Today's movie watching

Netflix has recently gotten a whole bunch of streamable documentaries--or rockumentaries--in a series called Classic Albums.  Today I watched the one about The Doors eponymous first album.

I agree with one of the commenters at Amazon:  there is some "filler" with contemporary musicians commenting on how influential, ground-breaking, etc., etc., ad nauseum this album was, and I don't care what they think, either.  Those minutes could have been better spent with additional background information or commentary by the people who were actually there when it happened.

That said, there is still a lot of great background information from those people who were there:  the three surviving members, producers, and others of the time.  Some of it I already knew, having read books and seen other documentaries about them, but some of it was new to me, such as how they actually developed the songs on the first album, from scratch, as it were.

Then I started watching another one about Fleetwood Mac's Rumors but got interrupted.  Once I finish it I plan on watching the one on Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast, then Rush's 2112.

I also tried watching Anvil:  The Story of Anvil, but it was kind of boring.  At times they almost ventured into Spinal Tap-like comedy, but knowing that this was a real band just made it sad and embarrassing.

I almost want to buy this

Glorious Majesty - Music for English Kings and Queens (Diamond Jubilee Edition)

Everyone should have some music for English kings and queens in their collection, shouldn't they?

Anyone remember these?

Well, if you've read this blog for a while, you know that I sometimes remember old songs from my childhood and look them up on YouTube just for fun. I don't know why I thought about this, but it got a lot of play on KKYX back in the CB craze days.


And the sequel.

Weekend update: geocaching

My son had his first campout as a Boy Scout this weekend (he enjoyed himself--mostly because this time he didn't get rained on) and my wife and daughter went shopping Saturday, so I was left to myself.  I threw some essential odds & ends in my backpack, filled up a water bottle and went to nearby Jackson Nature Park.

This isn't a very well-known park, and it's mainly just for hiking and seeing lots of wildflowers during spring time.  I had never been there before, even though it's only about a 20-minute drive from my house.  I went there this time because there are six geocaches there and I wanted to get some time in learning the hobby without anyone bothering me.  I was there for nearly 3 hours and I had the park to myself the whole time.

And I had fun, going at my own pace and doing what I wanted without having to take breaks for kids who have to go to the restroom every 15 minutes.  I found 4 of the 6 there.  One of the two I couldn't find just had me completely stumped; I couldn't find any landmarks that looked like there would be a cache hidden there.  The other was supposedly in a hole under a large rock formation.  I've lived my whole life in this area without being bitten/envenomated by anything significant, mostly because when I was very young I decided I wouldn't stick my hand into dark holes under large rocks.  So I poked around with a long stick for a few minutes and didn't find anything, and let it go at that.

One of the ones I did find was in a hollow tree, the hollow of which went all the way to the ground.  I examined it carefully with my flashlight before reaching in for that one, because I've found copperheads in such places more than once.  By the way, I've known of several people around here that have been bitten by a copperhead, and every one of them was bitten on the hand.  That should tell you something.

I'm taking some vacation next week, and with Fiesta Friday coming up I'll have good, long vacation.  I'm going to do more geocaching during that time.  I've been checking all the parks in the area and those are the places I'm going to try, where I can poke around without being bothered too much.  It looks like Espada park should be a good place, and it's fairly cache-dense.  I've been to the mission itself before, but I've never explored the park so that should be fun.  I'm also going to start taking a camera with me so I can maybe get some decent pictures.

In fact, the entire mission trail has lots of caches on it, although some of them might be gone/buried now because of all the construction going on along the river.  I decided to start with Espada because it's the most remote and isolated.

Jackson Nature Park has a port-a-potty and a water fountain at the entrance; those are the only facilities.  Also a couple of picnic tables in the same area and occasionally along the trail there will be a bench in a shady spot where you can take a break.  So if you ever want a nice place to take a hike without many other people around, I recommend it.  I'll be going back there to try and find those two other ones sometime, but I'll probably take the kids with me next time.  I also want to see it during fall and winter.

FYI, pretty much every "park" in S.A. has some caches in it.  I say "park" because some of these are very small.

I've also been scouting a few places where I can hide a cache of my own.  I just want to get more experience in the hobby and see what other caches look like before I hide any myself.

For some reason this word struck me as funny

From San Antonio Remembers:

1908
The mayor and police officials today agreed no hoodlumism would be permitted during the carnival this year. They outlawed the small whips, loud horns and confetti of former years.

Hoodlumism?  Not to be confused with hooliganitry.

