Monday - March 03, 2008

Aww nuts

Guitarist Jeff Healy, of the Jeff Healy Blues Band, died yesterday. He was 41 and had been fighting cancer almost his entire life.

http://www.jeffhealey.com/home.htm

Posted by Drew458     on 03/03/2008 at 04:52 PM   
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   Monday - February 04, 2008

Hippies for Obama … now that’s real change

Not to be too sarcastic but I think that would take at least 4 or 5 shovels (Pigpen, Keith, Brent, Jerry, Vince) to truly bring the Dead back together.

This will mark the first time that the members of the legendary band have performed together since 2004. They have agreed to reunite for this one-time-only event in order to lend support to Senator Obama leading into the crucial “Super-Tuesday” series of primaries held on Tuesday, February 5th.

“Deadheads for Obama” will feature Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh & Friends at San Francisco’s Warfield Theatre on Monday night.

It doesn’t look like second drummer Bill Kreutzman will be there, so the three original members - Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Phil Lesh - will be joined by Jackie Greene, John Molo and Steve Molitz.

The concert will be live streamed by IClips starting about 7:30pm PST tonight. It could be a really good show; nobody but nobody can blend rock, country, jazz, and freeform psychadelic music the ways these guys do. But without Jerry, and with Bill not playing, will there be any worthwhile extended space jams? Tune in to see.  It’s almost a guarantee they’ll put on a better show than Tom Petty did last night at halftime.

The Dead also got together to support John Kerry back in 2004, and were part of a post-inauguration fundraiser for Nancy Pelosi in 2007. I really doubt that Obama himself will attend.

Source links to Al Reuters

and to Market Watch

Posted by Drew458     on 02/04/2008 at 01:21 PM   
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   Monday - July 09, 2007

Dead Earth Flop

The BBC was predicting massive viewership.  Two years ago, when LIVE8 ran, 10 million tuned in.  Not so with the Tour de Gore.

Live Earth branded a foul-mouthed flop

Organisers of the global music concert - punctuated by swearing from presenters and performers - had predicted massive viewing figures.

But BBC’s live afternoon television coverage attracted an average British audience of just 900,000.

In the evening, when coverage switched from BBC2 to BBC1, the figure rose to just 2.7million.

And the peak audience, which came when Madonna sang at Wembley, was a dismal 4.5million. Three times as many viewers saw the Princess Diana tribute on the same channel six days before.

The BBC blamed the poor figures on Saturday’s good weather and said its Wimbledon tennis coverage had drawn away afternoon viewers.

Critics said however that the public had simply snubbed what they saw as a hypocritical event.

Emphasis mine.  They figured the sheeple are stupid enough to not realize the hypocracy of these do-gooders flying all over the globe, consuming truck loads of carbon offsets, jsut to tell them they need to conserve.  Guess that plan is backfiring.  Ijits.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2007 at 06:47 AM   
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   Friday - June 29, 2007

Street Art

After all of the political news of the past couple of days, I wanted to give you something a little lighter.

Stop-Action motion picture photography is a genre that fascinates me.  The idea is to take many still photos and blend them together into what appears to be a movie.  It is painstakingly tedious work with no shortcuts.

Apparently, the group Modest Mouse had a contest for folks to make a music video for them.  These guys went overboard and did it with stop-action digital photos.  4,133 of them for a four minute video.  They did a heck of a job in my opinion.

Enjoy.

“Myself and a couple have friends have entered the above into the Modest Mouse video competition. Using green screen footage provided by the band we cut a simple music video. We then degraded the images and printed out each frame sequentially. (all 4133 of them) We then nailed each “shot” of 50-100 posters to various structures and posts. Then using a digital SLR camera with a long exposure we frame by frame shot each poster. Oh, and theres a little video projection (again, frame by frame on the SLR) just to mix it up. There is no compositing, no shortcuts, just lots of blood, sweat and tears, and a huge Kinkos bill!”.... Max

Posted by Drew458     on 06/29/2007 at 07:10 AM   
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   Sunday - April 15, 2007

Obituary

‘Tiny Bubbles’ Singer Don Ho Dies at 76
_{HONOLULU - April 15, 2007, 5:34 AM EDT}

Legendary crooner Don Ho, who entertained tourists for decades wearing raspberry-tinted sunglasses and singing the catchy signature tune “Tiny Bubbles,” has died. He was 76. He died Saturday morning of heart failure, publicist Donna Jung said.

