The Oppenheimer Report - 3/24/14

Yesterday, I travelled down to Bracebridge to attend the live recording session of friend and fellow songwriter, Sean Cotton. The studio where the recording was to take place was is called Ghetto Blaster Sound Factory, and I figured with a name like that, it would not be hard to find. I was wrong. I followed the directions on my GPS and, uncharacteristically, it did lead me to the general vicinity of the studio. As the GPS lady with the Aussie accent announced that I had reached my destination, I looked around to discover that “there was no there there.” I found myself in an industrial park which was, by all appearances, empty. Immediately to my right there was a parking lot full of empty school buses, in front of me a bunch of empty barn-like buildings, and to my left there were a few industrial buildings. It was then I recalled another musician friend telling me that this place would be hard for me to find. I drove all over the area looking for any signs of life, but there were none. Had it been a Saturday, perhaps there would have been someone walking about to ask, but all I saw was the snow blowing horizontally on an industrial wasteland; a flashback to how I spent a good part of my 25 years in the industrial real estate business. With fifteen minutes left until the recording session was to start, I got the sinking feeling I was in the wrong place, and I was cursing myself for not getting better directions from Sean. I called Shauna at home and asked her to look up the studio to see if there was a telephone number, and perhaps some directions that I had overlooked. She gave me a phone number to call, which of course was someone’s cell and unavailable. Then there was a stroke of luck. While I was on the phone I saw a taxi cab drive by in this otherwise deserted area, and I thought, this must be someone headed to the recording session. I followed it and sure enough, the cab stopped at a nondescript metal shed,completely hidden behind another industrial building, with no visible signs from the road. There was a guy smoking a cigarette outside a door with “MUSIC STUDIO” written on a cardboard sign in magic marker. I had reached my destination. I am happy I made it, because the recording session was interesting, the music was fantastic, and I had a chance to talk with Mike Lopez, one of the founders of Tree Ring Records and a musician with whom I had wanted to connect for a while. All in all, it was a good experience. 

I wish I understood global politics better, because I do not know what to make of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. Some have likened this action and the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. In terms of “right" and "wrong” or "legal" and "illegal" I have no idea. I watched an interesting interview on Jon Stewart last Monday with some expert on Russian affairs who seems to feel that Putin’s decision to annex the Crimea was ill-advised. Apart from the kangaroo court referendum held to “let the people decide” there is the damage done to Putin’s credibility in the U.N. Now Russia faces economic sanctions from Europe and North America, but Putin doesn’t seem to care. He appears to be preparing to take over the entire Ukraine. What will “Mommy Jeans” Obama do about this one? Conservative pundits are comparing Obama to Putin and painting him as spineless and ineffective, but come on.  You’ve got to love Fox News for their unbiased reporting.

As I began writing this week’s installment there was still little to report on that missing Malaysian Airlines jet, but there were aerial photographs of some large pieces of floating debris which might have been from the crash. I haven’t seen this much rampant speculation about an unsolved mystery since the OJ trial. Nobody really knows what happened, but as each news source scrambles to break the big story, everyone is rolling out the flight experts, the psychologists, the fire experts, and even the completely unqualified to offer an opinion. If it sells ad space go for it, right? The problem is, there are hundreds of devastated families trying to find out where their missing loved ones have gone, and this kind of reporting must be hurtful to them. Did the pilot try to hide something by deleting files on his flight simulator, and is this some kind of red flag that he is a bad guy? Maybe he was just doing what a pilot should do in a crisis. I read an interesting theory on the disappearance of Flight 370, written by one veteran pilot. He suggests that all this speculation about nefarious intentions is off track, and that some other kind of catastrophic event took place on the flight. He suggests that an electrical fire might have broken out causing the tracking devices to stop working, and that the flight pattern was consistent with a pilot trying to land at an appropriate runway, found along the diversionary track. This line of thinking may turn out to be closer to the truth, but we may never know exactly what happened. I'm not sure there has ever been such a comprehensive search for a missing airplane

Watching one of those music competition shows the other night on TV I noticed a female vocalist who was otherwise attractive, but who had multiple face piercings and a grim, pale white complexion – sort of that heroin sheik look that was so fashionable among the emaciated supermodels ten years ago. I decided that her stage name should be “Zombie Tacklebox.” Then I started to think, “Hey, what a great name for my first album!" Look for James Oppenheimer’s seminal first effort “Zombie Tacklebox,” recorded at Ghetto Blaster Sound. I can picture the cover photo now!

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED