Greetings from L.A., the city of angels, and the land of constant traffic jams on the 405.
If you don't know already, I've been out in L.A. since July 8th, where I've been working as a camp counselor for Grammy Camp, which is run by the Grammy Foundation®. As the name suggests, the Grammy Foundation® is the advocacy branch of the Grammy organization that is committed to both furthering and preserving American music culture. Part of perserving the future of American music is investing in its future, which are the 83 highschool students who are participating in this week and a half experience.
So my journey to this point goes a little something like this......
I woke up on Wednesday morning at 4:45am to get ready for a 6:50 am flight to California. Direct flight, no transfers. There was one stop in Arizona (and although I only sat on the tarmat, it was burning up inside that plane...90 degrees at 9:30 am!), and then I arrived in the insanley huge LAX airport. I met up with two other counselors (both from northern Cali), and we get picked up by our boss and are immediatley wisked away to the Grammy Foundation offices in Santa Monica.
We arrive at the office and there is a performance taking place in this beautiful room that had floor to ceiling glass windows surrounding it. There's a stage and a piano (grand piano that is) in the room and the group performing has an amazing energy, and I'm kicking myself for not remembering their name right now. It was a group consisting of instrumentalist, and this older guy singing..he sang some in cajun creole, and did a stirring rendition of Sam Cooke's "A Change
Gon' Come" To be in an office that had a performance space was just more than I could ever imagine being possible. Of course it was right up my alley, just going away from my desk and enjoying a concert during my lunch is like a dream.
Having caught the tail end of the performance, we were put to work right after. Mind you, my bags are still in my bosses' jeep and I hadn't even seen my room yet, but it was ok. I love to keep busy, and the fast pace of everything was like a breath of fresh air to me. It had been a while since I had been busy like that.
In a back office, I joined a group of five or so other counselors in order to assemble schedules and welcome binders for the 80-plus campers. We're sitting on the floor, punching holes into papers and then eventually in a conference room assembling the binders assembly line style.
Some hours later (and a few printing errors and missing pages as well), we're all headed to the University of Southern California (USC). There we scramble into the dinning hall to make it there before it closes, and I'm releaved because I hadn't eaten since my flight. Not to mention on top of that I had managed to go back in time once I got here (because of the time change), so I scarfed down that food like it was the last meal of life.
By this time I was fading fast. I had just eaten, I had been traveling all day, I was thinking "ok, now we get to get settled in." It was actually time to set up the rooms instead....
The camp is being housed in a couple of different buildings associated with the Thorton School of Music. We had to set up over a dozen iMacs to create an electronic music production classroom. I'm not the most computer-savy or musical engineering-savy person though, and I didn't know a lot about the software and everything that we were installing, but I soon learned. Over half of my co's are sound engineers, and so I was constantly running behind them asking 101 questions about everything I had to do. I wanted to understand how everything works. Having a really basic knowledge of pro-tools I undersood that the room wasn't complete until we had the much needed M-audio boxes (which is used with the production program pro tools). Apparently the boxes that the campers are using are top of the line, can't remember what generation but it had the word PRO in it.
I had the most fun setting up the combo rooms because I got to learn about how a drumset actually works. What all the sounds involved were called, and what each drum and cymbal were called. One of the counselors, who is a drummer taught me a very basic pattern involving the kick (that's the thing with the pedal right? the bass drum), high hat and snare. I also learned that apparently there are different kinds of kicks and pedals for said kicks for different styles of music. To some people reading this it may seem like common sense, but I'm a woodwind player. I've spent a good portion of my life blowing a metal tube, producing music by dead men who probably would have never imagined that you could take a bunch of percussive sounds and play them all together and it sound good (and not like noise).
Well anyway, we worked well into the night...until 12am to be exact, which was 3am east coast time. So as one can imagine at this point I'm worn out and exhausted. I finally get my stuff out my bosses' car and head to Trojan Hall to get settled.
It's crazy being back in a dorm room again. It's hot as all get out at times because there isn't any air in these rooms. It's a freshman dorm, so I feel like L.A. is hazing me. Good thing tho that I'm too busy to spend an extended period of time in the rooms.
So that's my first day on the west coast in a nut shell. There are some parts that I left out, that again involve me working, and doing so a lot. And then there is also the part about USC basically being in the hood. Not that I'm scared or anything, but it's crazy how that works though.
I'll be posting again soon about the kids, and the various camp activities. If you aren't already, be sure to follow @GrammyU so that you can get my updates about the various guests that have come to camp and shared their time with the campers. So far Gavin Rossdale (formerly of Bush, and married to Gwen Stefanie) and Jason Castro (third runner up from American idol) have graced Grammy Camp with their presence.
These kids are amazing and this experience has most certainly been a blessing..but more on that in a later post...
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