#early Supertramp

[northwestofinsanity]

Rick Davies and Richard Palmer-James in the very early debut era of Supertramp

[haveyouheardthisband]

What are some of the mods favorite artists?

Rottel: estradasphere, king gizzard, queens of the stone age, t+pazolite, tub ring(mostly), anything with carla kihlstedt or mike patton

Char: king gizzard, mild high club, portugal. the man, cake, herbie hancock, the white stripes, david bowie, supertramp, funkadelic

Eddie: my chemical romance, will wood, ghost, the paper chase, creature feature, leathermouth, jhariah, muse, early set it off, shinedown, nine inch nails, and i’ve recently been getting into hozier, the sisters of mercy, and bauhaus

[northwestofinsanity]

They all look so painfully shy here!

Supertramp in an ad for Dutch TV

[chronicdisasterwrites]

happiness looks good on you

pairing: toji fushiguro x reader (modern au)

genre + warnings: - FLUFF !! kinda nsfw? nothing explicit, but nsfw acts were mentioned and hinted at, some kissing and just Toji being literal sex on legs, basically gn! only reader is shorter than Toji.

word count: 962

summary: morning after with Toji ;) listen to t.swift’s “sweet nothing” for the ultimate experience.

enjoyyyy

It's warm. And bright. And so soft.

You slowly open your eyes, blinking rapidly to adjust your dozy eyes to the luminous rays flooding the room through the flowing translucent curtains. Cream-colored linen curtains flow with the soft breeze entering through the slightly ajar windows, creating shadows as they obstruct the light from the early morning sun. Your mouth is dry and your limbs tired. Memories of the previous night bring an unconscious smile to your face as you look around the empty room. Sitting up, you scratch your head, stretch like a cat and smell the sweet aroma of coffee, and hear the crisp sizzling of what you assume could be eggs. Falling back down on the bed, you wonder whether this is all a dream. But then you hear light humming coming from the kitchen, and the realization that this is real and not a dream is somehow overwhelming. The man you love singing a song you love, as he makes breakfast, hopefully fully naked save for the apron you bought him for his birthday last year, with you waking up wrapped in his bed sheets, your clothes in his drawers and strewn all over the floor, and pictures of your love on his fridge, his bedside table, his phone. 

Dragging your body upright, your feet hit the cold ground as the tepid breeze causes little prickles all across your exposed skin. Picking up his normal-sized (yet oversized for you) Supertramp t-shirt you wear it, breathing in the musky scent of his deodorant and shampoo, with the lingering scent of cigarettes and aftershave. Making your way to the bathroom, your eyes scan your face in the mirror. Disheveled hair, little love bites scattered all over your neck and collarbones, a rising blush on the apples of your cheeks as you think back on last night's shenanigans. Memories of touches flood back as you trace the marks on your body, remnants of kisses and whispers in the night. The feeling of his skin on yours, the coolness of his teeth on your pulse, the soft brush of his wispy hair on your forehead, then chest and navel. The feeling of his lips on yours as he holds your heart in the palm of his calloused hands. It all comes rushing back to you, like a flash wave rolling through your brain. Brushing your teeth and washing your face, you follow the humming to find its source.

Walking out from the bedroom you pad along barefoot to the kitchen and find him moving around, grabbing ingredients, chopping coriander leaves and flicking them in the frying pan, checking the waffles in the waffle iron, still humming that song. It's so domestic, you think. There's so much love crammed between these walls. So much love in your heart you think it might just explode. He is wearing that apron, albeit not fully naked, bare back on display and Calvin Klein boxers just below the little bow of the apron tied behind him. You smile as you walk close enough to wrap your arms around his waist and place a small kiss on his spine. He looks back and gives you a smirk. You lean up to kiss the scar on the corner of his lips. He turns the stove off as he places the spatula on the counter. Turning to you and placing both his large palms on either side of your face, he gives you a longer kiss, slow and sweet. His steely blue eyes lock onto yours and you feel so safe. 

“Hey there. Why're you up already, huh?”

You laugh and quirk an eyebrow looking at the omelet in the pan and the coffee just begging to be poured into your designated mugs, “What, you planning on eating all this yourself?”

Toji scoffs as he turns back around to reach his hands up to the cabinet to grab your large mug and his even larger mug. You watch his muscles flex and grin to yourself. 

“Nah, I just thought I'd surprise you with some breakfast in bed.”

He pours the coffee into both your mugs as he hands yours to you and keeps his one on the dining table. You take the first sip and hum in satisfaction as he starts plating the omelet and golden-brown waffles onto two distinctly patterned plates. Placing the two plates filled with delicious-looking, steaming food on the table he turns to you and takes the coffee cup from your hands. You frown as you watch him place it down on the table next to the food waiting to be eaten. He leans down and peppers kisses on your jaw, trailing down to your chin, then neck, then collarbone. 

