Musings on the byways of popular culture
I have an Exposure XV MM amp, a Sony ES 570 FM tuner, a Nakamichi Cassette Deck 2 and a pair of Linn Keilidh speakers with granite bases to sell, as I’m upgrading the amp and speakers and never use the radio or cassette deck. Other than eBay, can you suggest where I might get a good price for any or all of these?
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The threads on music playing devices and iPod classics highlight distinct differences in attitudes to streaming and owning music. Some put sound quality above functionality. Some appear to have not been near streaming services for a while and perhaps don’t appreciate the progress in the last year or two.
I can’t remember the last CD I bought (but it was probably second hand, cost £1.50 and was made more than a year ago). I have virtually stopped buying downloads and am about to cancel my eMusic subscription after 6 or 7 years.
Apple music serves my purposes very well and with WiFi well on the way to becoming ubiquitous, along with cheaper than ever data plans, I don’t see myself buying any physical products anymore. In fact, if I did, it’s more likely to be vinyl than CD. And I don’t own a record player.
Most of this change has been in the last couple of years as my devices become more integrated and the apps become better at dealing with the process of streaming.
People seem to be less passionate about physical products for films and tv with Netflix, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and the like not drawing the » Continue Reading.
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There’s been a steady chub-exit, or Chexit, if you will, but some us are still Chubby Remainers (or Chubainers, although that doesn’t really work, does it?). Whatevs, as the yoof like to say (or did so in 2005). If you’re still here, still trying to lay off the beer, and still wanting to reduce your bad habits and get fitter and or lighter, it’s time to check in…
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After @Twang’s magnificent thread on guitar albums (how’s Doolittle in your ears, brother?) and the recent Night In with Led Zeppelin’s BBC Sessions, I though of guitar solos. I do not like much blues rock fret wanking. I like my guitar solos compact, an intricate part of the song, lifting it on to a higher plane. Think of George Harrison in The Beatles and you are there. After some thought, I wrote down my top twenty. Most of them are more than thirty years old. I set aside Jazz guitar for another day.
I know The Afterword loves a list, so here it is:
20. David Gilmour – Blue Jean Bop
Personally, I find Gilmour’s guitar playing dull. Not on Paul McCartney’s Run Devil Run. The sparks fly, the fingers are nimble and he keeps it brief. Perfect.
19. Fred Tackett – Shore Leave
Tom Waits song is remarkable. It captures the excitement of exploring an exotic city but it is underpinned by a tender longing for home. Tackett uses very few notes but he makes your heart ache and sing at the same time.
18. Paul Warren – Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone
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What does it sound like?:
The Monochrome Set have their roots in the early days of post-punk art school rock, and share similar DNA with semi contemporaries Wire – all too post-modern and post- ironic to wear pirate outfits but still very clever, clever. And good. Their work is beloved by a select band of OK people – and a few annoying ones. Also one of the few bands (I think) since the Monkees to have their own eponymous theme song – which is a brilliant way to come on stage – “I entertain your tiny brain so spuriously”.
Latest album Cosmonaut is the highpoint of a late blossoming career revival given added impetus by singer Bid’s stroke a few years ago. Since the departure of alt.guitar hero Lester Square (is that really a vibrator he’s using?) extra musical duties have been shared with key board player JP Moran – who looks a bit scary (but not as scary as his previous band Rapid Pig). Andy Warren’s bass playing is as impassive as ever. Includes vocal contributions from Alice Healey who graced some of the early output from Bid’s other project the even more whimsical “Scarlet’s Well” and Jessica » Continue Reading.
A few weeks back I was reading an interview with a lady celeb in the Grauniad, and among the comments after, someone said simply “I wish she was my friend.” This has occasionally intrigued me, having come across it before; a friend of mine on separate occasions has wished that either Annie Lennox or Oprah Winfrey was one of his friends.
I can never help but wonder two things…
a) what would the benefit be to these people’s lives to have such a famous friend? Are they imagining great tickets to forthcoming shows, invites to the top-tier meet’n’greet beforehand, somehow to bask in the presence of the famous…?
And just as importantly…
b) what are they going to bring to the relationship? Would they be getting desperate phone calls from Bruce asking to recommend which track should be the single, or whether to leave Adelaide off the national tour yet again? Do they want to feel important that someone (gestures) up there values their opinions or desires their company…?
So the question is….who would you want to be you famous friend? And why? They can be from any field of endeavour, just well-known enough that mere mention of their name » Continue Reading.
