Here's the Tower

For today’s episode, I’d like to invite you to connect your best headphones or speakers and turn them up.

I have explored a few different musical experiments with you on Here’s the Tower.

Whether it has been a piano piece that requires three hands to play, an unusual set of beats that somehow fit together nicely, an acoustic guitar adaptation of my favorite Rihanna song, or a singalong chorus that relentlessly doesn’t stop modulating up to higher keys, I have tried a few new things musically and I’ve asked you to come along… everybody.

Today’s episode is a dive into musical notes and how they make me feel. I explored how the different notes I chose can weave in and out of each other to create different combinations, and how can different instruments and melodies can twist together and spread apart.

I have always been a big fan of dissonance and the unease it can create or convey. I especially appreciate how liberating it can feel when that dissonance subsides into harmony or resolves into opening itself up.

This musical experiment is nearly 10 minutes long. With more than 20 instrument tracks, it has more tracks than any episode I have done before.

I began writing today’s music on my iPad in mid-October, outside on a balcony, when the weather occasionally allowed things like that to be done comfortably. This was just days after I returned to Sweden, after spending all of the rather unique year of 2020 – up to that point – in Louisville.

I didn’t have the joy of working with actual cellists, violinists, drummers, et cetera, on this – like I did back in 2016 on my record Simple Orbits – so to complete this piece I moved the original phrases out of the iPad and then on to two Macs with input devices that were more capable of enabling me to do what I wanted to do.

A lot of listening to revisions and note taking for this episode happened during walks to and from three different lakes near my apartment in Stockholm’s south suburbs. The accompanying photo above shows the crystal clear water and forest-lined shores of Flaten, one of these nearby lakes.

The sounds I put together here capture the way I have been feeling since returning and being essentially isolated from society, as we all have been.

I was not crazy about my south Stockholm apartment when I took off last year for America. I really didn’t expect that I would come back and live in it again. I expected to perhaps return to clean out my belongings, transport them to Louisville, build the next phase of my life around my bourbon business, and let the apartment go.

But 2020 threw all manner of unexpectedness at all of us. I find myself now somewhat content in this apartment. It is quiet, close to nature, and fairly well suited for everything from recording to keeping one’s self away from other people and their aerosol transmissions of a certain virus.

I have been lucky (and annoyingly diligent) enough to stay healthy and fed through it all so far, as has my family, and I hope you have had the same good fortune.

Being isolated from physical contact with the world doesn’t have to be all bad. The isolation has given me time to invest in things like this. Who am I if there is no one around? What will I create if I have only blank pages and sounds to work with? Which notes will I choose and where will I put them?

I can’t imagine that I would have been able to build a piece of music like this during the hustle of what we now fondly recall as normal life. So for that, I am thankful and I hope you enjoy it.

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

Your hands are everything and you need dexterity to live your best life, but arthritis pain can get in the way.

Whether you’re a concert pianist or a senior who lives alone – or an exciting new character we’re welcoming to Tower Nation this week – Moticillin gives you back the flexibility you had years ago.

Guest voices:
Narrator: Dawn McLelland
Concert pianist: Kim Wood
Senior citizen: R. E. Harter

Music: “Hopeful Freedom” by Asher Fulero

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

Coming up in the next hour, Gary’s guest is Dr. Ron Dean Silent who will answer your tough questions about how to prepare your pets for when you eventually leave the house again. But first, Randy is calling in with some straight talk about the coronavirus.

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

One of my favorite bookmarked websites is a very uncomplicated page called howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com.

This site simply displays a number, usually between 3 and 6, that tells you how many people are in space at the moment and it provides links to the Wikipedia pages of those people.

As I record this, right now there are three people in space.

Since NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended in 2012, most of the people in space at any given moment have been living and working at the International Space Station. This research outpost hangs 250 miles above the surface of the Earth (that’s 400 km) and orbits the planet once every 93 minutes. That gives its occupants more than 15 sunrises and sunsets every day.

Assembly of the Station began in space in 1998 and the first resident crew arrived in late 2000.

Because the International Space Station has been continuously occupied for the two decades since then, that date twenty years ago – November 2, 2000 – is generally considered to be the last time that all living humans were on Earth.

If you’d like to get technical about it, that first resident crew left Earth on October 31st, 2000, two days before they arrived at the Station. They were already in space on October 31st – so technically not “on Earth” – but most people who care about things like these start counting from their arrival on November 2nd. 

