The Null Device Blog

I know this tour was pretty short, compared to some of the long worldwide hauls many bands go on.  Our tour-mates, TDC had two more dates and another few thousand miles to go when we headed back for the homeland.

Still, for me, this was a pretty Big Deal.  It’s the culmination of years of work, numerous hours of self-doubt, musical re-evaluation, crazy changes at inopportune moments, technical twiddling, and the like.  It’s something I’ve wanted to do for, well, my whole life, but for one reason or another have never quite gotten to, until now.

There are some people I couldn’t’ve done this without.  Not in a million years.

Jill Sheridan – I’ve been told, and I’ve often said myself, that bringing Jill into the band was one of the smartest moves I’ve made.  The girl can sing, she’s enthusiastic about the music, she manages to take all the crazy changes I make with grace and aplomb, she handles all the exceptionally nerdy tech stuff I set up, she’s funnier than hell, she’s easygoing, always great to talk to,  and has always, always been a good friend to me.  She’s probably the closest thing I’ve got to a sister.  I always feel like I’m criminally underutilizing her skills onstage, and I think I need to do something about that.  We work great together.   And I think I simply could not do this whole “band” thing without her.

Elizabeth Scheef – she’s awesome.  She’s hardcore.  She knows everybody.  She’s calm, cool, and collected under pressure (like, say, driving through 4th-of-july Traffic in the DC metro area).  Her packing skills are legendary.  She’s clever, funny, patient beyond any reasonable expectation, can drive like a formula1 racer, friendly, outgoing, and damn professional.  AND she did this entire tour while 3 months pregnant, with nary a complaint.  She’d earned the right to sit out a drive, or to pass on load-in, or to lobby for more comfortable quarters, but never once did she.   I’ve never met anyone with such resolve.  She’s going to be a fantastic mom, too.

Raya Wolfsun – Adding Raya to the lineup at pretty much the last minute was a risk.  We had two whopping days to practice, she’d never done anything resembling this before.  I basically threw her into the deep end and said “swim!”  And swim she did.  The crowd loved her, she’s got a capital-V Voice, great stage presence, and she’s deeply entertaining and sweet.  So, as she would say, it was full of win.

Dan Clark – the dude nudged me, poked me, and eventually shoved me into committing to this.  My own self-doubt had kept me from trying it.  Dan finally was the guy who said “dude, you MUST DO THIS.”  So I did.  And it was great.  And I can’t thank him enough.  He’s managing his own band – which was excellent every single night – and doing a fine job of keeping me informed about what’s happening when, where, and putting me in contact with all the people I need to contact.  A great, hairy guy with talent to spare and a level of professionalism I can’t even touch.

Thanks to all these people for making this tour happen, and for making it great.

.com maven-turned-internet-culture-wonk Derek Sivers has recently posted a blog entry about how everyone really needs to relax and remember that when you’re angry at something on a computer there’s a real person on the other end.

Okay, that’s all well-and-good, but he goes on to use some frankly asinine examples.

The first is about a woman who runs a mail-order company, who got a vitriolic email to customer service that made her cry.   This is one of those things that makes me wonder if said person is really suited for the kind of job that requires dealing with customers.  Sivers uses this as an example of how people overreact on the internet, sending angry emails whose bloviating far outclasses the infraction.  I think Sivers needs to get out more.  He’s been an internet gazillionaire for a decade now, so I suppose he doesn’t have to mingle with us peons anymore, but anyone who’s spent time in an airport has probably seen some sweaty, balding businessman from Schaumburg ranting and raving and berating some poor 19-year-old ticketing clerk at the gate because his plane is snowed in in Rochester.  Or perhaps, since it’s been so long since Sivers has worked in traditional customer service, he’s forgotten about the frankly bizarre  angry letters addressed to the “president of the company” or the abusive phone calls demanding to talk to a manager over some perceived slight, like not allowing a customer to pay their bill 5 months late.  The internet may make it easier to send an angry screed to customer service, but it is hardly the only method, and by no means is the angry tirade a new web-2.0 phenomenon.

