INT. J ROLAND KELLY - NIGHT

As in my earlier, post I talked about writing a song with an Ecuadorian I met here, and I needed a guitar. I was feeling that nervous-anxious itch, after not having played for six weeks anyway.

I walked around to different guitar shops in El Centro Historico of Quito, of which there are many, and decided on a little student guitar by Rosero Nunez. It cost $45 and is totally playable.

I don’t know who this Rosero Nunez (or the company) is. I do know that there are many small guitar-making shops in Ecuador, but I couldn’t find any information online about this one.

And when I can’t find information online; I blog about it.

All I have is the inside label:

Notice the hotmail email address on it.

I’ll pass that along, in case anyone wants a custom guitar.

I hear from an Ecuadorian peace corp’er that the country has many guitar makers that are 70 years old with no children who wanted to continue the tradition. So it goes.

My new guitar is quite inexpensive (but good) and in the store I purchased it, I saw many more Rosero Nunez guitars that were of really good quality but at a higher price.

I decided on my particular guitar because it was small (in case I have to travel with it), it was cheap (in case I have to toss it), it’s not large enough to make too much noise in my hotel room, and while being a “classical” guitar, it’s made for children so the strings are almost the same distance apart as in the American tradition.

Having a classical guitar is new to me. I have never had nylon strings, I’ve never had strings don’t fan out as you go down the fret board, and if I break a string I would not know how to replace it, as the strings have no “ball” and are tied on in an elaborate way.

Still it has a unique sound, and I’m quite satisfied.

I should say that many things in Ecuador are bootlegged, and just because the label lists it as being a Rosero Nunez, that’s no guarantee that it’s not a guitar made somewhere else with an Ecuadorian label. I bought a hat that says it was made in Italy and that is obviously not true.

Even if - it’s still a playable guitar.

-J Roland Kelly

UPDATE: Sound Engineering & Making Music: Converting Audio to MIDI In Your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to Perfectly Intertwine Organic and Virtual Instruments Plus a Lesson on Audio Plug-ins

I’m here in Quito, I’ve got Tom Waits on the ol’ Ipod, and it’s raining real hard. I thought I should get this rant down before the rainbows come out and start taking lives.

THE PREMISE

Basically, for the first time I think I understand where modern indie music is going, and I want to place my bets. (Mostly) all analog instruments are finished, and I want to make a guess at how they are finally going to be phased out. I bet that a sound recording program will “recreate” organically recorded music in pure perfect computer-generated tone, somewhat in the form of the current concept of MIDI.

I got this idea in my head when recently, against my will, I was forced to learn a lot about MIDI. I was surprised to learn that MIDI was actually nothing at all like what I thought and only in the last two years has it been worth a damn.

That surprised me because MIDI is very old.

PROBLEMS OF NOW

MIDI belongs to the piano, and to classical music, but things changed, the piano became the synthesizer, the synthesizer became the MIDI keyboard, and now if you just say “MIDI controller” people will understand what you mean.

Many homes still have a piano in some form or another, either a child’s keyboard, or a high dollar MIDI controller, the important thing being that the piano is still a very popular instrument.

And in my experience everyone who thinks they can play the piano, also believes they are on top of this MIDI thing. Every single time this has proved untrue.

Problems arise when you meet a person who plays a MIDI keyboard and you try to record a song together. You will eventually figure out that they have no clue how to control their software.

This has always frustrated me.

One, because the software is such an important part of their instrument that it IS their instrument.

Two, because I always thought they wanted me to learn their software for them, like it’s ONLY a software issue, like it’s my problem, like I care how their keyboard software works, when I can’t even play the keyboard.

And three, we always ended up recording their keyboard live through analog. I felt a little bad about it, as I knew it stripped the power of MIDI out of their instrument, but I didn’t know what to do about it, nor did they.

What I learned in the last few weeks is that MIDI for most of its life has been really weak, and when I recorded a MIDI keyboard as if it were a synthesizer, unknowingly that was the best I do at the time.

Everyone spoke of MIDI as magical and I didn’t know any better so I believed them.

But what’s magical? You can record a musical line, then play it back with different instrumentation, and also edit the musical line itself.

