Category: music

Illustrotter

I keep a little bit more than a score of links on the right hand side of my blog. I try not to keep more than I frequent. And I also try to edit when my mouse moves elsewhere.

Daytrotter is not one of those links. But perhaps it could be. The pulse of the mp3 blogosphere is often as interesting as a pulse. Not like the pulse of some tribal house music that locks a dancefloor in unison. But like the repetitiveness that plagues mainstream radio. What's so indie about a hive mind? Drop the “in-” prefix and your're left with “die”, which is what would happen to the whole scene if the “die” translates back into its unabbreviated form. That would be “dependent”, for you home gamers out there.

Daytrotter goes beyond the rest of the mp3 blog scene by providing live music sets of artists to the masses. Or really, the anti-masses. Just today I downloaded the set of laptop superstar Jason Forrest, who I had the good fortune of seeing perform a few years back. But other somewhat familiar culprits like Of Montreal, Bonnie Prince Billy, and Cold War Kids (former mp3 blog faves).

Why Daytrotter? Why here? Why now?

Why the fuck not?

In case you hadn't noticed there's a fuckload of web sites on the Internet, and if you have any type of personal activities that you combine along with gainful/ungainful employment, top off with what most refer to as family, and sprinkle it with some necessities of modern life, as well as making the fruits of that gainful/ungainful employment stretch from a berrylike stature to a girth resembling a rather large melon, then you probably tend to forget a lot of the great web sites you find. Your bookmarks have become as unwieldy as the Yellow Pages, del.icio.us is just another thing to log into, and although it should have been mentioned in sentence one of this paragraph, the information overload that can't be stopped, and that some of us (present company (which is right now me by myself) included) like to try to manage like a seasick amateur bullrider.

So I should thank the injured junior high gymnast who sold me my Wired subscription for indirectly placing Daytrotter before my eyes once again. (Wired had a piece on Daytrotter, just found it.) And I'm glad, because it contains the lovely illustrations of Shannon Palmer (among others), whose What Noisy Cats Are We blog resides somewhere to the right of this column (we're talking browser page location, not political affiliation).

All this from a guy who recently included fucking Night Ranger mp3s in a post, who'd a thunk that?

Where does it Hold the Green M&Ms?

I can't find a container, caddy, or a cup to contain those candy-coated chocolate morsels. Can you?

Interesting post over at the spraygraphic blog, at least I thought so. Some may have chosen the word obscure over interesting, but I find many obscure things interesting, and this was one. Celebrity patents will never be a Jeopardy category, but why shouldn't celebrities have patents? They might make a great living, but their real dream may be some sort of invention, and who better to be able to combine a little bit of influence and the necessary coin? A good idea would help as well.

Found while perusing t-shirts at spraygraphic. Here's how it went down.

“Oh look, they have a blog. I have a blog, too. Wow! Aren't blogs grand?”

click

“Oh look, they posted about a bizarre Eddie Van Halen-esque doodle. I posted about…something else. Hey, why don't I post about this?”

And here we are.

The Eddie Van Halen sketch sucked me in. Humorous, no? It actually looks like he's playing it like a piano. Was he trying to patent this technique? Because if memory serves me correctly (and this time it does), Jeff Watson (formerly of Night Ranger) had a patented 8-finger technique (at approximately the 2:36 mark), not so unlike what Sketchy Van Halen may be doing in this picture. (Couldn't find a patent of the 8-finger technique, but Watson's own site did not call the technique patented, instead “invented” and “popularized” were used to describe the technique.) I think EVH's technique was different, and he may be using a thumb in the picture, and really who cares. I'm typing this after finishing this post, and by now I'm over it and probably destroying any flow this post once had. I don't care, and I mean that in multiple ways.

I'm going to throw some mp3s here, because I can. I mean I have the ability to do that. Legally, well that's up to a jury of my peers, I suppose. They'll appear soon. I'm kind of on a roll here, and I don't want to stop yet. This was not the post I was looking for tonight. But sometimes any post is a good post, and this is as good as any.

Back to Jeff Watson, I used to read guitar magazines in my youth, and recall reading about his technical skill, and listening to it, too, including his performance on a Tony MacAlpine cassette that was in my collection. But while constructing this post I just discovered I've heard Jeff Watson's work on another album in my collection, Chris Isaak's Forever Blue.