New Alestorm official video: Death Throes of the Terrorsquid

I had mentioned this one previously but at the time there was no actual video for it.  Now there is--just released this week is "Death Throes of the Terrorsquid."

I don't think the word "video" does this one justice.  Let's call it a short film, instead.



I think the "black" section perfectly fits the story as it progresses.  I'm still trying to figure out the keyboard with the broken D key, though.

Derek Riggs interview

Derek Riggs is the artist who created many Iron Maiden album covers.  Read the interview here.

Japan clearly ignored my plea about that weirdness thing

Read this.  Click the link on the page to view some of the items.

Impressive diagram

Disguised as a comic at xkcd.  Follow the link, then click the graphic to enlarge so you can read all the fine print.

Freakishly horrifying

This.  It doesn't matter which video you watch for an example.  I watched only two, but I'm pretty sure they're all the same.

If you've ever wanted a perfect example of the "uncanny valley," this is it, and it doesn't even involve robots.  I wish it did.  Then maybe it would be less scary.

P.S. Okay, Japan?  We give up.  You are the weirdness capital of the entire world.  Now can you please back off already?

The density of metal

click to enlarge

In case you didn't click on the most recent update at Eat the Music, here's one that's worth reposting.  Someone took all the "country of origin" information listed at Encyclopedia Metallum and created this color-coded world map of the number of metal bands per 100,000 population.

I'm not surprised at seeing Scandinavia as the most dense.  If they changed this to only doom/death/gothic metal, I'm guessing they would have to come up with a new color for that region.

And Canada is more metal than the U.S.  Go figure.  As far as that goes, most of what people think is "metal" in the U.S. is only rock metal, not metal metal.

Comments on Bleach

Well, I've been watching Bleach in the future (of what's being aired on Adult Swim) on the free version of Crunchyroll with my Roku.  I have only three episodes left until the end of the series.  366 episodes in total.

No one who reads this blog watches this show, I guess.  Too bad.  It has been one of the most enjoyable series I have ever watched, and it has kept me interested even through the occasional somewhat more boring parts (for example the Bount arc).  There has been a lot of "filler" and plenty of digressions (for example the one-off episode when the Soul Reapers spent the day at the beach--including heavy emphasis on several female Soul Reapers choosing, and subsequently wearing, their beach attire), but the overall story is about a renegade Soul Reaper captain named Aizen who wanted to destroy the Soul Society.  This main story ends before the full series end--the final story arc is sort of a coda.  The picture above is the form Ichigo is forced to take to fight Aizen.  It's called "the final getsuga tenshou."

I don't want to give away any spoilers, but between the end of this story arc and the beginning of the final arc there is a gap of 17 months during which Ichigo lives as a normal human with no Soul Reaper powers.  And then stuff starts happening again.

It's building up to a great ending, although my greatest fear is that there will be questions left unanswered, for example, why did Ichigo's dad quit being a Soul Reaper and go to the world of the living to live as a more or less normal human?  Well, there's three episodes left and maybe that question will be answered.  And I suppose Ichigo and Orihime will never get it together.  Another question I have is why did Uryu's father not take any action when Uryu continued to help the Soul Reapers?

So they're still a few seasons away from the end on Adult Swim, and they're involved in one of the digressionary story arcs right now, so you can start watching it and still see all the great climaxes to come.  In fact, I haven't seen what they're airing right now, because I would have to get the Crunchyroll pay service to watch that far back.  Netflix has the first 109 episodes, in English, so if you have Netflix you could watch it there.

Well, that was...unexpected

Got home today to find a message on the answering machine.  It was my wife, who said, "I left the Avon order on your computer--it has to go in today.  Also, could you download me some Freddy Fender songs and burn them to a CD?"

Yes.  Yes I could.  I suddenly realized that I need some Freddy Fender on my playlist, too.

My daughter has been saving all of her Christmas and birthday money for a long time now, and actually got a job during spring break with a cousin of my wife's, which got her more money.  She was able to order for herself a used iPod Touch, and she is becoming increasingly anxious for its arrival.  She's going to be gone Friday and Saturday for a church function, so I told her, "If it comes on Friday when you're gone, don't worry, I'll be sure and play with it for you Friday night."

I walked 6.96 miles today.  Overall average speed only 1.8 mph.  Lots of dirty meters.

Your life or your lupins, m'lord

More bluebonnets that aren't bluebonnets today.  I had a mandatory OT day today, and found these up in the Great Northwest.  First picture:  purple.  They didn't come out all that well because I was just using my phone camera, but they are light purple.

This next picture are some regular bluebonnets, from the same yard, for comparison.

