Bach - Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor

Everyone knows it, or at least the beginning of it. It's that spooky Halloween piece, except I'm pretty sure Johann didn't have Halloween in mind when he wrote it. Anyhow, check out this video.



I came across this yesterday as I was looking for nyckelharpa info, and went ahead and downloaded it in hopes I could get a decent audio rip for my mp3 collection. I found myself utterly fascinated. Why? I think I've mentioned before that music always creates impressions of images in my mind that can best be described as spots and ribbons of various hues and brightnesses. This video comes closer than anything I have ever seen at roughly approximating the kinds of things I see in my mind when I hear music. One reason I so love Bach and organ music in general is because of the intense layering of varying colors and textures they generate.

More at Music Animation Machine.

The nyckelharpa

My dad called me a little while ago to tip me that a show on KLRN was going to have a "nickel harp" performance. Unfortunately, the show is on 9.2, and although I do have a digital-capable TV, I don't have a regular antenna to hook up to it right now and we don't get any of the extra digital channels via DishNetwork. So I went a-hunting.

It turns out he was not saying the word correctly: nyckelharpa. I had never heard of this instrument before but it is a very old instrument of Swedish origin in the violin family and could very roughly be described as a cross between a violin and a hurdy-gurdy. Click the above link for Wikipedia entry or just check out the video below.

Pi Records Amazon Sampler (2009, mp3 download)

I just wanted to be sure and get a word in about this collection while it's still available--you never can tell which of these free downloads will eventually become not-free or disappear altogether.

The Pi Records Sampler is a good, solid collection of jazz that is worth the download. Nothing at all weak about this one except maybe track #8 which is a spoken-word "art" piece with some jazz noodling in the background.

So...get it while you can.

I would've thought that was pretty much self-explanatory

10 more albums #67

All except the last two are free downloads from Amazon.com.

Eagle Armory Records Metal/Hard Rock Sampler (2009)
Hardly Art Sampler (2009)
Large Music Sampler (2009)
Lost Highway Sampler: T for Texas, T from Tennessee (2009)
Sargent House Sampler (2009)
Scandinavian Gold (2009)
Vanguard Visionaries Series Sampler (2009)
The B. Reith EP (2009)
Black Acid Prophecy - A Trip Into Unknown Kadath (2009, mp3 download)
Richard Davis - Harvest (1977, mp3 download)

Eagle Armory: pretty much meh. Notable artists get 2 out of 10 and overall gets a 1.4. Mostly just so-so, the notable artists being Deep Purple and Stratovarius. One track by Poison that's well worth deleting and the rest just your run-of-the-mill hard rock verging on metal. Older acts such as the aforementioned DP, Alice Cooper, Dio, Twisted Sister (really?) and Rainbow plus a few others I've never heard of.

Hardly Art fares not much better: Notable artists 3 out of 15 and overall a 1.6. Groups worth mentioning are The Duchess & The Duke, Pretty & Nice and The Pica Beats. Conversely, one other track by The Duchess & The Duke got a deletable rating, plus one other deletable by Talbot Tagora. Indie/alt rock.

The Large Music sampler gets an overall 1.3 with no notable artists. A collection of your typical trance/dance that fulfills its place as background music adequately.

Lost Highway, on the other hand, gets good marks. 3 out of 6 for notable artists and overall a 2.5. Highest marks go to Ryan Bingham, Robert Earl Keen and Willie Nelson. Three other nice tracks by Lyle Lovett, Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears and Hayes Carll. Unfortunately no longer available.

Sargent House is another one of indie/alt rock with one notable artist (Rx Bandits) and an overall score of 1.5. A few nice tracks that are mostly instrumental and several that aren't worth mentioning.

Scandinavian Gold is a decent collection of pop with an overall of 2.3 with 3 out of 6 notable artists: El Perro del Mar (2 tracks) and I Was a King. Not bad at all and still available.

The Vanguard Visionaries sampler is a collection of vocal jazz & blues that is great and still available. Notables are 4 out of 5 with Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Doc Watson, Peter Case and Odetta. Overall gets a 3.6.

