#like I saw this twelve year old online putting out a cover album

[mizu-amia-akiyama]

i wish I could just focus on doing music and recording covers but I have like fifty other things to do and no time to do music augh

[raggywaltz1954]

Continuing the exploration of jazz clubs via records in my collection, and after checking clubs out on the eastern side of the United States, this post marks our foray into the West Coast scene.  Naturally, we start in California, and if we’re in California, naturally we begin in San Francisco.  And if we’re in San Francisco, naturally we head to the Blackhawk.  And if we’re at the Blackhawk, naturally we have to catch a set by Cal Tjader.

The Music

The Tune:  “Bill B”

Recorded:  December 1958 at the Blackhawk, San Francisco, CA

Personnel:

Cal Tjader:  Vibes

Jose Silva:  Tenor Sax

Vince Guaraldi:  Piano

Al McKibbon:  Bass

Willie Bobo:  Drums

The Tune: “A Night In Tunisia”

Recorded December 1958 at the Blackhawk, San Francisco, CA

Personnel:

Same as above, but Willie Bobo on timbales, Mongo Santamaria on congas, Cal Tjader on cow bell

This record is a great example of Cal Tjader’s working group in action.  Recorded live in the acoustically-blessed confines of the Blackhawk, the music features Cal Tjader’s usual quintet lineup with the added addition (redundant?) of Cuban tenor saxophonist Jose Silva.  The group stretches out on the tunes, playing as much for themselves as for the audience sitting in the club.  Picking a track to spotlight from this album was rather difficult, as my two favorite tunes from the album happen to be the longest tunes on the album.

“Bill B”, the opener to side two, is a relaxed off-the-cuff blues that meanders for over twelve minutes, giving every soloist the opportunity to blow as long as they want.  This track, more than any other on the album, perfectly encapsulates the “liveness” of intimate jazz clubs.  From the spontaneous beginning, to the audience laughter and noises, to Cal Tjader’s comments and encouragements, the atmosphere of a jazz club is palpable.  Tjader’s shimmering vibes start the proceedings after McKibbon’s bass intro.  Tjader’s vibraphone playing always has a cool, refreshing sound, which, combined with his economical approach, made for a rather laid-back, hip style.  Someone once called him the West Coast’s answer to Milt Jackson (ok, I was the one who said it).  Of course, I like to just accept and enjoy Tjader on his own merits.

During Tjader’s solo, Jose Silva weaves his sax in and out of Tjader’s vibes, and steps up to solo after Tjader.  I had never heard of Jose Silva outside of his work with Cal Tjader.  He appears on three albums with Tjader, all recorded for Fantasy in 1958, and this was one of them.  His tenor sounds like a cross between Stan Getz and Tina Brooks, with the husk of Ike Quebec thrown in.  It’s both a unique sound and one that sounds familiar.  As the liner notes point out, he’s a Cuban playing jazz, and as a result, his ideas are as unique as his sound.  He kicks things into double-time as he closes solo, yielding it to Vince Guaraldi’s piano.

Vince’s solo continues the double-time pattern, and he digs in for numerous choruses.  As he solos, Tjader can be heard telling the group to do “Bill B” and telling Vince to do one more chorus.  The drummer slows it back to the original tempo and Vince swings his last chorus harder than his entire solo combined, with Vince throwing some particularly effective block chords that get Tjader’s approval.  With another gentle direction from Tjader, the group segues into the cheerful, spare melody to “Bill B”, a Tjader original dedicated to Bill ‘Count’ Basie.

“A Night In Tunisia” is in the Latin jazz vein that made Cal Tjader so popular.  This performance must’ve come from a different night because the acoustics are slightly different and the piano is slightly sharp.  Al McKibbon’s bass again starts things off, with Tjader’s vibes carrying the melody.  The percussion team of Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria keep things moving with their Afro-Cuban rhythms that must have had the small club rocking.  The rest of the album follows this winning Tjader formula of straight-ahead jazz and Latin jazz.  It’s solid music from a solid musician.

The Cover

College Jazz Collector Rating:  B-

There’s a play on words here.  Take a good, long look at the cover, and see if you can figure it out.

The original pressing that was released in 1959 had a slightly different cover.  On that album, the cover was in color, with a bright pink background a the knight’s armor in a shade of lime green.  My copy is an early ’70’s pressing, and they decided to put it in black and white.  The cover itself is pretty basic, the appeal lying heavily in the strength of the joke.  What’s the joke?  Read the title of the album, then look at the artwork.  Fantasy Records strikes again.

The Back

The back of this album is the epitome of everything ‘wrong’ with a Fantasy album.  What tracks are on the album?  Who knows.  You’ll have to actually buy the album and check the album labels to find out.  Who are the musicians playing in the group?  You’ll have to wade through the liner notes to pick out the names of the guys on the record.  Recording date?  All we get is “the winter of 1958” and “the Christmas season”, which loosely translates to December of ’58.  Fantasy Records strikes again.

The liner notes are…conflicting; incomplete; slightly disrespectful.  After much ado about all of the sidemen, Vince Guaraldi gets one perfunctory, back-handed sentence.  And it doesn’t even acknowledge Guaraldi’s talent on its own merits.  Guaraldi left Tjader’s group in 1959 and after a few years became a sensation in his own right, finally receiving the recognition that he was denied earlier in his career.

Another issue with the liners is their conflicting spelling of the Blackhawk jazz club.  I already went into the controversy surrounding the Blackhawk etimology so I won’t get into all of that again.  But, I will point out that it’s called ‘Blackhawk’ in the main liner notes and ‘Black Hawk’ in the smaller liner notes.  Fantasy, come on.

