Ah. The 80s when I was having fun. But talk about a one-trick pony. And this wasn't even their own trick: they were playing, I'm told, with a German band who had a song they liked and asked if they could play. It made it.

Thank Stalin for Steve Jobs, who got music distributors to break up albums. I just threw away a vinyl record of this, which was utterly unlistenable except for this song.

Ahhhhh!!!... DJ Rev. L Space Dogged... thank you... your musical ministrations* have sped me along the path to getting a s**tload of stuff done this weekend... as always, "Thine divine signal doth drown out the shrieks of those afflicted with dull shovels... For thine tin foil mitre doth boost the gain, and in so doing, increase the affliction visited upon the Kulak neighbours who see not the indiscretion of coveting an Escalade, for they know no shame... In your infinite mercy, you do remove Wham from your playlist. May the People's Message be Piggybacked on Hero Space Dog Laika's Signal, forever and ever, running through my head over and over and over again... And for this, we give thanks... Ramen!" Algore Akhbar! GWBUH!
*Dalmations, 102.1 FM

Faithfully,
SMO

Ah. The 80s when I was having fun. But talk about a one-trick pony. And this wasn't even their own trick: they were playing, I'm told, with a German band who had a song they liked and asked if they could play. It made it.

Nein, nicht ein band, es was der Tekno Konig Falco, der ubermensch auf Pop.



Alles klar Herr Kommisar Theocritus?

SMO, you're welcome. I'm glad the Hymn to the Kommisar scared the evil demons of Wham away. Begone Michael! Begone I say!

Tip of the tinfoil to Dr. P.....when I heard of his pet falcon, Mr. Falco...a little light went on.

Michael, the Dancing Queen, no relation to ABBA, seems to have found his metier performing in public places and I don't mean playing a guitar but rather a skin flute. Did you see the picture of the troll he was caught in the London park with?

Although let us not forget his introductory song, "Jitterbug," which was bright and bouncy, good bubble-gum, actually probably the best of that rather treacly genre, but it had one saving virtue: slow triplets in the middle of it, and I'm a sucker for triplets, especially slow ones. Mencken said if you wanted to get a woman to take off her clothes, play a waltz.

Michael, the faded pretty boy, was in that 1982 video parading around in hot pants and I must confess there was something to parade. Unfortunately when he quit singing that particular song he did not close his mouth for good--the words that came out were vapid and what went in was best done in private--and for his sins of commission and inhalation I have relegated him to the Richard Simmons home for Stupid Howling Embarrassing Faggots.

The flashing lights in the beginning were speaking to me. They told me to tax. Tax without mercy. However that is something that we all do without thinking about so it was kind of a waste of time.

Betty, it is our catechism. The Goracle has told us to finger our Karl Marx prayer beds five times a day, you know, and as First Direktor of Public Purity I sentence you to Five Tax Without Regards until you see the error of your ways.

You can NEVER waste time saying tax, tax, tax.

Learn it, live it, love it.

Awww....

No, that's a GOOD thing.

Shut up, Bruno. Martha Stewart is not going to come so you can paint her toe-nails. Get back in your cage.

Oh... okay.

And just to clarify, those Karl Marx prayer beads, are you sure they are just not cheap anal beads? They do bear quite a resemblance.

Anal beads go in and then out. You don't actually pray with Karl Marx prayer beads--when you say the Rosary, you wail on people like a whirling dervish. That way you leave Marx.

Couldn't resist.

A really rude joke about the size of beads and a drawstring is omitted but that ability did come handy when Our Many Titted Empress snarled at Bruno, "Just sit on it."

Coming up on 9 O'Clock and here's some Timbuk 3 to get your 80s groove on....

Elvis lives....no, not that Elvis....

"99 Luftballoons", anyone? This is a great anti-Reagan song, and, it's the original German version.

Bangers and Mash...with beads and two from The Bangles
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Ahhh...I see Dr.P and the Chairman has got the keys to the Hedonmobile and are out cruising this Friday night and they just called in for a dedication....This goes out to their MTE...This is for you Empress...here's The Divinyls!
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Thanks, Laika! It's not officially a party until someone plays The Divinyls' classic song about an auto-erotic compulsion.

The Chairman seems to be developing quite a penchant for Asian womyn lately. So here's The Vapours with "Turning Japanese".

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The lead singer's mullet rules!!!

Thank you Laika! One of my favourite retro-eighties songs. I am almost overwhelmed at what the last twelve hours has brought me... first The Vapors and then a Spinal Tap - the procedure... not the band - I enjoyed the Vapors more, to be honest... I've discovered that Spinal Taps give you really bad headaches - the procedure... not the band, and that you are supposed to stay level for a while until the fluid in your spinal column equalizes... But you did pick one of my favourites... the song - not the procedure...

