What's Spinnin' ..

[mrjamiam]

My friend had a 73 or 74 Chevy Laguna.  Drummer.  And I was in that car when a bag full of just-purchased fireworks was accidentally set off in it.  We were probably listening to something like this:

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by mrjamiam
Wrong live album at first

[alantig]

5 hours ago, Toadroller said:

Buddy of mine had a 72 Skylark with Cragars and air shocks in the back, and an 8 track up front (in 85!!!) and this album plus an Eagles album. 
 

high school. How many times did I risk death? Every time I got in his car. 

I had an 8-track player in my car later than that.  I still have a working 8-track deck (non-mobile).

[mudshark]

Marc Ribot on guitar

[Toadroller]

Funkiest funky-funk,

[alantig]

17 hours ago, gtrdaddy said:

I had a working 8-track deck in 1979. I gave it away in 1979.

I bought this one in 1986.  Because I'm not a quitter. 😜

[mudshark]

 

[Mr. Dave]

Nice To see ZZTop returning to their guitar-based roots for this album.  I love Billy Gibbons' playing for his technique, playing mannerism and tone, I rank him among the best, even if he's not as technical as Satriani, Vai, etc.

[Mr. Dave]

Exactly. you don't need to be playinga million notes an hour going up and down endless scales & arpeggios to be good.  I sometimes think this is lost on guys like Steve Vai, although as you say some of his work is great, I loved watching him play in Frank Zappa's band and I bought 'Passion & Warfare' which in places I found kind of overblown and a bit too busy for it's own good. A bit too much technicality and lacking emotion, whereas Billy Gibbons has this briliantly dirty guitar sound and it's full of soul & emotion.  I remember watching a documentary about blues and more modern artists were describing their American peers, mainly from the Mississipi delta.  Keith Richards was talking about B.B King and saying how he was economical with his notes but he always hit the right note at the right time.  I sort of feel like that about Billy Gibbons too.

Edited February 3, 2020 by Mr. Dave
typos

[mudshark]

 

[Toadroller]

And in the end... you can watch it again:

 

[JohnnyB]

My stepson gave me this vol. 1&2 double vinyl remastered180-gramg repress for Christmas:

 

This music evokes fond memories going back 58 years when I was 8 yrs old. This album shot to #1 in 1962 and the singles got lots of airplay on our local top 40 stations.

To hear its biggest hit, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-YqaTDDCDM.

I got a new phono cartridge and I was breaking it in on the Ray Charles, some gems from my jazz collection, and this amazing album:

This is a meticulously mastered and 180g pressing from a 1963 recording. It was recorded by Mercury Records, using a Westrex cinema-based machines 35mm tape recorder. 35 mm film is about 2-1/2" wide and runs at 24 frames/sec, which means the sound was recorded on about 1-1/2"-wide tape running at about 24 inches per second. The recording clarity and musical quality is stunning.

This recording was made at the height of the Cold War. To soften some of the tension, there was some USA/Soviet cultural interactions, and this recording was one of them. (Another was when Russian folk dancers appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show about the same time) The musicians were the Osipov Orchestra (Wiki article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osipov_State_Russian_Folk_Orchestra), and featuring a full-sized orchestra comprised of Russian folk instruments. The balalikas ranged from large bass ones (pictured) going all the way up to violin range. They also used accordions or concertinas, which add a lush color to the arrangements. The balalaika players are monster virtuosos. One of the songs is "Flight of the Bumble Bee" picked at full speed. 

Check it out at https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/11026/Vitaly_Gnutov-Balalaika_Favorites-180_Gram_Vinyl_Record. Hear the opening number here:

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by JohnnyB

[RobB]

On 2/3/2020 at 10:25 AM, Mr. Dave said:

Exactly. you don't need to be playinga million notes an hour going up and down endless scales & arpeggios to be good. 

Yeah? Since when?

[JohnnyB]

On 2/3/2020 at 10:25 AM, Mr. Dave said:

Exactly. you don't need to be playinga million notes an hour going up and down endless scales & arpeggios to be good.  I sometimes think this is lost on guys like Steve Vai, although as you say some of his work is great, I loved watching him play in Frank Zappa's band and I bought 'Passion & Warfare' which in places I found kind of overblown and a bit too busy for it's own good. A bit too much technicality and lacking emotion, whereas Billy Gibbons has this briliantly dirty guitar sound and it's full of soul & emotion.  I remember watching a documentary about blues and more modern artists were describing their American peers, mainly from the Mississipi delta.  Keith Richards was talking about B.B King and saying how he was economical with his notes but he always hit the right note at the right time.  I sort of feel like that about Billy Gibbons too.

I tend to agree. Some displays of virtuosity fit in with the music and raise the energy of the songs, but when overdone, it distracts from the song. I got a CD of Eric Johnson from the local library. I was interested in checking him out because he was touring with G3 and got a lot of good press here. But after slogging through his solo album, the pentatonic meedly-meedly got to me, leading me to conclude, "It's Still Wank 'n' Roll to me."