Learning that there was a special recording system installed into the Blackhawk is kinda cool, as is the revelation that there’s what 75 hours of tape that was recorded during Tjader’s stay at the Blackhawk.  Where is the rest of the material? Perhaps buried deep in the Fantasy vaults?

And then there’s the odd poem with the dog.  The only thing I could think of was that it was an involved pun on the RCA dog label.  RCA’s label has the famous dog listening to an old gramophone, with the caption “His Master’s Voice”.  This dog is at work says “My Daddy At Work”.  The first line says that the dad’s name is Ed Renfro.  I googled that name, and I groaned.  Who was Ed Renfro.  An artist from California who, among other things, did artwork for Fantasy Records.  Including this album’s artwork.  This poem is about him.  Fantasy.  Strikes.  Again.

The Vinyl

As I mentioned earlier, this is an early 1970’s reissue, and as such it was pressed on regular albeit thin black vinyl, non-deep groove.  It plays quietly, in delicious stereo.  It would be interesting to compare a first pressing with this later pressing, just to see if the audio mastering is the same.  Recordings from the Blackhawk always sound fantastic, whether it’s Miles Davis on Columbia, Shelly Manne on Contemporary, or Ahmad Jamal on Argo.  The sound is full-bodied, punchy, and rich.  Amen and amen.

The Place of Acquisition

eBay.  This record, as with many early Cal Tjader records, are surprisingly expensive online, as well as in short supply.  I had been trying to find an affordable copy, but wasn’t having much luck.  When I saw this copy, with its black and white cover and low(ish) price, I jumped at it.  It wasn’t until I opened the package a few days later that I found out that it was a later pressing.  Maybe one day I will buy an original pressing of the record, but until then, this record will do just fine.

A Night At The Blackhawk // Cal Tjader (Fantasy F-8026) Continuing the exploration of jazz clubs via records in my collection, and after checking clubs out on the eastern side of the United States, this post marks our foray into the West Coast scene. 

[boozeymustdie]

Feature Story: Frank Iero

OCTOBER 8, 2017 BY BECTON SIMPSON

Frank Iero and Bec

Frank Iero is a busy man.

So far this year, he’s been involved in a serious bus crash in Australia, toured with Taking Back Sunday, made an appearance at Slam Dunk festival, played with the all stellar line up of Thrice, Rise Against and the Deftones, and now he’s released a brand new EP, Keep The Coffins Coming, and has embarked on a month-long tour of the UK and Europe in what he describes as “the first headlining tour for Parachutes.”

After the accident down under that left him and a couple of his bandmates banged up in hospital, Frank Iero and the Patience were thrown off kilter for a while and plans were put on hold. So, despite the release of Parachutes in late 2016, this is actually the first time Frank has had the chance to tour it properly, as a headliner rather than a support act. It’s now ended up being a ‘double tour’ for both Parachutes and Keep The Coffins Coming.

“I like to multitask as much as possible,” laughs Frank. “Feels like it’s been almost a year in the making though, y’know?”

We’re sat in a darkened corridor backstage at the Academy in our makeshift ‘office’ with a couple of mismatched chairs we’ve managed to squander from the Student’s Union. It’s half an hour before the doors open, and as we chat, we’re also listening to the sounds of Frank’s excellent line up of support bands soundchecking a few rooms down – the Paceshifters, The Homeless Gospel Choir, and Dave Hause & The Mermaid.

Despite his own soundcheck going on fifteen minutes longer than expected, Frank seems relaxed and happy. His laid-back manner and cheeky sense of humour make him easy to interview, and the passion when he talks about his music and inspirations shines through. The fact that Frank has been to the UK no less than three times in the space of twelve months is no coincidence.

“I really do fucking love it here. I really do,” he says enthusiastically. “I feel like as a young person, I didn’t truly understand all the history of it. I got held up on the hardships of travel, and didn’t get to enjoy it as much…” And he has similar words to say about the touring lifestyle in general. “I’m incredibly thankful for all those opportunities to get to see all this. I mean, it’s unreal. That education is unlike anything else you can possibly get. You start to have this real worldly view. You realise that being a big fish in a little pond is worth nothing. There’s so much more out there. So many people out there, so many cultures out there, so many things to experience and to do and to see.”

Frank talks like an excited, wide-eyed boy, still in awe of the world around him, despite having been in a touring band since he was a teenager and now approaching 36 years old. Perhaps it is this consistently fresh outlook that always seems to keep him on the road. He still enjoys it, and very rarely takes time off.

“There’s something to be said about creating and getting to play, y’know? I’ve done that for so long, I don’t know what my life is like without it,” he readily admits, but he also insists that next year he is definitely having some time to himself and his family.

“I’m telling you, this is it,” he insists with a playful giggle after I express doubt over his ability to avoid the addictive lure of the road. “At the end of this year, I’m gonna take some time. I swear to God. I keep saying that, I do, but I actually made the phone call two days ago. I had stuff ready for next year, and I fucking canceled it.”

Then, adopting a more serious tone and speaking in a reflective murmur I can barely hear above the noise in the next room, he admits, “I think this year’s just been a little too much for me, and I think it’s put a lot of things in perspective. I think I need 2018 to be mine.”

It really is fair enough, considering everything Frank went through at the beginning of the year, and how busy he’s been since that, bouncing back doubly hard in a way that a lot of people couldn’t. Plus, he has a wife and three kids at home who are bound to miss him when he’s away, and finding the work/life balance is always tough.

“It’s like a tightrope, and I think that you spend a lot of time trying to make everyone happy and end up not succeeding so much. And then everyone’s miserable and so are you! I think you owe it to yourself to kinda take a step back and get your head straight and kind of figure out who you are without this, y’know?”

