The search usually turns up the same basic list of ham radio, original music, and weather station pages, but something new and odd will turn up from time to time. The last time, I found my music listed on a Japanese site that may or may not be called “goo”.

Click here for … goo?

From what little I can read on the page, I apparently sound like Chick Corea and Return to Forever. While I am a huge fan of Chick Corea, I don’t consider myself in the same league. Who knows, maybe it says something like “he could never be as good as Chick Corea and Return to Forever.” Flattering none-the-less.

The new discovery this time out was finding my old general MIDI songs for sale on a CD in the Netherlands.

Click here.

You can find me in the huge listing of artists right in between Boyz 2 Men and Brahams (yuck and yuck, respectively) as having “27 nummers” on the CD. Thanks to Babel Fish, my suspicion was confirmed: nummers means numbers! (duh) You know, I don’t honestly recall ever having put 27 general MIDI files on the web. Maybe 10 or 12. What gives?

Since I’ve yet to find another person on the Internet with the same name, let alone somebody with the same name who also posted original MIDI files on the web, it has to be me. So curious. I guess I’ll try to buy the CD if I can even figure out how…

“Beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, on the other side of the sky, is a universe teeming with radio emission. By studying radio waves you can learn about planets and stars and galaxies, about the composition of great clouds of organic molecules that drift between the stars, about the origin and evolution and fate of the universe. But all these radio emissions are natural-caused by physical processes, electrons spiraling in the galactic magnetic field, or interstellar molecules colliding with one another, or the remote echoes of the Big Bang red-shifted from gamma rays at the origin of the universe to the tame and chill radio waves that fill all of space in our epoch.” – (Carl Sagan, “Contact,” [1985], Pocket Books: New York NY, 1986, reprint, p.41)

While this is just one paragraph that leads to a larger idea within the context of the story, I think it stands on its own as pure poetry.

The main things that draw me to PT are drummer Gavin Harrison, and the heavier, more progressive parts of the music. Before now, I’d never really given the older or mellower material much of a chance. I really only listen to four songs on In Absentia, and most of Deadwing. Thanks to this DVD, I’m finding some older songs I enjoy, like “Even Less”, “Hatesong”, “Don’t Hate Me”, and the ultra-mellow “Heartattack in Lay By” – I would never have discovered the cool vocal arrangement at the end of that song otherwise. “Trains” is another song that somehow eluded me before.

My wife has always liked “The Sound of Muzak” and “Blackest Eyes”, but she never really cared to explore PT beyond that. She’s now discovering the songs I knew she’d like if only she would give them a chance, mostly from Deadwing. She loves “Arriving Somewhere But Not Here”, “Lazarus”, “Heartattack in a Lay By”, “The Start of Something Beautiful”, and “Halo”. The only other time we’ve bonded on any progressive music was Rush’s Counterparts. She was a big fan of the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd in high school, so I had a feeling she’d like Steven Wilson’s vocal sensibilities. British. Very British. In layers and layers.

Some notable things:

• Compared to the rest of the package, the DVD menus seem really cheap, like something you’d make with an off-the-shelf DVD authoring program. This isn’t a bad thing, though. One of my main complaints with DVDs is the silly menus you’re forced to wade through and wait on.
• Colin Edwin (bass) always looks like he just heard a good dirty joke, as though he’s just on the verge of busting out laughing. Or maybe he has a secret that he’s not going to tell you. The wife says he looks like he just “eeked one out.” Oh yeah, he’s also a kick-ass musician.
• The background vocals seem like they’re mixed a little too loudly on “The Sound of Muzak”. And Wilson’s lead vocals sound like maybe they’re a little low in many spots on the DVD. But if this is my only complaint, who cares.
• I could write many paragraphs on why I think Gavin Harrison transcends even the best prog and jazz drummers that I admire, but I’ll hold off.

The Porcupine Tree Official Website is at http://www.porcupinetree.com.

