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Jun. 22nd, 2009 @ 08:46 pm Things that will never happen to me
Current Music: Marillion - Fantastic Place | Powered by Last.fm
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I've always dreamed about finding an amazing Hammond Organ at a garage sale, for a discount price, and fixing it up nice and good.

But now, that dream is cast aside for the dream of finding a Hammond Novachord.

I saw this and thought, hey, it'd be cool to do that. But then I realized this guy is a professional analog synth restorer and modder, and it's likely way out of my league. Which means there's no way you could afford a restored one. And used ones, well it sounds like that after 70 years the electrolytic capacitors leak PCBs all over the place and basically make the things toxic as well as unplayable (whereas an old Hammond Organ usually just needs a good cleaning and lubrication and the tonewheels will still work.)

But still, wow. The thing sounds cool. And it'd look great in the living room.
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Jul. 29th, 2008 @ 05:45 pm Happy birthday, Geddy Lee!
Current Mood: musical
Current Music: Rush - "Red Sector A"
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I just happened to notice while reading the paper this morning that it's Geddy Lee's 55th birthday today. In his honor, I have listened to nothing but Rush all day. Check out my last.fm profile to see. I put the entire collection on shuffle play, so it's a good mix of stuff, and several songs I hadn't heard in a long time ("Superconductor"? Kind of silly, but a nice groove.)

I think I shall do this for all my favorite musician birthdays. Joe Jackson is August 11th, Alex Lifeson is the 27th, and Neil Peart is September 12th. Cool.
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 07:16 pm Father's Day Concerts
Current Location: home
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( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
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May. 18th, 2008 @ 03:54 pm New music
Current Music: Wish I'd Known All Along -- Asia
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I've picked up some new music recently.
( Read more... )
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Jan. 1st, 2008 @ 07:49 pm 2007: My favorite albums
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I bought quite a bit of music this year--not all of it new. I will try and write up some of my favorites from this year. These will not be your favorites. Some will be things that showed up on everyone's favorite lists.


The Shins - Wincing The Night Away - I was surprised by exactly how much I enjoyed this album. I know it's a critical favorite but I like it anyway.

Dungen - Tio Bitar - The best Swedish psychedelic-prog-pop I purchased this year.

Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet - they just keep getting better and better. 18 minute long songs are good.

Suzanne Vega - Beauty & Crime - A great collection of songs, brilliantly performed. And oh, that voice.

Marillion - Somewhere Else - Honestly, a mediocre Marillion album, but that still makes it one of the year's best in my book. The title track alone nearly carries the whole thing.

Fish - 13th Star - Fish, on the other hand, has probably made the best solo album of his career. Full of emotion, thematically tight while still stylistically varied, and yet one of the heaviest albums he's ever done. Splitting up with his fiance was the best thing that could have happened to him artistically.

Maria McKee - Late December - A sprawling, theatrical pop/rock masterpiece. And she can really sing as well.

Dolores O'Riordan - Are You Listening? - The former lead singer of the Cranberries with upbeat prog-pop. No, really. I liked the Cranberries well enough but this is better (although apparently closer to the later Cranberries albums which I do not have).

Rush - Snakes and Arrows - It's totally not fair that a band who's been around so long can sound so new and fresh. After the angry wall of distortion that was Vapor Trails this is a complex, melodic, and thoughtful set of songs. And made for a great tour.


Honorable mentions (since they came out this year, but are rerelases of old albums): The Warren Zevon albums Excitable Boy, Stand In The Fire and The Envoy, and the Genesis 1976-1982 box set.
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Oct. 18th, 2007 @ 08:42 pm The more I think about this the funnier it gets
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Progressive-Rock Fans Are Terrible Trash-Talkers.

Some of you will not appreciate this. Some of you will all too much.
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Jul. 9th, 2007 @ 12:16 am Rush!
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Just got back from seeing Rush at the PNC Bank Arts Center. What a great show. 3 hours of music, lots of the new album and many old tracks I hadn't heard before (Here's a link to the setlist if you're interested. They did the substitution mentioned on 7/4 tonight as well.)

I've only seen Rush 3 times but this was probably the best one. They're just so damn good. They don't really make any mistakes. At least playing, Geddy sometimes has some trouble with the high notes, but he was actually quite good tonight.

Even [info]kingfox would have liked the South Park bit.

And at least this time I didn't have aging frat boys screaming, but I did have two guys in front of me, in different rows, insisting on air drumming by holding up their right arms all night. It was almost like conducting, actually. I have 3 problems with this: 1) I can't see, 2) I think the band knows how to play stuff and don't need your help and 3) Everybody else knows how the song goes too, bucko, because we're all a bunch of middle-aged men who still think we're in high school and that liking Rush somehow makes us cool, and we've memorized every passage, drum fill, and note. So thanks for playing but keep the rythmic arm movements where we can't see them.

So other than that the fans were downright friendly. People were letting people in leaving the parking lot. That never happens to me.
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Jun. 20th, 2007 @ 09:28 pm Lots of new music
Current Music: Oddly, nothing right now.
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I've bought a lot of CDs in the past 2 months. A lot of bands I like have come out with new music, and I'm filling in some gaps in my collection. You can see what I've gotten recently at the blog that auto-updates every time I rip a CD into my Kuro Box for playback in SlimServer, and I've now hooked up my SlimServer with SlimScrobbler so you can see what I'm actually listening to on last.fm which is incredibly cool, has changed my life, and made me listen to a whole lot more new music. In fact, you all should friend me on last.fm, or get accounts, so we can share music tastes.

