http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html Inge Berge: news Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:11:01 -0700 http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#33 Ten True Things & A Filthy Dirty Lie is being pressed. I expect to be able to deliver it around April 12th. Look for promo and general pressure to buy, coming to your inbox soon!

]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#33 Sun, 04 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#32
It's sounding good & I'm happy with the results so far. I'm hoping you will be, too.

The Rockpile sessions from this summer came out great, and I
just did a session here in Norway with a couple of lovely & talented backup vocalists, Linni & Annika, who put their personal touch on a tune called "Ah! This Vanity." Sexy.

Stay tuned.]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#32 Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#31
Things are sounding good. I'm writing, producing, recording, scheming, dreaming, wheeling and dealing.

There will be a couple of hits on this record. Sez me.

Some of the tracks are more or less ready. You've heard the previews: Hacksaw, One True Thing, Fiona. Much more has been recorded, but I'm not pre-releasing any more stuff till the real record comes out. Muah.

Now you know.

Stay tuned.]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#31 Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#30 Found this little ditty today. Says it all. Rough translation follows. 

Trass - Raga Rockers ©2009 M. Krohn

Jeg er tapernes konge

Jeg lever på trass

Spiser søppel

Bader I dass

Velstand og lykke

Preller av på meg

Jeg kjører en annen vei

Men bakken er glatt

Og bilen mangler ratt

Jeg tror jeg blir sjakk matt

Det er ikke lett å slåss

Mot alle på en gang

Uten annen grunn

Enn for å være vrang

Fred og kærlighet

Funker ikke for meg

Jeg kjører en annen vei

Men bakken er bratt

Og batteriet er flatt

Jeg tror jeg blir sjakk matt

Spite - Raga Rockers ©2009 M. Krohn

I'm the king of the losers

I live just for spite

I eat garbage

I swim in shite

Well being & happiness

Never stick with me

I drive another road, you see

But it's slick and it's uphill

and the car ain't got no wheel

Think I'm finally gonna keel

It ain't easy to fight off

all that needs resistance

based on nothin' 'cept

a contrary insistence

Peace & Love

Don't work out for me

I drive another road, you see

But it's slick and it's uphill

and the fuel gauge screams "nil" 

Think I'm finally gonna keel

 

]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#30 Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#29 The Zerosum in Scandinavia and Europe. The label must be able to get the record into the right stores, as well as work to place its songs in appropriate films/TV shows/radio programs.

Inge stands firmly by this record and believes it is an interesting and aesthetically/existentially challenging concept piece which deserves a place on the CD-shelves of serious music lovers all over the world.

Inge's label of choice should be arts-minded rather than overtly commercial, and it should have experience in the marketing and distribution of niche art. This CD is not a WalMart/Convenience store pop-hit-of-the-day mega-seller, but rather, if handled by the right people, a collector's item with a potential "long tail" of sales for years to come.

The label should also be willing and able to collaborate financially with the artist on future releases of high artistic integrity.

Please visit the links page to download a pdf one-sheet describing The Zerosum and additional promotional materials. Musical selections from the record can be sampled in Inge's tape vault.

The record is currently distributed via CDBaby.com and iTunes.

Interested labels can request a copy of the CD by contacting
info (at) ingebergeworld.com or by using the form on this website's home page.]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#29 Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#28 welcome to the air outside
As you can see, there's a lot of stuff out here
mostly plastic & chemicals.

The best thing we sculpted out of
plastic & chemicals so far is called  "Television."
Television tells you what things
you need in order to be 
successful and happy.

In order to be happy, you must Consume
lots of things.
The more you Consume
the happier you are. 

It's important that you try to Consume 
more than your neighbors and friends. 

The Television
will keep you constantly informed
about the things you need to 
Consume.

Keep it on at all times.

If there are things you don't feel you need, you
are doing something wrong. Work harder, and 
watch more Television.

In order to get all this stuff, you
will have to work hard for someone else, 
who gives you money
to buy some of the stuff the Television 
says you need.

This person will always have more stuff than you.
That way you will be reminded that 
you need to be more like him
and try to get more of the stuff he has.

Don't be afraid to get tired of old things very very quickly,
and try to get new things
very very quickly. 