More later
SMO (who's going to go and sleep off - the procedure... not the band.... )

I recall fondly the 80s--I was running and playing <i>a lot</i> then and had a wonderful time. Except for one unfortunately episode in an El Paso motel. Oh hell, except for several unfortunate episodes.

While recently in El Paso, I took a picture of the Caballero parking lot:
Imagine a BEQ, in underwear, eyes closed but rolling, hand stretched out like Moses parting the Red Sea, missing hair, as I drive by in a 1983 Toyota Supra <i>with the doors locked</i> while Mexican children snicker.

Some of the beguiling music of the time was the Bangles, called, falsely, the heirs to the Beatles, and George Michael's "Jitterbug" which I liked because slow triplets always fetch me. A friend Ron once asked why I looked funny at George Michael and I said, "That boy's too pretty to be straight" and the shorts that he wore were, er, pardon, fuck-me shorts. And boy was I right.

No points though. That Bush-bashing, and bush-eschewing bozo, screamed.

And while he left Wham! and became a heart-throb for teeny boppers I got the sort of belly laugh that only I could really and truly enjoy as adolescent girls swooned over his bubbling moaning treacle. "He's WONDERFUL! He understands ME!" That boy understands boys, girls--he's commonly known as a silly faggot.

George Michael is the gift that never quits giving. First his exhibitionism in a Los Angeles john. Tres amusant. Then passed out. Ah. The <a href="https://defamer.com/hollywood/gays/geor ... adation</a> of the witless leftie.

Don't you find the snarl fetching?

And George Michael, when found on Hampstead Heath, a cruising area in London, howled

The Screaming Queen wrote:When challenged George, 43, was wild-eyed and trembling. Trying to hide his face under a baseball cap, he screamed:

“I don't believe it! F*** off! If you put those pictures in the paper I'll sue!”

And in a Parthian, and I'm not committing a solecism when I write that, shot, here is the man with whom our Dancing Queen (homage to another 80s icon, ABBA) did the nasty:

Now all of these, except possibly the fat old tart in the park, including the BEQ, were raging pinks. And how exemplary I found their behavior in comparison with that old terror Ronald Reagan, who did the unthinkable: he said what he meant.

There. I feel much better.

Oh crap. I pissed myself laughing.
Theocritus...that link was hysterical...

Well...It's Friday Night and let The Party™ party!
Let the whole world party!
What's an eighties buzz without Karl and his World Party?
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Commissar Theocritus wrote: A friend Ron once asked why I looked funny at George Michael and I said, "That boy's too pretty to be straight" and the shorts that he wore were, er, pardon, fuck-me shorts. And boy was I right.

No points though. That Bush-bashing, and bush-eschewing bozo, screamed.

And while he left Wham! and became a heart-throb for teeny boppers I got the sort of belly laugh that only I could really and truly enjoy as adolescent girls swooned over his bubbling moaning treacle. "He's WONDERFUL! He understands ME!" That boy understands boys, girls--he's commonly known as a silly faggot.

First a note to our easily offended leftist lurkers:
As you learned in your diversity courses in college, a member of an identified "victim group" can use derogatory terms aimed at them as "empowerment words". Comrade Theo is therefore entitled under the Uninformed Code of Progressive Inequity to use the term "silly faggot".

Back to George Michael. I recall having several heat arguments with a high school girlfriend and several of her friends over my contention that George was, in fact, gay. They wouldn't believe me about that or my opinion that another male "hanger-on" in their group was also gay. I was right on both counts.
When George went through his too carefully groomed "rugged" phase shorty after leaving Wham, I could hardly watch a video without laughing because the homoerotic aspect was so overt. The guy looked like a Tom Of Finland cartoon and yet his fans were surprised that he turned out be gay?

To be fair, I didn't get much farther among my metalhead friends when I kept suggesting that Rob Halford of Judas Priest dressed more like a leather queen than almost anyone else in the genre. You dared not suggest that the lead singer of one of THE heaviest of real heavy metal bands (as opposed to that West Coast hair metal crap) might have been *GASP* GAY. HAHAHA!

Note to self: I need to submit the Uninformed Code of Progressive Inequity (UCPI) as an entry to the People's Glossary.

OK, since we're in an '80s frame of mind, here's a song that's both (hopefully) entertaining and true in the philisophical sense. A variation on the maxim No matter where you go, there YOU are.

Crowded House, Weather With You:
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This video probably couldn't be made today with all the traffic safety violations (kid on driver's lap, people standing up in a moving vehicle, etc.) So highly un-PC.
Kinda sad watching these old Crowded House videos knowing that drummer Paul Hester is no longer with us.

Also a note to our leftist lurkers: The evil reich wing types aren't all that evil. Daily I rub shoulders with the crowd in Midland, Texas, W's home town, and no one gives a damn. Lots of second-generation Republicans said, "This is great!"