I was surprised by the lack of responses in the Amazon Echo thread the other day and was wondering about other people’s general attitude to home automation. Most of us take for granted the heating coming on at the programed time and I suspect many of us also have timers on a light or two. But has anyone gone any further? If so, is it because of (perceived) security, convenience or maybe even a disability. I’m currently investigating skirting round the edges and putting together rather Heath Robinson solutions as anything all encompassing is going to be very expensive. Ideally, I’d like to be able to draw the curtains in the living room and switch a few lights on when I out or on holiday but, unless I go for something like the Belkin or Philips lights, I’m either stuck in the past with X10 or I have to get the lighting circuit rewired (you really need a neutral at the switch and most UK homes don’t have it). Any solutions, experiences? My current task is seeing up a raspberry pi based system that will check if there’s a connected wifi signal available in the house and automatically reboot the » Continue Reading.
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What does it sound like?:
A suitably prog title ushers in the first new Kansas album in sixteen years. I listened to this with some initial trepidation as the band is now without both key songwriter Kerry Livgren and original vocalist Steve Walsh. However, I’m pleased to report my misgivings were totally unfounded, as this is a very fine album that sits comfortably with the best of their seventies work such as Leftoverture and Point Of Know Return.
What does it sound like – well, it’s a mixture of AOR and prog really. The more AOR sounding material, such as opener With This Heart, is reminiscent of Toto in their prime. The best pieces for me though are when the band indulge their prog side on songs like Visibility Zero and the album’s centrepiece The Voyage Of Eight Eighteen.
This album far exceeded my expectations – it’s way better than it has any right to be after all the line up changes and the passage of time.
What does it all *mean*?
The sleeve artwork depicts a phoenix rising and flying from the past into the future – they couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate image!
Goes well » Continue Reading.
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Platform:Playstation Age Rating:16+ Year of Release:2016 Review:
This is the fourth and final game in the Uncharted series, a set of adventure and exploration games that are Sony’s answer to Tomb Raider, all climbing, puzzles and ancient temples. The previous three were PS3 exclusive titles, but they have been recently remastered for PS4 and released as an omnibus collection. You should probably tackle them before playing this instalment. You’ll have a better feel for the story, and they’re great games anyway, especially the second.
The earlier games established Nathan Drake as a matinee adventure hero in the Indiana Jones mould, and introduced his supporting cast. There’s Victor “Sully” Sullivan, his genial cigar chomping, wisecracking mentor, and Elena Fisher, a reporter who becomes his love interest over the three games. As 4 opens, Drake has given up his life of adventure to settle down with Elena. He’s put risk behind him for a life of happy safety. He knows it’s the right thing to do, but there’s definitely still a part of him that regrets it. And then his long lost, presumed dead, brother Sam shows up, with a tale of pirate treasure and an urgent need to find it to » Continue Reading.
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On a wave of nostalgia last night I searched for and found a photo of the radio cassette player I received for Christmas in 1984. I was ten, and was also given a cassette of Shakin’ Stevens’ Greatest Hits, plus a blank one for taping the charts. What was your first music-playing device? And what other ones were in your family home? Photo if you can find one.
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/sanyo%20cassette%20player_zpsqn4mywu2.jpg
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I don’t post here much these days because, to be a frank chicken, I don’t have much to say. I am about as interesting as Steve Davis after a late night session on Ovaltine. However I do like to read what jolly japes you lot seem to be doing much of the time. I also like discovering, or being directed to, new music and film clips.
But that’s enough about you. Here is a newly posted pilot for the Mrs Murton Nightcap show from the days of YTV. It would go on to find a better home in Granadaland as The Mrs Merton Show with better quality celebrity guests, although Liz & Andy were probably the closest duo to Mark Ellen & David Hepworth that Yorkshire could provide at the time and two names from my past.
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Venue:
The Greystones, Sheffield
Date: 15/09/2016
The last time I saw Robin in a small venue was about 20 years ago. Twenty five seemingly indifferent people turned up, poignantly he introduced The first Girl I Loved by saying “we played this at Woodstock.”
This time he all but sold out the -admittedly small – venue. First thing I noticed is that he’s lost a lot of weight and is now back to a skinny Wee Tam era profile. With his thinning, still long, white hair and thick glasses on the end of his nose, he now more than ever looks the part of a bard. His voice though, is better than ever. It was always reedy aural Marmite, but the years have put timbre into it, and his efforts at raga style melisma are more restrained,
He kicked off with a couple of unaccompanied harp tunes which included the traditional Pretty Girl Milking a Cow. The set that followed was peppered with distinctive covers that included the expected (Bob Dylan) and the less expected (Foghat and Jerry Lee Lewis). His own songs were all from his more recent solo efforts, including touching versions of Wheel of Fortune and I Always » Continue Reading.
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Just saw that Low are going back to UK for Christmas shows and have ordered my ticket. Made by Day. Looking forward to some chilly serenity. What is making your day?
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I notice we have 665 members on the Afterword. Who will be the next? Will the Afterword implode or be sucked into Hell’s nether regions? Are we at the birth of Ragnarok? Yours expecting doom with a heavy metal backing.
