Category: Beatles

A bad day to get a good computer

Most of yesterday was not good. I fell very ill, very fast in the morning, and you don’t want the details. By the time my new computer was delivered, about 4:30 in the afternoon, I was sufficiently recovered to try getting it working, assuming it didn’t give me any trouble; and, thankfully, it didn’t. I installed the cards taken from the old computer, started Windows 7 Professional, it found drivers for the cards, and everything worked. After that, only 117 security updates were needed to make the system ready. I’ll install Service Pack 1 when it’s released to the public on the 22nd.

My only complaint about the new system — an Acer Veriton M275-UD7600W — is that the CPU is an Intel E7600, which is a dual-core processor. I noticed the difference in performance when testing multi-threaded MP4 encoding with WinFF. The quad-core Q6600 on the now-dead Dell Inspiron could process over 140 frames per second. The E7600 managed only 80 fps.

But the good news is, I had no trouble capturing video to run the test. Before getting the system I had read about complaints that Windows Live Movie Maker doesn’t have a capture option. Not true, at least with my video capture board. As seen in the screen shot, it’s listed as a webcam. In fact, Windows Live Movie Maker works much better than XP Movie Maker, which sometimes had audio/video sync problems and frequently locked up on me. Here’s the test video I caught in a single take.

[media id=231 width=512 height=408]

British brass band themes

“Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records” has some real surprises on it, from the never-released “King of Fuh” (can you say Fuh King?) to this 1968 gem by Paul McCartney, the theme song to a TV show called “Thingumybob”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlV6A_7ZSV0

The Black Dyke Mills Band dates back to 1855, long before John Philip Souza, who wrote the “Liberty Bell March”, that is best known as the theme for “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yfm2HSoD50

Years later, Julian Nott wrote the delightful brass band theme for Nick Park’s wonderful “Wallace & Gromit” series.

Prue Bury in Astrid’s new book

I have Astrid Kirchherr – a retrospective, a new book that’s a companion to Astrid’s exhibit at the Victoria Gallery and Museum in Liverpool, that runs through the end of January. I am very pleased to see that the book includes a photo with my dear friend, Prudence Bury.

Lon Van Eaton and Friends

I’m hoping Santa will bring me the new Best of Apple Records compilation. It includes ‘Sweet Music’, a track from ‘Brother’, Lon and Derrek Van Eaton’s album on Apple that certainly deserves a CD release. The credits for ‘Brother’ include many familiar names — George Harrison, Klaus Voormann, Ringo Starr, Jim Gordon (drums), Phil McDonald (engineer), and Clive Arrowsmith (photos).

Tonight, Lon Van Eaton will be appearing in his home state of New Jersey, at The Record Collector.

It’s nice to see that Apple Records has added a web page about Lon and Derrek.

Lon & Derek Van Eaton

Lon and Derrek van Eaton were one of the last acts signed to Apple Records and the first to record at the newly built Apple Studios. The brothers had previously been in a band called Jacobs Creek, who issued one self-titled US album on Columbia Records in 1969.

After that band split up, Lon and Derrek made a demo of ‘Sweet Music’, which they sent to Apple in New York. John Lennon heard it and was impressed. George liked it too, and it was George who called the van Eatons to ask if they would like to record for Apple.

A couple of quibbles. They’re inconsistent about the spelling of “Derek” vs. “Derrek,” and ‘Sweet Music’ is cited as the demo that was sent to Apple’s New York office. Apple’s original promotion for Lon and Derrek says they submitted a home recording, and based on the liner notes for ‘Brother’, the song would have been ‘Warm Woman’. Here’s that recording.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2010/DEC/WarmWoman.mp3|titles=Warm Woman|artists=Lon and Derrek Van Eaton]