Inspired by Tim Dunlop posting Yeah, but can he play Stairway to Heaven? about Preston Reed I remembered I'd meant to link to Bill Clements the famous one armed bassist. There's a video on his site of his amazing technique but you might find it easier on the bandwidth to watch and listen to Bill over at YouTube. I found Youtube by recommendation from Amanda over at Flop Eared Mule.
Talking about bass. Here is a good piece on the physical issues of lugging, or pushing, around a double bass.
Q- How many bass players does it take to change a light bulb?
A- None--they just steal somebody else's light.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Sunday, February 12, 2006
catholic riots narrowly averted
No ‘Thriller’ – Michael Jackson said unlikely to sing pope’s prayers By Cindy Wooden, 2/7/2006
ROME -- Father Giuseppe Moscati said he never considered having Michael Jackson record all of the 24 prayers of Pope John Paul II he hopes eventually to set to music.
But, the priest told Catholic News Service, to have the pop star of “Thriller” fame sing one of the songs or to be part of a choir singing a song might have helped sales, reaching greater numbers of people.
However, when a Scottish newspaper published a story Feb. 6 saying there had been "secret discussions between the Roman Catholic Church and Michael Jackson to put the prayers of Pope John Paul II to music," the project began to fall apart.
"It would be very difficult for the Vatican to accept the project," said Father Moscati, director of Edizioni Musicali Terzo Millennio, a sacred music publishing and promotion company.
"Although he has been absolved by the courts" on charges of the sexual abuse of minors, it is clear Jackson's image "cannot be put alongside that of the pope," Father Moscati said.
The priest said he still would not mind the singer being involved on some level, but the furor created by the news reports makes Vatican approval doubtful.
"I did not go looking for him or for anyone else," the priest said.
He mentioned the project to an acquaintance who claimed to know Jackson "and I thought he had contact with other singers as well."
"I never met Michael Jackson or his representatives or his lawyers," the priest said. "And it was very inappropriate of them to tell the press."
Father Moscati said he went through dozens of texts of Pope John Paul's homilies, speeches and remarks for various occasions, paying particular attention to the prayers the pope often used to close his remarks.
"Many of them are prayers for peace, for young people, for the family or prayers to Mary," he said.
The priest obtained permission to use the prayers from the Libreria Vaticana Editrice, which holds the copyright to all papal texts.
However, he said, the final project -- including the music and the singers -- must be approved by the Vatican before publication.
Father Moscati has hired two Italian composers to set a few of the texts to music, although he said that if he finds some well-known singers who want to compose the music themselves that would be fine.
"At this point, I am hoping to find a producer, a serious professional, in the United States who would want to join the project and who has contacts with professional singers," he said.
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
ROME -- Father Giuseppe Moscati said he never considered having Michael Jackson record all of the 24 prayers of Pope John Paul II he hopes eventually to set to music.
But, the priest told Catholic News Service, to have the pop star of “Thriller” fame sing one of the songs or to be part of a choir singing a song might have helped sales, reaching greater numbers of people.
However, when a Scottish newspaper published a story Feb. 6 saying there had been "secret discussions between the Roman Catholic Church and Michael Jackson to put the prayers of Pope John Paul II to music," the project began to fall apart.
"It would be very difficult for the Vatican to accept the project," said Father Moscati, director of Edizioni Musicali Terzo Millennio, a sacred music publishing and promotion company.
"Although he has been absolved by the courts" on charges of the sexual abuse of minors, it is clear Jackson's image "cannot be put alongside that of the pope," Father Moscati said.
The priest said he still would not mind the singer being involved on some level, but the furor created by the news reports makes Vatican approval doubtful.
"I did not go looking for him or for anyone else," the priest said.
He mentioned the project to an acquaintance who claimed to know Jackson "and I thought he had contact with other singers as well."
"I never met Michael Jackson or his representatives or his lawyers," the priest said. "And it was very inappropriate of them to tell the press."
Father Moscati said he went through dozens of texts of Pope John Paul's homilies, speeches and remarks for various occasions, paying particular attention to the prayers the pope often used to close his remarks.
"Many of them are prayers for peace, for young people, for the family or prayers to Mary," he said.
The priest obtained permission to use the prayers from the Libreria Vaticana Editrice, which holds the copyright to all papal texts.
However, he said, the final project -- including the music and the singers -- must be approved by the Vatican before publication.
Father Moscati has hired two Italian composers to set a few of the texts to music, although he said that if he finds some well-known singers who want to compose the music themselves that would be fine.
"At this point, I am hoping to find a producer, a serious professional, in the United States who would want to join the project and who has contacts with professional singers," he said.
