I pick Phil up at his house and we hit the road to the Big Apple for the Conan O’Brian show. It feels so good to be back together, talkin’ the talk and walkin the walk.

I never really liked TV before, but this show went smoothly. We had a great 4min 9 sec version of The Wheel worked up and it sounded powerful. The mood backstage was warm and fuzzy. After our soundcheck I made my way to the soundboard where the engineer allowed Mike McGinn and I to tweak the mix. Usually they don’t let the band or crew have a say in the mix, but this was our bottom line issue.

We were all looking forward to seeing Robin Williams and he was in fine form. It was San Francisco day on Conan. We all cracked up together backstage as he held court and worked himself into a frenzy making jokes over Bob’s casual attire.


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My wife Caryl and I went directly to dinner with my old buddy Walter Cronkite and his wife Betsy. Everybody knows Walter and there was a constant flow of visitors to our table. First it was the governor of NY, Mario Cuomo, then the former Miss America, Phyllis George…on and on. This guy is really famous. We crack jokes into the night. He is 86 and sharp as a tack. What a treasure. After dinner it’s on the bus and off to Washington D.C. for my national Digital Registry meeting at the Library of Congress. I arrive at 4:30 AM, check into my hotel and catch a few ZZZZ’s. 8:00 o’clock I go to the magnificent Jefferson building where the leading members of the recording and preservation and ethnomusicological community are about to submit their recommendations to the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James Billington.This Board was formed by an act of Congress 2 years ago to identify audio collections in crisis. The rarest of recorded sound and the most endangered are to be digitized by this Board. The Board is modeled after the film preservation act that George Lucas and Steven Speilberg formed in the early nineties. This is the audio counterpart. I submit the first test recording of Emile Berliner. This is the first recording on a flat disc. Emile invented what we know as the LP at the end of the 1890’s and recited the Mother Goose rhyme onto a zinc master. It was the size of a 45 record, but it was at the speed of 78rpm. This is one of the Rosetta Stones of the recorded sound age.

I leave at 12 o’clock for TOO’s sound check in Roanoke this evening.

Souncheck goes smoothly and we play for 3 hours and then to bed at last.