Vanessa Vivante

It was the beginning of the nineties. I had just graduated college where I had majored in trumpet performance with my minor instrument being bass. That morning I was at Stapleton Airport on my way to Boston to visit relatives and hang out in places like the Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. A plane arrived at my gate and passengers began to disembark.

While a student at CU I had gotten into the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Their album Mother’s Milk had come out a year earlier and a funk band in Boulder I played with played their version of the Stevie Wonder song Higher Ground at our shows. I particularly liked Flea’s totally uninhibited bass playing. And then who else, but the Chili Peppers walked off the plane!

I quickly spotted Flea and pulled the paper pad I used for lesson notes out of my trumpet case and asked him for an autograph. He was very nice about it and didn’t try to shoo me away or anything. He said, “Hi...okay, sure...” and wrote “Hi I’m Flea” on the pad, smiled at me and and handed it back. Thirty minutes later Flea and his band were in a limousine going who knows where and I was on a plane flying to Boston.

What I didn’t know was that Flea the virtuoso rock/funk bass player had given up on his dream to be a trumpet player. He seemed to carry that low level of regret through several more decades of being a global rock star until now. Meanwhile I carried on with a life of trumpet playing punctuated by jobs in fast food restaurants, temping, secretarial work, software development, and finally opening my own coffee shops. It’s been a fun life and maybe less hectic for me by not being globally famous. Although it looks like he now plays a Monette trumpet which means being globally famous perhaps might grant one a little more FU money to lay down for an instrument.

What I didn’t do in all those years was play bass...until a few years ago when I finally bought one...sort of. I always liked the sound of bands like New Order and The Cure who often had some jangly line in their songs being played on a Bass VI so I bought myself a black Schecter HellCat VI, which is Schecter’s version of a Bass VI. You can hear it throughout my album Du Bist Kein Toy. So I guess Flea and I had been staring across the same abyss longingly at the instruments we’d flirted with as kids and always wondered, ‘what if?’.

According to an interview I saw with Flea and Jimmy Fallon, he finally came around to doing something about his wish to be a trumpet player and started playing every day a few years ago. He’s obviously a quick study and very disciplined because he just released an album, Honora where he sounds almost like Ron Miles! Actually the album reminds me of the one Ginger Baker did with Ron Miles called Coward of the County. How long is it before we see Flea touring with Bill Frisell and Rudy Royston?

Last night I played my trumpet along with a few songs from Honora, improvising harmonies and making up countermelodies which is something I often do with Sigur Rós, Murcof, or Eluvium albums. It was surprising and pleasing how similar Flea’s tone and melodic inclinations were to mine as I played along, hearing the songs for the first time and playing along.

Honora is probably not going to be the first choice for hardcore Chili Peppers superfans but anyone who has tastes broad enough to have in their record collection some jazz, ambient, electronica, and maybe even an old beat poet album or two will really like this release.

-V

Here's a video for You're In A Hell Of A Lot More Trouble Than You Think from my album Du Bist Kein Toy. Enjoy!

-V

Recently I noticed someone online issued one of those dumb little social media surveys people do to generate clicks, likes, and shares. It asked you to post the cover image of the first album you bought with your own money. I mentioned it to Carrie and remarked about how one of the albums shown was from a user obviously far younger than me. Her reply, “So, what was yours?”

Whoops!

My immediate response was “In the Heat of the Night” by Pat Benatar. But suddenly a rush of memories came back and I realized my answer was a quite bit more complicated. I was living in the Philippines on a military base at the time. We would sometimes go off base to shop at a local record store that sold mostly Filipino artists but also counterfeit copies of popular albums from the US and Europe. One afternoon I asked a shopkeeper for a song I’d heard on Casey Kasem’s Top 40 radio show called Heartbreaker. I had no idea who sang it but really liked the song. Happily I took my new purchase of Heartbreaker home with me anxious to play it on my own stereo.

I quickly realized my new album bore no resemblance to the top 40 hit I wanted. It had the right title but my only thought while listening was “um...NO!” It turned out to be Dolly Parton’s album, Heartbreaker, released about a year before Pat Benatar’s song. We took it back to the store and after much haggling, they offered to exchange it for another album. The only catch was they had never heard of Pat Benatar and definitely did not have her album. Angry that I’d spent my money and the store wouldn’t return it, I browsed their collection for what must have seemed for hours looking for something suitable. I ended up going home with Candy-O by The Cars.

Later that year my mom and dad found In the Heat of the Night and gave it to me as a birthday present.

