The Afterword

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Grass sausage – any other means of ingestion ?

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A couple of mates and I get together to watch music DVDs and YouTube stuff. I found some hooch I had stashed so I took it down for the night.

I’m an asthmatic and have always hated smoking, too late for cookies, never really had much success with tea so my mate who was in charge of the BBQ said how about in a sausage. So we sliced a fair size bratwurst down the middle, put the contraband in the middle ,squeezed the snag shut so the fat softened the herb, divied it up and down the hatch. Just tasted like a sausage with herbs in it.

Worked pretty good too. Think I will be doing that again.

Any Afterworders tried other unusual means of ingestion?

Jimmy Page playing on Baby Please Don’t Go by Them

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Just been reading a copy of Blues Magazine featuring an interview with Van Morrison re blues ,influences, etc.

On the guitar playing on Baby Please Don’t Go and the presence of Page J on Them Singles he comments

“Jimmy played on everything then. He played rhythm on Here comes the night, and on Baby Please don’t Go he is playing a de tuned six string ,so he’s actually doubling the bass part , then when it drops down low he’s playing this thing behind the vocal -it’s a tuned down guitar but it sounds like a bass. I loved it.

The Big Short

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Year: 2016 Director: Adam McKay

Declaration of interest straight up. I work in the financial markets in the education area these days, so I know a lot about what happened during the global financial crisis, the shenanigans that went on and I know the jargon. So I am coming from a different angle to someone either wanting to have a stimulating night at the movies or learn about what caused the GFC. The Big short is a reference to shorting the market. which means you sell something you don’t own and hope to buy it back at a lower price before you have to settle.So you sell higher than you buy which is the reverse of buying something then hopefully selling it when it goes up. At the time the markets were in a major bull run ( rising market) so people taking a negative view was very much going against the tide. The movie focusses on a few characters that latch onto the realisation that the mortgage market in america is extremely vulnerable due to por lending practises and the financial markets are ,in turn extremely vulnerable because of the many financial instruments created based on these underlying mortgages. » Continue Reading.

ATM scanner for slides and negs

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I think I asked about this on the old site but cant find any reference.

I have a need for a scanner for general documents but I also need to scan some slides and negs.

The slides negs will be a one off job which encourages the idea of a multi purpose scanner that I can use on an ongoing basis for documents. But I don’t want crap quality or having to dick around endlessly while doing the slides and negs because the scanner is really a doc scanner with an adaptor.

So my questions: are there any photo /doc scanners that also do negs and slides well and efficiently?

If the better option is a dedicated slide neg scanner what should I look at? Kaiser Baas have inexpensive models but I have read bad reports and they save to an SD card whereas I’d prefer to load straight onto my Mac.

Muchos gracias.

Admin question – name-checking Afterworders

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Has something changed with the site upgrade?

Previously when you typed @ and then part of an Afterworders name you got a drop down of options or if you typed it in full it would automatically become a hyperlink of sorts.

This doesn’t seem to happen now – I’m using Apple stuff. I’ll try Tim’s address here in case it works

@timadmin

Rodney Crowell and Ry Cooder

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God I’m Missing you is one of the best later period Crowell songs- one that really pulls on the heart strings.

There are better recordings of it- see Tiny desk for starters. But this one has Ry Cooder with him.

Carlos Santana – autobiography, the Universal Tone

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Author:Carlos Santana with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller

This was a lot better than I was expecting. His recent tours feature some fairly incomprehensible hippie spiritual babble so I was not sure what the book would be like but in a bargain bin for $10.00 I thought what the heck. Yes you get quite a bit of his evolving spiritualism but a. I am a bit more receptive to those themes than I might have been a few years ago and ,for the most part, it is explained reasonably well. Perhaps that is the work of the co-authors. Kahn has written a book on Coltrane and Miller is a long time friend of Santana , jazz drummer, lecturer and collector of jazz videos. So what makes this a good book? I like the style. A friend said it was too simple but Santana doesn’t strike me as an overly sophisticated sort of guy, he talks to you in simple language, very down to earth like he is in the room chatting to you.Also, he has had a pretty interesting life. Consider this, family moved from a village to Tijuana, learns violin to play with his father’s mariachi band ( Carlos » Continue Reading.

