Pulled Coupling Caps

[J M Fahey]

If anyone is interested I could post a sample of the ultra-low end recordings as to what can be done with a total amateur singer who does not know the language she is singing, with no studio or controlled acoustics or fancy mics and no outboard gear, and mixing loops with live instruments, 16 bit 44.1khz

PLEASE do !!!!

[Chuck H]

Cooool. And also about Steely Dan (anyone know a where the name comes from?)... I think I knew Dr. Wu. At a retirement community I did maintenance painting for there was a resident named Dr. Wu that gave many seminars at Berkley and would be the right age. Also suffered some maladies as the song implies. Hard to know for certain though.

[Leo_Gnardo]

(anyone know a where the name comes from?)

Oh you don't wanna go THERE do you? I think it came from a William Burroughs novel, and refers to a "device intended for female entertainment." Let your imagination run wild...

I think I knew Dr. Wu. At a retirement community I did maintenance painting for there was a resident named Dr. Wu that gave many seminars at Berkley and would be the right age. Also suffered some maladies as the song implies. Hard to know for certain though.

Who knows, might be. I have a theory "Kid Charlemagne" is about Owsley Stanley, or perhaps a character made up of a combination of people similar to him. Have another listen and tell me what'cha think.

[Jazz P Bass]

[QUOTE=Chuck H;314887]Cooool. And also about Steely Dan (anyone know a where the name comes from?)... QUOTE]

From Wiki: "Being fans of Beat Generation literature, Fagen and Becker named the band after "Steely Dan III from Yokohama", a strap-on dildo referred to in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch."
Steely Dan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Leo_Gnardo]

about Steely Dan

So as you can see, the intent of the band is right there in the name, gleaming bright but artificial & kinky besides. As advertised, for @ 42 years now.

Also sort of an inside joke, "Hey let's take the kids to see Steely Dan." "Ya got the new Steely Dan?" Burroughs must be laughing at it all... wherever he is. How subversive... again. Lots more bands with titles along those lines.

Show biz kids makin' movies of themselves, ya know they don't give a f*** about anybody else,
They got their Steely Dan T-shirts, they're outrageous!

Some years ago I did a lot of sound work at the local richie-rich college. There was a video course, and the kids with their vid cams (much larger and more cumbersome than today's consumer units) were about as obnoxious as could be, thinking they had first precedence at everything & shoving everything & everybody out of their way. (Sound familiar?) Had to share elevator time with them, and they glommed that elevator something awful. They just didn't "get" that the object of their attention wasn't going to happen without the sound gear getting to it and it was buggin' me a bit to say the least. Then "Show Biz Kids" popped into my head and I was able to carry on with a smile on my face & a lot more patience. Got a playback system in my brain. Who needs pills?

[eschertron]

I have a theory "Kid Charlemagne" is about Owsley Stanley, or perhaps a character made up of a combination of people similar to him. Have another listen and tell me what'cha think.

My theory is that Kid Charlemagne is about Harvey Milk, the SF councilman who was openly gay and got hisself shot dead for it. The only problem with my theory is that the song was written years before Milk was assassinated. Donald and Walter are prescient?

[Leo_Gnardo]

My theory is that Kid Charlemagne is about Harvey Milk, the SF councilman who was openly gay and got hisself shot dead for it. The only problem with my theory is that the song was written years before Milk was assassinated. Donald and Walter are prescient?

After a couple decades of keeping the Owsley references in mind, just a minute ago I looked up KC on Wiki. Have a read for yourself. Of course it's just a song and you can make of it what you will, no argument there. Enjoy! It's ... Safe As Milk

How subversive...