Ho had suffered with heart problems for the past several years, and had a pacemaker installed last fall. In 2005, he underwent an experimental stem cell procedure on his ailing heart in Thailand. Promoter Tom Moffatt said he attended Ho’s final show Thursday and Ho received a standing ovation. Afterward, Ho reminisced about his many years in Waikiki and talked about how Judy Garland sang with him one night. “Don was in great spirits,” he said. “He was fine.”

Ho entertained Hollywood’s biggest stars and thousands of tourists for four decades. For many, no trip to Hawaii was complete without seeing his Waikiki show—a mix of songs, jokes, double entendres, Hawaii history and audience participation. Shows usually started and ended with the same song, “Tiny Bubbles.” Ho mostly hummed the song’s swaying melody as the audience enthusiastically took over the familiar lyrics: “Tiny bubbles/in the wine/make me happy/make me feel fine.”

“I hate that song,” he often joked to the crowd. He said he performed it twice because “people my age can’t remember if we did it or not.” The son of bar owners, Ho broke into the Waikiki entertainment scene in the early 1960s and, except for short periods, never left. Few artists are more associated with one place.

Donald Tai Loy Ho, who was Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and German, was born Aug. 13, 1930, in Honolulu and grew up in the then-rural countryside of Kaneohe. In high school, he was a star football player and worked for a brief time in a pineapple cannery. After graduating in 1949, he attended Springfield College in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship. He grew homesick, returned to the islands and ended up graduating from the University of Hawaii in 1953 with a degree in sociology.

Inspired by the U.S. military planes flying in and out of Hawaii during World War II, Ho joined the Air Force. As the Korean War wound down, he piloted transport planes between Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu and Tokyo. When he returned home and took over his parents’ struggling neighborhood bar, Honey’s, he put together a band and started performing at his father’s request.

“I had no intention of being an entertainer,” Ho said. “I just played songs I liked from the radio, and pretty soon that place was jammed. Every weekend there would be lines down the street.”

Honey’s became a happening place on Oahu, with other Hawaiian musicians stopping in for jam sessions. Ho began to play at various spots in Hawaii, then had a breakout year in 1966, when appearances at the Coconut Grove in Hollywood helped him build a mainland following, and the release of “Tiny Bubbles” gave him his greatest recording success. Soon he was packing places such as the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Stars such as Lucille Ball, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra were known to be in the audience for Ho’s shows.

Ho also became a television star, and hosted the “The Don Ho Show” on ABC from 1976-77. One of Ho’s most memorable TV appearances was a 1972 cameo on an episode of “The Brady Bunch.” Besides “Tiny Bubbles,” his other well-known songs include “I’ll Remember You,” “With All My Love,” and the “Hawaiian Wedding Song.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/15/2007 at 05:50 AM   
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   Friday - May 19, 2006

Through The Looking Glass

“Space Oddity”
_{Photo Courtesy NASA}

 
Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God’s love be with you

Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five,
Four, Three, Two, One, Lift-off

This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You’ve really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare

“This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today

For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do

Though I’m past one hundred thousand miles
I’m feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much (she knows!)
Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear....

“ am I floating round my tin can
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do.?
 

-- David Bowie

Free Flying Orbital EVA

Mission Specialist Bruce McCandless II, is seen further away from the confines and safety of his ship than any previous astronaut has ever been. This space first was made possible by the Manned Manuevering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. After a series of test maneuvers inside and above Challenger’s payload bay, McCandless went “free-flying” to a distance of 320 feet away from the Orbiter. This stunning orbital panorama view shows McCandless out there amongst the black and blue of Earth and space.