I once knew, and well, someone named Stacy, who is the model for Bruno, by the way. Looked like Dudley Doright, or a really good looking Rutger Hauer. 6' 3" tall, with an IQ of perhaps 70, a walking id, who flamed so much in the 80s that rednecks on motorcycles would blush and laugh and take him for rides on the back of the motorcycle. Made a pet of him, which was all he was good for.

Also for the lurkers, the last person I heard use the word "nigger" was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, my physician. It just <i>isn't</i> on among the rich, white Republicans. If you used that word, you'd politely be excluded from future things as being, er, very low class. Which is infinitely more powerful than calling someone out, as they do in Antioch college (which PCed itself to death by the way). And it has the advantage of not being so goddamned self-righteous and self-dramatizing.

Commissar M, if you meet someone like your old high-school girlfriend, or some middle-aged man whose wife wants him to wear a shirt which is pretty but he resists because he is afraid people will think he's gay, tell him what you've found: that homoeroticism is deconstructed masculinity. Which makes sense. It's a celebration of masculinity untethered by femininity. There were leather queens (admittedly when they opened their mouths sometimes very amusing) years before leather entered the mainstream.

Commissar Theocritus wrote:Also a note to our leftist lurkers: The evil reich wing types aren't all that evil. Daily I rub shoulders with the crowd in Midland, Texas, W's home town, and no one gives a damn. Lots of second-generation Republicans said, "This is great!"

I once knew, and well, someone named Stacy, who is the model for Bruno, by the way. Looked like Dudley Doright, or a really good looking Rutger Hauer. 6' 3" tall, with an IQ of perhaps 70, a walking id, who flamed so much in the 80s that rednecks on motorcycles would blush and laugh and take him for rides on the back of the motorcycle. Made a pet of him, which was all he was good for.

Also for the lurkers, the last person I heard use the word "nigger" was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, my physician. It just <i>isn't</i> on among the rich, white Republicans. If you used that word, you'd politely be excluded from future things as being, er, very low class. Which is infinitely more powerful than calling someone out, as they do in Antioch college (which PCed itself to death by the way). And it has the advantage of not being so goddamned self-righteous and self-dramatizing.

Commissar M, if you meet someone like your old high-school girlfriend, or some middle-aged man whose wife wants him to wear a shirt which is pretty but he resists because he is afraid people will think he's gay, tell him what you've found: that homoeroticism is deconstructed masculinity. Which makes sense. It's a celebration of masculinity untethered by femininity. There were leather queens (admittedly when they opened their mouths sometimes very amusing) years before leather entered the mainstream.

Theo,
Tomorrow when I get home from the bastards at the hospital ramming that camera down my throat, remind me please to find the foto of me (the punk) and my second to last high school boyfriend (Dave) who was the lead singer in the Judas Priest cover band (Yes... Sister had a thing for musicians... though friend Gary was better boyfriend and plays mean blues guitar)... I figure I'll still be loopy enough from the knock-out juice that I'll have the guts to scan it and post it... it's pretty funny... and he was pretty... someone else will have to judge who had the tighter jeans on though... and I think we might have had the same hair-do... heheheh... He was such a nice Catholic boy...

Little Sis...

SMO wrote: Tomorrow when I get home from the bastards at the hospital ramming that camera down my throat

Hey, it could be worse.

Premier Betty wrote:

SMO wrote: Tomorrow when I get home from the bastards at the hospital ramming that camera down my throat

Hey, it could be worse.

I know... I have Crohn's, remember?... "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille"...

Didn't you ever wonder why Gloria Swanson had that look on her face in Sunset Blvd. during that shot?... It wasn't cause she'd gone mad... it's cause they were REALLY giving her a close-up:::::::::::::::::::: -8

Wish me luck! Ack!!!! (I already feel like Bill the Cat)...
Sister Hoping They Knock Her Out Cold (I don't even care if they use drugs in my I.V., or my shovel - which I always carry with me - or a ball-peen hammer... and I'm taking my People's Cube with me.... Its predictable certainty of unerring, historically inevitable outcome, is the model for the correct and predictable behaviour for those waiting in state run hospitals for their medical procedures... and so it calms me and keeps me sure that all is well at The Peoples Cube and so in my world... In fact, I am certain that it might even allow me to undergo an appendectomy without anaesthetic, were I only allowed to clutch it during the operation... ... though in the camera-ramming-down-my-throat instance, I would still like to be unconscious, please, if it's in the budget... )

Sister Massively Opiated wrote:

Premier Betty wrote:

SMO wrote: Tomorrow when I get home from the bastards at the hospital ramming that camera down my throat

Hey, it could be worse.

