Deleted Scenes is all over SXSW.

Every March, dozens of D.C. artists join thousands of musicians from around the world at Austin, Texas’ massive South by Southwest Festival—a place where hopes are live-tweeted and dreams are expensively publicized. Is this the year the D.C. delegation makes its mark? There will be plenty of individual artists and bands making the Austin trek, but here are some of the larger D.C. happenings—official and unofficial—at South by Southwest, including label showcases, a venue on wheels, and a brand new Bluebrain commission.

DC Does TX, Lovejoy’s, March 14
Since 2008, this annual unofficial showcase has presented a day-long, well-curated lineup highlighting the District’s more polished indie rockers. This year, things are a bit scuzzier: The organizers—bloggers Valerie Paschall, Dan Corbin, and Steve Rogovin—teamed up with independent booker Sasha Lord, who specializes in hip-as-fuck garage rock.

The Lineup: Hume, Deleted Scenes, Soccer Team, Edie Sedgwick, and Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds, with more TBA. DJ Baby Alcatraz will DJ.

Texas Chili Pepper Scoville Index: 500,000

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Sweet Tea Pumpkin Pie, Casa Chapala, March 14-17
Hyper-enthusiastic musician and blogger Dave Mann started a hyper-inclusive local rock festival last year. Now he’s expanding to Austin and, characteristically, is going large. His unofficial Sweet Tea Pumpkin Pie showcase spans four days and two stages, with a quarter devoted to D.C. artists.

The Lineup: Some familiar local indie-rock names, like Deleted Scenes and Pree, and plenty of kinda-obscure ones. Headlining the noisy fourth night is Texas nu-gazers Ringo Deathstarr.

TCPSI: 400,000

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Slip Productions and Lovitt Records Showcase, Club 1808, March 15

The longtime Arlington label teams with an Austin promoter for a bill of aggressive and brainy bands.

The Lineup: Sleepytime Trio, Redgrave, Regents, Edie Sedwick, Soccer Team, Beast of No Nation and More

TCPSI: 400,000

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Listen Local First Mobile Music Venue

The local music boosters are taking on South by Southwest hobo style. I wrote about this yesterday.

TCPSI: 450,000

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The Violet Crown, South by Southwest Festival area
South by Southwest commissioned local experimental-pop duo Bluebrain to compose another free, location-aware musical app. The Violet Crown doesn’t cover as big a geographic area as Bluebrain’s earlier National Mall and Central Park apps, which is actually a plus: This app is small enough to download on a 3G network. The duo is also performing with Frank Warren, the artist behind the project “Post Secret,” on March 11 at the Austin Convention Center.

TCPSI: 450,000

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Fuck SXSW, Montserrat House, Washington, D.C., April 6-7
Travis “Beeronimo” Jackson runs local garage-punk label Windian Records, but instead of flying his roster out to Austin each year—where the booze is abundant but the career benefits are dubious—he schedules some anti-programming in D.C. For musical quantity, you can’t beat South by Southwest, but the always rowdy Windian might have it beat on volume.

The Lineup: ’70s punks The Penetrators, plus The Bizarros, Paint Fumes, Thee Lolitas, Foul Swoops, Spider Fever, The Shirks, and more.

TCPSI: 16,000,000

Y U NO PAY GUARANTEE?

For the last few weeks, Arts Desk contributor Justin Moyer and his band, D.C. modern rock quartet Edie Sedgwick, were touring Europe. Here is his final dispatch.

Dear corrado90,

I write to express disappointment that you fucked me out of a 450 euro guarantee for a show at the club "Lo-Fi" in Milan on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011. Though I could express these concerns to you at your mobile number, I prefer the public forum that is the Washington City Paper’s Arts Desk.

Corrado90, I did not need to play a show at the club “Lo-Fi” in Milan on Oct. 26. This was the last show of my European tour. It would not have been difficult for me to simply fly home one day early instead of reporting to your deserted venue, which is located next to lonesome train tracks (but not a train station) about as close to downtown Milan as this secondhand building materials store in Hyattsville, Md., is to Washington, DC. I would have been happy to play a small club in the city's center for, say, 250 euro, but you thought that a Wednesday night show in a venue that holds well over 300 people for a band who can (sometimes) expect to draw 50 was a good idea; that the venue’s remote location was not a problem; that the show’s confluence with a number of high-stakes soccer matches was not an issue; that people might come to see the local band, which, while staffed with very nice guys, sounds like Bush; and that you could expect to break even, if not turn a profit, from your half-baked plan. Further, you thought that, when fewer than five people came to the show, you would somehow revise my guarantee and not expect me to storm out of the building without playing.