The B. Reith EP is not really my kind of music. Still, I gave it an overall of 2.8 which is pretty high for someone considered a "Christian hip-hop artist." The lyrics are funny and sometimes self-deprecating and not at any time obscene or profane, and he's a good composer and singer. Still available.

The Richard Davis album was downloaded from Kathleen Loves Music. This is jazz, with Davis playing bass and accompanied by bass, trumpet, guitar, piano, drums, alto sax and flute. Two basses? you might be thinking. Yes. The accompaniment bass holds the traditional bass place in the jazz band. Davis himself plays an upright bass as a lead instrument, often playing it with a bow. Unusual, interesting, and definitely worth checking out. Ripped from vinyl and there are a few pops & clicks but as I usually say: don't let that keep you away.

Album count: 680.

Video: Dan Fogelberg - Same Old Lang Syne (Live)

And read the story behind the song.

Oh yeah...

It completely slipped by me, but last Monday the 21st was my 6th Blogiversary.

Writing

I guess the season has finally inspired me and I churned out another "chapter" for The Hunter Chronicles. But I think I'll sit on it a while and try to improve upon it. Here's the obligatory teaser.

It was one of those lonely nights that happen only around Christmas-time, when you remember what it was like to be part of a loving, happy family. When you remember what it was like going outside at night just so you could look back at the Christmas tree lights twinkling through the window and enjoy the feel of a chill wind on your neck—knowing a few feet away was the warmth of a house and the love of a family. You remember the sound of your mother’s laughter from inside the house, and through the window you can see your dad grinning his quiet, closed-mouth grin at something silly your little sister had done.

You were going to be opening gifts in the morning and according to the stern instructions you had been issued to stay out of the tool shed, you were pretty sure you would get that bike you wanted. To top it all off, you had a crush on the redhead next door and you were pretty sure she was not uninterested. The world was perfect.

But the world wasn’t perfect anymore and I hadn’t decorated a Christmas tree in years. There was nothing in my 256-channel cable package that grabbed my attention, so I tried the radio. The spectrum was filled with Christmas cheer. It was unbearable. Even the jazz station was jumping on the bandwagon. I tried the classic rock station, but after 25 minutes they still hadn’t played any Pink Floyd and when I heard the opening twang of “Stairway to Heaven” I decided enough was enough, turned off the radio and left a dark apartment behind me in favor of the dark streets before me.

It sounds like a downer, but it has a happy ending.

They never saw it coming...

Hilarious.

Nineteen dollars for a chess set?!

I got rooked.

This and that

I am still here. Just going through one of those phases when I don't feel much like posting anything. But I figured it was time to scroll that previous post down from the top.

I've been working on cleaning up that record of The Messiah, and it came out quite well. Then I decided to re-rip a record that was one of the first I tried my hand at to see if I could make it come out better. Some of it, mostly side 1, did end up better than the first time. Side 2 has some vinyl damage and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.

I did my Christmas shopping today. My wife takes care of most of this and I never even think about it, except for gifts for her. Found exactly what she wanted, at Walgreens of all places. All I need to buy now is a halfway-decent chess set for my kids. They've both joined the chess club at their school. They aren't very good yet, but they love playing.

I remember when I was a kid, some cereal box had some cut-out chess pieces on the back of the box. So I cut them all out, but no one in my family knew how to play. So I broke out my grandmother's ancient encyclopedia and looked it up. Taught myself how to play from the encyclopedia. Unfortunately, there was no one to play with, so I didn't get very far. But when my grandmother found me reading about chess, she gave me a small wooden box containing a set of wooden chess pieces that my great-grandfather (her father) had carved. I still have it, but haven't let the kids get their hands on it yet for fear that they will lose pieces.

Tomorrow is the last day of work for the week, and I'm really looking forward to spending Christmas Eve at home. Christmas Day we'll be running all over the country visiting. It always gets on my nerves.

