I traveled through 12 states with my dog Scout, visited some old friends, made some new friends, and am now watching the movie known as “what in the name of sam hell is going on with the financial markets and why are these rich and grasping greedheads ruining our party?”

People were living high off the hog, borrowing money they shouldn’t, but this current nonsense is mind boggling on many levels. I hope those people who bought their kids matching luxury cars because that’s what kids need these days to fit in don’t get burned too bad.

Anyways -- Chance and I are both keeping busy and I have a few posts to write over the next month or so.

Here is some music.

2002 Remake

Original from 1972:

The special sauce: strings that have “a specific metallurgy designed to work with the Moog pickups.” Marketing manager Chris Stack told Listening Post, “the pickups are simultaneously listening to the strings and controlling them.”

Wired article about the new guitar.

Listen to an Mp3 of this first recording

American researchers have pieced together a 10-second audio clip of a French folk song which they believe is the oldest recognisable recording of the human voice.

The recording appears to be of a young woman singing a couple of phrases from the 18th century folk song Au Clair de la Lune. It was made in 1860 by Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and librarian, on a Heath Robinson-style device he called a “phonautograph”.

But in successfully playing back the clip, the team from the University of California’s Berkeley Lab, may have robbed their compatriot Thomas Edison of the honour long accorded him as the first man to successfully record sound.

Edison’s recording of himself reciting ‘Mary had a little lamb’, recorded on a tinfoil cylinder and no longer playable, dates from 1877. The first playable recording is thought to be from a performance of a Handel oratorio at Crystal Palace in 1888.

Scott’s phonoautograph had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a hog’s bristle stylus which etched sound waves onto sheets of smoke-blackened paper.

The New York Times reported that Scott never intended them to be played back but saw them as merely a visual representation of sound. It said that when Edison unveiled his phonograph, which was designed to play back its recordings, the Frenchman even accused him of misusing the technology.

The recording was discovered earlier this month at the French Academy of Sciences by David Gioavannoni, an “audio historian” who led the effort to find Scott’s original “phonoautograms”.

Mr Giovannoni had found earlier recordings at a Paris patent office, dating back as early as 1857 but he told the newspaper that his “eureka moment” came when he found the immaculately preserved 1860 recording on a sheet of rag paper measuring nine inches by 29 inches.

“It was pristine,” Mr Giovannoni said. “The sound waves were remarkably clear and clean.”

Mr Giovannoni sent scans of the recording to the Berkeley Lab where they were painstakingly converted into sound by scientists using technology designed to salvage historic recordings.

That technology allows the voice of a young French woman, recorded in Paris in the months before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration as President of the United States, to be heard again.

Times of London Source Article

A re-mastered theatrical trailer of the original movie:

I didn’t care for the 2000 release of the Dune miniseries:

I have heard recently that the movie is in production in the writing phase of the project. Hopefully it will be well made. Will you watch it?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1160419/

NIN Ghost Web Site

You can pay $5 for a download of max quality, non DRM infected digital tracks, or choose from a variety of options:

Nine Inch Nails presents Ghosts I – IV, a brand new 36 track instrumental collection available right now. Almost two hours of new music composed and recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I – IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.

Trent Reznor explains, “I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective – dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference. I hope you enjoy the first four volumes of Ghosts.”

The E.F.F recently posted a PDF of various R.I.A.A law suits. PDF Link to EFF Document

Anyways – there is a web site called Slicethepie. Slice the Pie Web Site

Here is how it works:

What is Slicethepie?

Slicethepie enables artists to raise money directly from their fans to professionally record and release an album.

How? We turn every music fan into a record label.

On Slicethepie:

o Artists can raise money directly from their fans to professionally record albums
o Fans can become emotionally and financially involved at all levels of the music industry – scouting, breaking, investing in and influencing real artists
o Investors can gamble on, trade in and profit from the success of these artists
o Artists who secure finance pay Slicethepie a small royalty on album sales but keep all their copyright and publishing rights.

How It Works

This is how it works:

1. Artists sign up, upload their profile and join an Arena.
2. When the Arena is full (up to 1,000 Artists) the Scout Room opens.
3. Music fans earn money scouting each track at least 10 times rating it 1-10 and writing detailed reviews.
4. The 20 highest rated artists from the Scout Room go forward to the Showcase.
5. Music fans vote for and finance Showcase Artists by buying Backstage Passes.
6. Backstage Passes give fans exclusive access to the artist, participation in the recording process, a free copy of the album and exclusive rights to buy Contracts in the artist at a discount.
7. Fans buy Contracts that entitle them to a return based on the number of singles and albums sold by the Artist over a 2 year period
8. The Artist receives the money (non-recoupable) and goes off to record the album, keeping in close contact with Backstage Pass holders in a private area of the site.
9. The Contracts become fully tradable on the Slicethepie Exchange, fluctuating in value depending on the anticipated number of album and single sales.
10. The album is released and Slicethepie receives £2 royalty on every album sale.
11. The Artist keeps all their copyright and publishing rights and remains free to sign a record deal at any time.