Corrado90, this is weak tea.

Still, in a sense, corrado90, you have hit the jackpot. Though you have publicly humiliated me—forcing me to end a not-entirely-unsuccessful European tour on a sour note—you will suffer no consequences. I am not a large, angry man ready to settle any argument with fisticuffs. I am not a powerful man who can, with a word, summon my powerful booking agency to ruin your reputation as a Milanese concert promoter. I am not a litigious man who can page an Italian barrister to appeal to an Italian court for my missing 450 euro.

Forsooth, corrado90, I am a punk rocker. Though I can summon the ire of 405 Twitter followers and tens of faithful readers of Washington City Paper’s Arts Desk to my cause, I am powerless in the face of your nonexistent instincts as a marketer of entertainment and your refusal to pay me money that you owe me.

Corrado90, if you are not a man of honor, that is not my affair. I do not make it my business to investigate the ethics of random Milanese who sport unfashionable glasses, questionable haircuts and uncreative email addresses. But you have invited me to do business, and I must strenuously, if nonviolently, object to the fashion in which you have drug my good if not unimpeachable name through the stinking mud in which you and others of your cursed kind so ignominiously dwell.

In sum: Corrado90, you owe me an apology and 450 euro. Lucky for you, I accept Paypal.

Farewell, corrado90. I will now board a flight to America to lick my wounds, count my losses, and attempt to convince a legacy label which rarely releases records by active bands to press 1,000 copies of my latest LP which, if ever released, will undoubtedly sell fewer copies than some record released in the early-to-mid 1980s by a band that played less than 50 shows.

The Lord be with you.

END OF BLOG

Y U STAWP US AT BAWDER?

We drive more than six hours from Vienna to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia and the only stop on our tour outside the European Union. Booking Agent A., who’s planned this part of the trip, warns me that Croatian border police may prevent us from entering their country without an “auto carnet”—a list of our gear that, somehow, proves we aren’t going to sell it in Croatia. According to legend, this document costs about 200 euros and must be secured from a labyrinthine, Soviet-ish bureaucracy in either Slovenia, which borders Croatia; in Prague, where Booking Agent A. is based; in Croatia itself, leading me to wonder how I can secure a document in a country if I can’t enter the country without the document; or on “the Internet” by mysterious means. Meanwhile, Driver D., a veteran of Croatian border crossings, does not think we will need the document since we have secured an invitation letter from Promoter M. in Zagreb.

At the Croatian border, Border Patrol Agent XXX., who looks more than a little like Jean Reno in The Professional, immediately asks for the auto carnet. I show him the invitation letter from Promoter M. “I think it is not enough,” he says, unwittingly providing the title of my future memoir.

ASIDE
DEALING WITH UNFRIENDLY BORDER PATROL AGENTS: ONE APPROACH

There is much debate in the punk rock community over how to address unfriendly border patrol agents. Some say it is best to speak only when spoken to, offering information about one’s destination and luggage only in answer to direct questions [(Q: “Are you in a band?” A: (Frown.) Sometimes. (Frown.)]. Others attempt to overwhelm officers with sheer cluelessness. (“Is this the border?”)

I am 34 and have been negotiating with unfriendly border patrol agents since 1994, when I was detained by American agents at the Canadian border because, for reasons beyond the scope of this blog post, my party possessed a glass bowl which could possibly, but not probably, be used for smoking marijuana. I have successfully stared down officers in Canada, the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Japan. My method: smother officers with information, preferably using the following phrases:

“We are a small band, and a poor one.”
“That drug paraphernalia is not mine.”
“Yes, these girls are in the band.”
“My mother gave me this guitar. She was Croatian/Canadian/Japanese/etc.”
“The name of our band is ‘OK GO.’”
“We would never sell any guitars in Zagreb/Vancouver/Tokyo/etc.”
“We play rock and roll.”
“Why are the Greeks so lazy?” (Note: For use in Northern Europe only.)
“We sound like Oasis/The Decemberists/Dave Matthews/Ted Leo/etc.”
“I am not a Jew.” [Note: Especially effective in Eastern Europe.]
“Yes, the black girl is the singer.”
“We don’t have any CDs for sale.”
“We have CDs. Do you want one?”
“I play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix.”
“The Vietnamese girl plays bass.”
“NATO is good.” [Note: Do not use in Serbia.]
“Do you like President Obama?”
“Will 500 dollars/euro solve this problem?”