“Y’know after last night, figured you'd need some extra lookin’ after.” You blush.

You trail your hands up his arms and hang them behind his neck, toying with his ebony hair that seems to have grown a bit longer than usual. You kiss his ear and rest your chin on his broad shoulder as his arms wrap themselves around your waist. One of his very busy hands finds its way underneath your his shirt and traces your spine. You exhale and bring one hand down his back to rest against his waist, “I mean, I could still go back.”

You feel him snicker against your neck as both his hands land on the back of your thighs; an unspoken signal to jump up. You do, and he holds you as you wrap your legs around his waist. He looks up at you and then at the untouched meal and back at you. With a devilish grin and a spark in his now stormy gray eyes, he starts making his way to the bedroom.

“The food can wait.”

------------------------------------------------------------

a/n: I LITERALLY FORGOT ABOUT MEGUMI WHILE WRITING THIS, just pretend he's at a sleepover or older or smth rip. this is so cringe i'm crying, i just felt like writing smth cute and domestic w toji

taglist: @thepup356, @porridgesblog, @stray-npc, @daisy-the-quake, @reignsaway, @ainetx, @icarusignite

[thebreakfastgenie]

outside of billy joel, who else do you listen to??

I actually listen to a lot of other artists I just don't tend to know their catalogues inside and out! Mostly I listen to older music. Queen, Elton John, The Beatles, Eagles, Meat Loaf, I'm the most casual of Bowie fans but I like him, Jimmy Buffett, Bob Seger, Fleetwood Mac... and then it just gets folkier lol. Carole King, James Taylor, Arlo Guthrie, Carly Simon, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Harry Chapin, I'm a huge fan of Fred Small who no one knows... I like ABBA but mostly the Mamma Mia versions, I listen to a lot of soundtracks actually, there's John Denver in the mix. There's Dubliners. Then there are artists I like but always forget to listen to. I'd put Joni Mitchell, the Kinks, and Supertramp in this category. I don't listen to Bruce Springsteen much but I've been meaning to start. I do listen to more recent music once in a while. I like a lot of early 2000s P!nk songs. I listen to Taylor Swift occasionally but I've never really clicked with any of her other work like I did folklore and evermore. I'm probably forgetting something but that's a sampling! There are a lot of individual songs I like because I heard them on the radio but I don't know anything else by the artist but I'm not gonna try to list them here.

But like. I don't listen to music that often because it's a full-attention activity for me but I have to do something with my hands so I end up playing phone games or something. I have been listening to music more consistently for the last few months but it's mostly been Billy Joel. This is not helped by Billy Joel being the only music I have on my phone so when I listen to music walking around it's pretty much just him.

[hammill-goes-fogwalking]

early Supertramp live at the Isle of Wight Festival, 1970

[superfallingstars]

Hey, for the playlist ask thingy, what about:

What Peter would listen to

Remus trying to find a job

What you think the weird sisters would sound like if they existed

send me a playlist prompt!

Omg sorry it took me a billion years to get to this. The problem with making playlists is that there is basically an infinite number of songs in the world and I'm always like, well maybe there's a better song out there that I haven't heard yet and I should listen to just one more song/album/artist/etc. But that's the devil speaking. Anyway these prompts were so fun and I really really enjoyed them :-) also I wrote SO much

First up is Peter! I already have a Peter playlist (it's kinda on the silly side, aka it's rat-themed), but for this, I tried to focus more on what he would listen to, rather than songs that describe him (or rats). Since Peter is evidently very impressed by showy, tasteless displays of masculinity (aka James and Sirius), I imagined he would listen to – PROGRESSIVE ROCK! Prog rock at its best is like, really incredible musicianship and composition, and if you can buy into the drama it can be really good. But at its worst, it's just tasteless and pretentious and you're like, wow these musicians are so far up their own asses that they can't even tell that their extremely technically impressive guitar solo sounds like garbage, and also did they even listen to these lyrics, cuz they suck. And I went for specifically, like, late-70s-early-80s prog rock, when it started to get really overproduced and bad. Sorry I just kind of reamed prog rock in this paragraph I swear I legitimately like it… You can only hate something this much if you're intimately familiar with it. I should also note that I chose some of these songs for their lyrics ("The Logical Song" and "The Very Last Time" both are REALLY great songs for Peter's personality and friendship with James, respectively) and some of them are even good. They're not all bad. But they're mostly bad. Anyway! Please enjoy my garbage! 

Track list:

Supertramp - The Logical Song: "The questions run too deep / For such a simple man / Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned / I know it sounds absurd / Please tell me who I aaaam!!!"