At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was further out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured above, was floating free in space. McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an “untethered space walk” during Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984. The MMU works by shooting jets of nitrogen and has since been used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit. The MMU was replaced with the SAFER backpack propulsion unit.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/19/2006 at 03:16 PM   
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   Saturday - March 11, 2006

Most Ridiculous Album Cover Of All Time

This image was sent to me this morning and after nearly losing breakfast I just had to find out who this insane music group was. They are a British rock band called “The Handsome Beasts” and the .. uh .. gentleman on the cover is Gary Dalway, lead singer. This album was released in 1996. You can visit the band’s official web site here - if you dare.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/11/2006 at 04:23 PM   
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   Thursday - November 03, 2005

Life Catches Up With Art

For those of you who are keeping track of how old you’ve become, here’s some really bad news for all of you. Mark this date on your calendar: June 18, 2006 (next summer). On that date, Sir James Paul McCartney (MBE) will officially be sixty-four years old.

Go ahead and dig out that record album or 8-track tape with the picture of four very young musicians in funny colored uniforms surrounded by a crowd of famous people in a garden (if you’re old enough, you know which album I’m speaking of). You also know which track to play in honor of Sir Paul, who in his declining years, wishes he hadn’t written that song ....

  Will you still need, will you still feed me, when I’m ....

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/03/2005 at 04:42 AM   
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   Monday - August 22, 2005

Obituary: Thanks For The Music

(BBC)—Synthesiser pioneer Dr Robert Moog has died at his North Carolina home aged 71, four months after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Born in the New York district of Queens, his instruments were used by The Beatles and The Doors among others. Dr Moog built his first electronic instrument - a theremin - aged 14 and made the MiniMoog, “the first compact, easy-to-use synthesiser”, in 1964. He won the Polar prize, Sweden’s “music Nobel prize”, in 2001.

It was Wendy Carlos’ 1968 Grammy award-winning album, Switched-On Bach, which brought Dr Moog to prominence. Carlos played renditions of Johann Sebastian Bach compositions on a Moog analogue synthesiser, making electronic music popular and Dr Moog a household name. Before long many musicians and groups, including the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, were using Moog synthesisers.

The Moog sound fell out of favour in the early 1970s, however, but Dr Moog remained a respected musical figure. In recent years many musicians, including Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, The Cure, Fatboy Slim and Stereolab have kept the Moog sound alive, even as analogue synthesisers were superseded by digital instruments. Dr Moog had received both radiation treatment and chemotherapy to help combat his brain disease. He left a wife, Ileana, and five children.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/22/2005 at 08:32 AM   
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   Monday - August 15, 2005

Song Contest

OK, listen up crew! The Afghan people are in the market for a new national anthem. Leave your suggestions in the comments. I suggest “Ali Baba’s Restaurant” where ”you can get any goat you want” .... (with apologies to Arlo Guthrie, of course) ....

KABUL (Reuters)—Afghanistan is looking for a new national anthem that the government hopes will bring harmony to the country after nearly three decades of conflict. A panel of poets, writers and musicians tasked with writing a new anthem after seeking the views of all ethnic groups released a draft this week for public comment.

The current anthem—a jaunty, martial tune—is sung in Dari, the language of the Tajiks who made up the bulk of the Mujahideen government that came to power after the fall of the Moscow-backed regime in 1992. But many Afghans feel the lyrics—which praise the Mujahideen for defeating the Soviet Red Army—are now outdated, and they want something more broadly nationalistic that would bring together the country’s varied ethnic groups.

Afghanistan had no national anthem from 1996 to 2001 under the Taliban, who banned all forms of music as un-Islamic. The subject of a new anthem caused heated debate and deadlock at a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, in early 2004 which drew hundreds of delegates from diverse ethnic groups to approve a new constitution.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/15/2005 at 09:00 PM   
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Bubba’s Blues Blitz

Former (thank the Lord) President Bill Clinton is releasing CD compilation called “The Bill Clinton Collection: Selections from the Clinton Music Room.”