END OF ASIDE

In the end, Agent XXX lets us through. I ask him where I can get on auto carnet in the future. “I don’t know,” he says. “On the Internet?”

The show in Zagreb is good—if not the best show of the tour, at least the most pleasant surprise. We make 300 euro and sell about 50 euro in merchandise. After the show, Bassist K. hatches a plan to play roulette in a Croatian casino that includes a credit card cash advance. The less said about this, the better.

One of the hallmarks of Capital Fringe, however unpleasant, is the time spent on those sweltering nights on New York Avenue NW underneath the festival's Baldacchino Gypsy Tent, trying to drink away the thick, punishing heat. And sometimes, the booze isn't enough, but a band playing in the next room might ease the swampy brutality of a D.C. summer.

Well, now it's cold, perhaps mild. Still, not warm enough to sit outside for extended periods of time. This year's edition of the Fall Fringe festival is adding a music slate for that downtime when you just want to drink before heading to your weirdo play. The five two-set shows scheduled for weekends in The Shop at Fort Fringe at 607 New York Avenue NW include some Fringe-worthy acts.

Leading the Fringe concerts is Edie Sedgwick, Washington City Paper contributor Justin Moyer's group, making their first domestic appearance after spending October playing Europe. Also in the lineups are brash post-punkers Imperial China, worldly experimenters Les Rhinocéros, and The El Reys, the latest band featuring guitarist Anthony Pirog (recently seen in ex-Smashing Pumpkin Jimmy Chamberlin's new group Skysaw.) But if any act is most Fringe-appropriate, it might be Fivewordslong, a sci-fi hip-hop duo who rhyme about an impending robot uprising.

Fall Fringe Music Schedule:

Friday, Nov. 4, 10 p.m.:

• The Cheniers
• Edie Sedgwick

Saturday, Nov. 5, 9:45 p.m.:

• Imperial China
• Weekends

Friday, Nov. 11, 10 p.m.:

• The El Reys
• Les Rhinocéros

Saturday, Nov. 12, 10 p.m.:

• Raindeer
• Loose Lips

Saturday, Nov. 19, 9 p.m.:

• The Whole Damme Delegation
• Fivewordslong

All shows $8 advance, $10 at door. Click here for tickets.

The drive from Piest’any to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is less than one hour. We kill time in Piest’any at two different bowling alleys. At the first, I manage to break 100. During a second game at a second bowling alley, I sleep in the car.

The venue in Bratislava is “Sub Club.” Sub Club is aptly named; it seems to be the dungeon, or at least the former basement, of Bratislava’s most famous castle. Promoter K., a disciple of an ideology I'll call "Punk Isn’t What It Used To Be And, Even If You’re OK With That, I’m Fucking Pissed," has been booking shows for “over 25 years” and welcomes us passive-aggressively. What follows is a very thinly fictionalized version of our initial conversation:

Me: Thanks for the show.
K: I think no one will come.
Me: Oh.
K: Do you want some muffins? They’re vegan.
Me: Sure.
K: I am so happy that you have been able to come to play!
Me: We really appreciate the show.
K: Too bad it will be shit. Everything sucks these days.
Me: …
K: Do you want some vegan apple strudel?
Me: Sure. [Chewing.] This place is cool. It used to be connected to the castle?
K.: No. This castle is shit. There is a better castle in a different part of town.
Me: Oh.

Promoter K. is right—with no local band on the bill, only nine people come to the show in the freezing pseudo-basement of the famous castle in the country my band has never played in before yesterday. Still, he pays us 200 euros, and we sell about 50 euros worth of merchandise.

The next day, we visit the "better castle"—or, more accurately, the ruins—recommended by Promoter K. Devin Castle is set amid lush, green hills on a misty hillside overlooking a river. I think of the scene in the Led Zeppelin movie The Song Remains the Same where Jimmy Page (or was it Robert Plant?) rides a horse around the English moors and saves a damsel in distress.

It’s unbelievable what rock bands got away with in the 1970s. Can you imagine if Britney Spears made a movie where she rode a horse around a medieval countryside? On the other hand, I guess Britney Spears made Crossroads. But on the other hand, Crossroads was an underrated film with a compelling plot directed by Tamra Davis. But on the other hand, there were no swordfights in Crossroads, or damsels in distress—unless you count Britney herself.

This one's for Hans Castorp.

Boss J. drives us to the train station in Brno to meet Driver D., who will rejoin us for the rest of the trip. I pay Boss J. the rest of the money I owe him—about 16,000 Czech crowns, or 650 euro. I’m left with 1000 euro.