Utopia - The Very Last Time: I love you Todd Rundgren. "Nobody sees how you treat me like dirt / Nobody knows just how badly a man can hurt [....] It's the very last time you will get on my case / It's the very last time 'cause I won't be a fool no more!"

Yes - Roundabout: this song is literally good

Rush - New World Man: man I hate Rush. But this is rather tolerable. "He's old enough to know what's right / But young enough not to choose it / He's noble enough to win the world / But weak enough to lose it / He's a new world man"

Yes - Parallels: sucks

Kansas - Point of Know Return: sucks

Asia - Heat of the Moment: sucks but it's a classic

Yes - Leave It: sucks even more than the last Yes song, which is really saying something

Electric Light Orchestra - The Way Life's Meant to Be: We're ending on a good note imo. They don't make concept albums about time travel like they used to! But really I put this on here because it made me giggle. "...I wish I was back in 1981 / Just to see your face instead of this place / Now I know what you mean to me / Ooh, and I wonder, yes I wonder / Is this the way life's meant to be?" lol. lmao even

Ok onto music that is good!

Next prompt was Remus trying to find a job! Gah I adored this prompt! That being said I kind of just made the saddest playlist ever LOL. I'm really fascinated by the time in Remus's life between the Potters' deaths and his employment at Hogwarts. Wtf did he do all those years? How did he get by? Since this playlist is about that time in his life, it's full of songs about the meaninglessness of life and just generally feeling lonely and empty and disconnected. And also working. FUN. Again I admittedly poached a lot of songs on here from my (very bloated and unfinished) Remus playlist. As far as genre goes, I like the idea of Remus having a pretty eclectic taste. But I tend to lean towards things that are lo-fi, scrappy, and less polished, as well as things that are a little jangly or jazzy (basically what I'm saying is that The Cleaners from Venus are theeee Remus band of all time). I'm going to try to restrain myself with the commentary this time

Track list:

Yo La Tengo - Everyday: One of the most depressing songs of all time imo. "Looking to forget tomorrow, looking everyday." Yeowch!

The Cleaners from Venus - Wivenhoe Bells (II): Like I said the Remus band of all time to me. Jangly, jazzy, lo-fi, + incredibly catchy songs about everyday English life

Even As We Speak - Nothing Ever Happens

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

Pavement - Here: "I was dressed for success / But success, it never comes" 👍

The Smiths - Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now: obviously

Nick Drake - Been Smoking Too Long

Galaxie 500 - Cold Night

The Dismemberment Plan - Come Home: The more I listen to these guys, the more I'm convinced that they're one of the best bands ever, as well as being the rare math rock band with good lyrics. Very literary.

Mount Eerie - Moon, I Already Know: I can recite this whole thing like some devastating prayer. Remus song of all time. Moon, I already know I'm small on the ground I roll around and feel menacing mountains And all depths of sorrow dwarf me All towering terrors are mine to cower below I know, I know, I know already So don't look at me like that and then Duck behind clouds I know I'm small and that I have no idea I know, I know, I know Let me be dumb again Let food drip off my chin Let me think you're a light Please please let me sleep through the night unknowing Let me close eyes. Ok I'm gonna throw up and die

Ok this was probably the most difficult prompt for me – I really had no idea what The Weird Sisters would sound like. But if there's any area of music that I'm familiar with, it's mediocre 90s alternative rock, so let's get to it. In the movie, The Weird Sisters are made up of members of Pulp (hi, Jarvis Cocker) and Radiohead, so I decided to start there. And I think Britpop is a natural place to start for a UK band that was big in the 90s. But I wasn't really feeling it with the usual culprits – Pulp was too sweeping and dramatic... I thought Oasis would be more "rock," but frankly, they were just too annoying. I wanted something a little more power pop (a genre that I can only describe as sounding like Disney TV show theme songs. Or, like, Stacy's Mom). And while tapping through related artists for small Britpop bands I've never heard of, I came across the song "1 Time, 2 Times Devastated," and I was like – THIS IS IT. Exactly the kind of mediocre 90s rock/power pop that I was looking for. (Also sorry that I keep saying mediocre I just can't imagine that The Weird Sisters are very good LMFAO! Idk wizards have not convinced me that they have a cool youth culture! Sorry bout it!) Other than that, I thought "Girl From Mars" by Ash was also a good fit. The rest of the playlist is mostly early Radiohead songs (they've got that Britpop feel, but they're a little messier and unpolished. And solidly mediocre) and the more up-tempo Supergrass songs (there's this sort of bouncy piano + drum thing they do that I quite like).

