Music – Page 4 – B12 Solipsism

Speaker Maker Bowers & Wilkins Sells Out to a Tiny Silicon Valley Startup

May 3, 2016May 17, 2016 Seth Anderson0 comment

Quickly, one last entry into today’s tech file:

Joe Atkins, chief executive officer of Bowers & Wilkins, has owned a majority stake in the half-century-old British speaker business for the last 30 years. On Tuesday, he plans to tell his 1,100 employees that he’s selling it to a tiny company that almost no one has heard of, run by a man he met just 30 days ago. Over the weekend, Atkins reached a sale agreement with Eva Automation, a 40-person Silicon Valley startup that hasn’t yet sold a single product or service. The company was started in 2014 by Gideon Yu, a former Facebook Inc. chief financial officer, ex-venture capitalist, and current co-owner of the San Francisco 49ers. Yu has said little about his startup. According to the company’s website, it is “making products that will change how people interact and think about the home.” About a quarter of its employees have worked at Apple, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

…

Bowers & Wilkins became a household name before speaker companies had to distinguish themselves through Spotify integrations and voice recognition capability. While Bowers & Wilkins does sell speakers designed to accommodate people used to listening to music through their smartphones, Atkins acknowledges that his company lacks the expertise needed to build software that communicates with cloud services. Any company that wants to sell speakers at a significant premium would need to integrate high-end hardware with sophisticated software. Yu plans to begin selling new products that incorporate Eva’s work by early to mid-2017.

(click here to continue reading Speaker Maker Bowers & Wilkins Sells Out to a Tiny Silicon Valley Startup – Bloomberg.)

I have owned three different Bowers & Wilkins headphones: they all still have great sound. I hope these new owners don’t gut the company of what made it great and run it into the ground.

Music Monday – Part One – Radio Radio

May 2, 2016 Seth Anderson0 comment

This sucky blog has been a bit moribund recently due to my lack of engagement with the outside world. No strike that, just a long, long winter and my body has made the leap¹ from young to not-so-young, and with it, nagging health issues of various kinds that I won’t bore you with. Anyway, to jump start me writing here again, I’ve assigned myself topics based on the day, starting with Music Monday.

An Overstuffed CD Shelf.

I may be one of the last citizens of America who still purchases music CDs on a regular basis. Streaming music is well and good, I don’t participate. I’d rather indulge my nascent horder tendencies, and have my own copies of things, especially since “used” CDs sound identical to “new” CDs 99% of the time. I also have wider, more varied tastes than the streaming algorithms encourage. I’ve only dabbled with Spotify and the Apple Music channels, but an hour of music via Spotify seems artificially constricted to my ear. You can change your musical directions by seeding new stations, but every “next track” is via a linear progression from the preceding song.

When I am the DJ of my own radio station, which truth be told, runs 20 hours a day² whether or not I’m in the room(s), I queue up 500 or 1,000 songs at a time. If you are listening to Radio Seth³, you should expect to hear deep cuts from Funkadelic followed by Alt-Country maesters The Jayhawks followed by Brahms concertos followed by outtakes from Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti followed by whatever. Or 50 songs about rain, or 24 hours worth of David Bowie or Prince or Merle Haggard. Or albums released in 1985. Or albums released last year. I liberally use randomizing AppleScripts from AppleScript guru Doug Adams to top up my playlists, I change direction on a whim, and of course alter playlists when I have an audience⁴

CD shelf in need of an alphabetization project…

There was a mythical era in commercial radio when DJs had the freedom to play what they wanted. By the time I was interested in music, this FM free-form radio era seemed to be on its last legs, so I don’t actually know if there were radio stations that played all sorts of music with only the taste of the DJ linking them together, or if that is another bullshit myth perpetuated by aging Baby Boomers. I don’t even care, in my mind, there was such a time, and I want to have my own radio station that plays all the hits as defined by my own idiosyncratic charts.

CDs in need of a re-org…

One last thing, the age of the CD box set has encouraged record labels and musicians to open their vaults, reissues and repackaging are attempts to cash-in, but also mean that much music is available that I’ve never heard before. I’m not one of those who claim “music today doesn’t have the same soul”, I seek out new music from current artists just as much as I seek out classic albums from garage rockers of the mid-1960s or obscure Nigerian funk musicians from the 1970s. I try not to have preconceptions over what I’ll explore, but of course, there is plenty of new and old music I am not interested in. As someone on Reddit said:

People think old music is better than new music because people have already stopped listening to the old music that sucks

(click here to continue reading People think old music is better than new music because people have already stopped listening to the old music that sucks : Showerthoughts.)

Footnotes:

stumble?? fall?? [↩]
until my Mac sleeps and iTunes pauses until morning [↩]
I use the Airfoil app to stream to different sets of speakers around my office and house depending upon set and setting [↩]
Not everyone is cool with Conet Project weirdness, or never ending guitar solos [↩]

Double Door In Danger Of Closing

February 2, 2016 Seth Anderson0 comment

Tour Bus Double Door

Wicker Park would seem weirdly empty without the Double Door, I hope they win their lawsuit…

Joe Shanahan, co-owner of Double Door, one of the anchor clubs during the rise of the Wicker Park music scene in the ’90s, is facing eviction. But in his first public statement on the monthslong legal battle, he vows he won’t go quietly.