Shot placement

More:

Friday night vintage video: The Smithereens - Behind the Wall of Sleep

This is one of those videos that has embedding disabled. So...here's the link.

Especially For You by The Smithereens is one of the great forgotten albums* of the 80s. This was their second-biggest hit from it.

An unusually normal-looking bunch of guys for 1986. If you met them walking down the street, you'd never guess they were a rock band. And their lead singer (Jim Babjak) has a great voice.

*I don't mean they were forgotten by their fans. When say "forgotten album" I mean that it's a group or album that is never mentioned on any of those 80s nostalgia music programs.

Welcome to the party, pal!

I find a sort of perverse joy in seeing others find evidence that modern "journalism" is largely a sham. Anyone who pays attention knows how they continually lie about topics such as guns and liberty (actual liberty, not Redemopublican faux-liberty).

In this case, ABC is working on a report of an alleged "Bigfoot" photo taken by a trailcam in Minnesota. So they call the man who is probably the current most expert person in the United States (possibly the world) for his comments on the subject. He tells them he thinks it's "bogus," and points out reasons why.

So what happens? They don't even mention him, or his comments, in their report.

Also, more shmournalism at the Today Show.

"notorious"

Hmmm...I have never heard of the word "notorious" being used in such a positive sense, unless the speaker was trying to be ironic. But I doubt that someone who has been sending out emails all month in alternating font colors of red and green is well versed in the concept of irony.

Old-school nerds on the east side

At Commerce & Cherry.

And here are a couple more shots of the train at Sunset Station, all decked out for Christmas.

Humbug, Mr. Baldrick?

I know it has been a little slower even than usual around here lately, but that's because I have not been feeling entirely well and I have been medicating myself and hitting the sack earlier than usual most days this week. Also the holiday season coupled with Boy Scout and Girl Scout activities--and my daughter being in the school choir--has made life a little more hectic than I prefer. Sigh...and the choir concert is Monday night, scout meetings again Tuesday night...but then the rest of the week should go back to normal, except for Christmas shopping. Argh.

Tonight was the annual tree lighting at the city park. Although they announced several times to "stay off the snow" until the tree was lit, did they really expect to dump several tons of fake snow around the tree and not have it result in utter chaos?

The scouts raised the flags, led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance, and sang some carols. The high school band played some carols. Some praise band from one of the local churches did a bunch of pop-carols that were completely uninteresting.


And then the misting rain started, which I was expecting and dreading because I'm usually outside in that kind of weather only when I'm getting paid to do it. So we came home and had hot soup for supper, and the tree-lighting ordeal is over with for another year.

Yahoo earns its place in the Takedown Hall of Shame

EFF:

Here's where the bogosity begins in earnest. Yahoo sent a formal DMCA takedown notice to Cryptome.org, demanding the removal of the compliance manual. In the letter, Yahoo's lawyers allege that posting the manual infringes Yahoo's copyrights (the only proper basis for a DMCA takedown), as well as claiming that it's a trade secret (absurd for a marketing document) and that posting it constitutes "business interference" (huh? informing customers about Yahoo's disclosure practices "interferes" with business?).

A bogus use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by Yahoo, just in case you think it's a better alternative to Google. It isn't. Yahoo just isn't as big and powerful. If they were, they'd be just as evil. Read the whole thing for the full explanation--and this has an "Only Ones" connection.

Bonus points to EFF for using the word "bogosity."

Thank G-d it wasn't an Elite

A few nights ago I was awakened in the small hours of the morning by a high-pitched, rapid-fire staccato beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep! As usual, no one else was awakened.

What the?! I thought. I know that sound...what...that is the low battery alert for some kind of Motorola pager. Previous employment experience has made me sort of an expert on these sounds. And then the weariness overcame me once again and I passed out.

The next day in poking around the house I found the culprit. One of these.

I still have a few old pagers laying around, mostly in junk boxes left over from when I worked as a pager repair tech, and some of them would probably work if they had service. My son had found one and put a battery in it so he could play with it.

That was a weird way to be awakened at one o'clock in the morning.