Track list:

DM3 - 1 Time, 2 Times Devastated

Ash - Girl from Mars

Radiohead - Just

Cud - Robinson Crusoe

Supergrass - Tonight

Radiohead - Anyone Can Play Guitar

Supergrass - Moving

The Stems - At First Sight

Radiohead - Thinking About You

Supergrass - Richard III

Anyway this was probably more specific than anyone would ever want but idk man. What I lack in media taste (what with my enjoyment of Harry Potter and other mediocre children's media) I make up for in, um, media taste (pretentious music nerd).

Thank you so much for the ask. Please send me more music asks I beg. There's like a 20 business day turnaround but like, I love making playlists, and getting to infodump about music is literally my dream. I hope you enjoy the playlists :-)

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Bernard Joseph "Benny" Gallagher born June 10th 1945 in Largs.

There's very little about Benny online, his working life started in the Glasgow shipyards as a marine electrician and in his spare time played bass guitar in local semi-professional beat group The Bluefrets, which featured Graham Lyle on lead guitar.

Gallagher's first published song was "Mr Heartbreak's Here Instead", which he co-wrote with Andrew Galt. This was recorded as a single for EMI-Columbia in 1964 by Dean Ford and the Gaylords,the bulk of which later became chart-topping outfit Marmalade.

In 1966, Gallagher and Lyle – who by now had forged a songwriting partnership – moved to London in search of a publishing deal. Both continued to hold down day jobs, Gallagher as an electrician and Lyle as a shipping clerk, while waiting for their big break. After an abortive contract with Polydor, which yielded one unsuccessful single, the pair joined the Apple record label of Beatles fame, writing songs for Mary Hopkin.

Gallagher and Lyle first saw success as members of McGuinness Flint, a vehicle for ex Manfred Man member Tom McGuinness. Gallagher and Lyle left to work as a duo. Gallagher was credited as Bernard Gallagher on sheet music copies of early songs such as these, but later shortened his forename to avoid confusion with golfer of the same name. Although now playig as duo the pair also spent a short time in Ronnie Laine's band Slim Chance, making several TV appearances on a couple of songs.

In 1976 Gallagher and Lyle finally hit the big time with the help of US producer David Kershenbaum who has worked with Cat Stevens, Joan Baez Elkie Brookes and Supertramp, his work Brookes and has yielded multiple Grammys and an Oscar nomination.

The stand out singles from their album Breakaway, , "I Wanna Stay With You" and "Heart on My Sleeve" both hit the top ten and made the charts in the US. Two more songs from the album spawned big hits in the States for Don Williams, Stay Young,and Art Garfunkel with the title track Breakaway. The duo's next album, Love on the Airwaves, also produced by Kershenbaum, went silver in the UK but yielded only one minor hit single, "Every Little Teardrop". Their final two albums, Showdown and Lonesome No More – the latter issued on Mercury – failed to chart.

Gallagher and Lyle split in 1980, leaving behind an unreleased ninth album, Living on the Breadline. A song recorded for this set, "A Heart in New York", subsequently became another hit for Garfunkel.

Gallagher kept a low profile for much of the 1980s, but re-emerged in 1992 as bassist with The Manfreds, a mixture of ex members of Manfred Man, although not enjoying chart success they toured the world for several years before Benny left in 1999. . During his tenure in the band, he co-founded and served as chairman of the royalties campaigning body PAMRA, which was set up to ensure that musicians received a fair share of royalties from recordings and performances. He then spent a year or so with one of my favourite groups Dr Hook before he embarked on a solo career as a singer-songwriter, touring the folk club and festival circuits.

In 2010, Gallagher reunited with Lyle for two concerts in their former hometown of Largs in aid of Haylie House, a residential care home in the town. They then did a couple of gigs "The Big Gig" at Glasgow's Barrowland nightclub, alongside Marti Pellow, Jim Diamond and Midge Ure and and the MOARE Festival in Faversham, Kent, which was headlined by former Average White Band man Hamish Stuart.

In 2012, Gallagher and Lyle undertook a sell-out tour of Scottish venues, under the banner of "The Homecoming Tour"; their 22-song set included all their British chart entries and both their US chart-toppers, since then they seemed o have been popping up all over place at Festivals and on tour.

Gallagher has lso released two solo albums on his own OnSong label: On Stage and At The Edge Of The Wave. The latter set includes "Tusitala", a tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson, the name coms from RLS's time in Samoa, meaning "teller of tales" - by the local villagers. Journalist and writer Tam Cowan has also used Tusitala as tribute, naming his house at Swanston on the outskirts of Edinburgh Tusitala.

Gallagher and his wife Diane have four children: Dillon, and Paul (twins) and Julian and and Claire (twins). Both Dillon and Julian work in the Music industry, Julian has written songs for the band Five, Kylie Minogue and a couple of The Spice Girls solo songs.