“We’re not going down without a fight,” he said in an interview. “We’ve done the Rolling Stones, the Smashing Pumpkins, the Flaming Lips, Greg Dulli and so many important artists there. It supports the community. We want to stay.”

Shanahan, who also owns the Metro in Wrigleyville, has been one of the pillars of the Chicago music community for decades. He opened Double Door with partner Sean Mulroney in 1994, just as Wicker Park was gaining international recognition as a hub for the city’s emerging bands and artists, including the Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Material Issue, Eleventh Dream Day and countless others.

…

The fight, which continued this week in Cook County Circuit Court, touches on whether Double Door gave the landlord proper notice that it wished to extend the lease. Schiff introduced documents that included a lease extension request letter from Double Door’s Mulroney dated April 24, more than 180 days before the lease expired, as required by the contract. Strauss’ attorney, Bonita Stone, said the landlord never received the letter and that she wanted to question Mulroney.

The Double Door attorney also contended in court papers that Strauss was operating as a partner of the club and was receiving monthly dividend checks for most of 2015. The landlord “breached his fiduciary duties” to the club, according to the Double Door complaint.

(click here to continue reading Double Door won’t go down without a fight – Chicago Tribune.)

Double Door Liquors

Fela Kuti Is Perfect For Working Out

January 4, 2016 Seth Anderson0 comment

Fela Anikulapo Kuti – complete works

Songs by Fela Kuti are perfectly suited to listening to while exercising. One queues up Sorrow, Tears and Blood, and maybe Zombie and then International Thief Thief¹, and suddenly an hour has passed. Driving, deep rhythms of bass and drums, interwoven with horns, guitar, electric piano, chanting choruses, and so on, and of course, searing politically edged lyrics by Fela Kuti. His lyrical inventions don’t always translate into English, but if you concentrate, you’ll get the gist. Sorrow, Tears and Blood is the Nigerian version of KRS-One’s “Sound of Da Police”, or N.W.A.’s “Fuck The Police”, Junior Murvin’s, “Police and Thieves”, or even the Dead Kennedy’s “Police Truck”.²

That is all…

Footnotes:

aka I.T.T., aka International Telephone and Telegraph [↩]
or Furry Lewis’, “Judge Harsh Blues”, The Clash’s song, “Guns of Brixton”, Prince Buster’s “Judge Dread”, you could go on and on. Suffice to say, the police have been frequently agents of oppression as long as they’ve had the power to [↩]

Best Music of 2015, More Or Less

December 31, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

Every year I make the attempt to write about the best new-to-me music I’d discovered the previous year, I think I’ve published a post maybe twice since 2003. Part of the problem is that I’m a glutton for music, and thus spend more than I should purchasing new tunes. Often I’ll be interested in some new LP, purchase a copy¹ but not listen to it closely for a year or two.

Anyway, instead of trying to scratch out mini reviews for the hundreds of new albums I added to my library in 2015, here are an arbitrarily selected few, plus a few duds. There are certainly others that I’m accidentally omitting, such is the hazard of working without an editor…

Also, obviously quite a lot of these albums were not first released in 2015, but that isn’t the standard I adhere to, only that these albums were added to my iTunes library this year.

Albums I Listened To The Most

Verckys Et L’Orchestre Veve – Congolese Funk Afrobeat & Psychedelic Rumba 1969-1978 – a great album, worth tracking down if you like to dance.
Bob Dylan – The Cutting Edge (1965-1966) – I didn’t splurge on the massive boxset that included even more music later, but 6 discs is a lot of classic Dylan, and mostly good!
Baba Commandant & The Mandingo Band – Juguya – another winner, hailing from Burkina Faso in West Africa.
Led Zeppelin – reissues of Physical Graffiti, Presence, In Through The Out Door, and Coda. Coda has some of the best new stuff, including the famous recordings with a Bombay Orchestra.
Pentangle – Sweet Child – Bert Jansch is a genius, eventually I’ll have every record he ever played on.
Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard – Django and Jimmie – some great tunes here, Willie Nelson seems immortal
Old Crow Medicine Show – Big Iron World – OCMS really grew on me this year, as I also had other albums by this band in heavy rotation. Modern string music, folk-rock, bluegrass, who knows. Toe tapping stuff, with clever lyrics.
Waterboys – Room to Roam – don’t know how I missed this LP all these years, I really love it

Albums That I Liked

The Staple Singers – Uncloudy Day & Will The Circle Be Unbroken
Pop Staples – Don’t Lose This
Brian Eno & Karl Hyde – High Life
Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane – Rough Mix – Ronnie Lane is a genius
Billy Gibbons And The BFG’s – Perfectamundo – Hispanic-bionic boogie
John Coltrane – A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters

Albums I Probably Will Grow To Like

Tame Impala – Currents
Björk – Vulnicura
Steve Earle and the Dukes – Terraplane
Meicio Askanasy, José Prates, Ivan De Paula – Tam…Tam…Tam…! Brazilian jazz reissue from 1958.
Bob Dylan – Shadows In The Night – crooning tunes actually suit Dylan’s voice these days
Funkadelic – first ya gotta Shake the Gate – George Clinton keeps keeping on
Grateful Dead – Blues for Allah – occasionally, I do like to listen to the Grateful Dead noodle
Wilco – Star Wars
The Arcs – Yours, Dreamily – I could get bored with this, but it isn’t bad
The Internet – Ego Death – seems promising, but I’ve only had it a month or so
Alabama Shakes – Sound & Color – same
Richard Thompson – Live at the BBC – box set, some with Linda Thompson.

Albums I Wanted To Like But Did Not

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress – maybe it will just take a while…for this, and the others in this section.
Lotion – Nobody’s Cool
Modest Mouse – Strangers to Ourselves
My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
Van Morrison – Duets: Re-Working The Catalogue – sounds too much like elevator music for my taste. Original versions are all better, by far, so why bother? Money I guess, but I wish I had saved mine.
Jack White – Lazaretto
New Kingdom – Paradise Don’t Come Cheap
Newsom, Joanna – Divers – come to think of it, I didn’t really groove on Have One on Me either.

Albums That I Used To Own, And Now Own Again

Hair Original Soundtrack – don’t ask me why, but I did buy this in a moment of weakness. There are actually a few catchy tunes on here, but limited replayability, no?
The B-52s – Cosmic Thing – classic from my formative years
Devo – Freedom of Choice – another classic from my formative years
Bert Jansch & John Renbourn – After the Dance – awesome collaboration with two great guitarists, both sadly deceased as of 2015.
Motörhead- No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith – damn, Lemmy died
Gregory Isaacs – Night Nurse – classic Reggae LP from circa 1982
Sonny Boy Williamson – Don’t Start Me Talkin’ I’ll Tell Everything I Know – classic Chicago blues from the Chess label
Poi Dog Pondering – Poi Dog Pondering – I was walking around this summer, and encountered a marquee announcing a 25 year anniversary of some album of Poi Dog Pondering, remembered seeing them play all over Austin back in my callow youth. Cheery pop still has its place.

Footnotes:

I will note that I have zero problems buying used music, especially in the era of compact discs, which means I can find a lot of new-to-me albums for a couple bucks [↩]

The Silence of Vinyl Records

November 16, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

Silence rules everything around me…

Recently, I was alone for an afternoon, without any pressing tasks to complete, so I decided to pull out my turntable¹ and listen to a few records. I listen to music all the time, and have a vast, horder-esque iTunes library, but I’m often too lazy to play records. I sat in a room I call The Lounge, and spun a half dozen LPs. Some I only wanted to hear a song or two from, some I listened to in their entirety, both sides.

Such a different experience, as I’m sure you’d concur. I won’t go into the debate here over sound fidelity, and warmth, and all that. In honesty, I don’t want to give up the convenience of being able to walk around with hundreds of my favorite albums in my pocket, or the ability to instantly play a song in my car. Vinyl does wear out, and there is that crackling, popping sound that does not exist in digital versions.

The vinyl experience is different in other ways. I didn’t realize when I purchased my turntable, but it doesn’t have an automatic shut-off feature. In other words, I need to be actively listening or else the album will continue to spin for hours, wearing out the turntable’s needle. I’ve incorporated this negative feature into my ritual of listening to records. I put the needle down on the song I want to hear², sit down holding the album jacket, study the cover art, read the liner notes, and listen with my full attention. I have the option of listening via³ desk top speakers, or a⁴ headphone amplifier with comfortable over-the-ear headphones.⁵

Curating playlists on my Mac is one of my hobbies, creating mixes of songs and albums based on topics and phrases, or genres, or concepts, or years, or events; but that means the music never stops playing. In contrast, when a record is finished, there is silence. Silence until the next LP is selected, or until the current record gets flipped over. I guess one could say listening to a CD would be similar, but my first (and only!) CD player was a six disc shuffler – again, when music was on, it kept going and going, filling up the nooks and crannies of available aural space.

I was surprised at how significant the empty spaces were, especially on a quiet afternoon.