If you already have a dedicated fanbase of over 5,000 fans then you may be able to go directly to the financing stage, if this is the case, then please contact us, alternatively, if you are not yet well established, you can join a Slicethepie Arena.

EARTHLING 

SLAVED

DOLL HUT SLUT 

KINGS OF SLEEP / BIT PLAYERS TRILOGY 

PATHETIC LITTLE FREAK

JUST LIKE IT NEVER WAS 

CAREERS

EVANDELLOR HOLLIS ON TOP OF THE WORLD TONIGHT

CONGRATULATIONS DAY 

Skot Pollok: Guitars

Freddie Clagg: Guitars

Darrin DelCastillo: Drums

Tony DelDuca: Bass

Geoff (Hefe) Yeaton: Saxaphones

Chance Derek Gregory: Vocals

All songs pretty much by Watching Alice except for “Doll Hut Slut” which was all Freddie. We were influenced by a million different things impossible to explain in words, so we used pictures instead. There is no genre worth preserving here. We were trying to transcend all of that in our own way; the big bang on a slightly smaller stage. What was born there sounded exactly like no one else anywhere — ever.

2008 Nowhere Records

Wikipedia Article

History

Original members:

* David Sylvian (original name David Batt): vocals, guitar, keyboards
* Mick Karn (original name Anthony Michaelides): bass guitar, saxophone, oboe
* Rob Dean: guitar
* Steve Jansen (Sylvian’s brother, Steve Batt): drums and percussion
* Richard Barbieri: keyboards

The band debuted on record with 1978’s Adolescent Sex and subsequently Obscure Alternatives, which both sold well in Japan and the Netherlands (where the single “Adolescent Sex” was a Top 30 hit), they also gained some popularity in Canada, but nowhere else. Though influenced by artists such as The New York Dolls, Roxy Music and David Bowie, both albums were widely dismissed by the British music press as being distinctly outmoded at a time when punk and New Wave bands were in ascendence. However, tracks such as “Suburban Berlin”, “State Line” and “Rhodesia” suggested a creative depth and sense of melody to the band’s output which would hint at their future direction.

Their third album, 1979’s Quiet Life, heralded a significant change in musical style from the earlier largely guitar-based music to a more electronic sound, with more emphasis on Barbieri’s synthesisers, Sylvian’s svelte baritone style of singing, Karn’s distinctive fretless bass sound and Steve Jansen’s odd-timbered and intricate percussion work with Dean’s guitar playing becoming increasingly sparse and atmospheric. Quiet Life was their last studio album for Hansa-Ariola, though the label would later issue a compilation album (”Assemblage”) featuring highlights from the band’s tenure on the label.

Their final two studio albums, Gentlemen Take Polaroids (1980) and Tin Drum (1981) were released on the Virgin label, and continued to expand their audience as the band refined its new sound and, somewhat unintentionally, became associated with the early-1980s New Romantic movement. Tin Drum in particular is critically regarded as one of the most innovative albums of the 1980s, with its startlingly original fusion of occidental and oriental sounds, and was a UK Top 12 album. Its unconventional single “Ghosts” reached #5 on the UK charts, becoming Japan’s biggest domestic hit and one of only a very few such ‘minimalist’ songs to achieve such heights. Tin Drum was to be the band’s final studio album as personality conflicts led to rising tensions between band members. Rob Dean had already departed towards the end of the “Gentlemen Take Polaroids” sessions, as his electric guitar work was increasingly regarded as surplus to requirements. During this period, Japanese multi-instrumentalist and experimental keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto was briefly implanted into the band’s set-up to work directly alongside Sylvian on tracks such as Taking Islands In Africa.

The group’s final UK performance came in November 1982 culminating in a six-night sell-out stint at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. Japan’s last ever performance was on 16th December 1982 in Nagoya, Japan. The band’s final Hammersmith concerts were recorded to produce Oil On Canvas, a live album (and video) released in June 1983. Ironically, the band decided to split just as they were beginning to obtain long-overdue commercial success both in their native UK and internationally, with Oil On Canvas becoming their highest charting British album, reaching #5.

All of the band members went on to work on other projects, with varying degrees of success. By far the most successful is David Sylvian, who has recorded numerous solo albums and collaborations with noted performers including Holger Czukay, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Robert Fripp. A reformation of the band members in 1989-1990 (under the name Rain Tree Crow) was short-lived and produced only one eponymously-titled album which was released in April 1991. Once again, the band dissolved following frictions between Sylvian and the other members. The project was nevertheless a critical success. Jansen and Barbieri released the 1987 synth-pop album “Catch the Fall” under the name The Dolphin Brothers recalling much of Japan’s sound, and worked together releasing electronic instrumentals under that moniker in the late nineties and early noughties both for Virgin and for their own label Medium Records. In 2005 and 2006 Steve Jansen and David Sylvian worked together again, releasing recordings under the name Nine Horses. Richard Barbieri went on to become a member of the British progressive band Porcupine Tree, who have just signed to Roadrunner Records (a major) and are enjoying critical success.