There's nothing really new to say about Benny, I don't know if he has maybe retired, he did give an interview to the local newspaer in Largs, the Largs & Millport Weekly News where he said how he is indebted to Sir Paul McCartney for his musical career. He dd however play a gig last year with Ted Christopher for the Guardians of Scotland Trust His Facebook page hasn't been updated since January this year.

[echidna-auxiliatrix]

Soooo was anyone going to tell me supertramps early years were funded by a Dutch millionaire or did I have to read that on Wikipedia myself

[footnoteinhistory]

I've been sick so my schedule is a little off, I didn't run today but I went for a walk a little before sunset. That's kind of an odd time of day for me to be out—I usually run early in the morning or right after work. I decided to walk with a playlist of music I listened to all the time in college, which I think was last time I was regularly out and about around sunset. The history department had a lot of night classes and tonight it was like a visceral reminder of those spring evenings.

Walking across campus while the sun was low, warm enough for short sleeves but knowing the chill would set into your bones walking home after class. The history building was next to the river—most of our classrooms had these big half-circle windows where you could watch the sun set across the river as class went on, everything turning blue and black, the few campus streetlights that worked blinking in and out. So many earthy smells—the pollen, the riverbank at low tide, the trees and flowers. (Back home, there are a few more agriculture scents this time of year—think manure, mostly—but still, the spring evening air tonight smells a lot like it did a couple hundred miles away in college).

Towards the end of the semester, if it wasn't cloudy, you could still catch the last rays of the day after night class. But it was still chilly—not freezing, but that ambient breeze you can just tell is spring fighting for warmth, wrestling the winter cold into something gentler. But it still feels cold on your arms and legs when you've decided it IS spring and won't wear a jacket again until October.

I can't think about college or those classes or this music without thinking of him, and the pandemic, and how things happened, and what a big mess it was, and how it turned out okay, and how I don't know how things would've been different if things went the way they were supposed to. April is strange because I had a last February at college, I had (half) a last March, but I never got to be on campus in April again. The cherry blossoms erupted in April, I took these in 2019

One of the songs I listened to is "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" by England Dan and John Ford Coley, which I was listening to on a bench outside the campus library when he sat down next to me my first year. I don't remember exactly what made me realize this on my walk tonight, but something about John Larroquette reminds me of him. That dopey smile maybe. Which cements my hunch that every man I ever like for the rest of my life will, in some way, large or small, be compared to or influenced by or somehow similar to him.

Which isn't a bad thing, I guess—I still think he's a good man, it's just sort of inescapable. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's exasperating. "Downstream" by Supertramp is the song I most closely connect with him and campus in spring and everything I was feeling at that time. Whenever I think about these things I end up feeling sort of achy, that song is really achy.

One of the hardest things right now is being caught between wanting to do big things and wanting to just exist. I'm not very successful—I mean, I'm fine. I have a middling job that doesn't have much to do with my degree. I didn't publish my thesis outside of my college journal (that's... a can of worms having to do with him, actually). I haven't gone to grad school. I don't currently have plans to change any of that. And I'm okay with that right now. I'm training for a marathon, I have a lot of fun with my friends, I have hobbies. I'm not doing a lot, and I have stress and problems like anyone, but generally I'm happy.

But I get embarrassed about it. I'm afraid to talk to him because I think he'll be disappointed in me for not doing more. Other people, relatives, family friends who expected so much of me—it's hard to tell them I'm not aiming very high now. I'm not aiming at anything, really. I'm just here, and doing my best to enjoy being here. Should I be doing more?

I don't know why I'm writing this. I was thinking so much on my walk and every step, every smell of spring, every way the light hit the trees, felt like a nostalgic slap in the face. I used to write longform all the time, now I barely journal. I miss college and him and when we were closer. I wish I knew whether I should be trying harder and doing bigger, better things to impress people and myself or if I'm okay to just exist. And when I say it like that, the answer sounds clear, but it's really not. Maybe there is something wrong with me, not wanting more. I wish I could go for a run on campus again. It was so much more scenic there.

[zeemczed]

So, if I wanted to get started listening to prog rock, where should I start?

Full disclosure, I'm asking because I keep returning to the RWBY soundtrack as my ongoing background noise and that's always described as prog

My friend... you've picked a good berk to ask.

So the gateway I usually suggest is Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd. It's very approachable, and there really isn't a bad track on the list.

Or, barring that, Rush's Moving Pictures.

Or, for a less morally repugnant choice, Genesis' Selling England by the Pound.

Past those you have my favorite - The Moody Blues' Long Distance Voyager. Really, most of their output was gold, but LDV was my lullaby every single night when I was in junior high, so I'm biased.