These are the records I played⁶

of Montreal – the past is a grotesque animal

Otis Rush – Blind Pig records

Leo Kottke, Ice Water

Songs of Kristofferson

A Love Supreme – John Coltrane

Otis Rush – Tops

Footnotes:

an Audio-Technica AT-LP120-USB Direct-Drive Professional Turntable [↩]
or the beginning of the LP, of course [↩]
an Audioengine [↩]
Schiit Magni [↩]
a Beyer Dynamic DT-880 [↩]
there might have been one or two more that I didn’t think to photograph [↩]

Earworm Theater – Jayhawks “Blue”

October 28, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

This morning’s edition of Earworm Theatre is Blue from the Jayhawks 1995 album, Tomorrow the Green Grass.¹

On a semi-regular basis, I wake up with a song or piece of music playing in my head, echoing in my brain. The song won’t leave until I play it, which depending on how my morning goes, could be an hour or so. The earworm occurs not nightly, not weekly, but several times a year. Frequently, but not always, a song I haven’t heard in a while, often with lyrics that have some resonance to something that happened recently. My subconscious trying to be helpful, in other words. This morning’s edition, Blue, was more about melody however, since I couldn’t even remember the lyrics unaided. I love how the chorus and bridge are harmonized. My voice cracks when I try to hit those kind of high notes…

Youtube “Official” video…

Here are the lyrics, for reference, since I looked them up…

Where have all my friends gone
They’ve all disappeared
Turned around maybe one day
You’re all that was there
Stood by on believing
Stood by on my own
Always thought I was someone
Turned out I was wrong

And you brought me through
And you made me feel so blue
Why don’t you stay behind
So blue
Why don’t you stop
And look at what’s going down

If I had an old woman
She’d never sell me a lie
It’s hard to sing with someone
Who won’t sing with you
Give all of my mercy
Give all of my heart
Never thought that i’d miss you
That i’d miss you so much

And you brought me through
And you made me feel so blue
Why don’t you stay behind
So blue
Why don’t you stop
And look at what’s going down

All my life (staying while)
I’m waiting for (staying while)
Someone I could (waiting around)
Show the door (now that I’m blue)
But nothing seems to change
(That I’m blue from now on)
You come back that month

So blue
Why don’t you stay behind
So blue
Why don’t you
Why don’t you stay behind
So blue
Why don’t you
Why don’t you stay behind
So blue
Why don’t you stop
And look at what’s down

but my subconscious wasn’t trying to send me a coded message, I don’t think, but rather a way of harmonizing. Or something, lines of communication between conscious brain and subconscious brain are notoriously fickle.

I did hear Blue recently; I was singing it to one of my cats, who wouldn’t harmonize with me:

It’s Hard To Sing With Someone Who Won’t Sing With You

and for your amusement, here is a very young Jon Stewart introducing a live version of Blue, circa 1995

Footnotes:

and yes, I know theater ≠ theatre. Blame my Canadian public schooling… [↩]

Cowboy Junkies – The Trinity Session

October 1, 2015October 1, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session
Cowboy_Junkies_Trinity_Session- cover

A few moments ago, the Cowboy Junkies best album¹ came on my stereo, The Trinity Session, and I listened to it intently for the first time in a long time. Such a timeless LP, and of course, hearing the album triggered a bit of reverie down my own memory lanes and paths. I recall many late nights putting this album on my turntable, and being enveloped by its mood, as I drank red wine with some people who have since faded from my life.

Per Wikipedia, The Trinity Session was released in 1988, but I don’t think I purchased a copy² until 1989 or even 1990. I’ve never been enthusiastic towards opiate-induced dream stupors, but I’ve been around enough people who were, and the slow-placed, languorous tempo of the Trinity Session evokes a similar state of blissful melancholy.

Thom Jurek writes:

The Trinity Session was recorded in one night using one microphone, a DAT recorder, and the wonderful acoustics of the Holy Trinity in Toronto. Interestingly, it’s the album that broke the Cowboy Junkies in the United States for their version of “Sweet Jane,” which included the lost verse. It’s far from the best cut here, though. There are other covers, such as Margo Timmins’ a cappella read of the traditional “Mining for Gold,” a heroin-slow version of Hank Williams’ classic “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Dreaming My Dreams With You” (canonized by Waylon Jennings), and a radical take of the Patsy Cline classic “Walkin’ After Midnight” that closes the disc. Those few who had heard the band’s previous album, Whites Off Earth Now!!, were aware that, along with Low, the Cowboy Junkies were the only band at the time capable of playing slower than Neil Young and Crazy Horse — and without the ear-threatening volume. The Timmins family — Margo, guitarist and songwriter Michael, drummer Peter, and backing vocalist and guitarist John — along with bassist Alan Anton and a few pals playing pedal steel, accordion, and harmonica, paced everything to crawl.

(click here to continue reading The Trinity Session – Cowboy Junkies | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic.)

The lyrics and instrumentation of the album were lifted from the classic country groups the band was exposed to, and the song “200 More Miles” was written in reference to their life on the road.

As they had on Whites, the band wanted to record live with one stereo microphone direct to tape—it is stated on the album cover that the recording was made on 2-track RDAT using one single Calrec Ambisonic Microphone.