THE LIMITATIONS OF MIDI

Here is what you couldn’t do until recently – kick out the jams, motherfu*ker. You couldn’t jam, you couldn’t interact with other live organic instruments, while recording live.

In order for MIDI to be incorporated into a modern recording with voice or a live instrument it had to be completely finished and locked down, then the organic components could be added on top of it. I’m sorry, but that’s not how modern contemporary music is created.

This is why MIDI has always been pushed away from the mainstream, and why the classical music crowd has always embraced it. It’s perfect for old dead perfectly notated music.

THE NEW EVOLUTION OF MIDI

Most people who have a MIDI controller don’t understand the new power that’s opening up to them.

Ok, what’s changed? The software, but it’s all software.

Three major software developments have changed the world of MIDI.

The first was that (cheap or free) virtual instruments became so perfect that no one could tell the difference between a real and a fake. That is, MIDI tells the computer to play this music with a grand piano and the grand piano is so life-like the only way to tell that it is most likely MIDI is that it is TOO WELL RECORDED.

The second was that multi-track recording programs (GarageBand, Adobe Audition, etc.) rethought the way MIDI should be incorporated into the recording process. Why not treat it like any other instrument, let it be recorded live with other live instruments?

I always thought this was the case, as it should have been, but it’s actually quite new.

Of the sound recording programs with which I’m familiar, the first one with this feature was GarageBand. Adobe Audition 3, which is still only a few months old, added this feature mainly just in response to GarageBand.

I know nothing about Pro Tools and hopefully never will, as I don’t like their dependence on hardware. I don´t know anything about Logic 8, but hear good things about it.

While it sounds like GarageBand might be an innovator, I can’t recommend it. I find a new reason to hate GarageBand every day, while at the same time I find new reasons to like Adobe Audition.

That’s how I finally stand on the GarageBand Vs. Adobe Audition debate.

The third development was that all of the amplifier modeling software and after effects (like software EQ, software hardlimiters, all the professional stuff, etc.) got better than their physical counterparts.

Now, even with endless money to spend, after music is in a computer there is no reason that it should leave for any reason. This means that organic sound and MIDI have finally come together in the same place at the professional level.

That’s it. This new software and it’s new potential for MIDI isn’t very old.

WHY MIDI WILL RULE MUSIC

Recently, I saw someone working on an electronic music album. I even wrote a song with them and in the process saw their music making routine, which was new to my style.

The problem came when, during our song-making attempt, I wrote the guitar part first. Now, what? The MIDI has to interact with an organic instrument.

The programs like GarageBand and Adobe Audition could have handled it, but this person was using high-end software from the MIDI tradition.

After two weeks, they figured it out. They used Ableton Live “rewired” with Reason 4. These are two expensive programs from different software companies made to work together in tandem.

Remember, software that allows for interaction of organic and MIDI instruments is relatively new. I thought it was a hack, but it worked.

And when I saw how well it worked, I started pondering my faith.

I play guitar, and I was very jealous of what they had. Imagine being able to record a performance in a perfectly pure way, then if you hit a wrong string, or just wanted to make a small change, it was only a mouse click away, and that edit would become as good as if you had played it that way.

Powerful stuff.

But this person was in the stages of “mastering” their album. In the processes of working on our song I saw the waveform of one of their MIDI tracks and it was perfect already! What was there to master?

Why would a computer spit out a track derived from computer-generated sounds in any form less than perfect? How could it be morally culpable to let the track hit the peaker? If you don’t mess with it, MIDI is perfection itself.

The last thing is that there are no microphones involved. You don’t know what a blessing that is. Microphones are usually the give away of a non-professional recording.

Every MIDI instrument is always a perfectly mic’ed instrument, that is quite priceless in a production value sense.

I’m still waiting for an omni-directional USB microphone with a frequency response of 20-20k Hz. Even if MXL or another company finally releases one, it will still only produce the same old uneven recordings that are the nature of analog (with unintended car noses in the background probably).

The perfection of a computer-generated tone will break a sound engineer’s heart.

That’s why I’m packing up the analog instrument tent and giving up.

THE WORLD DOES NOT END WITH THE MAYAN CALENDER IN 2012; IT ENDS WITH THE STOCK MARKET CRASH IN 2008

I look at it this way, when I was learning to play guitar 10 years ago, I thought I needed all kinds of musical equipment that I couldn’t afford. The one solace in later life is that it all proved unnecessary, if I had been able to buy it, I would have just been throwing my money away.

