I know one or two of You Guys have a squint at Heave’s Music Forum from time to time, so I thought an opportunity to share glimpses might fly here. Or not.
Here’s a review of the Deluxe Feats Don’t Fail Me Now edish, buried in slewage of fascinating “shipping” updates:
Yesterday our new pool was finished being installed, I took Wed-Fri off work…and spent all day today fillng in the sand and dirt, plus reinstalling a fence post and two sections of fence…very hot. I’m now cooled down and rehydrated…I’m now sitting down to a nice homemade dinner of pork carnitas, rice, refried beans and homemade chips and salsa. After things wind down, this set is getting a spin.
“I picked it up. I’m happy with it👍👍👍”
However IMO the original UK vinyl ‘Porky’ cut stands head and shoulders above the rest. This album was recorded at a cost of $3000, with no overdubs and on listening to it, there is no evidence that any were required. The ‘Porky’ cut is a sonic delight, but requires a good analogue front end.
What album? It really doesn’t matter.
Based on the details provided, he will be blowin’ off all night long. Farts Don’t Fail Me Now
Porky sonic delights ahoy!
“But exactly how many records feature both a harmonica and a bass marimba. ~ Ben”
” It is a reproduction of the medallion obi for the 1983 lp reissue for the 15th anniversary of the original London Records issue and not a typo.
Rolling Stones Their Satanic Majesties Request – Medallion Obi Japanese vinyl LP album (LP record) (296506)
Actually, that Obi is a replica from the one on the 1968’s first Japanese native pressing. As you can see here: https://www.discogs.com/es/release/…グストーンズ-Their-Satanic-Majesties-Request-サタニックマ”
*blacked out^
“Too many issues with non-fill. I’ll stick with my OG. It’s nice. I’m happy with it.”
“My fave Zep CD’s are the recent Japanese SHM’s, bought the box, some claim that they are louder (they are) but they are nowhere near compressed and squashed as some like to claim (no doubt w/o hearing them first), a quick comparison with the Page remasters of a few tracks on Goldwave showed a minimal increase in average RMS volume and they are not even close to a typical 2000 and later rock release (Metallica Death Magnetic holds that record in my collection), they are more like 1994 in terms of how the file actually looks, the peaks are intact. Whatever sounds best for the individual is the most important criteria and the only one that really matters imo.”
Lovin’ that last sentence.
“That’s a hard pass from me.”
Oh Christ yes. The “hard pass”. So much authority.
Erm … have you got one of those Dynamic Range (“DR”) graphs for each track that I can study?
I do like the Hoffman forum, and it’s a handy way of hearing about new releases and other news, but the whole DR graph thing baffles me.
I love music and have a collection that makes me very happy, but I’ve never, ever wondered about the DR so much that I need a list of numbers that somebody else has somehow compiled.
If a CD sounds good to me (I don’t do vinly or streaming), then it sounds good. That’s as much as I need to know. I don’t care if the DR is 1, 100, or 1000, or however such things are measured.
Admittedly I *might* occasionally wonder which is the best version of an album – the original, the remaster, or maybe the remastered remaster with the bonus tracks – but that’s about as far down the audiophile rabbit hole as I go.
It’s difficult to explain my relationship with the Hoffmen. (they ARE nearly all men). There are a few people on there who really know what they are talking about, but there’s also a sea of pickup-driving, basement-dwelling MAGA types. I suppose that’s life.
Without going into too much detail, the DR analysis stuff has caused some serious problems for some record labels, who are doing their best to issue music to real fans. Then some prat on there notices it’s 44k instead of 48k or something, or that it has gaps in the frequencies… and convinces people that this means it’s a bad product, forcing returns/demands for replacement discs… this stuff can hurt.
There was an epic “gotcha” thread recentlyish accusing some record company of dishonest trading by not declaring a digital element in their analogue releases that caused them a lot of grief. The point being that this digital input was such a small – literally insignificant – part of the process it made no discernible difference to the sound. Those same releases had been praised to the skies by the Hoofmen on release (for all the usual reasons), and yet they were baying for blood when this shock revelation made them look like fools.
That’s not really the key point. The relentless bullying of the label in question by nerds is the problem. The label also should have admitted the mistake (or whatever it was) and put an end to it. The rest is just noise, and it matters not one jot what the Hoffmen think/hear.
The rest is “Just noise?”
Just noise? On the Hoffman forum??
