Vintage Video: Art of Noise "Close to the Edit"

Without the video I may well never have liked this song simply for its association with the new music of the 1980s.

Robin Lane and the Chartbusters: "Piece of Mind"

After a long hiatus punctuated by some fine solo recordings, Robin Lane has released a fine reunion recording with her legendary Chartbusters. The recording consists of a re-recorded Chartbusters tune ("Idiot") and another ("The Letter") from Lane's most recent solo effort.

And yes, this review is about four years late but I didn't get around to purchasing and listening to it until just now.


Maybe the link widget just needs time to look like it's supposed to.

"Heroes" plot musings

While I tend to love the television program "Heroes," I have long been dissatisfied with the show's handling of time travel.

Yes, it's just a television show. Perhaps I shouldn't let it get to me. But I can't help it, because the issue interests me in terms of logic. Once a character like Hiro visits a given future, it appears to confirm that the future he visits is real. The people he meets and the things he experiences are to be established as part of Hiro's immutable past.

And that's where the problem comes in. You can't coherently talk about "changing the future" if the future exists in a given state. If the future exists in state A then it exists in state A. Nothing can change it. Perhaps it is possible to bring about an alternate future none-the-less, but that must be a different thing from changing the future. For example, if you have a future here Sylar is the rehabilitated Uncle Gabriel, that future is stuck in reality. There's no getting rid of it. The program tends to suggest that those alternate realities can no longer interest us once events in the past have changed so that such a future is averted. Suppose that Uncle Gabriel's existence is thwarted, and Peter cannot have the opportunity to acquire his powers. How do you acquire powers from somebody who does not exist anywhere in time or space?

I had also feared that the writers would keep multiplying alternate realities to the point where the story became incomprehensibly convoluted. But I'm happy to see from last week's episode that the program probably will not head in that direction. I expect that once the character said to be manipulating the others comes to light we'll see a hard limit on the number of alternative realities/possible futures, at least in terms of the plot.

Don't read further if you fear a potential spoiler based on my guessing.

And who is the mystery character prefigured in the scenes-from-next-week? I have no insider information, but my guess is that Mr. Petrelli, father of Nathan, Peter and perhaps even Gabriel (Sylar) will turn out to be the guy pulling others' strings.

Why would I guess that? Quite simply, Mr. Petrelli is the most important character in the overall flow of the plot about whom we know the least. The lack of information creates a hole in the plot just waiting to be filled in future episodes. I expect we'll learn much more about Mr. Petrelli and what he's up to in the coming weeks.

Speed Racer

It's a pity the Speed Racer movie was so bizarre. What a great cartoon!



I love the run-on dialog. Plus the way the other drivers near the beginning of this first episode are so deferential to Speed.

"You beat us fair and square."

"Speed Racer" is always good for cartoon-camp laughs, plus it's a healthy reminder of the healthy amount of gratuitous violence one encountered in the cartoons of yore.

Whoa. "Heroes" teaser

I've enjoyed the first two seasons of "Heroes" quite a bit. The acting has been solid and the stories have been addictive, creative and surprising. The new season looks like it will offer more of the same.

Andy Timmons: "Cry for You"

Youtube added some "recommended for you" feature and this Andy Timmons video popped up.



Great recommendation! It's a great tune--just right for a guitar-dominated slow tune/ballad, comparable to Satch's "Always With Me, Always With You."

Shogun Assassin

I haven't watched a new film release for some time (my last visit to a movie theater was for the fourth Harry Potter film, if I remember correctly).

I have my favorites, though. One odd film, notable for its geysers of spurting blood well before video games and death metal made it commonplace, was Shogun Assassin.

Shogun Assassin was brilliantly cheesy once it had been dubbed into English. This trailer give a pretty good indication of the overall effect.



Those "Masters of Death" guys I figure are pretty much the same dudes that Jack Burton tangled with in "Big Trouble in Little China." Check them out in the trailer for comparison.



But back to "Shogun Assassin"--it's got one of those fabulous dubbed lines that can really stick in your memory. The assassin's son narrates their journey: "At night we listen for the ninja--who never make a sound."

Nifty music: "The Milky Way Home" by Sonny Landreth (featuring Eric Johnson)

I'm still agog over the excellentness of Amazon's mp3 download service. My last post about it had me enjoying music from King's X and trying to decide on my next music purchase.

The verdict is in, and the purchase was modest.

I bought Sonny Landreth's song "The Milky Way Home" since it's instrumental and features the superlative Eric Johnson. Landreth's playing is nothing to sneeze at, either. Landreth's tone nicely compliments Johnson's on this tune.

The PolitiFact widget

I don't recommend this thing by any stretch of the imagination. I just wanted to see what it looks like embedded in a blog post.



Feel free to ignore it.

King's X "XV" and Amazon MP3

In the "Didn't see that one coming" department ...

Amazon has entered the mp3 download market with DRM-free downloads. So I picked up the new King's X (14 songs) for under $8 without those lousy, stinkin' DRMs. At first listen, this sounds like King's X best since ... "Gretchen Goes to Nebraska." I was never gaga over "Dogman," which is apparently a favorite among many King's X fans. I've never been one who gravitated toward dark-sounding music (melancholy's OK), and "Dogman" was painful to listen to--in retrospect almost certainly because of the pain that the group was going through (notably singer/bassist Doug Pinnick).

It's nice to hear the group back on their game.

And now I'm listening to D. C. Slater trying to decide how to prioritize my next music purchase ...

Goes to show you never can tell ...

I love browsing music.

Today I ran across two bands whose music I almost certainly will never purchase but I want to give each one honorable mention for catching my interest.