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
Friday, January 27, 2006
two tone shoes NQOCD
During the 1930s shoes made of two tones of leather, one light, one dark, and worn by both men and women, were known as "divorce court" or "co-respondent" shoes. It was well known that Wallis Simpson wore them but it would have been considered extremely daring for a middle class British girl to do the same. Mrs R., an MP's daughter from Gloucestershire, remembers
"two-coloured shoes, you know, they were known as co-respondent shoes, everyone knew that. I mean you wouldn't dream of them. Or if you did, you were not quite our class dear, which was, NQOCD. Isn't that awful? That was said sometimes."
From: Keeping Up Appearances: Fashion and Class Between The Wars by Catherine Horwood.
"two-coloured shoes, you know, they were known as co-respondent shoes, everyone knew that. I mean you wouldn't dream of them. Or if you did, you were not quite our class dear, which was, NQOCD. Isn't that awful? That was said sometimes."
From: Keeping Up Appearances: Fashion and Class Between The Wars by Catherine Horwood.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
hunka hunka
From news.com.au:
A WOMAN who allegedly stabbed her partner overnight after he repeatedly played an Elvis Presley song will face a West Australian court today. The woman will appear in a magistrate's court in Northam, 97km north east of Perth, charged with unlawful wounding, WA police said.
Officers will allege the woman stabbed her 35-year-old partner with a pair of scissors during an argument over him playing Burning Love over and over again.
The man was treated at Northam hospital for lacerations to his head, back and legs, police said.
The song, recorded in 1972, reached No 2 on the US charts and contains the lyrics:
"The flames are reaching my body. Please won't you help me. I feel like I'm slipping away. It's hard to breath. And my chest is a-heaving ?"
The song's chorus is:
"I'm burning a hole where I lay.
"Cause your kisses lift me higher.
"Like the sweet song of a choir.
"You light my morning sky.
"With burning love"
A WOMAN who allegedly stabbed her partner overnight after he repeatedly played an Elvis Presley song will face a West Australian court today. The woman will appear in a magistrate's court in Northam, 97km north east of Perth, charged with unlawful wounding, WA police said.
Officers will allege the woman stabbed her 35-year-old partner with a pair of scissors during an argument over him playing Burning Love over and over again.
The man was treated at Northam hospital for lacerations to his head, back and legs, police said.
The song, recorded in 1972, reached No 2 on the US charts and contains the lyrics:
"The flames are reaching my body. Please won't you help me. I feel like I'm slipping away. It's hard to breath. And my chest is a-heaving ?"
The song's chorus is:
"I'm burning a hole where I lay.
"Cause your kisses lift me higher.
"Like the sweet song of a choir.
"You light my morning sky.
"With burning love"
Monday, January 09, 2006
see me, hear me, huh? pardon?
One of my fellow bloggers, Pete Townshend, has warned music fans against potential hearing damage caused by headphones as portable players become more popular. Pete has a blogspot blog here, where he is serialising his novella The Boy Who Heard Music. The bit below on hearing is taken from his diary which is on this site.
29 Dec 2005
But today, this very morning, after a night in the studio trying to crack a difficult song demo, I wake up realizing again - reminding myself, and feeling the need to remind the world - that my own particular kind of damage was caused by using earphones in the recording studio, not playing loud on stage. My ears are ringing, loudly. This rarely happens after a live show, unless the Who play a small club. This is a peculiar hazard of the recording studio.The point I'm making is that it is not live sound that causes hearing damage. Earphones do the most damage.
In a studio there are often accidental buzzes, shrieks and poor connections that cause temporary high level sounds. Playing drums with earphones on is probably a form of insanity I think, all those gunshots, so much louder than a real gunshot, but how else can a drummer hear the other musicians? When I work solo now I often avoid using a drummer, simply to keep the overall sound levels lower. Also, one might have to work for several hours to perfect a studio performance. As the work progresses, the ears shut down and one needs a higher volume. If you stop to rest your ears (and you need to do so for at least 36 hours to do any good) you lose the current performance. It is a tough call.
I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf. It takes time, but it happens. This is, I suppose, no worse than being a sports person or dancer who knows they have a limited working span, and their body will suffer. The rewards are great - money, fame, adulation and a real sense of self-worth and achievement. But music is a calling for life. You can write it when you're deaf, but you can't hear it or perform it.
Last night, I was working with a piece of music that depended on me finding a correlation between the harmonic clusters in a piece composed using a computer - rather electronic in nature - and the overtones of a normal acoustic piano. With my hearing rolling off severely now at around three or four kiloherz, I don't have much luck with high harmonics or piano overtones (I can still hear speech OK). Needless to say, I didn't finish what I started. I drift back to the familiar tools of acoustic guitar and piano with my experimental tail between my legs.