Similarly to the OP, I haven’t heard much music for the past couple of weeks because of a gardening project. I’ve been mainly listening to podcasts on my Sandisk Clip Sport Plus.
I’ve lived in this house for just over 13 years. A bit over 12 years ago, I dug up some of the front lawn and put down some gravel, some Aco matting*, filled in the ‘hexagons’ with top soil and sprinkled grass seed over it all. It was fine as occasional guest visitors’ parking for the next decade until, 15 months ago, Offspring the Younger passed his test and bought a Ford Fiesta, and started parking it there. The grass died under the car, the top soil became a mudbath and so, two weeks ago, I dug up the matting.
The pallet of matting cost me £450 back then and is otherwise fine but full of soil. Chucking it and replacing with fresh matting would cost nearly £800, not to mention being bad for the environment. So for the last two weeks I’ve spent upwards of three hours a day scraping/poking top soil out of 112 slabs of plastic matting with a rusty screwdriver. Each mat takes 15 minutes to clean.
I have a man with a mini-digger, some hardcore** and lots of gravel coming next Wednesday.
(*) https://www.aco.co.uk/products/groundguard
(**) if that doesn’t bring Moosey back, I don’t know what will.
Are you absolutely certain you’re on the right forum, Fentworth?
I think I’d be too dull for the other place.
In the last couple of months, I’ve taken out all the mortar in a brick wall, and repointed it. I’ve now moved on to the lias stone wall at the bottom of the garden, putting fresh mortar into that, removing and re-laying stones where necessary. Dull work, and yet it becomes quite mindful. See also weeding flower borders.
That sounds lovely. We have bindweed in one corner of our back garden, so I’m never short of the need for a bit of weeding. It can grow about a yard a day.
We had bindweed, and had to use weedkiller to eventually get rid of it; had come up inside the porch, under its laughable foundations. Still, at least it wasn’t bamboo or Japanese Knotweed.
We have bamboo in the opposite corner, next to the shed, which rests atop a 6 inch concrete base. Even then it’s only a matter of time, I reckon, before break-through.
Oh for the easily dealt with Giant Hogweed. Mind you, don’t plant Jerusalem Artichokes unless you really want years of digging it out. And indeed farting, if you eat it.
If you try to deal with the hogweed and it keeps growing back, then that’s the Return of the Giant Hogweed.
Boom-tiss!
Why in the name of all that is holy and true was Offspring the Younger allowed to park there regularly in the first place? I’m inclined towards the opinion that if he can afford to buy and run a car surely he should help with pallet costs and/or labour. #BringBackNationalService
It’s a Ford Fiesta, Gar. There’s status involved.
He sat his final A-level paper (Maths) yesterday, so now has no excuse. At 9am tomorrow I will be sending the chain-gang* to drag him from his pit.
(*) Mrs F and a cat which has been denied breakfast and won’t leave him alone until it is fed.
Now we have a cat (aaarggh), thats a good tip to get my daughter out of bed/room especially as she has now broken up for 10 (yes, TEN!) weeks of summer vacation.
* I quite like her actually (the cat)
Be sure not to feed the cat first, or it will simply curl up next to the sleeping offspring.
Offspring the Elder handed her last bit of work in about mid-May (no final exams) and so has something like eight weeks of rest in a 10-week term. The shops of Lincoln are taking a battering.
I think we need to know about the wheelbarrow that you used. Also, was brickwalling involved?
It’s a bog-standard B&Q wheelbarrow with an upgraded (solid) wheel. Just as Covid hit, I took it out of the shed and found it had a flat tyre. Rather than reach for a puncture repair kit, I immediately fired up Am*z*n and a nice man in a blue van delivered a solid wheel the following day. Conclusion: I would be useless in a war.
Did it have a right angle wheel adaptor?
Nope, that’s probably why it went flat.
The man who delivers our logs has the narrowest wheelbarrow you can get in the UK and he’s had it customised. I forget the dimensions, and what he had done to it to be honest, something to do with getting it over steps, but thought you might like to know.
I’ve been somewhat distracted recently, since someone posted on another thread a picture of a sack barrow with pneumatic tyres.
What was the 11th commandment? Thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s trolley?
BryanD’s reference to brickwalling – *chef’s kiss*
It’s a sack truck ffs.
A sack barrow? Like Buster Gonad’s? I didn’t realise they actually existed. Given the way mine is heading south I might get one if they do very small ones.
That might have just been an ordinary wheelbarrow now I think about it.