This is a crucial moment. The money we will make in the next five days is ours. From now on, every crown or euro or zloty or kuna that doesn’t go to daily expenses—feeding the band, fueling the van—will go to paying our tour’s overhead expenses: $3,700 plane tickets, $800 to our label for records, and an additional $900 for T-shirts. In other words, in the next five days, I have to quadruple the amount of money in my pocket to break even. In a world where neutrinos travel faster than light speed, this isn’t technically impossible, but neither were Napoleon and Hitler’s invasions of Russia.

We drive from Brno to Piest'any (PEE-ES-SCHTAN-EEE), Slovakia. I have never been to Slovakia before and know little about it. I’m reduced to band metaphors: like John Lennon and Paul McCartney or Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, the Czech Republic and Slovakia used to be partners, but then they broke up. Driver D. doesn’t have much to add to this analysis. In Slovakia, “the girls are nicer,” he says.

Piest'any tuns out to be a small spa town with hot springs on the Vah River once visited by Beethoven. The venue, “Kursalon,” is a bar in a beautiful cultural center in the middle of a park that’s also used for wedding receptions—in other words, the nicest place we’ve been so far and the nicest place we’ll be for a long time. It looks like the sanitarium in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, but without Hans Castorp, his dying cousin, or his French lover.

If only TB wards were known for their sound. When we arrive, the first band, The Wids, has already set up. I tell the sound man that this is okay—we don’t need a sound check. This proves sonically catastrophic in the usual ways: feedback, inaudible bass, broken microphones, etc. The Wids sound like Bush, and, at least tonight, we probably do, too. After the show, a guy offers me acid—a first. (Well, maybe I was offered acid at Lollapalooza 1993.) I’m so surprised by this vintage drug offer that I don't immediately turn it down. (Q: “Do you want a nuclear submarine?” A: “I’m not sure—how fast does it go?”)

We make 250 euro and sell about 50 euro worth of merchandise. The guy with the acid buys most of it.

But would He sleep in a van?

We drive a little more than two hours to Brno (BURN-OH). We arrive early—always a problem. Some members of our traveling party want to sleep; others want to eat something vegan; others want to eat something not vegan; some want WiFi; some want to go to the music store; some are indifferent. Somehow, we kill two hours, then go to the club.

The venue is “Mjuz”—a club in the basement of what seems like a nice hotel. We are, unexpectedly, playing with another American group: Band O. from Portland, Ore. Like Band G., who we played with in Leipzig, Band O. embraces a neo-hippie aesthetic, and its members sport long or longish hair and laid-back attitudes. I consider adopting these styles myself. We are paid a bit more than 5000 Czech crowns, or 200 euros, and sell about 2000 crowns worth of merchandise.

A little after 1 a.m., we arrive at the promoter’s flat, where we will sleep. The apartment is nice, but about the size of a Toyota Matrix, and the prospect of sleeping with four other people in such close quarters triggers memories of the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Premature Burial." I decide to sleep in the van.

Sleeping in a van—if one is not chronically homeless, but a rock musician of means who does so only once or twice per year to maintain his credibility—is not as bleak as it sounds. The van is quiet and womblike, or at least quieter and more womblike than, say, a promoter's tiny apartment. If one's bandmates snore after a night of heavy drinking, one won’t hear them. If one's bandmates rise early for a breakfast one doesn't want to eat, one won’t hear it. And, since bands rarely motivate before noon, one will have a room of one's own for eight to 10 hours. If the dull glow of a nearby streetlight allows, one can read want to read an overlong memoir about life in Poland by an Australian, or William T. Vollmann’s The Ice Shirt. Have to pee? If one is a boy, there’s undoubtedly an empty water bottle on the floor of the car somewhere. (Girls are probably out of luck.)

The only prima facie, gender-neutral downside to sleeping in the van is heat in the summer and, in the case of Brno in October, cold. Around 3 or 4 a.m., the temperature drops around or below zero degrees centigrade. Even if one is wearing a white suit, a flight suit (for reasons beyond the scope of this blog post), a sweater, and a knit hat, one finds a chill in one's bones around the witching hour. But don’t fret; around 8 or 9 a.m., the sun will rise, and the interior of the car will slowly warm up again.

Just as The Lion King said, this is the circle of life.

Novy Jicin: While peeing, aim at the soccer ball.

