Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Okay - I'll admit it: it doesn't take much to buy me off. I've bitched about buying and downloading mp3's to Linux machines and Amazon's non-support for a while - in fact those posts are some of the most visited on my site. But still I stick with Amazon. It's like some trailer park relationship. But now I'm willing to kiss and make up because now Amazon Prime memberships get FREE MUSIC STREAMING! (I'm doing the happy dance). I signed up for Prime around Christmas because (I told myself) I needed a package in a hurry. While normally I might have just popped for the extra shipping, the fact that Prime accounts get free 2 day shipping AND video streaming was enough to get me to fork over the cost of a Prime membership. You can do a free one month trial, so why not?  I don't watch a lot of stuff, but I watch some, and it's a nice deal. I even bought myself a Roku device (from Amazon!) for Father's Day this year to make it easier. But fr...

Call me an old curmudgeon, but I find a lot of what passes for new music boring in the extreme: manufactured pop, pseudo-country, and studio produced crap. There are a few things interesting that I've chanced upon - most of it stuff my offspring have turned me on to - but not a lot. Lately I've been supplementing my (ahem) legally purchased music from Amazon (yes - as awful as they are , I still patronize them) with a new source - Archive.org . Archive.org , in case you've never been there, bills itself rather cumbersomely as "Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music and Wayback Machine." While accurate, it's a bit of a mouthful. I could write several posts on this amazing site and barely scratch the surface. If you've never visited it, just do it. Just. Do. It. You won't be sorry. Some basics about me: I love music - especially old music. The funkier the better. Growing up, my dad had numerous Spike Jones 78's, which we listened to endle...

The other day I awoke to the news that pianist Dave Brubeck had passed away at age 91, one day short of his birthday, December 6. To say he was a jazz giant is only to illustrate the weakness of the written word, compared to his chosen language, music. I first got turned onto him as a twenty-something who had grown bored with his dorm roon collection of rock and roll. KERA (local public radio station) at the time played classical during the day, and jazz at night. My first purchase was a double LP called The Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall . To say it knocked my socks off is to further illustrate the weakness of the written word. He was born in the San Francisco Bay area. After graduating from the College of the Pacific (where his inability to read music created a bit of a scandal), he was drafted and served in George Patton's Third Army. While in the army he formed one of the army's first multi-racial bands. It was then that he first met his long-time collaborato...

I've been on the road (more on that later) and haven't had a chance to note the passing of a couple of giants. Author Ray Bradbury passed away on June 5 at the age of 91, and Doc Watson, guitar legend, died on May 29 at age 89. The first book by Ray Bradbury I read was a second hand copy of The October Country I bought at a thrift store. It was a collection of short stories more gothic horror than sci fi, and deliciously creepy. I tended to prefer the short stories over the novels - they were little polished jewels of language and poetic imagery. The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man both followed the same format, in that they were a collection of short stories bound thematically into a pseudo-novel. His actual novels were not so much to my taste - the artfully constructed language of the shorter pieces (to me) seemed to bog down the narrative energy of the longer works. I re-read one of his most praised novels,   Something Wicked This Way Comes , a few years...

Perhaps you went to look up something on Wikipedia today, or Google, or any of a number of other sites, only to find them dark. "What the hell is SOPA?" you may be asking. What the hell indeed. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act (HR3261); PIPA is its lesser known bastard sibling: Protect Intellectual Property Act. Both were drafted at the behest of the Big Media cartels who own the rights to most movies, audio recordings, television shows, and print media. Note I did not say they created these things: they merely own the "rights" to them (whatever that means). Because their business model is broken, they've decided to break the Internet. In it's original form, SOPA criminalizes certain web technologies, whether there are legitimate uses or not. It allow the Justice Department to order the takedown of websites, without any type of due process, and make sites criminally liable for user-created content. A Big Company, irked by a website criti...

A couple of decades ago I was noodling around on my guitar and remembered a lick from a song my old high school buddy Chuck Niebling used to play. It had a lilting, slightly melancholy sound. The lyrics (I can never remember words) had something to do with leaving home. That's all I could recall about it. I've played that 24 bar phrase on and off ever since; searching through the repertoires of every obscure and not so obscure 60's and 70's folkie I could think of -- to no avail. I've been totally stumped ... until today. I was listening to a new download I'd gotten from Amazon featuring Jorma Kaukonen and David Bromberg (highly recommended, by the way) and was struck by a tune Bromberg sang. I went back to Amazon to check out some of his other CDs, clicked on a selection and --- OMG! MY MYSTERY SONG! It was called " Child's Song, " and was written by Canadian Murray McLaughlin. More research revealed the version my friend Chuck had perform...

I'd gotten an invite for Google Music a month or two ago but hadn't done much with it until recently. The other day I logged in again and started playing with it again. Here's a few notes for those who are interested in that sort of thing. Here's the short version: Google Music is cloud-based music streaming service, which you can use to upload (I hesitate to say "store" for reasons I'll describe later) and playback MP3s. You get to store 20,000 files, apparently regardless of size. Right now it's in Beta with limited availability (get in line and wait for an invite). It's similar to what Amazon recently launched and what Apple seems to hope iCloud will be. I don't want to call this "cloud storage," because, although you can upload music to play back, there's no way to natively download it - so you won't be using it to back up your music collection. So far it's a one-way street. That being said, I've seen a coup...