The Court of the Crimson King is, according to the Venture Brothers, capable of pushing a super-scientist to supervillainy early in their career. I believe it. This one's polarizing as HELL, either you love it or you hate it.

Tommy is the first rock opera, and it arguably fits in here.

Other seminal prog albums: Aqualung by Jethro Tull The Yes Album by Yes Trilogy by Emerson, Lake and Palmer Crime of the Century by Supertramp The Trick of the Tail by Genesis Leftoverture by Kansas

And lastly, the TV Tropes page, which has ALL kinds of info on the genre and breaks it down into subgenres with examples.

[northwestofinsanity]

Early Supertramp Roger Hodgson

[audio-luddite]

Back to Normal

I sat down and did a listen for 2 hours after the system warmed up. The EH tube is in the preamp. The AT7V body with the AT440 stylus is on the turntable.

It was a bit different. The problem with the right channel is gone. As I said yesterday tubes can fail slowly which lets you get used to that changing sound. I was happy with the voice of my system until it got really bad. Fool me once.....

It now sounds more solid, and more clear.

The albums I played were a broad selection. There was noticeably more clarity but not harshness in the treble. The 440 Stylus is what they call a microline which is a bit sharper than an elliptical. It can trace fine detail better than an elliptical shape and even a Shibata tip. It is supposed to find areas of the groove that are not as worn from playing. More treble is to be expected.

My early experience with the AT440MLa was it was hot sounding to the point of unpleasant. I later attributed that to the capacitance of the lines to the preamplifier. It is particularly sensitive. With correct loading it was much better. It also means the stylus is almost new.

I played the "audiophile" Supertramp "breakfast.." album. It sounded good, but I am not that familiar with it as I have played it perhaps two other times.

Next was one side of Quarter moon in a ten cent town. It is a hot recording, but not harsh. Again all is well, and I was able to get out of the looking for issues mode.

I played three sides (yes 3) of my 2x180@45 rpm of Fleetwood Mac Rumours. Fleetwood is a drummer. Mac is a Bass player. They have always been big in the bottom end. I think they were a bit bigger now than I recall. More umph in the new tube? The tinkling bells and cymbals Mr Fleetwood likes were very clear. The vocal tracks were obvious where they overdubbed the background singing. The also did many overdub tracks of guitar by Mr. Buckingham. Overall it was more clear than before. Any trace of that goofy channel was gone.

One of my favourite songs is "Songbird". Just a solo singer and her piano in a real theater. Though there is a guitar quietly mixed in to accent some stuff. It is a pretty nice recording with less of the pop-song-rock processing on the rest of the album.

In the second side of Dire Straits Album I noticed that the character of the percussion was different. The drummer was hitting the cymbals and the tick of the stick was prominent at each hit. I had not ever noticed that. So yes different and more detail.

I will geek out on more later.

In other news I got notice that my compatible power tubes are on the way. $120 bucks extra. That makes me think I should have modified the bias circuit as the parts are far less than the premium for the tubes. That violates the purity of the ARC design though. W.Z. Johnson would be appalled. Oh well this only needs be done every few years. The set in the Cl60 are very old.

My Tube dealer is "the tube store".

I really appreciate the friendly service. They have been very helpful. They are in Canada, but ship worldwide.

When all done and running all the tubes in my system will be Russian Electro Harmonix. Just like the factory wanted. It is getting cooler around here, I can use the extra heat.

[einsteinsugly]

That 70s Show: The gang, and their varying music tastes.

In That 70s Show, most of the gang (minus Jackie) loves what we now call stereotypical classic rock. Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Queen, etc. But now and then, we see small glimpses of the gang's varying tastes, from Eric's love for the prog rock band Styx to Donna's Janis Joplin poster on her wall. Here, in this essay, I'm going to present their variations in music taste, as provided by both the show and my realistic speculations (and some real life experiences, via my EDish parents), from character to character.

Donna: She has a singer-songwriter slant/vibe, such as…

Fleetwood Mac, Carole King, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, The Mamas and The Papas, etc.

Also, she'd generally have a slant towards female rock groups and solo artists. Heart, Pat Benatar, Janis Joplin, Joan Jett/The Runaways, and the occasional Blondie tune (mainly, she'd really like Rapture).

She would also, with Eric, like these rock bands more than the others would (they all give me "mom and dad" rock vibes): Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Kansas, The Eagles (and all their solo stuff in the 80s, too).

In the 90s/00s, she would be a fan of Jewel, Alanis Morissette, The Cranberries, Tracy Chapman, The Fugees/Lauryn Hill, Sheryl Crow, Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs, Melissa Etheridge, No Doubt, Evanescence, Alicia Keys, KT Tunstall, etc.

