Music

When Star Trek went wrong

Jeromey Balderrama

You may know that I am a quasi-closet Trekie.  I’ve been a Star Trek fan since I was 10 years old and have watched all of the movies and episodes from all 5 different series countless times.  In fact, I pop in one of the DVD’s and kill at least 1 episode before bed-time each night (currently I’m bouncing back & forth between Season 6 of DS9 and Season 1 of Voyager).

While I am a big Star Trek fan, I’m not a Trek Koolaid drinker.  I would actually consider myself a skeptical Trek fan.  Not every episode is a great episode – in fact, there were some pretty crappy episodes.  I have respect for Rick Berman and what he means to Star Trek, but I also firmly believe he’s responsible for running the franchise into the ground and why there’s currently no Trek on TV.  I’m also glad that he’s nowhere near the 2009 movie project.

Some of these episodes were isolated, but then again some of them represented the point-of-no-return for the series, leading to a “ho-hum” burnout.  After watching as much Star Trek as I have, I think I have a good sense of possible indicators to the point of no return for many of the series.  This is completely subjective, and I actually would encourage anyone to offer their own opinions. Maybe you have a different opinion on the episode/season/timeframe, or you could disagree that the series made a turn for the worse.

TOS

SpocksBrain This one was most difficult for me, largely due to my relative unfamiliarity with the series.  We also have to take the fact that virtually all 60’s TV was campy into consideration as well.  I’m going to take the easy road out and take a swipe at “Spock’s Brain“.  While this episode is consensually considered the worst TOS ever, this pick is based on the fact it was the season 3 premier.  After reading the Star Trek Memories book that William Shatner wrote, this was the first episode after the circumstances that took place before the season: the move to bad time-slot, the budget cuts and the way Roddenberry’s hands were so tied he felt forced to leave the show.  The movies obviously rebounded the series, and while there was a roller-coaster of good and bad TOS movies, the series ultimately ended on a strong note with Undiscovered Country.

TNG

This is also difficult because the series was so good and arguably enabled the green light for the subsequent series’.  I don’t mean to sound like a TNG fanboy, but I don’t really think the show suffered any kind of downward spiral – at least not in their TV run.  The first season was a bit hokey, but you can’t hold any first season (of any series) to the fire.  The spiral did unfortunately met it’s demise on the big-screen, in the form of Insurrection.  The plot of the movie could have been passable, had it not been for the lame dialog.  Part of the reasons TNG movies struggled was because they were completely Picard-centric, to the detriment of all other characters.

DS9

CordiallyInvited This one is easy: Season 6 “You Are Cordially Invited…“.  It wasn’t that this episode necessarily bad, it was just the first episode that wasn’t good in DS9.  The Dominion was the best and worst thing that happened to DS9.  Many would argue that the Dominion gave DS9 a purpose, but at the same time it really pigeon-holed the whole series.  It seemed that after the writers had the crew return back to the station, they often wanted to forget that the show revolved around the war – implausible for a space station that was supposed to be in the thick of things.  True, the latter part of Season 6 brought us “In the Pale Moonlight” – one of the best episodes ever – but we still can’t forget that 9-episode mess that was the end of the 7th season.  The ending of the web site just seemed forced.

Voyager

Voyager did the roller-coaster for a majority of it’s run, but had more strong episodes than weak ones.  However, any episode that had to do with the Borg tarnished the Trek legacy.  It’s disappointing that the writers of Voyager took arguably the greatest foe in Trek and relegated them to mediocrity.  The episode that drove the nail into the Borg coffin was the finale: Endgame.  If there was anything more mistreated in Voyager than the Borg was temporal paradoxes, especially involving not-really-alternate-future-but-should-have-been-erased-from-time-after-altering-the-past Admiral Janeway.

Enterprise

Xindi The Xindi, which started the serialization of a once-promising series.  Serial dramas like Lost and 24 worked for a lot of shows, but not for Trek – DS9 taught us that.  At the same time, we saw this drastic change of the show, where Archer went from being a fledgling explorer to a crazed madman, shooting from the hip and basing all of his actions on revenge.  By the time everyone realized this in Season 4 it was too late and the series was already canceled.  It was a shame, as the 4th season offered compelling material. If left many Trekies wondering why they didn’t trot this stuff out during the troubled second and third seasons.  The problem with Enterprise was that Paramount placed it on the crappy UPN.  Voyager barely survived the removal from syndication that made TNG & DS9 popular.  I realize syndication is not what it once was, but part of me believes that Enterprise would still be on the air if it was syndicated or even on a cable network.

Where did I go wrong?  Please let me know!

Gravedigger – You’re kidding Willie, right?

Jeromey Balderrama

In my email today I got an email from DMB Warehouse telling me to go check out Willie Nelson’s video of his cover of Dave Matthews song “Gravedigger”. I went to go checked it out:

Willie, you’re kidding, right?  Please tell me you’re going into Weird Al parody videos or something ,because I can’t believe that you took this seriously.  Seriously, it sounds like you badly spliced this song up and tried to put it back together after picking it up off the cutting room floor.  I realize that you were a legend in your own time, but this is not the way to come back..  Wow, if Dave were dead, he’d be spinning in his grave.

