I love technology almost as much as I hate technology. Even thought it wasn't really necessary, we kept up with all the latest tools of our touring trade. We were one of the first bands to use in-ear monitoring, doing away with the monitor speakers that have robbed so many veteran musicians of a portion of their hearing. (Thank you to our audio man Stan Miller, for making us digital before some of us knew what that meant, and saving our ears.)
Alan Lindgren, Larry Brown and I made what was arguably the first album that was recorded direct from sequencers and samplers to CD, without an analog step in the middle. We were proud of that back then, but the way things have developed over the years, our pride is considerably diminished. That feeling is expressed in the version of "Headed for the Future" on the 2017 Jazz Time album.
We used lasers before lasers were cool, and used them a lot less when not using them was even more cool—but thank you to Wacky Ed Auswacks for being our laser pointer. And we did a few projects with him during our off times. We actually won an award caled the THEA award, some kind of themed entertainment deal. We weren't too impressed about it, until I went a screening at the Disney studios in Burbank, and found that they had their THEA award displayed in a case withj a spotlight on it, so I may have to dig that object of the archives and display it someplace in the house.
On another techno-front: The Diamondville web page was created in 1996, before most sane people used the internet, and before we could even spell HTML. You can still see that original site today, so If you're so inclined, use this link. But don't follow the links you'll on that creaky old page, because they're pretty antiquated these 24 years later.
Oh, and the more recent Diamondville page is still up, although it's frozen in time beginning around 2011. It's at Diamondville.com, right where you'd expect it. If you do visit that one, you'll find a proto-blog called Diamondville Doings, which you might want to click on, because some of it is still reasonably funny, at least if you're as perverse as I am.
You may have noticed I've had this site shut down for a week or so--I was attempting to move it to a new platform, because I found the Bandzoogle setup to be restrictive and craved a more creator-friendly means of working, but it became too much work, frankly, for what is now more of a hobby for me. So I settled for spending a little more time trying to learn how to do this site the way Bandzoogle wants me to do it, rather than the way I want to do it. And it's not so bad, I guess.
A couple of organizational things I should explain: the Tom Sez page, this one, is going to be about miscellaneous stuff that crosses my mind, while a second blog I added, The Diamondville Chronicles, is for tour-related stories, for a book I'm hoping to assemble about that particular part of my history. I'll probably get tied up trying to decide what goes where, but maybe, just maybe, it'll be a little more efficient to read. Hell, I don't know. I'm just headed for the future, even if I have to go to the past to find it.