This helps the Economy. 
The faster you can use up things, 
The better the Economy is, 
and the better the Economy is, 
the faster new things 
can get made, 
so you can always be happier
and happier
and happier
and happier
and happier
and happier
and happier
and happier
and happier
and happier

like, if your microwave oven is too slow, 
buy a new one, as fast as you can, 

and if something doesn't entertain you in less than, say, 10 seconds, 
(like a "book",  or "music",  or a "film", or "trees")
throw it away 
and buy something else. 

The happiest, most successful people we know about
have actually built "shopping malls" where "trees" used to be.
Maybe you can, too?

Always remember: if you're not totally happy (if you can't get enough stuff) you can always take a drug. The Television
will tell you which ones are good. 

Any questions,
come see me
during a commercial break.]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#28 Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#25
_{Click here for the version published in the Gloucester Daily Times.}

When I first heard about the now dubious "teen pregnancy pact" at GHS and the international media-frenzy it sparked, my instinct wasn't to be ashamed of my adopted hometown.

After reading the onslaught of moral condemnation and outright hatefulness which has formed the bulk of the responses from Gloucester's suddenly high and mighty citizenry, however, I'm not so sure.

Sure, this is an odd and unusual situation. Teenage motherhood is obviously not something to be taken on casually, and eighteen high-school girls choosing to become pregnant concurrently is an uncommon and noteworthy occasion.

But is there really cause for hue and cry, moral outrage and wholesale condemnation of the girls (and boys) involved? Of course not. Yet the city's editorial pages and online bulletin boards are dripping with derision. I’ve read, among other absurdities, calls for “sterilization of youth”, “public shaming”, “immediate expulsion from school” and — get this! — “the mayor must resign.”

In addition to this, many area talk radio hosts, frothing at the mouth, evidently think nothing of hurling the ugliest epithets at these girls. “Slut” , “whore”, “welfare trash” and “illegitimate” have all been become staples of radio vocabulary in recent days.

As I read and hear some of the medieval venom directed at these girls - that's when I cringe in shame over our society. That's when I can’t help but recall the Salem witch trials. That's when I see what a powerfully negative force mob mentality can be. That's when I see that whatever choices these girls may have made for themselves, their chances of success are are all but annihilated by the overwhelmingly condemning reactions of local society.

We seem to be forgetting a couple of key things in this story: Even teenage girls have civil liberties. Even teenage girls hold the rights to their own bodies and their own reproductive systems. Even teenage girls have the right to make uncommon and challenging choices. It is not for you and me to jump to the knee-jerk conclusion that all these girls are stupid and uninformed; that they and their offspring are doomed because of their admittedly radical choice. Even so, most of Gloucester evidently sees nothing wrong with engaging in a hate-fest directed at these young women, as if driven by a collective wish to enforce a self-fulfilling prophecy of utter failure for every pregnant high school girl, regardless of her individual circumstances.

The media have, by and large, rushed at the opportunity to help hang these young women. Instead of taking a rational, pragmatic approach - as in: "OK, here's an unusual and challenging situation. What can we do to make the best of this?" - the media and much of the public have brought out the pitchforks and mounted their collective high horse, preferring to ignore the fact that teenage motherhood is in fact feasible, has in fact been undertaken successfully by millions (billions?) of women throughout human history, and can, under the best of circumstances, be rewarding and fulfilling - if necessarily immensely challenging - for both parent and child.

I am not trying to paint a picture of teenage motherhood as something to be encouraged in modern society: as the recent media storm succinctly illustrates, we are ill equipped to deal with the notion. I am a firm believer in sex education, open and free information about human sexuality, reproduction, contraception and the value of making informed, autonomous choices regarding one's own body. These are measures which have been solidly proven to greatly reduce teen pregnancy rates in all societies in which they are meaningfully practiced.

("Abstinence education," by the way, is prima facie nonsensical. Teenagers will always engage in sex - society's only measure of control over which being whether they tend to do so aided by informed decision-making or else in blind ignorance of the facts of life.)

At any rate: I wish to extend an overdue "congratulations" to all these pregnant girls. In case we’ve all forgotten, it’s a common, decent word of well-wishing and good will usually bestowed on expectant moms. It’s a word of which these young mothers-to-be have been woefully deprived - due not only to their age and unusual circumstance, but by society's general thirst for scorn and self-righteous indignation in place of much needed support and guidance. "It takes a village," the saying goes. I hope this village is enlightened enough to put away the tar and feathers, and instead help these young moms deal with their situation in a pragmatic, reasonable manner.

Godspeed!

---]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#25 Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#26 Click here for the version published in the Gloucester Daily Times.