If I was good I'd write really long reviews of all of it like I did for the new Marillion but I'm lazy.

( So I'll cut it for you. )
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Mar. 30th, 2007 @ 08:47 pm Zevon Remasters
Current Music: "Let Nothing Come Between You" by Warren Zevon
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March 27th saw the release of the Warren Zevon albums Excitable Boy, Stand In The Fire, and The Envoy. The latter two have never been on CD before, and all three have bonus tracks.

These are all great albums and make you miss Warren even more. In some ways they feel new even though they're over 25 years old. SITF has been out of print for so long I have never heard it (and never did pick it up on vinyl when I've seen it at old record stores) and is a rocking live album.

I had read somewhere that Warren's greatest lament was that he really didn't have much money to leave his children and grandchildren, his rock star life not leading to incredible riches. He told his kids to use his music and his recording studio for their benefit.
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Feb. 3rd, 2007 @ 12:26 pm Feel the power of the New Prog
Current Location: home
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I figure, hey, I am proud to admit I like prog rock. I'm a white, nerdy American guy. It's my music. The problem with prog, is that despite the name "progressive", most of it was made in the 70s, and new bands making music in that style aren't really "progressive", they're stagnant. Now sure, some of it can be good music, but it's nostalgia, not progression.

But, wait, now there's New Prog. As far as I can tell, New Prog is prog rock made by people in their 20s who supposedly grew up listening not only to Old Prog, but the Sex Pistols and 80s music. Not to be confused with neo-prog which is the prog that people made back in the 80s (and who Marillion are likely the best embodiment of, and who ironically are an influence to New Prog bands) and was considered more derivative of classic prog with shorter songs and pop hooks. New Prog is trendy, it's hip, and it's something that all the cool kids are now allowed to listen to.

( Now for how I justify my musical tastes )
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Jan. 17th, 2007 @ 08:11 pm Baltimore!
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I'm in Baltimore for the Educause Mid-Atlantic Regional conference, for which I am on the program committee. So far, so good. Talked to [info]amy_pearlman for a bit, and saw some good sessions. The keynote was quite good, actually. Went out for sushi with a guy from Rutgers and one from Penn, and in a few minutes go out with [info]baltomick to say hi and catch up.

Tomorrow's my busy day--program committee breakfast, convening a session, and running a lunchtime roundtable. Then out to dinner with people--supposed to help along the first timers.

I got to listen to some of my new music on the way down. I'll write more later.

The hotel room has an LCD TV and has a few HD channels too. Interesting stuff. They have HD channels right next to the SD channels but the SD channels are stretched so it's hard to do a direct comparison, and you can't get into the setup menu on the TV to fix it. But it does look good, even though I'm pretty sure it's not a 1080p TV ;-).
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Jan. 1st, 2007 @ 08:31 pm Best of 2006
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: content
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This is easy--I really didn't consume nearly as much media this year as I often have. I bought very few CDs, relatively speaking, and many of those were older albums to fill out my collection or get into new bands. Or were 2005 discs that I got around to getting late. I seem to have missed the popular new TV shows ("Heroes" in particular.) I saw exactly 2 movies in the movie theater this year. I can't remember all the new books I read (I check them out of the library.)

So, here's some random thoughts of my best of 2006:

Best New album: At War with the Mystics" by The Flaming Lips. I just got into the Lips this year, and boy have I been missing out. I'll gradually fill in the rest of my collection over the next few months. This is a great album full of all the things I like about music--great melodies, instrumentation, sci-fi themes, impenetrable lyrics, and neat production. And they're from Oklahoma City to boot. Honorable mention: "The Dark Third" by Pure Reason Revolution--if I hadn't just gotten this as a Christmas present it might have been my favorite. It's great proggy post-rock with some awesome vocal harmonies and a bit of a metal edge of all things. I'll talk about it more.

Best New Movie: Casino Royale. Okay, it was this or "Snakes on a Plane". I loved "Snakes" but Casino Royale was a darn good movie, and about the best Bond flick I've seen. I'd give an honorable mention to "Cars" but I didn't see it in the theatre.

Best New TV Show: 30 Rock. The pilot was a bit scattered, and I thought it was lame that they changed out Rachel Dratch for Jane Krakowski, but it's really caught its stride. If Alec Baldwin doesn't win the best comedy actor Emmy there's no justice in this world. Tracy Morgan is also far funnier than he ever was on SNL. Honorable Mention: The Class--no one's watching it, but under it's mindless ensemble comedy exterior is a hard, cold center of bitterness, cruelty, adultery, and suicidal thoughts that give it an edge that it's not at all getting credit for, probably because people can't get over the fact that John Ritter's kid is in it.

Best book: what the heck, I'll say Crashing the Gate by Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, if only for the fact that most of what they suggested was done, and most of what they wanted to have happen did. And that's a good thing.

Comment if you like.
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