Epictetian Preachin'

Here we go, here's a little uplift, to match our weather today:



Oooooh, if only "everyday" felt this good!
Going to go eat goose with friends tonight (my idea),
doing research on Stoic philosophy in combination with Foucault's use of their ethical care of the self,
sat in a park where they were mulching Xmas trees, which smelled better than you could possibly imagine.

Well, I won't bore you with all the rest of my "day, people"-- for it is not your duty to mark down and be concerned with my joys and ills, nor mine to fret and tut-tut over yours. As Epictetus tells us:

But the judge condemns you on the charge of impiety. And did not the judges similarly condemn Socrates? Surely it is no concern of yours...
Your father has a certain function, and if he does not perform it, he has destroyed the father in him, the man who loves his offspring, the man of gentleness within him. Do not seek to make him lose anything else on this account...
Again, it is your function to defend yourself firmly, respectfully, without passion. Otherwise, you have destroyed within you the son, the respectful man, the man of honour. What then? Is the judge secure? No; but he too runs just as great a risk. Why, then, are you afraid of what decision he is going to render? What have you to do with another man's evil? (Discourses, Book III, xviii)

So, if I be condemned, I will not let that affect the respect which I hold for myself, nor will it affect my judgment on what a nice fucking day it is.

Na Woo Woo, Nuh Ow Ow: Pro Baseball, Pro Edition

Did you know that currently, only 4 Major League baseball teams lack a mascot? (MGX indicated this to me.) The Cubs, of Chicago, Illinois, are one of these four teams. However, they do have a sort of unofficial mascot. Well, really, he's a superfan: one Ronnie "Woo-Woo". So called because he's prone to shouting "woo".



Download Wilson Pickett's "Land of 1,000 Dances"

So, this Wilson Pickett song may have a "woo or two" in it. It definitely has some "huh", "ow", "uh" action. And it has the famous
"na, na na na, na nuh na na nuh na nana"
starting about :35. You know, what they play at baseball games all the time.

(Do they play music at pro football games? Could you even hear it outside? If not, how do the players get pumped up- other than steroids?)

Ronnie "Woo Woo"'s been attending games from about 1959, which is before my mother was born (hey Ma!).
While his demeanor and devotion to attendance have gained him fame in the Greater ChicagoLands area, his life has not been all sun and roses: no, far from it. He's been homeless (but still attended games, thanks to generous other parties), and later, a fundraiser was held for him so he could get a new pair of dentures.

Poor guy was born prematurely, which shows you: he's a fighter, he's always been a fighter.

He was even struck by a car outside the game once, and had to go to a Masonic hospital, which would frighten me.
What if they make you join up?
Or, worse, what if you ask to join, but they become cryptic all of the sudden, and then your pain meds start getting reduced, and you know, it gets pretty painful. All this, simply because you wanted a sweet ring like these:







Or, mayhaps, this is the ring you always wanted :

Together Soon: Teddy & Sharon ( & Harold ?! )

This one's a duet.
From the random selection on my IPhone which I brought to Portland- and will shortly bring to Houston.



Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes: Hope That We Can Be Together Soon
AKA "Teddy Pendergrass Feat. Sharon Paige: "Hope That...."
Teddy and Harold had a little spat, see- Harold founded the group, but by the time they were successful, well see, Teddy was doing all the lead singing.
(And How!)
Teddy wanted his name added to the existing group-name, which would have produced the titular monstrosity of
"Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes Featuring Teddy Pendergrass".

"No dice", says Harold; Teddy says "I quit".
But not before recording this song with Sharon Paige (and the rest of the Blue Notes); she too was a Blue Note at the time, so this track really only needs the title "HM & BN: 'HWCBTS'",
not "TP FT SP (AKA HM & BN FT TP & FT SP): 'HTWCBTS'".

Clarifying, I'm sure.
I think we all learned a lot today.

Welcome Back

I am now back in Portland, and listening to my IPhone's mp3s. A very loose collection of stuff made it onto my phone's IPod.
I'll post up those songs which I think you all could make friends with: post them as I hear them, more or less.

Here is one such tune, and very appropriate to start off with:



Evidently, this is the theme song to "Welcome Back Kotter", which I have never really seen. Which means that, while you can get multiple videos of "theme song" length -- including one with footage from Grand Theft Auto!? and another from Final Fantasy VII!?! -- I could not find any longer* version.
(Note that the above video does not even mention the name of the artist who sang it!: John Sebastian. I'd be insulted- but then, he's prob dead.)

S'okay- all I really needed, which is included in both short videos, are the lines:

"Well, we tease him a lot/
'cos we got him on the spot;
Welcome Back."