I'm not done. Further digging revealed that Watson also inspired an alternate guitar tuning that Isaak used on arguably his greatest hit, “Wicked Game”. (Actually I don't think even Isaak himself would argue otherwise. But I'm not deleting the 'arguably' there. Mainly because I don't feel like arguing with someone who wants to try and reason that “Somebody's Crying” was a bigger hit. (Yes, I know it was on a Party of Five episode. I once watched television semi-regularly.)

I like Wicked Game a lot, so much that I've dropped the quotation marks. As much as I love parentheses, I am not enthralled with quotation marks. They are an (un)Necessary evil, but that's just me.

This is around the time I lose all interest in posting. I found the above somewhat interesting to write, and perhaps even a bit obscure at times. Now I have to go make sure the links appear where I deem necessary, and then proceed to post with all typos, sentence fragments, and other unproofed grammatical error and inconsistencies intact.

Chris Isaak – Wicked Game

Night Ranger – Don't Tell Me You Love Me, (You Can Still) Rock in America

Tony MacAlpine – The King's Cup

Looking Back, Moving Forward

What to do in the New Year? How 'bout make good on old blog promises? No one's holding me to them, since no one is reading anyway. So I will hold myself accountable and assume full responsibility like the fine upstanding individual I am.

In a post dated Sept 2, 2006, I listed a few thoughts for blog postings that were floating around my brain. One of which involved Joe Franklin. I had just been in New York for an IRS seminar, and during a 3 hour lunch break, (yeah, 3 hours, so don't call them between 12 and 3 during tax season, I guess) I ventured over to the nearby Museum of Television & Radio. I headed to the library and requested a few videos to watch. The selection room is quite nice. The professional staff looked quite professional and after selecting I moved to the viewing area. the viewing area was a more dingier place, with different sitting areas with smaller screen than the selection computers and some headsets, so as not to disturb the neighbors.

My choices were a Picasso documentary that had originally aired in the late 60's or early 70's on either CBS or NBC, (this is a few months ago people, please.) and the Ramones appearance on the Joe Franklin Show. I found both interesting, but will admit that sitting in a small desk area not unlike my computer setup at home staring at a screen was not how I really intended to spend my bit of spare time in New York City, when I was convinced that I could find the Ramones bit on YouTube (guess what? I can't. Can you? I can't. Can you? I can't.) I was more than a bit antsy, but both pieces of archival footage were interesting.

The Picasso documentary actually featured Pablo creating in real time in both paint and sculpture. I can't imagine a major television network ever doing something like this again. Art only seems to have a home these days on public television. And that is not a dis to public television, it's just unfortunate, because not everybody ventures to that realm of the remote.

The Joe Franklin clip is quite humorous, although Franklin was not familiar with the Ramones' body of work (or the pronunciation, must be seen, actually heard, for any effect, I refuse to phonetically try to recreate, I have faith that the Tubemasters of the Internets will find this footage, and we'll all share someday). But Joey and Marky, the two Ramones in attendance, were familiar with Joe Franklin's Memory Lane (the Joe Franklin link is above, one's enough).

Making good on old promises. I am so proactive in 2007, I even baked cookies already this year.

This is not the Footage I'm Looking For

Missed the earlier coverage of the Tournament of Roses parade. Haven't yet found real good footage of the Star Wars floats and the 501st Legion marching in the parade. This will do for now. Why the Star Wars thing in Pasadena, must have something to do with the Grand Marshal, and 2007 marking the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.

And I'll take this opportunity to post a link to my favorites televised live musical performance by a pop act donning Star Wars garb for 2006. Yep…Gnarls Barkley.

Does Dr. Manny have all the answers?

What is the correlation between Dr. Manny Alvarez readers and their fascination/concern for the Year 2012? If you look at the book descriptions for these 2012 books, you'll see that the Weather Channel (and FEMA) will be quite busy that year.
2012. Not to be confused with 2112, that's a Rush album.
What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?

The Misfats

What the world needs now,

is an overweight,

Misfits tribute band,

like I need a post on my blog.*

I see. I chuckle. I link. The Misfats.

Waddle among them.

They fill the void. Literally. The world needed an overweight Misfits tribute band.

* Did this post need a Cracker reference? Not sure, but I started humming the tune as I wrote this. (Scroll down, the link worked at posting time.)

Yet.

I neglected to mention the treadmill performance on the VMAs. My wife knew when this wabout to start as she noticed a few people walking around backstage with orange jumpsuits labeled “TREADMILL TECHNICIAN”. She's got a good eye for these things. She always somehow picks up on the lack of continuity when cigarette lengths, and beverage glass levels don't quite match in the movies.