Category: Music

Categories
Critters Music Should We Talk About The Weather?

Another day, another tornado watch

Ahhh, April and May. I look forward each year to April and May…being over. We seemed to escape the worst of the dastardly weather last night, only to have another shot at it tonight – and on Lost night of all nights! Bastards. Still, last night was a fine night to gather all of the living creatures that comprise our family under one roof. Xena had to go in for her annual shots yesterday, and she apparently handled it like an old pro – mainly because it was Jan who took her, and all I had to do was hoist her into the back of Happy Wagon Of Death 2K3. I remember thinking at the time that she’s actually managed to get heavier, and lo and behold, we now have at least 90 pounds of dog guarding our home. Must be all the chicken I’ve cooked for her since her last round of shots. The cats loved having Xena inside, and once the rain was pouring down in not just buckets but large wheelbarrows, I think Xena loved having Xena inside too. These bad-weather family gatherings will become very interesting when the baby arrives…

It’s also raining music…and I’m coming up dry. In one of those cruel twists of fate, there’s a sudden glut of music that I’d love to get my paws on, and here I am in one of those increasingly familiar situations where I consider the change in my pockets my life savings. There’s a new Jason Falkner out (with an eyebrow-raising price tag since it’s a Japan-only import – why in the world can’t this guy get a U.S. label deal!?), the entire Idle Race catalog has been reissued in a 2-CD set (they had quite the career), and the first Alan Parsons Project album has been remastered and reissued. Argh. Add that at least two of these are going to be imports, and the fact that American currency isn’t so much falling as plummeting against, well, just about every form of legal tender that exists on the planet. Except maybe whatever penguins use for currency. If penguins sold CDs that I really wanted, I could so get a sweet deal. In the meantime, I guess I’ll leave a (increasingly worthless) quarter under my pillow and hope for a visit from the Amazon Wish List fairy. 😆

Anyway, those are my musings for right now. There are a lot worse problems in the world to have than the “can’t afford a few CDs” variety, so I’m really not complaining. It’s just one of those funny feast-or-famine things. 😛… Read more

Categories
Gadgetology Music Television & Movies

The night the video gear slept

Trying out a new Winamp crossfader plugin today. I’m sure that’s old hat, but I didn’t even know that such things even existed. It’s quite a bit of fun, actually. I gotta try this out with an all-soundtrack mix and a hot game of Dune 2000. Seriously, when massive corporate ownership has leached local news (and therefore any local value to anyone other than advertisers) out of radio, do we need radio anymore with stuff like this around?

Dave gets a mention in USA Today in this article about Lost and the unusual number of characters named after prominent philosophers, and whether or not that’s a coincidence. I thought it was a pretty interesting article myself. Dave also writes our nifty Lost guide, and I’m sure he’s already wondering how to tackle this week’s episode. Which, for those who might’ve missed my last entry, I loved. 😆 Be sure to check out his blog, which is rapidly becoming more frequently updated than mine.

With some of our first bad weather of the year inbound, I’ve powered the Avid down, possibly for a couple of days until things clear up. If one operates by the axiom that doing a lot of powering up and powering down of a computer is less stressful on the machine than simply leaving it on, a computer with external SCSI drives and outboard modules and a VTR is even more susceptible to problems. So it gets a day off. It’s on a pretty robust surge protector, but I’d rather not take a chance with it.

Congrats to Doctor Who, Galactica and SG-1 for their Hugo nominations. SG-1’s 200 was nominated, which I’m kinda iffy on, but it’s been the most entertaining episode of the current season to date, so I’ll give ’em that. Unlike the Nebula nominations, which went to the Galactica boxing episode, the Hugo nod is for Downloaded (see if I didn’t call that one here). Again, The Girl In The Fireplace was nominated, this time accompanied by School Reunion (ehhh…I loved the episode, but I’m not sure I really see the great SF storytelling in it) and Army Of Ghosts / Doomsday (ehhh…see above). I guess nobody watched The Idiot’s Lantern after all. My prediction: Downloaded will take the trophy.… Read more

Categories
Music Television & Movies

All along the…wait, WHAT!?

There’s so many zingers in the season finale of Galactica, I’d think this episode was sponsored by Dolly Madison. I don’t even know where to start. I’m going to have to re-watch it to try to process it all again, though one thing that sunk in with the first viewing was that the music was flat-out awesome. I e-mailed Bear McCreary to find out if “All Along The Watchtower” is going to be on the season 3 soundtrack CD, and then I paid his site a visit, only to discover that he’s got a blog for every episode, and the entry for Crossroads Part 2 says that yes, there will be a season 3 CD, and yes, “Watchtower” will be on it. (Come to think of it, I really dug the music from last week’s Lost episode as well, so as long as McCreary and Giacchino and their respective labels want to keep doing season soundtracks, count me in.) It’s hard to find a version of “Watchtower” that really blows the doors off the barn the way the original did, or especially the Hendrix version, but this interpretation of it just floored me. (Slight bit of self-pimpery: if you haven’t already, you should read our 2005 interview with Bear, who’s just one of the nicest guys I’ve spoken to in a sub-career of interviewing film and TV composers. For such a soft-spoken soul, this guy makes some awesome noise. And he’s taking over the music for Sci-Fi’s Eureka next season!)

