Demotivational Tuesday

    Or Awww Tuesday.  Either way works.

Too many books?

    Yeah, the stacks on my TBR shelf are getting higher and higher.  Yeah, I have 200+ books on my Kindle, of which I've read about 40.  Nevertheless...

     There is no such thing as too many books.

Richie Havens - Richie Havens On Stage

    Richie Havens On Stage is a 1972 2-LP release and according to Wikipedia, one of only two "Live" albums from Richie Havens.  It's been sitting in my To-Be-Digitalized pile for a while, and in light of Mr. Havens' passing away earlier this year, I decided to convert it.

Side 01

01. From The Prison
02. Younger Men Get Older
03. Old Friends
04. God Bless The Child

Side 02

01. The Dolphins
02. Nobody Knows
03. My Sweet Lord
04. No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed

Side 03

01. Tupelo Honey
02. Just Like A Woman
03. Teach Your Children
04. Minstrel From Gault

Side 04

01. High Flyin' Bird
02. San Francisco Bay Blues
03. Where Have All The Flowers Gone
04. Rocky Raccoon

   These are mostly covers; the track numbers of the three songs penned by Havens are marked in blue.  As usual, my faves are in pink.  It took me a while to place The Dolphins; It's A Beautiful Day also covered it.

    The LP's were in fair shape, but cleaned up nicely.  As with any live album, I removed a couple minutes' worth of clapping.  The music for this album comes from three different concerts.  There are a couple very nice segues from one song to the next.  Kewl, except it makes it tough to find exactly where to clip the tracks.  A few times I just left them together. 

    One curiosity - the cover image shown above is actually the back cover.  The front image is just a head shot of Richie from one of the concerts, with no text at all.  Richie Havens On Stage seems to be a bit of a rarity - Amazon doesn't offer it as a CD or as MP3 files.  iTunes doesn't list it either.

    I suppose this means that his albums haven't been selling much lately.  That's a shame, since Richie Havens was a Rock-&-Roll fixture in the late 60's and early 70's.  He was an activist without being a radical; a champion of the poor and oppressed; and a black guy who wasn't afraid to cover music by white folks.  I wouldn't call him a guitar genius, but he could make strumming sound every bit as good as a guitar solo.

    RIP, Richie Havens.  You will be missed, but not forgotten.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    The West will not be dictating how China lives, moralizing on what is right and wrong, deciding our future.”

    “You sound confident.”

    “Their missionaries and educators tried to modernize and Christianize us.  The Japanese wanted to conquer us.  The Americans attempted to democratize us.  The Soviets tried to insinuate control.  They all failed.  Even worse, we experimented with ourselves and failed, too.  We are a great civilization.”  He paused.  “We shall once more be what we were.”

    (from The Emperor’s Tomb by Steve Berry)

  9*/10.  The complete review is here.
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what are the odds?

    Haven't seen the movie yet.  But the book was 10*/10.

The truth about books

More Vinyl

   Went to one of the local Half-Price Bookstores this afternoon after work  And scored the following albums :

Outlaws - Outlaws

Outlaws - Ghost Riders

Molly Hatchet - Flirtin' With Disaster

JJ Cale - Okie

JJ Cale - Five

Styx - Equinox

   We'll be digitalizing them all over the next few months.  Oh yeah, I got a couple books too.  Manifold Origin and The Time Ships, both by Stephen Baxter, a Sci-Fi author I've been meaning to get into for quite some time now.

Chopsticks in China

    Funny cartoon.  But the truth is, if you are going to spend any amount of time in China, you'd better learn how to use chopsticks.

    Most restaurants, excluding those at the fancy hotels, have no idea what knives, forks, and spoons are.  And even if you somehow communicate to them what they are, they don't have any.  And even if they do have any, they're dusty, dirty, and were sitting on a back shelf for months in less-than-hygenic condtions.

   I know.  I spent in week in China once.  And deeply regretted not being chopsticks-fluent.  OTOH, I think I lost 5-10 pounds during that week.

Happy Birthday, Davey Johnstone!

    Happy 62nd Birthday to Davey Johnstone.  He's been the lead guitarist for Elton John for most of the last 40+ years.  But he's also played with Alice Cooper, Meat Loaf, (Long) John Baldry, etc.  He can play rock, folk, bluegrass - guitar, mandolin, fiddle.  You name it, he can do it.

    In 1973, he put out a solo album - Smiling Face.  It's a superb LP, which inexplicably didn't sell worth a crap.  It's so rare that you can't find any YouTube videos of its tracks, and the CD version at Amazon is only available as an import, and costs (new) $101.01.  Sheesh.