And then another shot of the purple ones.

There were also some red ones mixed in.

And these were directly across the street from all the previous.  This didn't come out well, either, but I would describe this color as "dry corncob."

So anyway, my wife got called in to work early today and I had to pick the kids up from her workplace.  On the way home we attempted to find four different geocaches, and failed at all four.  However, upon getting home and checking the logs at geocaching.com, two of them have been stolen/tampered with for sure and I have suspicions about the other one.  The last one I think I can find if I have another go.  I had misunderstood the hint about it and now I think I know exactly where it is (more or less).  By the way, geocachers have a lot of special slang terms, and they have a verb for when a cache has been stolen by a non-geocacher (which is the noun form of the same word).  You can look it up if you want, but I'm never going to use it because it sounds so stupid.  I think for our next foray I'll hit a nearby park so we can take our time and snoop around without a bunch of (term that I'm never going to use because it sounds so stupid) watching us.

At the least I did get in some good practice on using my new GPS receiver.  If you want to see what kind of I got, click here.  It's not the fanciest model, but it's fun playing with.  I ordered it from geocaching.com, so it came pre-loaded with 100 caches nearest to my shipping location (my home address).  It has enough memory to hold a lot more than that--I think according to the manual it can hold 400 caches if you don't have anything else taking up memory (like waypoints, tracks, routes, etc.).  I also got a set of travel bugs, which is something geocachers use.  Whenever I get around to hiding my first cache, I'll use them.

This unit also has a trip odometer, which is something I was particularly interested in using.  I tried it out this morning on my meter routes.  By playing around with it for the last couple days, I figured out that I can suspend the trip odometer by simply turning the unit off.  I needed to be able to do this because I often have a full route in one place and then a partial route in another place.  I have also been really curious about how fast I walk.  By watching it as I was actually walking, I found that my standard pace is 3.5 mph.  A "brisk" walk for me reaches close to 4.5 mph.  I also did some sample jogging between meters a couple of times and found that my short-distance jogging speed is 7.5 mph.  So on today's routes I found that I walked a total of 6.76 miles.  I spent 2 hrs, 40 min moving and 44 min stopped (standing still).  It would have been quite a bit lower than that on the stopped time but my partial today was pretty dirty and I had to spend a lot of time cleaning off meters--my stopped time on the full route was only 22 min and I had to spend the same amount of time stopped on less than half as many meters on the partial.  The thing I was most curious about was my overall speed, which holds into account all the stopped time as well, and my overall speed was a mere 2.0 mph, even though I was moving at a pretty steady 3.5 mph between meters.

I'm going to keep doing this on all my routes so I can see how they measure up.  You see, I consider what I did today to be pretty much my easiest foot route.  I won't be surprised if some of the harder ones are close to 10 miles total distance.

Covers: Seven Bridges Road

So there you have the earliest version of "Seven Bridges Road." It was written by Steve Young, and recorded by him for the first time for his 1969 album Rock Salt and Nails. As far as I know, Steve Young hasn't had any major hits of his own performance, but he has written some famous songs--other than this one. For example, "Montgomery in the Rain," which was recorded by Hank Williams Jr., and "Lonesome Orn'ry and Mean," recorded by Waylon Jennings.

Some technical stuff about Seven Bridges Road. This original version is in the key of B major. It's in 3/4, or at least some kind of triple time. The tempo is about 87 bpm, and it runs about 3 minutes and 40 seconds. The key the song is pitched in isn't really that important, though, because the artist usually pitches a song to his or her vocal range. So what I mean is, the key isn't usually a part of that artist's interpretation, it's more a matter of practicality. But as we get on down the road we'll find one artist who made a major change to this song and turned it into what we usually hear today if we're listening to classic rock radio. But we'll get to that later.

"Seven Bridges Road" was released three more times during the following four years. In 1970 it was released by the Manfred Mann of folk music, the woman who can't stand to let a good song go unruined, that's right, ladies and gentlemen: Joan Baez. From her 1970 album One Day at a Time.



For the most part, the lyrics of these various versions weren't changed in any significant way, except for this one. So, whereas Steve Young says, "There are stars in the southern sky, southward as you go. There is moonlight and moss in the trees down the seven bridges road," Baez says, "There are stars in the southern sky, if southward as you go. There is moonlight and moss in the trees. On the seven bridges road I go."