Other than that…I have no comments (or spoilers) at the moment on the story itself. Still digesting. I’m sure I’ll have things to say later though.

Not much else to report from the past few days. Same old incidents and accidents. I’ve been soaking up the Alan Parsons Project remastered goodness, and as much as I like it (the track of Eye In The Sky orchestral & choral overdubs, sans rhythm section tracks, is just breathtaking), I’m coming away from each one just a little bit let down. I must’ve gotten really spoiled by the relative wealth of “found and finished” songs on the ELO remasters. I wouldn’t even be making comparisons, except that virtually the same team at Sony is responsible for both groups’ remastered albums.

Counting down the days to the new season of Doctor Who. Dunno about you, but I’m pretty happy – for the first time in quite a while, all of the shows I’ve been following faithfully have gotten renewed this year, even though at least a couple of them (Galactica and Torchwood) won’t be seen again until next year. (Word has it that this is also likely to be the case with Lost once it finishes its season.) I know some folks are bemoaning the fact that there’s a long gap between seasons, but y’know, somehow the Brits have been able to settle into this rhythm of watching TV, so I don’t see why we can’t do the same. Besides, I’m sure I’ll have something to occupy my time between now and then.… Read more

Categories
Critters Gadgetology Gaming Music Serious Stuff

Random ramblings of minimal importance

Sam ‘n’ Ella better keep away from my peanut butter cookies. I’m a mongrel for crunchy peanut butter, so this news is rather alarming. In other news, to make a completely bizarre segue into another topic, someone’s finally cracked the Tagalong Code: if you’re craving that most delicious variety of Girl Scout Cookies during those times of the year when Girl Scout Cookies aren’t available, try out Keebler’s new peanut-butter-filled fudge cookies. I forget what they’re actually called, but OMG they’re delicious. They’re still not quite perfect – Tagalongs are thinner and I like the chocolate coating better on them – but they’re as close as anyone’s gotten. (And they’re about a buck cheaper.) That said, I’m still craving genuine Tagalongs, but it looks like I missed the bus for this year’s order. 🙁
Robin Hood: Cats On Printers. The funny picture yesterday of Obi standing proudly atop my PC is not an isolated incident, so my game room has become Off Limits To Kitties While Daddy’s Away. Sad, really, because the window in there, which is all overgrown with brush, is teeming with birds year-round – it’s like Cat TV. You can find one or both of the kittens sitting in there on top of the scanner, watching the window all glossy-eyed. But when Obi jumps on top of the printer, decides that it’s a good idea to jump up and try to tag either an arcade marquee (which is damn close to the ceiling) or the Doctor Who pinball backglass (perched in the upper pane of the window in a way that isn’t precarious until someone starts screwing with it), and then all that jumping threatens to dislodge both printer and Vectrex from their slots on the shelf…well…I suppose this is just a sneak preview of things to come. 😆 My game room is going to need quite a bit of work to make it kid-friendly. Fortunately, I already have some ideas on that front, ideas which I’ll share shortly. Gaming folks with limited space and/or concerns about keeping their consoles clean of dust and other things may want to pay close attention… … Read more

Categories
Home Base Music

I don’t remember anything after that

Turns out I have the mother of all sinus infections. Loverly. I’m on some meds for it, not sure if I’ll be back at work by Wednesday or not. Ick.
Got the new Intrada CD of the original 1968 Alex North sessions for the 2001 movie score that Kubrick rejected. Without wanting to upstage the eventual movie review too much, this CD is awesome if you’re a 2001 fan, an Alex North fan, or still curious about North’s unused 2001 music even after the 1993 release that was arranged and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith (North himself having passed on in 1991). The music is very different from that recording in some places – it’s often a matter of the balance of instruments used, the timing, and other subtleties, but there are some sections of music that, despite the 1993 Goldsmith recording, are completely new to me. The booklet itself is worth the price of admission too – I had no idea that the whole thing had led to this intractible feud between North’s widow and Kubrick, and wouldn’t ever be settled until both she and Kubrick were gone. I highly recommend it. I’ll slot a more comprehensive review into the schedule soonish, but it may be a couple of weeks – I’m still happily digesting it all.
I see that the ELO fan club, or at least its UK congtingent, is working to make “Latitude 88 North” an iTunes hit. Hey, if it worked for “Love Don’t Roam“…
I’ve got some more news…but of course I can’t tell you what it is just yet. 😛… Read more

Categories
Critters Home Base Music

…and tired always followed sick.

