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Archive for February 2002 So Sony cancelled all the other forthcoming ELO remasters, but is calling it a postponement. Rob Caiger, head of archiving and mayor of string-fans-along-town, says this happened because they're finding all this wonderful new material in the vaults that they need to sift through and decide if it should go on the remasters. Meanwhile, Sony's official line is they hadn't found enough material to make remasters with bonus stuff worthwhile. I'm more inclined to believe the latter. Much more inclined. Rob Caiger: "Oh, you should hear the things I've uncovered! We've got experimental octophonic mixes for Out of the Blue, and alternate versions of four songs on A New World Record. In fact, there's a lot of material here that points to Jeff scrapping a new album between those two! It was never completed, but I did find eight new finished songs. Ever hear demos of Jungle and Starlight? I found eighty of them! I also located the track Jeff did with Aerosmith, Lizard Love, and have two dozen mysterious tracks with Jeff performing with Madonna, Garth Brooks, Alanis Morrissette, and U2, among others! Every record exec, even the ones who hate ELO, wet their pants when they heard this material. There's at least 4,000 hours of stuff here!!!" Typical remaster bonus material: Fire on High (early demo) -- 9 seconds Wild Times (instrumental) -- 26 seconds Love on a Heart Cloud (unfinished demo) -- 15 seconds Okay, so there's more than a minute of sort-of-new stuff. But like, Little Town Flirt, which was completed in 2001 (and from the sound of it, used very little from way back then) was on Discovery. Why? A pretty much NEW song, and a COVER at that, tossed in among the '70s-era material? Don't lie to us. If there's no new material, don't tell us there is. And for God's sake, if there IS new material, stop acting like someday, down the road, we'll get to hear all of it. Because we already know Sony has no reason to put it out. Look, I don't know whether or not Andrea Yates was sane when she drowned her children. That's for the jury to decide given the evidence. And the evidence, AND the justice system, is not served by showing the jury the childrens' cute little pajamas for "showing how much smaller than the mother the children were." We KNOW how old they were. Besides, if they were able to fight her off, there was still a crime being committed. Just play it clean, prosecution. She's either going to prison, to an asylum, or death row (?). I hate how the courts are all about theatrics. Leonard reports that Paul Conrad suffered a stroke at some point, so it's not exactly 100% okay to make fun of him, as it would be to mock, say, Matt Drudge. But I'd say his work hasn't suffered. And I don't mean that in a cruel way. It's passable. But it does truly embody the generic Michigan J. Frog approach to political cartoons. Now, Brad Anderson... http://www.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/NEWS/02/19/dozing.airport.screener/index.html ... zuh? What? Ohhh, September 11th, right. http://www.ucomics.com/paulconrad/viewtmpco.cfm?uc_full_date=20020213&uc_comic=tmpco&uc_daction=X Multi-talent Conrad The focus of my fandom Than him I look no further For topics matched at random! Flit about, Paul Conrad Political toon fairy Sprinkle me with anthrax dust Disguised as commentary Paul Conrad is a diamond With facets like a prism He polishes the left face With hodgepodge symbolism Sharpshooting Paul Conrad Draws pro-Democratic The only gun he carries Is a semiotimatic. P.S. I didn't make up that word. A major theme in my work is mimicry, and forgery. These are both elements of satire, but I do it beyond that. For example, for a few months I've wrestled with what to call my next music project. Is it still Electrologica? (Frankly, it doesn't matter very much.) But one of the things I tried to do with Electrologica was to do it straight - it's a guy and a MIDI sequencer, and that was it. Heck, from the music, you don't believe otherwise anyway. But I always felt it would be cool to have a "band" which I'd make look authentic. I'd make fake pictures from concerts, realistic press kits, etc. Never with the intent to out-and-out fool, but just to make people say "what a good forgery." Part of me gets very tired of that form of humor. Like Checkerboard Nightmare. A lot of days I feel really hacky and stupid for relying on self-aware humor, even if it is self-self-aware. (Self-aware-aware?) But other days, like with this film noir storyline, which also gives me a chance to draw differently, I love that kind of stuff. That sort of goes along with why I wanted another strip/to change CN. I wanted to expand the humor beyond self-aware Chex wants fame, so I can parody things. But that's only when I feel like it's not working so well. Anyway, I think the fake route is what I'll do for the next album I put together. I have a need to formally hide behind corporate entities or aggregates (thus, why it's not kristoferstraub.com -- I feel that's egotistic, but nightlightpress isn't).  