All those in favor of living in a police state, say nothing.

Is it just me, or are things changing around here?

Ok, here's the deal, folks. I'm sitting at this local bar last Friday night, just me and a friend. Having a martini, shooting the breeze, enjoying life. Real chill. Real mellow. There are probably ten other patrons in the room plus the restaurant-owner and the barkeep; respectable folk, all. A class joint, by all standards - not the kind of place where any kind of trouble goes down. Just good food, good drinks, civilized company. Every last person in the joint is behaving him- or herself perfectly, all are well dressed and speaking in subdued tones and drinking Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio. Get my drift?

I would say the name of the place, but then it would look like I'm writing this on behalf of the owner, which I'm not. These are just my private observations.

Anyway. I guess it must have been around 10-ish. We'd been half-way noticing a police cruiser parked out front the previous hour or so — effectively blocking the entrance to the parking area, so that no more cars could enter. Come to think of it, no new patrons entered the establishment on foot either, the whole time the cruiser sat out front. The establishment is relatively new, and could probably use all the business it can get on a Friday night, but, hey. Whatever, right?

At around ten, two uniformed, armed policemen enter the bar. Mind you, there's nothing going on, nobody has called them; nobody would have any reason to. Nevertheless, these two Gloucester cops show up - and more or less start to interrogate the bar owner. Right in front of us - his patrons, his bread and butter. "You the owner, Sir? Any problems with underage drinking in your place? Everything cool? Ever have any trouble? Fights, excessive drunkenness?" I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.

It seems they were doing random spot-checks on several area bars and restaurants. Just sort of letting their presence be known, letting the bar-owner know they're there. Always. Right near by. Ready to pounce at the slightest stirring. Listen up, folks. Don’t even think about any funny business. We’re on it.

Now, most folks probably think this is a good thing. Many would likely say this is an example of "good community policing" or some such phrase. I happen to see things in a different light. The whole song-and-dance looked more like posturing to me. If not quite intimidation, then uncouth at least. There's a very fine line between "protect and serve" and "intimidate and harass.”

Maybe it's my upbringing. I grew up in Norway. In the eighties. A very different time and place than post-9/11 America, to be sure. No terror threats, real nor imagined, no rampant crime. It seemed very free. Very free of police, too. Come to think of it, I don't know that I ever saw a policeman or a police cruiser from the time I was born until I turned nineteen and moved stateside. That's maybe a slight exaggeration, but you get my drift. As kids, we partied, hung out, did our thing. In the woods, at our friends' houses, at the local lake. In discos and clubs. Nobody ever had occasion for any contact with law enforcement. As a matter of fact, nobody ever saw the police. The police were there, you could call the local constabulary and they would surely send a man to assist, should there ever be trouble. But there never was. To the kids, “The Police” meant a British new-wave band.

Now it's 2008 and I live in Gloucester, MA, USA. Allegedly, I’m a resident of the freest country in the world. I see, on average, 15-20 patrol vehicles a day. If I walk my dog around the block, all probability indicates I'll see an armed officer in a marked cruiser. If I drive anywhere, even just across town, I'm likely to spot at least two or three. In short, police presence is high, folks. We have highly paid, deadly-force-equipped cops guarding every manhole cover being opened, every tree-branch being sawed, every pothole being filled, every peaceful gathering of anything more than a small handful of citizens. If we're lucky, maybe they'll clear the streets following this year's Fiesta celebration with snarling German Shepherds, just to be on the safe side; to protect the reveling citizenry from itself. Who knows? Who cares, right?

The US has the highest rate of incarceration in the history of the world; of human civilization. We have in effect done away with habeas corpus, and our federal government is in the process of demanding that all states comply with the Real ID act, requiring all citizens to be ready to "show their papers" at any and all prompting. Panopticon society is fast becoming a reality, and we simply don't care, as long as there are still cheap flat-screens at Best Buy and juicy gossip about Britney and Paris in the tabloids.

Police is needed in any community, and I applaud and support the fine work of police departments and officers everywhere who fight crime while always keeping in mind what it is they’re helping to safeguard: a free and open society.

Friday’s little cop-show at the bar, however, made me wonder just how long it will be until it's decreed to be OK for officers to enter peoples homes to conduct spot-checks: Just checking in, ma'am. Just keeping you safe from yourself and making sure everything is up to specs. Not to worry. Anything suspicious to report about your neighbors? We’re watching ya.