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Thank god for some intelligent comedy analysis. I don’t always agree with Bill but his show is vital. Tune in tonight at 9pm pacific. Trump’s campaign manager is on the panel.
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I was listening to Science Friday today, and they had a great feature on Voyager and the music they put on it. It including quite a moving sequence around the inclusion of the EKG scans of the meditation of a woman who had just fallen in love with Carl Sagan.
It’s 40 years on. What should we put on our discs that we include on Voyager2016?
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Happy days.
Got my Janic Gers circa Gillan band sorted.
Any more?
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Okay, so I posted about my hard drive stopping working last week and how, if I couldn’t repair it, I was dreading having to re-enter 70,000 tracks on to iTunes if I had to use my back-up hard drives. Thankfully, my mate helped me out and talked me through what I needed to do and how to remove the actual hard drive from the casing. He gave me a device to plug it into, but he also lent me the cable from his Seagate hard drive, just on the off chance that this would be all I need. Well, so far, that is all I needed, a new power cable. So far so good.
However, I then plugged my iPod 160gb into my laptop to update it and none of the new songs appeared on it. On checking, the space required for the ‘other’ Section had gone up to 16gb. A quick read on techs message boards led to me doing a full restore of the iPod and this reduced the size of the ‘other’ bit…but now it won’t put any music back on it, giving me error messages. I have spent a couple of hours with technical bods from » Continue Reading.
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I don’t know how much is spent annually on The Met Office and the myriad of forecasts on TV and the internet. The endless ways they use to portray a cloud or rain or the sun. However much it is it could surely be better spent elsewhere. They really seem to have no idea what’s happening, I am tempted to write down what the lovely Carol or Matt or whoever actually say. They baffle us with a stream of consciousness that I guarantee includes, showers, sun and cloud and it’s never right. Unless I missed it no one predicted the thunderstorms in the South last night, if they did I suspect it was after 6pm. It doesn’t make a difference to my day but it just seems a pointless exercise trying to predict the weather and despite satellites and technology they seem no better than they ever were. I’m going to the cricket tomorrow and brought tickets based on a forecast earlier in the week. I’ll never learn and won’t really know what the weather will do until I take my seat and look up. Does anyone know if the shipping forecasts that disturb Test Match Special are any better?
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I’m lazier than most when it comes to posting thread starters, but really – nothing?
I’m posting this just before the rsult is announced, but I’ll let the picture say it all for me. I don’t want Bowie to win by the way.
http://tinypic.com/r/msp4ec/9
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Platform:Playstation Age Rating:7+ Year of Release:2016 Review:
A small portion of the Internet has been on fire over the past couple of months, and only now are the flames dying down so we can see what’s lost and what’s been saved. Seldom has a new game received so much pre-release hype as No Man’s Sky, and seldom has a game received so much abuse on its release.
For those who are going No Man’s what here’s a brief recap. Tiny indie games studio Hello debut footage of a space-opera exploration game promising a near-infinite universe to explore with ‘ten quintillion’ planets. The footage – pure Chris Foss 70s cover paintings made digital Magic – and the proposition of being able to explore fully realised alien worlds no-one has seen before, makes the gaming world explode. Sony give the game the full 110% build up and for two years it’s the most anticipated game in development. In the weeks leading up to the delayed release word starts to spread that the game’s initial release may not contain all the features discussed during development.
So on release Reddit becomes the home of a hate-fest populated by videos of angry gamers comparing the » Continue Reading.
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In today’s Telegraph there is a story about Rick Parfitt, which (if I have done this right) should be linked.
Towards the end, there is the following sentence: “Next year would mark Status Quo’s 50th anniversary; Parfitt joined singer Francis Rossiter and bassist Alan Lancaster in 1964 to form The Spectres, who began performing as Status Quo in 1967…”.
I was quite taken with the idea of “Francis Rossiter”: Reggie Perrin in denim? Or Rigsby rockin’ all over the world?
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Do read this hilarious Craigslist ad for a cat in need of a home. Sounds like my kind of kitty.
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Does anyone have any experience with an Amazon Echo? It looks like an intriguing piece of kit and the reviews are pretty positive. I’m tempted as it seems to be great to listen to podcasts, audiobooks and radio whilst having a large potential for other things as well.
Is anyone else tempted by it? Or is it just an incomplete gadget?
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The Afterword is giving all members the ability to put on your own festival. The rules are:
1. One day only, starting at 12 noon to late.
2. Any era, everyone is alive. Selecting which career point to feature is permissible.
3. Three stages – you decide what they are.
4. Have consideration for ticket sales – a mass of completely different genres may not attract the punters.
5. Default assumption is acts are in their “peak” assuming there was one…
Twangfest in comments….