Kid Charlemagne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[km6xz]

The notion that good music has to be, or seem, spontaneous is common but if the work is not, does not detract from the art at all. Few people complained that the big jazz bands were playing note for note, which was required for a large orchastra, like Duke Ellington or even many of the most influential small quartets. Classical music leaves little room for winging it, but the great conductors still manage to personalize the performance and interpretation. I liked Steelie Dan albums, because they reminded me of the precise arrangements of the great big bands, tight, right and crisp. I never recorded that way but I liked how they did it.
My favorite bands were rather flexible about interpreting their own songs differently from night to night, sticking to a theme that would be the core they might return to every so often in their play. My favorite was probably the best at that, the Grateful Dead. I never cared for the studio albums, neither did they but the label required it, but never tried to interfere....too much. But live, the only way to hear them, was another experience. They would play 3 nights in a row, with the same audience in attendance, and did not know in advance their set list. The audience knew something special would result if they experimented, pushing themes, even if sometimes it did not work. The audience would say"ok, not great but tomorrow night, it might be magic". Not many groups had an active song list of over 300 songs ready to be played if the urge was there, out of a total of about 600 songs. Which 300 of the total would vary from tour to tour but the audience knew every once of them.
Scripting a song is normal, the same way a novel is scripted with editing, re-writes, outlines and character research files, it gets tight and polished in a way that stream of consciousness would not. In popular music, the song is the key, the song writer is as important as any element of the total experience as musicians or singers. A lot of people can re-interpret a song in interesting ways, covering it even in different genres but the song remains the core.
In a recording, if the song sounds good and spontaneous, it is not really spontaneous at all, but carefully built up to sound that way. The bigger the band the more tightly it needs to be scripted. When Santana records live, just as an example, he is very demanding of his musicians, and if one goes rogue from the carefully and tightly controlled arrangement, he is gone. Not much is notated but it is expected to be played note for note. It has to be when there are that many players involved.
Sure, there are frequent improvs in the studio but with a large ensemble, that is reserved for the development cycle when working out the arrangement. A small band can be more flexible and still sound tight so there is constant rewrites, even if no one reads notation. With rock, a music notation transcriber comes in and writes what is actually on the song from the master tape/disk. The sheet music you can buy is usually very different from what the song writer and arranger created. When guest or session players are involved, they are often allowed(or required) to write their own part since they have a great deal of experience in doing just that. The song writer usually does not fill in and instrument parts in popular music. The part might be worked up with a lot of experimentation but once decided on, it is pretty firm for the actual track, otherwise it would take forever to get a project done if too many variables stay in contention.

[Enzo]

This is show biz. The reality is not important, it is the perception that matters. All music may be scripted and controlled, but we want it to SEEM spontaneous. If it SEEMS scripted and controlled, then it is not appealing.

I can believe Carlos Santana expects his side men to be tight and controlled. James Brown was noted for charging fines to his musicians for missing anything. But when Santana plays a soaring solo, we want it to be an expression of the moment (whether it really is or not), and if we found that the solo the next day was note for note identical, it would be disappointing.



On the other hand, I used to hear that Yngwie Malmsteen was a guitar god, so I gave a listen. What I heard sounded like old Deep Purple B-side rejects, and I got the impression the charts just said "insert wall of notes solo here" in the middle. I hear some of that flash-doodle, and I think to myself, I dare you to play that again note for note.

[The Dude]

Wow,......haven't looked in on this thread for a while. How did it get from "Pulled Coupling Caps" to this?

[km6xz]

The nature of the internet.....

Nothing important transpires but it seems at the moment to be.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Wow,......haven't looked in on this thread for a while. How did it get from "Pulled Coupling Caps" to this?

DAB started a new thread "Please help me trouble shoot 64 Bandmaster" to help him concentrate on just that. So far it's working.

This one lost its compass a couple weeks ago, been from Hollywood Bowl to Guernica and inside some recording sessions etc at times aboard the magic bus "Further". A good midsummer wander. All aboard the bus to never never land! Cowboy Neal is at the wheel. You never know where you'll wind up.

