Late Night Walk.

I was just out for my late night walk and had a bit of a surprise. I heard gulls at one point along the way. I've heard other birds flying at night, such as geese, but to the best of my knowledge I haven't heard gulls before. It would be interesting to know how they navigate at night. I also picked 30 cents worth of empty bottles for my recycling pile that were sitting in the street. Hopefully I'll have the energy to go out for another late night walk tomorrow, as I can use the exercise.

Two New Links.

In case anyone is interested I've added a couple of new links to the link list, both blogs. First is The Daily Jazz, which as you might guess is a jazz related blog. Second we have Matrixsynth, a blog for all the synth freaks passing through.

Think Link.

Not much to say about this one but read it. From Perfect Sound Forever an interesting profile/biography piece on Link Wray.

10,000th Hit.

Yep, just a bit ago the hit counter registered its 10,000 hit. Thanks to everyone who has visited since May of 2004. Wow, it will be 2 years of doing this next month. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get to 20,000.

Not On The Other Team.

Today I received another one of those kind of search engine hits that make me shake my head. The query was "nikki wong from 6teen is a lesbian." Nikki is one of the characters on Teletoon's series 6TEEN, the charming young lady in the picture at left. I can only wonder at why the searcher used that phrase. If they've seen much of the series they'd know that Nikki is not portrayed as a lesbian. Even if we ignore the fact she dates Jonesy, one of the other main characters, for several episodes, we know she has a crush on a member of Dawgtoy, a fictitious boy band. So I find myself wondering if this person figured Nikki might be a lesbian because of how she dresses. Oh yeah, wearing cargo pants and having dyed hair are both well known signs of lesbianism. Well, I suppose in someone's world they are.

If someone had asked something along the lines of "jonesy from 6teen is gay" I would have found that somewhat more convincing given that the show has actually had a couple of bits of what could be seen as gay subtext between Jonesy and Jude, another one of the main characters. Given what Teletoon allows the show to get away with I would imagine if the writers and producers wanted one of the main characters to be openly gay or lesbian they would have written him or her as such already.

Time Travel Healing.

Chiropractic is a controversial discipline, especially when chiropractors hew to the early ideas of the practice that spinal manipulation can cure ailments unrelated to the skeletal and muscular system. But one Ohio chiropractor has become too outre even for the Ohio State Chiropractic Board, because he claims to heal his patients remotely by "reaching back in time" to when the injury first occured. You don't even have to see James Burda, just send him your money and he'll heal you at a cost of 60 bucks a session. The Board accuses Burda of being mentally ill. Hmm, being able to do your work without having to leave your home or office sounds pretty rational to me. Nonetheless I think I'll stick with actual hands on treatments of any ailments I might suffer from

(This one comes via Respectful Insolence.)

Une Message "Scam" en Francais.

Like most folks I get the occasional scam e-mail, offering me all sorts of money if I help out some poor soul who just wants to get their cash, or more often some dead person's cash, out of some foreign land. But the one I received today was a first. It was in French. Oddly enough the person claimed to be from Sierra Leone, a country whose official language is English. Come to think of it its surprising I haven't received more non-English scam letters. After all they just randomly send them out, with no regard of where the potential mark is located.

Naked City on YouTube.

Yeah, another YouTube post, this time John Zorn's Naked City from 1990. I've got the first Naked City album, but don't recognise the tune here and its not named.

Now, if you'll excuse me, its off to listen to The Spotlight Kid by Captain Beefheart, which I literally haven't listened to in years. My copy is a twofer with Clear Spot, no doubt from some long ago budget line of CDs on Reprise.

Mike Oldfield on YouTube

Yep, you guessed it. I have nothing much to say tonight, so its time for another YouTube post. First of all we have the video for "Shadow On The Wall" with Roger Chapman on vocals. I get the impression Oldfield spent more time deciding what guitars to bring along to the video shoot than on the rather generic video itself, as he dragged along an early '60s Strat, an Ovation Adamas acoustic, his '57 Gibson Les Paul TV, early '60s Gibson SG Junior and what looks to be a Roland G808 bass which was used with the Roland GR33B bass guitar synth. Next up is the video for "Five Miles Out," the title cut of the album of the same name. The song is based on a rather harrowing encounter Oldfield had with bad weather while flying his Beechcraft 18.

More Dolby.

Following up my recent Thomas Dolby post I've just found out he has a blog. You can see it here. Its interesting to read about his current gear, especially his comment about buying a Fairlight CMI in '82 for 120 grand which did a lot less than what he's got now, and I bet it cost 20 times as much.

Lost and Not Found.

This afternoon I was trying to find a couple of old webpages so I could read some text files on them. Despite being fairly good at hunting down webpages I couldn't find them, so presumably they've been deleted. Unfortunately there's as yet no real way to get access to defunct pages when you don't know the URLs. There is the Internet Archive, which offers the Wayback Machine, but to access a webpage you need to know its URL. They don't offer a text search engine as yet, assuming its even possible. Nor is the setup perfect, as much of a webpage's content won't be displayed in many cases, especially for older pages. Still, its better than nothing.

On the other hand it sometimes surprises me the stuff that has stayed online despite its age. Last month marked my tenth year online. I recently found a page that I first looked at fairly early after I got online. It probably hasn't been updated in close to 10 years, but its still on a server someplace. I think it was on an university server, so you'd think it would have been deleted long ago.