......Wish me luck! Ack!!!! (I already feel like Bill the Cat)...
Sister Hoping They Knock Her Out Cold (I don't even care if they use drugs in my I.V., or my shovel - which I always carry with me - or a ball-peen hammer... and I'm taking my People's Cube with me.... Its predictable certainty of unerring, historically inevitable outcome, is the model for the correct and predictable behaviour for those waiting in state run hospitals for their medical procedures... and so it calms me and keeps me sure that all is well at The Peoples Cube and so in my world... In fact, I am certain that it might even allow me to undergo an appendectomy without anaesthetic, were I only allowed to clutch it during the operation... ... though in the camera-ramming-down-my-throat instance, I would still like to be unconscious, please, if it's in the budget... )

I am happy to report, dear comrades, that A Peoples Cube IS more than enough comfort when having the state ram a camera down your throat! While I cannot say it was pleasant, it was not as bad as being beaned by pieces of broken Hummel or finding red man panties in the whites, and on the whole, I left the entire procedure feeling quite well and proud that I did not require being knocked out. And as I'm not in the least loopy, I can spend my time doing more productive things than looking for 24 year old fotos of me and old high school boyfriend in interchangeable tight jeans (though his, as with man panties, actually required more front than mine)... he did do a very good Rob Halford, chaps and all, though only wore the leather get-up on stage... but it was early 80's and Carol Pope was busy teaching all us relocated Prairie children about non-conformist sex that didn't involve animals, so what did I know?... I was a punk rocker from Regina - the hole above ground and a province whose chief crop besides wheat was something called rape seed (now that it's been genetically modified to remove those two poisonous compounds, and can be used for something other than industrial lubricant, they call it Canola... and they even, confusingly, have 'organic' Canola products, which I thought was impossible if something was genetically modified... but they do the same thing with soy, so really, you have to give it up for Monsanto... they have achieved not only doublespeak, but triplespeak of Orwellian proportions... I wonder who's doing Her Majesty's real marketing?)....

In any case, as I was not rendered unconscious, I don't have to waste time finding silly foto... now, must just regain ability to swallow... food and such...
SMO (and her Peoples Cube... From now on I will never leave home without it... you never know when you'll need to spend time in a state funded hospital... or why...

Sister, happy to hear it came out (or is it up?) all right.

<karakter off, lowers voice to whisper>

bless your heart!

SMO, let us hope that the results of the spelunking were good too.

Good to hear you made it out alive, SMO.

Well, It's another Friday at The Cube Retro Cafe.... so let's bring on the Revolution...no, not Prince.

The Cult!

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What kind of a call for revolution was that? I almost fell asleep in the first 30 seconds. If I were to write that song I'd probably be too bored to play it. Here's an example of a real revolutionary song.

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And here's the modernized version made either by the oppressed Muslim Anarchists or Sheep-loving Bush-haters if you judge by this creative setup for enhanced HBO reception. Of course, they could be both - Sheep-loving Muslim Anarchist Bush-haters.


<br>And for those with a strong stomach, here's a "Blair Witch Project Internationale"

<karakter off>

That first one makes me ashamed to be Scottish.

-Mikhail

I've got some Scots blood too--this strain goes way back. Even when the Scots were the engineers of the British empire they had a certain progressive flair.

If I were a Scot I'd be more ashamed of the last one. But of course, coming from the Motherland, I have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Red Square wrote:If I were a Scot I'd be more ashamed of the last one. But of course, coming from the Motherland, I have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Red, I got about 45 seconds into that one before I stopped it. That guy's fist came up, I groaned, then ended it. I just can't take that much "zeal."

-Mikhail

It's time to invade this sanctum of imperialist music with some real People's musik! Check it out all the way, this gal can rock and sing!

Alright....
This isn't 80's
It's 60's and I'm being selfish, so I'm changing the rules.

Here's my favorite group, The Moody Blues, who put the People's Math into song:


1+1 just ain't 2

"Ride My" outlawed, harmful, deadly if children are unsupervised "Seesaw".

The boys did this in '68 during the "Prague Spring" and were trapped there during the uprising.

And SMO...we're "Watching and Waiting" for your return.
Get Better.

Hard to believe such geeky looking guys could produce such great music! LOL

Now it's time you heard the Pup's favorite... perhaps one of the most talented bands ever, a band whose name my friends would incorporate into my real name Wesley due to my love of their music....



And perhaps my favorite of all of them...I had to include both parts because part 2 absolutely haunts the Pup! Haunts me! The three chords that are repeated at the start of part 2 changes keys constantly, so it make a musical circle.

And I can't leave without what I consider the greatest guitar playing ever... and it is almost 80's debuting in the US in early 79.

Oh man... The 80s... Before the Tank's joyous conscription in the People's Army... Back when I had hair (and mouse, combs, more hairspray....)

Back when the lovely female capitalists had big hair and the only silicon parts were in toys.

Back when the joyous USSR was alive (Ok, not really 'alive' but "existing" like a Premier who had gotten an 'illness')..... Wait... um... Maybe the late 70s were better in that regard when the USA, under Comrade Carter (socialist dictator and Islamist ally), was impotent to stop the advance of global Communism!!!

Damned Regan just had to come along.......