I’m tempted to de-growl the Ghost Reveries album. Granted, I love this album more than any other in many years, but that infernal Cookie Monster Death Metal growl is spotted all over it. Somebody should pop open a copy of Soundforge and delete the growly stuff. Honestly, I’d do it, but I don’t care enough at this point. The killer progressive parts and its wide dynamic range in general more than make up for it. I’ve become accustomed to it enough that I just growl along with it now. Still, I’d be curious to hear it without the growling.

For instance, let’s take “Beneath the Mire”, one of my favorites. The very beginning feels an awful lot like something off of Dream Theater’s Awake album, and we’re okay up to around 1:40. Then the growling begins, and the music becomes mindless and boringly brutish. So we take out from 1:40 to 2:20. Not bad, only 40 seconds.

Along about 3:24 we start into what I consider to be one of the most beautiful passages of prog I’ve ever heard. The groovy bell of the ride cymbal on the offbeat. The haunting vocals. The cool phrasing of the lead when it kicks in. All fairly subtle in prog terms, but it really hits me. Oy … 5:00 brings the growl. Actually, it’s just a brief gutteral thing, no words, and it kinda works. It can stay. I guess 6:06 to 6:20 is the only other part that really needs to be cut. Only 54 seconds of the song actually need to go. That hardly seems worth the effort, but it could be enough to draw in listeners who might not otherwise put up with it at all.

I’m sure Mikael Ã…kerfeldt would hate this idea given the way he mentions that they’ll never do anything like the shockingly mellow Damnation album again. (a pretty great album in its own right) He seems pretty steadfast about retaining his Death Metal roots. Such a shame. C’mon, how about a nice compromise? … Ghost Reveries minus the growl!

Anyway, I wonder how badly Martin Lopez’s recent departure will affect their next album. His drums are a big part of what draws me to Opeth. It’s an awful tall order to replace a prog drummer and retain the feel that makes the music great.

Speaking of which, I wonder if the new project with Ã…kerfeldt, Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), and Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater) will be a worthy supergroup project. Most of the prog supergroups I’ve heard over the last 10 years don’t do much for me. Seems hard to go wrong with those three, though. We shall see.

I figured nothing could live up to the reputation and mystique that has been built up around this bestseller, but I was wrong. It’s been hard putting it down. I tore through half of it in about three hours, which is scarily quick for me. It usually takes me forever to plow through a novel because it feels like such a task. I usually have a hard time concentrating on fiction.

It’s a shame the movie is getting such bad reviews, but it has been kind of cool seeing some of the images from the book in the previews. Like Silas’ cilice, and the cryptex. I noticed one reviewer on CNN who, when asked if he had read the book, said no. Another reviewer said she didn’t think the movie had enough character development or humor. Wtf? Humor? Like, Schwarzenegger style one liners? “Ahll be back… for da grail!”

Anyway, here’s hoping the second half of the book is as good as the first. I’m pretty impressed so far.

Happened to run across this picture we snapped over the summer and thought this might be a good place to put it. We paused the DVR right before final jeopardy, and this is what was on still.

Never thought I’d snap a picture of the TV for any reason, but this seemed at least a little worthy.

Is this funny at all? I’m just not sure…

I know that commercial audio tracks are usually highly compressed so as to sound apparently louder while remaining at the same volume level as typical TV programming. But I also think that sound effects are often so accute in commercials that they don’t sound realistic at all.

I don’t mind that there are people who get paid to create fake sounds for every actual sound you hear on TV and in movies, just turn the shit down a little. Less is more.

Or maybe I just watch too much TV.

At first, this seemed like a good idea. Doppler radar and professional news voices. The sad reality now is that 60% of the time you look, it’s a commercial. And another 20% of the time, it’s weather graphics and information besides radar, or a “weather update” that’s often many hours stale. The same is true of the audio loop.

Honestly, as bad as the old airport radar was, I’d rather have it available 24/7. Since you can get local radar on the Weather Channel on the 8’s (and everything else besides), channel 22 has become almost useless. The low point was a recent Sunday when clouds were threatening, and cable channel 22 was running an infomercial. Dicks.

This isn’t the first thing WCPO has ruined by getting their hands on it.