Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard
Apr 29
Apr 13
Phil Spector, the OJ Simpson of the music world, is guilty of murder.
Long known for how to write a catchy tune or to shoot someone just because...well...there really isn't a story here. He did it...got caught...and now probably going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
His wig, however, remains out on bond awaiting conspiracy and destruction of evidence charges. The prosecutor has vowed to "spray that sucker".
Mar 6
Karl Lagerfield says, "Coco Chanel had an affair with Stravinsky, mine was with a guitar."
http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/2009/02/rocking-runway-literally-chanels.html
http://www.justluxe.com/fine-living/fashion/article-240005.php
Over at the Music Machinery blahg, Paul Lamere explores the use of the click track in music production.
Sometime in the last 10 or 20 years, rock drumming has changed. Many drummers will now don headphones in the studio (and sometimes even for live performances) and synchronize their playing to an electronic metronome - the click track. This allows for easier digital editing of the recording. Since all of the measures are of equal duration, it is easy to move measures or phrases around without worry that the timing may be off. The click track has a down side - some say that songs recorded against a click track sound sterile, that the missing tempo deviations added life to a song.
Blah blah blah...being a child of the industrial (music) revolution and one that has never felt the need to practice relentlessly to the strong armed overlord that is the metronome, my own sense of time is, how you say, lacking. Four on the Floor is the only way we do it and then judicious use of the quantize button. Either way, this is rather interesting seeing which artists obviously use clicks, and which don't. Hell, I'd be hard pressed to even say 'played to click, as tools like Mixosaurus/ make it very easy to replace these stick monkeys with something virtual and on time.
Read more at Music Machinery.
Jun 30
Over @ the NYT:
HALF a century ago, when America was having problems with its image during the cold war, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the United States representative from Harlem, had an idea. Stop sending symphony orchestras and ballet companies on international tours, he told the State Department. Let the world experience what he called �real Americana�: send out jazz bands instead.
The idea behind the State Department tours was to counter Soviet propaganda portraying the United States as culturally barbaric. Powell�s insight was that competing with the Bolshoi would be futile and in any case unimaginative. Better to show off a homegrown art form that the Soviets couldn�t match � and that was livelier besides. Many jazz bands were also racially mixed, a potent symbol in the mid to late �50s, when segregation in the South was tarnishing the American image.
Read more over at the NYTimes.
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