I made a last minute month decision that since this is presumably my last mix CD of the "mix CD of every year of my life" vanity project, I'm totally justified in including 2021 songs that would've made it onto that unmade future mix. And I mean definitely would have made it. I'm not the quickest listener processing songs when I first hear them. I might like something right away, but it's basically in one ear and out the other and it often takes a handful of listens before a song really starts to sound like something with elements I can remember. But every once in a while a song will stop me in my tracks, grab me by the lapels and demand my attention leaving me slack-eyed and/or wide-jawed at how good it is for whatever reason. The five 2021 songs included on Disc 2 are in that league.
And I'll admit the decision to change the mixes to include 2021 songs was made rather recently after the Oh My Girl and fromis_9 songs on Disc 2 were released a week apart and made me wonder about including them. And I might also admit the decision was made easier because I had already shoe-horned the 2021 Chungha song into the originalfinalized track list because I couldn't make it work with only 2020 candidates. That song, released in January, was emotionally stunning and I tried slotting it in just to see how it sounded and I liked it! I ended up suppressing my obsessive-compulsive impulse to include only 2020 songs and tossed two 2020 songs to accommodate it. But then opening up the field for other 2021 songs that met the standard, in addition to the two mentioned above, I found two more and then a bunch of 2020 songs of the "original concept" went out the window.
There were no live audiences at the music shows for the entirety of 2020 so I avoided linking to those videos because the energy is different. Most are videos with mp3 sound and some supplemental live versions. Unfortunately I've found that mp3 sound is much better than the live sound videos I've been linking for the past 10 years! Maybe I shoulda been linking videos with mp3 sound all along :p
It's no secret and I think no shame that I consider Genesis my fave band of all time, and I typically piggyback Peter Gabriel solo into that number one spot out of convenience. Peter Gabriel and Genesis (whether fronted by Gabriel or Phil Collins) were a huge part of my high school and life soundtrack.
There are, however, limits to my fandom when artists, trying to keep up with technology, continually re-release or re-issue their catalogues and expect fans to keep up with the upgrades because of whatever bit of better sounding technology is introduced. I was perfectly happy with David Bowie's second round Rykodisc releases and completely ignored future rounds of re-issues claiming better fidelity because of technology.
My attitude was the same when Genesis released their ultimate Box Set collections. Why am I gonna buy what I already have? What I didn't know was that they didn't just upgrade quality and technology, but it seems they went back to the original multi-track recordings and dug up things that were mixed out of the final original releases. That's interesting!
I only noticed because they've been uploading "official audio" videos, no doubt in part to get fans' attention to buy tickets for their "The Last Domino" tour next year, which is advertised in the video description. I rarely click on those videos because why would I? I've listened to the songs dozens or hundreds of times over the years.
But then they posted this:
This is "The Battle of Epping Forest"! I clicked on this audio-only "video" expecting just to enjoy the song yet another time, but being so familiar with just about every second of old Genesis recordings, things I'd never heard before stuck out like a sore thumb.
My ears perked up at the 2:17 mark with backing vocals I'd never heard before and putting me on notice to listen for other things new. Phil sings a high harmony and then ends on "war" with what I consider a classic Collins note – just an unexpected choice of note but sounds great. The lower vocals are evidence (there's not a lot) that Mike and Tony did actually record backing vocals they're always credited with, albeit they unimpressively sing in the same vocal range as their speaking voices (the way guys who are uncomfortable with singing sing "Happy Birthday"). The snarls and grunts of distorted guitar by Steve Hackett in the following section were also originally mixed out and there are a bunch of minor vocal parts throughout the song that have been restored; perhaps considered mistakes at the time, but interesting now.
The song is just epic silliness that only Genesis could really pull off. Other prog rock bands dabbled in whimsy and eccentricity in minor works, but mostly stuck to spacey and science fiction-y and dystopias and other-worldly things to imagine and think and be paranoid about. "Epping Forest" is a galloping, raunchy romp about mob bosses and their street gangs inspired by a story in the morning newspaper (as a cultural reference, I think of the Guy Ritchie movie "Snatch"). I think keyboardist Tony Banks (it was Phil) complained the song is too "wordy" and was disappointed about the vocals going by at a mile a minute, but I don't understand how he can complain or what they expected when they handed over this big hunk o' composition to Gabriel.
Even just reading it it's something to behold; the puns, rhyming and word manipulation. The verse playing around with the Silver Cloud Rolls Royce is just confoundingly clever ("Did he just . . . ?", "Was that supposed to . . .?). There's a lot I didn't get until much later. Like I didn't know a Silver Cloud referred to a model of Rolls Royce until I heard the (possibly apocryphal) story of The Rolling Stones' "Get Off My Cloud", whereby they were in Texas and at one point one of the members was leaning on a car that happened to be a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and when the owner saw it he drawled at them "Hey, get off my Cloud!".
Along the Forest Road, there's hundreds of cars - luxury cars
Each has got its load of convertible bars, cutlery cars - superscars!
For today is the day when they sort it out, sort it out
'Cos they disagree on gangland boundary
There's Willy Wright and his boys
One helluva noise, that's Billy's boys!
With fully-fashioned mugs, that's Little John's thugs
The Barking Slugs, supersmugs!
For today is the day when they sort it out, sort it out
As these Christian soldiers fight to protect the poor
East End heroes got to score
In the Battle of Epping Forest
Yes, it's the Battle of Epping Forest
Right outside your door
And you ain't seen nothing like it
No you ain't seen nothing like it
Not since the Civil War
Coming over the hill are the boys of Bill
And Johnny's lads stand very still
With the thumpire's shout, they all start to clout
There's no guns in this gentleman's bout
And Georgie moves in on the outside left
With a chain flying around his head
And Harold Demure from Art Literature
Nips up the nearest tree
(Here come the cavalry!)