I also ask…geez, how long have you been on the net now, Derek?  I mean, even when I got started, back in the pre-boom early 90’s, the flame war, the angry message, the name-calling, the invocation of Godwin’s law…these were well-known things.  The third email I ever read was aimed at someone on a Star Trek mailing list I had just subscribed to – “Brent Spiner is not [expletive] German, you [expletive] [expletive] [obscene gerund].”  It became clear very quickly that incivility was sort of the stock-in-trade of internet communication, and it was to be taken with a grain of salt.  This is not to say that this is a good thing, per se, but…geez, it’s 2010, we should all be aware that this is just the way things are and this touchy-feely “remember there are real people out there!” thing that Sivers is advocating seems sort of naïve.  If you can’t handle a flame war, perhaps the internet is not the best place for you to be hanging out.  All the Derek Siverseses in the world are going to have a hard time changing the behavior of a few million people,  so until they do, it’s either grow a thick skin or unplug the laptop.

His other example (he only had two, really.  Statistical analysis, this is not) was of a friend who was trying internet dating, but only lukewarmly, and was deleting a lot of messages from “losers” without reading them.  Sivers saw this as callous and unfeeling, since these guys had clearly spent a lot of time crafting messages to her, hoping to win her attention and her heart.  Um, dude?  Internet dating?  That’s your example?  Yeah, it’s a step up from Craigslist’s “no strings” section, but still, you can’t be so naïve to think that every one of those guys read her profile and decided she was Their One True Soulmate and their fragile self-esteem is riding on her response.  He also can’t believe that she was the only one they sent messages to.  The whole point of an internet dating site is to provide a larger pool of potentials, and get the ball rolling by offering a method of safe, reasonably anonymous contact.  I’m guessing most of these guys have gotten ignored before, and have done their share of the ignoring as well.  And…hell, even in the real dating world, “uh, yeah, I’ll call you!” is the way of the world.  Nobody walks into a bar and politely informs every guy nearby on the dancefloor “gosh, you seem like a nice guy, but I’m really not interested in you” or agrees to go on a test date because a guy clearly put in enough effort to come by and say hello.

I’m not even trying to sound cynical.  I’m not saying civility and politeness are dead.  I’m quite fond of them, myself.  But the cold hard fact of the matter is that in a lot of situations, people act uncivilly, or it’s just not appropriate to do so, and those of us on the receiving end – especially those of us who create subjectively-perceived things open to criticism like art and music – simply cannot expect to be glad-handled by every internet user, customer, consumer, listener or patron in every situation.  It’d be great if everyone in the world were unflinchingly polite and measured in their responses, but never in human history has it ever actually happened, so why Derek Sivers thinks imploring people to “remember that there’s a real person on the other end” of the computer is going to change a few thousand years of social conventions.

Interesting year.

We played some shows.  We played some really, really fun shows.  The band is working together pretty damn well these days, and I’m really pleased with that.

We took a few breaks for various reasons.  Chuck got married.  Elizabeth got married.  I tried desperately to finish up “Recursions” – and in fact, did.

That was the other big deal.  We released Recursions, which on the surface seems like “just another remix album” but it’s one where we decided to kind of dive into the wide world of “new media” – fully electronic distribution, multiple formats, etc etc.  Rather DIY, but it’s the first album we’ve ever had that recouped its production costs in a matter of weeks.

Also worked with a large number of very talented people this year.   Some of the usual co-conspirators were involved for remixes and randombess – Mr. Shwadchuck,  Dan “Shred, Dan, Shred!” Clark,  Matt Fanale, and some new ones – Ryan from Stripmall Architecture, Shawn and I-Li from Bloodwire, and the cats from Claire Voyant.  I also finally managed to wrangle the talented Raya Merenkov into the studio to record things in a Arabic and classical Greek (because she happens to speak those languages).  I’m really excited that we’ve gotten to work with these people.

Things continue on our next release.  We’ve got about 6 tracks in the can, 3 more nearly done, and plenty of ideas.  We’ve already booked a few shows for 2010, and we’re trying to put together a tour for mid-year.

It’s been a good year.  2010 looks pretty excellent already.

Happy new year from Null Device.

Matt made an interesting blog post today, entitled “Why I Do It (Short Version)” about why he makes music.

I’ve got an even shorter version.

“Why I Do It (Shorter Version)”

Because I can’t not do it.