So, it’s not as simple as it would seem to answer the question, “What was the first album you bought with your own money?” because I could make an argument for several albums. It could be Pat Benatar: In the Heat of the Night” (which is what I wanted), Candy-O (which I eventually came to love and never regretted buying), or Dolly Parton: Heartbreaker (returned to the store but I eventually came to appreciate and adore Dolly Parton).

...although, come to think of it, when and how did I obtain that album by Filipino boy band The Boyfriends with the song Dahil Mahal Kita on it? Was that before Pat Benatar? Hmm...

-V

Mongomaniacs (named after we did an all Mongo Santamaria show last year) is a jam / cover band I play with in San Francisco. Here's more about this upcoming show. -V

Do you love music? Freedom? Democracy? Then join us on Saturday, May 24, from 6pm - 10pm to celebrate all three!

Jam For Change is our next event! It’s a fundraiser for organizations championing rights and principles we all care about. We're aiming to raise $5,000 for the ACLU, HRC, Indivisible, NAACP, and Planned Parenthood. These organizations are fighting the good fight, and they need our support now more than ever!

This time around, we're renting out the spectacular Music City SF event space for the party – and the jam is open to everybody! We'll be performing on the main stage, and there will be a cash bar and food service available. Invite your friends, your neighbors, your neighbors’ friends and your friends’ neighbors. It's going to be a blast!

Three bands you know and love – Strawberry Jealous, Mongomaniacs, and SuperBloom – will be performing. And best of all, you can play on stage with them by making a donation to one of the above causes!

Ready to rock out? Signups are here, or contact jam-request@lbtband.com.

FAQ & other deets available here.

Signups close on Sat 4/26, and space is limited. Sign up now!

Rock On!
Zenkat and John

(plus a huge hat tip to Gina for putting together an awesome flyer for the event, send it around!)

Here's a head's up about the first gig I will play since heart surgery. It's this Sunday!

Just a little over a week after I left the hospital our lead guitar and genius singer/songwriter Mike Woodard was in the emergency room with debilitating headaches. Soon he was in surgery to remove tumors in his brain. Then onto the Mayo clinic for treatment. He and his wife (also a singer in Split Window) suddenly have massive expenses for all kinds of stuff related to this unexpected health crisis.

Split Window and Beau Thomas will perform at Ten Mile Music Hall this Sunday October 20, 2024. You can come help Mike and Audrey, and hear some great music!

-V

Like many classic cars and other hobby projects, I’ve been taken apart and put back together several times in order to give me more years of life. I remember a comic strip of a Sergeant who was always taking his Army jeep apart and putting it back together for fun. There were always a few nuts and bolts left over which he simply kicked under the workbench. Problem solved! Being a few parts short might help explain how I’ve managed to stay trim.

My most recent disassembly / reassembly was only two months ago. Recovering and healing from that has given me a lot of time to think about what I want to do next musically. I suppose I could make another album but I get the impression that unless you are obligated by your record company to create long format song collections, it’s a kind of hard way to make an impression on people.

I discovered after making Du Bist Kein Toy that most people don’t want a CD, even if you give it to them for free. They stand there looking up into the air trying to remember if they have a working player anywhere. “Well, I used to have one in my car but it stopped working and there was an old PC in my mom’s house I think may have had a CD-ROM drive, but I think she moved it down to the basement behind her piano and the boxes of Peter Max posters…”

The trendy resurgence of vinyl seems to me a way to make artists pay even more to get physical copies of their work. At least CDs were cheap to manufacture. Plus after shelling out two or three times the cost per copy the factory puts you on a long waiting list. Apparently there’s only one order in front of you, but unfortunately for you it’s for another ten million copies of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Add to that the fact that many of these new young vinyl collectors don’t even have record players?!!

Didn’t I see a recent article on some European paper’s website about cassettes making a comeback?

*sigh*

Over the last few years I made a few videos from Split Window’s shows which pleased a few viewers. I had even more fun filming stuff with my phone and editing that into videos for some of my own songs. I may not be very good at it but the work pleases me and I like the end product after my efforts. I don’t expect them to rise to the standard of the multimillion dollar budget stuff like Woodkid or Rammstein videos but they make me happy.

Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll accidentally flash too much tits and ass in an on camera wardrobe malfunction, or maybe I’ll even say something powerful and inspiring that lots of people actually want to hear and it will go viral. C’est la derrière! (That’s French for “Never underestimate the power of my derrière, motherfuckers!”)