Thanks a lot, Oberon. Little fart ran out of the house around this time last night, and I had to get something/anything on to go outside and fish him out from under the side deck, again. This time Xena was no help at all – she thought me wallowing around in the snow on the ground was a sign that it was playtime, and wound up scaring Obi back under the deck repeatedly. The result? I woke up this morning feeling like death warmed over, and not even properly warmed over, but like someone kinda half-ass read the microwave instructions for warming death over and forgot to peel the film back on one corner of death and didn’t stir death halfway through, so the applesauce is still frozen and the melted cheese hasn’t melted over anything that it was actually supposed to melt over. (In fact, half of it is in the applesauce.) I must really love that little dipwad because that’s the second time in a week I’ve had to go retrieve him before he wanders too far off, and the second time with snow on the ground.
The wife was unbelievably happy that I made Jello for her tonight, like it’s the most remarkable thing anyone’s ever done for her. Erm…okay. Maybe I need to make Jello more often. It’s a kitchen challenge that taxes my cooking skills to their very limits, and maybe someday I’ll be ready to move up to Jello Pudding! Not that there’s anything wrong with making her happy, especially when she’s lugging my two-headed mutant love child around in her belly, but I’m just gonna chalk this one up to the hormones. 😆
I’ve been munching on some Reese’s chocolate dipped peanut butter cookies lately and wondering why it is that no one outside of the Girl Scouts can seem to nail down the perfect balance between peanut butter, chocolate and cookie that we mere mortals know only as Tagalongs. Then again, if Tagalongs were available more than once a year, I’d probably be hovering closer to 350 pounds than 250. The terrifying thought also just occurred to me that, no longer working at the station, I can’t order my usual annual forklift pallet of Tagalongs from Donna anymore. Holy crap, my source has dried up! I’m going to start having tremors somewhere around Easter weekend.
Without even really deliberately setting out to do it, I embarked on something of an exploration of electronic music today, from Raymond Scott’s 50s and 60s experiments to the non-Doctor Who repertoire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to Hot Butter to Jarre to Art of Noise to early Juno Reactor and Christopher Franke. (And some other stuff in between that I’m probably forgetting.) I need to hurry up and get a USB MIDI cable extra soonish because I’m feeling the music-making bug chewing away at the edge of my consciousness almost around the clock right now. Maybe it’s inspiration from recent events, but I’ve had some lyrics that were very vague suddenly swim right into focus, along with a lot of other stuff, and I’m charting out arrangements as best someone can when they can’t actually read or write music, working out and practicing guitar parts, that sort of thing. I’ve got one humdinger that I’ll probably use as my first experiment, but it’s a bit daunting, what with some rather specific instrument sounds that I’m gonna have to coax outta Cubase, and at least 8 part harmonies on the vocals. (Yeah, fair warning, I’m probably finally going to sing.) (Gee, I wonder who could’ve inspired me to pile that many vocals on something?) But it’s the one piece that’s just burning a hole in the back of my brain, so challenging or not, that’s probably the one that needs to come out of my head first. I’m not sure what’s flipped a switch in my head that’s made me feel like actually exposing the rest of the world to my singing voice, aside from the possibility that I’ll be having to sing to someone a lot here in a few months.
You have been warned.… Read more