Eric: He has a prog/soft rock vibe, such as…

Chicago, Styx (but he can't stand Mr. Roboto, because Kelso ruined it), Genesis, Pink Floyd, Air Supply, Rush, Foreigner, Boston, The Police, Journey, Supertramp, The Cars, The Doobie Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, Hall and Oates, Huey Lewis and the News, Genesis, Tears For Fears, Billy Joel, Wings, U2, etc.

He's a huge fan of The Beatles, Paul McCartney in particular. He constantly compares him and Donna to Paul and Linda.

He, along with Hyde, likes more "chill" rock when he's in a good mood, like Eric Clapton and Steely Dan. And James Taylor, after Jackie gets Hyde into it.

See above for the "mom and dad" rock bands. Eric loves "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," though, and Donna hates it.

In the 90s/early 00s, he'd like a lot of the mainstream/less grunge rock of the 90s, such as Matchbox Twenty, The Goo Goo Dolls, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, and Weezer (Weezer is such an Eric-y band). He'd like John Mayer, Five for Fighting, and Michael Buble in the 2000s, and the gang would make fun of him for it.

Fez: He has a mix between an R&B/Motown slant (such as Stevie Wonder) and what I would call a "crappy novelty song" slant. This mix leads him to be a fan of KC and the Sunshine Band, which everyone makes fun of him for (although Kelso likes a couple of songs). He's a huge fan of Queen and Freddie Mercury, and a huge fan of Prince and Michael Jackson (and to a lesser extent, Boyz II Men). He, unfortunately, likes Milli Vanilli (even after they were exposed), Ricky Martin, and Enrique Iglesias (he's not as bad as the first two, though). and all those novelty songs from the late 80s/90s (like Mambo No 5 and the Macarena). Currently, he would be a big fan of Bruno Mars.

Hyde: I'm admittedly less knowledgeable about hard rock, and I'm just gonna throw some well-thought out band names at you. He particularly likes Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Santana, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix. In the 80s, he hates hair metal, minus maybe Guns N Roses (if that counts; Kelso loves it), and in the 90s, he's a big fan of grunge. Nirvana, Soundgarden, The Smashing Pumpkins, etc. He also likes Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lenny Kravitz, and The Black Keys (his kid gets him into it). Jackie gets him to be a fan of James Taylor, Elton John, and Adele (much later), and very occasionally, Billy Joel. He likes Steely Dan when he's in a good mood.

Anywho, I grew up with Eric and Donna "mom and dad" kind of rock (but my dad's a mix of Eric and Jackie music taste wise, and it's the worst) mixed with a bit of some good R&B and Motown (not the crappy Fez kind). My dad grew out of a solid chunk of the harder rock that he listened to as a teen, hence how I personally developed Eric's music taste over time in my verse (it's realistic, frankly). So, if any of you grew up with a parent with Hyde-ish taste in music or just like hard rock yourself (or are just more familiar with it than me), toss some ideas at me.

Jackie: She's the only one that majorly deviates from the classic rock status quo on T7S. She loves ABBA, The Carpenters, David Cassidy (she grows out of that, though), The Bee Gees (my dad does too, eww), Captain and Tennille, Journey, Elton John, Billy Joel, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer, and Peter Frampton. She grew up listening to James Taylor with her dad, so it holds a special place in her heart. She gets Hyde to like James Taylor and Elton John, and Hyde gets her to like Zeppelin. She gets Donna to like Blondie, to some extent, and Heart and Pat Benatar is Jackie's angry music.

In the 80s, she loves Madonna, The Go Gos, Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper, Paula Abdul, a sea of one/two hit wonders, etc. She loves Dirty Dancing and the song "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." In the 90s, she's a huge fan of Mariah Carey. Since the mainstream music for most of the 90s was either rock/alternative, R&B, or stupid Fez-ish gimmicky songs, Mariah Carey's music becomes an obsession for her. Her obsession calms down a bit with the bubblegum pop revival in the late 90s/early 00s, and she loves Britney Spears, The Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, J-Lo, Christina Aguilera…the list is endless. And today, she'd love Adele and Ariana Grande, and uses them as an example for good music when Hyde complains about mainstream music today. Well, and she'd love Taylor Swift too (minus some of the early country stuff), but for Hyde, Taylor Swift doesn't count as good music. And for Hyde, Ariana just has a good voice. That's it.

