Obligatory Halloween post

Some people have a resolution to make at least one post per day. There was a time when I couldn't have restricted myself to such low output. These days I can barely force out one per week, it seems.

Last week seemed quite hectic. Even the days when I thought I could slack off after work, something always happened to cut into my downtime. So I'm behind where I wanted to be in my music stuff, but I did manage to go through several tracks today, fortunately.

We had a great Halloween festival sponsored by our church last night (I should add great, as usual). My daughter had been invited by a friend to go to another tonight, and wife was working, so only my son and I went to church services tonight, but we hit the streets afterward and he still got a good haul. I scored myself during the cakewalk at the festival last night--I won a platter of white chocolate chip cookie bars, which is probably what I would have selected if I had been allowed to choose it myself anyway. By the way, someone at our congregation has been making these things called "cookie cakes" which I have tried and they are just about the best baked confection I have ever eaten. It's like a huge single cookie but covered with cake frosting. Yow.

For the record this year my daughter was an Egyptian princess (don't know where she came up with that), and my son was Batman. This time he had one of those costumes with the false muscles, which he liked but it made him sweat a lot.

My friend Brer at PowerOfBabel has been posting a series on witches (in pop culture and folklore) this week which I have enjoyed, so click on over and check it out if you have the inclination. Another friend (and Brer's brother) Babel has created a nice slide show for Halloween, you can visit his blog The Absurd Good News Network to check it out.

And finally, a few Halloween-themed links from the folks at Cracked.

The 7 Most Ridiculous Ghost Stories from Around the World
8 Psychologically Traumatizing Kids Halloween Costumes (I wonder if they make that goth cheerleader in adult sizes)
26 Sexy Halloween Costumes that Shouldn't Exist (I must admit that Darth Vader costume made me pause)

I hope you're happy, Chet

Today I was on a regular motor route that takes two people about two hours (we did some other stuff also). Since the other guy was driving, he got to pick the radio station (which is proper car radio etiquette, you know). He used to always listen to frikkin Jim Rome but for some reason no longer does...by the way I always found Rome's shows highly amusing because pro sports means less than a rat's ass to me...lately my partner has been usually ending up on some rock station or the other, but today it was KJ97 all the way.

Now, I realize that "country" music has been going downhill in the past several (many) years because of pop/rock invading it. However, I didn't realize it was this bad. It seemed that they played one token country song per hour--I was so surprised to hear "Family Tradition" that for a minute I thought he had switched to KKYX, but no, it was still KJ97--although sometimes the token country song was really more of a token "country" song. The rest of the time it was just plain ol' straight up rock music. No finer examples of the typical rock song could be heard anywhere. There was even one song in which the female singer (I think it was female) went into what can only be accurately described as hip-hop for about 10 seconds--by searching for what I guessed was the title I found that it was Sugarland, who I had never heard before but now I understand first hand that they suck (and their fans are stupid). Hint: country music does not have power chords or autotune.

It's no wonder so many country music listeners are so cheesed off. Some of you realize that that stuff being passed off as country most certainly isn't, and the rest of you are so musically ignorant you don't know what the $#@! it is you're listening to. It's like someone made up a bunch of chocolate ice cream and started passing it off as vanilla, and almost everyone believed it.

Look, if you enjoy listening to it, that's fine. No problem. Just don't try to delude yourselves into thinking you have some superior level of integrity or plain-old-folksiness because you're calling it something it isn't. You poor hoodwinked dupes.

Interesting morning meeting

This morning we had a "presentation" in which some guy from another part of the company who is a history buff of said company gave us a bunch of information about how the water system works and some of its history. I thought the most interesting part was about a blind meter technician.

I don't remember his last name now, although his first name was José. But yes, the man began working for the City Water Board in 1925, if I recall correctly, and he could tell which meters were bad by sound. He would then unscrew the bottom, replace the turbine and everything, although completely blind. Pretty cool.

Album promotional stickers, part 9

The last of the album promotional stickers. Jimmy Smith, "Live at the Village Gate" and 38 Special, "Tour de Force. Then two unknowns. The "audiophile" sticker probably came from a classical music record. I don't about that last one, but I have two of them.