Peter Moore was enlisted and suggested the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto for its natural reverb. To better persuade the officials of the historic church, the band claimed to be The Timmins Family Singers and said they were recording a Christmas special for radio. The session began on the morning of 27 November 1987. The group first recorded the songs with the fewest instruments and then the songs with gradually more complex arrangements. In this way Moore and the band were able to solve acoustic problems one by one. To better balance Margo Timmins’s vocals against the electric guitars and drums, she was recorded through a PA system that had been left behind by a previous group. By making subtle changes in volume and placement relative to the microphone over six hours, Moore and the band had finally reached the distinctive sound of the album by the time the last of the guest musicians arrived at the church.

The band was unable to rehearse with most of the guest musicians before the day of the session. Considering the method of recording and time constraints, this could have been disastrous for the numbers which required seven or more musicians, but after paying a security guard twenty-five dollars for an extra two hours, the band was able to finish, and even recorded the final song of the session, “Misguided Angel”, in a single take.

Contrary to popular myth, the album was not entirely recorded in one day. In the hustle of the first recording session, the band forgot to record “Mining for Gold”. Margo and Moore recorded the song a few days later during the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s lunch break.

Sleeve notes state that the recording was not mixed, overdubbed or edited in any way.

(click here to continue reading The Trinity Session – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Michael Timmins adds more detail of the album’s genesis:

We had spent the past year touring Whites Off Earth Now!! around Canada and the United States, grabbing gigs wherever and whenever they were offered. We had sold an incredible (by the Canadian indy standards of the time) 3,000 copies of Whites and had taken the little money that we had made from touring and placed it all back in the band. With a pocketful of change and the inspiration from our travels we began to conceptualize our next recording.

While touring Whites we had spent a lot of time in the Southern States, especially Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas. For some reason the club owners down there took a liking to what we were doing so we spent a lot of time crossing the kudzu choked highways that ran through the heart of the old Confederacy. Those were the days when having to spend a night in a hotel room would mean the difference between eating the next day or paying for the gas to get us to the next town, so we spent a lot of our time sleeping on the floors of friendly promoters, fans, waitresses and bartenders. One of the best part about being “billeted” was that each night we were exposed to a new record collection and each night we’d discover a new album or a new band or a whole new type of music that was springing up in some buried underground scene somewhere in America.

(click here to continue reading COWBOY JUNKIES | The Trinity Session.)

Footnotes:

that I’ve heard, at least [↩]
used, from Waterloo Records, I believe [↩]

After 36 years, Neo leaves a changing Lincoln Park

July 28, 2015July 28, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

Smoke Break in the Neo Alley.

Sasha Geffen interviews Callin Fortis about the closing of Neo.

When Callin Fortis took over Neo in 1982, Lincoln Park had no Gaps, no pet boutiques, and no day cares. It was a nightlife hub, with cheap rents and 4 AM bars and 24-hour diners—”like New York,” says Fortis. His own nightclub, one of the last of its generation in the area, is now sandwiched between a preschool and an Urban Outfitters in an alley on Clark Street, just south of Fullerton Avenue, less than a mile west of the Lincoln Park Zoo. Neo had been open for just two years when Fortis moved in, and at the end of July, it will close its doors after 36 years in operation. The preschool that occupies the storefront of the same building will move into the space that has served as a late-night hangout for Chicago’s misfits since 1979. “The neighborhood has changed dramatically,” says Fortis over the phone from Miami, where he now lives. “Lincoln Park was still residential, but it was much hipper than it is now. It was still filled with art and cool stuff. Now, it’s not. Urban Outfitters is still there. That’s probably the coolest thing there is.”

Fortis and the owner of the building where Neo is housed, John Crombie, recently failed to come to an agreement on a new lease for the space, forcing the club to relocate. Currently, no new venue has been pinned down, although Fortis says he’s had offers come in from across the city, and that he’s eyeing a space in Wicker Park.

(click here to continue reading After 36 years, Neo leaves a changing Lincoln Park | Bleader | Chicago Reader.)

I never claimed Neo as one of my spots, but I have been inside a few times, and always enjoyed myself.

Amazon Associates Linkage Dying Off

June 13, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

Amazon the Everything Store…

I got an email from the Amazon Associates division, reading, in part:

As part of our continuing effort to improve the Associates program’s products and services, we are making some changes to our technology platform. This platform change will require you to replace some older product links, banners, and widgets you currently have hosted on your website as they will no longer be supported after July 31, 2015. Text links are not impacted by this deprecation.

Action Required
We ask that you replace or update the impacted ad units prior to July 31, 2015. The links require the following update that can be facilitated through your CMS (content management system). You may make these replacements at whatever scale you are comfortable with.
– Find and replace ws.amazon.com with ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com
– Find and replace rcm.amazon.com with rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com

Keep in mind that starting August 1, 2015, any remaining legacy product links (text + image, image-only), banners, and widgets will be served with non-clickable public service announcements that will not send traffic to Amazon, impacting your referring traffic and potential earnings, if not addressed. On September 1, 2015, these legacy ad units will no longer render, thereby creating a broken link on your website.