More likely I’ll keep on keeping on the way I have done because I’m busy enough living my life and being basically happy. It’s kind of an amazing thing for someone who not too long ago was chronically depressed and reckless most of the time.

To summarize, I’m going to make more music and other fun stuff, but there probably won’t be new CDs from me for a while (at least until The Guardian and NME say CD’s are tres cool now and everybody goes out and buys new players so they can listen to the music on them). However there are still some copies left of Du Bist Kein Toy if you want one.

-V

Pink Pony World

The thing I love most about Chappell Roan’s sudden rise in popularity is watching the effect she seems to have on people. Look at any video of her concerts online and check out the audience. Doesn't it look like a lot of those people are getting more out of these shows than just standing there listening to a girl sing songs? It seems many of her fans are finding the ability now to convert the vicarious thrill of watching a young beautiful pop star as she performs her process of self discovery onstage and online into improved self confidence and feelings of empowerment to improve their own lives.

Maybe there are a lot of crossover experiences for these people where the positive influences they’re feeling are coming from several sources converging lately (e.g., Brat Summer, Kamala Harris, Simone Biles, etc.). However it’s happening, I love to see it. It reminds me that there’s a lot of good things in the world. Chappel Roan is definitely one of them!

As to my website’s recent blurb advertising myself as a former barista at the Pink Pony Club...okay fine! Let’s unpack that. The Pink Pony Club is a song and part of Roan’s fictional universe and since it's a bar, would probably employ a bartender not a barista, but since I was a barista for several years I can indulge in redecorating her fantasy venue to suit myself. Besides, it’s a cool thing that Roan and I have in common: We both were baristas and know how to make latte art.

That song brought back a lot of memories. Her lyrics for Pink Pony Club resemble my entire twenties and even thirties. Here I am more than twenty years on (Sorry, age-drop there...look, if I can admit it, you can deal with it!) and Chappell Roan is discovering for the first time in her life the joy in some of the same things I found for myself in the nineties. I count myself among the lucky that I never lost those sensibilities, and the girlfriend I met in one of those pink pony clubs way back then is still married to me today. So there! Sometimes it does work out.

Another thing I love about Chappell’s act is the positivity she projects. Her performances make people feel great about everything despite lyrics that can cover topics like humiliation, breakups, rejection, and depression. People come away from her show thinking everything is still somehow going to work out, for Chappell and for them.

I played in a band with similar energy in the early 2000’s. We were a big drag king/queen fifties cover band called The Woodyz that played at gay pride events around the country. No matter how raunchy our act got it always generated positive feelings and excitement with audiences. The band I now perform with, Split Window, also projects its own kind of positivity and excitement.

Having played with other bands that spewed all their darkest emotions and got back pretty much the same from the crowd, I have to say I like the positive thing a lot better. It seems to work better psychologically for the audience members as well.

Note: You know, I think this is the first time I've noticed that both of the band's names I mentioned I played with are automobile references: A “woodie” was a kind of station wagon popular from the thirties through the sixties, and “split window” refers to the divided windshield on a VW Microbus from the fifties and sixties.

-V

Photo: The Woodyz at El Rio, San Francisco

Living in a postcard…

While trying to assemble photos of myself for an editor once, he complained that a lot of them looked like I was on vacation. He was clearly being acidic, trying to say the photos I gave him weren't professional enough. He was probably looking for something more like a Robert Mappelthorpe or Annie Lebovitz style shot of me holding a bulky Monette horn or one of those Dizzy Gillespie raised bell trumpets behind my head artistically while peering off meaningfully with the squinted gaze of a fighter pilot, possibly surrounded by other band members wearing Mexican wrestling masks, showing inexplicably stern expressions glaring into random directions in space.

Maybe he had a point but I'm old enough now I have the right not to be too professional. I'm happy. I get to write and play music frequently but not so much that I feel drowned by my schedule, and the crowds I play for are mostly very appreciative. If this is mediocrity I certainly don't feel crippled by it. I have time to live my life.

I'm very lucky to have gotten to where I am. I'm not a celebrity which means you've probably never heard of me and never will. I made a living parallel to my music career for many years which means I never had to be a starving artist, at least not for long. I've found a few good friends who help stroke my ego when I'm good and know how to smack me down a few notches when I'm bad. I've also found places to live and play that make me feel like I really am on vacation all the time.