Case and point: guitar amplifiers. I always wondered why my $80 practice amp (in 1998) never sounded like any guitars I heard on the radio. I always thought it was that I didn’t spend enough; I didn’t know anything about sound engineering at the time.

Now, everything has come full circle, and I think it’s a joke. If you want to spend two grand on a high-end amplifier today, guess what, it is just a computer with a large speaker mimicking what it thinks high-end amplifiers sound like.

Let me explain it this way, guitar amplifier modeling software has gotten so good, that real amplifiers now use it to create the sound that the software was supposed to be mimicking. It’s great, it allows for presets and so on. The point? You can buy the two thousand dollar amp or you can plug your guitar into your home computer, and your computer will give you more options.

So, acoustic guitars made out of endangered trees, the fine details between an American versus a Mexican made Stratocaster, expensive cables, all of that proved pointless. Plug in your guitar, record it, add a little reverb, and now tell me how much the equipment cost?

Sorry to have to tell you this, but if you can’t entertain a group of people with a $99 student guitar, you won’t be any more entertaining with a $7000 pre-war martin. It takes a long time to learn that but it’s true.

THE APOCALYPSE (Organic Instruments are MIDI)

Organic instruments for final playback are dead. MIDI recreations of those instruments are so much better, and there can be only one.

I’m a guitar player, not a great one, but I enjoy it, and I realize that I am never going to learn to play the piano. That may sound sad, but I’ve had plenty of time to get over it.

I wanted to know how could I get in on this MIDI thing?

I’ve spent time on the Internet trying to figure this out. People have come up with a few different options—

I could buy a “MIDI Guitar.” Companies are out there that are selling guitars with no strings, only buttons along the fret board. These are not cheap, start around $1500, and I can’t see how they could possible play anything like a guitar. Not for me.

Then there are aftermarket add-ons, essentially unique pick-ups that you attach to your guitar that goes to a computer. The computer tries to read the notes you are playing and converts them to MIDI. This technology is a little more bit my style, it’s called tone-to-MIDI, but I can see through the logic. Mostly it is someone wanting to sell you the pick-up, because a guitar pick-up no matter how unique is just a type of microphone.

So, my next google search was simply “audio to MIDI” and I hit the jackpot.

Everything now is just software of course, and what I found were dozens of programs both freeware and not, that try to convert audio to MIDI. Some say they can do it in real time. I tried a few of them and found out that they worked with my guitar, but with errors.

As it turns out tone-to-MIDI technology is not that advanced, and a guitar is very demanding instrument for the software, it spits out notes faster than a piano, it is always slightly out of tune, much of the time there are six individual notes playing, good guitaring is about some really subtle movements, and the software just doesn’t record and sample fast enough. All of this is problematic.

100 MILLION DOLLAR ADVICE FOR ADOBE AND APPLE

Get that tone-to-MIDI software working right and incorporate it into the next releases of GarageBand and Audition.

It might take some work, I can see it being a little like voice recognition technology. The musician might have to teach the software how to listen to their instrument. The software might ask you to play some common chords for example. It could be processor intensive and unrealistic in real time, but it would change the face of modern music.

Imagine being able to play an old beat up guitar, mandolin, trumpet, kazoo, clarinet, violin, or saxophone into an old beat up microphone, and after some calculations the software will convert it, and give you the most angelic perfectly recorded piece of music you ever laid down.

That’s the potential.

Every organic instrument could already be a MIDI controller.

MIDI is only going to get more powerful, and the number of life-like virtual instruments grows everyday.

Imagine, Apple puts this into GarageBand… one day a college kid practices the drums on a practice mat in his dorm room (you know, a bunch of different circles to hit that make slightly different sounds, but quieter than a drum kit, or maybe just set up coffee cans), his MacBook is recording nearby with its built in microphone, the kid hits a button and his practice session is converted into the most perfectly mic’ed drums ever. Drums have a reputation as the most difficult instrument to mic, it’s not for amateurs.

Apple could even brand and sell the drum practice mat; they love that kind of thing.

