Harmony Studios - Status Flow
The rear corner of the top floor of Harmony Studios is generally hot and stuffy. The rooms are a bit smaller and there aren't as many windows. The cheaper rents usually attract the more scruffy, down-and-dirty musicians. Status Flow practices in one of these dark back rooms. I noticed this band one day while strolling around the hallways, pausing at various doors to listen to the music inside. I heard this blues/funk rhythm happening around the corner and it sounded pretty polished and energized. Then all of a sudden a soaring, heavenly, breathtaking guitar sang out over the top of this rhythm. I was immediately captivated and entranced. I wandered over to the door with "Status Flow" flyers taped all over it and sat down and listened. The band grooved along while the guitar wailed a tear-jerking, gut-wrenching solo. Very raw, beautiful and pure. The deep, rich tone spoke with a visceral, stunning voice. It hinted at loss, suffering and pain. The melodic lines were graceful and full of inquisitive, satirical character. Gorgeous, gorgeous music. The band stopped after that tune and i could hear them putting down their instruments for a break. A few minutes later the door opened and out walked a motley lot of older, disheveled homeless-looking characters. This squat, hunchbacked guy with scraggily black hair and a crooked nose glared at me and i could tell immediately that he was the dude. I told him that i enjoyed their music and he just winced and nodded to me. His face looked horrid, with the tell-tale red-veined signs of alcoholism and a sallow, yellow-tinged coloring that spoke of sickness and lack of daylight exposure.
Later i found out that this guitar player, Red "the Hammer" Cookland, is a total California guitar legend but also a bit of a tragic story. Born up in the old gold country near Nevada City, his mom made ends meet doing odd jobs but also as a "working girl" at the local brothel. Red never knew his dad but had inklings about his ethnic origin based on his own darker skin and kinky hair, especially considering his mom was a freckled, pale-skinned red head. Red and his mom moved around a lot, following opportunity and meeting disappointment in Reno, Vegas, Needles, Barstow, Fresno, Sacramento, Modesto. Invariably Red's mom would end up working at some house of sin and Red would end up hanging out with the other ladies and the bands that came through to play. From a young age he was transfixed by the sound of the guitar. A lot of the old black rhythm-and-blues bands used to play at the various brothels. Red couldn't get enough and eventually used money that he made from cleaning the bathrooms of the bordellos to purchase a used Les Paul from a local pawn shop.
The brothels were a strange place for a little mixed-race kid to grow up in the central valley and desert towns of Nevada and California. He witnessed drunk men at their twisted worst. He saw strung-out women experience manic breakdowns. At the age of 14 his mother suffered a terrible beating at the hands of a wealthy, entitled newspaper baron. Hearing the commotion from her room he rushed in to help and was violently struck by the large man. He broke his nose in 3 places. The man left but Red and his mother lay bleeding and in trouble on the floor.
Red dropped out of school in the 7th grade and began playing guitar for money at bars and brothels. He toured with various bands and came close a few times to breaking it big. One night in Chicago a tiny, redneck-looking kid wearing a cowboy hat approached Red and thanked him for playing so beautifully and asked for a few pointers. Years later Red saw that same kid up on a television screen, his name was Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Over the years Red struggled with alcohol addiction, poor health and lack of money. People almost universally loved his playing but record company representatives shied from signing him due to his gruesome appearance and swarthy manner. To this day he's still channelling a riveting spiritual connection and inspiring people everywhere he plays.
Yeah Red, keep it flowing man!
Alain sent a wonderful email and some great photos from across the drink in Europe. Rock on Alain!!
Frist prost
Posted by: blakestah at January 5, 2006 10:28 AMI guess I was suspecting that maybe a local disturbance had created 50' seas in the area with low periods and somehow the buoy associated these large heights with the longer period energy underneath. Which leads me to ask the question - how do the buoys associate periods with heights given the raw data. I imagine the use a fourier transform to get the dominant periord but how do they match the heights to the period? Maybe a NOAA link explains this?
You almost guessed it already. Each buoy has a sampling period. They all used to be 100 seconds, some are longer now. For simplicity assume they sample every 100 seconds. 36 samples an hour.