If you know British actor Hugh Laurie primarily from his hit TV show House, you may be unaware of his previous role on the BBC production of "Jeeves and Wooster," based on the stories of P. G. Wodehouse (both the TV series and the books they were based on are hilarious). Laurie was a comic genius in these, but he also displayed his musical talents, performing (in character as Bertie Wooster) novelty songs of the era. I was always left wanting just a little more. I want no more! The multi-talented Mr Laurie has released a CD entitled Let Them Talk inspired by his love of New Orleans blues. It is great stuff!!! I downloaded it from the Amazon MP3 store (my favorite source of downloaded music these days) and am marveling at the goodness of it all. He sings, plays guitar and piano, and is joined by a number of outstanding guests, such as Dr. John and Tom Jones. Hit his website for more info and some downloads. Here's a sampling to give you a taste (I own a mahogany...

It's true: of late I've taken to hanging out in a bar on Sunday afternoons. Wait, I'll explain: my friend and occasional debating partner, The Whited Sepulchre , has organized an acoustic guitar circle that meets on Sunday afternoons in The Corporate Image , a rather unpretentious watering hole over on the east side of Fort Worth. I'm not sure if the name of this place is supposed to be ironic or not, but the bartender is friendly and more than appreciative of our musical musings. We've done this about 4 Sundays now. It's great fun. There's four of us who could be called regulars and there's enough overlap in repertoire and musical taste that we all manage to play along, no matter who actually starts any given song. I borrowed a collection of harmonicas from youngest son and add a little harp when appropriate (or I can't figure out anything else to do). The Whited Sepulchre, by the way, is a natural for this -- he's quite a guitar player...

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Jeff Beck proves he has no shame. And I mean that in the best possible way imaginable. His new album Rock 'n' Roll Party is subtitled "Honoring Les Paul," and it's like attending a freaking guitar seance.  I mean to say there are tracks that will give you chills. For starters, there's How High the Moon, a Les Paul / Mary Ford standard. The Mary Ford part is filled with scary enough accuracy by Imelda May but the signature guitar riff will have you convinced the Godfather of the Electric Guitar has come back from the dead. After listening to Jeff Beck's track, check out this live performance by the late Mr. Paul and tell me I'm wrong. And the Beck track, while dead on, is bursting with manic rockstar energy. There are other Paul standards also lovingly reconstructed with the aid of Imelda May. Even though most of the album is heavy on rockabilly vibe, the senses tingle when Beck's personalit...

Yesterday the Apple website breathlessly teased us about an announcement to be made today that promised to change our world. Today they revealed the Beatles are (finally) available on iTunes. Are you freaking kidding me? Don't get me wrong -- I like the Beatles, it's just that this has to be one of the lamest announcements ever. While the history of the conspicuous absence of the Beatles audio library on iTunes is interesting, in a geeky sort of way, it's not like mp3's of Beatles songs weren't available on the web in great abundance (albeit through unauthorized channels). Any one possessing a CD, borrowed or otherwise, can rip Beatles tunes to their heart's delight. My iPhone is full of Beatles songs. So what? All this means is now Apple ( and whoever owns the rights to the catalog now ) makes even more money off Beatlemania. Yawn.

I first saw Leo Kottke at UTA about 35 years ago. He opened ( opened! ) for poor unsuspecting Jesse Colin Young. Baby-faced Leo came out armed with nothing but a couple of acoustic guitars and astonishing virtuosity and left the crowd howling for more. One of the notable tunes from this period was "Vaseline Machine Gun." That pretty much described Leo's playing. After the intermission, Jesse took the stage only to discover half the  audience had deserted him. Guess what -- they hadn't come to see him. He was visibly annoyed. I saw Leo Kottke tonight at Bass Hall in downtown Ft. Worth. Fortunately Los Lobos, who he opened for, has a pretty loyal and enthusiastic audience. But it was plain to see there were a lot of folks there (like me) for whom Leo was the main event. The lights went down and gray-haired figure wandered to the front of the stage bearing a guitar. Gone was the baby-face, but the goofy grin remained as did the astonishing virtuosity. I was sitt...

Thanks to my friend T-Dawg who tipped me off to the Adventures in Music Online series over at BoingBoing, guestblogged by Stephen Worth of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive . Lots of embedded YouTube videos, so the page is a little slow to load, but definitely worth the effort! Here's the video from Adventure 15 - The "Boffo Finish" , which will hopefully whet your appetite. The Nicholas Brothers will astonish you! Stephen Worth makes an interesting point about the cultural illiteracy of today's entertainment consumersm, which he refers to as "pop culture amnesia." I ran into that the other day when I mentioned to a 30-something co-worker that I was going to a Django Reinhardt festival. "Who?" was their response. My youngest son won't bother to watch a movie if it's in black and white, on what I can only assume is the theory that something that old will have nothing to say to him. Complaining about it makes me feel like an ol...

