• My album, Father’s Day, Bordeaux, Israel vs. Palestine and more.

About a week ago, my parents visited to help celebrate my being finished with my album. My dad brought an exquisite bottle of wine, a 1995 Margeaux, but just before we opened it we were struck by the raw realization that we were ordering sushi and sushi was no food for a fine French red. We opted to drink the bottle another time, and headed off to Safeway to buy a bit of sake.

A few days later, I made the decision to re-record the piano track on Water Under the Bridge and so our on-time celebration turned out to be a bit pre-mature. This weekend, though, was Father’s Day, so my parents were visiting again and this time there would be Bordeaux-appropriate grub and a truly completed* album. And so we finally had the the wine — toasting both my album and Father’s Day — and it was everything I hope my album will be: in another words, it lived up to expectations.

If you’ve ever had an aged Bordeaux, you know what the wine tasted like. Not that all Bordeaux are the same, not by a long shot, but they share traits: food friendliness, earthiness and balanced fruit (not the jamminess so favored by that alcoholic Robert Parker, who, in my opinion, can no longer appreciate subtle reds as his palette needs more, more, more, more, more). Right up there with the wine was the conversation, as my dad and I debated what to do about Israel (I favor a Palestinian state, he does not), Arab oil (I think their drilling costs will rise rapidly as the oil becomes harder to pull from the ground and as a result, the Saud family, a bunch of worthless fucktards, by the way, will fall), Intel’s 3D chip technology and implications for Arm Holdings, Apple’s potential decision to have Intel manufacture its PA Semi-designed chips, the possibility that Twitter is more valuable in the long run than Facebook, the pathetic state of US public schools and much, much more, maybe even a teensy bit of music.

But enough about fine wine and conversation. What are the expectations I have for my album? Well, they have changed over the years. I confess, back in 2007 when I first started work on it, I was going to consider my album a success if it got finished. Then I lucked into being able to work with a killer engineer, bass player and dummer (Jaimeson Durr, Sam Bevan and Andy Korn, respectively) and my ambitions grew. My ambitions grew further when I was introduced to singer Larkin Gayl, who poured silk on Here Comes the Weather. I finally became convinced I was working on a record that would go viral and sell and maybe even earn back a significant chunk of my recording costs when guitarist Tim Young joined the fray. Now, I have no such expectations, hopes maybe, but not expectations. No, these days, I expect about 50 people download it and I’ll be over the moon if 500 people do so and if a 1000 people click Download, well, then my thoughts might once again turn to making a little money. But not from sales. More on that later, but suffice it to say, there will be a free version of the album.

Stay tuned.

* Water Under the Bridge still needs a final tweak. Argh!