Pink Floyd - Meddle (1971, LP)

I've already written about this album, back when I had ripped my old dupe cassette of it, but today I finished ripping it direct from LP. Another record that has been played very little because I always listened to my cassette of it instead, it required very little cleaning up and I got a perfect rip.

This is one of my favorite albums and I'll add the whole thing to my general favorites playlist.

$3398 hard drive

Oddee has some tech vintage ads. When I was in tech school in the early 90s our teacher had one of those hard drives that he kept around just to show off. 10 MB, and it was as big as a boot box.

Guess the playlist

This will be an easy guess. First 10 tracks from a randomized playlist.

1. The Alarm - Rain in the Summertime (live)
2. Bonnie Tyler - Have You Ever Seen the Rain?
3. Gordon Lightfoot - Early Morning Rain
4. Tanya Tucker - Rainy Girl
5. Bob Mould - Black Sheets of Rain
6. Kenny & the Kasuals - Raindrops to Teardrops
7. Christian McBride - Rainbow Wheel
8. Tanya Tucker - Lizzie and the Rainman
9. John "Roc" Mateo - One Rainy Day
10. Enigma & Deep Forest - Rain Song

The Platters - Greatest Hits (yard sale CD)

This one was badly scratched and I was able to get clean rips of only four tracks, which I'll be keeping: The Great Pretender (always been one of my favorite songs), Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, The Wonder of You, and The Magic Touch.

Street Corner Symphonies [disc 1] (yard sale CD)

Another compilation of 50s hits. All ripped okay on this one, but I deleted about half of them because I can't stand the ballad/goopy love songs from that era. Kept the rest (for example, "Blue Moon," "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," "Get a Job," etc.).

Afterthought on "The Shrieking Madness"

Although when I was younger this was something that never really occurred to me, but as I became a more "mature" reader I started noticing it more and it bugs me just a little. And it's this: although writers go to a great deal of trouble to describe the things characters are seeing and hearing, they rarely describe what the character is smelling. This seems odd to me since odors are more likely to produce stronger emotional and memory triggers than anything else. That said, I want to point out a couple of lines from the Scooby-Doo episode in yesterday's post.

The villain creates a Chargargothakon (Cthulhu) mask and uses actual octopus tentacles. This has the side-effect of leaving behind a very disagreeable odor, which the kids notice as they are examining books that have been handled by the villain (side note: the odor of books is even more rarely mentioned than odors in general). At one point early on, Daphne notes: "it smells like old clam chowder being gargled by a seal." This sounds humorous, but in my opinion, humorous fiction often has an edge over "serious" fiction in that it is not limited to "sounding serious" in its descriptions (see Terry Pratchett). Later on, Fred gives an even funnier and very exemplary description of the odor: "it's like a baboon smoking a cigar while bathing in a bath of moldy tuna and curdled ranch dressing." FANTASTIC DESCRIPTION, FOLKS!!!

Another line that really cracked me up was given by H.P. Hatecraft as he confessed that he didn't really believe in the monsters he had created: "I made the whole thing up to sell books, and...to gain lucrative access to the world of plushy monster toys."

Here are more screen caps showing the great macabre artwork that went into this episode. Most of it not recognizable to me as any specific Lovecraftian monster, but I still like it.




Is that a penguin?

The Beast in the Cave?

Cthulhu portrait again.

A raven?

Malt Shop Memories: Jukebox Gems (yard sale CD)

1950s rock & roll: Although I don't have any of this in my big mp3 collection, I am not against this kind of music in theory. And although it seemed that this disc ripped okay, about half the songs are messed up. So...oh well. I do have a strong aversion to syrupy ballads of that period, and I deleted one song outright without even listening to it: "Tell Laura I Love Her." I hope never to hear that song again. So only about half this disc survived, and there's nothing wrong with most of them, but I don't think I'll bother keeping any of this one anyway.

The Shrieking Madness

Alt title: When I get too old to watch cartoons, I'll be dead.

I have long wondered/fantasized about what would happen if those meddling kids ran into a Lovecraftian horror. Well...BEST SCOOBY-DOO EVER!!!

