The ISS has HD cameras, and offers a live feed. Here is your planet, below. Press play. Wait a bit. If black, it’s probably night for the ISS. If grey or brown, it’s switching cameras. Be patient. Sunrise comes every 45 minutes for our intrepid crew and station, so check back soon. It’s worth it. Toggle “Best” and “Fullscreen” down at the lower right for the full effect.


Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
Reflecting on Earth’s surface from space in realtime, it’s always amazing to me just how thin is our atmosphere. Enjoy breathing much? Given our behavior as a species, you’d think it wasn’t all that important to us.

This is a good live feed on which to meditate. It’s Really Redding.

Edit: Here’s some great ambient music with which to view your planet.

Atmospheres 1990 by Craig Padilla and credited to Skip Murphy (me) begins after the excellent John Serrie piece. Very nice compilation. However, I am not part of this piece of music.
“Regarding that track “Atmospheres 1990″: I hadn’t met you yet. That’s a track by me and Bryan Arnold. It was also the first recording of mine that received radio airplay… DJ Ron Dare played that to open his radio show (at KCHO) before he did a big marathon of my music tapes I sent to him.
-Craig”
Funny how stuff gets around on the interwebs.
Tracklist:
0:00 – Jonn Serrie – Starmoods
15:44 – Craig Padilla & Skip Murphy – Atmospheres 1990
26:28 – Sparkle – Over The Horizon
32:20 – Bass’Flo & Ziyal – Looking Back From The Edge Of Time
39:18 – Purl & Sinius – We Don’t Belong Here
48:32 – Purl & Sinius – Blue Water (World Exclusive)
59:26 – LucienMusique – Dreamed Life
1:05:23 – Sean Mackey – New Zealand Sprawl
1:10:26 – Sunlight – The Reborn of Life
1:14:32 – Sparkle – Mountain’s Pray (ft.ECHO)
1:19:50 – Sean Mackey – Roads (ft. Lambert McGaughy)
1:25:11 – Sean Mackey – Mountain Republic (nExow Remix)
1:29:07 – CMA – Without You
1:35:06 – Sparkle – Sunrise
1:40:49 – Jacoo – Desolation
1:44:50 – Kaj – Flashback
1:48:05 – Moseqar – Daydream
1:52:55 – NVprod. – I Miss You
1:55:35 – Sparkle – Memories (ft.Samlion)
2:02:21 – Phaeleh & Clubroot – Unharmed
2:07:40 – CMA ft Sacred – Loose Ends
2:11:30 – Sparkle – Leaving Roads
2:18:38 – Jacoo – A World Of Peace
2:22:03 – Owsey – In A Decade Full Of Dreams
2:29:09 – Ambientsketchbook – Peace
2:33:42 – Ludovico Einaudi – Le Onde (Ellipsis K Remix)
2:37:41 – Ludovico Einaudi – Nuvole bianche
2:43:23 – Dub-Eden – Nord Wind
2:48:21 – Dub-Eden – Source Of Life
2:55:05 – Sparkle – Memories (ft.Samlion) (Ellipsis K Remix)
2:58:08 – Tom Day – Flemington
3:01:55 – Dub-Eden – The Last Of Us
3:07:44 – Elysian – Sent To The Skies

Chill out for a Sunday evening. Vojtech Matlák is a video artist in Reca Slovakia. Recently he created this mashup of video imagery set to Redding musician Craig Padilla’s Spirit Signs. 8 minutes of introspective meditation awaits:

Craig’s instrumental music has always been very visual for me, and evidently for others as well. Interesting that the internet allows this connection between artists half a world apart. Yet not really apart at all. It’s Really Redding.

As seen in a newsstand in McCloud California. News of a rare public performance.
Thanks to Jon Lewis for the journalistic heads-up in After Five. Craig Padilla will be playing in Red Bluff tonight.

Come out and support this unique homegrown artist tonight in Red Bluff. Then spotted in a music store window. Big news. Craig Padilla hasn’t played his hometown in years. Now’s your chance to see and hear this Ambient and Electronic Music artist from the Northstate, now known all over the world.

7:00 PM
Tickets just $15 and go to benefit a Red Bluff scholarship fund.
Red Bluff Elks Lodge
355 Gilmore Rd

Support a local artist and benefit a scholar.