Then, never quite able to stay serious for too long, he adds with a little twinkle, “Plus, if you’re on the road, you’re probably not in certain cities, probably in Brazil, that people are going to be very upset about!”

It’s no secret that Frank’s fanbase is widespread and worldwide, and when he doesn’t tour those cities and countries, he gets frequently pestered about it on Twitter. His online relationship with his fans has been well documented in the rock press, and he definitely gives as good as he gets. Although recently, a lot of the Twitter hype in his fanbase has been surrounding the recent release of his brand new record, Keep The Coffins Coming, which has so far has been met with warm reception and favourable reviews.

Despite it being a ‘new’ release, the four tracks on the EP are not new songs and were in fact recorded before Parachutes. Frank has been sitting on this one for a long time, and he goes on to explain why it seemed like the right time to release these very special tracks.

“When I recorded this, it was really something I did just for me. I’d just finished touring on Stomachaches, and I had a conversation with Paul, my manager, and he said, ‘Alright, well what’s next? What do you wanna do?’ And I said, ‘I don’t really know. I have some songs, but I don’t know what the next thing is just yet.’ And he’s like, ‘What are things that you’ve always wanted to do that you’ve never gotten to do?’ So, we made a list – a bucket list – of people I wanted to work with, things I wanted to accomplish. And he was like, ‘Alright, let’s start checking them off,’ and one of those was to work with Steve Albini.”

Albini is something of a legend in the music industry, having produced records for Nirvana, the Pixies, and Jawbreaker to name a few, and Frank readily admits “he’s someone that made me want to create and make records” and that he’s wanted to work with him “since I was like, 11!”

Frank’s childhood dream finally came true when his manager placed a phone call, and before he knew it, he was in the studio. For Frank, it was a fulfilling and exciting experience, but also an eye-opening one on a personal level that ultimately led to him choosing Ross Robinson as the producer for Parachutes.

“Steve’ll tell you, ‘I’m not a producer. I’m an engineer, and I want to facilitate your vision.’ He’s very hands-off, and I think that’s because of experiences he’s had in his formative years of becoming an engineer and learning the recording process. He saw one of his favourite bands get kind of railroaded by a producer, and he said, ‘I’m never going to do that again. I just want to showcase bands’…and he’s booked constantly because of that, and also because he is such a genius and such a talented engineer and guy…he knows his shit. So, when we got in there, I didn’t know how much time we were going to have or what we were going to do. His process was very confidence-building in that he said to me, ‘The reason you’re here is because you know what you’re doing. I’m not gonna come in here and tell you how to play your songs.’ And that was amazing, but I still felt like I was…on my own in that realm, y’know? Which is cool…but I had done that with Stomachaches. I did it all by myself. I didn’t have anybody else to bounce ideas of off; it was very DIY. And yes, for this, Steve would be behind the board and micing things and getting the sounds that I wanted. But there wasn’t someone there who would really get to the core of what these songs were about and push me farther. It was all on me. And I knew that I needed to – these songs demanded that. And that’s why the record was done by Ross.”

As for the track choice on Keep The Coffins Coming, at least one of them will be familiar to casual Patience fans – “I’m A Mess” – which is featured in its final form on Parachutes and is given a different lease on life with this earlier and slightly rawer version.

And those who have been following Frank’s solo career from the beginning may also have an awareness of the other tracks on the album. “BFF,” for example, was originally released back in 2014.

“That was a song my daughter wrote that I did in my basement before even Stomachaches,” explains Frank. “And when I knew I was working with Steve, I handpicked that song because I knew I wanted to do a full band version of it…I thought that…just the tendencies of that song and the way I heard it in my head…what it could be…it was a perfect Steve Albini song.”

Then there’s “You Are My Sunshine,” a cover of an old classic, of course, and one which Frank used to whip out and play live on stage occasionally.

“No Fun Club” is an interesting one. It’s probably the noisiest and punkiest of the four tracks. It has gone on a musical journey of its own, reforming and taking shape into something else entirely, although the music is still roughly based on a joke song Frank released some years ago…

“It’s not the first thing I released but like…around the first couple of EPs and 7 inches I did on my own under my solo ‘career,’ I put up a song on Soundcloud called “Xmas Sux.” It was just kinda this thing that I threw together in an hour in my basement, and it was just an experiment to see if I could do these types of things. As soon as I put it up I was like, ‘I kinda really like this song, but it’s a joke.’ I didn’t really put too much thought into it, but I liked that I could take that and make it something important. It’s this idea that songs don’t die until you say they’re done with them. I can have that idea and mold it and grow it and evolve it years later, and form it into something that has some gravity – and actually has some meaning behind it and a purpose.”

Evolution is a key theme on this EP, and even for Frank in general, who is constantly changing the name of his band.

“It’s not just to confuse people,” he laughs. “It’s to keep me interested. Every record, the band name is gonna change. The original idea when I was formulating what Parachutes was gonna be, I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll do two records, a double record. One will be Patience and one will be Patients,’ but it didn’t make sense to split those songs up when it came to fruition. It just felt like a full record. So this time around, after the whole experience in Australia and stuff like that, it was just my own clever little way of being able to change the band name up again.”

I tell him I think it’s a cool idea to which he replies, without missing a beat, “I think it’s cool too,” before cracking up in a fit of giggles. But Frank’s not the kind of guy to use throwaway, unimportant titles for anything – either for his band names or his records. Wordplay and meaning are clearly important to him, so it goes without saying that Keep The Coffins Coming wasn’t just chosen simply to keep up his dark emo credentials. There’s a much deeper and more interesting message behind that choice of words.