First, the Dictatortots. Inspired name. The music is, er, "fun" but probably a bit too depraved for my tastes.

Second, the Radioactive Chicken Heads. Stupid name, but catchy in a stupid sort of way. Their attitude reminds me of the Dickies (I still love their work on the soundtrack of "Killer Klowns from Outer Space").

These are not recommendations but there you have it, whatever it is.

Good band: Melodyssey

I'm waiting and waiting and waiting for new music from an Emusic discovery, the Aussie band "Melodyssey." I've described them as sounding a bit like Rush crossed with the Offspring. The singer delivers a Geddyesque take on new rock vocals while the band stretches out well beyond the commercial rock sound, putting a progressive instrumental angle on crunchy rock.




My favorites, more or less in order, are:
Aquaplane
Gameday
Intro
Distance and Regret
Bullrush
Vacate

The band supposedly has a new release coming out ("The Two Windows"), but I haven't yet located an avenue for procuring it.

New music from King's X

King's X has been a favorite of mine for a very long time.

How long?

Well, I bought the vinyl version of "Out of the Silent Planet" without having heard the band at all. I was in the habit of periodically visiting record stores and looking at every single album in stock to see if there was anything new and interesting. King's X remains one of my treasured finds, though their recent work hasn't measured up to the first half of their catalog.

The pre-release single, "Alright" sounds good, though. I'm hoping the rest sounds as good.

New music from The Weepies

Today marked the release of a new album (is that term still allowed?) by The Weepies. Titled "Hideaway," it picks up where "Say I Am You" left off with yet more very tastefully arranged and written folk-pop by the husband-wife duo Steve Tannen and Deb Talan.

The vocal mix between the two gives The Weepies a very distinctive sound that serves to insinuate the words and melodies into your brain.

Fans of the innocence mission should enjoy The Weepies.

Both are available as DRM-free downloads at eMusic.

Changes afoot: Plugging eMusic and favorite bands

I've decided to continue this blog's shift in focus toward music.

For some time, now, I've subscribed to e-Music, a music download service that provides MP3's minus those pesky DRMs. Though I tend not to share files except in ways that promote an artist's livelihood, I object to DRMs in principle.

I've long had eclectic tastes in music, and e-Music works well with my tendency to listen to artists a tad off the beaten track. Plus it's a good deal compared to other (legal) music services.

Rather than simply finding videos by artists I like and posting those to the site, I'll be sharing my explorations of new music and encouraging readers to take advantage of e-Music's no-strings-attached free trial: Forty free downloads of DRM-free MP3's. Those whose tastes are mainstream might have trouble finding familiar artists. E-Music does not have music from the major labels. But I've been able to download everything from the White Stripes until "Icky Thump" as well as Kansas' "Device-Voice-Drum."

Nifty Music: "Charmed Life" by Leigh Nash

Excellent tune sung by Leigh Nash for the "Uptown Girls" soundtrack. It took longer than I thought it would to find out who wrote the song: Kenneth Brown and Steve Mandile.

As a pop single it stands up there with anything else Nash has done, including her work with Sixpence None The Richer.

Cool song download alert

While hunting up a link for the prior post on Vedera, I surprised myself by crashing into the Fleming & John page featuring the (free) download of "Winter Wonderland" melded with Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop."

The main page had been inactive for quite some time.

Nifty Music: Vedera

I discovered (you know what I mean) this group while browsing at e-music.

The singer's voice on this tune falls between that of Leigh Nash (Sixpence None the Richer) and Fleming McWilliams (Fleming & John). Plus I like the guitar textures. Adds a U2/Choir/Sundays vibe to the tunes.

Well, cool. There's another video:

Return to Wall Springs

I recently paid a return visit to Wall Springs.

The last visit occurred during a dry spell, so the outflow from the main spring was weak. My region of Florida has experienced decent rainfall lately, so I expected the spring to manifest a more robust output.

Big difference.



Just like last time, I spotted a juvenile snook in the brackish lagoon. The video came out surprisingly clear.



Still no fox squirrels. The fish in the main spring were the best animal entertainment. About a dozen of them were hovering with their noses sticking out of the water.



The above photo is the lagoon from the south shore.

See the images posted from my earlier visit for comparison.

Guitarist T. J. Helmerich (unidentified tune)

There is one T. J. Helmerich tune that I've been digging for years after hearing it on a instrumental guitar collection. I just looked up T. J. on a lark at YouTube. Ordinarily I don't post but full videos of instrumental tunes, but this solo is just too sweet to pass up.



It has a little bit of that Allan Holdsworth off-the-wall feel to it but still strikes me as very melodic.

I may have to hunt for more of this kind of stuff.

Nifty music: The Weepies

I've been listening to this duo for about a year, now. I was delighted to see that their songs were used in JC Penney and Old Navy ads this past Christmas season. And now that the songs are appearing on some soundtracks (such as "Because I Said So") perhaps it will earn them some well-deserved acclaim.

Thought I'd post a couple of favorites from YouTube.



"Nobody Knows Me At All"



I'm not sure if this is an official band video or not--but somebody put some care into making it. And the music sounds fine.

Hmmm. Not the smoothest upload I've ever experienced with Blogger, but I suppose it's my fault for using (relatively) high-resolution images.

Just a few more pics from the Silver Springs auto show featuring Ford products. As mentioned in the previous post, most of the cars were Mustangs. Even though there were quite a few unusual Mustangs (including more Cobras than you'd expect to find in India), but I was more interested in taking photos of the more unusual entries.

Gulf Oil Pantera--sweet

One of several exquisite exhibitions at a Ford-themed auto show held at Silver Springs in Ocala, FL. Most of the cars were Mustangs of one kind or another.