Amidst the battle roar
Accountants keep the score: 10-4
They've never been alone after getting a radiophone
The bluebells are ringing for Sweetmeal Sam
Real ham, handing out bread and jam
Just like any picnic . . .
It's 5-4 on William Wright
He made his pile on Derby night
When Billy was a kid, walking the streets
The other kids hid - so they did!
And now after working hard in security trade
He's got it made
The shops that need aid are those that haven't paid
"I do my double-show quick!" said Mick the Prick, fresh out of the nick
"I sell cheap holiday, the minute they leave then a visit I pay
And does it pay!"
And his friend, Liquid Len by name of wine, women
and Wandsworth fame
Said, "I'm breaking the legs of the bastard that got me framed!"
They called me the Reverend when I entered the Church unstained
My employers have changed but the name has remained
It all began when I went on a tour
Hoping to find some furniture
I followed a sign saying "Beautiful Chest"
It led to a lady who showed me her best
She was taken by surprise when I quickly closed my eyes
So she rang a bell and quick as hell
Bob the Nob came out on his job to see what the trouble was
"Louise, is the Reverend hard to please!"
"You're telling me!"
"Perhaps, sir, if it's not too late we could interest you
in our old-fashioned Staffordshire plate?"
"Oh! No, not me, I'm a man of repute"
But the devil caught hold of my soul and a voice called out, "Shoot!"
To save my steeple, I visited people
For this I had gone when I met Little John
His name came, I understood
When the judge said, "You are a robbing hood!"
He told me of his strange foundation
Conceived on sight of the Woodstock nation
He'd had to hide his reputation
When poor, 'twas salvation from door to door
But now with a pin-up guru every week
It was Love, Peace & Truth Incorporated for all who seek
He employed me as a karma-ma-mechanic with overall charms
His hand were then fit to receive, receive alms
That's why we're in the Battle of Epping Forest
This is the Battle of Epping Forest
Right outside your door
We guard your souls for peanuts
And we guard your shops and houses for just a little more
In with a left hook is the Bethnal Green Butcher
But he's countered on the right by Mick's chain-gang fight
And Liquid Len with his smashed bottle men
Is lobbing Bob the Nob across the gob
With his kisser in a mess, Rob seems under stress
But Jones the Jug hits Len right in the mug
And Harold Demure, who's still not quite sure
Fires acorns from out of his sling
(Here come the cavalry!)
Up, up above the crowd
Inside their Silver Cloud, done proud!
The bold and brazen brass
Seen darkly through the glass
The butler's got jam on his rolls
Roy doles out the lot
With tea from a silver pot
Just like any picnic . . .
Along the Forest Road, it's the end of the day
And the Clouds roll away
Each has got its load
They'll come out for the count at the break-in of day
When the limos return for their final review, it's all through
All they can see is the morning goo
"There's no one left alive, must be a draw"
So the Blackcap Barons toss a coin to settle the score!
- Gabriel/Banks/Rutherford/Hackett/Collins
What's more of a secret and not a little bit of shame is that I used to be able to sing (liberally speaking) the entire thing without a lyric sheet along with the record at the top of my lungs (and range) and with the accents when the house was empty or (alone) in the car. Oy vey.
Yes indeedy, yet another addition to my vanity project of making a mix CD for
every year I've been alive! And same as since 2012, it's a
double-disc collection filled with K-pop! Yay! Of course there's no
reason on multiple levels for doing this. There's no reason for most of my
life, what's your point? The CD medium itself is an artificial and/or obsolete
construct. Who even uses CDs anymore? (oh yeah, me) But for me the physical
limit is important (if allowing for a second CD can be called "limiting"), as
is the concept of a "collection" with track order, segues and flow and
contours. Who even thinks that way anymore? (oh yeah, me)
What a long, strange trip it's been in just these mix CDs. The extreme left
turn that is K-pop so late in my life still confounds me to the point that I
still can't dismiss mystical attribution of future life resonance – that my next life will be in Korea. FLR might also be why I'm primarily
attracted to girl groups, whereas if it was just about the music genre I
should be equally accepting of the boy groups. I'm drawing analogies with
passages in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead that describe
the bardo of rebirth whereby individuals that are to be reborn as male will
feel jealousy towards the father and attraction to the mother and vice versa
for females (that's just the basic template while, as my theory goes, genetics
also play a part; the gender-"determining" experience in the bardo primarily
affects subjective identity and may influence physically being born one gender
or another (or yet another these days) but can't counter genetics dictating
otherwise. It explains a lot if you think about it). So the Korean thing may
be a resonance as to where I'm to be reborn, while the focus on the female may
be sticking with current karma that I'll be born male (getting XX chromosomes
notwithstanding). What the hell am I talking about?
Back on planet earth I've tried to explain the K-pop in other ways – that it's about songwriting, really good melodies, tight backing-track
arrangements, the progressions, the gestalt and other
musical/production attributes – but I feel like I'm trying to legitimize something that doesn't
need legitimizing. I've always trusted my musical tastes and rarely have I
made the blunder of thinking something was good only to realize there really
wasn't much substance (mostly when I was trying too hard). But I suppose
maybe none of this matters if it's future life resonance at play. It's no
longer my musical tastes in this lifetime, but echoes from a future that
hasn't happened yet or is supposed to be happening if I had kept to script
and departed for that life long ago. My music listening has been hijacked.