Therefore I think of it as a compliment to be accused of trying to get away with using postcard photos I took myself as PR. To that end here's one for you to enjoy at the top of this page I took while riding my bike near the Dillon Amphitheater, one of the venues my band played at last year. It's beautiful, isnt it?

I want to play…Where to play…Where to play…

A young musician recently told me she was having difficulty finding venues in which to perform. She was looking for a specific kind of place and described a specific demographic she hoped would frequent this theoretical place in her mid sized city. I realize what she really was looking for is a feeling of safety and belonging within a social scene and to find friends. However, in my experience that personal challenge is a separate thing from trying to get gigs and perform. The specifics of her story are not important to this point: Venues are not concerned with any of that.

Venues are concerned with making money.

(It's an old, old story, so I'll tell it again…)

Venues are concerned with making money.

This is not as bad a thing as it sounds. Every musician wants a place to play but that means it's important those venues stay in business. They're not a charity. They have to sell tickets. They have to sell booze. They have to sell coffee/food/t-shirts/whatever. You, the performing act, are just a cog in that machine. Get used to it and make it work for you. (It's true - there's greed, corruption, and even criminal enterprises out there but once you learn how to spot the many telltale signs you can avoid those places…unless you happen to be a greedy corrupt criminal musician, then enjoy!)

It's your job to convince venues you're a good investment. This may happen anywhere from impressing the coffee shop's barista with a good open stage performance to your agent or manager selling your show to an arena's talent buyer. Being part of a particular social scene is not the same thing as getting gigs. The talent buyer doesn't care about your style, clothes, eyeliner or goth friends, only that all your goth friends showed up and paid full price for their tickets.

Maybe you fancy yourself a punk/queer/hippie/folk/rockabilly/jazz person and you want to build credibility and a reputation for that, but that's all secondary to whether the music you make is entertaining and interesting to people. You may even discover the music you thought you were making for one scene ended up doing far better with an entirely different crowd. Don't feel obligated to conform to what you think your current friends want you to play, letting those feelings dictate whether you become a successful musician.

If you make good music that people want to hear there will always be venues to book you. Think of the variety of big touring acts passing through all the big arenas and theaters: The only thing that diverse variety of acts has in common is they all sell a lot of tickets and often completely sell out their shows. That should be the scene you aspire to, not your identity politics.

-V

After revisiting a song I wrote ages ago I decided to make a video love letter for San Francisco out of it. Crisis Management explores the city through video I captured in December 2007 as well as December 2023. If you're really paying attention you may notice the old bus terminal building before there ever was a Salesforce Tower and Salesforce Transbay Transit Center. Enjoy!

-V

Here's a new video from Split Window's show at FIBARK - Salida, CO June 17, 2023. (link: https://youtu.be/rzNQnNOywec)

Video for Split Window - Gypsy Dance - Live at Elevation Festival - Alma, Colorado - June 30, 2023.

Looks like it's a bright sunny day behind us but from the stage we were watching a dark storm creep over the mountain in front of us. Actually we had to cut our set short just a few songs after this one because the sky opened up with freezing rain that stung as it hit our faces and froze our hands. However a little under an hour later it was sunny again and the festival continued.

Listen to Split Window perform Stray Valet from the AvonLive concert September 15, 2022.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that this was the first time we performed this song and Lucas and I were making it up as we went along. That isn't an excuse, though. Making it up as we go along is how we do horn parts for this band. As we play each song in more shows our horn parts start to sound more like written parts. However we make it a point to mix things up a bit every show, making up new melodic lines and rearranging parts, even for the songs we've been playing for years. It's more interesting that way and keeps us on our toes.

The Split Window summer calendar is beginning to come together. (Actually, I've been sneaking in here every few weeks and updating our calendar as things get added. -ed)

Hope to see you at our shows.

• June 17, 2023 - FIBArk
• June 30, 2023 - Elevation Music Festival
• July 14, 2023 - The Ripple - Festival In The Clouds pre-show*
• July 15, 2023 - Festival In The Clouds *
• July 29, 2023 - Burro Days *
• August 4, 2023 - Silverthorne First Friday *
• August 5, 2023 - Summit Sky Ranch *
• August 7, 2023 - Dillon Amphitheater *
• August 26, 2023 - TwinFest
• September 3, 2023 - SunsetLive - Summer's End
• September 9, 2023 - BMFR Guffey
• September 16, 2023 - Tres Litros, Salida*
• September 23, 2023 - KHEN 106.9FM - Chickenstock*
  
  Click links for tickets and more information about each show.
  * Free shows

FIBArk was on a beautiful warm sunny day. We played on a large stage in a park next to the Arkansas river. The band after us was an all girl AC/DC cover band that had thousands of people cheering and dancing. Much grass was trampled down that day.

