This weekend Mike Teager and myself (under my alter ego PK (sometimes Olagra)) will be opening for our band The Elevator Conspiracy at the Basement 414. This is a free show and one that I think not only will be a lot of fun, but also could be the beginning of more shows like this. You can download some tunes that Mike and I recorded early in 2009 here.

I’ve uploaded a live reinterpretation of Huronic Minor to my site, http://www.mattborghi.com that’s free to download. I haven’t worked much with this recording in the almost ten years since I recorded it, but my friend, saxophonist Michael Teager, and myself gave it a go at a gig we did back in September at SCENE Metrospace in East Lansing.

The character of the piece has changed quite a bit, as I glossed some of the ambient audience noise out, as this was recorded with a binaural mic in the open air.

While the character of the piece has changed, the pieces still has it’s dark reminscents and cold longing, the same character that I tried to introduce to the recording so many years ago. Over the years many of you have commented on the recording, it’s evocative quality, and impressionistic tones… I’d love to hear what folks think of this as it moves into its tenth year. Hope you enjoy it, and I’d love to hear your feedback.

You can download the full-length recording of Huronic Minor here. Please pass this on and feel free use for radio/internet airplay.

I’ve been slacking on writing. You wouldn’t know that here, because luckily fruitful periods of writing over the last four months have given me an abundance of stuff to post. I’ve been slacking, as I always do, because of a focus on music.

I swear it goes both ways, either I’m slacking on music for writing, or slacking on writing for music, anyway, after years of this cycle, I’ve learned to just go with it.

A while back, just before saxophonist Michael Teager and myself did a three hour set of of reinterpretations of my Huronc Minor, The Phantom Light and Images at the East Lansing SCENE Metrospace I started putting together ideas for an ambient, consonant, contemplative, almost free jazz ensemble, that I was calling the Long Now Ensemble. Finally, after a few months I think that I’m finally making some progress towards that end.

I plan to post the recordings from SCENE Metrospace here to demonstrate the Long Now duo I just haven’t had the time to edit and clean them up.

Anyway, just a note that you might start seeing more info about the Long Now Ensemble on here, hopefully, as things start to progress, and I wanted to update you as to exactly what that is.

Last night on an unanticipated trip for some carry-out to my local eatery El Azteco in downtown East Lansing, I had the radio tuned to Michigan Radio, WUOM, and Marketplace was on. I really do enjoy Marketplace, and Kai Ryssdal, but last night I happened upon an excellent commentary by Charles Handy, a dude that I’ve never heard of, but now I’ll be paying a lot more attention to.

My favorite quote of his from the story was this: “if you are your own boss, it’s up to you how hard you work, or where, or when, or why.” And he doesn’t talk about this just in the context of being a strike out on your own entrepreneur, but also as an corporate entrepreneur working for someone else.

You can read about the story here, and download an Mp3 of his commentary here, but I will tell you what Charles Handy was talking about was absolutely the essence of what The Working Stiff blog is all about, particularly my post about the best investment you can make is in yourself. I highly recommend that you listen to this post. I found it to be fan-freakin-tastic!

When I decide to don my folk (sometimes psych folk) music hat, I usually do it under the Olagra pseudonym, which was both a band of mine a few years ago, who played some of these songs, as well as the name of a past recording that focused on some of those tunes, as well as some of the stuff that I was doing with the group. A handful of years have come and gone since the band, and those songs haven’t seen the light of day, but early in the dark winter months of 2009 I set about to record some new interpretations of them. I recorded these tunes with saxophonist, Michael Teager, at Shoeshine Studios in East Lansing under the Teag and PK name. I’m putting these tracks online, as well as other Olagra tracks that Michael Teager and myself will be recording. Enjoy.

• Burned Down
• Come Back to Me
• Deep Side of Tomorrow
• Desert
• Fancy This

Heard an interesting interview on WUOM (Michigan Public Radio) this morning with Daniel Okrent (I think, still looking for a link to the story on WUOM’s site). He’s written the cover story for Time, this week, called Detroit: The Death — and Possible Life — of a Great City, which is part of Time’s year-long look and visit to Detroit documented here.

I really enjoyed this story because I’m a sucker for anything about Detroit, especially since I’m living 100 miles away now in East Lansing, and because it’s where my life and family roots are. Anyway, Okrent talked about Detroit and an economic concept called creative destruction that I hadn’t heard of before. Basically, it’s when something new grows out of the old, at the expense of what came before it.

I’ve thought for a long time that this is what will happen here in Michigan, generally, but Okrent was talking specifically about Detroit. As manufacturing, specifically automotive and auto-related production, goes away we’ll have to find new ways to move forward; creating new businesses and business models out of what we have available to us here in the state.

Along these same lines I heard an interesting story yesterday on Michigan Public Radio’s The Environment Report, called Seeing Abandoned Buildings Through a New Lens. This story talked about how some communities are re-purposing closed “big box” stores; a story that’s analogous to what we’ll have to do in Michigan to turn things around.

I’m glad this conversation is happening, and I’m glad that Michigan Public Radio is doing such an excellent job in covering what’s going in Michigan. Nice work.

I’ll be doing a live re-interpretation of Huronic Minor, Images and The Phantom Light featuring saxophonist Michael Teager, Friday September 11th from 6-9:30 pm at SCENE Metrospace in East Lansing, as part of the 3 Cities in 3D opening – Flyer is here. SCENE Metrospace is located at 110 Charles Street in East Lansing, Michigan. There’s a map here.