Alas, I am more a late sixties early seventies pup. I really think real music died the first 3 years of the decade, when the Beatles broke up, and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died. Seems that everything since has been just variations of a theme produced long before. Love them or hate them, the Beatles did more than any other rock group to take rock and turn it into an art form. I remember in Music Theory in college, the professors would refer to the three B's of music, Bach, Beethoven, and the Beatles.

I have a theory, and it is mine and I did it, that the music that you really like is what you listened to when you first came alive. For obvious reasons I did not indulge in the, er, carnal things in the early 70s when my peers did--to have a lot of fun I waited a decade. But you get in less trouble with an AmEx card so there's an upside to it. But the music that I recall fondly was the early 80s.

And after this spot of trouble in 2005-6 I have literally been reborn, and it's classics for me--I never had the Mozart and Beethoven so good. No one has been able to explain music although Oliver Sacks wrote a book with many fascinating anecdotes. <a href=">. I've not read it but have an excellent review by Theodore Dalrymple, always worth reading, either under that name or his real one, Anthony Daniels.

This theory that we become fixed on the music that we listened to when we were changing explains a lot to me.

Oh, you are absolutely correct in that, how else could one explain a love of the 80's music? LOL

But I can make my argument about the Beatles on more objective arguments. They really did have a long list of recording firsts, from the first use of feedback as part of the song, to one song blending into another. Of course anyone could have done this, but they did. I also base this on the fact that Beatles music was the first music performed by a rock and roll band to ever make into a symphony orchestra's repertoire. In other words, they made rock and roll "respectable."

From 1967
Ned Rorem, composer of some of the best of today's art songs, says: "They are colleagues of mine, speaking the same language with different accents." In fact, he adds, the Beatles' haunting composition, She's Leaving Home--one of twelve songs in the Sgt. Pepper album--"is equal to any song that Schubert ever wrote." Conductor Leonard Bernstein's appreciation is just as high; he cites Schumann. As Musicologist Henry Pleasants says: "The Beatles are where music is right now."

Er, the Beatles may have been the first rock and roll band to be respectable but we can go much further back, to Gershwin, to find popular music which was made so-called respectable. "Rhapsody in Blue" was written when Gershwin, on vacation, read that he was working on a symphony. He wouldn't do that but did the Rhapsody, which was played by Paul Whiteman in, I believe, Carnegie Hall.

And there is a history dating back centuries of incorporating folk or popular melodies into classical music: all Brahms' and Liszts' Hungarian dances. Grainger, Vaughn Williams.

There was in the 70s a 45rpm direct-to-disk virgin-vinyl (before CDs obviously) of the Tokyo String Quartet playing Beatles. Very nice. Also John Bayless did two things, "Bach Meets the Beatles" on CD--also lots of fun.

That was all I was really saying about the Beatles, that they were true innovators and icons of the rock world. As you noted, a lot of traditional church songs were born from songs sang in bar rooms. In many ways. Stravinsky was considered a genius for his expanding from the traditional eight tone music system of the west, but then eastern music has used 16, 32 and even 64 tonal systems for Lenin knows how many years.

Now I do consider JS Bach as being the "Einstein" of music, at least of western music, since it was he who essentially wrote the rule book for our music, from classical to rock, country to blues, you name it, with his "Well Tempered Clavichord."

I'm told that professional pianists warm up with this every day. The BBC had a program which played one prelude and fugue a day leading up to Christmas.

It took me three listenings to realize, just a bit, how good the Goldberg Variations are. There's a version on guitar, Kurt Rhodamer, playing with himself, and it works. Next I'm going to try to learn the Art of the Fugue. I had dismissed it until Glenn Gould said that it was Bach's finest work, and his opinion is not to be discounted.

There is a DVD of Gould playing the Goldbergs, on a short stool, hunched over the keyboard, humming, his hands twitching and it's mesmerizing. I have an SACD of him playing his 56 (?) version--horrible quality but wonderful playing. A <a href="https://www.audaud.com/article.php?Arti ... company</a> has used a computer to extract the notes and has used a new Yahama electronic piano with, I think, 1000 different volume levels possible, and they have developed software to have a piano play Bach just like Gould. I heard it on XM radio and it's stunning. They are soon to release a SACD of this, in a binaural mode--being two microphones in a dummy head. Can't wait for that.

Here in Pecos I have a friend, Jim, who rebuilds grand pianos and puts on Ampico reproducers. They're 20s technology and work on compressed air but only in the last 20 years or so have electronics gotten that good. He has rolls of Gershwin playing Gershwin, Lecuona playing Lecuona ("Malagena," one of my warhorse pieces), Rachmaninoff playing Rachmainoff and Chopin. It's erie and wonderful.