To be fair, I think too much reliance on the pentatonic scale is getting to me. I recently played a British classical orchestral album of Ralph Vaughn Williams symphonies and tone poems. Vaughn Williams frequently adapted/rearranged orchestral works based on rural English folk songs. Being folk songs, these also relied heavily on the pentatonic scale (minus the meedly-meedly), and to my surprise I rapidly tired of the folk reliance of the pentatonic scale in spite of Vaughn Williams' lush orchestations.

Edited February 8, 2020 by JohnnyB

[mudshark]

 

[cynic]

 

[Toadroller]

9 hours ago, JohnnyB said:

I got a new phono cartridge

 

2 hours ago, gtrdaddy said:

Pray-tell.

Why yes, do tell.

[JohnnyB]

5 hours ago, Toadroller said:

 

Why yes, do tell.

Audio Technica has a brilliantly conceived new line of moving magnet cartridges. 

More info to come Friday.

 

 

    

Edited February 7, 2020 by JohnnyB

[JohnnyB]

10 hours ago, JohnnyB said:

Audio Technica has a brilliantly conceived new line of moving magnet cartridges. 

More info to come Friday.

 

 

    

Friday update: I just wasted 2 hours writing a description of Audio-Technica's AT-95VM moving magnet series only to have a virus take over my screen with no escape but pressing the power-down button, thus wiping out everything I wrote. Now I need a nap.

So here's the URL to Audio-Technica's well-illustrated description of their AT-95VM series: https://www.audio-technica.com/vm95seriescartridges/index.html

I bought the entry-level model with the bonded conical stylus for $34. I've been playing a wide variety of records lately and will post my opinion of its performance later this afternoon.

Edited February 7, 2020 by JohnnyB

[Submariner85]

 

[ARM OF HAMER]

 

Edited February 8, 2020 by ARM OF HAMER

[JohnnyB]

On 2/7/2020 at 8:08 AM, JohnnyB said:

Friday update: I just wasted 2 hours writing a description of Audio-Technica's AT-95VM moving magnet series only to have a virus take over my screen with no escape but pressing the power-down button, thus wiping out everything I wrote. Now I need a nap.

So here's the URL to Audio-Technica's well-illustrated description of their AT-95VM series.

I bought the entry-level model with the bonded conical stylus for $34.

I've been playing a wide variety of records lately and will post my opinion of its performance later this afternoon.

At last I'm able to present my subjective impressions of new $34 AT-95VM with bonded conical stylus. I like it for a number of reasons:

• It has a rich, forward soloist range, whether vocal or instrumental, with a pleasing blend of the backing instruments. This makes it particularly engaging if you're listening to Sinatra accompanied by Nelson Riddle or Count Basie, or any number of pop/rock groups such as The Cars, Police, Elvis Costello, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, etc.
   
• The cartridge body has built-in mounting threads, making installtion siimpler and with no need for bolts to secure the cartridge. The supplied bolts fit the thread pitch in the cartridge, which may not work with bolts from other sources.
   
• If you have any mono LPs, you can switch between stereo and mono recordings without swapping (and re-balancing) between stereo and mono cartridges. My 2014 Beatles in Mono releases sound superb, even when compared to my moving coil mono cartridge (which requires rebalancing the tonearm and changing the gain and capacitance settings on my phono preamp. The mono cartridge is lower in noise because it's a true mono  which tracks above accumulated dust i in the bottom of the groove, but the AT95-VMC comes very close. The conical stylus is a good match for LPs stamped before the mid-60s.
   
• Starting with the $34 AT95-VMC, you can upgrade economically to a nude and/or exotically shaped stylus for less the price of most all-in-one cartridges with a nude-mounted high end stylus. For example, I got Audio-Technica's flagship cartridge with nude Microlinear stylus,  the At150MLX, for $259 in 2008 directly from Japan when import goods were cheaper; stateside they were $599. Currently the At150MLX has shot up to $770. The AT-95VMC ($34) plus the microlinar stylus ($169) totals at $203. Similarly, the same cartridge ($34) plus its upgrade nude shibata stylus ($199) comes to $233. By contrast, the shibata-equipped Ortofon Black cartridge weighs in at $699. Again, $233 is a steal.
   
• The microline stylus is shaped like the cutting head when mastering the LP. The shibata stylus was created to track 4-channel discrete LPs to groove oscillations up to 40Khz. They remain lush and unperturbed when tracking the inner part of an LP's groove where it's tight.

I have been using the base AT-95VC on a wide variety of music: a capella vocal, the Beatles, power pop, '80s rock, small group jazz, big band, and even large scale orchestra, even my Balalaika Favorites, which is in mono. It sounds superb with this $34 cartridge, and I have been using the AT150MLX for13 years. 

Edited February 10, 2020 by JohnnyB

[DaveH]

 

[mudshark]

 

[ARM OF HAMER]

 

[specialk]