Rattlebrained

In preparation for the “Night of the museums”, a yearly event when many European museums stay open on a specific Saturday evening until the early hours of dawn, I spent last Friday afternoon at the Musée d'Ethnologie de Neuchâtel with friends Bill, Thomas & Jacques preparing a make your own "La Sonorie" instrument workshop that was to take place the following day.
For this event the different museums rival in offering entertainment of all kinds, in our case we where sharing a space with a “make your own electronic instrument” workshop organized by the diy makaway group from Zurich.

Three instruments were to be proposed: Bongoboites, Pailleasax (see picture) & Tonatems

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Next Friday Dave & I will be playing at the Red Turtle Club here in town. It’s a bar that recently reopened and that actually has a real stage, not very deep but quite wide, that has already seen a good amount of musicians in the first three/four months the place has been opened. We stopped by a couple of days ago to confirm the gig, I had sent a picture for the flyer but had not heard from the organizer.

I asked about the bar’s name since “Turtle” is pretty hard for french speakers to pronounce and was wondering if there was a story behind it and sure enough…

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Almost summer weather today so I walked north west, up and out of town, just over the crest were one can look over to France’s Franch-Compté region. I like it better than the view of the Alps that you see if you go up the opposite way. Less dramatic, an invitation to walk with your mind across the hills.

On the way up I saw a small white butterfly, probably the first Ive seen up here since spring comes a month later than down in the Plain (which is what they call the central area of Switzerland that is not the Alps or the Jura). Nice to get some air after three days of facing the dust that had accumulated in my studio over the winter.

Tuesday I practiced with Dave, the two of us will be playing locally…

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Piezo mic, volume pot, guitar output jack, a bit of work and presto: electric washboard!

But why? you may ask. Because… why not? For fun? A spark of the old punk spirit? Perhaps. Last fall, friend Blaise gave me a piezo mic that he had soldered via some wire to an output jack. A fun thing to have around since you can stick it on to whatever you what with a piece of tape and see what sounds you can make. And it was to put on my washboard but till now, the nagging question: then…

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Last week I took a walk above the village my folks live in, with Elstir – their Shetland sheep dog – and made a couple of quick sketches. The one here on the right is of the Baulmine, a stream that has its source about 3/4 of the way up the mountain.

It has been highly canalized over the years because of the amount of water that comes down with the spring thaw as well as during big storms. The size of the rocks the water can carry during those moments is quite impressive, but its a bit late in the season for that now. I’ve drawn it off and on now for nearly 30 years watching the stream bed and its environment changing with time, tamed by man; or at least it seems…

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When Bone Dry Music received a whole new batch of whole sun-bleached ox rib bones== a couple of weeks ago I decided to completely ignored the fact that monetary resources are low and order a few, after all a choice of good rhythm bones will get you through hard times a lot better than uh, well, many other things I’m sure…

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