Do you play keyboards? Or guitar? Bach is my favorite "classical" composer though of course he was not a Classical composer. You know that he was the one who showed how to tune a keyboard so that songs could be played in any key? Before Bach, they would have to tune the instruments to a particular key. Bach's music also comes across so beautifully on a guitar. My other most favorite has to be The Messiah, at least parts of it. I can not think of a more powerful work than the Hallelujah Chorus. But you are more well versed in the subject than I.

At one time I was a passable pianist and at Rice played the organ in the chapel--before the music school one could pay $15 a semester and have an hour's practice time a day. I'm not making this up. That doesn't apply now.

My love of classical music starts, mostly in the Baroque with Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, but I spend most of my time in the classical era, and the Viennese classical era, with Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert (some say he was early Romantic and there is a little truth to that) and I do sometimes venture into more modern territory with Mendelssohn (greatly underrated) and Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff is treacly, the notes substituting for ideas.

Bach is susceptible to many interpretations: Mozart arranged some of his sinfonias for string trio--and they work. In the 70s a hideous group called Apollo 100 arranged "Jesu" to a rock beat, in four. Destroying triplets of triplets, the most graceful cadence known. I bitched to a friend, Mark, in college who said that they'd done that to the jazz standard "Take Five" and that I shouldn't worry: Bach could fight back. Just so.

Glad to see the Pup is into Yes. Chris Squire looked like he was having a great time with that Rickenbacker in this rendition of "The Wurm".
It seems we have a lot of the same musical likes here at the Cube.
I grew up playing the woodwinds, starting with the sax.
I credit my grandmother for buying me all the great composers as a small child with a mail order Longines Symphonette catalog. Each month I'd get a different one in the mail...Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Handel, Chopin....which in time took me to The Moody Blues, Yes, Jethro Tull....along with The Beatles and The Beach Boys with my little transistor radio that I fell asleep with every night.
I like and can listen to anything, with the exception of head banging metal and (c)rap. I even like some opera and musicals...which brings me to Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli....


My spouse has strict instructions to have this played at my wake...when the time comes.

That is beautiful Laika! Stunning! Why, even when I could not understand a word it moved me. BTW, don't know if you knew this or not, but there is a reason Yes songs make no sense, they wrote lyrics to fit the music. But have we talked of this before? For we have a lot in common as one of my absolute favorite rock bands besides the ones I mentioned, is Jethro Tull. I adore Tull! Now I also have a certain like for Steppenwolf, Alice Cooper, and David Bowie from the good old days.

I too have some songs picked out for when I am "put to sleep," and all were sang by Nicole C Mullen. First her appropriately named "When Heaven Calls," "Come Unto Me," and of course her incomparable "My Redeemer Lives."
I saw her in concert, and she is an absolutely great performer,

Commissar Theocritus....

You have no idea how much I adore organ music! Never been a Catholic, but that is what I envy them for, the absolute most beautiful church music of them all. Nothing stirs the heart more than the sound of a pipe organ shaking the foundations, or when the sound is so sweet and low. I even use to love certain rock groups as much for their use of the Hammond B3? (the revolving horn)? You can't fake the sound of that revolving horn.

The Lyrics For Con Te Partiro:

Sarah:
Quando sono sola
sogno all'orizzonte
e mancan le parole,
si lo so che non c'è luce
in una stanza quando manca il sole,
se non ci sei tu con me, con me.
Su le finestre
mostra a tutti il mio cuore
che hai accesso,
chiudi dentro me
la luce che
hai incontrato per strada.



Time to say goodbye. -- Con te partirò.
Paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te,
adesso sì li vivrò.
Con te partirò
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono più,
it's time to say goodbye. -- con te io li vivrò.



Andrea:
Quando sei lontana
sogno all'orizzonte
e mancan le parole,
e io si lo so
che sei con me, con me,
tu mia luna tu sei qui con me,
mio sole tu sei qui con me,
con me, con me, con me.



Time to say goodbye. -- Con te partirò.
Paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te,
adesso sì li vivrò.
Con te partirò
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono più,



Both:
con te io li rivivrò.
Con te partirò
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono più,
con te io li rivivrò.
Con te partirò

English Translation:

Time to say goodbye -- I'll go with you
Sarah
When I'm alone
I dream of the horizon
and words fail;
yes, I know there is no light
in a room where the sun is absent,
if you are not here with me.
At the windows
show everyone my heart
which you set alight;
enclose within me
the light you
encountered on the street.


Time to say goodbye. -- I'll go with you
to countries I never
saw and shared with you,
now, yes, I shall experience them.
I'll go with you
on ships across seas
which, I know,
no, no, exist no longer;
it's time to say goodbye. -- with you I shall experience them.


Andrea
When you are far away
I dream of the horizon
and words fail,
and, yes, I know
that you are with me;
you, my moon, are here with me,
my sun, you are here with me
with me, with me, with me.