The thing is, I probably won’t bother. When Amazon decided to kill off the Illiniois affiliates program rather than give the state a taste of the tax revenues, as we’ve discussed previously, I stopped posting as many reviews of Things I Discovered That You Might Like Too. Coincidentally, this was also around the time I became a half-hearted blogger, posting less frequently and decidedly less enthusiasm. My daily traffic plummeted, probably because there are now many alternative blog-like media outlets, places like Gawker and Deadspin and Curbed, and so on – not written by hobbyists and part-timers like myself, but paid writers¹.

After a couple of years, Amazon decided that paying taxes to all the state governments was not as big a deal as they had once complained about, and reinstalled the Affiliate program. However, they wouldn’t give me my old affiliate link back, nor would they merge the two accounts I had, so basically I stopped using Amazon links much.

I don’t think I’m going to go back through the thousands of posts I’ve made to correct the Amazon links, they will just become dead links, and I no longer will get a 3% bonus from Amazon if you clicked through one of this blog’s links and purchased something. Possibly, I’ll fix a few, if I happen to run across the post for other reasons; I doubt I’ll create replacements on a global level. I stand to lose dozens or more cents, but there are more important items on my agenda.

Moving on…

Footnotes:

or whatever it is that the Huffington Post model is of exploitation, a model followed by some other sites [↩]

Sticky Fingers

June 4, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

Last night Sticky Fingers¹ came up on my shuffler². Within a millisecond of the opening riff of “Brown Sugar”, I instantly knew what I was listening too, and went into a reverie. Here’s an edited version…

Patience please

I cannot quantify the number of times I’ve heard this album in my lifetime. When I was a child living in Toronto, or Frostpocket, whenever there were parties hosted by the Ragnarokr generation, Sticky Fingers was a frequently spun disc. When I was 8 or 9, Sticky Fingers was one of the albums I would play when I was alone in the house – I distinctly recall sitting on the Frostpocket front porch in a rocking chair listening, loudly, to Sticky Fingers played through the house speakers, reading some book or other, and not reading but just listening.

When our family moved to Austin when I was a teenager, I remember Sticky Fingers playing at dinner parties or other occasions for guests to mingle.

I started attending The University of Texas a few months after my 17th birthday, I also moved out of my parents’ house. My first financial aid check was blown on frivolities/necessities like a stereo for my car, and a receiver, speakers and record player for my apartment. Sticky Fingers was one of the first LPs that was played on that stereo system.

Chios – or Mutiny On The Aegean

For a few years while a student at UT, on Saturday’s, I would go have breakfast with Honoria, strike poses (fully clothed) and she would sketch line drawings while we listened to music and chatted. Sometimes I brought friends, but mostly, just me and a few records made the journey. Sticky Fingers was a frequent companion.

My friend Trey Buck³ would come over and we would spin records, drink wine, shoot the shit. Sticky Fingers was a frequent companion.

I made several dozen mix-tapes⁴ of music that played while I worked at Magnolia Cafe South, at least until the ASCAP people came by and harassed Kent Cole, the restaurant’s owner. Songs from Sticky Fingers were often in the mix.

I rebuilt my iTunes Library last in 2002, but since then, I’ve played songs from Sticky Fingers 122 times, using this particular library, or on an iPod/iPad/iPhone. This doesn’t take account of the many times the album or songs from it played in a car, either with a mix-CD, or someone else’s iPod on road trips.

Like everyone, my musical tastes have changed over time, but surprisingly, Sticky Fingers has not gotten tiresome to me, despite the constant playing over my entire life. There aren’t many albums I can say the same about.

Footnotes:

by The Rolling Stones, if you didn’t know [↩]
I use Doug Adams “shuffle random albums to playlist” AppleScript religiously to feed my iTunes jukebox [↩]
before he went insane [↩]
#71 is where I think I stopped, though the first five or six were less polished, made when I was too young to appreciate the wide gamut of music available [↩]

Random Friday – Desperados Waiting For A Train Edition

March 21, 2015March 21, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

A slightly different way to play the random music on a Friday game, I started with a song I wanted to hear, and used the Create Genius Playlist on my iPhone to generate a list.

I’ve talked about my deep love for Guy Clark’s version of Desperados Waiting on A Train previously, instead of repeating that, I’ll just add that these songs do fit well together. Vocals and literate lyrics front and center, lots of stringed acoustic instruments, guitar, fiddle sometimes, lots of empty space. If I had been older instead of younger, I’d probably have seen all of these acts multiple times when I lived in Austin, as it is, I don’t remember ever seeing any of these acts live (maybe Joe Ely, but my memory is fuzzy). I really wish I had seen Townes Van Zandt at least once, his music can bring a tear to my eye.