The 11-track disk includes tunes such as “My One and Only Love” by John Coltrane; “Harlem Nocturne” by David Sanborn; “My Funny Valentine” by Miles Davis; “Summertime” by Zoot Sims; “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” by Nina Simone, and “Chelsea Morning” by Judy Collins.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/15/2005 at 07:58 AM   
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   Tuesday - July 05, 2005

iPod Woody

Do you have an iPod? Do you think it looks dorky as hell with that shiny, white, creme de mentos look? Yeah, I think it sucks too. That’s why I bought an iRiver player to carry around with me (not to mention the fact that the iPod only plays Apple’s proprietary music format files while my iRiver plays damn near anything thanks to its multi-codec interpreter). Anyway, I digress. If you don’t like the snarky dweeb look of the iPod go take a look at what ZapWizard did with his iPod (see below). He shows you how he built his own genuine iPod Woody! (don’t tell any of those dweeby iPod owners but my iRiver has a really cool 3-D holographic image around the display on the front).

Posted by The Skipper     on 07/05/2005 at 01:05 PM   
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   Sunday - June 12, 2005

And She Plays The Piano Too

ASHINGTON - A musician long before she became an academic and then a world-famous diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took to the Kennedy Center concert stage Saturday to accompany a young soprano battling an often-fatal disease.

Rice’s rare and unpublicized appearance at the piano marked a striking departure from her routine as America’s No. 1 diplomat. A pianist from the age of 3 she played a half-dozen selections to accompany Charity Sunshine, a 21-year-old singer who was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension a little more than a year ago.

The soprano is a granddaughter of Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., and his wife Annette, who Rice has known for years. The Pulmonary Hypertension Association, formed in 1990, presented the concert to draw attention to the disease from which more than 100,000 people are known to suffer.

Largely unknown in the United States until about 10 years ago, it has no known cause or cure, but genetic studies and a search for treatment are under way.

Sunshine has persisted in her career and performed with orchestras in Hungary, her grandparents’ home before the Holocaust, Denmark and the United States. On Saturday, in a concert entitled, “An Evening of Music, Friendship and Awareness” and hosted by Lantos, she drew the secretary of state to play selections by Verdi, Mozart and Jerome Kern.

Eileen Cornett, of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Md., accompanied Sunshine on a half-dozen other pieces.

Lantos introduced Rice as “a warm friend” and said the concert was her idea, describing how her eyes filled with tears as he told him about his granddaughter’s illness.

“We have to do something about this and enhance public consciousness,” he quoted Rice as saying. “Let’s have a concert and I will accompany her at the piano.”

Rice, whose first name is a variation on the Italian musical term “con dolcezza,” which is a direction to play with sweetness, learned to read music at the age of 3.

As a child she performed, won piano competitions and planned a career as a a concert pianist. But she switched her field of interest to international relations in her junior year at the University of Colorado and went on to be provost at Stanford University, then President Bush’s assistant for national security, and now secretary of state.

Despite her busy schedule, Rice finds time to enjoy classical music and plays occasionally and privately with friends in a string quartet.

_{By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer}

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/12/2005 at 05:42 AM   
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   Tuesday - May 03, 2005

Geriatric Rock and Roll Update

Cream exists once more. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker have reunited after more than 36 years apart. Clapton is still God. Bruce is Shiva and Baker is Buddha. I’ll bet they still rock.

I would upload “I Feel Free” for your listening pleasure, but the Expression Engine interface tells me that the file is too big.

A little help here Allan, oh omnipotent system administrator.

Update: I decided on ”Crossroads” instead. The link is on my own server and it is a little slow. It is about 4MB. Be patient.

Posted by Yellow Dog     on 05/03/2005 at 08:36 PM   
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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