Elevation Music Festival in Alma in the mountains at over ten thousand feet elevation was actually kinda cold. Sleet blowing in our faces caused us to end the set early with numb hands and frozen faces. Shiver!

Festival In The Clouds was also in Alma but what a difference a couple of weeks makes. It was warm, sunny and a huge crowd turned out to see us play. Fans of the band were singing along to the songs. I met a nice band called Bedford from Kentucky.

We played Burro Days for our first time this year and it was a fun little street side stage with the crowd dancing in as well as across the street. Our show was the evening before the big race so one of the burros even came by the stage for a visit. I like to call it Donkey Daze.

It was really sunny and hot for Silverthorne First Friday but at least I remembered to bring my shades and sunblock. Someone told me there was some sort of commotion during our set involving the police but I didn't see it.

Summit Sky Ranch is a neighborhood block party with lots of friendly people and a beautiful clubhouse. This was where I discovered that you can actually grill a peach. Mmmm! I want some more of those grilled peaches!

Dillon Amphitheater is kind of like Red Rocks but even prettier. I think that gig counts as the most powerful PA system this band has played through. Thanks for buying all of our T-Shirts! I didn't even get one. Also let me know your thoughts about my CD if you picked up one of those.

Somehow we threaded the needle weatherwise and did our set at TwinFest in Salida just after a rainstorm ended and just before the next rainstorm began. Good planning skills displayed by all those people who wore swim suits to the festival.

SunsetLive in Avon had their Summer's End celebration a few weeks before Summer actually ends but the show was fun, relaxed and we watched the sun go down during our set right as we played our song, Sun Shining Somewhere.

BMFR stands for Black Mountain Family Reunion. That means it's near one of the hundreds if not thousands of hills in the world called Black Mountain. However the family reunion part is purely figurative. Even if it's untrue, I like to think of this as a Burning Man “afterburn” party.

Salida has been tremondously supportive of us this year. Maybe some of that has to do with the influence of Jodi and her family having moved there. Tres Litros is a night of noisy fun and dancing which we've done once before. I brought my little red horn partly because it's a small stage and partly because people love to see that trumpet up close.

The radio station KHEN threw a fundraiser and called it Chickenstock. I don't know why but the name makes me giggle, but in more in the way of “Wait. They named it WHAT???” Okay, so they have the word “hen” embedded in their call letters so I guess we'll allow it. Lots of people showed up for one of the last few warm Saturdays in the mountains. We were missing a couple of honeymooning newlyweds in the band (Congrats, Audrey and Mike!) and one or two others, so it was a bit roomy onstage.

So, that about does it for the Split Window 2023 Summer Blog. Hope you enjoyed seeing us play. We sure enjoyed performing! Be sure to catch us for our New Years Eve show, which I think is going to also be in Salida this year.

The donkey scored front row seats for Split Window's show! (July 29, 2023, Burro Days, Fairplay)

Yesterday as I was driving home my phone played the song “bloodseconds” by 40th Day in my car. I don't expect you to know who 40th Day is. This is the year 2023 and that band hasn't been around in any form I'm aware of since they had a reunion show in Denver around 2013. (Yes, I was there.) They broke up sometime in the nineties.

So why am I bringing them up?

While listening to the song I had a flood of memories of my time in Denver in the early nineties come back to me. 40th Day along with several other bands in the Denver scene used to trade headliner slots with the band I was in at the time. One show, say in Boulder, we'd open for them. The next show, say in Fort Collins, they'd open for us. We also shared costs on renting PA equipment as well as share drums and backline so we could all travel light. It worked that way at the time with a lot of local bands on Colorado's front range. The great thing about it was that we became friends with a lot of other bands and we all supported each other. We also got to hear a lot of great music that would influence what we were doing and it made everybody sound better over time.

Later I moved to San Francisco assuming I'd find more of that same kind of social scene among bands but it was unfortunately not like that. The bands I played with seemed to want to isolate themselves and viewed other bands as competition. It made building a fanbase much harder because you had to rely on marketing and self promotion instead of encouraging your friends to listen to the other bands you like at your shows while knowing those bands were doing the same for you. It didn't feel like anybody had our back which made it also feel kind of lonely.

