Music – Page 164 – Prattling Before the Pratfall

Benefiting Mr. Kite again

How far can a Beatles obsession take a fan in expressing his appreciation for the creativity of the Fabsters? In the hands of world-class craftsmen, very far.

Soundclouds!

Brian Sibley, distinguished Man of Letters and friend of the blog, interviewing Ray Bradbury.

Lia Pamina, the sweetest of Spaniards, and likewise a friend of the blog, has a delightful song that’s been remixed by her talented producer, Robbie Leff.

And here’s a catchy tune I caught on BBC Radio 2.

I am annoyed that Logitech has discontinued its superb Squeezebox Touch music player. I’d be even more annoyed if I didn’t own one. Playing on the Touch right now is, for me, the ultimate expression of audio technology as it presently exists — The complete Beatles on an Apple USB flash drive. The customer reviews on Amazon are all over the place, and I am very pleased to say you can ignore all of them that aren’t five stars. (No, I didn’t have a problem with the stem, as others have reported. The drive is secured magnetically, and maybe that’s given some people trouble.)

This thing is worth every penny, and maybe I’m just giddy because I applied all of my Amex Rewards Points to the purchase and got it for only $18, as a birthday present to myself, but the sound quality is what it is, and it’s absolutely outstanding. I’ve never been carried away with the sound of most — and I mean 75% or more — Compact Discs. I have never thought that digital audio was the problem, but that 16 bits aren’t enough. The dynamic range of CD is great, but so is the contrast ratio between solid white and solid black. The fine shades of gray — the nuances — often seem to be missing. Cymbals, for example, lack the shimmer they should have. Acoustic guitars don’t quite convey the feeling of the strings vibrating. Etc.

Despite my advancing age, my ears still seem to be good up to 12 kHz, maybe even 14 kHz, and listening to the Beatles this way is really something. With CD’s, when music gets loud, with a lot of instruments and vocals, I think everything sort of collapses into a flat-sounding mess, and I lose interest. The Beatles collection, copied from the original 24-bit digital masters, and compressed in the lossless FLAC format, doesn’t do that. Every little thing can be discerned distinctly and easily.

For sure, this is a specialty item for the very few with a lot of interest and the right setup, but at last there’s something better for listening to the Fab Four than the Mobile Fidelity LP’s from 30 years ago (I have a few titles, but not the box set). Enough talk. I’m going back to listening!

Titanic Folk-Rock

Bob Dylan’s next record is going to have a long song about the sinking of the Titanic, 100 years ago. Dylan says,

“People are going to say: Well, it’s not very truthful. But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth.”

That being the case, Dylan’s own take on the Titanic is fair game, and comic Tim Heidecker has recorded a speculative prediction of Bob’s as-yet-unheard song.

The thing is, Dylan is more than 40 years late, because the first and best extended fictional telling of the tale of the Titanic belongs to Jamie Brockett, who used an old Leadbelly song as a springboard. Brockett called the ship the USS for United States Ship, and not RMS for Royal Mail Ship, but hey man, it was 1969.