Sack barrows – “whatevs” – clog the streets here on market days. No fancy inflatable tyres. Cheap as crisps. Also available – two-wheeled carts, the size of sidecars, you can either wheel around yourself or attach to your motosai by sitting on the handle. Yet more reasons for living in the World’s Oldest Fledgling Democracy!
I have a niche application for a tyred sack barrow. My stepdad’s Oak memorial bench is in the woods and, every spring, I cart a bucket of dilute Jeyes fluid and two buckets of fresh water. I give it a scrub, two rinses, then return the following day and give it a coat of Teak oil. I even polish the little brass plate. All ready for people to sit and take in the view for the rest of the year.
The path down to it is quite bumpy but passes some big gorse bushes. Imagine the fun if one of the gorse needles punctured a tyre!
Sound like a Viz associated product: tyres sack barrow. Isn’t there a character in the learned journal about someone with an unfeasibly large sac(k). Or unfeasibly large contents?
@fentonsteve could you not have blasted the matting with a high pressure hose* thereby not having to spend your time poking ** away with a rusty tool***
* I suggest a 44k instead of 48k cleans those hard to reach places.
** paging @moose-the-mooche
*** paging @moose-the-mooche
I tried blasting it with my hose but just made myself dirty. I’m not sure where the dirt came from as the matting still looked filthy. The vibrations from my pumping power tool give me a sore wrist after an hour or two.
In a private email, Moose says he is “frankly tired of playing the dirty-minded fool, responding with a lubricious leer to any phrase capable of being interpreted in an obscene or prurient manner. I regret now having ever created this persona; this Frankenstein’s monster, if you will. What was once a relatively harmless “gag” has developed to the point where I am incapable of posting pieces, or their attendant comments, which more truly reflect my own personality in all its complex subtlety. I am happier these days cloistered in my study, a slim volume of verse in my lap, gazing through the mullioned window across the croquet lawn to the ha-ha and reflecting not only on the transience of existence but also its innate absurdity. Sadly, working up a provocative post for the Afterword, or leaving a salty ejaculation in the comments, no longer holds an attraction for me.”
Easy fun activity for all: replace hose with nose in the above posts. Tee hee central. And nothing too blue, either, so as not to offend our little darlings.
Site is down for me right now, you must have encouraged a huge rush over there
What I’m missing at the lively online community of the Afterword is/are more threads about “pre-ordering”. And “shipping”. And “Listenin’ To Melanesian Noseflute Music And Conversation.”
Instant Sunshine did a song about that.
They get a hard pass from me.
Don’t you have a book to write so Stephen King can plagiarize it, HP?
It would help if he posted details of his audio set-up.
“Equipment profile.” Come on, that’s one of the basics.
He seems to have posted his tv setup if that helps.
That’s my room, that is. Bastard.
That subreddit has 203K members. You gotta love reddit.
Oddly enough, I’m currently on disc 3 of the new FDFMN set. I’ve saved the hottakes/outtakes/rarities disc 2 for later enjoyment. The boys have just launched into the Cold Cold Cold medley, the neighbours are likely calling the fuzz about the racket, and any thought of doing any constructive work this afternoon has vanished in a foot tapping frenzy. It’s a fab set. Guacamole, baby!
Do you not find the live set to be a tad ropey, Foxy? Gawd knows I’m no audiophile but I have bootlegs from the same year (f’rinstance the magnificent Orpheum set) that sound much better than this. The performance is fine, but is this really the best the sound boffins could do? I am disappoint.
Ooh, who’s correct? Not sure I want to fork out my hard-earned, only to find a “ropey” live set on disc 3…
Anyone up for doing a review of the set?
Over at the Hoofman forum, one reviewer calls the sound of the live disc “poor”, while another disagrees, calling it “rough”. They all seem to be “happy with it”, though, because it’s a good performance. It’s just not up to the sonic standard set by the previous expanded reissues. The actual remaster disc isn’t essential, not a dramatic difference or improvement. The Hotcakes & Outtakes disc is very enjoyable, but again seems a little less valuable than the previous outtake sets. Conclusion: you can live without it, but do you want to?
Thanks, HP.
Another key question: is there much overlap between the bonus Hotcakes disc and the 4-CD Hotcakes and Outtakes set? Or Hoy-Hoy, for that matter?
No. It’s confusing they called it that. But there is a faint smidgeon of barrel-scraping about it. Little Feat barrel-scrapings are still better than many bands’ main meals, of course.