Categories
Music Serious Stuff

Well, I suppose they are brothers after all…

So I took a look at the new Crowded House mini-site (link), and was stunned to see that Neil Finn now looks like…well…Tim, circa 3 or 4 years ago! (Well duh, I hear the crowd saying.) Moreso than usual, I mean. He looks almost exactly like him. (Of course, I seem to remember a while back being completely stunned when I opened the CD booklet for Imaginary Kingdom to see that Tim had gone from that one little shock of grey hair that he’s always had to this enormous mane of completely grey hair.) It’s somewhat curious that most of my pantheon of musical heroes are, across the board, steadily marching toward their mid-50s.
The upcoming Crowded House album has a title, Time On Earth. In other news, Intrada is taking orders for their limited edition (~3000 copies) release of the original 1968 session recordings for Alex North’s unused 2001: a space odyssey score – be sure to leave me a copy though.
With the above, plus the already-ordered final ELO remasters, and the upcoming Alan Parsons Project remasters, I keep telling myself that great music is a perfectly acceptable reason to be broke before the baby gets here. 😛 Dave mentioned over on Not News his feelings on 2007 being an embarrassment of music riches – I certainly hope he’s right on that count. It’s definitely shaping up that way. (It’s not for nothing that music reviews have been bumped back up to a weekly feature on theLogBook for this year.)
Veering completely off topic here, and not prompted by anything in particular, I’m wondering if anything is really being accomplished by the trend of the past few years of all but forcing-at-gunpoint bigoted celebrities to apologize for their actions and promise to change their ways. I understand that there’s an instructional element to this, that we want to make sure that hatred and bigotry aren’t cool just because they’re practiced by the likes of Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, that fellow from Grey’s Anatomy whose name escapes me… I understand we need to say that it’s not cool, and it’s not okay. But somewhere inside me is a little bite-sized bit of Libertarian wondering if it’s any better to “force” tolerance than it is to embrace ignorance. Does it change my world to hear that Michael Richards is sorry and is “seeking help”? Not really. I’m content for such people to stand as less-than-shining examples of ignorance, and proof that the fight is so very far from over, and there’s something just a little thought-police-ish about the enforcement of tolerance that makes it a bit creepy. Tolerance is good (though acceptance is better), but jamming it down people’s throats sets up a potential backlash that could do more damage to the fight for civil rights, gay rights, religious tolerance, etc. than somebody’s tirade to a comedy club audience or a police officer or a closed production set for a TV series – not exactly mass media venues.
By broadcasting these events and making them water cooler news, are we not giving the celebrity bigots more of a voice for their garbage than they would’ve had otherwise in any of these settings?… Read more

Categories
Music

The music gods must really like me

I must’ve been a really good boy or something, because I went to see if the new ELO remasters were finally available for pre-order (and they are!), and found a second sample clip from “Latitude 88 North” that makes me wish more than ever that Jeff Lynne would record something new – hell, I’d even settle for him continuing to “discover and finish” unrecorded ELO gems like this one.
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/podcast/l88n.mp3]
Add to this the upcoming Alan Parsons remasters-with-new-tracks, and the reunion of Crowded House, and that’s my trifecta right there. For reasons both musical and otherwise, I’m a happy boy.
If you want to pre-order the remasters directly from the fan club, get ’em at the link above, or heck, if you want to throw fiddy cents my way (uah!), I won’t kick you outta bed* for ordering ’em here. … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Music

I suppose that, upon further reflection, I would want to be like you after all

(Cryptic title is a play on the Alan Parsons Project song “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You”.) Check out this list of remastered goodies from the upcoming Parsons Project remastered albums. Some of it’s really interesting, and some of it…well, you can tell they’re probably reaching. There are some parallels with the bonus tracks on the ELO remasters, such as the stripped-down mixes and the backing-track-minus-vocals mixes, the latter of which have thrilled the heck outta me on the ELO CDs.
Before either they or I die, I really want someone to stick Jeff Lynne and Alan Parsons together in a studio full of instruments and gadgetry and not let them out until there’s a full reel of tape left on the machine (or they run out of air, whichever happens first). Actually, what would be really interesting would be for them to pre-record vocals and basic rhythm tracks for about four or five songs each, and then each one takes a shot at producing his own 4-5 tracks and the other’s 4-5 tracks in their own style. So you get the same ten songs, reinterpreted in radically different ways – Lynne has regressed into a kind of retro-rockabilly style with light strings, while Parsons has gotten an education in the ways of electronica. That would be interesting. (Not as interesting as having Neil Finn or Peter Gabriel do one song’s worth of guest lead vocals each into the mix, but I doubt that’ll happen anywhere except in my dreams.)
I lurk on the ELO mailing list and on a Parsons forum or two, and I’m amazed that there are folks who like one, but not the other – at their mutual heyday (the late 1970s), both groups shared some distinctive similarities in style, and I was in love with both of ’em.
All of this is just me trying to distract myself from other things. We informed the whole family over the course of the last 36 hours or so; I think the happiest reaction we got was from my father. I really get the impression that nobody ever expected us to unleash any mischevious spawn upon the surface of this planet. Honestly, we’re as surprised as anyone else…but you know what? I’ll take it. I haven’t been this happy in a long, long time, and the thought occurs to me that maybe this is what I’ve been missing in my life for years. And yet I’m not sure it could’ve come at a better time, what with me having just left the crazy slavery of teevee and more or less perfectly positioned to be a stay-at-home dad.
I can’t wait to read to my child. This is gonna be so freakin’ cool. I know there are diapers to be changed too, but you know what? That’s a pretty small tradeoff. (It’s not like mucking horse stalls for eight hours straight.) (And it ain’t like dustin’ crops, boy.)
And here you thought it was the expecting mother who was supposed to be glowing.… Read more