Or you find a virtual instrument pack that mimics yodeling. You yodel into a microphone, the computer will measure pitch and length and then give you perfect yodels to your specification. It won’t sound like you, but it would if you could yodel.

Well, that’s the future as I see it.

There might be some people uncomfortable with this; they might argue that all music would sound the same if everyone used the same set of virtual instruments for example, or they might be uncomfortable with how “un-genuine” the music is.

But after post-production things get changed so much even the same virtual instrument would not sound any more similar than one acoustic guitar compared with another. And anyone who is concerned with how fake music is getting, should realize that for a long time now, algorithms have existed to keep music in pitch and in tempo.

It’s possible that someone who could barely play his or her instrument or can’t really sing laid down a million dollar track. But I hoped they at least had style.

AFTERWARDS: THE ACOSTIC GUITARS AND THE COCKROACHES

Beating on an old acoustic guitar is a lot of fun, and it always will be. The guitar as a musical instrument is going to go in and out of fashion, but I will always be a guitar player. I bet there are plenty of people out there who feel the same way about their organic instrument, no matter what that instrument may be.

That being said, in the recording process, organic instruments don’t hold a candle to computer generated virtual instruments. If tone-to-MIDI software were improved, it could lead to generating music of the highest production value, from instruments of the lowest, and that is the Do-It-Yourself spirit. With one click of a mouse, you could finally have your million-dollar studio.

3-2-1 Watch for the flash.

-J Roland Kelly

Living in the old historic part of Quito is great, but sometimes it’s hard to find modern trendy things; like a place to workout. Plenty of decent gyms exist in the new town, but I have only found one near where I live in the Old Town.

It’s called Samsom Y Dalila, and it’s located at Montufar & Chile in El Centro Historico.

They have a good selection of free weights, most of the machines are pretty beat up, but I found one stationary cycle in good shape.

If you want to pay by the month, it’s 20 bucks for a membership plus a one-time sign up fee, otherwise it’s two bucks to enter.

I think the hours are 6:30 am until 9:30 pm Monday – Friday, 9:30 am – 2:30 pm on Saturday and they are closed on Sunday.

It’s located on the ground floor of a residential building, but a stainless steel “GYM” sign on top of building makes the place easy to find.

I couldn’t find any information online or in a Quito city guide about gyms in the Old Town so I am writing this up.

If you are preparing to play Joe Versus the Volcano with the Cotopaxi (5897m), Chimborazo (6310m), or just taking the TeleferiQo (sky tram) up the Pichincha above Quito (4100m, where I play Joe vs. the Volcano, they built a bar and an entire amusement park up there) you can use Samsom Y Dalila to stay in shape.

“I’m sorry to inform you, you have a terminal brain cloud.”

-J Roland Kelly

A volcano! The one thing that the Bay Area doesn’t have, somebody petition Google to buy one.

I saw this film recently, and enjoyed it, mostly because it takes place in Ecuador (where I live now during my extended writing vacation).

In fact some of it is shot like only three years ago at the main bus station of Quito, which is about 200 meters from where I’m staying. Did I just write meters? I mean yards. WTF?

The story consists of a European girl (from Spain) and a native Ecuadorian girl trying to get to Cuenca (Ecuador’s third largest city) during a worker’s strike. When the bus they are on suddenly stops, they decide to hitchhike together. It then becomes a road flick and female buddy film with really beautiful scenes of Ecuador’s countryside in the background. I highly recommend netflixing it just for that.

I read one review of the film that said much of the film is lost in translation. I can testify to that. There are many inside jokes about Ecuador in the film that I don’t think will be perceived by the outside viewer, although the film did ok at international film festivals such as the one in Austin.

One thing about the film that’s odd is all the references to the geography of Ecuador. They are all right on, but unless you know anything about Ecuador’s geography, it will all be lost on you. It makes me wonder how much of this film was designed for international consumption.

The film is more political than it lets on at first. There’s a cab driver at the beginning that I would have kicked the sh*t out of, and the European girl convinces the Ecuadorian girl to stop playing a victim in her own life (a metaphor for larger things perhaps).

The thing I like most about this film is that it is straight shot Ecuador, the buses, the cities, kids walking with goats, the people, etc. After watching the film, I watched the “making of” on the DVD copy that I had, and was disappointed to learn how much effort went into the making of the film.