“With Stomachaches, I could trace every song back to a feeling of illness. With Parachutes, every song was a story about feeling safe or an instance that allows you to kind of enjoy life or experience that fall. This…this is more like…these ideas, these songs, these creations that we have. We relinquish control of them, and we send them out into the world…almost like sending the bodies home from war…and if you can continue that process of creating and inspiring, creating and inspiring, and never letting these ideas fizzle out…just keep them coming and coming and coming. Then hopefully, even beyond our own mortal souls, these things will carry on.”

Inspiring words, indeed, Frank, and we certainly hope you’re right!

Keep The Coffins Coming is out now on Hassle Records, iTunes and all your usual music providers. You can still catch Frank Iero on tour if you’re in the UK until 21st October. You probably should try and do that – he’s pretty damn good. Check out frank-iero.com for dates.

Link to Article

[anxietyfarm]

Spotify rolled out personalized Time Capsule playslists this week. Through algorithmic alchemy it attempts to gather tracks from your teens and early twenties in an attempt to either make you grin ear-to-ear, recoil in horror, or just wonder how they know so much. For reasons only clear to me I will now attempt to analyze the songs Spotify plucked from the musical ether to send me whistling down my personal nostalgic path.

1. Southenplayalisticadilacmuzik – OutKast – First off of all thank you, Spotify for thinking I was this cool as a 16 year old. I did not know about OutKast when this song came out. I heard about them the next year after the Source awards and didn’t buy my first OutKast album until Aquemini came out in 1998 (nineteen years ago this week). Great start though. You already know me, Spotify. 2. They Want EFX – Das EFX – Yes! I love this song so much. I’m still mad at my washing machine for fucking up my Das EFX shirt. Also, one of the only tweets I’ve ever written that got any traction is when I said that I failed my Anatomy test because I thought my knee bone was connected to my hardy-har-har-har. Thanks, Das EFX. 3. Flagpole Sitta – Harvey Danger – I posit that this is the most 90s song ever. It came out in a gray area between grunge and raprock. Lyrically it is very self-aware but can come off as self-important when you take it in with regards to everything else around it in 1997. It’s super white guy complain-y, which is the exact link between the flannel of the early 90s and the backwards red hat of the late 90s. It reads like a parody of Green Day’s Basket Case. All of this can be backed up in my doctoral thesis, which you can read on my blog. Thanks, Sean Nelson. 4. Poison – Bell Biv DeVoe – Yes. Twelve year old me did love this song. No. Twelve year old me did not understand the sage advice of “never trust a big but and a smile.” Thanks, Bell. Thanks, Bivins. Thanks, DeVoe. 5. Mind Playing Tricks on Me – Geto Boys – “This year Halloween fell on a weekend / me and Geto Boys are trick-or-treating.” I say it every year whether it applies or not. Btw, am I the only one who got the news of every rapper being shot from Kurt Loder? He told me in that condescending tone like it was my fault. I did not shoot Bushwick Bill, Kurt Loder! Stop talking to me like that. Put Tabitha Soren on. Thanks, Scarface. Thanks, Willie D. Thanks, Bushwick Bill. 6. Peaches – The Presidents of the United States of America – Okay. A rare miss from Spotify. I do know this song very well but that’s because you can hear it once and never shake it. I don’t dislike the Presidents. Chris Ballew has worked with the Minus 5 since so that’s cool. No thanks, Spotify. 7. Can I Kick It? – A Tribe Called Quest – If I wasn’t cool enough for OutKast at 16 then I certainly wasn’t cool enough for Tribe at age 12. At that age I was still begging for Hammer to not hurt ‘em. Pleeeeeease, Hammer, don’t hurt em. I implore you! I have since gotten on board with Tribe. Thanks, Q-Tip. R.I.P. Phife Dawg. 8. Cannonball – The Breeders – This is pure goodness, just instant good mood music. I never saw the Breeders live but I did see Courtney Barnett cover this song in concert. Thanks, Deal Sisters. 9. Killing Me Softly with His Song – Fugees – It was rough being a broke music fan before streaming because not only was I buying a Fugees album but I was also curious enough to buy Roberta Flack’s greatest hits. This situation happened over and over again. Thank God there was BMG and mail fraud. Thanks, BMG. Thanks Lauryn Hill. Thanks, Roberta Flack. 10. Fat Cats, Bigga Fish – the Coup – Okay, let’s get real. I didn’t know about this group or this song until a few years ago but I love it and I’ve listened to it a lot since then. When I was in that new relationship phase with this song I wrote about it online and Boots Riley of the Coup sent me a very nice message thanking me for the kind words. Thanks, Boots Riley. Thanks, Internet. 11. I Got 5 On It – Luniz – If you don’t like this song you don’t like music. Thanks, Luniz. Thanks, dime bags. 12. Blister in the Sun – Violent Femmes – Here we have our first timeline anomaly. This song was released a full decade before my “formative years” but then again young James did buy a Violent Femmes album during his formative years and wore it out. Spotify algorithms are something else. Not my favorite VF song but it’s an undeniable classic. Thanks, Violent Femmes. Thanks, Sean and Bren. Thanks, big hands. 13. She Don’t Use Jelly – the Flaming Lips – Here we have the first instance of a song I first heard on Beavis & Butthead. I bought the album after being assured in Spin magazine that it was much better than just this novelty song. I have since seen the Flaming Lips in concert four or five times. At one show Sean Lennon kicked a huge red balloon off the stage and straight at my face. Thanks, Sean Lennon. Thanks, confetti. Thanks, Flaming Lips. 14. Elevators (Me & You) – OutKast – Again, it came out before I listened to Outkast but it’s probably my favorite. No. Second favorite. We will get to number one later in the playlist. I have a glow-in-the-dark 12’’ of this song. It is gorgeous. This song was also BJ Upton’s walkup music when he played for the Braves and because of that I loved BJ Upton no matter how low his batting average dropped. Thanks, baseball. Thanks, Record Store Day. Thanks, OutKast. 15. Laid – James – I have never had any problem with being made fun of because of my name. I guess kids in middle school were too dumb to think of Lame James because the only thing they could manage to call me was faggot. There was a very brief time when this song was popular that, upon meeting me, many people would ask if I knew there was a band called James. Yes. I knew and I loved them. This is such a great song. Life experience has taught me that the therapist mentioned in this song is very bad at their job. Thanks, therapy. Thanks, James. 16. Gimme the Car – Violent Femmes – See number 12. Thanks, Gordon Gano. Thanks, referring to a previous entry. 17. You Don’t Know How It Feels – Tom Petty – Man, I love Tom Petty. This album is good from start to finish. One day I will see Tom Petty. Maybe. He has to stop performing amphitheaters first. I do not do music outside nor with that many people. Thanks, Tom Petty. Thanks, solo albums. 18. Careless Whisper – George Michael – Another timeline disruption. I did not start loving this song until I heard Rufus Wainwright and Ben Folds cover it but it is perfect. Cheesy saxophone and all. Thanks, cover songs. Thanks, duets. 19. Polka Your Eyes Out – “Weird Al” Yankovic – Yeah. Give me all the Weird Al polkas you got. Thanks, medleys.