Time to say goodbye. -- I'll go with you
to countries I never
saw and shared with you,
now, yes, I shall experience them.
I'll go with you
on ships across seas
which, I know,
no, no, exist no longer,


Both
with you I shall experience them again.
I'll go with you
on ships across seas
which, I know,
no, no, exist no longer,
with you I shall experience them again.
I'll go with you.


You and me.

I have a fondness for Alice Cooper too--and some David Bowie. Pup, if you like Bach organ music, you might enjoy some of the guilty pleasures of orchestrated Bach pipe-organ music. The LA orchestra and the Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen did some in 2003--I have a copy but it's not to be had any more. They're the Stowkoski ones, and you heard on of them in <i>Fantasia</i>. It's overripe, lush, and really, when you get down to it, kitsch, but it's a wonderful wallow in the lushness. And Bach, as I said, can fight back.

I've come to be very fond of swing, and the revival of the big band. Indigo Swing, Royal Crown Review, Bill Elliott's Swing Orchestra, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy--lots of fun. A lot of these are punk rockers who put on zoot suits and you can see the tattoos and piercings.

I may shock you here.... I have never been able to bear watching all of Fantasia! It never appealed to me at all. I would see a bit or piece of it here and there, and it just doesn't do anything for me. Yet I did love the styled Switched on Bach and Clockwork Orange. Of course some of that was following the progress of electronic music. The early beginnings of synthesized human speech on the Clockwork Orange album fascinated me, or the developing of the Moog and Emerson Lake and Palmer. Mellotron....just love the name of that! Didn't work out too well, but I loved the music that was done with it. Shoot, I even enjoy the Beatles Revolution #9! There is music there as well.

I used to be a fair fan of swing.... Chattanooga Choo Choo etc. No, I used to love swing come to think of it! WWII produced some great music!

Oddly enough I won a trip to the 23rd International Science Fair in New Orleans in 1972 with a synthesizer using RTL integrated circuits. Had a great time; stayed in the Monteleon. My sponsor forged an ID so we could drink hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's. And while at Rice I took a music class with a fellow named Roger Dannenberg who said that he lived in NO and he went to the fair and wanted to talk to a fellow who had an exhibit called "Synthesis of Complex Waveforms" but he wasn't there.

I introduced myself.

Ok, I am officially "the young guy" again......

Hey, I'm still the youngest here! Consider yourself lucky. I don't get half the stuff going on in this thread.

Dannenberg, I know that name, google sure seems to know him, but where do I know that name? I saw it not long ago. I was never that great with the stuff, at least the technical, though I did take a course in electronic music in college. Mostly did the splicing tapes, running backwards, and some moog thrown in. I remember how excited I was when Brain Salad Surgery tour of EL&P came out, for they were featuring the first synthesizer capable of more than one tone at a time, a regular chord playing synthesizer. It was awesome. At one point they just left the stage and the synthesizer was left alone on the stage to play, and move about the stage as these wings and other oddities sprouted from it along with the requisite lights.

Oh, Tank, you have been officially the "young guy" among us Commissars for a long time. LOL

Geaux Tigers!

Betty,

I get a little more than half... I remember some of the stuff they are talking about and the... um... technologies used. My parents have the complete Simon and Garfunkle concert on reel-to-reel and I still have the Quadrophonic player for it (which connects to NOTHING now). You would know "quadrophonic" as "surround sound" now, but without computer controls. We had the 8-Track and records out the wall. I grew up having 45s and regular vinyl records, but some of this stuff was way before old Tank here was even a prototype in the "design beureo".

Yeah, well I didn't understand a word you said, so there!

Ok, I am young, but you are REALLY young!!!!

W007! PR3M13R B377Y FTW!!!

I'm old enough that when I started in electronics in 1965 (I was 10) state of the art was 1T4 vacuum tube. A pentode. I figured out if you used the technology of 1965 to replicate the iPhone I'm looking at now using 12AX7 twin triode vacuum tubes, which required 12.6v at 300 mA to heat, it would take the power output of at least ten large nuclear power plants to run the heaters alone.

25 years ago I wrote a program in Pascal on an Apple ][ which could operate oil and gas wells and do a good job of it--using 64K of memory and two 132K 5.25" floppy disks. Let's never forget that the iMac killed the floppy.

30 years ago I was writing compilers on a $4 million ($12M now) IBM machine which ran in 64K of core. And that's what is was--magnetic core. I fidgeted to get a date into two bytes. Now I rip a gigabyte of Bach or Mozart in ten minutes.

Vive la difference!

Oh. My first car, a 1962 Plymouth, had push-button transmission (great idea) and a radio with 5 tubes and one transistor. My Acura has two satellite receivers. I love progress.

///Of Character///

My mother talks about using her punch cards to enter data into a computer akin to an old player piano. The computer took up an entire building and could brown out the city! Now a days, my laptop does 10 billion times more on a battery.

As for push button transmissions, we have push button transmissions on transport trucks and some heavy deisels. Real progress is wonderous!!