I bought a Strat on the weekend, which was infinitely cheaper than the Les Paul. It's much easier to play than the Les Paul; I have the action on that one as low as I can get it without buzzing but it still feels high up to me. That said, the Strat sounds nice, but when I play them side by side, the Les Paul is a lot fuller. The Strat, to me, sounds a lot cleaner with the treble all the way up and lots of distortion than the other one. To me. It's exactly like the picture, except it doesn't have a whammy bar. They gave me one, but it doesn't fit the damn thing, which is too bad. And, if you're interested, I think I did a good enough job on this part [MP3, 188 KB] to put it here. I noticed one thing about three- and four-part harmonies a long time ago, and that is individually, they can sound like garbage, off-key and everything, but when they're together, there's a level of illusion, where you brain knows the notes the voices are trying to approach, and that's what you hear. It's even better when there's music under them. Most of my old harmonies were pretty lousy stand-alone. http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/02/15/space.language/index.html "Basic vocabulary like mother, father, run, walk and sit will persist. But other words --such as airplane, skyscraper, car and train -- would not be useful to the space travelers." They will prefer the terms aerowinger, atmoscrape, flizzer, and fastrailer, respectively. P.S. This CNN article has about the least content of any article I've read there, and that's no small feat. It's like John Stossel wrote it. I have covered Video Killed The Radio Star, and shortened it a bit. What say you, my children? It still needs some more mixing, but I was just practicing. MP3 -- 2.8 MB  On Closet World (I hope weary Google searchers will soon associate my journal with "Closet World") | February 7, 2002 19:51:20 PM  An e-mail from one Brendan Avery, who read a previous entry on the Closet World dancing logo (10 Nov 2001, check the archives): I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only one who has recognized the disturbing improvements in the Closet World Man's rendering technology. I find it almost exciting, yet troubling that the CWM has becoming even more hypnotic and stupifying in recent years. Just tonight, I've seen the actors themselves dancing in a manner that I can only define as CWM-influenced. Is it Closet World's aim to distract us from the less-than-interesting prospect of shopping for closet-oriented retail merchandise and installation services, by dazzling us with the disturbing jolts and twitches of the white-striped faceless effigy of the human soul, manipulating it into a cruel puppet-show foretelling of our enslavement to an addiction of competitively priced home improvement services, coat racks, and storage bins?My response: The difficulty here is, most "free-thinkers" would accuse you of trying to upset progress. Yet with all the technical improvements CWM has undergone, his modus operandi remains the same: a joyless thumping of pale, stiff limbs -- movement, but not life. I suppose Closet World sees its mascot's vacant countenance as indicative of some everyman property, to be respected and aspired to. The actors' mimickry of CWM's mindless dance shows us others striving toward a state of existence sans both emotion and logic. This is Closet World's vision of the future: a single image of Closet World Man dancing on a human face, forever.I forwarded both e-mails to my father, who replies: The really scary part is the likelihood that CW retains a brace of programmers who are actually able to scratch out an existence with this line of work. I imagine some guy, at 3 in the morning, pushing himself with black coffee and uppers to meet the deadline -- "Oh no, dammit, his movements are still too jerky!" Then comes the breakthrough -- "Ahhh, that's it! Eureka!"But, is such a task ignoble... or ennobeling? Only time (and Roget's) will tell. What have you done? You made a fool of every-wuh-UH-uh-hun http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0205TV-VanSusteren-ON.html Seriously, that's pretty damn scary. And not particularly sexy either, for that matter. |