There are 36 more songs. I got some Neutral Milk Hotel, which I did not discover until the early 2000s, but In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is probably the album I’ve listened to the most since. There’s the best Violent Femmes song, American Music. There’s a few R.E.M. songs, Regulate from Warren G and Nate Dogg, Nirvana, They Might Be Giants, Digable Planets, Biggie, James Brown, Bill Withers, Old 97s, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, etc. The biggest mystery is a Black Flag song that I cannot figure out but it is balanced out by the best song of all time: B.O.B. from OutKast. Thanks, Dungeon Family. Thanks, power music. Thanks, electric revival.

[63824peace]

Tuesday, 25th of october 2005

I started by blog exactly one month ago. I'm doing fine so far... I think I can continue.

I toasted myself last night to celebrate my blog's one month anniversary.

My morning disappeared beneath employment interviews and other miscellaneous tasks ; all unrelated to game creation.

I went to the restaurant Kurosawa for lunch but it was closed. The place closes on Tuesdays. My only option was to go a little farther into Tokyo's Azabu district.

I ate Butaniku-to-ninniku-kuki at the Shanghai-style Chinese restaurant Nan Shan Sho Ron.

I saw Julien as I walked back to the office along Keyaki-zaka Street. He and I are scheduled to meet in the office this afternoon. How's that for a coincidence?

Julien flew all the way from France and has just arrived in Tokyo. It couldn't have been an accident that we just bumped into each other on the street. If you consider the odds against our accidental meeting, then it's nothing short of miraculous. It must be some kind of fate. I would not have gone to the Abazu district had Kurosawa been open today, and then I wouldn't have been here to run into him.

I felt a really strong sense of connectivity.

I bought the Japanese edition of New Order's album Singles in Tsutaya. I listened to it in the office.

I ripped into the CD's shrink wrap so hastily that I lost the triangular contest entry ticket inside. If a buyer sends the ticket back to the album publisher, then he stands a chance to win a special poster featuring all of the jackets of New Order's singles.

Well, it's not a big deal. I doubt I'd win anyway. I'm never very lucky in lotteries, and I've never won a prize through these types of games. Besides, I'm proud to say that I own all of the twelve-inch singles except for Progression and Temptation.

I have the sleeves for Fine Time and True Face Remix (my favorite singles) displayed in my personal hideout.

Some people might say, "Decorating a room with vinyl LP sleeves?! This over-the-hill grandpa is really uncool." It wasn't anything out of the ordinary in my younger days though. People even considered decorating a room using vinyl LP jackets (rather than posters or photographs) pretty trendy back then.

Records weren't just for playing. They were made for buyers to use and display. The record jacket was considered an aspect of the interior's decoration, which was also considered part of the total musical package.

Today the vinyl LP has been replaced by the Compact Disc. CDs are easier to carry around and they're more convenient; on the other hand, the jackets have become smaller. The package's size can't express the same visual texture or detail that the older albums could.

Then again, the old LPs were pretty big. The inside and outside of the album jackets were practically as large as a painter's canvas. The cover unfolded and revealed enough space for a picture or a landscape painting.

Listeners also couldn't easily manipulate older analog records to select a desired track like they can with CDs. We could only look at the art printed in the album jacket while we listened to the entire record from beginning to end. The jacket's visual materials practically served as a music video when we perused it while listening to the album.

People bought albums impulsively after looking at the jacket art. A lot of people therefore displayed the record jackets at home by putting them in picture frames.

I listened to a music genre filled with performers who were mostly art school graduates. They sought out sounds that would express the pictures that they envisioned. They pursued music to extend the breadth of their original visions. Pictures preceded their music. They introduced a new style to the world ; a new way of thinking about music as an art that should appeal to the eyes as well as to the ears. These were definitely the aesthetic decisions of art school graduates.

Of course the music could be pretty bad. They weren't trained to play their instruments. They hadn't even known how to read the musical notations on their own scores. They created their music with the aid of computers; they input certain data and the results made it possible to compose and play their music. Still, the audiences jeered and heckled them when they gave live concerts because the actual performance was so bad. Even the Japanese audiences gave them a rough reception.

Their musical ideals involved more than only sound. Other ideas attended the music, such as fashion and pictures. Their musical identity incorporated clothing, make up, album art, and music videos.

