Category: Music

Got Dem Old Audio Blues

When the Robert Johnson CD set came out in 1990 I bought it immediately for myself, but then promptly gave the set to my best buddy. Why? Because the sound was awful, and I knew it wouldn’t matter to him as much as it did to me.

I wasn’t expecting miracles from those old records, but it was apparent to me that the engineers did an unforgivably lousy job. The proof is heard in the remastered 2011 Centennial Collection, and it takes only a few seconds to hear the difference.

Marvellous Moment

A poem…

To His Coy Mistress

By Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

A song…

Jackson, Drink Your Beer

The “critical mass” achieved by television viewership during the mid-50’s led to the transformation of radio from what it was to the hit record format for kids it became. That turned Rock and Roll into a force that changed the world. One of my pet peeves is the assertion that RnR is nothing more than Rhythm and Blues. It isn’t, because by its very definition Rock and Roll is a combination of White and Black influences. You want an example of purely Black music from that time? Here’s an awesome 1955 “race record” (as R&B had previously been called) that deserves far more views than the sub-200 it has at the moment!