And I've mentioned before that the Korean thing is the future life
resonance, not K-pop. The K-pop is because of love of music in
this current life. In future lifetimes I may not be interested in music at all.Theoretically, if I had some other strong interest, it would be some other
aspect of Korea that would be inexplicably manifesting.
I wonder what I would've been listening to for the past decade if K-pop
hadn't happened. Anything good coming out of the west aside from
Hamilton? I haven't noticed anything. I wouldn't need anything
new since all the music I acquired in those hard-drive exchanges in
2009-2010 may have taken 10 years to get familiar with; as I mentioned, it's
good stuff, I like it, but I frustratingly just don't
know it. *sigh* Music show video clips from 2019 still had live audiences.
Because of the CCP pandemic, there have been no audiences for the music
shows in 2020 and there's a palpable difference in energy without the
screaming audiences and fanchants.
This is a K-pop post I thought of composing two years ago, but decided against it because of the likelihood I wouldn't "feel it" in the long run. It would be dated and I would be embarrassed having posted it. And it's still an embarrassing post, it's K-pop, but two years later I came across the videos and still liked the idea of the post, so maybe not something I'd regret.
I imagined myself going back in time to my younger self in 2003 when I was living in the Mission District in San Francisco and all about indie rock: Modest Mouse, Versus, Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, etc. And I would say to my younger self: watch this video and pay close attention to it and tell me what you think of it (I, of course, would know exactly what my younger self would think of it).
My younger self would say, "Holy fucking shit, what the hell was that?", and I'd tease, "It's a 'K-pop' song (appropriate finger gestures). This song is hot in South Korea this very year, what'dya think?".
"Just 'what the hell?'" I'd reply, "It's pretty fucking weird, why are you showing me this? And what happened to your hair?!"
"Because", I'd say with a dramatic pause, ignoring the jab at my thinning hair, "15 years from now a K-pop girl group is gonna cover this song and you're gonna be all over it watching it dozens of times, geeking out about how super fun and cool it is. You'll even read the lyrics. And not only that, but you'll also already be into the entire genre by that time".
"Aw, that's fucking lame. Whatever. Well if you say it's gonna happen, then it's gonna happen. I know things change and I'll change, but it doesn't matter to me now, it still looks pretty stupid. Oh alright, show me the clip 15 years from now." I knew I would take the bait (the two older gentleman in black in the audience are the original artists.)
I honestly have no idea how my 2003 self would have reacted to this video. I was a real snob, all about real musicians writing their own songs and playing their own instruments and I would have resisted this concocted pop confection, but I knew a hype beat and cool groove when I heard one and I think I couldn't deny it was pretty infectious from the get-go. I hope I could've managed a conciliatory, "Actually not that bad".
It's possible – I don't know how possible – that I might have thought if my future self traveled all that way to show me these videos, I may have been hinting something to myself. Maybe to not be closed-minded about music and be open to what can be done. Beyond that I don't know if my life course would've changed any. Probably not much, except knowing that time travel was possible *yawn*. And that I'd still be alive 15 years later *sigh*. Not that I'd change anything since I know I'd be stubborn like that. I probably wouldn't have figured out I wasn't hinting at anything at all and was just using time travel for inter-dimensional geeking out.
May 3, 2004, 2:28 p.m. - My San Francisco apartment in the Mission District. Band posters for Versus, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse and Rainer Maria. The cat's name is Ransom, sitting atop a first generation Bose AM-5 satellite speaker cube. I'm told those original design Bose speakers are much better than what came later.
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Actually, my iTunes collection broke the 20,000 files mark recently. Last month let's say. I've mentioned benchmarks I've broken in the past and thought about mentioning 20,000 when it happened, but it's actually a bit of a conundrum I'm a bit conflicted about. Who am I kidding? It's a total mess.
You can never have too much music, I recently heard someone quip.
I disagree, you can. I do and I can describe what it means to have too much music. It becomes a total mess. It's such a mess I don't think I can describe how it all happened in any sane, rational-sounding way. Basically I'm a serial music chaser and hoarder, and it's pretty much gotten out of hand. The main basic problem is that there is a ton of music in my collection that I deem excellent – music that comes up on shuffle play and I don't have any thought of removing it – but I don't really "know" it.
It partly hearkens back to the regrettable hard-drive dumps circa. 2009-10. I think my brother had given me a 500 GB external hard-drive, and the brilliant but misguided idea dawned on me to hook it up to various music-loving friends' (I had friends?) computers and let them transfer whatever they deemed worthy onto it. I got a lot of music that way, and, mind you, everything got reviewed before I put it in my collection, plenty of what they gave didn't make it. And a considerable amount eventually got taken off despite my initial approval.
And I'm not even going to talk about Limewire* and K-pop, except to say without K-pop, those hard-drive dumps may have been manageable. K-pop probably makes Limewire look like a drop in the lake. Let's just say that since breaking 20,000 files recently, it's already up to 20,117. No more than a handful of files are added every three days in my very geeky system of listening and adding, but it's a constant drip-drip that has been going on for years.
Years of constant process has led to this collection of over 20,000 files, most of which I think deserves to be there, but quite a lot which I don't really "know". I think it's good, I like listening to it, but I don't know a whole lot about them. How many albums does that band have? Name some. Name one. Name some of their songs. Name one! Band members' names? My answers would be woefully deficient. Do I consider myself a fan? Using the criteria of bands I'm very much a fan of, I'd have to say no.
