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Marina Sirtis is in Death Wish 3. Pre ST:TNG.
Huh.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
R.I.P. John Keel
You're not going to hear about this from the MSM since they're still too busy fawning over that other guy, but John Keel has died.
Keel was (and still is, and I'm sure will remain) a big name in the field of Forteana. He was an author, journalist, and studier of anomalies of many sorts. Cryptomundo has been covering his recent death here, here, here and here.
At last!
I finally finished editing those &^%$#@! John Klemmer records. There is something about the timbre of his tenor sax that makes it incompatible with pop/click filters. I had to go through and manually take care of all the noise instead of just letting the filters do it like I usually do. They aren't perfect, but they're as good as I'm going to get them. I only took so much care with them because I like them so much. Side 2 of the last record was almost perfect, and I zipped right through it a few hours ago.
Another "MacGyver" moment
(The handheld computer thingies we carry have an elastic strap on the back to make them easier to hold).
Co-worker: Did you get a new strap?
Me: No. The old one tore so I just took it off, punched a new hole through it and screwed it back on. Happened one day when I was out in the field.
Co-worker: How did you do that?
Me: Swiss Army knife.
Co-worker: Wow. That's pretty cool.
Sigh. It's getting harder and harder for me to take anyone seriously who doesn't carry at least some kind of multi-function pocket knife. Personally, I always carry the Swiss Army knife (Tinker model), a Leatherman Wave and a S&W kerambit (for serious cutting jobs and to open bags of Corn Nuts). I also have a Swiss Army "cybertool" model which I don't carry all the time but which has proved indispensible on occasion. I frequently use the tweezers on the Tinker to remove splinters and thorns from my hands while working, and I don't know how I could get by without it.
Passport - Man in the Mirror (1983, LP)
I have slowed way down on LP ripping because I'm having to manually edit some records and I'm waiting until I finish before I do any more. However, this is one that ripped perfectly.
Passport is a fusion group fronted by German saxophonist and composer Klaus Doldinger. Arguably fusion, perhaps. "Fusion" being a term used to describe music that is jazz with elements of pop/rock, or pop/rock with elements of jazz. If one can consider this album fusion, then I suppose it is the first album of that genre that I ever purchased. Used, somewhere, back in the 80s. My own tastes in fusion run more toward groups like the Pat Metheny Group and Weather Report.
Doldinger has been a member of, or fronted, several other groups besides Passport. He started back in the 60s and is still active today. This record leans more heavily toward pop than jazz, and is a mixture of instrumentals and songs with vocals. The first track, "Glass Culture," is an instrumental that sounds like it could have come from an Alan Parsons Project album.
The current line-up of Passport, according to Wikipedia, consists of drums/percussion, guitar, keyboards, bass, and of course Doldinger himself on tenor sax. It looks like they are much more popular in Europe than they are here. My opinion is that this is not a great fusion album, but it isn't bad for (somewhat) jazz-flavored pop music.
This is my only Passport album but I would not be averse to aquiring more. I'm just not going to go out of my way for any of them. Please feel free to recommend others if you are a Passport fan.
Amazon has sound samples of all tracks.
Klaus Doldinger website (warning: flash-heavy, and in German)
Amazon link: Man in the Mirror
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Brief vacation
I never announce these things before hand, because I think using a blog to announce that one will be away from home for several days is somewhat foolish, but we took a trip to Port Aransas over the weekend. This is a big shark's mouth outside the entrance to one of the tourist traps. I took quite a few pix with a real camera (film and everything!), but I also took a few with the cell phone so I'd have something to post as soon as we got back. Above are the kids, daughter just sitting there, son posing as a bit of meat caught between the teeth.
We hit both the State Aquarium and the Lexington this time, third visit to the aquarium for my wife and I, second for the kids. Second trip to the Lexington for my wife and I, first time for the kids. My son pronounced the Lexington "awesome." They've added a lot to the ship since we visited it the first time in 1993 or '4; we caught the film about the fighter pilot this time and it was pretty cool. The model ship just below was made completely out of brass, it was quite impressive. Looks like I managed to catch the sign on the wall too, so we can see it is supposed to be the U.S.S. Texas.
The model immediately above was wood, but I don't remember the name of it.
We ran into brief, scattered showers on the way back, beginning about Sinton, and saw either showers or evidence of recent rain all the way home. It was a nice trip back.
We hit the beach a couple of times, too, but I really only did that for the kids. The beach doesn't really excite me very much anymore. I saw something that I considered fairly close to stupid (although that is not uncommon). Sunday evening at the beach, a bunch of fish started jumping out of the water about 100 yards from shore. Everybody started running out there so they could stand where all the fish were jumping. I told my family, "There may be a very good reason for those fish to be jumping like that. Something might be chasing them." Anyway the beach was in very good shape this time. Sometimes it's full of seaweed, but this time even the free beach was really clean.