Now, notice I am not accusing any officer of any kind of wrongdoing under current laws and guidelines. Friday’s police visit was in perfect keeping with the present American zeitgeist; perfectly aligned with our current paradigm of inviting the ever-stronger arm of the law into all forms of social interaction. To me, it was a fitting piece of evidence of a society grown accustomed to forfeiting its civil liberties, piece by piece, in exchange for a perceived increase in order and security.

All those in favor of living in a police state, say nothing.
World history indicates you're very likely to get your wish granted.

Postscript: It is now the following Wednesday. After a long day at work, I’m heading back home; the last train from Boston. All day, ruminations on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of publishing the piece you’ve just read have been churning in the back of my mind. Showing this piece to friends and acquaintances, I’ve been advised not to publish it as many times as I’ve been told it ought be printed — which perhaps tells us something about prevalent views on police, liberty, free expression.

At any rate: as I groggily step out onto the platform in Gloucester at 1:15 AM, I and the other passengers are greeted by two policemen, their bright flashlights in our faces, accompanied by a brusque demand for ID. When I ask one of the officers what the story is, he replies “Oh yeah, you wanna get involved, do you? You could be a terrorist, that’s what the story is. Lets’s see some ID before I take you in.” I quickly comply, asking no more questions.

---]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#26 Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#24
My old iPod died a while back, and I just replaced it with an iPod Shuffle. You know, the new clip-on, featherweight, matchbook-sized gadget from Apple. It plays music. Any music. Any sound ever recorded by anybody. Any music that ever made it onto waxpaper, bakelite, vinyl, magnetic tape, CD; any vibration ever made by a human musician and shared with the world as the audible product of their souls, hearts, brains, mouths and fingers.

As it turns out, it can all be stored and reproduced by a thing the size of a matchbook, weighing not much more than a soda cap, player and storage medium one and the same.

I used to understand sound, so I thought. I used to feel I understood soundwaves; their objective, empiric, comprehensible existence. I could mentally follow the path of a soundwave's physicality: how the vibrations of a guitar string make their way into a record groove, how the singer's voice is really only air moving in waves and patterns, patterns drawn so accurately as to communicate the soul, the heart, the art, the essence of the singer. A needle on a record, a finger on a string, a breath on a membrane.

When the digital age came, I sort of followed, still. I could conceptualize how soundwaves were broken down into mathematical equations, sound-pictures drawn binarily - ones and zeroes, etched onto disc, read by laser, reanimated through the D/A conversion process and ending back up as physical waves, yet again tickling the eardrum, making you and I hear the music.

There was always a spinning disc, a mechanical something. A physical, tangible element. Movement. You knew there was a plastic platter spinning inside your CD player, psychologically recalling the physical process of making sound, a carousel of time, a tangible timeline of aural events. There was a motor. Ones and zeroes, sure, but they lived on something. A spinning disc. A hard drive, at least. There was still the reminder of motion; the movement of sound from medium to eardrum.

The disc is gone. Flash memory. The artist is kept alive by a battery the size of a pinkie nail. His soul, his thoughts, his sound, his vibrations, his emotions: living - self contained - in a flash memory chip. No movement, no vibration, no spin. A secret, unseen army of sixteen trillion quantum-size soldiers, each responsible for exactly one sixteen-trillionth of the artist's soul, zealously guarding a one or a zero, flashing their identity on the timekeeper's exact signal - as long as his sun, the fingernail battery, gives his army nourishment.

Earlier tonight, I stood in an open field, stars above, earbuds in ears, and listened to myself. My own voice, my own guitar, my own feelings, my own emotions. The record I made a year ago. It was coming from an item the size of a matchbook, an item with no moving parts, not even a slight vibration. There was no remaining hint of mechanics, only data-transfer between matchbook-chip and Inge-brain. Two values - everything and nothing, on and off, one and zero - flashing at light speed and recreating, well, me.

As I listened and looked at the stars, a fleeting satori-like notion flew through the moment: neurochemistry is digital but reality is analog. Then the thought disappeared, and I haven't really been able to get in touch with it since. Guess I got sidetracked by wondering when exactly the 16,000,000,000,000 soldiers and their offspring will move out of the matchbook and into my brain, to be directly overseen by myself in conjunction with Apple and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Can we do anything but wait, and keep listening, having, perhaps irreversibly, discovered that all human effort just may be reducible to the size of a soda cap?