Take those 36 samples. Each one has a mean of zero and a variance. Throw out the bottom 2/3rd of the samples by variance. That is, the ones in which the buoy moved up and down the least.
OK. Now, you have 12 samples. Do a Fourier transform, and you have the energy at periods of 100 sec, 50 sec, 25 sec, 20 sec, 16.7 sec 14.3 sec, etc.
Average the energies in the 12 samples together, and average the wave height (which is the square root of the sum of the energies). This is what the buoy reports. The buoy also reports the average energies each hour in its raw spectral data. The biggest errors occur on really sparse swells when sets hit the buoy on less than 12 of its samples. Then the buoy will under-report the set heights.
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 10:39 AMA 50 ft swell should create some 25 second periods if the seas are reasonably developed, and this one did. The real question is how much of the energy is going in which direction. If it is all aimed at the Aleutians it doesn't do SF much good. This low was well-organized and small and didn't resolve well on the normal satellite imagery (QuikSCAT), I wasn't watching visible or IR satellites until too late, so I don't know. I suspect the main blast will be well to the north, but that it will be felt at 20ft plus in HMB as well. But not until late afternoon today, possibly even after dark.
Posted by: namers and claimers get owned at January 5, 2006 10:44 AMaw man i was all into the story about the drunk guitar guy and you guys go and mess it up with bouy readings and scienc-y crap. ha ha. that guy red reminds me of my upstairs neighbor expept the guitar part.
Posted by: bagel at January 5, 2006 10:44 AMCheck out the video of Mavericks yesterday:
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 10:50 AMhttp://www.surfline.com/video/index.cfm
Great post man, was that fiction or fact?
Posted by: Dave at January 5, 2006 10:51 AMHoly shit! Now that's a bomb. Frank has got to put a gallery up from yesterday. As always insane work.
Posted by: artifact at January 5, 2006 10:51 AMdo they record? link for samples?
Posted by: PNW at January 5, 2006 10:51 AMi'm guessing alain is in portugal, at least thats what it looks like. Is it ok to name countries?
Posted by: herb at January 5, 2006 10:53 AMthis whole "harmony studios" series is all fiction.
crazy mavs waves. holy mother of!
Posted by: e at January 5, 2006 11:05 AMthat video is fucking nuts. the possibility of getting held under by one of those beasts is soo frightening.
Posted by: rza at January 5, 2006 11:06 AMWhere do you guys rehearse @ anyway e? I play mucho guitar and dig the jazz and rock posts i've seen on here. Keep jazz alive my man.
Posted by: Dave at January 5, 2006 11:13 AMThanks.
Blakestah, you must have worked for NOAA at some point. Or you have an amazing capacity to analyze, retain and process a large amount of information. And I’m sure you only spend 5min a day doing it – hopefully the rest of the time you’re finding the cure for cancer.
Anyway, given the last response, why don’t all buoys record mean wave direction as do some others (46027 for example)? Or is this just a meaningless observation given that it is a mean value?
Posted by: obro at January 5, 2006 11:21 AMhttp://www.unearthed.com/bands/S/band4010.shtml
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 11:22 AMgad damn! no matter what band name i come up with off the top of my head some other band already has it!!! sheesh!
Posted by: e at January 5, 2006 11:24 AMhttp://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/data/realtime2/46006.data_spec
Most recent three days at SE Papa, plotted from raw spectral data
Same plot from 100 Wednesday swell
Note the scale goes from 260 on 100 ft Wednesday to 417 for this swell...but the peak energy may or may not be headed for SF area breaks.
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 11:30 AMA single buoy can only go up and down, it cannot tell you which way the wave is going. Wave direction requires a grid of buoys, much more costly.
But with a grid of buoys you can do a two dimensional fourier transform and get energy in different directions. Its still troublesome getting more than just the average direction in each energy band though, because good direction resolution requires a LOT of buoys and the grids usually have 9 in a 3x3 grid. So the reporting, as with the Pt Reyes buoy, is energy per frequency band, and mean direction per frequency band. Needless to say these get real screwy when swells from different directions and the same periods hit the buoy.