And now for a short break from ponderous holiday thoughts. Here's my latest geeky thing. I confess, I love my tunes, which is one of the reasons I finally opted for an iPhone -- it's a great portable music device. And not just when using it as an MP3 player. Lots of devices do that. It also has great streaming audio functionality. Apps like Pandora , Slacker and Shoutcast (to mention but a few) were what sold me. But when I'm home I don't always feel like listening to streams on my iPhone. I've got other stream players, such as my Roku Soundbridge and Linksys WMLS11B . Here's a brief discussion about one way (out of many) to manage tunes for these two devices. Both of these have remotes that let you browse for music servers on your network or  select preselected streams. While useful, both devices have only low-res displays which means a lot of drilling down using the remote -- not a very fast or intuitive method of looking for stuff. Since I can...

A follow up to the previous post about the passing of Les Paul (June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009), American guitar legend and recording innovator. Here's a clip of him playing one of his signature pieces, "How High the Moon." At about the 1:30 point he jams it into overdrive. My god, this brings tears to my eyes. And here's an archival clip of him and his then wife Mary Ford on Alistar Cook's Omnibus, telling how it's all done.

CNN is reporting that guitar legend Les Paul has died at age 94 . Screw the current crop of wannabees -- Les Paul was the real goods. In addition to being a phenomenal musician (he was playing into his 90's), he revolutionized recording studio technology with multi-track recording, tape-delay and other ground breaking tools. Perhaps the most visible monument to Paul's innovations was the guitar that bore his name. He developed the solid body (another Paul innovation) in 1939 to combat the problem of acoustic feedback that often occurred with amplified hollow body guitars. The "Log" as it was called, was little more than a chunk of 4 x 4 lumber with bridge, pickup, and guitar neck. The distinctive single cutaway Les Paul became one of the iconic symbols (along with the Fender Stratocaster) of the Rock generation. Paul's career as a performer spanned the 30's up to the present. He began playing with such names as Fred Waring, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra ...

Woody Guthrie wrote the song " This Land is Your Land " in 1940 as a reaction to the syrupy sentiments of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." We forget now Guthrie's song was not originally just a patriotic camp singalong. When formerly blacklisted folk icon Pete Seeger sang it on the Washington Mall during the Obama inauguration concert, he sang the whole thing, including what singer Jill Sobule and others have mockingly referred to as the "Commie verses." An anthem is a song of celebration. For a country as diverse as ours we need more than one National Anthem. "This Land is Your Land" belongs on that list of unofficial anthems, and not just the feel-good verses. This Land is Your Land by Woodrow Wilson Guthrie This land is your land, this land is my land From California, to the New York Island From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me As I was walking a ribbon of highway I saw above me an ...

Okay, after a week two weeks of dealing with the Jaunty Jackalope upgrade, I'm here to pronounce Audex a worthy successor to Kaudiocreator. I used to rip a lot of CDs, in the past primarily wih Kaudiocreator- (Kaudiocreater was an app that ran under KDE 3.5). After the upgrade to KDE 4.2 , it (along with several other apps) disappeared. I was aghast. I loved Kaudiocreator: it was, in my opinion, one of the best Linux rippers out there. Then it disappeared! I found Audex while googling at work ( during lunch! I swear! ) which promised to be more or less a replacement. I installed with a mixture of skepticism and apprehension, but quickly became a fan. Like Kaudiocreator, Audex has a clean simple mostly intuitive interface, which integrates well with KDE 4. It doesn't have its predecessor's annoying habit of failing to encode a CD if the tag editor doesn't like the genre/label pulled down by the CDDB lookup. One can set multiple encoding profiles using Ogg, MP3, Flac,...

I'd been thinking about getting an MP3 player for a while. All my family members had iPods of various shapes and fashions, but something about Apple's aura of lemming-like cool turned me off. Then one day I got an email flyer from NewEgg selling a refurb Sansa e250 2GB mp3 player for $25 -- free shipping ! How could I resist? There are a ton of these e200 series Sansa refurbs out there, almost always cheap, being sold by various discount electronic shops, including NewEgg, Buy.com, and even Sansa . Some are 2GB, some are 4GB; occasionally you'll see an even larger one. While not as sexy as the ubiquitous iPod, they have a sturdy utilitarianism about them that I find appealing Part of the appeal of these little gizmos is they have a micro SD expansion slot. Here's where it gets complicated. Older (version 1) models only recognize the SD micro card, maximum 2 GB. The newer (version 2) models recognize the SDHC microcards, which come with up to 16GB of storage. So I orde...

Presenting a performance on ukulele of Jobim's One Note Samba by Canadian James Hill , in honor of my good friend, the Whited Sepulchre , who lately has been singing one note on the subject of stimulating the economy . Enjoy! (Watch the whole thing -- it's pretty amazing!) Seriously, I stumbled across this while looking for guitar tabs for One Note Samba. First I encountered a cover by DominatorUke , who is no slouch himself , who pointed me over to James Hill. I love the internet, don't you?