Oh, I’m feeling so, so shallow and foolish right now.

We’ve all been preaching here about getting rid of our Stuff, and I myself have more than once mounted the pulpit to sermonize on the Evils of That Damned Evil Materialism.

I’m just a simple hippie boy at heart. All I need is my fair allotment of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, and I’m relatively happy. And when I’m not happy, I’ve got the Blues to get me through.

I don’t want a fancy car, a big home, lots of money in the bank, don’t want to own or consume unnecessarily, don’t want to use up the bounty of Mother Earth.

Don’t want what I don’t need.

But, right now, I need a 61-key to 88-key MIDI-enabled keyboard, dammit! With class-compliant USB connectivity, hammer-action (or at least semi-weighted) velocity-sensitive keys with aftertouch, and the ability to split zones. Send on sixteen channels so I can have maximum multi-timbrality. Easily assignable modulation and pitch-bend wheels.

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Kurt Vonnegut, interviewed on the DVD: Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.

I first encountered this project in the February, 2003 issue of Sound on Sound Magazine. Duncan Bridgeman had called Matt Bell, one of the SOS editors, to see if the mag was interested in doing an article about his plan:

…he was taking a friend and embarking on a round-the-world trip, from the jungles of Africa to the streets of New York by way of India and Australasia, and planning to record any musicians he could find on the way into his Apple Powerbook, using it as a fully fledged multitrack recording studio. His intention thereby, he claimed, was to create a CD, DVD, and documentary film, all three of which would provide a snapshot of mankind at the turn of the new Millennium, and form a vast multimedia project designed to, as he put it, “celebrate the unity and the diversity of humanity”.

Everything fell into place. Duncan Bridgeman was clearly completely mad.

As a home musician, I find the entire SOS article fascinating.

Here’s the vid for ‘My Culture‘, which was the breakout track that emerged:

It’s even science fiction, guys!

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