I'm referring to the New Wave movement of the 1980's.

The musical movement gave birth to the idea of creating a twelve-inch, LP-sized single album as distinct from regular EPs. The large jacket was a perfect canvas on which to express the album's art. It even spun at a faster speed than an EP, which created better quality playback.

Then twelve-inch singles boomed. Remixes became popular as a new musical style too.

Some time ago they made paper jackets for reissues that reproduced the most popular records. The paper jacket packaging once was in style but it simply wasn't big enough. The original album art had been designed for an LP-sized package; the necessary size reduction created a sense of incongruity. I might compare the change to a famous painting if it were shrunk to half its original dimensions.

The LP-sized CD jackets that current artists sometimes use resulted from all this. KojiPro has even adopted this design style for MGS3's press sheet at E3 2004.

The press sheet is essentially a digital CD packaged in an LP-sized jacket. The band Asia used this format for their first album.

We affixed a sticker to the jacket with a caution message printed on it: "This is a Compact Disc." We placed the warning on there to ensure that no one mistook the album for an actual vinyl LP.

I like the music of New Order and Joy Division, but I also like the jacket art designed by Peter Seville. An exhibition titled The Peter Seville Show was held during autumn a couple of years ago in the LaForet Museum Harajuku. I visited the exhibition on my way home. Seville fans in their thirties and forties like me were moved to tears before the authentic album jackets on display.

I would like to ask Seville to design a jacket for one of my games someday.

I gave an interview with the France2 television station this afternoon for a charity telethon. Julien-kun is seventeen years old. He came all the way from Normandy in France to meet me here in Roppongi Hills. He is a huge fan of Metal Gear. He told me that he is currently studying Japanese.

He greeted me in perfect Japanese. I would like to have answered him in French, but I couldn't. Teppei from the motion team was born and raised in Paris, so I asked him to interpret.

I walked Julien to KojiPro' development booth, where I invited him to play Metal Gear Online. We were in the process of checking MGO through its final phase.

Julien truly is a huge MGS fan; he's a really good player. He easily beat out the older members of my staff.

I had a private man-to-man talk with Mr. Sagami in the eveniing. He is the editor-in-chief of the comic magazine Koro Koro.

Gachinko fight!

I didn't feel like working on the blog when I arrived home. This is it for today.

[lofidiaries-blog]

Condoleezza. Condo, Lease a. Con Dole Ease Saw. Condole Eee Suh.

Well Dave and I smacked the shit out of “Standing Room Only” this evening, absolutely hammering it far past the stadium seating and into the parking lot. As typically happens when recording (and always happens when recording with Dave), an imaginative ad-lib led to the song being completely altered, re-titled, and finished. 

We were doing the second chorus and putting in the refrain to the ascending chromatic scale that meets each first quarter note, by singing “come to leave,” as per the lyrics, taken from an old GIANTS song called “Financial Panther” which you can hear here: https://giantsgiantsgiants.bandcamp.com/ That lyric and vocal melody can also be found on an old-but-unreleased BCN song called “How To Build A House You Won’t Hate.” So it’s been in my head for more than a few years now, going back to 2013. So we started singing this song with the usual “I come to leave it, I come to leave it alone,” adding the come to leave its in the last chorus. Dave started singing “Uh!” after each one with a wicked grin on his face, which confused me at first, until I realized he was singing “Condoleeza.”  I liked it so much that I decided to change the name of the song, which is no great loss, because “Standing Room Only” is a pretty lame name for a tune. “Condoleezza” is better. I hope that people won’t mistake us for a political band though. Somehow I doubt it. Political bands tend to be a little more currently topical than dedicating songs to the Secretary of State from two administrations ago. 

Anyway, I did a bit of editing on it tonight and though it’s nowhere near finished (it still needs bass, as do all the songs still, a vacancy that David and I intend to remedy tomorrow), the rough skeleton of what that song is has been completed. Whether you like it or not, that’s it. It might be our track one. Either that or “Bloviator.” We also finished a slow-as-shit ballad tonight called “Me Online.” Whew it’s slow. Glacial, even. A drum machine would get impatient and speed up if it had to play it. I read somewhere that Noel Gallagher’s demo version of “Go Let It Out,” a song I absolutely loathe, was much much slower than the version that ended up on the album. This is perplexing to me, because “Go Let It Out” is really fucking slow as is. I mean, it doesn’t seem particularly slow on its own, but put it next to barnstormers like “Fade Away,” “Headshrinker,” or “Rock N Roll Star” and you’ve got yourself one sleepy song. It’s a piece of shit, really. Not just a bad song but the worst single Oasis ever released. I remember seeing the cover for the single, in CD format obviously, at CD Plus in Brampton, where I purchased my first CD ever in Grade Seven, Everclear’s Sparkle and Fade, an album whose lyrics I immediately identified with, since I was in my first romantic relationship and overwhelmed by the strong feelings that were consuming me. I know I was only twelve but it was a transformative experience. Before Sheena, I was alone and fine with it. After Sheena, alone didn’t cut it. There is a place inside where all the good things die/sometimes I feel like a whore.  A pretty stupid song made even worse by Art Alexakis’ stupid yelling before the first verse. “Guh!” he yells, presumably meaning “go!” “Ohh yeah uhhhyayhayhay” he continues, unable to shut the fuck up until the verse begins. (By the way, Billie Jo Armstrong yells a lot throughout Dookie, and it always sounds like he’s yelling “poo!” Seriously, I’m going to write an essay about that someday. How has nobody noticed it?) Anyway, track two on the Everclear album is called “Heroin Girl,” and I always loved it. I daydreamed about having a girlfriend I could live in an abandoned warehouse with (a constant fantasy of mine in high school, being runaways together, us against the world, sleeping bags across the nation, tucked into the cozy corners of cities, protected from rain and wind in little nooks...no other homeless people ever infringed upon these fantasies of mine...no cops, no security guards...you can see, from that alone, just how young I was. We lived in our own little daydream, dual solipsism). I thought heroin would be cool. Years later when I actually became a heroin addict I was too busy trying to scrounge up money to buy drugs to think about how “cool” I was. I didn’t put on the song and do a comparison between the fantasy and the reality of it, though that would be a worthwhile exercise now. I don’t know how I got onto Everclear...oh yeah! The front cover of the “Go Let It Out” CD single. So hopelessly British. Google it. A buncha young boys in their school uniforms kicking a soccer ball - sorry, football - around a court.