Regardless of which particular day you’d like to mark as the beginning, sometime around this week is the twentieth anniversary of the last time that all the living humans were on Earth.

In those past 20 years, 241 people from 19 countries have visited the Station. 129 of them have been more than once, including 44 who have been three or more times, and two people who have stayed there five times each. 

There’s so much crazy shit going on in the world that it’s easy to forget that people are capable of incredible things together. It’s easy to take it for granted, but some of those bad ass motherfuckers pass over our heads 15 times a day. 

Here’s a toast to this milestone anniversary: Twenty Years Since Everybody Was On Earth. 

For more information about the International Space Station and life on Earth, visit your local library.

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

Music: “Walking” by Scott Ritcher

Today we’re talking with some wide-eyed children from the 1950s who have a lot of questions about life in the future. They want to know if there will be flying cars and home computers in the year 2000. Let’s find out.

Guest voices: I would love to credit the kids who appear in this episode because their performances are fantastic, but for their protection, they should remain anonymous. In case there is any doubt, I should make it clear that they are voice actors who performed remotely, were recorded by their parents and worked from scripts that contained only their own lines. I went to great lengths to protect them from this hilarious nonsense.

Music: “Gaiety in the Golden Age” by Aaron Kenny

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

Source photo: Bell Telephone’s Picturephone on display at the 1964 World’s Fair

(Looking for the scoreboard? It’s right here.)

This is a special audience-participation episode of Here’s the Tower. It’s a game that you and all listeners can play and it’s called Fantasy Cabinet.

If you’ve ever filled in a March Madness basketball bracket or bet on a horse race, you kind of know how to play the game already.

What would you say if I told you we are about to combine all the thrills of college basketball with the exciting world of executive branch politics?

I’m inviting you and all my listeners to compete in this game to guess who will be in the Cabinet of the United States next year.

You may have heard something about this – there’s a Presidential election coming up in the United States on November 3, 2020. When such an election happens, it almost always means that the Cabinet members will change shortly thereafter.

The Cabinet consist of the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and 14 other people who are the heads of the federal executive departments. These are agencies such as the Department of Defense, Department of Education, and so on.

A new President typically picks new people to head all of these departments. When a President is re-elected, current Cabinet members often use the occasion to move on to other work, or the President uses the opportunity to bring in fresh faces.

So in this case, you’re competing to try and guess either who Joe Biden will nominate to Cabinet positions, or who will be in the Cabinet in Donald Trump’s second term.

The game is simple. Starting September 23, 2020, you can go to kcomposite.com/cabinet to fill in your bracket.

If you think Biden will win the election, you can fill in your bracket with the people you think he will nominate to be in his Cabinet. 

If you think Trump will win the election – or refuse to leave office, or seize power like Stalin, or somehow otherwise remain in office – you can fill in your bracket with the people you think he will keep or nominate to his second-term Cabinet. 

Or you can play it both ways, choose a Biden pick for Secretary of Commerce and a Trump pick for Secretary of Energy, something like that.

You’re basically just trying to get most of them correct, so you can play any strategy you like. You can even play the strategy that someone else will become president.

Cabinet members are nominated by the President and then either confirmed or rejected by the Senate. 

If the Senate confirms their nomination, they are sworn into office and they start working (or in Trump’s case, they begin enriching themselves, or they start collecting damaging information so they can make money writing books about it instead of standing up to the corruption). 

For each person you correctly pick, you’ll get one point when they are nominated by the President. 

You’ll get an additional 2 points if that person is confirmed by the Senate.

And you’ll get 4 more points when they are sworn into office.

So for each person you pick, you have the possibility of earning 7 points. 

As a bonus, you’ll also get one point for each person you pick who is nominated for a different office in the Cabinet. (For example, if you pick Frank Davidson as Secretary of Labor, but he is actually nominated as Secretary of Commerce, you’ll get one point for that, but not for any of the subsequent milestones.)

Fantasy Cabinet is a long, long game that will last into spring 2021. You need to submit your bracket before the election, but the final results won’t be tabulated until the end of the President’s first 100 days in office.

We expect that to be April 29, 2021, but anything can happen lately, so if Inauguration Day does not occur on January 20, 2021, the first 100 days will end later.

And because anything can happen this year, as another bonus, the position of Vice President is worth double points.

