lot of folks, creating amazing, amazing art out there and trying to get it out into the world, including, you know, some of the
01:09:47
Speaker
some of the music we really enjoy. I also want to say that, and I mentioned this to Peter, but into the audience in bits and pieces, you know, looking at the show and some of the themes in the show around healing and around, you know, kind of joke about it, you know, nothingness or mindfulness or seeing past a lot of the chaos.
01:10:10
Speaker
And a lot of stories of artists tend to be stories of people who've experienced trauma, who are processing trauma, who I know it for myself in creating things. That's a good reason for it. How much of me doing the podcast is me trying to pull myself and others through to the other side of non-pandemic life? I don't know. Psychologically, there might be something to it to create, create, create, and show your lives.
01:10:39
Speaker
I appreciate a lot of the creative efforts you've done, Peter, and open up to a lot of directions of
01:10:45
Speaker
health or baseball and uh magic and and music and um one of the things I appreciate around your work and openness to the things I look to explore with guests is that the show is expansive and intends to be expansive and it's not beholden to anybody besides you or I and that's what it is it's to uplift
01:11:09
Speaker
the folks who were around. And that's kind of our ethos. And I like having that shared ethos with us being in the labor movement and concerned about mutual aid and surviving. How about the mutual concern about surviving, Peter, right? Yeah. Yeah. Bread and roses, right?
01:11:33
Speaker
Thanks, everybody. Hey, great conversation. Warbling Creek Studios, Peter Bauer. And I want to force you into a position where after the end of this show, Peter is going to drop a track or two or five or seven or three or four, some amount of a bit of a musical exploration with the imprint of Peter Bauer, the musical artist. Thank you so much.
01:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. For stepping up more towards the microphone for this episode, Peter Bauer. Yeah, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Ken. And yeah, we'll play some tunes on the way out. I think we'll do probably a lo-fi jam that I recorded in quarantine over Google Drive shared via email and text with some friends. And then we'll probably transition to
01:12:22
Speaker
Probably put one of our newer Blazer bits. We've been having fun. So yeah, we'll try to get two ends, like the lo-fi chill and the very intense, very loud end. So it'll be fun. Awesome. Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening to something rather than nothing. Great pleasure to be able to talk with your editor and producer, Peter Bauer, a wonderful creative working on this show, but also to be talking about the show.
01:12:48
Speaker
a little bit more generally, what we're thinking about. And we're going to try our best to open up avenues for you to communicate with us about maybe things you want to see, guests you want to see, and if you have a hot tip on how to get Taylor Swift onto the podcast, or some of the ones we always want through history, or a seance or a medium through our historical. Finally, my answer to the historical person that I would want to have a conversation with,
01:13:17
Speaker
I for me the philosopher who I find the most idiosyncratic and amazing comes from the most personal incredible story is Ludwig Wittgenstein. I would love to have had a conversation with Wittgenstein because
01:13:34
Speaker
Wittgenstein was a brilliant thinker and philosopher, but he was also a great eccentric and exhibited his genius in patents, creations, architecture, philosophy, and even went into the mountains of Austria to teach kindergarten for three to four years.
01:13:58
Speaker
Kind of weird, kind of strange. I would like to know what made that guy tick on a basic level. So, Wittgenstein. And you know what we're gonna do? Wittgenstein did give an answer to something rather than nothing, Peter. So, we can use it as a launching pad to figure out what Wittgenstein said about it. Any final comments or extended discussion? Something rather than nothing. Peter Bauer at Eugene, Oregon here. Final comments or words of wisdom for us.
01:14:27
Speaker
take us out. Yeah, I think what I would leave us with is maybe my hedonic ethos of if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right. So given the time that we're living in now, I think it's important to have fun and make it your own and create it your own way. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Ken. Have fun.
01:18:35
Speaker
you
01:26:20
Speaker
Oh
01:28:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:59
Speaker
you
01:29:53
Speaker
the the the
01:31:12
Speaker
so