As you say…
Thanks, HP – Hoy-Hoy! gets a lot of play round these parts, and the outtakes disc from the Hotcakes set isn’t far behind…
I thought I would take a look at the forum but got 403 Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access this resource.Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe
Do you have to pass a test regarding brickwalled remasters or some such bollocks before you’re allowed in?
You’re probably just too interesting to get in – they installed an AI gatekeeper.
That would be a first.
You get similar nonsense on other platforms. This sort of thing:
“I picked up a 51 Tele, mint condition. This baby plays well! But I swapped out the body for an 81 Squier, and the neck from StewMac. The frets were from my 92 Westone Thunder, and the tuners were lyin’ around from my last build. I swapped out the pups for Cockburner I and Cocksander II in the neck and bridge respectively. The strings are stock. I’m happy with it 👍👍👍”
“You should have seen the faces at church when they got a full burst of the Cocksander! This baby is burnin’ it up. I’m sure glad I got this.”
Blimey.
Who knew Black and Decker did such accessories?
Ian Dury.
Ah, of course. Well remembered.
It occurs to me that the line “The hope that springs eternal springs right up your behind” would make a prime AW tee shirt.
Would anyone be up for a thread about vacuum cleaners?
While the idea immediately sounds very exciting, I don’t feel I’d be able to contribute much as I don’t have any carpets. Have we done curtains?
I started this one soft furnishings, does that count?
A fascinating thread. Can’t believe I missed it at the time. So much to absorb. I see it has somewhere in the region of a thousand videos to watch. Might take me a while.
We have tiled floors chez us. And a vacuum cleaner. I’ll go into this more deeply in a dedicated thread should there be a demand. I don’t want to start a tumbleweed piece, hence this “toe in the water” to test the demand. If any.
Captain Beefheart + Aldous Huxley +Vacuum Cleaner =
Jean-Michel Basquiat?
I think a lot of your readers, especially the less lucid ones, will be curious to know whether a vacuum cleaner is employed on a tiled floor as a substitute for a wet mop or as an occasional alternative.
Vacuum first, mop later. Otherwise, you are simply moving the shoqt around while making it wet.
Having a dog intent on shedding half his bodyweight daily in hair at the moment, I plump for the sweep, vacuum and mop “triple threat”
Vacuum first, mop later, as Tigger says, but this gives only the sketchiest outline of the process. What type of vac? I have some pretty controversial things to say about this, revelations that will send shock waves through the corridors of Big Vac. But I’m sensing it’s maybe too hot a topic for this forum?
Are we talking mop and bucket or a steam mop? The public needs to know.
I think we’re rather running ahead of ourselves, Fentster. I’d like to see the mop/bucket issue get its own thread, but after we’ve dealt with vacuum cleaners.
I fear few of us have the required patience to tolerate the wait, HP. I for one am very eager to move on to Swiffer Dusters.
Do you mean Swifty Dusters, Gary?
Didn’t Swifty Dusters play tea-chest bass with The Rockin’ Vacuums skiffle group?
We have an excellent combination vacuum cleaner/mopper. She’s called Tanya and turns up once a fortnight.
@tiggerlion
Swifty Dusters? Do they not have Swiffer Duster in UK? It’s a wonderful implement for which I have nothing but the highest praise. I sweep, then Swiffer Dust then mop, is what I do.
I have so many questions – you sweep, then use this catering size powderpuff, then mop? Do you actually eat off your floor, Gar?
One naturally moults a lot in the summer, so the sweeping gets most of the hairs, the Swiffer Duster gets the residue and mopping gets the filth and the grime and other unsanitary produce. Cleanliness is, as the saying goes, next to Skegness and Swiffer Duster is like the Mayor.
Steam mop. Now we’re talking.
I have one, a Vax I think. It’s good, no sticky detergent residue on the tiles, but not great at getting into the corners.
Can we PLEASE get back on topic? This is a thread about …
Oh.
What a clean-spirited post
I’m sensing a dedicated vacuum cleaner piece isn’t getting any suction here.
Will it involve James Dyson ?
It might. It might.
Dyson vac is, apparently, rhyming slang for those little mint sweets, now available in all sorts of fancy flavours.
“Orright, mate, got any Dyson”, as the surly youth bellowed at me, at Calvi airport, as I consumed my casanu baguette. In French, clearly, but the gist was more than apparent, not least since Sir James left our once proud nation.
He’s still here. His helicopter routinely burbles overhead at Foxy Towers either on the way to or from his underground Cotswold lair.
He and his research facility are still here. His manufacturing is done outside the UK.