Clark, Guy– Desperados Waiting For A Train
Old No. 1
Steve Earle– Mercenary Song
Train A Comin’
Townes Van Zandt– Pancho And Lefty
Rear View Mirror
Jerry Jeff Walker– Pissin’ In The Wind
20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: Best Of Jerry Jeff Walker
Slaid Cleaves– Broke Down
Broke Down
Ray Wylie Hubbard– Conversation With The Devil
107.1 KGSR Broadcasts Vol. 7 (disc 2)
Ely, Joe– Me And Billy The Kid
Live At Liberty Lunch
Earle, Steve– The Mountain
Just an American Boy
Townes Van Zandt– Tecumseh Valley
Live and Obscure
Jerry Jeff Walker– Desperados Waiting For The Train
Viva Terlingua
Mary Gauthier– I Drink
Bob Dylan – Theme Time 3 Drink
Earle, Steve– Poncho And Lefty
Townes

Bob Dylan Hates Purple Throated Vocalists As Much As I Do

February 7, 2015February 7, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

Trio of musicians

Long time readers of this humble blog might remember a discussion or two about singers who over-sing. Artists like Whitney “permanent orgasm” Houston, for instance, who constantly ululate over and around the melody until it makes your ears bleed. There’s probably a better way to describe this style of singing, but I call it purple throated, in homage to the phrase “purple prose”.¹

Bob Dylan is many things, but one of my favorite aspects of his persona is his love for music, and his propensity to speak the unvarnished truths about musicians.

Such as in his speech at the MusiCares Person of the Year event yesterday:

Dylan was gracious enough not to identify by name the singer who was the recipient of his sharpest barbs. But he seemed to be referencing Ambrosius, who has had several R&B hits, most notably 2010’s Far Away, sang the national anthem at a 2012 Floyd Mayweather-Manny Cotto fight.

“Critics say I mangle my melodies, render my songs unrecognizable,” he said. “Let me tell you something: I was at a boxing match a few years ago, seeing Floyd Mayweather fight a Puerto Rican guy. And the Puerto Rican national anthem, somebody sang it. And it was beautiful, it was heartfelt, it was moving. After that, it was time for our national anthem, and a very popular soul-singing sister was chosen to sing it. She sang every note. That exists. And some that don’t exist. Talk about mangling a melody. Take a one-syllable word and make it last for 15 minutes. To me, it was not funny. Mangling lyrics, mangling a melody, mangling a treasured song. No, I get the blame.”

(click here to continue reading Dylan disses Merle Haggard, others, in MusiCares speech.)

If you want to torture your ears, here is the YouTube of that rendition of the US National Anthem, available at the moment.

Dylan also discusses another my favorite songs, Sunday Morning Coming Down. I’m partial to the Kris Kristofferson version, but the Johnny Cash cover is pretty spot-on too.

Dylan recalled reading an interview with Tom T. Hall, the country singer and songwriter noted for story songs like Harper Valley PTA and (Old Dogs, Children And) Watermelon Wine, during a Nashville recording stint many years ago. In the interview, Dylan said, “He was (complaining) about some kind of new song coming in. And he couldn’t understand what these new kinds of songs were that were coming in or what they were about.”

“Now, Tom, he was one of the most pre-eminent songwriters at the time in Nashville. A lot of people were recording his songs, including himself. But he was on a fuss about James Taylor and a song James had called Country Road. Tom was going all off in this interview: ‘Well, James don’t sing nothing about a country road; he just says that he can feel that ole country road. I don’t understand that.”

“Now some might say Tom was a great songwriter, and I’m not going to doubt that. At the time, during his interview, I was actually listening to a song of his on the radio in the recording studio. It was called I Love. And it was talking about all the things he loves. An everyman song. Trying to connect with people. Trying to make you think he’s just like you and you’re just like him. We all love the same things. We’re all in this together.”

“Tom loves little baby ducks. Slow-moving trains and rain. He loves big pickup trucks and little country streams. Sleep without dreams. Bourbon in a glass. Coffee in a cup. Tomatoes on a vine and onions.”

“Now listen, I’m not every going to disparage another songwriter. I’m not gonna do that. I’m not saying that’s a bad song, I’m just saying it might be a little over-cooked.”

Dylan said that Hall and a few other writers had the Nashville scene “sewn up” — until Kris Kristofferson came along and started writing songs like Sunday Morning Comes Down, which Johnny Cash turned into a No. 1 single.

“That one song blew Tom T. Hall’s world apart,” Dylan said. “It might have sent him to the crazy house. God forbid he ever heard one of my songs.”

“If Sunday Morning Coming Down rattled Tom’s cage and sent him into the looney bin, my songs surely would have made him blow his brains out.”

(click here to continue reading Dylan disses Merle Haggard, others, in MusiCares speech.)

Bob Dylan – Shadows In The Night

By the way, Bob Dylan’s latest album, Shadows in The Night, is actually pretty good, in a melancholy sort of way. Very down-beat, but in a quiet mood, I like it. I’m guessing I might not have appreciated it as much when I was 17, insistent that every song I heard be guitar-driven, but now that I’ve expanded my musical palette a bit, I can appreciate songs by Frank Sinatra, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, et al. Also, Dylan’s voice sounds much better than it did on that lame Christmas album² released a few years ago.

Footnotes:

In literary criticism, purple prose is prose text that is so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw excessive attention to itself. [↩]
Christmas In The Heart [↩]

iTunes 12 Syncing Is Broken Beyond Belief

January 1, 2015January 1, 2015 Seth Anderson0 comment

Hello Would You Like To Restore Your iPhone Yet Again?