Awesome music moment – "Brothers In Arms"

Jeromey Balderrama

I was working tonight when Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" came on.  This is such a beautiful and powerful song, with a really profound message in the lyrics.  It made me think back to when I heard it the first time, in a sequence on the West Wing.

This is my all-time favorite part of the entire series, which took place in the Season 2 Finale: "Two Cathedrals".  Basically it became revealed that the President had M.S. and while he knew it before he campaigned, didn’t disclose it during the election.  The song was played entirely in this sequence where his staff gathered and they went to face the media for the first time.

Even without the context of the entire episode, the sequence is pretty powerful. The song was played in it’s entirety and really matched well with what was on the screen.

They try to make Winehouse to go rehab…

Jeromey Balderrama

AP story found in International Herald Tribune:

The father-in-law of the British singer Amy Winehouse is urging her fans to boycott her music and said she should be ineligible for awards until she seeks treatment for drug addiction, the BBC reported. In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, Giles Fielder-Civil said that Winehouse and her husband, Blake, Fielder-Civil’s son, would die without medical help. “Perhaps it is time to stop buying records,” he said. “It’s a possibility, to send that message.” But Winehouse’s father, Mitch, said, “It won’t send any message to Amy at all, unfortunately,” adding, “If I thought it would, it would be a great idea.” Fielder-Civil said he believed that Winehouse, a nominee for a Mercury Music Prize, an MTV Video Music Award and four Music of Black Origin (MOBO) Awards for her 2006 album “Back to Black,” had been using cocaine, crack cocaine and possibly heroin. Winehouse, 23, was hospitalized this month for “severe exhaustion” and withdrew from concerts in the United States and Canada “to address her health.

Yeah… That “Rehab” song she sings isn’t quite as cool when’s it’s based in reality as much as it is.  Maybe Amy should stop saying “No, no, no.” Maybe we should stop patronizing her by buying a song that glorifies her defiance of drug abuse intervention.

Having a really good gig

Jeromey Balderrama

It’s definitely been a long, but productive summer for my band, Greenfoot.  Since the beginning of June we have played 10 shows throughout Denver and the Front Range.  We seemed to be playing 1 show at least every 10 days, with a few shows being only 2 days apart from each other.  This tends to ware on a  band where all members have day-jobs, families, business & family trips, and numerous other summer activities.  We’ve seen a lot of success as a band this summer and have accomplished a lot.  Nonetheless, this summer has definitely been a trying one in our struggle to balance our time.

Throughout the winter and spring our practices were loosely organized, but productive.  We spent rehearsals balancing practicing established songs, writing new material  and working on covers.  When our aggressive summer schedule came about, our practices became very focused, centered around preparing for the next show.  While these practices were productive, it was definitely a radical departure from our previous rehearsal format.

After a while, it’s easy for the shows to start blurring together.  We had some pretty rocking gigs, but we also had shows where our sound just wasn’t there, or we struggled to get things together.  In my 15 years of drumming I’ve performed countless times, but it still seems hard to shake off a tough show and not let if affect you.  Due to my travels, I had a tough time logging practice on the drums or with the band and ended up knocking off rust while playing at shows.

As easy as it is to get disparaged by tough shows, having a good gig can be just as powerful – and that’s what happened last weekend.

A friend of the band asked us to provide music at their company picnic, and we graciously accepted.  Original music artists don’t get too many opportunities with these kind of gigs, especially one that delivered a decent paycheck.  As the show was approaching, I was beginning to experience doubt about how we’d be received.  Would this group like our music, would they feel alienated about  not hearing our songs before?  Would we have enough material to last the picnic?  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t hesitant and cautious about this show.

We arrived at Maple Park in Golden to a beautiful summer morning, and there was just an aura of relaxation that filled this place.  We got in early enough to take our time setting up and making sure everything was just right sound-wise.  This was a stark contrast to 2 nights before when we rushed on without even a sound check. 

With our relaxed setup experience, we also took a relaxed approach to the show – almost a healthy form of apathy.  We realized that people here don’t really know our music and don’t really have high expectations as compared to a night-club experience.  When you’re playing a bar, you’re often the focus of the venue – many are critically judging you. However, here at the picnic, people were just looking for some good background music to help them have a good time.  This freed our minds and our music, opening up an awesome musical experience.  We jammed out, enjoying ourselves and having a good time.  We conveyed our relaxed state of emotions through our instruments, and this resulted in the tightest show that we’ve ever played.  We were on fire – everyone was locked in, our solos were pretty raw and you could hear the joy coming through our music.  Incidentally, we got some of the best fan interaction from this show.  People sought us out to get more info on us and get a CD, instead of us placing them on a table and hoping they get handed out.  A lot of people asked about our next shows and said they look forward to hearing us again.

This may sound cheesy, but on Saturday in the park, under a gazebo – we fell in love with our music all over again.  We also learned a lot about us as a band, and with this great show we were able to constructively apply the tough lessons we’ve learned with our bad shows.

Although we do have one more show left, I consider last Saturday a great way to wrap up our summer.  We’re going to be taking some time off “in the basement” and regroup ourselves for the upcoming months, but now we’re fueled with energy to plot our next goals and develop a plan to attain them. This is why I love playing music. 

Technorati tags: greenfoot, great gigs, bands, musicians