Then what the hell are they doing in my collection? Would I even notice if they were removed? Why don't I get rid of them? It doesn't work that way. Easier said than done. He hit me first. And I am constantly vigilant for files to remove. I have two folders named "Removed from iTunes" and "Removed without prejudice" (I'm a hoarder, I rarely delete files permanently). The "without prejudice" is a borrowed legal expression and that folder is for music I removed for whatever reason I felt at the time, but it wasn't because it's bad (and could theoretically be reinstated because it was removed without prejudice). The criteria for removing files is ever-shifting and is usually done spontaneously.
I think I just hit the geek-overload point in this post which demands that I cease and desist. It's such an over-bloated, neurotic mess that would cover topics such as my hoarding history, my listening habits/procedure, the growth of K-pop over the past 10 years, the "great unlistened wasteland" in my iTunes collection, etc., etc. It isn't pretty.
Needless to say, none of this is any big deal. It really doesn't occupy a whole lot of mental space, and despite trying to come up with strategies and criteria to trim down cull swaths of my collection, it's more of a background mosquito consideration. In the meantime I'm enjoying the listening, I'm hardly suffering. Except in the Buddhist way that I'm still acting out a delusion, which has karmic implications if I'm attached in any way. I don't think I am, or I tell myself I don't think I am. I'm aware this is just games I'm playing with myself and anything can change in a heartbeat and none of it will matter. Even the way I listen to music is heading towards obsoletion. What did I do before iTunes and iPods? What did I do before iPod Shuffle for that matter? What will I do after my iPod Shuffles die? I'll adjust. And breathe a sigh of relief.
* It's just a matter of time when no one will remember Limewire. It was a Napster-like file-sharing service that was widely used for downloading music, but almost immediately forgotten once it got shut down for copyright reasons. No mourning, no despondence. No nostalgia. It was great when it was there, no one cared when it was gone. Like my life, lol!! (I was thinking that had to be a metaphor for something🤣).
Sunday, May 12, 2019
I felt an itch on my left palm. An odd place for an itch, I thought. When I instinctively scratched it, it wasn't pleasant. It was a little pins-and-needles painful, and I immediately applied mindfulness practice to not scratch it. Scratching an itch is supposed to be pleasant. It's supposed to give relief to an irritation.
For as long as I can remember, I've always had skin particularly sensitive to scratching. Scratching caused my skin to welt, and there wasn't relief, just more itch to scratch. Before mindfulness practice, there were times I would mindlessly scratch until my entire back and arms would be red and welted. Horrific as it looked for anyone who saw it, I never considered it significant and never sought out what was going on medically. Applying mindfulness practice, I would concentrate on the sensation while completely resisting the urge to scratch and just focus on it until it went away. I'd gotten quite good at it. Whenever it reached a point that I knew it wasn't an itch that would get relief from scratching, I stopped and let it go away by itself. In the case I lost patience before it went away, I still have two tubes of Cortizone-10. I can't recall ever having an itch on my palms and can't imagine Cortizone-10 working on it.
So it was a bit annoying when it started up on my right palm as well. There was redness along my palm lines, but it wasn't so bad that it prevented me from doing anything. I was able to plunk away at a bass for supposed "ear-training" practice just fine. It was enough for me to look it up online afterwards to see if it was a symptom of anything. What jumped out was that a burning sensation on palms was symptomatic of cirrhosis and of course my first thought was, "so this is how it ends". My liver's about to fail. But then I clicked on the link and of all the other symptoms of cirrhosis listed, none really rang a bell. At least none which I consider novel. Insomnia? Pfft, that's so last year. I've already used the joke that I'm of Asian descent, so no one would know if my skin was turning yellow.
And since, the sensation has also occurred to the soles of my feet, the feet equivalent of the palms! Oooh! It's irritating. It's annoying. It persists. It comes and goes. If I stretch or scrunch my feet or hands, it's exacerbated and I feel it more intensely for a little while. My bathroom slippers are accupressure slippers and that also intensifies the sensation.
I roll my eyes at this. It's my full expectation that this is not a health scare of either cirrhosis or diabetes, another condition where palms may burn, and will disappear in a few days without fanfare. That's the pattern of everything before that seemed like a health scare. I know better now until it turns out to be something different, and I'll deal with that when it becomes something different.
As it is, I've been off bike for a couple weeks because the plum rains have arrived. This coming week appears like there might be ride opportunities with drier weather and only chance showers, so it'll be a day-to-day thing, but I have zero concern the burning on either my palms or soles will prevent. For the record and no one's interest but my own, only one weekday in May so far was dry and even sunny (I don't ride on weekends when there are too many people on the bikeways), but I knew from experience that it was too cool for the bikeways to have dried out, so I didn't ride, and that suited me fine since it was a mad windy day. Windy is unpleasant, but more of just an excuse to not ride. It's alright because it provides resistance training. Wind resistance slowing me down to 11-12 mph is still less than gravity resistance on hills where I go down to 8-10 mph. And going the opposite direction, the wind assist is great. I was once flying at a sustained 27 mph on a flat because of the wind at my back (translation: wheee!).
As for my liver, I feel like I've cut down on drinking, and since August 2017 I have. Back then I think I was buying six bottles a week. Only one day per week that I didn't. But I thought I had cut back to a schedule where I buy a bottle every three days. Maybe I was on that schedule since then, but recently I noticed that I'm back to buying a bottle every other day, with reserve bottles at home for when I run out. I always have two tiers of reserve (three actually, a desperation back line of mini-bottles!) to make sure there's never no alcohol in my apartment. Again, I'm talking liquor, not beer.
I don't feel like I've increased drinking, but that's what the schedule suggests. When I leave my apartment every day, that's a drying out period, as is sleep. But when I wake up or come home, there are hours before I allow myself to start. But somehow in the time that I allow it, it has increased. I don't feel it, but the schedule doesn't lie. But that's alcoholism. Or my brand of it.