That is, we presume Mike Pence or Kamala Harris will be the Vice President next year, so most players will pick them for their brackets. However, if you think someone else will be Vice President 100 days after inauguration – because of some scandal or illness or whatever – if you think someone else will be Vice President 100 days after inauguration and you’re correct, you will collect those extra points that maybe no one else will.

However, if you are wrong and everyone else played it safe, you’ll miss out on those points.

It’s incredibly unlikely that someone will correctly guess all 16 Cabinet positions, so the winner will be the player with the highest score.

Fill in your bracket at kcomposite.com/cabinet before Election Day. That means all entries must be received by 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Monday, November 2, 2020.

Not only will you have street cred in Tower Nation, but I will announce your name and the results on the show. The top point earner will also receive a very special Here’s the Tower coffee mug. Holy shit.

After Election Day, as the Cabinet nomination process moves forward (hopefully), I’ll update the scoreboard at the same address where you fill in your bracket so you can see how you’re doing.

Fill in your bracket today at kcomposite.com/cabinet and share this episode with your political junkie friends and family and get them to play.

Cumulative points
1 point: Nominated by the President
2 points: Confirmed by the Senate
4 points: Sworn into office
7 points total possible per office

Bonus points
Double cumulative points: Correct pick for Vice President
1 bonus point: Your pick nominated for a different office

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

Photo: Betty Ford dances on the Cabinet Room table during her last full day as First Lady, January 19, 1977. (Gerald Ford Presidential Library, National Archives)

Music in this episode:
“News Theme 2” by Audionautix
“Newsreel” by Max Surla/Media Right Productions
“Go Go Gadget Rockstar” by The Whole Other
“Castlevania” by Density & Time
“Grut” by Patrick Patrikios
Jam version of “Theme from Snuggling With the Enemy” by Scott Ritcher and Magic GarageBand

Far out, man! It’s the finale of Here’s the Tower’s third season. Let’s celebrate this beautiful life we’re living. Our wonderful world just grows more glorious with each day we share together.

But please be advised: The management accepts no responsibility if your head explodes while attempting to process this celebratory song’s ever-escalating exuberance. 

Today’s anthem was inspired in no small part by the Barry Manilow hit “I Can’t Smile Without You.” If you’re familiar with that song, perhaps you’ve noticed that it has a silly number of key changes. It keeps going up, higher and higher, and it just won’t stop getting brighter and wider.

Not only that, but Manilow seems to have put all those key changes in there for his own personal amusement, or at least that’s how it appears in the video linked above.

Can this type of key-change abuse be pushed even further?

Starting with that song as a base, I dumped it in a blender with additional inspiration from songs like “Sowing the Seeds of Love” by Tears for Fears and “All Around the World” by Oasis, and added dashes of Polyphonic Spree, Youngbloods, ELO, and the Beatles. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of any of those turkeys, but my song is way better than anything any of them ever pooped out and dared to call music.

With no fewer than ten key changes in 2 1/2 minutes, “Come Along Everybody” is a fitting conclusion to the season that was, and it leaves Barry’s handful of comical modulations in the dust.

Stay tuned! A whole slew of great new episodes are in the works. The fourth season of Here’s the Tower is coming your way in October 2020.

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

Gather ’round the smart speaker for an old timey radio play.

Frank has just purchased a new digital smart home system that has the voice of country music legend Merle Haggard.

Merle can set the thermostat, start the coffee maker, update Frank’s calendar, and assist with other tasks around the house.

But soon after the device is plugged in, Merle begins complicating Frank’s life.

Starring Ed Nash as Frank Davidson and Scott Ritcher as Merle

Special appearances by Mark Brickey as the delivery driver and Chris Reinstatler as the Hört

Original music score written and performed by Pat McClimans

Written and directed by Scott Ritcher

Based on characters by Chris Reinstatler, Pat McClimans and Scott Ritcher

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

Hidden references and Easter eggs in this episode:

Here’s the Tower’s team of investigative journalists continues digging into an unsolved case from four decades ago.

Residents in the quiet town of Haniston, Kentucky, were left reeling after three masked criminals pulled off a daring robbery at Pleasant Valley Savings Bank. Suspicions and theories still surround the case 40 years later.

In this episode, our team runs into a little frustration while collecting firsthand accounts from people who were on the scene, including Haniston’s former chief of police Larry Parsomn and DJ Spellchecker.

Associate producer: Betsy McClimans

You can hear The Heist, Part One as Episode 49 of Here’s the Tower, released April 24, 2019.