What lamebrain at AT&T decided to announce the Cingular name will be retired the very same week that Apple has introduced the iPhone, which is being promoted with the Cingular logo?
It’s the AT&T brand that should be retired. “Cingular” is one of those mushy, meaningless words, like “Camry”, but how descriptive is “American Telephone and Telegraph”?
See my previous item about the book Recording the Beatles. The second printing isn’t out yet, but the bonus materials are here!
Dennis, what are you waiting for?? Do you think it will show up on remainder at Barnes & Noble? 😉 (That’s an inside joke.)
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Way back in this blog’s dark ages of embedded video, I posted a brief clip from an Animé series called Last Exile.
For a long time we’ve been meaning to post the opening and closing to the show. And thanks to Santa having given Eric a Last Exile box set for Christmas, here they are.
I stopped paying attention to Bush’s speech about his latest plans for Iraq after he said this, because it’s the only part that matters.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/BushSpeech.mp3]Going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents? Don’t think so. There’s going to be a clamp-down. The residents of Baghdad are already terrified to leave their homes, and now they’ll be terrified in their homes. A lot of civilians are going to get killed.
As I predicted, there will be no change in Iraq, except for escalation. Why is this being called a change in policy? It’s a change in military strategy.
We’ve had 160,000 troops there before, with the difference this time being they’ll concentrate on Baghdad. But weren’t there two all-out battles to secure Fallujah? How successful were those, and will the outcome in Baghdad will be any different?
Perhaps you’ve heard about the recent Beatles CD, Love. It’s a wild remix — a mash-up, if you will — of later Beatles recordings. The song “Help!” is in there, as is some of the Revolver album, but mostly it was taken from “Sgt. Pepper” to “Abbey Road.”
My buddy Dennis gave me a copy of Love for Christmas and, much to my surprise, I really like it! Except for the art, which is total rubbish as the British would say. If nothing else the sound is stunning, and highlights how badly the Beatles’ catalog needs to be remastered.
NPR has given “Love” lots of coverage, including a frank interview with Sir George Martin that’s at this link. Although I can’t stand NPR’s Bob Boilen imitating Scott Simon’s annoying laugh, I agree 100% with his comments about the release. Boilen’s 30-minute interview with George Martin’s son Giles Martin can be heard here. I’ve extracted three minutes of the interview and put them on the audio player. Martin discusses “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/BeatlesLove.mp3]
As familiar as the stereo mix of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band is, the fact is the Beatles had nothing to do with it! Their input went exclusively into the monaural mix. EMI recording engineer John Lush, who assisted Geoff Emerick on the stereo mix, says “The only real version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band is the mono version. George Martin, Geoff and I did the stereo in a few days, just the three of us, without a Beatle in sight.” (Source: The Beatles Recording Sessions, by Mark Lewisohn)
Here’s “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” from the original 1967 mono LP release of Sgt. Pepper, purchased by my sister Leslie the week, if not the day, of its release. Don’t expect sonic excellence — American Beatles records had notoriously poor sound quality — but do expect the song to not be just the stereo version made mono.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/Kite.mp3]Edit: That old record sounds so bad I equalized it to give it some life.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/KiteEqualized.mp3]