Monday, January 07, 2019
Phil:
Last month I finished re-reading Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I Am", and I was out near Eslite bookstore with time to spare, so I bought Phil Collins' autobiography "Not Dead Yet". I'm a bit surprised I didn't buy it the first time I saw it more than a little while ago, seeing as Genesis is my fave band of all time and Phil is at the top of the list of my fave drummers. But unfortunately he was more than a great drummer who fronted post-Gabriel Genesis to the heights of success. Solo, he also became an international pop superstar and fronted Genesis to their arguable artistic low of the wildly successful Invisible Touch, which for people like me tainted his legacy. As a fan, it's hard to begrudge him success, but . . . "Sussussudio"? I couldn't listen to any of his solo work after that, aside to see if I might like it. I never did.
Reading about Genesis was a delight, and I read extra slowly during the Gabriel years to savor it. He could've written a book twice as long just covering every detail of his Gabriel-era experience and I still would've read it. I would've bought it right away, too. He gives his view of his role in the 80s as the "it" guy who was everywhere and you couldn't get away from him unless you turned off the radio and never watched MTV. In previous interviews he's said that he basically took every call that came his way because you don't know when the calls would stop coming. I suspect constantly working was also his way of running away from his personal problems, which became a part of his personal problems.
Unlike the vast majority of egomaniacal superstars, Collins was aware of his bad press and that there were quarters that reviled him. Despite his success, he remained characteristically self-deprecating, almost to a fault (like when he dismisses claims that he's a "world great" drummer), which likely kept him grounded and realistic. The stunner is how willing he is to make himself look bad in the name of getting his own truths out. And his failed relationships make him look really bad. He just had some seriously wack relationship mojo, aside from engaging in the typical male rock star behaviors. I've read a bunch of rock star autobiographies and messed up and failed relationships practically come with the territory. But this is the only rock autobiography that was followed by a lawsuit by his first ex-wife for defamation. That's wack mojo! For crying out loud, just let a little old man tell his life story.
I went back looking for articles about that lawsuit, filed in 2016, and from what was reported I hope it was or will be summarily dismissed. Collins doesn't ever say anything defamatory towards his first wife, he just gets facts wrong that were construed to be defamatory. He outright states that the book is just how he remembers it and differs from other people, so personal interpretation of even wrong facts I don't think is actionable. How his first ex-wife feels defamed by a wrong fact doesn't make the wrong fact defamatory. How Phil feels about not being a "world great" drummer doesn't make him not a "world great" drummer by any objective standard.
No doubt there are mistakes of fact in the book. In fact, there is one mistake of fact that can be verified by hundreds of thousands of fans who saw Genesis live in the 80s. He was writing about being a showman in the 80s and making the audience do dumb things (pretty close to his words) in the name of entertainment. Specifically the introduction, he writes, to the song "Domino" when the lights come down. Every Genesis fan knows that "lights coming down" doesn't mean they were dimmed, but that the entire lighting rig is lowered so that the stage, seen from the front, looks to be in letter-box format and the lights are hanging just a few feet above the drum overhead mics, extra vivid because they're less diffuse. It was just a gimmick, I reckon, they did just because the technicians figured out that they could do it. It didn't serve any part of the show; it wasn't a requirement that had to be brainstormed on how to do it. To justify the gimmick, Phil had the audience do dumb things. Only, as the video verifies, the song wasn't "Domino" but "Home By the Sea". I wanted to sue-sue-sue-dio Phil Collins for getting the song wrong.
To geek out a bit, "Second Home By the Sea", which is segued into, has my second favorite note Phil Collins sings. The song is mostly instrumental, but at the end reprises lyrics from "Home By the Sea" including the line "things that go to make up a life". The way he sings "life" the last time in the reprise is totally different from all the times before (with appropriate echo) and to me has always been the song's emotional closure before the actual closing line of the song, "as we relive our lives in what we tell you". (My favorite Phil Collins note is the backing vocal on the chorus of "The Light Dies Down on Broadway". He's just doing "ah"s, but on the third note where I expected the note to go down, back to the first note actually, he goes up to a harmony note and I love it every time I hear it.)
And as long as I'm geeking out, my favorite lyric from "Home By the Sea" is:
Coming out the woodwork, through the open door
Pushing from above and below
Shadows with no substance in the shape of men
Round and down and sideways they go
Adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair
Then as one they sigh and they moan
Needless to say, it was worth the read. My opinion about him is the same. He's still a drum legend and always a thrill to watch, but I'm not going to be getting into his solo catalog beyond what I already have, his first two albums. He does fill in a lot of information that I didn't know, even about Genesis, and his physical struggles that forced him to stop drumming are tragic. He suffered for a career and ambitious drive that was always pushing his own limits as a drummer, vocalist and entertainer, it's no wonder his own body would smack him down like a fly on a windshield.
Pete:
I will re-read Phil's book, possibly right away, but last month was finishing off Pete Townshend's book for the second time. When I look back and think of my favorite rock bands, The Who is faded far off in the background microwave radiation, but it's undeniable they loomed large in my formative years. It was no less than a legacy they left on impressionable young rock and roll minds without our necessarily even knowing it.
Memory is replete with the evidence. Keith Moon's epic drumming is the stuff of legend, figuring out John Entwistle's "My Generation" bass solo, listening to the synthesizer solo on "We Won't Get Fooled Again" loud in the dark, wearing a Who t-shirt in an extant teen birthday photo, writing out Who lyrics on the cover of school-owned textbooks (we had to cover them with brown paper shopping bags and could write all over them as we pleased), even traumatizing my baby cousin later (she told me even later) by telling her 11 people were crushed and killed at a Who concert on her birthday, December 3rd.