Posted by: blakestah at January 5, 2006 11:35 AMgeorge bush on global warming
Posted by: e at January 5, 2006 11:56 AMMy guess is you are more likeley to see directionality from satelites before you can see it from the sea surface. It's damn near impossible to do with accerometers.
Now that I consider the problem, I bet you could find some PhD student with funding to put something else together entirely. The same way tuning forks are used to find frequency of vibration (put a bunch of forks out, the that resonates the most is the frequency), you could probably put out something that responds differently to different wave direction (at a frequency you get from a nearby traditional buoy). But until NOAA starts responding to my letters scrawled in crayon and blood, we're mostly gonna be looking at predictions from wind models rather than wave measurements.
Posted by: Andrew in Alameda at January 5, 2006 12:02 PM
Posted by: ribot fan at January 5, 2006 12:03 PMdave.. hit me up at e@niceness.org if you're looking to jam. I'd be psyched to play with you. I'm free all weekend and will most likely spend most of the time in the studio playing and fucking around. we play at soundwave studios in west oakland.
Posted by: e at January 5, 2006 12:17 PMAndrew, why not use something simple like a bunch of underwater accelerometers? Put them at different depths. They will move in circles. The direction of the circle tells you the direction of the waves, and you could probably use a half-dozen to sample all the wave periods...be a lot cheaper than the directional buoys with much better directional resolution. Don't know how robust it would be to rough ocean conditions, probably not too bad.
Posted by: blakestah at January 5, 2006 12:19 PMNice to see a few heads attempting the paddle this a.m. at my usual spot. Short on time so I just watched. No one made it our while I was there. Red hooded bodysurfer was suiting up.
I'm taking tomorrow off. Hope it's gonna be good somewhere. Town? South? Reef?
Posted by: kdalle at January 5, 2006 12:34 PMi hate my job. I prefer to surf the NOAA sites - anyone have any job leads in this vein?
from: http://seaboard.ndbc.noaa.gov/wave.shtml
NDBC also reports directional wave data for selected stations. Besides buoy heave acceleration, measurements of hull azimuth, pitch, and roll are also necessary for directional waves. Two methods exist for the measurement of hull azimuth, pitch, and roll.
The first method includes the use of a Datawell Hippy sensor to measure vertical heave acceleration along with pitch and roll. A second sensor, a triaxial magnetometer, is used to measure hull azimuth.
For a more detailed description, refer to:
Steele, K.E., Teng, C-C., and D. W-C. Wang, 1992: Wave direction measurements using pitch and roll buoys. Ocean Engineering, 19, 4, 349-375.
The second method uses only the triaxial magnetometer to measure hull azimuth, pitch, and roll. Vertical heave acceleration is measured by an accelerometer.
For more information, refer to
Steele, K.E. and M. Earle, 1991: Directional ocean wave spectra using buoy azimuth, pitch, and roll derived from magnetic field components. IEEE Journal of Ocean Engineering, 16, 4, 427-433.
The processing stream as applied to raw, directional measurements is similar to that presented above for non-directional data: RAO's are applied to the acceleration data after all Fourier processing is performed. The main difference between directional and the non-directional wave data is that, for directional data, four frequency-dependent parameters are calculated along with the spectral measurements, WVHGT, AVGPD, and DOMPD. These other parameters are ALPHA1 (mean wave direction), ALPHA2 (principle wave direction), and R1 and R2 (parameters which describe the directional spreading about the main direction).
Posted by: obro at January 5, 2006 12:43 PMjust use an array of bottom-mounted pressure transducers (used to be an array off of santa cruz). Much easier to deal with than underwater acceleormeters.
Posted by: jimmy at January 5, 2006 12:49 PMlasers?
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 12:56 PMsaw cirque du soleil - corteo last night. my first one and it was worth every penny. e, you'd really dig it.
anybody checked out this waves watch desktop widget?
Posted by: lerm at January 5, 2006 01:02 PMHilarious video of Letterman cutting through O'Reilley's demagogic bullshit:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/01/04.html#a6571
(Last link on the page)
Posted by: JH at January 5, 2006 01:14 PME, you should write a book of your adventures. I'm digging the stories about the studios in O town.