* ! Newsflash! This Just In!
My Mom has just cracked an egg of knowledge all over the place: back in the 70's, some theme songs were written special for the show. "Kotter" is such a theme. So, the original version is the above short version! And what I have on my IPod is a later version, which they lengthened some, to 2:40-ish. So while the above videos for John Sebastian's "Welcome Back" are odd -- deeply odd -- they do in fact give you the original version.

(I prefer the extra minute, tbf ['to be frank'].)

Skuffled Mammajamma

Went digging through CDs to find something to listen to the other day. Felt in a particular kind of mood, so grabbed some Drum and Bass CDs I hadn't listened to recently, including....
the classic...



Metalheadz two-disc of golden-era Junglist anthems.


(if you are impatient, go to about 1:30 for the big drop...)


This is the kind of CD that nobody sells used. You don't just accidentally end up buying this- so nobody is selling it used, because they happened into it with no idea what it was.



(although the tracklisting for it on amazon.com is incorrect, so maybe 'no idea' is true, in a wholly different sense. The right tracks are listed on Discogs.com.)

You also don't get tired of it, unless you just get tired of whole genres of music. All the reviews of this state accurately: peak tunes; never tire of these; "don't make 'em like this no more"; sick wicked dope; etc. For this genre of music (drum 'n' bass, aka jungle), this would be like a Led Zeppelin greatest-hits package: if you ever like it, you always will, and never any less.
So nobody ever bought this and liked it, and then eventually soured on it, bored of it, overplayed and so played-out it.



But how did I get it used then?
Well, Everyday Music in Portland sells used CDs, and they will sell you scratched CDs.
Sounds bad: is good.
They mark out the scratched ones; they sell them for less; and they even will take them back if they skip. You know how almost all of your CDs are scratched, somewhat at least, and how many of those never ever skip.
SKUFFS, they call them.
Well, this mamajamma was skuffed pretty bad. Two whole tracks just ain't played right, ever. Or at least, ever for me, since I bought it scratched.
One that never got all the way through, was Dillinja's "Angels Fell", above. Obviously, the YouTube version no skuff.

But what you can do, see, is copy a scratched CD. Because while the CD player has to deal with scratches in real time, your computer's CD-ROM does not- it will keep patiently scanning, scanning, re-scanning-- until it can find out just what 0s and 1s made up that track, in its prediluvian state. So usually, the copy will be a like-new, scratchless, unskuffled version. That beats a lossless copy- it actually improves your version.

So now, for the first time ever, I can listen to this track all the way through-
And so can you.

Danzig's Mother is a suggested video,
so is Halo Benders (the laziest band in rock and roll!).
What is funny, is that my dad has something to say about both lazy bands, and drum n bass. He said (says) that Pavement et al. "aren't even trying" when they sing.
It's true!
He also once said a drum and bass song was "Ferris Bueller music", which I took to mean: sounds like that Ferrari music in the movie.
Which is false;
But what he meant was, it sounded like another drum and bass song
Which in fact!
Sampled a line from the movie.

I must have got my "right all the damn time" gene from my pops.

Funkin' Around: The House That Disco Built

Okay, funk a little of this through your speak's and 'phones.


This is one of the deftly selected tracks from the last mix (grab a fistful of music, including the song below, here). Now, these fellows may not appear so very cool, but I think they spent all their money recording all those instruments in the studio. And so they spent very little designing, shooting, and dressing for the record cover.

You know, it's expensive to record this many guys.
A story made super short- the expense of putting full large bands in the studio (for disco, funk, etc) was an annoyance for bands and labels alike. So, when synthesizers made it possible to sub out a few guys, and lay down an additional sound without paying an additional dude- well, synths were understandably popular.
And that is how house music is born (I told you this was the short version). Broke people (so more blacks and Latinos- less ABBA Northern European) could make disco without having to have/pay a full band (no drummer, no strings, no piano player, etc) because one person could use synths instead.

-But!- using different materials (the instruments), even if one were trying to exactly replicate an existing form (disco), will inevitably shift the form too. Disco -->(shifty synthy changey)--> House.
(dropping eggs of knowledge in the discothèque)

Now, this song is not proto-house or anything; that is not what I'm trying to claim. But the "Wedded To The Discothèque" mix I made does eventually shift from disco to more recent house. So I thought I'd throw out a condensed version of how that happened historically. How it happens on the mix is different.
Pretend you are at a wedding reception that you actually really really want to be at- I'm DJing (ahem!). After a while, though our parents have drifted away from the dancefloor, we are really just starting to get wound up.
Gotta let it loose.
So your (inimitable! inestimable! incorrigible!) DJ eases out of the Disco classics, and slips into our classics- Blur, Daft Punk, and a few dance gems that you will crown classics, once you have heard them. Check the Jesper Dahlback RMX of Fox 'n' Wolf, for instance. In fact, check out the whole track listing on the last post.