    We saw Elton and Leon Russell a couple years ago during their Union tour, and Johnstone was there, rocking away.  So Happy Birthday, Davey!  I for one love your music.

   BTW, the title track was written for his (at that point in time) toddler son, who also made it onto the album cover.  Kewlness.

Bedroom Remodeling

    We've been busy the past couple days remodeling the bedroom.  Bought some pool furniture, added a couple kitschy garden statues, backlit the monolith, etc.  All in all, it came out rather well, methinks.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    A cloud cut across the sun, extinguishing the brightness of the day, and a shadow rolled from the Sacred Seal to the back of the sanctuary where Maralt stood with Carryn.

    “That can’t be good,” he said.  On this pristine day there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

    (from Chosen,  by Jolea M. Harrison)

    7*/10.  The full review is here.
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Science Wednesday

    Chemists!  You never really know what's going through their mind.

Gand-alf

   Well, what did you expect?

Vangelis - Ignacio (from "Entends-tu les chiens aboyer?")

    This is the latest LP I've digitalized.  It's a French release, which is très kewl.  "Entends-tu les chiens aboyer?" translates into "Do you hear the dogs barking", and apparently is a movie.  I've never heard of it, but they got Vangelis to do the music for it, so it's gotta be good. 
 

     The album was in rather poor shape.  No skips, but lots of scratches, big and small.  The de-popper program cleaned it up quite well.  This is a 1977 release, and I've got three or four more Vangelis albums sitting around, waiting to be cobverted.

    I get the impression this is not a well-known album.  However, there is a 15-minute YouTube video that someone made of this, with some simply bitchin' surreal images to go with it.  Search "Vangelis Ignacio" and it will come right up.  I'll probably be posting it as Friday Night Chill Music on FB this weekend.  If you know me there, come give it a listen/watch.

Stardust (Movie)

    My second movie watched in 2013.  The first was Batman - The Dark Knight Rises.

    We'll give Stardust 9*/10.  Great special effects; a cute romance for Liz to get into; and of course, the genius of Neil Gaiman behind it all.  Michelle Pfeiffer does a good job, and the two young'uns are okay, including Claire Danes, who is a fine Gynneth Paltrow lookalike.  But Robert DeNiro frankly steals the show.

    I read the book back in October 2011, and gave it 9½*/10.  No surprise there, Gaiman is a frickin' fantastic author.  The movie is almost - but not quite - as good.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    He dumped the spaghetti jar in the sink and rushed through into the drawing room.  There, Jane was sitting crouched on the edge of a settee, moaning slightly.  With one movement Vanderdecker lifted her up in the air, kissed her noisily on the lips and said, “Guess what?”

    “Ouch,” Jane replied.

    “You’re going to go bright green and luminous, hum slightly, and grow an extra arm,” he said cheerfully.  “What do you think of that?” 

    (from Flying Dutch by Tom Holt)

    8½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Claus Encounters of the Third Kind

Dreams

    True dat.  I could tell you about falling (down Mt. Everest, out of an airplane, etc.); waking up nekkid or in my underwear (in church, in school, at work); or trying to get somewhere when all the roads have inexplicably changed (which somehow doesn't bother me at all in the dream).

    But you've already had all these dreams yourself.

Happy (belated) 4-20 Day!

    It completely slipped my mind, maybe cuz it fell on the weekend.  Then again, if you did celebrate 4-20 properly, you're probably just getting around to posting about it anyway.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “I see by your clothes that you’re a country doumana,” the babbler said.  “No doubt you stare up at the sky and watch the clouds, judge how the wind is blowing, see what colors circle the moon, and guess your weather that way.  Then you consult the vision-stage and let a weather-prophet tell you how close to right you’ve come.  But if you’ve got the knowledge, you just open your mouth and taste.  Rain is like sour fruit, makes my mouth pucker.  Heat taste like dirt.”  She patted my leg with her filthy hand.  “There now, isn’t that a good gift I’ve given?”

    She’d given me nothing, but I said, “Yes.  Thank you.”

    (from Khe,  by Alexes Razevich)

    7½*/10.  The full review is here.
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Young Uns Never Listen

Highway to Hey Look

    Coincidentally, someone at the office where I work has a sticker on the back window with this same AD/HD logo.  But without the punchline.

Too Late

Quote for the Day

    Probably true, although I'm a little leery of mixing a wine and writing.  But who am I to argue with Papa?

E-Card Wednesday

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “Will you still find me desirable when I’m bloated like a puffer fish?” Tilda asked, smiling at Zeb in the mirror.