///Char On///

Commissar!! My first car was a Plymoth with a push button transmission as well! It was a cool thing! A lost art! LOL!

I remember a "personal" computer in grad school that used a cassette tape drive! LOL! Then there was that WANG computer I once worked on! Can't go wrong with a WANG can you?

No, you can't go wrong with a Wang, because that's the name of the Hildo in China.

I wrote a compiler on punch cards. I'm not kidding. And worked on an HP 9830 calculator--computer meant government red tape--with a cassette drive. A Facit typewriter as a printer.

And about push-button transmissions--why the hell not? There is no reason for a console unless you have a five or six speed. I'd have the six-speed Acura TL except that owing to lymphedema in 1991 I have no feeling in my feet, which makes bearing gout tolerable. No feeling means it's not a good idea to drive a manual, which I love. I put hundreds of thousands of miles on Triumph TR-7s, one a convertible, and on a blue 1983 Toyota Supra. Now <i>those</i> were crumpet collectors, and easily had pride of place outside bars which were then entered from the alley and which were surrounded by white cars. For people who were supposed to have style, it sure as hell didn't carry over to cars or electronics. But I am a queer duck.

But now, why have the console on the TL that I have? There is to be sure some cabling and linkage but the transmission is up front. There would be more storage area, and since the 2006 (mine's a 2005) is drive by wire, why not have it entirely drive by wire?

Next we'll have everything done by wire. Tankograd may already have this. But I predict that everything in a car will have just two wires: power and load, and the chassis will be ground. The car will send signals over the power, modulated on a carrier. The house I'm remodeling has <a href="https://www.smarthome.com">Insteon</a> light switches which can be linked to talk to each other. Three-way switches are replaced by two smart switches, only one with the load, but linked so that when one turns on the one with the load turns on. And you program how fast it ramps up, dims, etc., and my Mac can control it. There is no reason that this cannot be done in a car. The turn signal, for example, has power and load, and the car's central computer tells it when to turn on and turn off and how much. Standardization of parts and ease of assembly. This will happen in five years or less.

Well....another Friday 80's Retro.

And no SMO. But we have faith in SMO's return and Beers for Queers...no..wait ...! Tears for Fears!

To the Glorious Victory! To Obama, McCain, and the MTE!

Where's Craig Livingstone?

Here's KBC

America

Behold! The CLASSIC Anti-Ronnie Ray-gun gem from the '80s!

The Party gives you Genesis, Land of Confusion (pukes).


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And for an added bonus, the Party also proudly gives you Disturbed's *modern* Land of Confusion redux complete with War for Blood and Oil, class-warfare, evil capitalist fat cat, George Bush and Nazis... lots and lots of Nazis. ENJOY!

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Meow, recall that Genesis had Phil Collins, Ol' Pumpkinhead. A man with an ego the size of Our Empress' ass. Supposedly the thing in a rock band to be most afraid of is having the drummer say, "Hey, guys, I've written some songs." Wasn't Collins the drummer?

He once thumped his little chest and said, "Phil Collins is going to be writing Phil Collins Music for a long time." And he egested an album called "No Jacket Required," which is the most arrogance I've ever seen, bar none.

He's merely an insufferable prick.

I've always hated Phil Collins. Gimme Peter Gabriel over Phil...weirdness and all, anyday.

Laika the Space Dog wrote:To the Glorious Victory! To Obama, McCain, and the MTE!

My tinfoil hat has been on the fritz lately. Is this the official current broadcast? Finger in the air?

I cannot bear the idea that our MTE will not win. When you consider what she did at Rancho del Rio Grande when Bruno gave her one ice cube too many, losing the election would wobble the tripes of Hercules.

I can imagine. She'd probably arrange something along the lines of this take out the president and everyone else in her way so that she could ascend her throne. Or she would just go insane and have to be locked up. Or she would explode and take out the entire east coast.

That worries me about BHO. Does he have the sheer depravity and treachery that is the hallmark of the Empress? He seems too soft.

Pupovich, I think that you are right. And he wants to be liked, which is fatal flaw. [off. That's really true. On] But our MTE wants to be liked enough to ascend the Throne of Absolute Power and after that, she doesn't care, as a good blood-soaked dictator should. Or shouldn't. I mean, did Stalin care about the feelings of the people he killed? Or the feelings of the families of the people he killed? Never. Never lost a night's sleep. And Our MTE can follow in his footsteps. After all, you can't make an omelette without wringing the neck of every chicken that doesn't chirp to suit you.

Mmmmm... omelet....

How correct you are Commissar Theocrtius. I was just telling another Comrade that the Empress has a long line of filled graves and destroyed lives to her credit. We have relatively little to go on in regard to BHO. No, I suspect what we shall soon see is Krystal Nacht for the BHO supporters.

And as I have said in other places, Our MTE has on her staff Harold Ickes, the single meanest man since Stalin.