“Go Let It Out” is a terrible fucking song but it taught me a lesson in songwriting with regards to tempo. The slower your song is, the worse it feels and sounds to the listener. So you have to have a really strong song to keep it slow, otherwise its stitching will be revealed, its structure, by its molasses-like movement. The listener will hear the spaces between the chords where you hesitated, unsure of how to go on.

So I was hesitant and worried this evening when we started doing vocals for “Me Online,” a slow song that came out even slower when I tracked it properly. But I was delighted to hear that it came out alright, pretty good even, especially the harmonies between Dave and myself. His vocal is so strong, in fact, that I turned him up loud as hell and made him the lead singer. You can hear “Me Online” here: https://soundcloud.com/user-895154951/me-online-1 We each sing a verse and then play a guitar solo after it. Dispensing with a third verse I was originally going to try and get someone other than us to sing, adding a guitar solo afterwards, I just threw a final solo in there after Dave’s, leading the song into a fade out at 3:30. So, along with “Sincerely,” “I Threw It All Away,” “One Straight Line,” “Long Way Back,” and now “Me Online,” there is just one ballad left for us to tackle, this album’s Mt. Denali (formerly McKinley) of ballads, a song called “Kings of Queendom,” which you can see me soloing over elsewhere on this blog.  After that, I need someone with a soft voice, preferably a girl or a femme of some/any kind, to sing “The Air Up There,” which needs a new title, and then we’ll take another stab at vocals for “Please Don’t Die,” which Dave added some great lead guitar on today, ditto for “The Air Up There.” And then the album will be done. I’m gonna see if I can borrow Dave’s bass guitar tomorrow to do the bass for these songs, as well as those dusty BCN songs that have been sitting on the shelf since Dec 2015, dagnabbit. I’m sad about some of the orphaned albums I’ve collabed on. Brent and I started off strongly in summer 2014 with a whippersnapper of a tune called “Nostril Shovel,” convening that Christmas to record enough material for an album, with the both of us sharing drumming duties. But since then we haven’t done a thing. We tried vocals at my house once (in August 2015), but haven’t done anything since. It’s been so long, in fact, that Brent’s laptop has become outmoded and obsolete, and we can no longer access the session files needed to actually overdub our vocals. We’re left with scratch mixes, most of which are completely unusable.

I’m not gonna let that happen. This album will be out by mid-August, or no later than the 20th. The teens of August (not a bad album title, eh?) Teens of August. We’re thinking of going with Our Forgotten Useful Buildings, a phrase that popped into my head once which I’m glad I wrote down, but seeing it typed out makes me think it’s kinda pretentious, so maybe not.

More recording tomorrow, I’ll letcha know how it goes.

[mindthump]

Automated gardens and smart beds made my apartment every geek’s domestic dream http://ift.tt/2mYk5GU

Smart-home devices sometimes require complicated installation that just doesn’t make sense for renters. Plus, apartments have different needs than single-family homes. That’s why we decided to outfit a whole condo with smart devices that don’t require rewiring or permanent installation. Each week, we’ll tackle a different category and look at various products, then explain how we made our selections. At the end of the series, we’ll examine the smart apartment as an ecosystem, and how all these devices — or do not — work together.

If I had to describe the smart home today, the word I’d use is disjointed. It’s hard to find a product in every category that has all the features you want — not one guaranteed to work with the devices you already own, anyway. In fact, there are a lot of devices that don’t fit in the typical categories that spring to mind when you think of the smart home: lights, locks, security cameras, and so on. But from smart toasters to connected alarm clocks to Wi-Fi-enabled trash cans, the enormous “miscellaneous” category is a catch-all for any home device that can connect to the internet.

And make no mistake, if you type smart fill-in-the-blank-with-any-crazy-idea-you-can-think-of into Google, chances are good there’s been a Kickstarter for it.

For the seventh installment in our Digital Trends Smart Apartment series, I decided to take a look at some of these one-off devices that don’t necessarily sync with my Wink hub or help make any tasks easier. Some are fun, others are actually useful. Hopefully none will get me hacked. That is a concern with some devices; if they aren’t coming from a known company, it’s hard to know their track record on security. That may not dissuade you from picking up the latest gadget, but it is something to think about.

With that said, I decided to try out four smart-home devices that are perfect for apartment dwellers, because they can easily fit in a moving van.

Snooze in a smart bed

For a few hundred dollars more than other mattresses-in-a-box, you can get a SleepNumber It Bed, which is embedded with sensors. While it can sync with an activity tracker you wear on your wrist, the idea is that lying on top of a bunch of sensors that track your breathing, heart rate, and movement will be much better at determining how you’re sleeping than a watch will.

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With sheets on, it’s hard to tell what’s smart about the It Bed. It hides its tech — including an air pump that lets you adjust the mattress’s firmness — inside the covering. You’ll never see the sensors, of course, and aside from a plug, there isn’t a lot to signal it’s anything but an ordinary mattress when the pump is tucked away in its pouch at the foot of the bed.