    “Of course, for my love for you knows no bounds,” Zeb said solemnly.  “How about you?  Once I am old and bald, back bent, knees shot…”

    “Your knees are already shot.”

    “…gray hair in my ears, arches fallen…”

    Tilda rolled down her blouse and turned to Zeb with a swirl in her long dress.

    “Oh gods, no.  I’m bolting the moment the ear-hair shows up.”

    (from The Channel War,  by M. Edward McNally)

    9*/10.  The full review is here.
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Boston Marathon 2013

    Two thoughts.  We are all Bostonians tonight.  And F*CK TERRORISM.

The Unforgettable Glenn Miller (Boxed Set)

    This is my latest music conversion project - a 6-LP boxed set of Glenn Miller songs.  This is 1940's (and earlier) Big Band music.  I'm not a big fan of this genre, but it did bring back old memories of the Junior High School "dance band" that I was in, way back in the early 60's.  We played some of the tracks in this collection.

    The Unforgettable Glenn Miller collection was put out by Readers Digest in 1968.  I won't list all 70 tracks here; overall I enjoyed the ones that didn't have any singing more.

    The LP's themselves were in pristine condition.  I'm not sure if that is due to the erstwhile owner being an audiophile, or if he simply never played them.  I decided not to run the de-scratching program on the discs, opting instead for manual removal.

    The first three LP's were essentially mint condition.  LP's 4 and 5 were apparently the ones the guy listened to most often; they had a few scratches.  LP 6 was in near-mint condition.

    There were no skips - forward or nackward - and none of the LP's were warped to any appreciable degree.  Each LP sleeve had a track-by-track discourse which was very enlightening; and Readers Rigest included a short brochure called "The Miller Magic", recounting Miller's life.

    Glenn Miller disappeared on December 15, 1944 on a flight from England to Paris, where he was to make arrangements for his band to play for the troops.  You can read about the verious theories concerning his death here.

    I don't generally post YouTube links on this blog, but here is one of what is probably my favorite track from this set.  Bugle Call Rag. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV4iViKWRe8

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “You don’t eat meat,” observed Marx Marvelous.  (This was a week after the reading of Purcell’s letters and the ambivalent young scientist could at last talk of something else.)

    “No, I do not,” said Amanda.

    “John Paul eats meat.”

    “That he does.  He considers it man’s evolutionary duty to devour other species.  My husband will never kill anything he is not prepared to eat.”

    “That’s a pretty good practice,” admitted Marx Marvelous.  “If everyone cultivated that habit there would be fewer murders and no war.”

    “Or a boom in cannibals,” said Amanda.

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    (from Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins)

  7*/10.  The complete review is here.
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Crash Test Daddy

RIP - Kurt Vonnegut

    d. 11 April 2007.  Simply the greatest American writer of the 20th century.  Really.  Don't believe me?  Who else, then?

Play Dead

    My kind of mutt.

Your taxes are (almost) due

    Less than a week remains before you owe a communication of some sort to the IRS.  As noted earlier, I got mine done Monday a week ago, and I'm getting refunds from both the Feds and the State.

    That's true every year because of how I structure my withholdings.  I don't begrudge the government the interest they earn off hanging on to my excess deuctions for a year.

    I was pleasantly surprised that the amount of the refunds hadn't changed noticeably this year.  We'll see if I can say the same for the 2013 returns.

Pink Freud

    Something quick, as I'm in the process of digitalizing a boxed set of 6-LP's, and getting an earful of the "Big Band" sound..

Star Wars Sunday

    Anything that has both Legos and Star Wars in it has got to be kewl.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    The night of fishing had been uneventful; a few small bass earlier in the evening, half a dozen northern pike – none bigger than a pickle – and then, nothing.  The zip of his baitcaster unspooling and the plop of the bait hitting the water were the only sounds he’d heard for the last hour.

    Until the helicopter exploded.


    (from Afraid – A Novel of Terror,  by J.A. Konrath, aka Jack Kilborn)

    8*/10.  The full review is here.
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Friday Night Art Appreciation

    We haven't been posting enough art-related stuff lately.

Math Wednesday

Time to read

    The taxes are done and will be put in the mail tomorrow.  But I'm worn out from staying up past my bedtime last night.  Seeing who's going home on DWTS frankly doesn't interest me.  (*)  So it's time to get a couple hours of quality reading in.

(*) : Nevertheless, I predict Wynona's getting the boot tonight.

Tax Night

    Something quick, as I'm off to get my taxes done tonight.  RIP, Jerry Garcia.  One can only dream of what the world would be like if, somewhere along the line, we had elected you POTUS.