Album o' the Day

The Ace Frehley solo album from 1978 is Allmusic's album of the day. One of the all-time great rock albums, I say. I liked them all, though. Even Peter's.

Trends

I have to wonder if, in the age of the internet where music of every taste is available anytime to anyone with an internet connection, where we're not subjected to just a few radio stations that play a narrow range of music, where individualism is increasingly prized above community, that the era of the musical "trend" is over. Is it still possible for a trend to grab hold of the popular interest as much as disco did in the 70's? My gut says no. I think we may be seeing the end of widespread musical trends, and possibly cultural trends. There are smaller trends, but they seem to be more fleeting and less significant as time goes on.

It's entirely possible that I'm talking out of my ass.

...

Undies

You ever put your underwear on only to realize you have them on backwards, turn them around and put them on again, only to realize they're backwards NOW and you had them on the right way the first time? I have. Ever do it after a couple beers while standing on the stairs with one hand on the railing? I've done that too.

Famous wrong notes

I heard Miracles by Jefferson Starship on the radio tonight. The last riff of the sax solo is all wrong notes. If it's intentional, it doesn't work in the context of the song. That's bugged me ever since I first heard it. Anyway, there are lots of famous wrong notes, or bad note choices, that make it into popular music. Like that one note in the guitar solo in Sunglasses At Night by Corey Hart. You know the one. I knew a guitar player who loved that note and was pretty sure it was intentional. I'm not convinced. There's the opening of Kurt Cobain's guitar solo in the acoustic version of The Man Who Sold The World. Flub. Charlie Watt's drum intro on Start Me Up. Oh, and back to Nirvana, there's the fact that the vocal melody on the chorus of All Apologies is in a different key than what the guitar and bass are playing. It kinda works but something isn't quite right. I love dischord and chaos and atonality - when it works, like on Beefheart's stuff or Milhaud's stuff, but that isn't what I'm talking about. I know I've left out a lot, I'll add to this list if I think of other heinous examples.

News

There hasn't been much Supraluxe-related news lately. We've been experiencing a lot of non-Supraluxe-related activity, and the posts reflect that. We're scheduling more rehearsals though - we're going to whip out more raucous ear splitting sonic entrees that may one day make it into your Winamp. Stay tuned.

Peter Criss

You remember that rumor in the late 70's that Peter Criss was the second best drummer in the world, after Buddy Rich? That's not true, I found out.

Beefheart on Letterman

I saw the first clip when it aired live....

Ice Cream For Crow

The "single" off the album of the same name.

Music is just black ants crawling across white paper

Captain Beefheart is pure genius, and I don't say that lightly. I hold this man in higher regard than almost any other musician in the world. Ice Cream For Crow is one of the best albums ever released. Ever. Period. This is not up for debate.

Hello Everyone. I'm amazing, check me out.

weedela weedela weedela

Belle Mehus

The frail old woman with the hunched back and funny name (it's pronounced MAYhoos), the one I took my first piano lessons from when I was 6, the woman profiled here, has become an auditorium. I'm glad her legacy lives on. The building she taught in, the Mehus Conservatory, where I read New Yorker magazines while waiting for my lessons to start, does not.

Action Squad

One of the coolest sites on the web. I'd love to have some beers with these guys.

Effin' Hot

eMusic Lists

eMusic members can make lists from the available artists on the site. Steve at Absolute Powerpop created one the other day and we're on it.

I also created one of my own.

This one's a little close to home

I copied this (and edited it a little) from The Onion. I thought it was funny was how close in tone this is to so many letters to the editor of the Bismarck Tribune.

Somebody Should Do Something About All the Problems

Heare Me Out
By Edith Heare
August 21, 1996

Why isn't anyone doing anything about all the problems? We're living in a time with super computers and underwater sea stations and million-dollar laboratories. And still, everyday when I watch the TV news shows I see all sorts of problems!