If you watch the movie currently playing on TowserTV, the Who performing at Irvine in August 2000, you will see John Entwistle attempt to play his grand bass solo on the song Five Fifteen. You may find yourself wondering why such a fluid, expressive and accomplished player should continually drift out of time with the drummer (Zak Starkey). It happened because John couldn't hear properly. John still gives an astounding display, but he rarely stayed in time in that solo.
Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK. It may only be studio earphones that cause bad damage. I only have long experience of the studio side of things (though I've listened to music for pleasure on earphones for years, long before the Walkman was introduced). But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead. The computer is now central to our world. If downloading has a real downside it may not be the fact that musicians will get their music stolen - in truth, they appear quite ready to give it away for nothing. The downside may be that on our computers - for privacy, for respect to family and co-workers, and for convenience - we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound.
I am forced to continue to take my time in the recording studio. Those 36 hour hearing rests are infuriating now that a tour is announced, frustrating and agonizing, but compulsory.
29 Dec 2005
But today, this very morning, after a night in the studio trying to crack a difficult song demo, I wake up realizing again - reminding myself, and feeling the need to remind the world - that my own particular kind of damage was caused by using earphones in the recording studio, not playing loud on stage. My ears are ringing, loudly. This rarely happens after a live show, unless the Who play a small club. This is a peculiar hazard of the recording studio.The point I'm making is that it is not live sound that causes hearing damage. Earphones do the most damage.
In a studio there are often accidental buzzes, shrieks and poor connections that cause temporary high level sounds. Playing drums with earphones on is probably a form of insanity I think, all those gunshots, so much louder than a real gunshot, but how else can a drummer hear the other musicians? When I work solo now I often avoid using a drummer, simply to keep the overall sound levels lower. Also, one might have to work for several hours to perfect a studio performance. As the work progresses, the ears shut down and one needs a higher volume. If you stop to rest your ears (and you need to do so for at least 36 hours to do any good) you lose the current performance. It is a tough call.
I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf. It takes time, but it happens. This is, I suppose, no worse than being a sports person or dancer who knows they have a limited working span, and their body will suffer. The rewards are great - money, fame, adulation and a real sense of self-worth and achievement. But music is a calling for life. You can write it when you're deaf, but you can't hear it or perform it.
Last night, I was working with a piece of music that depended on me finding a correlation between the harmonic clusters in a piece composed using a computer - rather electronic in nature - and the overtones of a normal acoustic piano. With my hearing rolling off severely now at around three or four kiloherz, I don't have much luck with high harmonics or piano overtones (I can still hear speech OK). Needless to say, I didn't finish what I started. I drift back to the familiar tools of acoustic guitar and piano with my experimental tail between my legs.
If you watch the movie currently playing on TowserTV, the Who performing at Irvine in August 2000, you will see John Entwistle attempt to play his grand bass solo on the song Five Fifteen. You may find yourself wondering why such a fluid, expressive and accomplished player should continually drift out of time with the drummer (Zak Starkey). It happened because John couldn't hear properly. John still gives an astounding display, but he rarely stayed in time in that solo.
Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK. It may only be studio earphones that cause bad damage. I only have long experience of the studio side of things (though I've listened to music for pleasure on earphones for years, long before the Walkman was introduced). But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead. The computer is now central to our world. If downloading has a real downside it may not be the fact that musicians will get their music stolen - in truth, they appear quite ready to give it away for nothing. The downside may be that on our computers - for privacy, for respect to family and co-workers, and for convenience - we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound.
I am forced to continue to take my time in the recording studio. Those 36 hour hearing rests are infuriating now that a tour is announced, frustrating and agonizing, but compulsory.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
van morrison tells all
In a rare interview with the NME in 1989, journalist Sean O' Hagan asked Van Morrison the following question:
"Have you ever read anything about yourself or your music that was valid or illuminating?"
The answer he received was a blunt
"No."
"Have you ever read anything about yourself or your music that was valid or illuminating?"
The answer he received was a blunt
"No."
Thursday, December 29, 2005
the effect of electricity on music
I'm excited and sad.
Excited because one of my interests, "the effect of electricity on music" is the subject, and the title, of an 8 part radio series from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called The Wire. It's on ABC Radio National, on The Night Air at 8.30pm on Sundays, Part one repeated Friday at 9.35pm, Part Two repeated Saturday at midnight.