I have probably never said that about any other film, but what I mean is that the film contains no lies. The backgrounds, and the portrayal of Ecuador is completely genuine. So much so that I hoped this was a real low budget movie shot with a handheld on the sly sort of Dinosaur style. But no, tracks were laid out for tracking shots like any one else pretending to make a film. It’s actually pretty professional.

I have been trying to find and watch Ecuadorian films but it’s more difficult than I would have thought. I think it would be easier for me to find these foreign films in the States. Of the Ecuadorian films I have seen so far, this one is by far the best.

-J Roland Kelly

Internet Cafes. They have always been a mixed bag, but I noticed something on my trip here to Quito.

Windows XP, which powers these places, has been turned into a mess.

It’s an old operating system; yes. The problem is that its been pirated at different evolutions of its development, and then it can’t be properly updated.

Microsoft has released certain high profile security fixes to anyone, even if the OS can’t be proven to be genuine, but where do you commonly go to get those updates? That’s right, and that isn’t happening.

So, it’s common that some of the OSs are five years old.

When I go to an internet café, it’s a crap shoot as to if the computer will run anything Ajax. Come on.

I have Wordpress set to use Google Gears, but anything of any complexity, a good deal of the time just causes everything to come crashing down.

I don’t like to take my laptop out of my room, so I write these posts, put them on a USB thumb drive and take them to the internet café.

Which means I can’t avoid these versions of XP, and it doesn’t stop there. I have seen many versions of XP where the Microsoft logo as been removed and replaced by another, or some hacker’s gang sign, or nothing at all.

Is this really how it is? Is XP so old and hacked that it can be de-branded or re-branded.

The other thing about all of this is viruses. Quito must have been hit hard a while back, because everyone is paranoid. There are all of these anti-virus programs running, that do no good.

First no one pays for an OS, so they are not paying for an anti-virus program. The result is that they have multiple shareware anti-virus programs running eating up resources, and the only thing that the programs do is make up viruses to try and get you to buy the program.

I bought the USB thumb drive here, took it out of the package and the first time I plugged it in, I was told there was a virus on it. Most anti-virus programs are themselves mal-ware.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the kind of guy to move from Silicon Valley where I had a T1 connection, a 30” monitor, a completely Mac environment, to Quito only to bit*h about the internet.

I’m not one of those particular kinds of as*holes.

There are many positive developments here. The entire Amazon River basin has better wireless Internet coverage then my university hometown in the United States at the end of 2006. I’ll write about it sometime.

If I paid $80 bucks a month, all this bi*thing would be for not. That just kind of violates my living on ten dollars a day rule.

But when it comes to Windows XP, I think this is an excellent case study for Software as a Service (SaaS).

-J Roland Kelly

The last time I left the United States was 2004 and it was to Asia, not South America. Things change and one thing I notice is how music and movies are pirated.

For as long as I have been traveling I have seen developing countries violating copyright, no reason to get upset it is just how things work.

In the late 1990s, in the Middle East, I remember seeing music stores where you would pick out whatever you wanted and then the guy running the place would dub it onto a cassette for you while you waited.

I doubt, that many cassettes are being bootlegged now.

Later on when CD-Rs and CD writers where cheap and commonplace, you could buy an album or movie on one CD, in the case of the movie it would have to be rendered down badly to fit on only one CD, this format being called VCD.

The quality was bad, but the format was the standard and it was possible to buy a stand-alone VCD player. Understand? Not a CD player, not a DVD player that could play VCDs, but just a VCD player. Later on it would all come together.

Enter 2008.

DVD writers have replaced CD writers. How has this changed pirating? Well, as my friend Dennis would say the future is where they have the bigger and better guns.

You won’t hear anything more true, than from Dennis.

Okay, so you get more bang for your buck. I’m used to being able to buy an album or movie in low quality on a CD for a buck, but now you can buy five VCD films or the complete Stones or Beatles discography on a DVD for a buck.

What is this noise about inflation?

All the Rocky films for $1, or the Rambo films; for a dollar f*ck it.

When it comes to bootlegging I want to say something about Windows XP but I think that will have to wait until next time.

-J Roland Kelly

Here’s the way I heard it: the church was built between 1700 and 1742. The tower is the highest in colonial Quito and contains the largest church bell.

