My trolly at Waitrose this morning didn’t have a shopping list holder. Had any first world problems lately?

As my other thread may intimate, I’m looking to improve the performance of my main stereo somewhat. It’s decent if oldish kit (Arcam, Mission 741), but seems a bit muddy in the low end, and I’d like a bit more clarity. Never having been more than an amused onlooker of the audiophile world they are as bonkers as ever, with their 200 quid a foot speaker cable etc. There are glimmers of sanity though…here are my conclusions…..

1. Speaker positioning makes far more difference than the cable, especially distance from walls 2. Bi wiring makes a theoretical difference, but in the words of the scientific paper I read on the subject, moving your head slightly whilst listening would probably make more difference than biwiring 3. Budget but decent speaker cable is noticably better than cheap, and almost indistinguishable from super expensive 4. The T&E electrical cable they use for your ring main in the house is better than most speaker cable (solid copper, 12 AGW!!!) 5. The position you sit in makes a massive difference, as does the room layout, furniture etc. As most of these things are unavoidable constraints, beyond a certain point most further refinement can be ignored.

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What are your choices for CDs which sound fantastic, sonically? The ones you play to test out a stereo, if you ever do….and does anyone have experience of those audio test/reference CDs?

Question posted by one of my favourite podcasters – The History of the Crusades podcast. I think I know the answer…what do you think?

Okay – I need some help on the heading for the next episode. In the episode, three separate characters undergo three separate changes of fortune. So, should the heading be: (a) reversals of fortune (b) reversal of fortunes (c) reversals of fortunes or (d) none of the above Any ideas? Someone well versed in the intricacies of the English language needs to save me from making a grammatical face plant…help!

Anyone fancy doing a podcast tonight? No special theme, bit of a chat, maybe talk plans for the summer, festivals….reply here or PM/email me. Skype a requirement as ever, otherwise all welcome. Say 9.00 pm?

Let’s have an AW poll – your best Dylan songs. Usual rules apply – choose five, ranked so that number one gets five points down to last which gets one. The bar drops Sunday night so I’ll do the five bar gates on Monday and publish the too songs, albums etc. Then “Like a Rolling Stone” wins. Or will it…..

We did this at the old place, but I find such threads useful reference points so what the hey. Your favourite western? And why? Me – there are many, but I’ll say “The good, the bad and the ugly” for reasons too many to list, but, oooh, the music, Clint, Eli Walach, the atmosphere…it’s a masterpiece. And at the other end of the scale, “Silverado” – rites of passage buddy movie, great cast, cool, funny, unpredictable – who saw the cows coming the first time they saw it? Costner on fire…baddies super bad, goodies flawed but good , Kevin Kline – here’s to the good stuff.

No monster lists – just the ones you really like.

You?

The Labour leadership contest is shaping up. It seems to be setting on Burnham, Kendall and Cooper. I’m politically unaffiliated, though instinctively soft left liberal by nature. My instinct is a Milibandesque agenda fronted by Andy Burnham doesn’t sound like a winner, though I thought he did well on John Pinaar last week, and I always quite lilked Yvette Cooper but she seems to be living up to her Hacker reputation of not saying much which upsets anyone. I’d never heard of Liz Kendall but (given my stated position) I quite like her.

Interesting New Stateman assessment.

Thorts?

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/were-beginning-see-outlines-labour-leadership-race

You know when you have nights with irrelevant crap whizzing round in your head so you can’t sleep? That.

Hendrix on the Lulu show. We’ve all seen it. But FFS, it was the Lulu show! And listen to the noise he makes! Quite apart from the fact that other than maybe a dozen people in tbe King’s Road, no one even looked like that! Truly a being from another planet, changing everyone’s sense of what’s possible with a few bits of wood and some valves. Where are today’s game changers? (…I do hope there are some…).

Let’s see whether this audio quality stuff ads up. Listen here…

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

I like jazz, me. I saw this duo a couple of years ago and find I regularly come back to their album “MY duo”from which this is the opening track….

I just played a gig, rocked the house, and now have pint of Speckled Hen, 2 fingers of single malt, a tub of pistachio nuts, the Beeb and my mandolin so I am set for the night. How is it for you? Drama already with the exit polls….

Twang Jr is learning “Johnny B Goode” to play at school at the end of term. We have just spent a very happy half hour watching different bands take it on, ranging from the outer planetary (Hendrix) to the execrable (AC/DC). But my favourite is Johnny Winter from my all time fave live album “And – Live” back when live albums is what they played rather than what proTools did for them in the studio 6 months after the gig. Bum notes? Who cares. Rick Derringer on 2nd guitar. What’s your favourite “Johnny B Goode”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jARuqUntPiI

Hi All. Booting up my Mac Mini this morning it tells me the external eye wateringly expensive Glyph hard drive has errors and needs to be reformatted. Happily I have a backup so the data is safe, but I realise my backup drive is old and quite small and I think the time has come to replace it. Recommendations for a 2tb USB 3 external drive? Seagate? Samsung?

Thanks all

PS My bid for most boring post of the day….but will help with my stress….

Any ideas, maths AWers?

♣ and ♠ both stand for whole numbers. ♠ is 50 greater than ♣. (2x♣) + ♠ = 500.

Calculate values of ♣ and ♠.

How does the calculation approach work? Doh.

Just looking at Photobucket, I realised I have loads of pictures and images from threads passim which have sadly lost their home with the demise of the various blogs. So here is new home for perfectly nice, interesting photos we may have seen before but which are currently stateless. No logic required, just post ’em here.

Elvis’s double neck guitar/6 sting bass, snapped in Gracelands in 1996.

http://i1094.photobucket.com/albums/i449/charlieboy14/elvisdoubleneck.jpg

I love this, from “The Secret Policeman’s Ball” – Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck playing “Further on up the road”. Thing is, it’s Eric’s song, but Jeff, guesting, decides to have some fun by outrageously upstaging him with a series of completely off the wall licks which still manage to wriggle back to the blues, jumping about, pulling faces, throwing shapes and generally showing why he’s the best. To his credit, Eric appreciates it and several times acknowledges that on this occasion he’d been had. Brilliantly musical and brilliant fun, and probably still unplayable by anyone other than the Beckster.

On the list of things I’m not interested in in the slightest, this plumbs new depths of apathy. Anyone intending to get one?

Phew. I mean, phew. Those who watched, comment within. Those who haven’t, don’t look!

15 minutes inside the deadline…I hadn’t realised it’s the birthday of our finest songwriter and guitarist. Happy birthday RT!

Over a sociable beer a mate fixed me in a gaze and said “The sweet you can eat between meals…” and I automatically responded “without ruining your appetite…”. I haven’t seen or thought about this for 20 years, but there it was. We had a good laugh coming up with old ad catchphrases and finishing them for each other (possibly you had to be there…). But now I couldn’t tell you a single one – partly because I avoid them at all costs, but have advertisers lost the ability to embed their wares in your brain in short order?

Some classics here…including Elvis Costello’s Dad….