[Chuck H]

Indeed! When I actually do (try) to use the internet for practical reasons I'm always surprised at how slow the traffic moves on the information super highway. The litany of diversions, opinions sans fact and added research to choose between differing information often takes longer than a trip to the library would! One COULD just schedule their day so that the things you do at home, like preparing a meal, tending tomato plants, juggling bills, etc. can be dealt with and then stop off at the library when you're out to go to work or run errands. That's what we did before the internet and life was working fine. In fact, I think most research would show that it was working better overall! The forum is a lot of fun for me. And I like having fast access to the trivial stuff like song lyrics and Ebay. But one example of the price we pay for any convenience the internet has to offer is that I can't go down the street to my local electronics store anymore. I have to order everything on line, often pay ridiculous shipping and wait two weeks for it to arrive. Another side effect of this is that the local electronics shop owner now either does something else, probably for less money or runs an internet electronics distribution, almost certainly for less money. So what if I can get instant access to weather forecasts for France on my phone. I don't need that and I never did. I'm not saying it's ALL bad. Information access probably is actually better over all and the options for product selection have increased enormously. I just wonder sometimes how much we've really gained in trade for the extra time spent on line digging through the "information pile" and doing maintenance and upgrade on our computers, the social events we no longer do because we have social networks and the loss of small local business that helps local economies in a healthy way. Of course I COULD research this phenomenon... I DO have the internet at my disposal.

[trem]

DAB started a new thread "Please help me trouble shoot 64 Bandmaster" to help him concentrate on just that. So far it's working.

This one lost its compass a couple weeks ago, been from Hollywood Bowl to Guernica and inside some recording sessions etc at times aboard the magic bus "Further". A good midsummer wander. All aboard the bus to never never land! Cowboy Neal is at the wheel. You never know where you'll wind up.

Guernica.?
I need to read the whole thing I guess.
How did the glory years of The Luftwaffe work its way into a cap post...??

[Enzo]

On the other hand, this place is like a local tavern, people hang out. This is not a reference library. In the real world old days, if you wanted real information, not tangents and opinions, you either contacted an expert (the factory, a university) or went to the library. One did not go to the tavern. If you wanted informal information and to hang out with like minded folks, then you went to the tavern. There you got opinions and bluster, and it was good enough that "Oh, someone will know about it."

Chuck, I think the demise of the electronics store predates the internet by quite a lot. The internet as we know it is really only about 20 years old. Electronics stores had been disappearing long before that. I can't call Radio Shack and electronics store any longer. They still sell a few resistors and things, but they have moved on. Here in Lansing, we still have one full blown electronics store, we used to have two. The Lafayette stores lasted only until 1981. The internet made parts available, and no doubt hastened the end of what was left, but I can;t blame it. Part of the problem is the shrinking need for local part stores. Consumer electronics have gotten so good in recent decades that far less repair of it gets done. We hear about throwing everything away, but for the most part, everything works. NO one throws away a thousand dollar TV set. Yet how often do they break? Used to be VCRs were popular - VERY mechanical and complex - to service them you attended a three day class. Over time the manufacturing processes advanced to the point entire mechanisms were snap-in assemblies. CD players at first required all manner of adjustment, you'd have to set the "eye pattern" for them to work. But they developed to where they adjusted themselves electronically. I bought a CD player at Sears for $29, new in the box with warranty, and that was 15-20 years ago. Now at that price it is definitely a throw away item. We can debate whether that is good or bad, but it is a fact, and no parts will ever be bought for it. or sold for it. I wish I had paid the $25 for the VCR that sat next to it at Sears. I didn;t need one, but now our VCR has died, and I need one to play the million tapes I still have. But no one sells CD player or VCR parts locally anymore because no one would buy them.

SO I wouldn;t expect any market for local parts in todays environment, interweb aside.

If it would make you feel any better, I do not have a facebook account, or twitter or any of the other ones that appear and then get bought for a billion dollars. I have never sent a text message, and in fact I don;t even turn my cell phone on unless I need to make a call. And yet, I still am not a patron of local parts stores. My local full line store is a mile away from the shop, but I get there maybe once or twice in a year. ALways for some specific emergency part.