We are a train town in Redding. But if you want to ride out of town, the only passenger train leaves just after closing time at 2:20 am. That’s either pretty late, or awfully early, depending on your perspective. Cheer up. You can listen to a song about it by talented local music duo Still Married at this link:
http://www.stillmarried.net/whiskeytown

2:20 may be the time to ride away, but 420 works for some too, evidently.
Redding bound train on a mural in nearby Cottonwood California. It’s Really Redding.

Here’s a favorite CD compilation that features a track recorded by me and Craig Padilla here in Redding. You can listen to this whole album on YouTube. I really think you’ll like it if you haven’t heard it.

The Fahrenheit Project series 1-7 is all available on YouTube. Our selected track “Beyond Beta” isn’t really representative of our overall style. Nor do we seem all that similar to the artists surrounding it. The odd thing is that it all fits together as a whole. Some music compilations can feel like a random mashup. But Project One has a really great sound and feel. It was a real head turning success on many levels, and it obviously spawned at least 6 sequels. It holds up very well for an album released in 2001! It was amazing to me that producer Vince Villuis in Lyon France found our Redding track on the internet, and decided to use it in his compilation. The power of the internet.

What interesting times we live in.

So here’s a serious question though. I have lately been listening to YouTube in the background, while working in my home office. Not watching, listening. There are a great many entire albums posted there, just like this one. If all these artists’ work is posted there freely, and not by the artists themselves, how is that any different than Napster or Pirate Bay or whatever? Et tu, Google? No answers, only questions here. But the internet has killed a lot of jobs, and it seems to me that on balance, musician is one of them. That’s the power of the internet.

What interesting times we live in.

The internet giveth and the internet taketh away.

If for some reason you like what you are hearing and want to support the artists who created it, you can find more music to purchase at the Ultimae Records website.

Sad news today about drummer Alan Myers. Condolences to family, fans, and band mates evolved and de-evolved. In memorial, I’m re-running this post from last year.

When DEVO came to Redding

Wow, was it thirty years ago? Looking through an old box in the closet, I ran across these photographs I took at the Redding Civic when DEVO came to town in 1982.

Are we not men? We are DEVO!

Sure, it looks like the singer is wearing a flower pot hat, but DEVO fans know them as “Energy Domes.” I was a fan back then, but not enough to have bought a ticket. A friend gave me the ticket. Her 15 year old daughter won the seats from a radio promotion, and mom really didn’t want to go. Front row! Hence, the good shots. The show was much better than I expected.

This was the era of the “It’s a Beautiful World” single, which was a show highlight.

It’s a beautiful world we live in,
A sweet romantic place,
Beautiful people everywhere,
The way they show they care
Makes me want to say,

It’s a wonderful time to be here,
It’s nice to be alive,
Wonderful people everywhere,
The way they comb their hair

(Chorus)
It’s a beautiful world (three times)
For you (three times)

Everything I’d heard by DEVO was sort-of deliberately sterile sounding, I think. Art music. Almost a parody of itself. Certainly a sarcastic reflection of pop culture.

The funny thing about pop culture is that even self-parody acknowledgement of its own banality becomes more pop culture, perhaps even the best of it.

What I wouldn’t have guessed was how hard they rocked. Obviously, having risen through the punk clubscene, they’d learned to move an audience. This wasn’t studio music played live. They engaged the crowd, playing it hard with abandon. Up front, and hearing mostly the stage monitors, I was impressed. A tight rock band.

Devo singer Mark Mothersbaugh has gone on to become an accomplished artist in both film scores and visual arts. An extremely impressive list of accomplishments by any measure.
They still play as a band too. The DEVO webiste had recent video from a SF show at the Fillmore.
Amazing.
I like the final image in my series. You can tell this was taken some time ago. Outstretched arms aren’t holding up cell phones recording the moment. They were just in the moment.

All photos by Skip Murphy, 1982. Below, I wanted to post one of their many online videos, but it was so hard to pick one. This one was recorded just few days ago, 1-13-12 @The Fillmore. Impressive longevity for any band!

This is classic. Thanks Erin. You’re Really Redding.

More of the talented Erin at Still Married.net.

For the record, I think we should have taken the name Enterprise when we merged with it in the 70’s. Redding was the name of an otherwise unremarkable rail employee. Enterprise has a ring of capitalistic optimism, and further enhances the business friendly image our EDC tries to project to the world. Welcome to Enterprise. What’s the acronym for that?