Oh yeah, we also caught the fireworks show on Saturday night. I always enjoy that.
P.S. For the out-of-staters: the aquarium and the Lexington are in Corpus Christi, not Port Aransas, but we have a free place to stay in Port A and it's a short drive to all the good stuff in Corpus.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Thursday night random 20
It's the end of the work week for me, tomorrow being a holiday, and I took two days vacation so I don't have to go back to work until Wednesday. The heat has been beating me down lately, although today wasn't too bad because I did a motor route and didn't do much walking. Still, I'm almost too tired to think.
Totally random:
1. Marillion - White Feather
2. Steve Forbert - Romeo's Tune
3. Camper van Beethoven - Sweethearts
4. Carter Family - Will the Circle Be Unbroken
5. Sheriff - When I'm With You (not a guilty pleasure--I freakin' LOVE power ballads and I don't feel guilty about it in the slightest)
6. Spencer Davis Group - Gimme Some Lovin'
7. Shriekback - Running on the Rocks
8. Hawkwind - The Island
9. *
10. Michael Moorcock's Deep Fix - Time Centre
11. REO Speedwagon - Time for Me to Fly (I still love singing along with this one)
12. Youngbloods - Get Together
13. Alan Parsons Project - You Don't Believe
14. Kenny & the Kasuals - Everything Seems Fine
15. The Original Rag Quartet - Ragtime Nightingale
16. Suzanne Vega - Knight Moves
17. R.E.M. - Carnival of Sorts
18. Billie Holiday - Please Tell Me Now
19. Saafi Brothers - Altered Future
20. Edie Brickell & New Bohemians - The Wheel
*The track that turned up at #9 is one of my own which I committed to tape way back when, and was created with a Casio CZ-101, a Korg Poly800II, a Korg DDD-1 drum machine, an old Korg sequencer and a Radio Shack four-track mixer. It's not fit for anyone but myself to listen to, but the title is "Something Kinda Blue."
Shriekback - Big Night Music (1986, CD)
Woo hoo! I now have a digital version of Shriekback's Big Night Music, thanks to a reader who I have already thanked privately and profusely. I have not heard every one of their albums, but it seems to me that they produced two really fantastic albums: Oil and Gold in 1985 and this one from 1986. After this one, some of the primary members of the band quit, and although their lead singer/songwriter stayed with the band (he basically was the band by that time), their music seemed to get less imaginative and more formulaic.
It's hard to pick a favorite between the two. The music, if you are not familiar with them, is heavily electronic dance pop, but the lyrics are very intelligent and imaginative, and the music tends toward the darkness. Barry Allen's vocals make him sound (as I've said before) like he's always smiling an evil smile. These guys deserved to get a lot more famous than they did.
This one's out of print. New copies at Amazon start around $120, used ones around $20. They have sound samples of all tracks.
Amazon: Big Night Music
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Kenny and the Kasuals - two compilations from Eva Records
Well, to begin with, the album cover photo to the right is a horrible picture, and looks retouched to me. With the lead singer appearing as some sort of slightly less demented older brother of Alfred E. Neuman, one must wonder how they ever did anything. The photo below left is a much better one, in my opinion.
Kenny and the Kasuals were one group that I read about in Acid Trip: The Complete Guide to Psychedelic Music and about which I was intrigued. They cut one album in 1966 of which there were only 500 copies pressed. It was called The Impact Sound of Kenny and the Kasuals Live at the Studio Club. It later became extremely collectible and demanded sums in the hundreds of dollars. Collectors referred to it simply as Impact. It was later reissued in the late 70s and the reissues don't have any collectible value, however I have never been able to find even the reissue anywhere.
Back in the 80s I would often special-order albums from the big Hastings catalog that they kept out on a shelf for customer reference. There was nothing by this group in it. So I asked the manager about them. He had never heard of them but said he's keep an eye open. Several months later I was in the store and he brought out one of these pictured albums and asked me if I was still interested. I bought it. A few months later he showed me the other one, so I bought it too. This was only one instance of him going out of his way to hunt something down for me that impressed me a lot and is one reason why I kept going back there.
These two records are two more compilations from Eva Records, who specialize in obscure, mostly psychedelic bands from the 1960s U.S. They have no collectible value but are the best I could come up with.
Kenny and the Kasuals started out as The Illusions and were apparently quite popular in the Dallas area during the mid-60s. They cut several singles, all in mono, as was their only album and as are these two compilations. They did a lot of covers of popular songs and some originals. Some of their originals are quite catchy and I enjoy hearing them turn up in the shuffle.
Eva Records had at one time issued a CD of both of these albums on one disc, but it is no longer available.