After construction, every bit of the building was blessed by priests except the 47m high tower, which as the story goes was quickly taken over by everyone’s best amigo El Diablo.

Also according to legend, the only one strong enough to resist the aforementioned Diablo in the tower was an African-Ecuadorian bell-ringer named Ceferino.

After Ceferino died in 1810, no one would climb the tower, and so the clock stopped and the bell remains un-rung.

Let me just restate this: the largest church bell in Quito has remained hanging in a 47m high tower for the last 200 years without human intervention; okay continuing…

The clock stopped at 6:50. I’ve been asking around trying to see if this is a special time.

El Diablo time. 6:50. Drink a beer.

No clear answer, but that’s 6:50 Eastern Standard Time in the U.S. (not accounting for daylight savings time) if you want to have that beer.

No daylight savings time in Ecuador, by the way people, because it’s on the equator.

I  know that sometime in middle of some night, that bell will ring, the city will gather around the tower, and a large drunken gringo in a red satin devil costume holding a heavy mallet will stagger out, just purely in terms of statistics I mean.

“NO HABLA ESPANOL, POLICIA. I’M THE DEVIL!” Stumble. Vomit. Handcuffs. Ticket home.

Maybe that gringo will be you. Maybe it will be me.

I’ve not found a devil costume, but if anyone needs a pope outfit shoot me an email.

-J Roland Kelly

Two Saturdays ago, that being August 9th; well, let me start this way, there is a major avenue in Quito called the 10th of August (Av. 10 de Agosto), but I sometimes have trouble putting dos and dos together.

…Saturday, I go down to the lobby of my hotel and the woman behind the counter tells me there’s going to be a fiesta at six. I ask her, where? The hotel? She says no, throughout the old town.

Okay.

I go about my business; I do notice that they are setting up stages around El Centro (Old Town) and at six there was a very nice parade. It had period customs from Quito’s history, including women in pocahontas outfits. Got me?

One thing I didn’t understand, at the front of the parade were maybe five voluptuous cheerleaders on stilts.

Five voluptuous cheerleaders on stilts led the big parade. Why? In a parade about the history of Quito where else would they go; I guess.

There was a devil character in the parade, and it’s no secret that the devil has a big Spanish nose, but I’m just stating what everyone already knows.

So the parade was nice, and then it was over.

THEN THE REAL F***ING PARTY STARTED

I’ve been to a pre-deluge Mardi Gras, and this was just as big. There are only 1.4 million people in Quito, everyone must have been here in the Old Town, El Centro is not a small place.

This throw down was nothing less than the 200th anniversary of Quito being liberated from the Spanish.

I’m still not sure of the open container policy in Quito (later on, I did see people drinking wine in the street) so I Michael Jackson’ed it. You know, Jesus juiced it? Put it in a coke bottle.

I walked around the Old Town going from stage to stage all evening; a lot of stuff I didn’t understand. I think I saw people playing blades of grass, or some kind of leaf.

People had jumped the fence and were climbing on the statue of Mariscal Sucre, the hombre who defeated the Spanish in the final battle, and I did the same as it led to a better view of a stage. Gringolandia in Quito official name is Mariscal Sucre named after this field marshal.

In the absolute center of El Centro, the Grand Plaza, the oldest plaza, the first one, by the presidential place, they had set up projection monitors for a concert.

The entire plaza was filled with white plastic chairs.

It was an interesting contrast between the ancient plaza and modern technology, and after the concert was a fireworks display… they used the roof of the first cathedral in Quito as the base to launch the fireworks (this is also in the grand plaza).

I was close enough to see everyone on the cathedral sh!t their pants when fireworks exploded on the roof, as opposed to a few hundred feet above the roof. Ecuador needs to give the people who put that on combat medals.

This was the fireworks display after the concert; there would be a whole other fireworks display at midnight marking the actual 10th of August.

I was back in the Grand Plaza later on in-between shows, actually going to another stage, when El Presidente came out onto the terrace of the presidential palace for a smoke, or a photo opportunity, one. He came over to the edge and waved at the crowd for a few minutes.

The great thing about Quito is it celebrates itself often. There were Pre-Incan indigenous people here, then 100 years before the Spanish came, the Incas conquered, then so the Spanish couldn’t get it, the Incas destroyed the city, then the Spanish re-founded it, finally Quito was liberated from the Spanish.