Zimbabwean band touring Melbourne and Perth jan 29 and 30

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Most of you will know that I’m a fan of African music and Zimbabwean music in particular. I’ve been helping the promoter out with the press release and drumming up indie radio interest. Here are some extracts from the press release. From what I’ve seen of the videos the band sound really good . The videos are pretty funny too, How often do you see a band marching around with real kalashnikovs?

When they think of the big names, the stars, most people outside of Zimbabwe, might think of Thomas Mapfumo’s militant Chimurenga music or Oliver Mtukudzi’s southern African fusion “Tuku music “or perhaps the joyful bouncy pop of the Bhundu Boy’s Jit music. But although still putting out great records, Thomas lives in exile and tours erratically, Tuku played some great shows here in Australia only last December, but he is getting on, and, sadly, Biggie Tembo and most of the Bhundu Boys died far too young.

So who will carry the torch for the music of Zimbabwe?

Jah Prayzah could well be that person.

The name is a bit lame and it suggests a reggae style band and certainly there is some of that but make no mistake » Continue Reading.

Classic South African Jazz treasure trove

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A few weeks a go I had the pleasure to play host to Chris Albertyn. Chris is a partner of Matsuli Music along with Matt Temple and I think others.They are South Africans and have a passion for rediscovering rare and unavailable South African jazz and Afro Soul.Quality vinyl with excellent liner notes and thick cardboard covers. They pay the artists well over royalty some have received more money from their modest releases than they received in their entire career. In addition to these labours of love they have opened to the world the collection of Ian Huntley, a generous South african who loved jazz, frequented jazz clubs, paid f0r instruments,let players sleep over in his flat when they overstayed curfew ,took photographs and recorded artists on his reel to reel. For many decades he kept the archive to himself but recently Chris and others set to work restoring the photos and digitising the music. The photos and their stories are compiled in a wonderful book- you can view some of the photos on their blog Electric Jive.Even more wonderfully, they are making available for free ,all these rare recordings with the blessing of Ian Huntley and where possible the » Continue Reading.

Dylan’s Shadows of the Night Revisited

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I’ve had a shit of a week. Work has been quite unpleasant. Just emerging out of the tunnel after a virus and I’ve got the heater on, it is 16 degrees outside , yesterday was 32 and it is supposedly the start of summer.

So what to put on ? Why not that Bob Dylan bloke? Why not the record you bought and have kept in the current play rack rather than filing in the big box? Yep good idea, and a glass of red too.

So on it goes and it is just the ticket.

Superb song selection, great band ,great recording. AAAHHHH but the voice, I hear you say. Well here is the thing, tonight, I’m not up for some master like Frankie gliding over the notes,making the caper sound oooh so easy. No here is Bob, great phrasing, great diction but just struggling in his life worn, cigarette ravaged voice just struggling to make the notes just get close to them.

Yep croaky melancholy, at certain times, is just the ticket.

Gareth Liddiard of the Drones shreds Patti Smith’s Birdland

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A few weeks ago I saw a tribute concert as part of the Melbourne Festival.

A bunch of local musicians played the whole of Horses.

It was organised by Courtney Barnett’s g/f Jen Cloher and the 4 sharing the songs were those 2 plus Adalita formerly of Magic Dirt and Gareth Liddiard of the Drones. All usually play with guitars, but only Liddiard did this time and he seemed the most comfortable.I don’t really get CB and, for mine, her songs were lack lustre. Jen Cloher cannot rock at all and her metronomic hand movements really got to me but Adalita was great. And then there was Gareth. He did Elegy as well but this version of Birdland was just well spine tingling, excoriating.

Hope you like it- semi professionally filmed, professional sound mix. I will post the whole show in the comments.

govt pays to soundproof venues

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Just announced down here- does it happen elsewhere?

http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/465053/victorian-government-just-paid-to-soundproof-live-music-venues.htm?utm_source=Tone+Deaf+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a8b7cd92fe-Tucker_Bag810&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b6f823df63-a8b7cd92fe-190448285

Obervations after listening to Dylan’s Cutting Edge

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I got the vinyl with the double CD format included- so the best of.

My observations are as follows- and I could be wrong as haven’t cross refernced with other versions.

Only 2 significantly different- Farewell Angelina has very diffferent lyrics and Just Like A woman has a really funky groove going , think he even throws in an “oh yeah”.

For a guy who came to hate the studio and wanted to get out as quickly as possible, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

Most lyric changes were coz it was hard to get his mouth around certain words or the new words fitted into the metre better.

Can’t think of any here that are better than the official versions….maybe Angelina.

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