***


Inge Berge will perform - physically, tangibly - at the Dogbar Sunday night. Strings will vibrate, voices will travel through membranes, cables and speaker-cones, to be received by your eardrums, and, if we do it right, the process will make you drink martinis, dance, socialize, talk and have a good time. Ain't that something. It's an analog sensation.


Inge at the DogBar, Gloucester, MA. Sunday nights, 930-closing.

www.ingebergeworld.com
www.dogbarcapeann.com


Also, at the Mandrake, Beverly. Tuesday. Nine o'clock!

www.mandrakebeverly.com
***]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#24 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#19 To say that Janice Moresby was torn by doubt would be like saying it's a little bit tricky to calculate the exact value of pi.

Sure, she was perfectly well accustomed to making fast,rational and - more often than not - correct decisions in her job at the
hospital. Janice excelled at her work. But this was different.

Janice just couldn't shake the feeling. An ominousness, a foreboding, a sort of emotional nausea. It had stayed with her since Wednesday, when she first learned, through a coworker, that Inge Berge and His Red Acousticâ„¢ would be appearing at Mandrake in Beverly. On a Monday! This coming Monday!

"Inge plays the Mandrake on Tuesdays," she had countered. No use. The coworker, a rather steely, frequently sterile and humorless neurosurgeon, had persisted in repeatedly assuring Janice that it was in fact true. "Inge is playing on Monday this coming week, not Tuesday, Janice. End of story. It's an unalterable, clinical, scientific fact. Live with it."

Bastard.

How could it be? The dilemma persisted, gnawed, tore at Janice's brain. Monday is Jam night at the Rhumbline! With Leo, Joe and the boys! This cannot be. Like a pesky gnat on a hot summer night, the thought just wouldn't let up. Several times Janice thought she saw the answer coming to her, only to see it evaporate into new rounds
of paradox a minute later: a new depth of impossibility, a
centrifuge of sheer unsolveability.

Janice slept poorly all week. Tossing. Turning. Night sweats. Channel surfing, re-reading her favorite books, even wandering the empty streets, fruitlessly looking for answers. Saturday night she took a Valium. She had always been very careful with benzodiazepines, wouldn't usually touch them, but on this particular night it was simply a necessity. For her sanity, she told herself. She slept a deep, dreamless sleep that night, and when she poured her morning
coffee, drowsier than usual, the obsession seemed weakened,
neutered. But noontime came, and Bang! there it was again. Monday! Goddamn, motherfucking, cocksucking Monday! Inge at the Mandrake! Janice didn't usually swear. Not at work.

Janice read Kafka. She read Kant. She revisited both Jung and Freud. She poured over Dostoevsky, the DSM-IV, the Bible, the I-Ching, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. She even delved headlong into an impossible quagmire of a book, "The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous." Janice was a very, very fast reader. No answers. No leads. No insights, no revelations.

Monday came as Monday always will. Janice was in hell. Every second, every tick of every hospital clock was a gunshot, an exploding bullet, a countdown to impossibility, to a morass of Nothing, to an incalculable singularity. Evening would come, Janice would find herself in her car, driving around and around the rotary, unable to
decide whether to turn up Washington street or else head down highway Twelve-Eight toward Beverly.

Perhaps the police would finally stop her, bring her in for
questioning, jail her for the night. At least it would be settled,
then: No music. No drinks. No company, no dancing. No Inge at The Mandrake. No Rhumbline Jam. Perhaps it would all be for the best.

Janice left the hospital at six. Janice went home to relax and get ready for a night out; that was the story she told her colleagues.

She was found three days later by a hiker. Dogtown, near Whale's Jaw. Wearing nothing but a knit poncho and her grandmothers showercap, singing Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." According to the
paramedics report, she had tethered herself to a young spruce with a length of bungee-cord, and there were cut-marks on her elbows. She was trembling. Hypothermia and hunger were all she knew. That, and
the lyrics to "I Will Survive."




Study Questions:

1) What was Janice's dilemma?

2) Was the dilemma really unsovable? Why? Why not?

3) Where is Inge playing on Monday night?

4) What would you do in Janice's situation?

Please return your answers/essays via electronic mail to
janicedilemma@ingebergeworld.com no later than Monday, April 7th,
5:00 PM. You will be graded. Please indicate if you consent to your
answer being posted at ingebergeworld.com.

*****]]> http://ingebergeworld.com/news.html#19 Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Producer. Singer. Guitarist. Contrarian. Writer. Madman. - Inge Berge - news