It has to sink in now what a towering talent Townshend was. Reading his narrative of what went on, the words "brilliant" and "genius" don't necessarily jump off the page, but coupled with watching past concert and documentary clips on YouTube and having enough files in my iTunes collection for them to come up reliably often on shuffle, there is a sense of who is this god among us?
It's hard to conceive of why he couldn't get the "Lifehouse" project off the ground after the success of Tommy. It's actually better explained in documentaries by other people who really had no idea how to make Townshend's vision happen. Out of the rubble of "Lifehouse" we got the classic Who's Next album, but it's confounding wondering what he was getting at and what the album could have been above and beyond the multi-platinum, classic, must-hear-before-you-die Who's Next.
I did download the Lifehouse Chronicles, the "Lifehouse" project demos that Townshend ended up releasing in 2000 and it's fascinating, amazing stuff. Not least because versions of almost everything that ended up on Who's Next is included, plus songs that would end up on Who By Numbers and Who Are You, but these are fully formed, high quality demos that he made himself. He is not only among rock's most underrated guitarists (and by no means is he rated low), but an accomplished engineer, and no slouch on bass and drums. I always wondered how Quadrophenia was recorded because there's so much synthesizer on it, played by Townshend, with lots of space between band-playing sections. It wasn't an album where The Who could gather in a studio and play through the songs. How did they do it? It's likely the band worked off Townshend's demos to record their parts.
Both Phil and Pete mention Phil's offer to fill in for Keith Moon after his death, but they tell different stories. It was fun and interesting reading the differences, because of course they have different memories of the fact. That it was an important enough anecdote for both to mention tickled me pink and erased any suspicion that Pete's rejection might have been a diss, and personally I think Phil's version is actually closer to the truth. He was the one putting himself on the line, so it would make sense that he remembered it better, despite not being able to remember the Genesis song where the fucking lights are lowered.
Phil also mentions Eric Clapton enough that I think I'll try reading his book again in the library. I'm not a Clapton fan. I find him overrated and boring for most part and my favorite work of his (the original "Layla" excepted) is as a sideman playing lead guitar on Roger Waters' The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. I tried reading his book before but it was boring going and I swore to myself that if he mentioned going fishing, I was closing the book and putting it back on the shelf. It was totally random, just imagining what is the most boring thing to read about. And then he mentioned going fishing. I closed the book and put it back on the shelf.
The best I can accept of Eric Clapton's purported greatness is Jimmy Page describing him as the greatest ambassador of American blues. That's totally fair. He's a great guitarist, but basically a copycat and interpreter for white people. As for who Jimmy thinks is the greatest of the Yardbird guitarists, he points to Jeff Beck. There's an assumption that Jeff Beck would cite Jimmy Page. Neither would say Eric Clapton.
Friday, November 09, 2018
There actually is a thread that runs through the last two posts. It doesn't tie them together, it's just there, hidden, noticeable only by me. The book I quoted, Dakini's Warm Breath, was a relatively recent purchase but I had seen it years ago in Eslite, a local chain of bookstores, when they carried a respectable selection of English language books. However, it was always shrinkwrapped so I couldn't sample it to see if it was any good. By the time I thought I might buy it anyway, it had disappeared from the shelves.
Part of how society has changed and passed me by and is no longer something familiar might be exemplified by changes in Eslite. I used to spend hours there. If bored, going there was always an option to pass time. It's different now; barely an afterthought as an option to pass time and more often than not passed as an option. For one, with only a mention of the decimation of its previously massive CD/DVD section, the English language religion and spirituality section has been severely trimmed down from what they had before. They used to have wall-sized bookshelves full, but now just a few shelves on a much smaller bookshelf. This applies to all of Taipei and life. What I'd be attracted to and familiar with isn't in demand anymore. What does exist now is boring to me.
Back to the book, perhaps it was strange that it reappeared on the shelves this year amid all the downsizing of shiny things that get my attention. I didn't know it before, but now I consider it an essential read for my learning and I'm going through it for the third time already. I wouldn't argue against the suggestion that it reappeared only when I was ready for it. When it reappeared, I didn't hesitate again, I bought it that day. My hesitation before was partly measured doubt about shelling out for a book I couldn't sample, but it may have also been partly intuition that I wasn't ready for it. After all, this time I still couldn't sample it and shelled out right away.
And at over US$30, it's not a cheap book, especially one with so many typos in it. I've probably mentioned before that a side effect of my prior job as a copy editor is that I, for most part, can't not see mistakes anymore. It's like a sub-conscious habit to look for them now. I don't think I ever noticed books having mistakes before, but now I often find at least one typo per book and it always makes my eyes roll (that's also probably a side-effect of copy editing). This book had 5 or 6 mistakes, 5 of them in a 30 page stretch, so it's possible that section was (not) edited by one person. My favorite mistake was "iconography" misspelled as "ironography". Someone really needs to develop a system of categorizing irony.
It seems like there should have been a sea change in the K-pop girl group scene in 2017 with the epidemic I mentioned before of girl groups disbanding, losing members or falling into limbo with inactivity or no news to the point of potential irrelevance. It was shocking. Yet here I am with no problem still filling two CDs for 2017. New groups have emerged amidst new trends and new top groups. Same as it ever was.
All the extra video links are supplementary videos that I enjoy. The full stage "camcorders" are room sound quality (poor), but they capture the full choreography and the audience noise, and are the closest facsimile of what it might be like to actually be there. I started linking the unofficial stage mixes by a user whose editing skills are amazing in 2016 and continue here (they also serve as a terrific review of fashions and variations girl groups go through in the course of a promotion). And then other various and sundry videos that I like.