This is nit-picking, I guess, but since it's my blog I get to nit-pick. Baez' version loses some strength and coherence. Her first statement makes sense, but then she says, "There is moonlight and moss in the trees. Period. On the seven bridges road I go." Okay, Joan? Where are we now? Is the moonlight and moss here? Or is it on the seven bridges road? Do we follow you on the seven bridges road to get away from the moonlight and moss? What's going on here? Anyway, she ends every one of these stanzas with "On the seven bridges road I GO" which just annoys me. Another small change she made was to the verse, "like some lonesome child." Ms. Baez sings it, "like a motherless child," which I suppose resonated more with her folk audience who were already familiar with the song "Motherless Child," famously performed by Richie Havens at Woodstock.

The male accompaniment vocals are by Jeffrey Shurtleff, who performed with her often back then (also taking the stage with her at Woodstock). He recorded a few albums of his own but never got really famous, and at present doesn't even merit a page at Wikipedia.

Technical stuff: key of A, 3/4 time, temp about 99 bpm, a little faster than Steve Young's original. "Countrified" by adding a steel guitar, most prominent there at the beginning and again at the end, which I must admit I kind of like.

So for a little more technical stuff before we go on to the next recording. You may have heard the old saying "three chords and an old guitar." Well, this song is written in only three chords, although they aren't the same three the old saying refers to. The basic chord progression is from a I chord to a flat major VII chord, to a IV chord, and back to I (which gives the whole song a kind of "falling" or at least "going down the stairs" feeling--a mood of sweet resignation). Unlike many old country and folk songs, there is no V chord anywhere to be found in this song. The middle bridge ("Sometimes there's a part of me") part simply goes back and forth between I and IV, if my ears don't fail me. But, the different artists didn't always do it exactly the same. It got a little more interesting in 1971.



That's Rita Coolidge from her 1971 debut album Rita Coolidge. She slows it down even slower than the original at about 77 bpm, but still keeps it in 3/4 time. Her version is the longest I know of: a combination of the slower tempo, the orchestral instrumental breaks, and a long fade out during which she repeats the title line several times, finally finishing up with a tenor sax solo on the fade-out, which I also like. I think this version moved the song more out of the country/folk category and toward more of a pop sound.



Steve Young re-released the song in an almost identical version to the original in 1972 on his album Seven Bridges Road. Same key, same tempo, same time. The biggest difference I can hear is that the string accompaniment was lowered an octave and is a little more prominent throughout the song than on the original.



This one probably sounds more familiar to most folks. It's from the 1973 album Valley Hi by Ian Matthews. Here we have the pattern that most of us are familiar with: an a capella beginning and, perhaps more significantly, the time has been changed to 4/4. Matthews sings it in the key of D with a zippier tempo of about 97 bpm. This is my own personal favorite version. I like the atmospheric spaciness of the guitar (played by Michael Nesmith, by the way) and the way Matthews' voice often "falls off" at the end of a phrase.

And then no one recorded this song for a while...



Until the Eagles performed it live and recorded the performance for their 1980 album, Eagles Live. Although in their introduction to the song they claimed to have learned it from Steve Young, their rendition is a near carbon-copy of Ian Matthews' version. Same key of D, same time of 4/4 (like Matthews and unlike Young). The a capella parts at the beginning an end are close to Matthews' tempo of 97 bpm (Eagles tempos of about 94 and 96 respectively), but with a slightly faster internal section of around 115 bpm, perhaps more fitting for their rock-oriented audience.

Several others have performed it since then. I don't know if any of them have actually committed their performance to a recorded album and I mostly don't care to find out. You can look them up on YouTube. Alan Jackson, Keith Urban with Sugarland, Keith Urban with Lady Antebellum, Keith Urban with Julio Iglesias,* G-d knows who else. All of them who I've heard are essentially just copies of the Eagles version, which itself is a copy of the Matthews version.

There's only one more version that I know was recorded and released as part of an album, and here it is.



From Dolly Parton's 2001 bluegrass album Little Sparrow. Pitched in A♭ for Dolly's vocal range, once again in 4/4 time. A quite slow tempo of 87 or so bpm for the beginning--reflecting Steve Young's original--which rockets up to a flying 150 bpm for the rest of the song. Anyone who reads this blog for very long will soon know of my penchant for bluegrass and I have nothing to complain about regarding this version of the song.

So...that's what I've learned about this song because a long time ago I heard Ian Matthews' version on the radio and liked it more than the Eagles version, and went hunting for information about who sang it and what they did.



*For the humor-impaired (and I know you're out there): that was a joke.

A good day and the flashlight I smashed

My son got his Arrow of Light and crossed over tonight, making him officially a Boy Scout.  One bonus is that now our meetings will be on Tuesday night, to coincide with Girl Scouts, which means I don't have to go back into town at night twice during the week anymore.  Woo hoo!