Everything is handled on the SleepNumber app, which lets you adjust the firmness, tells you how well you’ve been sleeping via a daily “score,” and reminds you to start getting ready for bed at a reasonable time each night. I found the app doesn’t get things right 100 percent of the time; sometimes it will give my husband’s sleep score, but not mine. Sometimes it’s the other way around.

After you’ve been sleeping on the mattress for a while, it starts to get you know you — especially if you sync it with your Fitbit and tell the app all kinds of personal details, like what you eat, how much you drink, and so on. It starts to give you personalized recommendations based on this information, but it’s just advice. For example, if it tells you what temperature you sleep best at because it’s communicating with your Nest thermostat, it won’t tell that device to lower the temperature a few degrees. It won’t adjust the firmness by itself, either. It’s taking your data and giving you data in return, but it’s not reacting. SleepNumber actually addressed this with its upcoming, sure-to-be-expensive 360 bed, which stops people from snoring and warms up your toes when it’s time for bed.

Still, it’s a pretty comfortable mattress, and while I do ignore those “time for bed” alerts the bed sends me nightly, at least I get concrete feedback on how doing so affected my sleep the next morning.

Get some herbs

Gardening is difficult for apartment dwellers, but a recent glut of indoor gardens makes things a little simpler. I do not have a green thumb. I’ve never owned a plant; I’m pretty sure anyone who knows me realizes I would probably kill any gift greenery and has thus not burdened me by gifting me with it. That’s why I wanted to try the Smart Herb Garden by Click and Grow, which bills itself as a foolproof way to grow herbs and other plants. The Garden comes with three basil capsules, so you can start growing right away. Almost everything needed to start sprouting is contained within the capsule, so you just add water and plug the garden in. Add water every two weeks (you’ll get a reminder), and consult the app for tips and tricks. You’ll see little buds after a week or two and can start harvesting in about three months.

The one word of caution here is be careful where you place this sucker. Click and Grow recommends plugging it in for the first time right when you wake up, and with good reason. The LED light is bright. I keep mine in a closet in the office, because it can be dazzling. Because the light cycle is 16 hours on, eight off, even if you plug it in at 8:00 a.m., the light will stay on until you’re ready for bed. If you live in a studio, it might be hard to find a good place for it.

Framed

The beauty of digital frames is that you never have to get bored with what’s hanging on your walls. The Memento Smart Frame is app-enabled, so you can put up whatever pics you have on your phone, including those you downloaded from the internet.

Its 35-inch, 4K display is surrounded by a matte to make it a bit like a traditional picture frame, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. You can create different “albums” for it to cycle through, changing them every minute or more or less frequently. You can also adjust the contrast, saturation, and so on of your display. You can schedule it turn on and off at the same time every day or have it on longer during the weekends. It’s meant to be hung on the wall, which means there will be a cord hanging down and it needs to be situated near a plug. Memento does sell a kit to help you hide the cord a bit, but it requires painting.

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The Smart Frame stores up to 3,000 photos. I chose some cool-looking science photos I found online. At least, I thought they were cool. When my husband came home and saw them, he suggested they look like the backgrounds of motivational posters and should be emblazoned with words like “Persevere!”

Artistic taste aside, the Memento is ridiculously expensive. You could always just have your photos cycle through on your smart TV instead…

Nomnoms

There are a ridiculous number of smart pet devices on our planet right meow – sorry, right now. My cat will not stand for a collar at any time, but he loves to eat. Thus, I thought I’d try out the Petnet Smartfeeder on him. It’s an automatic feeder that also has an app that gives you a bit of insight into what’s going on with your furry housemate.

More: Petzi Treat Cam review

The thing with the Smartfeeder is that it needs to be plugged in. My little cat nook — aka, the place I put his food and water bowls — doesn’t have an outlet, so I had to find a new place. My cat didn’t really seem to appreciate this move, and though he regarded the machine curiously when it spit out food the first time, he didn’t approach it. It makes a kind of whirring sound typical of automatic feeders, which doesn’t seem to hold the same allure as me shaking his bag of food. To get him to investigate, I dropped some treats in the feeder’s bowl, and he seemed fine with it. He still seems to prefer his plain old stainless steel bowl, though.

The app lets you set scheduled feeding times and gives a recommendation for the amount based on your pet’s age, weight, and activity level. To me, this doesn’t seem like an exact science, as my cat is part Maine Coon, and they’re big. Twelve pounds might sound like a lot, but he wears it well. The app also seemed to shame me with my pet food choice; the “Food Report Card” showed a few red circles indicating the fairly pricey kibbles are deficient in protein and fat, and they also contain filler ingredients and artificial colors. Sorry, kitty!

Petnet had a server outage left year that left some pets hungry. It’s definitely not something I would trust if I was leaving the cat alone for more than a day. In fact, I’m supposed to get alerts when the device doles out food twice a day, but I found this wasn’t always reliable. When I scrolled back to yesterday, for example, it said it had only delivered a single feeding. I think this is because the feeder drops food directly down, meaning the nibblets tend to stay crowded in the back where it’s hard for him to reach.

I like the idea of having a reliable machine that can always deliver my cat his food at 6:00 p.m. on the dot, so hopefully updates will make the Petnet more trustworthy in the future.

More smart stuff?

My experience with all these devices has been far from perfect, but that doesn’t mean I’m not curious about adding, say, a smart alarm clock into the mix. Heck, I want to try out Simplehuman’s voice-activated trash can when it comes out. Smaller companies are coming up with some of the most innovative solutions, but it might take a while before their software and hardware work together perfectly, 100 percent of the time. I guess a smarter apartment isn’t necessarily the smartest apartment.

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