Future life resonance. I've been eating Korean food almost every day since about the beginning of December. I have just about every Korean restaurant within a two miles radius mapped out in my head and continue to note and target the few that I've missed.
Truth to tell, I've never been this way about Korean food. Not like I am with Mexican or Italian. Two of the Korean restaurants were around when I first moved to this neighborhood almost 10 years ago and quite honestly I went years without going to either.
Now, I inexplicably melt at how good they all are. My knowledge and palette for Korean food isn't that sophisticated and I end up ordering the same things, but it demonstrates what I've heard from Korean food shows about local cuisines all around Korea being different. It's reflected in restaurants in Taiwan. You can order bibimbap at 12 different restaurants, and they'll all be different.
There are Korean restaurants who now recognize me as a loyal regular, coming in reliably at least every week or other, but they don't know they're just one of a veritable revolving door of Korean restaurants who all recognize me as a loyal regular. I feel like a cheap whore. Well, the opposite. I'm a cheap Korean restaurant John.
It confounds me. You eat so much of any cuisine, you're gonna get tired of it. And it's not happening with a cuisine towards which I've never shown any particular affinity. That's why I attribute it to a future life resonance. It's like "where is this coming from?".
Also since the beginning of December have been winter weather patterns; this year they've fluctuated quite a lot. When it got really cold right from the start, I feared it was going to be a long winter. Previous years' temperatures were mild until late January. But so far this season there have been very nice short stretches of warm temperatures in the 70s. Short stretches of rain, some hard, but not constant rain like in previous years. And stretches of low to mid-50s, brittle cold in a country where homes don't have heating. Very variable, not at all brutal. Yet.
Oh, you know, there may have been a trigger for the Korean food frenzy. Several months ago I watched a "behind the scenes" video of a rookie K-pop girl group and they were eating throughout it. At the very end, Lucy lifts the yellow box and I could see the name on it, Bobby Box. Just for shits and giggles, I searched it on google maps because I'm a google maps geek. I expected locations in Korea, but was surprised to get a hit in Taipei! I went there the very next day and have been going there once or twice a week since.
There's this thing in Korea called 'mukbang' (Japan too, I think, but I don't know what they call it) which are videos of people eating. They're popular because apparently it's very pleasing to watch people enjoying good food. I can't argue with that. This video qualifies as mukbang.
Saturday, September 02, 2017
Perhaps some insight into the expert level of my self-distraction: I've spent the summer reading the Harry Potter series of books. HBO was also accommodating with a timely broadcast of the series of movies. Twice, in fact, so I had the opportunity to read the books in conjunction with watching the movies. I'm reminded of this as the entire movie series has been broadcast back-to-back these past few days. Twice! I'm not watching it, I've quite had my fill.
I think it's really impossible to say whether the books or the movies are better. They are quite complementary with their pros and cons. What the movies do great are things that are lacking in the books, and what the movies miss out on are provided in the books. The movies' strengths are their visuals, economy and consistency over 8 films and 7 years. One of their main weaknesses is related to their economy and the amount of information that was necessarily left out. The books' strength is the detail and fleshing out of information that was left out of the movies. At varying points, that's also the books' weakness when they go overboard in detail and prattling discussions that go on ridiculously long and are tightened up in the movies.
One more prominently memorable of the examples is in the Prisoner of Azkaban in the Shake Shack scene when Sirius and Lupin confront each other. In the book it's a long drawn out verbal confrontation. Tensions and emotions are high, wands are threateningly drawn, and . . . they're having a conversation. It's an action point, and that's what the movie realizes. Instead of the drawn-out discussion, Lupin arrives already having figured out the conclusion of the discussion in the book, explained in a very economical and logical way.
There is so much detail in the books that is not included in the movies that it may seem that a lot is lost in just viewing the movies. Maybe so, but it doesn't feel that way and the movies are still great on their own. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, the complementary nature of the books and films is strong.
An example that comes to mind of the opposite, where the book explains what the movie doesn't is in the last book. At the beginning of the movie version, the Dursleys are leaving with the brief and hurried explanation that it "isn't safe anymore". The book is much more satisfying in going into why it isn't safe anymore. And it's not just that the Dursleys are leaving, but they had been told by the Order of the Phoenix that they had to go and would be escorted to safety by Order members, and the Dursleys actually weren't sure whether to believe them or not and equivocated about leaving.
There isn't a contradiction between the pros and cons of the Harry Potter movies and the books. You can enjoy the movies without the details, then read the books and get the details, but then still enjoy the movies with the added information. That's different from the Lord of the Rings which I both watched and read in conjunction several years ago. Unlike Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings books are flat out superior to the movies. The Lord of the Rings books are near arguably considered literature, whereas the Harry Potter books, I shouldn't wonder, will never be more than Young Adult fiction with a wider appeal. That's not a diss; they are what they are, and are very good at what they are.
The contradiction I find in the Lord of the Rings is that if you haven't read the books, how the hell do you know who everyone is and what their motivations are? And if you have read the books and know who everyone is and what their motivations are, then how do you watch the movies and not think how inferior they are (story-wise) to the books and how much is wrong or missing?
There are also substantial differences between the Harry Potter books and movies, and some the books do better or worse, and some the movies do better or worse. For most part, I think the movies' economy on plot points actually improves the story. Scenes that are convoluted in the books are presented in the movies in a way that improves them. And some not. For example, the fate of the elder wand in the last movie is terrible compared to the book. In the book, it makes much more sense and has much more meaning and is more consistent to Harry's character and his relationship to Dumbledore.