We arrive in Novy Jicin (NO-VEE NEE-SIN)—a small city in the far east of the Czech Republic that looks like Annapolis, but without cadets or water—at dusk. The venue is called “Galerka.” We are served delicious vegan soup by a handsome young man with the left side of his head shaved, like Jason Newsted in “Enter Sandman”-era Metallica. We ask for more soup, but are turned down—some must be left for the opening band, Schwarzprior. Schwarzprior, which includes a keyboardist/laptopist with a shaved head, handlebar moustache, and a huge Western belt buckle and cowboy boots in gothic Western style a la Ministry's Al Jourgensen, plays techno while projecting animations of Darth Vader fighting Batman.

Not bad.

After the show, we get paid 200 euros and sell about 100 euros worth of merchandise. Some people think our T-shirts are free and don’t pay for them. Language barriers contribute to this misunderstanding, as does my controversial T-shirt policy: Because our shirts are a random variety of designs and colors, I prefer to dump them on the floor of the venue, no matter how filthy, and let any interested customers sort out sizes for themselves. I resolve to revise this policy in the future.

The promoter puts us up in a hotel maligned by Boss J. as "Communist-style." However, the Hotel Praha is one of the nicest places we have slept on tour. Though the hotel's meandering hallways and brutalist furniture does give the impression that the building used to be a ministry where people came to unsuccessfully petition for drivers licenses or extra potato rations, the beds are comfy and the showers are warm. And, mercifully, there are no TVs in the rooms.

After dropping off our bags, Bassist K. and I leave the hotel around midnight in search of a casino that offers both live roulette and Texas hold ‘em. Though, according to Boss J., Novy Jicin is home to only 32,000 people, we find three 24-hour casinos in our hour-long sojourn. One casino says it has Texas hold 'em, but does not; two others have only video roulette, which Bassist K. contemplates playing, but decides not to after realizing that she cannot understand the Czech instructions. The three casinos do seem friendly, intimate places to hang out—smoky and beery, like The Raven in Mt. Pleasant circa 1991.

After not gambling, Bassist K. and I decide to go back to the hotel and quickly get lost. One cobblestone street looks like another; the city's picturesque homes and unmarked streets begin to look alike; the Carpathian Mountains disappear into the night; the bus station, which sits next to a supermarket at the bottom of Novy Jicin's gentle slope, seems a useful landmark until we begin to wonder whether those lights in the distance are actually the bus station. If vampires hunted on these streets (Don't they? Those mountains are the Carpathians!), we would be prime targets.

Unfortunately, we find our hotel before getting lost stops becoming inconvenient and starts becoming an adventure. I watch an episode of The Walking Dead and fall asleep.

Two Polish guys.

Boss J., our driver for the next three days as Driver D. gets some rest, pilots our Ford Transit six hours through rain on country roads from Hradec Kralove in the Czech Republic to Krakow, Poland. We pass four car accidents, then stop counting. We also pass Auschwitz, and a huge poster of Chopin. The Polish countryside reminds me of Pennsylvania. Krakow's picturesque cobblestone streets and beautiful, medieval-ish architecture do not. It's terrible that I know more about Rem Koolhaus (please excuse Wikipedia link) than about the entire pre-postmodern history of architecture. Finally, we arrive at the venue: “Klub Re.”

It’s easy to understate the importance of playing in Poland in these breezy, sarcastic and/or absurd blog posts that I write for the Washington City Paper’s Arts Desk. At the risk of alienating millions of faithful readers who chuckle at my every witticism, I feel compelled to say that traveling to Poland for the first time, let alone playing a concert there, is a crucial personal milestone that is explicitly unfunny and, surprisingly, emotional. My maternal grandparents were Polish; I’m half-Polish; unless my mother or Aunt J. is reading this and is willing to correct the record, I’m pretty sure that I’m the first member of my family to return to Poland since 1918, when my grandmother left after her mother died of the Spanish flu; my grandfather was a Polish Jew, which probably means at least a few of my relatives were welcomed at Auschwitz and eliminated in the Holocaust, a.k.a. the Shoah, a.k.a. what Shimon Peres’ biography of David Ben-Gurion recently reminded me was the almost total destruction of European Jewry.

So, it’s kind of a thing for me to be here, but not many Poles agree. Though people in Krakow seem to like our band and are generally familiar with music from Washington, D.C., there are only 10 of them. We are paid 800 Polish zlotys, or about 200 euro, and sell one record. I take a picture of the promoter, who looks like me, or at least looks like another bald guy with a prominent nose.