In case you haven't been watching it, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is the latest iteration of the Scooby-Doo franchise. It airs at 6:00 PM central time Mondays on Cartoon Network (and on ToonWest at 9:00 PM central, you can still catch the late show), and reruns at various times during the week. In my opinion, this is the best variation on the theme since the original series (with What's New, Scooby Doo? a close third). Anyway, tonight's show was a "tribute" to H.P. Lovecraft. Unfortunately I couldn't read the credits; they roll them with ads for other shows taking up most of the screen so I couldn't see who did one of the voices. Some screen caps.

I saw this at the beginning and my heart lurched into my throat. Could it be?!

A quick nod to Warner Brothers, who ran the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? A Tweety-Bird mirror hanger.

When this came on I knew it was happening, and my son yelled, "Cthulhu is on Scooby-Doo!" In this episode, the monster is called Chargargothakon.

Howard E. Roberts, Hatecraft's biggest fan and eventual nemesis.

The inside of Hatecraft's home.

Hatecraft in his library/den with a portrait of Cthulhu over the fireplace.

H.P. Hatecraft himself, voiced by the great Jeffrey Combs.

And Harlan Ellison. I couldn't tell who was doing his voice. Sounded kind of like Brian Doyle Murray. Was it Ellison himself? That would be totally cool.

Hatecraft and Ellison, pondering writing a new book together. The show was full of sci-fi/horror in-jokes, especially related to Lovecraft. Also extremely funny was when Ellison sarcastically reamed out Shaggy for saying "like" all the time.

The best 30 minutes of TV I've seen in a long time.

P.S. In case you're wondering why I recorded it if I didn't already know what it was about--I always record it in case I don't get to see it when it airs.

Joe Stummer - Walker (2005, CD)

This is the soundtrack to the 1987 movie Walker, which was pretty much of a flop according to imdb. I assume it wasn't released on CD until 2005, which accounts for the date of the album. Most of the tracks are instrumentals, but a couple have vocals. Nothing too outstanding in my opinion, but then it's only a soundtrack album. I'd say the music has a heavy Latin flavor, sort of the thing you might expect to hear in a spaghetti western. Worth keeping in the big archive.

11 (correction: 12) Yard Sale CDs

Here's the list of what I was able to keep. One CD was an environmental ambience disc of a "peaceful ocean." It was okay, but I didn't rip it. Another was some album of a woman singing gospel songs with a piano backing. This kind of thing does not appeal to me. It was so bad I couldn't rip even the first track, but I was able to listen to just a little of it and I dropped it in the trash can.

Other than that...

ATB - Seven Years
Joe Stummer - Walker (soundtrack)
Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane
The Moffatts - Chapter 1: A New Beginning
The Platters - Greatest Hits (4 out of 10 tracks)
Elvis Presley - First Post-War Interview (a 12-minute interview on one disc, nothing else).
Elvis Presley - Ultimate Gospel (20 out of 22 tracks)
Various Artists - Malt Shop Memories: Jukebox Gems [Disc 1]
Various Artists - Motown Legends Volume 3
Various Artists - Rock of the 90s [Disc 2]
Various Artists - Street Corner Symphonies [Disc 1] (there were two of these--neither one completely rippable but between the two I got the whole thing)

Oops, forgot one. Also Merry Christmas Strait from the Heart by you-know-who.

Since I know my wife will likely want to hear these (she bought them, after all), I've already backed them up to data CD so I can re-burn them when I need to. I don't really want her playing the origiinal discs in her touchy vehicle CD player because I'm afraid they might go bonkers in there and jam it up. Also I won't be keeping all of these in my big playing archive on the external HD.

What a weirdly inconsistent collection of CDs that was.

ATB - Seven Years (2005, CD)

The first of the yard sale CDs (alphabetically). The dude on the cover is ATB, or André Tanneberger, a German musician and producer of trance music. This CD is a sort of "best of" compilation of his from the years 1998-2005. While I will readily admit that this stuff isn't for everyone, it is one kind of music that I definitely enjoy. This is the kind of stuff I personally refer to as "chill," because I have a playlist of it that I like to load up at night and let it just fill the air while I chill* out with a pipe and the internet or a book. Favorites on this one are the few with Tiff Lacey on vocals (click for her Google images link,should be SFW unless someone really snoopy is hanging over your shoulder), for example "Ecstacy" and "Marrakech."