Quitenos celebrate all this, although I hear the indigenous people don’t like the celebrations honoring the Spanish, you know because they’re not Spanish, and f*ck big noses.

I swear there are people here cheering on space aliens, and young uptown progressives cheering on the liberation of Quito from the space aliens.

More wine, please.

By 1:30 in the morning I was in Santo Domingo Plaza near my hotel dancing like a drunken madman. The entire plaza was a dance floor. It had started to rain and everyone was slightly wet.

Everything was breaking down. The one-two-three dance of salsa was turning into something tribal. People were holding hands and dancing in circles. Chinese vampires were standing in one place and hopping up and down. I, for some reason had dissolved into short jerky bluegrass movements.

Somewhere a Virgin Mary was crying real blood, and a stone Ganesha was drinking fresh pure milk.

Never in all my ever increasing years, has someone told me “hey, fiesta at six” and it turned out to be some kind of world super party.

Quito Luz de America - may God protect it.

-J Roland Kelly

A couple of years ago, on my way out to a new life in California I was standing by a overloaded Geo Metro smoking a cigarette at a rest-stop somewhere along I-40, watching a guy watering his dog, and to make a long story short: I struck-up a conversation with said guy, who was going to where a circus was bedded-down for the winter and I received an official invitation… to run away with the circus.

If you roam around long enough anything will happen.

I started a conversation with a guy in my Quito hotel that turned out to be a writer David Joshua Jennings, on assignment for a travel guide. We talked about teaching English abroad, he said he was meeting people for drinks later, invited me out, and that is where I met Quito screenwriter, filmmaker & musician Carolina Arroba.

I saw her little studio, listened to her new unreleased album, and read the screenplay for the film she is currently shooting. F*ck yeah. I’m not allowed to say anything about any of this, but I’m going to see if she will give me an interview, I’ll post it to this blog.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Carolina.

-J Roland Kelly

Above photo by Chris Falcony

I’ve had enough time to wonder around Quito and get a grasp of the cost of living. I reside in the historic center of Quito (Old Town, El Centro) on what turns out to be an inexpensive working class street.

All of the Old Town is an Unesco World Heritage Site, and a great place to be alive.

If I hang out in gringo bars of the Mariscal Sucre, the traveler’s ghetto or “gringolandia” as some locals call it, it costs gringo dollars (American dive bar prices) but if I stay away from touristy or major hubs the everyday working class prices are as follows:

Hotel Room – $165 per month. See my Quito for Expats post for pictures of my room.

Large beer from bodega - .80 cents. The national beer is called “Pilsner,” guess what kind of beer it is.

Internet - free with room but faster at Internet café .70 cents per hour. It’s high-speed.

Lunch & Dinner - $1.50 a piece. Nothing scary, I promise. They know bananas, and fruit juices. Order what ever you want or you can get the set menu for lunch or dinner, it’s like their special, or a lunch or dinner of the day sort of thing. Multicourse and good.

Laundry - $1 a kilo for someone else to do it.

Public Bus - .20 cents, years ago when I was in Quito it was full of pickpockets. I don’t know about now, they’ve cleaned up the city.

Taxi - $4 bucks from the old town to the new town, almost as far as you would want to go, not including the airport which cost $8.
 
Things like shampoo – if imported same price, maybe not San Francisco, California bodega prices, but certainly supercenter or target prices.

5 liter bottle of mineral water - $1.10

3 liter bottle of coca cola zero - $1.50

Bootlegged DVD - $1 Bootlegged DVDs are everywhere.

Private Spanish tutor - $4 bucks per hour

Touring churches and museums – approximately $1-3 depending.

Salsa Club with live music – all different of course, but one I like in the Mariscal Sucre is $6 bucks and includes one drink, $2.50 a drink after the first one, Salsa lessons from women who know how to wear high-heels free.

I guess I should say the National Currency of Ecuador is the United States Dollar. They no longer have their own currency, inflation was at 60% and in the year 2000 they decided to abandon their currency for the US Greenback.

This is good for Americans because while the US dollar is losing strength in the rest of the world, Ecuador is pegged to us, that, and you don’t have to change money at the airport.