In the morning, I walk to St. Mary’s Basilica with Singer C. We pay eight zlotys, or about two euros, each to enter and look at some medieval-ish Christian stuff. We don't understand what most of it is. Since St. Mary's has separate entrances for "worshippers" and "visitors," I'm not even sure how to light a candle. At the souvenir shop across the square from the basilica, I spend 80 zlotys, or about 20 euro, on some Catholic-ish medals for the Polish members of my family.

On the way out of town, Drummer J. clamors for Polish sausages, a.k.a. kielbasa. Boss J. says that there is no such thing as Polish sausages, and that kielbasa is actually Czech. At first, I think he's just kidding. My great aunt, whose first language was Polish though she was born in Riverside, N.J., cooked kielbasa for more than 75 years. But he is so insistent that I wonder whether I am the product of some culturally bankrupt, Americanized Polish diaspora. Then, a few hours after we cross the border and return to the Czech Republic, I do a Google search and confirm that he was definitely kidding.

Guitars prefer MOTUs.

I wander Prague for two hours in search of a cowbell to replace the one I left in Bielefeld. I find one that is as bigger than my head for about 1500 Czech crowns, or 60 euros, or $80. The cowbell is enshrined in a glass case in the music store. I decide not to buy the cowbell and buy some new, thinner guitar picks instead. Then, I eat a pizza and finish Shimon Peres’s book about David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion dies in the end.

We drive from Prague to Hradec Kralove. (“HUH-RAH-DECK CRA-LO-VAH,” I think.) The venue is called “Zelenej Zakal,” or “The Green Dragon,” or “The Green Tiger,” or maybe just “The Green Sub-Basement That Holds 35 People.” We play a great show in a tiny space, make about 5,000 Czech crows, or 200 euros, and sell about 2,000 Czech crowns, or 100 euros, of merchandise. After the show, the owner of the club delivers a dangerous number of vodka shots to Singer C., who starts a singalong with the entire bar. I retreat to a back room to read an expatriate’s overlong memoir of a life in Poland.

After the show, we bid goodbye to Driver D. Driver D. does not want to go to Poland, where we are headed tomorrow, and will be replaced by Boss J. for a few days. Then, we sleep at Promoter M.’s flat, where Promoter M. has set-up an admirable home studio.

ASIDE: TECHNICAL DISCUSSION OF PROMOTER M.’S STUDIO GEAR WITH EDITH WHARTON AND JANE AUSTEN-INSPIRED METAPHORS

Promoter J. is running ProTools 9 on what looks like a late-model Mac G5 desktop. (Language barrier prevents spirited discussion of specs.) Since, in America, I run ProTools 7 on a 2005 iMac, my studio is like a rowboat compared this Czech’s Starship Enterprise. However, we deploy the same audio monitors—KRK “Rocket” 8s—though I believe that the promoter’s KRK’s are of a more recent vintage, since my KRK’s are not “rockets.” The promoter also has two video screens, allowing for “split-screen” mixing – mix window on the left, edit window on the right. Since I enjoy only a single video monitor, I seethe with envy.

I interrogate Promoter M. about ProTools 9. Is it really better than ProTools 8, which I have purchased, but am afraid to install, as installation of said upgrade may limit my use of certain compression and reverb plug-ins of which I have grown fond? The promoter will only admit that he is “still searching his way” in ProTools 9. (Language barrier prevents spirited discussion of plug-ins.) However, he points out that ProTools 9 must be better than previous versions because it doesn’t require purchase of the much-loathed Digi002 or Digi003 audio interfaces, whose pre-amps sound like Jurassic mud. He says that he would like to buy a MOTU 24 I/O instead, and ProTools 9 will enable him to do so.

I scoff at this observation. Of course, everyone would prefer a MOTU 24 I/O to a Digi 002—just as anyone would prefer a Thai massage to 40 lashes! Doesn’t he know that I hate my Digi as much as the next fellow, and have little patience with my Behringer ADA8000 audio extension? Can’t he see that everytime I plug a mic into my Behringer, I am as humiliated as Newland Archer in Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence,” who, though he has married delicate May Welland, realizes that all of fin de siecle New York society knows he loves the disgraced Countess Olenska? Of course I would rather have access to a MOTU, the Fitzwilliam Darcy of audio interfaces! Who wouldn’t? If I am stuck with my Digi, the George Wickham of audio interfaces, can I be blamed? Maybe I just don’t have $1,500—37,500 Czech crowns—to spend on Darcy, goddammit!

END OF ASIDE
END OF BLOG POST