Finally, if I were a parent whose children were interested in the Harry Potter series, I would require them to read each book before watching the movie. Partly because watching the movie first just seems lazy. There's also an element of encouraging literacy and patience in investing the time and effort into reading a book and using imagination, instead of just being fed someone else's visualization of the story (albeit a very good visualization). I don't think children would read a book and then watch the movie noticing what was left out. That's what critical adults do because we don't know how to just enjoy and have fun anymore. Kids would likely enjoy the movie with the extra information simply incorporated into their viewing experience.
Thursday, October 06, 2016
The blast furnace summer heat of Taipei ended in September with three typhoons in quick succession. It's still hot, just not intolerably so. Summer was just about going miserably from one air-conditioned space to the next.
Jogging, sometimes running, continues with times improving with ever-so-slightly cooler weather. Running over this summer, even in the evening, was still a bit crazy in retrospect. It was still quite hot.
I had 3-, 4-, 5-mile courses which all ended up near Rainbow Bridge, a footbridge over the Keelung River near Raohe Night Market, which usually had healthy breezes to help cool down. 30+ minute cool downs were not uncommon.
Jogging times have been upticking again lately, though, I think due to health matters; alcohol related I assume. It may be nothing, but I've just been feeling worse in general to the point that my usual activities like reading for hours have become untenable due to discomfort.
I've gone through episodes like this before, I suppose, and it'll probably pass. And it always feels bad enough that I wonder if maybe it really is finally getting out of control, which is fine and expected. I just kinda wish it would be more fast and dramatic, and not this languishing in ugh.
A current nasty bout of insomnia probably isn't helping my mood or outlook. I have terms for types of insomnia: "front end insomnia", "back end insomnia", "total insomnia". I've found ways to deal with each accordingly.
But I want to call this "devastating insomnia", which may be compounded by the health issues to make it extra hard to deal with and get through days with any semblance of homeostasis.
I have a maybe interesting anecdote about insomnia and memory in case some researcher wants to study me. Unfortunately it forces me to reveal how anal I am about my iTunes music collection and how I listen to music.
I sync and re-load my iPod Shuffle every three days, and the first thing I do is manually load three iTunes pages of the oldest last played songs; the 90 oldest songs that played to be exact. With an iTunes collection of over 19,300 files, this forces the oldest last played songs to be played and keeps files from not playing for years and years, as would naturally happen if at random. How's that for anal?
And an indication of what over 19,300 files means (I am trying to pare it down), the current oldest songs played are in March 2015. Anyway, every night, I don't know why, I like to go through those 90 songs and try to identify which of the songs played. Don't ask me why, I don't know why! I get a kick out of it.
It does become a memory thing. More songs are listened to before the next sync and I continue to try identifying songs. I'm usually pretty close. There are usually a few songs I missed or thought had played but hadn't. That's besides the point.
During insomnia this time, I listened to my iPod Shuffle for two hours lying on my bed in the dark. I always listen to music while trying to fall asleep, but only on devices that have a timer and will automatically shut off.
But my brain was so stuck in the "on" position, I was sure I wouldn't fall asleep while listening. In fact, I kept track of each song to make sure I wasn't falling asleep or else I would turn it off. Later when I reviewed the 90 songs, there were a few fuzzy ones, some "I think so", etc.
Finally when I synced the iPod and looked at the songs that actually played, I missed a whole bunch of them. But when I saw the songs, I do remember listening to them, I have the actual memory of lying there listening to them.
So I was fully conscious when I was listening, but the memory of listening to them failed when tested independently. I couldn't remember that they played, and still couldn't, but looking at the song names and the fact that they played, I have an actual memory listening to them.
I wasn't in any sleep state, but during insomnia the memory of my experience of listening to music became . . . an abstraction. Later experience wouldn't remember it. But when faced with factual data I had listened to certain songs during that time period, I had a concrete memory of the experience.
As anticipated, the second 2015 mix CD (of my vanity project of creating mix CDs for every year I've been alive) wasn't easy to put together. The first CD came together surprisingly fast and easily, and that probably caused most of the difficulty with the second disc. My satisfaction with it locked in the track list and didn't give me flexibility to move things around between the two discs.
So that's how not to make a double-disc mix. Collecting songs for 2016, I am already playing with song order, but I'm doing both discs simultaneously to avoid limiting options later.
I found it hard recognizing the segues, which shouldn't be hard. Also elusive was identifying placing of songs, either beginning, middle or end, which also shouldn't be hard. Probably a case of thinking too much.
This mix largely came together by finding two or three song segues by similar type and then jigsaw puzzling them together in a way that flowed. In the end, the final track list does succeed with satisfactory segues and song placings that I hadn't been able to see initially.
The biggest thorns were finding the opener and closer. There was a parade of songs that became final candidates for those positions, only to be ultimately rejected; almost all of them having not been considered for the mix at all, and then not staying on the mix when rejected.
This weblog is not being written to be read. It charts a mental decline and a relentless, often distracted, crawl towards an inevitable suicide, with sophomoric ruminations on religion from a Buddhist biased point of view, some armchair cosmology and astrophysics, monastic aspirations, unexceptional photography and other really, really, REALLY DEEP THOUGHTS that contradict themselves and aren't supposed to be watertight. Get off my back.
"With mind distracted, never thinking, 'Death is coming,' To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life, And then to come out empty - it is a tragic error. Recognition of necessity is the holy teaching So won't you live this divine truth from now on?" These are the words of the great adepts. If you don't put the Mentor's precept in your mind, Won't you be the one who deceives yourself? - Bardo Thödol (root verses).