Also my GPS receiver came today.  I was hoping to fire it up and play with it a little, but I don't have any spare batteries for it.  I have a couple of batteries in my work truck from when I smashed my flashlight the other day, so I can mess around with it tomorrow.

Now, about that flashlight.  It was one of these.  I saw it at Wal-Mart and thought I'd give it a try because it has a pocket clip.  As you may understand, I often need a flashlight in my job.  I already have one small light (a Coleman) but it doesn't have a clip and I have to stick it in my pants pocket.  P.S. Those flimsy canvas belt sheathes they make for these lights do not hold up to extended usage--the light itself will by far outlast its sheath--with the exception of this Black & Decker, because I smashed it.

I've posted a review of it at Amazon and you can read it once they approve it.  The problem was, the light wouldn't stay on when held in anything approaching a vertical position--which is exactly how I have to hold it to read meters.  I tried stretching the contact spring on the inside to improve the electrical connection but it would help for only a few minutes.  I finally got so p*ss*d at it that I destroyed it by hurling it violently at the street several times.  Then I noticed the batteries rolling away so I stopped long enough to pick them up and pocket them, then continued smashing the flashlight until I got bored with it.

So if you run across one of these somewhere, don't buy it, unless you plan on aiming it only at things that are on the same level as yourself all the time.

You are a Pirate

It was 1987, and I pretty much listened only to music that came out of the 70s.  After all, the 80s was the decade when all the music sucked*, and we were being subjected to Bangles, Starship, and frikkin' Bon Jovi.**  But something happened in 1987 that completely slipped under my musical radar, and which I discovered only a few days ago.

There was a German group called Running Wild, a black metal group who used (cough) "satanic" related lyrics and the usual black vocal style.  I guess things weren't going so well for them, or maybe they just had a sudden, brilliant inspiration.  They had already released two albums of black metal, when in 1987 they released an album called Under Jolly Roger, which was basically heavy/speed metal with lyrical themes about...pirates.

Dr. Oh's Octopodiform Deterrent

Found at My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck By Lightning.

Sleep paralysis

This post at Oddee about sleep disorders brought back some unpleasant memories.  I used to suffer from sleep paralysis.  It would happen several times a year up until I was in my mid-30s, and then it kind of tapered off.  It's been a long time since it happened.  It was just like they say in this article:  terrifying hallucinations and all.  If you've never suffered from this, count yourself lucky, and I hope you never do.  It's no fun at all.

"My Girlfriend is a Gumiho"

Today I watched the first episode of a series that Netflix calls "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho," but which is also known (in English) as "My Girlfriend is a Nine-Tailed Fox."

I would normally steer clear of so-called "romantic comedies."  However, it wasn't exactly clear to me what kind of show this was, and as soon as I saw that it was not an American TV show--and furthermore, that it was subtitled--I was quite intrigued and watched it with interest.

It's actually a South Korean show.  Netflix has 16 episodes and they are all more than an hour long.  Every now and then, the subtitles annoyed me because they would stick in a parenthesized part to try and explain what the character meant; apparently we English speakers are too stupid to understand by context.  That's only a small quibble, however, and it didn't happen often.

It was funny.  It also had brief instances of terror and looming dread.  It's about a guy named Cha Dae-Woong who is tricked by a supernatural being called a gumiho into helping her escape a centuries-long entrapment.  He subsequently experiences a bad fall which should have killed him, but the gumiho (who uses the name Mi Ho), and who now appears as a beautiful young girl, implants a "fox bead" (or marble) into him using what I can only refer to as a "kiss-like contact" which keeps him alive but doesn't really heal him.

So he's stuck with her.  He wants to get rid of her, but the only way he can stay alive is by having the fox bead within him, and to do that he must keep Mi Ho happy.  Being a fox, she is quite fond of eating meat, especially beef, and at the very beginning of this episode when he tells her he doesn't have any money left to buy her some beef, she suddenly turns from playful to deadly serious and tells him if he doesn't, she will eat him instead.  So you see what I mean by "terror and looming dread."

The episode ends with him basically telling her to get lost and leave him alone, but before he gets on a bus to take him to college, she tells him she will follow him, find him, show him what she really is, take the fox bead from him, "and then you will die."  She does exactly that, and the final scene is of her performing her special kiss to remove the fox bead.

Of course we know that she must give it back, because the series would have ended right there if one of the main characters had died.  I liked it.  I'm looking forward to watching it all the way through.  If you have Netflix streaming, check it out.