Heurism

I was trying to talk music with one of my student workers the other day. He is a pretty well informed music fan, even if he is only 21. The place we differed was on listening to whole albums. He is, like alot of folks these days, what I call a single listener. He only listens to songs he has purchased off of iTunes or Emusic, and he never buys an entire album, just the song he likes. I tried to talk to him about the “album” experience. He was resistant.

Keep in mind that I grew up listening to the apex of AOR radio. AOR was, rather pointedly, not about singles, but about the whole piece of music. I’ve always listened to entire albums. Always. I know what track is supposed to come next. I can get a feel for what the artist/producer/engineer/etc was trying to say with sequence. Shoot to Trill comes after Hells Bells, it just does. Three Days (the Stairway to Heaven of my generation) is a perfect follow up to Been Caught Stealing, it just is. When the Levee Breaks is a great album closer. Seriously. At work I listen to a ton of music. It’s always on in the background. And it’s almost always whole albums. Start to finish. I feel like I’d be missing something if I just listened to singles.

Songs I’d have never heard otherwise: Tattooed Love Boys (the Pretenders), Darling Nikki (Prince), Midnight Rambler (the Stones), The Great Curve (Talking Heads), Eurotrash Girl (Cracker). None of these songs were the hit single off their album. But they are all better in my opinion. I’m not saying that listening to singles is bad. I’m just suggesting that their is something more to the experience of consuming an entire album.

Albums people…it’s albums.

Greg Costikyan is an old school board game guy, author, and so forth who still posts thoughts about games, gaming and the like here. This morning he posted a wonderful essay about a play by mail (that’s snail mail kids) Diplomacy variant called Slobbovia. I remember reading a recap of a Slobbovia turn in a game zine I bought WAY back in the day (lets say ’83). This essay made me smile, made me reminisce about the old school games. The good and the bad about the way we *used* to do things. Magic.

Link

Oh, and the rules set is available here.

This is a damn fine article about the governance of California. Fascinating, in depth, funny, scary, it has it all. Since I lived in Cali for nigh unto 20 years I feel every word. Highly recommended.

Link

and yes…that is Jerry Brown, aka Governor Moonbeam…

I don’t get to do as much computer gaming as I once did, but I will admit to being pretty excited about All Points Bulletin. APB is an MMORPG centered around the ancient cops n’ robbers formula. It looks vaguely like a first person shooter with a ton of personalization options. The character customization system strikes about every computer gaming fun button I have. I can only hope that the game is any good. The cops n’ robbers thing is near and dear to my heart, being raised, as I was, in a time when playing with toy guns was accepted and not a way to get shot by actual law enforcement. I had the most complete selection of toy guns in the neighborhood and was the go to guy for all your childhood gunplay needs.

Link – game site

Link – video of the character customization system

eMusic continues to be my source for delicious, DRM-free digital music. Now and then I’ll pick up an actual CD, or something from Amazon, but most of my needs are met by eMusic. Here is the stuff I’ve downloaded lately.

The Monks – Black Monk Time: The Monks were all GIs stationed in Germany in the early to mid 60′s. They began playing together in ’64 and by ’65 had been discharged. Black Monk Time is the only album they ever produced and it is a stone cold classic. Garage, underground, frighteningly original and ahead of it’s time, this won’t appeal to just anyone. Recently re-released this is pretty dang wonderful.

Wild Rumpus/Wild Rumpus feat. Beardyman – Purple Summersault and Rock the Joint: Juke joint swing re-mixed into funk electro? Sure. Dig that beat, baby.

The Mooney Suzuki – The Maximum Black EP: Good ol’ American Garage Rock. Check out Love Is A Gentle Whip.

The Dirtbombs – Ultraglide In Black: Detroit’s renowned punk/r&b live act.

The Oholics – Baby Blue Eyes: A delightful EP by some very very drunk Swedes. Delightful.

King Khan & The Shrines – The Supreme Genius of King Khan & the Shrines: A Berlin based garage/psych band. I listen to this all the dang time.

A couple of drinks into our Friday evening, and over some really nice goat cheese pizza, bin and I had a moment of intense, soul gazing connection. Some radio station or other was playing and for some reason chose to play Bread and Butter by The Newbeats. It’s a very odd song. Midway through the first bar bin looks at me and says “this is Bread and Butter” and then “I had this on Goofy Greats.”

Of course I, too, owned a copy of Goofy Greats when I was a child. Now K-Tel must’ve released about 20 different versions of this album. Some had two LPs, some only one. Some had Mr. Bass Man, and Leapy Lee, while mine did not.

As far as I can tell below is the track listing of the Goofy Greats I had:

Royal Guardsmen – Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron
Brian Hyland – Itsy-Bitsy, Teenie-Weenie, Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini
Newbeats – Bread And Butter
Fendermen – Mule Skinner Blues
Bobby Day – Rockin’ Robin
Hollywood Argyles – Alley-Oop
Johnny Thunder – Loop De Loop
Ohio Express – Yummy, Yummy, Yummy
George Baker Selection – Little Green Bag
Tokens – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Trashmen – Surfin’ Bird
Ohio Express – Chewy, Chewy
Ray Stevens – Ahab The Arab
Shirley Ellis – The Name Game
Lemon Pipers – Green Tambourine
1910 Fruitgum Co. – Simon Says
Piero Umiliani – Mah-Na-Mah-Na
Bill Haley – See You Later, Alligator
Playmates – Beep, Beep
Jewel Akens – The Birds And The Bells
Lovin’ Spoonful – Nashville Cats
Larry Verne – Mr. Custer
Larry Williams – Bony Moronie
1910 Fruitgum Co. – 1-2-3, Redlight

You’ll notice a few important things here. This list contains the greatest rock and roll song of all time (Surfin’ Bird by the Trashmen), the greatest rock and roll song with the word bo-birley in it (The Name Game by Shirley Ellis), two amazingly non-pc classics (Ahab the Arab and Mr. Custer), the Ohio Express doing all of their “-y” catalog, and Rockin’ Robin. The fact that we both owned this record, both could identify Bread and Butter, and her name is Robin….that /has/ to be kismet right? I’ll be stoked about this for a long long time to come.

(and no…this is not the correct cover for the LP I had…)

Having my own domain is pretty swank but I’m find the care/maintenance/feeding of an actual wordpress.org setup (as opposed to the wordpress.com freeness) is a bit wonky. God my tech skills are out of practice. Sad, huh?