The lead singer, Kenny Daniels, was drafted and served a tour of duty in Viet Nam, which pretty much ended their musical career. They did reform later and played on the nostalgia circuit, and a version of the band lead by Daniels is still active today. Much more information can be found at the official Kenny and the Kasuals website. Full liner notes for these two records are below. Click for the large versions.
You can visit my tumblr site to hear their song "Nothing Better To Do."
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
This struck me as quite strange
This morning at work someone called me "MacGyver." It was due to something so simple and routine that I am still kind of stunned that someone else hadn't fixed it before I did.
I was on a two-man route so we had a company vehicle. It was a Jeep that didn't have built-in strobes, so we got a mag-mount amber flashing light to put on top. As I was going out to the Jeep, my co-worker came toward me with the light, saying, "It doesn't work." I glanced at it and immediately saw that the positive lead had come undone. So I said, "Just twist those wires back together, it'll work." "What," he said, "you mean twist all of these together?" Meaning the positive and negative leads. "No, no," I replied, "that'll cause a dead short. Just twist these two together and then put some electrical tape on those exposed wires so they don't short together and blow a fuse."
He did it, and a minute later came back inside the office, saying with some amazement, "It works!"
I am in no way boasting about my own technical know-how. I am just stunned that I was the only person there who knew how to repair a simple loose wire. I'm sure there are plenty of simple things that I don't know how to do*, but I was, and still am surprised at this one. Maybe it helps that I've been playing with 12-volt devices longer than I can remember, I don't know. What have these guys been doing with their lives that they can't tell a positive lead from a negative lead, or be able to recognize a broken circuit?
It reminds me of something from a long time ago when one of my sister's first boyfriend's didn't know how to change the oil in the his car, and he was going to pay someone to change it for him. "No you won't," she told him. "I'll change it for you." And she did. That relationship didn't last very long, as I recall.
*For example, I don't know much of anything about repairing engines. But I can change the oil.
America On Parade: Celebrating America and the Music of WWII (1995, CD)
I noticed this CD a few days ago and thought I'd see how it sounded. My wife must have picked it up somewhere. Twelve tracks: six military marches and six popular songs of the day.
I was pleased to discover "The Liberty Bell March," which I have never heard in its entirety and which I did not know the actual title of until just now. You are probably familiar with it even if you don't know it by the title, but the version you are used to hearing ends with a blown raspberry (pthpthpth!) and a giant cartoon foot dropping from the sky.
So far, this is the only CD I have ever submitted to freedb. I'm kind of proud of having something so obscure that it wasn't even on freedb.
Monday, June 29, 2009
My Life and Hard Times - James Thurber
I chanced across this book on my shelf a few days ago and decided to read it again. I bought it somewhere used more than 20 years ago, and have read it several times. It always still makes me laugh. This is one of the books that I immediately took my grandmother and told her, "You have to read this." She told me she laughed so hard that she could hardly breathe.
It's a slim volume that consists of a collection of essay/tales about Thurber's boyhood and his odd and eccentric family. Are they all true? I don't know, but it doesn't matter, because it's the kind of humor that makes you think "I know someone like that."
Here is one of my favorite passages, about one of their long succession of maids/housekeepers.
Mrs. Robertson, a fat and mumbly old Negro woman, who might have been sixty and who might have been a hundred, gave us more than one turn during the many years that she did our washing. She had been a slave down South and she remembered having seen the troops marching--"a mess o' blue, den a mess o' gray." "What," my mother asked her once, "were they fighting about?" "Dat," said Mrs. Robertson, "Ah don't know." She had a feeling, at all times, that something was going to happen. I can see her now, staggering up from the basement with a basketful of clothes and coming abruptly to a halt in the middle of the kitchen. "Hahk!" she would say, in a deep, guttural voice. We would all hark; there was never anything to be heard. Neither, when she shouted "Look yondah!" and pointed a trembling hand at a window, was there ever anything to be seen. Father protested time and again that he couldn't stand Mrs. Robertson around, but mother always refused to let her go. It seems that she was a jewel. Once she walked unbidden, a dishpan full of wrung-out clothes under her arm, into father's study, where he was engrossed in some figures. Father looked up. She regarded him for a moment in silence. Then--"Look out!" she said, and withdrew. Another time, a murky winter afternoon, she came flubbering up the cellar stairs and bounced, out of breath, into the kitchen. Father was in the kitchen sipping some black coffee; he was in a jittery state of nerves from the effects of the day. "Dey is a death watch downstaihs!" rumbled the old Negro lady. It developed that she had heard a strange "chipping" noise back of the furnace. "That was a cricket," said father. "Um-hm," said Mrs. Robertson. "Dat was uh death watch!" With that she put on her hat and went home, poising just long enough at the back door to observe darkly to father, "Dey ain't no way!" It upset him for days.Everyone should read this book.
Good luck, dude!
click to enlargeI don't know why on earth you would want to, though.
P.S. You don't have to, he's already here.
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