I'm sad because although I heard the first episode last week, it was in the car, and the ABC haven't made it available for download. I'm sad because I'll also be away next time it is on and won't be able to record it.
Last week's Episode 1– Hallo, Hallo reflected on how electricity has changed the way we think of the human voice, the way we communicate sound to large groups of people, and the way we now take for granted that sound is something that can be preserved, stored and heard again.
Although the programs themselves are not available The Wire site has the background, playlists and the complete interviews, some over an hour long (unfortunately in Real Player format), on which the programs are based as well as links to resources such as Fessenden and Marconi: Their Differing Technologies.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF
A lane, garbage truck, car that needs time to start in lane, Cast Iron Balcony, Barista, AGB, boynton, Gummo, wbb, plus someone claiming to be Nabs. Real bloody characters all.
Talk turns to the good old days, dial up, text, irc, newsgroups.. [I wanted to up the ante and go way back with talk of acoustic couplers, punch cards and an Osborne Luggable but I had a sneaking suspicion Gummo might trump me]
A nice start to xmas.
From the geek love book:
Roses are #FF0000,
Violets are #0000FF
all of my base,
are belong to you
Talk turns to the good old days, dial up, text, irc, newsgroups.. [I wanted to up the ante and go way back with talk of acoustic couplers, punch cards and an Osborne Luggable but I had a sneaking suspicion Gummo might trump me]
A nice start to xmas.
From the geek love book:
Roses are #FF0000,
Violets are #0000FF
all of my base,
are belong to you
Thursday, December 15, 2005
you learn something everyday
When Elektra released Too Fast for Love, it was a disaster. The priority for the label was an Australian band called Cold Chisel, and everybody in the promotions department was intent on making them the next big thing. I happened to be listening in on a conference call when I heard a regional promotions man say to the head of the radio department, "Listen, I've got a station in Denver and another in Colorado Springs that just added Motley Crue. They're not interested in Cold Chisel, but I'll keep working on them"
Tom Zutaut, Manager of Motley Crue, from THE DIRT: Motley Crue. Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band. With Neil Strauss.
Tom Zutaut, Manager of Motley Crue, from THE DIRT: Motley Crue. Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band. With Neil Strauss.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Friday, December 02, 2005
come back again, I'm just crazy 'bout you ..
There was a time when a Prime Minister didn't fawn over cricket yobs and had style in clothing and taste in music.
On reading this I wondered if he had some Quad ESL's but they are not American. He is probably misled about Class A amps and possibly deluded about DACs but I have fallen in love all over again after seeing this bit of delightful hifi nerdery:
"..took 15 years to find the perfect sound system..",
"I started with the speakers, by an American Armenian. They're not directional speakers, they don't hit you, they go round you. Problem was it was very hard to drive them. Years later I found the only A-class amplifier built, the Gryphon, and I've got a digital analog converter. It's a knockout sound, makes your hair stand up. Not good for home units, not good for neighbours"
From: Dividends of a fervent listener: Paul Keating, the only PM to have appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, The Financial Review 28/11/2005
On reading this I wondered if he had some Quad ESL's but they are not American. He is probably misled about Class A amps and possibly deluded about DACs but I have fallen in love all over again after seeing this bit of delightful hifi nerdery:
"..took 15 years to find the perfect sound system..",
"I started with the speakers, by an American Armenian. They're not directional speakers, they don't hit you, they go round you. Problem was it was very hard to drive them. Years later I found the only A-class amplifier built, the Gryphon, and I've got a digital analog converter. It's a knockout sound, makes your hair stand up. Not good for home units, not good for neighbours"
From: Dividends of a fervent listener: Paul Keating, the only PM to have appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, The Financial Review 28/11/2005
Monday, November 21, 2005
Thursday, November 17, 2005
reacting to the state of the nation
It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
It's no go the Yogi-man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.
Apologies to Louis MacNiece for abridging, re-arranging and snaffling.
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
It's no go the Yogi-man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.
Apologies to Louis MacNiece for abridging, re-arranging and snaffling.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Monday, October 10, 2005
fire hits wallace and gromit sets
The warehouse contained Aardman Animations' archive Props and sets from the Wallace and Gromit films are believed to have been destroyed in a warehouse blaze.
Fire crews were called to Oscar-winning Aardman Animations' site in Bristol on Monday, but were unable to stop all three floors inside collapsing. The building near the city's Temple Meads station contained the company's "entire history", a spokesman said. [more]
Fire crews were called to Oscar-winning Aardman Animations' site in Bristol on Monday, but were unable to stop all three floors inside collapsing. The building near the city's Temple Meads station contained the company's "entire history", a spokesman said. [more]
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