SE Papa Buoy must be broken - is all I can figure out. I've never seen it with 63kt gusts and 45ft swell heights without an associated swell forcast to arrive.
When will the beach be surfable again? I'm dyin' here!
Posted by: Surfseeker7 at January 5, 2006 01:25 PMThe "Datawell Hippy sensor" is going off on this blog!
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 01:27 PMHide the kids honey, here come the Hippies!!!
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 01:29 PMDamn, I was imagining how crooked his nose was after being broken in 3 places, and being a poor kid working in brothels he couldn't afford to get it fixed. And it's fiction! Nice!
Posted by: gttim at January 5, 2006 01:30 PMyou want some of this?!
Posted by: untouchable at January 5, 2006 01:36 PMHey guys,
Big waves yesterday out there. Was this the remnants of the storm fronts that passed through last week?
On another note, I have some serious problems with my apartment complex resident manager. This guy is shady, and i'm thinking about my options. Is there a California State dept. that I could contact for questions/answers regarding renter's rights? Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 01:38 PMthere's a renter's rights office in the mission. they were helpful when i went over there with a past problem. not sure of the address but i think one block east of Mission street.. around 16th or 17th street. old victorian building.
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 01:44 PManon, re: renting, you might try this page.
Ok, re: the 46006 mystery swell. To me it's weird that such a high-energy swell (17-20 seconds) could apparently completely miss the 46059 buoy. Unless it was a SSW swell or something. Where's the West Oregon buoy when you need it?
B-stah, thanks for the info.
Posted by: dano at January 5, 2006 01:47 PMtenant union
Posted by: renters at January 5, 2006 01:52 PMso how about a fictional link for samples then? sheesh.
Posted by: PNW at January 5, 2006 02:00 PMI saw one person out near my hood this am. Didn't see any rides but kudos for getting out. It looked tough.
Mexi - I haven't forgotten you. I'm working with Dreamweaver right now learning it tools. I realized I have to review coding as well. How quickly I forget. Soon as I get a respectable handle on it, I'll let you know. In the meantime, think about what you want as far as layout.
Posted by: Dennis at January 5, 2006 02:08 PMcovered, sweet
Posted by: sic at January 5, 2006 02:22 PMGlad to have Blakestah back dropping wave science. e, you totally got me yesterday, thought the Harmony Studios story was real. Today's story was good stuff. Enjoy life....
Posted by: Dem at January 5, 2006 02:26 PMOff Topic - does anybody know how to convert cassettes and vcr music files to digital, as to burning onto a cd?
Posted by: Dennis at January 5, 2006 02:29 PMThe movie benefit/Art auction at the Blue Cube should be sick tonight. There are some really good artists, Twist, Clare Rojas, Thomas Campbell and the Alex(K)s from Aqua. I am honored to have some stuff there.
Right on Dennis! I know what I want, maybe i can come over and watch and look at what you are doin with the DW??
Posted by: Mexi at January 5, 2006 02:41 PMKdalle, some big waves were ridden yesterday in Westside SC. Nobody was out for the morning or early afternoon but as the tide started to go out people started looking for manageable places to surf. I initially paddled out to catch some inside waves, but the current and backwash made conditions mostly unsurfable so I paddled over to the second reef at a spot that was not the Lane. I was on my just purchased that day (used) Coffey 7'2" gun, but it was not big enough for me to charge the giant waves some of these 20 guys were getting into. I was sitting in a good spot, though, and saw some nice barrels and cutbacks. I didn't catch but a few of the smaller ones but it was fun to be out there and see some great big-wave surfing.
Posted by: steve at January 5, 2006 03:00 PMConvert VCR to Digital---->
http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/tec030203.html
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,97624,00.asp
I found these two just by googling.com the question.
I know you can do the same for cassette tapes....but I know there is a piece of hardware you can buy that doe sit for you via USB port...at least I think I saw soemthing like that recently.
Posted by: duncan at January 5, 2006 03:01 PMDennis,
You will need a sound card to take the input from the cassette/vcr and digitize it. Once the music is digitized you can save it as MP3 or some other format.
Posted by: steve at January 5, 2006 03:02 PMThanks guys. I guess we should have an acronym for checking on google, kinda like rtfm :^) gtfq?