Kelso: He likes The Doors, The Police, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie. For Kelso, he never grows out of the most obnoxious rock bands the gang listened to as teens. KISS, AC/DC (to be fair, Hyde doesn't, either), Alice Cooper, Molly Hatchet, Foghat, etc. He loves 80s hair metal, like Twisted Sister, The Scorpions, Def Leppard, Van Halen, Poison, etc. In the 90s, he loves Smash Mouth and the Barenaked Ladies. He can recite "One Week" and "It's The End of the World" by REM by heart. The Talking Heads and the B-52s are also a guilty pleasure of his (especially "Love Shack"), and "Mr. Roboto" by Styx. He also has a soft spot for Boston and The Cars (he listens to "My Best Friend's Girl" on repeat when Jackie first gets with Hyde).

[theretirementstory]

28/07/2024. Bonjour à tous, am I glad to see the weekend, when I can relax! I was at Paris on Monday, Troyes to see the cardiologist on Wednesday and for a transfusion at Troyes on Thursday afternoon. There were two pieces of good news, no lymphoma in my bone marrow 😁 and I don’t have to see the cardiologist again until next year 😁😁. Everything else is still the same but the doctor did say it was too early for the new treatment to be effective.

This coming week it’s another three days of hospital visits, two of which are to Paris! Not only will I have transfusions on Monday but I will also be having my third round of treatment. Hope they give me a bed as I think I will be snoozing a lot of the time.

A young driver took me for my appointment on Wednesday (he’s about 25 years old), he always plays great tracks in the taxi, Supertramp, that sort of thing. Well he only played this song: “Come And Get Your Love” by Redbone. As I quietly sang along I wondered what year it was released, thinking to myself not that far back really. It was released in 1974, that nearly blew my socks off! Have a listen to it, it’s stuck in my head now. My second song for this music spot was one I could hear playing in the background of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, it was from the Europop section and although the commentator was talking all over it, I was still transported to holidays and particularly discos. The year this song was released was 1980, it’s “Spacer” by Sheila & B Devotion.

I asked Monique to do the bulk of my shopping and Anie bought my fruit and vegetables. Anie has also been and collected my prescription. It’s great to have such good friends and I was happy to have lots of tasty food. I hope my body appreciated the fish/chicken/vegetables and fruit I have been feeding it 😂.

Oh my goodness I took the plunge and messaged my cleaning lady to see if she had a couple of hours free. Horror of horrors she didn’t and also said that she was having health problems of her own. Now what am I going to do? Accept the offer from Monique or see if my friends know any other person. I have already mentioned it to Anie.

I must just rectify an omission from last weeks blog, “The Trainee Solicitor” sat an exam at the course he did at the University. He said at the time he hoped he had done enough to pass it and he obviously had! Great result passing the exam, just checks to be made and then he will be a fully fledged Solicitor. I remember my godmother telling me it was years of hard work to attain that position and he has put in the time and effort. Well done that man!

“The Recovery Coordinator” started her working week with a severe migraine! Not a good way to start, then she had a couple of nightmarish days at work, that doesn’t help either. After spending some time with my grandchildren and their Daddy this weekend she was going to catch up with the Olympics. It’s the F1 from Spa-Francorchamps today, a circuit I would have liked to visit. Don’t think it’s on free to view tv so for me it will be the Olympics (once I have prepared myself for tomorrow).

“The Photographer” has had his children for one week of their summer holidays. My granddaughter attended a football day, she gave it a thumbs up but when asked if she wanted to go the following day she said no. They attended a local football match (grandson included) both wore ear defenders as the last time she went to a match she wanted to leave as it was too noisy. Fingers crossed they are having four nights in a camper van this week, it is greatly anticipated by the three of them and I think it will be a memorable experience.

“The Traînée Solicitor” was pleased to hear my health news as it means that he can come out and visit me. I did say that he has to be careful hugging me as I am only fragile now, hopefully he will remember that 😉. I am really excited about seeing him too, it’s been over a year. I had hoped to be visiting him but as we all know, life has a habit of throwing a curved ball occasionally.

The photographs this week are of a champagne village which has at its heart an amusement park, Nigloland.

My garden is very neglected but I am unable to get out there and sort it out. Looking back at photos of previous years it looked so lovely and I am hoping that it will again.

The car has only been moved out of the garage once in the last goodness knows how many months. I would like to bring it out today but as it is more than two days since my last transfusion I had better leave it until I get back from Paris on Tuesday.

I have finished crocheting the blanket, I think it will do for a new baby and as a pram blanket (do people still buy prams?)

I am having a clear out of bedding, and clothes that no longer fit me. I think I will let go of some jumpers and t shirts too. I bought a few new clothes last year but they too are too big for me now. I really need some new shoes but will have to wait for those I think.

As it is a busy day for me, I think I had better make a start!

Have a good week until next week 😁.

[steeleyespan]

i was like fully intent on going to bed early last night and then instead listened the the logical song by supertramp for like an hour and a half on loop while knitting