My initial activities online were via the Saskatoon Freenet, which I still use for my e-mail. It was a text only service, which made for some rather interesting browsing if you wanted to look at any graphics on a website. To do so you literally had to download them to your computer, and this was using a 56K or whatever modem I had on the computer at the time over phone lines. I spent a lot of time sitting in front of my computer watching a picture slowly download, then looking on my harddrive to see what I'd actually grabbed. Still, Internet access was Internet access, and the size and amount of data on a typical website at the time was a fraction of what many sites these days probably waste just on cutesy Flash animations and so on.

Penn and Teller Trivialities.

PZ Myers posted a link to Penn and Teller debunking the Bible and it generated quite a bit of talk about the duo. It also reminded me of one of the odder pop culture Penn and Teller references I've seen, which was in an episode of the cartoon show Braceface. In the episode "Ms. Spitz Goes To Warsh and Stone" the title character takes on a cosmetics company that tests products on animals. Interestingly the company heads Mr. Warsh and Mr. Stone look very much like Penn and Teller, and I assume this was very deliberate. The duo have been harshly critical of the animal rights movement, and Braceface often took a pro-animal rights stance reflecting the view of series star and exec producer Alicia Silverstone.

Personally I wonder about Penn. He named his daughter Moxie CrimeFighter. Moxie is bad enough, but the Crimefighter part is worse. And people complain about Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin naming their daughter Apple.

One For the Bassists.

I've made a number of guitar related posts, but have unfortunately neglected the bassists who might pass through. Its time to rectify that situation. However I should warn you that this page is not for the humour impaired. Non-musicians may find this of some amusement as well.

You Wouldn't Name Him That.

Listening to a piece on CBC Radio One's The Current about Michael Baigent's new book The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Coverup in History got me thinking about the name Jesus itself. Specifically I found myself wondering why its a common male name amongst Spanish speaking peoples, but not English speakers. An English speaking person naming their son Jesus would likely not go over well with most other English speakers whether they are religious or not. Yet other Biblical names don't have that problem. Given some of the odd names people in English North America give their kids these days its kind of surprising we don't seem to have them choosing Jesus.

The Blue Box and the Brown Guitar

There have been at least a couple of entries on this blog that have mentioned the Roland GR300 guitar synthesizer system, much loved by Pat Metheny. Tonight I stumbled across an interesting page of various bits of GR300 miscellany. So if you're a guitar geek who likes all those '80s King Crimson, Police, and other releases full of GR300 goodness check it out. Personally I'd love to have one, but if I had the money I'd be leery of buying one, since we're talking about a 25 year old piece of equipment that used some pretty unique bits and bobs, and was made in relatively limited numbers. The cabling used in both the GR300 and its associated guitars is apparently pretty fragile.

Gene Pitney, RIP.

It has not been a good few months for musicians. To the list of those who have died recently you can add singer Gene Pitney, who has died at 65 while on tour in Wales. Pitney was known both as a performer of such songs as "Town Without Pity" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and as a songwriter of such songs as Ricky Nelson's hit "Hello, Mary Lou."

Where Are You, Thomas?

Seeing this video on YouTube served to remind me that there was more to Thomas Dolby than "She Blinded Me with Science." So I decided to go see if I could find a copy of The Golden Age of Wireless. Not only have I not found one so far, but most of the stores I visited don't even have a Dolby section. A check at Amazon.ca seems to indicate that its not available domestically, but an import(US market?) version is available. I guess I may have to order it from them at some point. This really surprises me given how big of a hit "Science" was. Its probably another album that's due for a fancy reissue.

I wonder if the title of the album was intended as a tip of the hat to the Buggles and their album The Age of Plastic and its hit "Video Killed the Radio Star." Before becoming a solo artist Dolby was a member of the group The Camera Club alongside Bruce Woolley, who was an early Buggle.

No Gym Membership For Me.

On Saturday morning I weighed myself for the first time in a while, and its obvious I need to lose some weight. If there is any month in which I'm likely to do so its this one. With spring weather here I can do more walking than I had been. On top of that is all the snow I've been shovelling the past few days. Yes, its spring and the weather is above freezing during the daytime. But when your front lawn is only partially exposed to the Sun and you have large piles of snow on it you need to shovel it where it will melt or you'll still have stuff on it weeks from now. Weirdo that I am I like dumping snow into the street and seeing it melt as I work away. Of course the folks who couldn't be bothered to shovel their walks during the winter aren't doing much with the remaining snow on their properties either.

Jackie McLean, Don Alias, RIP

From the blog Song With Orange I just found out that jazz saxophonist Jackie McLean has died at age 73. McLean appeared on numerous albums as both a sideman and as a leader over a more than 50 year career, including stints with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Charles Mingus. From the same blog I've also learned that percussionist Don Alias has died. Although he released no albums under his own name Alias appeared on over 200 recordings ranging from jazz pianist Chick Corea to James Taylor.

More From YouTube

Here's a couple more from the YouTube video service. First is the promo vid for Sandii and the Sunsetz "Sticky Music," with Haruomi Hosono from Yellow Magic Orchestra introing. At least in this vid you get to see Sunsetz drummer Hideo Inoura, unlike the vid to "Battery" I previously posted. Its also interesting that Keni Inoue and Makoto Kubota are both playing Tokai Talbo guitars, an unusual design with an aluminum body.

Second is the vid for Mathew Sweet's "Girlfriend," featuring some typically off kilter soloing from the late great Robert Quine. It looks to be Sweet himself miming the solo in the video. I would chatise him for that, but its likely Quine didn't want to appear in the video anyways. The animated footage is from the Japanese sci fi piece Space Adventurer Cobra. When I saw the film a number of years ago I really didn't find it that great. The video makes it look far more interesting than it actually is.