Month: September 2009

Hit and Miss Masters?

This is a promo video for the remastered Beatles CD’s that I grabbed from Amazon.com.

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These CD’s are sort of a stand against the grain of lossy, compressed MP3 digital audio, but they’re still limited to 16-bit/44.1 KHz CD sound. I wish there were a standard, higher quality lossless digital format for consumers.

Some fannish things that matter to me:

  • These are remasters of the original mixes (yay!), with two exceptions.
  • The stereo “HELP!” and “Rubber Soul” are George Martin’s 80’s remixes (boo!).
  • I hope the splices in “She Loves You” are smoothed over.
  • I hope the quick channel fade-out in “Day Tripper” is fixed.
  • I can almost live with the splices in “This Boy”

The first four titles were available on CD only in mono until now, because the stereo versions are said to not be true mix-downs. But that’s precisely why I want the stereo versions — they make it possible to hear exactly, in detail, how Norman Smith engineered the sessions.

I’m not happy that “HELP!” and “Rubber Soul” aren’t the original 60’s mixes. This greatly undermines the spirit of the set.

Some first impressions of individual tracks on the new Beatles CD’s are available from picky listeners who were congregated in a high-end audio showroom in the city of my birth, Evanston, Illinois.

Jury rigged

Tomorrow, I have jury duty.

I’ve been called for jury duty four times before, and I’ve served on two juries. First, a drunk driving case (guilty), and a few years later an assault and battery charge (not guilty).

At the second trial, when I was led into the courtroom to impanel the jury I was surprised to see that one of the prospective jurors was a neighbor of mine. We served on the same trial, which ran into a second day. We didn’t discuss the case with our spouses, but when we drove in together the next morning we talked about it, and nothing we heard during the remaining testimony changed our minds that the charge was bogus.

One on, not after, 909

Wednesday is the day for the big glut of Beatles stuff. Despite the recession, Amazon is sold out of both the remastered stereo and limited edition mono CD sets.

You might think I ordered both sets before they were gone, but I didn’t. Best Buy has a good price for the stereo set, and the ad says not all stores will have the mono set.

Beatles Best Buy ad

My birthday is one after 909, but if I have to settle for the new slippers I asked for, that’s fine too.

Moore is less

Two articles that popped up today present a very instructive contrast. First, rabble rouser Michael Moore says, “Capitalism is evil.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5850PQ20090906

Second, investment banks are contemplating turning life insurance policies into marketable bonds, the way they did mortgages, so I can see why Moore feels the way he does.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/06insurance.html

But I disagree completely, entirely and totally with Michael Moore. For one thing, no “system” is evil. The correct statement would be, “Capitalists are evil.” The question is, can evil people take better advantage of Capitalism than other systems of economics? No, absolutely not. Not only that, the other systems don’t provide the opportunities for regular people that Capitalism does. Capitalism is by far the best way to lift people up. Michael Moore, the son of an auto worker, is one example of that.

Socialism is a utopian concept that can never exist in reality as envisioned, as is the wacked-out fantasy world of Ayn Rand. Corruption and inequality exist in every economy, and Moore’s wrong about regulation — it CAN work. Much of what went wrong in the past few years can be blamed squarely on the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. If it were reinstated, investment banks wouldn’t be salivating over life insurance policies.

I agreed with Moore when he knocked GM twenty years ago, and I actually admired him for slamming the Bush administration on Iraq. His gun movie was less compelling, and I haven’t seen “Sicko,” but to denounce Capitalism outright is wrong, and considering the money he’s made, it’s a hypocritical position for Moore to take.

Sunday School with Davey and Goliath

If you’re of a certain (older) age, and American, you remember “Davey and Goliath.” It must have been one of the primary inspirations for “Calvin and Hobbes,” but I don’t know if Bill Watterson has ever acknowledged that.

“Davey and Goliath” really stuck with me as a kid. Later, I was thinking about the Protestant denomination that produced the series when, as a teenager, I walked into a Lutheran Church by myself one Sunday morning.

There are, of course, parodies of “Davey and Goliath,” but I’m uncomfortable with them, because I feel that although the cartoons are now dated, in their day they were sincere, positive and worthwhile. The “Davey and Goliath” Mountain Dew commercial is clever, and it does nothing to undermine the lessons or spirit of the series. Something that’s emphasized repeatedly, and still resonates with me, is that everybody has choices in life, and people have to take responsibility for themselves.

Here is one of my favorite episodes. Animator Art Clokey did some really psychedelic stuff in “Gumby and Pokey,” and “Davey and Goliath” is toned down by comparison, but there’s a brief, slightly surreal dream sequence in “The Winner.” The importance of a lowly cotter pin is something I’ve always remembered. “For want of a nail…”

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Songs for birds and lobsters

Happy 3rd anniversary to my blog!

Here it is, forty years gone by since “Abbey Road” was released. I listened to that record start-to-end so many times I have no idea how many times it was, although it’s been quite a few years since I’ve done that. In ’79, when I bought a high quality Parlophone pressing of “Abbey Road,” it struck me how different it sounded from every previous Beatles recording. It was so smooth it was almost antiseptic. According to Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, the difference was the introduction of a solid state console, replacing the old tubed REDD board.

Ten years after “Abbey Road” the music scene had changed a lot, thanks to the anti-Disco movement that was equal parts of angry anarchy and silly fun. Here are some examples of what I was listening to, going into and out of 1979.

From the quirky….

….to the quirkiest…

Lene Lovich Bird song (clip 1979)
Uploaded by libelule64 – Explore more music videos.
…and from the hard….

…to the hardest.
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