I had never heard of ATB until my wife brought home this CD, and it's one that I do really like. So...SCORE!!! This version of the album has 20 tracks and runs more than 75 minutes total playing time.

Results of all the yard sale CDs: almost all them were good. A few of them required repeated cleaning until I got them where they would rip all tracks; two of them I couldn't get everything. One of these was an Elvis CD that I know my wife will want (Elvis singing gospel songs), so I might go ahead and download from Amazon the two tracks I couldn't rip. The worst one was The Platters Greatest Hits, an early version with only 10 tracks, and I could rip only 4 of them. Too bad, it would have been cool to have that whole album to load up now and then.

*For me, "chill" encompasses new age, trance, acid jazz and ambient music. Although not ALL new age, nor all trance, nor all acid jazz, nor all ambient. Well, probably pretty much all ambient. It just depends how it strikes me. Most of my "chill" playlist has a "darker" sound, rather than a "brighter" sound, if that helps.

Cuellar must be getting really spooked...

If you live in District 28 and you've checked your mailbox in the last couple of days, you probably know why.

I'm one of those kooks who believes that we're never going to vote our way out of this mess, but I'll be gleefully rolling in schadenfreude if Cuellar loses.

Surprise

My wife happened across a yard sale today and came home with a ziplock baggie with 14 CDs (sans cases) in it, which she bought for $1. Pretty scratched up and used, but so far all rippable, with no sound problems. And some of them even interest me. There's one that's currently out of print but used copies are listed at Amazon for $29. More on this as I work my way through them.

Score

Today I was--at last!--able to record that episode of Phineas & Ferb where Dr. Doofenschmertz falls in love so that I could audio-rip his song "Evil Love." It became one of my favorites the first time I heard it.

Love was once a crazy dream
Now it's my new evil scheme
And I'm as happy as can be
It's the age old story

How an evil boy meets an evil girl
We got a love strong enough
To rule the whole wide world
We both maniacally laugh
At all the same stuff
I've found my other half
Yes, I've got an evil love

When our robot armies march
To the beating of our hearts
I'm as happy as can be
It's the age old story

How an evil boy meets an evil girl
We got a love strong enough
To rule the whole wide world
We both maniacally laugh
At all the same stuff
You can't foil a plan
That's built upon evil love

The Frost - Rock and Roll Music (1969, LP)

There is a very brief stub article at Wikipedia on this band. I think one sentence bears repeating here:

The Frost were one of the top Detroit area bands of the era, however very poor album cover artwork, distribution and promotion by Vanguard hampered the band and caused them to miss the national success that other Detroit bands like Bob Seger and Grand Funk Railroad were to achieve.

Yeah, "very poor album cover artwork." I think this graphic can attest to the accuracy of that statement. The back and inside artwork is no better.

As for the music, I like it. It's just good solid rock & roll with occasional harmony vocals. The personnel were: Dick Wagner (lead guitar, vocals); Don Hartman (rhythm guitar, harmonica, vocals); Gordy Garris (bass, vocals); Bob Rigg (drums). Wagner went on to work with a great many other famous rock stars later on.

Some of the tracks are studio recordings, while others were recorded live. The album has 7 tracks, 6 of which are original to the group, closing with a live cover of "We Got to Get Out of This Place," which had been a big hit for The Animals.

The record is old and badly used, and I don't think I'm going to go to the trouble of trying to edit out all the pops, but I'm going to go ahead and keep it in the main archive because it's not half bad.

UPDATE: I did do some editing to get rid of the worst of the noise, but I wasn't nearly as persnickety about it as I usually am.

P.S. "Persnickety" is in Firefox's spelling dictionary? And Cthulhu isn't? WTF?

Jimmy Smith - Live at the Village Gate (1963, CD)

Just in today from yourmusic.com. This time Mr. Smith is accompanied by only two dudes: Billy Hart on drums and Quentin Warren on guitar.