What are the scientists doing with all that technology? Just sitting on their patoots? Just yesterday there was another plane crash. Isn't that what we have radar for? Why isn't someone taking care of that?

And then there's all those people starving. You can't tell me that we can't figure out a way to feed them. What about all those high-energy vitamin supplements I read about? And what about the dehydrated space food? Someone has got to start putting this information to good use.

Somebody should get on the stick and start using all those high-powered electronic microscopes to cure cancer, that's what I think.

So many people are dying in the world. We have laser surgery, don't we? Isn't somebody using that? They put a baboon heart in a human, you know. They can make body parts out of plastic and put little camera probes in your body. Then why are there so many people dying?

All this technology—robots, big machines, atomic power—and still they say we are in an energy crisis. Why isn't anyone working on a better way to make electricity? You should see my bill every month. Here we are in the most powerful country in the world and I can't afford to run my air conditioner so I could get one night of good rest once in awhile.

It's a downright shame. Is there no morality in science? Last night I tried to have a barbecue on my back patio and I ran inside before the spicy shish-kabobs were even half-grilled because of the mosquitoes. With all that chemical engineering going on today, with all that military technology, I should at least be able to sip a sloe gin and sour without getting run out of my own yard by something smaller than my fingernail!

And now I have shingles again. With the hundreds of thousands of doctors all over this world, you are telling me that not one of them can do anything about this pain? It's killing me. This is the 20th century, isn't it? We put a man on the moon, and I can't find an hour of relief from the swelling? Can't someone assign a team to this problem and get something done for once?

Then there's the fact that my kids never visit me. Here I sit all alone wondering when they'll come. We have jet planes that break the sound barrier, but Ginny can't make it from Elk Grove once a month so I can see my own flesh and blood? The Hubble sent down pictures of the galaxy, but I have yet to see my granddaughter's fourth-grade school portraits!

I hear jabber-jabbering about the discovery of new subatomic particles. What good is a quark to me? Three and a half minutes it takes to cook a bag of microwave popcorn. Three and a half minutes! Someone is spending a billion dollars a minute to send radio messages into space, and I have to choke down a bag of Pop-Secret kernels that are only half buttered, some not even popped to full puff. God, I pray for a future when the inventor is the friend of mankind.

DNA fingerprinting—that's what they're doing now. And still strawberries at Bergmann's are $2.99 a quart. It's ludicrous. It's as if we live in the Dark Ages.

Cloned genes and fiber optics, but the cat still goes into heat and scratches up my new mahogany coffee table. Isn't there something someone can do about that? I'm sure with all the vaccines and hybrid cells and carbon dating equipment we've got today someone can take a minute to whip up a pill I can force down Pumpkin's throat so I have one decent thing in this shoebox house that I worked like a dog at the phone company for 27 years in order to afford.

These are the good years for me? Huh! I'm still watering my flowers and hosing off my driveway. Where is the fiber optics in that? How's superconductivity helping me when my new cotton housedress shrank up to nothing the first time I put it in the dryer? I see all the technology they talk about on the television and I ask you, who's doing anything with it? No one, and it's a dirty rotten shame.

Art Tatum

My musical tastes run the gamut. While snooping around eMusic trying to find some good classical piano recordings, I happened on Art Tatum. I'm embarrassed to admit that until last night I didn't know the first thing about him. I'd heard of him, I knew he was a jazz guy, but that was it.

Stupid. I must live under a rock.

Last night I read so many incredible things about him I decided to give him a try, and I was so blown away at this guy's technique I was like a bug to a light. This "new" discovery of mine resulted in me staying up until 3:00 AM listening to all the Art Tatum I could find. I usually look for a balance in music, something that appeals to the emotional and intellectual sides equally, but now and then I run across something or someone whose mastery of one or the other appeals to me so much that the whole "balance" thing goes out the window. This was the case last night. Such was his ability that music of almost unbelievable beauty and complexity danced and twinkled like he was less an interpreter than a conduit.

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for lift off.