Mexi - check yer email.
Posted by: Dennis at January 5, 2006 03:10 PM
Posted by: Kaiser at January 5, 2006 03:11 PMHow stoked are the 2 groms in the background?
Posted by: Kaiser at January 5, 2006 03:17 PMKaiser, those kids in the background will never be the same again!
Posted by: dano at January 5, 2006 03:26 PMi love ass!
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 03:27 PMthank you kaiser
Ahem! Dennis...
jfgi perhaps?
http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 03:43 PMLerm - nice call on Cirque du Soleil. I saw the show last week. I've been to 6 different Cirque shows, including a couple in Vegas. Corteo is the best traveling show and rivals "O" (unbelievable water-themed show) as the best I've seen out of them all.
One complaint was the high-wire chick. If the rigging guys were pulling on her safety line any harder during our performance, I don't think she'd have been touch the wire at all!
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 04:06 PMno swell mystery, the waves that lit up the SE Papa buoy has hit Washington, http://seaboard.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=46041
one hourly reading of 36 ft at 20 secs, the winds were concentrated flowing south to north with a little west to east.
Posted by: g-money at January 5, 2006 04:20 PMi suck at my job.
i'm indecisive.
i can't find love.
i'm filled with doubt.
i fucking suck!
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 04:21 PMok, you guys sold me on this cirque. i saw the one last year or whenever and was into it but didnt have the best seats and my girl told me O was better. not to compete with the surf thing but brian barcello (below) show at 111 minna tonight. random musical props go to radiohead.
Posted by: bagel at January 5, 2006 04:22 PMdoh..
hey anon, cheer up.
Posted by: bagel at January 5, 2006 04:26 PMThanks for the report steve. Current plan is to head south and stop at a big wave reef. If that's a no-go I'll probably end up with you and a few dozen buds on the W or E side.
Coffey made my last 6 boards. Good shaper, good guy. You need more length IMO. Lot of water moving out there on a big day.
Posted by: kdalle at January 5, 2006 04:36 PMI'm heading south and hitting cowells!
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 04:50 PMJPL's year in pictures slideshow
Posted by: cadaver at January 5, 2006 05:11 PMkdalle, shoot me an email and maybe I can meet you tomorrow a.m. I also have a used 7'7" Brewer that I have yet to wax up. hindmansm @ y a h o o . c o m
Posted by: steve at January 5, 2006 05:18 PMThis no surf thing is driving me batty. Very recently began random plan lap swimming instead. Also Aquatic Park. Useful exercise, but boring as heck. If anyone else is interested in splashing around like a bunch of goons and fighting the mind numbing boredom *cough Dennis cough* shoot me an email. DPing flatwater tomorrow.
Posted by: s.s. sharkbait at January 5, 2006 05:22 PMthouroughly satisfied with the blog today. good job guys.
Posted by: at January 5, 2006 05:54 PM
Posted by: sd_rider at January 5, 2006 08:05 PMbe-a-fucking-utiful
Posted by: Brian at January 5, 2006 08:44 PMFYI---'Great white sharks are found throughout California and northern Baja, sightings are not uncommon. Although they are a protected species in California, Great white sharks are commonly caught and killed in Baja. Scientific estimates suggest there are over 20,000 adult white sharks roaming California's coastal waters. Areas in central California where white shark feeding activities frequently occur include the Farallon Islands, Ano Nuevo Reserve (site of a large elephant seal population), the Northern Channel Islands and the Marin headlands.'
Posted by: You Do The Math at January 5, 2006 09:52 PMShark Research Institiute. Honolulu, HI
That photo with the GROMS in the background is classic -- check the kid's broken arm. I knew plenty of dudes growing up who'd wrap their casts in a baggie and a rubber band so they could surf gutless South Jersey windslop. Sometimes a return trip to the doctor, all in the name of grommy surf.
I updated my website, barely. The secret message encoded in the photograph (throughout all of 2002-2005) has been revealed. ;|
Posted by: Dem at January 6, 2006 12:12 AMWhat great writing about Red and Status
Posted by: Rich at January 7, 2006 09:58 PMFlow! Is this for real? Does this guy and band exist and where can I find them?