Kirk McElhearn, a long-time Mac columnist, adds his voice to the chorus of iPhone owners dismayed with iTunes 12 and iOS 8.

Now, syncing an iOS device—iPhone, iPad, or iPod—is too often an ordeal. And it is because it’s become untrustworthy. Will the sync work at all or will your content disappear and be transformed into something that fills the amorphous “Other” category in iTunes’ capacity bar. Will all of your content sync or just your music, or music, or apps?

Sync problems between iTunes and iOS devices are all too common. (See the last thirty days of posts in Apple’s support forums about iTunes sync issues.) In a way, this may be a predictable side effect of Apple’s push to online services. The company wants everything to be in the cloud, and it would prefer that you buy all your music and movies from there as well. Local syncing isn’t really a part of that plan and so may be treated as an afterthought. The difficulty is that not all users are right for the cloud model. For those with large iTunes libraries, or with limited broadband bandwidth, cloud storage simply isn’t usable.

Given that, it’s time to revisit local syncing. In its current state, iTunes syncing is broken and it can only be fixed by Apple.

…

Apple needs to fix syncing. While users who don’t sync their iOS devices in this way aren’t affected by these issues, those people with small and large iTunes libraries alike report syncing problems. It’s frustrating, and the fact that there’s no way to find out what’s wrong makes it even more so. In an ideal world iTunes would have some kind of sync log or sync diagnostic tool, akin to the Network Diagnostics utility, that would help ferret out problems and let people get on with enjoying their media.

(click here to continue reading iTunes syncing is broken: Apple, please fix it | Macworld.)

iPhone 6 and iOS 8 restore number 12

I’ve written at least once about my frustrations with syncing, and by my count, I’ve had to restore my iPhone 6-minus at least ten times since I got it last fall. Ten times! New Year’s Eve¹ was number eleven, and for some reason² the PIN I used yesterday would not unlock my iPhone today. Since I have Find my iPhone turned on, I was unable to restore directly via my Mac, and had to log on to https://www.icloud.com/#find, and remotely wipe the iPhone.

Restore Number 12 finally began, and because I use my iPhone for more than just a phone, the syncing takes for freaking ever³, and I probably won’t have use of a phone for several hours.

Sure there are much worse problems in the world, but iPhone owners want devices that we spend thousands of dollars annually⁴ on to actually work. Currently, the iTunes 12/iOS 8 platform is not up the usual Apple standards. Constantly having to reinstall the software is not customer-friendly.

Footnotes:

yesterday, 12/31/2014 [↩]
fat fingers, or the beginning stages of a good buzz, or Jony Ive’s sense of humor, whatever [↩]
between 4-5 hours, plus time to reset Apple ID, iCloud, the thumbprint, Apple Pay, etc. [↩]
the device itself, the monthly bill, the apps and songs and etc. [↩]

Rosemont passes law to prevent release of Garth Brooks contract

December 5, 2014 Seth Anderson0 comment

Rich Play – Poor Pay – Chicago Tribune.

There aren’t many times when we align unequivocally with the Chicago Tribune, but this is one such time. What the hell is the Village of Rosemont doing?¹ Corporate welfare at its most transparent, and then trying to cover up their tracks? They are spending taxpayer money, right? So why shouldn’t the taxpayers know the details?

Whatever Rosemont had to do, it doesn’t want the public to know about it.

The village recently passed an ordinance to keep secret the financial details related to Brooks’ record-breaking concert run — an unusual move that came after the Chicago Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to his September shows at Allstate Arena.

The ordinance gives the mayor and other officials the power to withhold documents if they believe the release would put village-owned entertainment venues at a competitive disadvantage. In addition to the arena, the town owns and operates the Rosemont Theatre and the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center.

Village officials declined comment on the new law this week, citing the ongoing dispute with the Tribune over the Brooks documents.

The Tribune requested the records on Sept. 11, while Brooks was in the middle of his 11-concert run at Allstate Arena. Brooks, who had not toured in 16 years, sold 183,535 tickets for his Rosemont shows and broke the North American ticket sales record for a single city with an estimated gross of $12 million.

…

None of those entities, however, rely upon concert and convention revenues as much as Rosemont, which owes more than $400 million on taxpayer-backed loans taken out primarily to build an entertainment district. In 2013, the arena, theater and convention center together generated nearly $38 million in operating revenue and attracted more than 1.9 million visitors, according to village officials.

(click here to continue reading Rosemont passes law to prevent release of Garth Brooks contract – Chicago Tribune.)

To be clear, we are befuddled why such a profitable touring artist would need financial incentives from the public: the government isn’t getting a percentage of the gate. In fact, just the opposite – Rosemont gave a share of concessions, parking, and the like to the promoter. Wacky, just wacky. Smells like corruption to me.

Footnotes:

a suburb of Chicago, five minutes from O’Hare Airport [↩]

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