40th Day to me now sounds like it could have been right at home in the shoegaze scene, their sound having similarities to bands that came long after they were gone like My Bloody Valentine, Chapterhouse, and School of Seven Bells. You can listen to some of 40th Day's music on Bandcamp (although it looks like that song I mentioned was left out) or try your luck finding their CD on the internet.

-V

Tune in to YouTube December 25 for my new video! -V

Here are a few more upcoming Split Window shows:

• September 24, 2022 - 6:30pm: Free concert at Buena Vista's 14er Fest
• October 8, 2022 - 6:00pm: Frisco Coroner's Ball - Ghouls & Goblins Night Out!

And here's a Split Window song called Stray Valet, recorded live by Carrie at our recent show in Avon.

-V

Question: What do you do when Matt Berninger comes up to you and sings a song?
Answer: I'm not really sure. Take his picture, I guess?

Tonight I will perform with Split Window as part of the Town of Frisco's Concert In The Park series. Last night I was getting warmed up and inspired by seeing The National at the Dillon Amphitheater. I was able to get tickets and gave them to Carrie for her birthday. The band had several moments of funny banter between songs and seemed very relaxed, happy, and friendly, acting almost like a local Summit County band rather than a famous touring headliner. In my experience playing an outdoor show here in the mountains kind of does that to you. Whole families come to the shows and the feeling is more friendly and less confrontational than some venues and festivals I've been to in larger metropolitan settings.

I also liked that their trumpeter didn't feel he had to live in the high, fast, and loud range like so many touring rock trumpeters do, even pushing all three buttons down and belting out a few low C-sharps from time to time. As the band played through their diverse back catalog we watched the sun set this summer for the last time after eight in the evening reminding me that we're quickly moving into autumn as daylight shortens and soon the lake, all the flowers, and this amphitheater will be covered in snow.

The opening act, Bartees Strange were very impressive. Notably, their drummer whose style reminded me of a cross between Michael Bland and Rudy Royston. As if either of those boys could swing their sticks around so well without yanking out two giant hula hoops worn as earrings! Bartees Strange did a cover of Lemonworld which made it three times we heard that song yesterday counting the two times The National played it, once during soundcheck and again during their show.

Last night's show was the first crowded concert event we've been to since the pandemic began. Signs around the venue said at "artist's request" masks were advised. We decided it would be a good idea to wear them, considering I have two shows this week and don't want to have to miss them because I got sick. We ended up being approximately the tenth of one percent of the audience that was masked. C'est la vie.

If you want to see Split Window this week, tonight's free show at six o'clock will be in the Frisco Historic Park gazebo. On Saturday afternoon we will be appearing as part of the Elevation Festival in Alma.

-V

It may seem pretty quiet around my website these days but it's because when it's summer here in the mountains I tend to spend a lot of my time playing shows with Split Window. We're a ten person band of talented musicians playing original music for parties, festivals, and concert venues in several mountain towns. While there are a few recordings of us floating around out there it's the live shows that matter most with Split Window. If you're in Frisco, Alma, or Keystone this month, be sure to come see us!

-V

Disclaimer: The text within this editorial contains a cleverly disguised advertisement for a product.

Buy my CD! The CD is absolutely the best way to experience Du Bist Kein Toy. If you listened and liked it in your tiny Alexa speaker or through your phone's earbuds, you'll love it on a CD. By playing Du Bist Kein Toy on a good CD player, you'll encounter no sudden stops due to network glitches and you'll never have to worry about lossy compressed file formats which make the music sound like it's coming from inside a paper towel tube. Every time you play my CD it will sound perfect, just like my talented guest performers and I are in your listening room performing Du Bist Kein Toy for you live.

Listen to Du Bist Kein Toy on CD on a well amplified two channel (better yet, add a subwoofer) system, with the volume high. It goes without saying, that you, as a discerning listener have invested in a pair of very high end speakers and have spared no expense on your amplifier and disc media player components. Sit on a nice, cozy chair or sofa optimally placed between the speakers to get the full experience. Put your phone down and just relax, rest your head on the cushion and close your eyes. Let the sounds wash over you.

On CD what you will never hear are the inappropriate and awkward pauses most streaming platforms unhelpfully put between tracks. You will hear Du Bist Kein Toy uninterrupted from start to finish. It's nearly an hour of sculpted and artful listening pleasure.

Repeat the CD listening meditation frequently to maintain your peace of mind and sense of well being.

People who buy and listen to Du Bist Kein Toy on CD are scientifically proven to be healthier and happier!*

-V

* Not by actual scientists.