Michael Jackson Is Dead

The AP reports. So does the LA Times.

“Hey Mom, I’m Going To The Record Shop.”

Turns out we might see more actual "records" in our music retailers soon: Retailers giving vinyl records another spin

It was a fortuitous typo for the Fred Meyer retail chain.

This spring, an employee intending to order a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.'s latest release "Accelerate" inadvertently entered the "LP" code instead. Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at several stores.

Some sent them back. But a handful put them on the shelves, and 20 LPs sold the first day.

The Portland-based company, owned by The Kroger Co., realized the error might not be so bad after all. Fred Meyer is now testing vinyl sales at 60 of its stores in Oregon, Washington and Alaska. The company says, based on the response so far, it plans to roll out vinyl in July in all its stores that sell music.

Other mainstream retailers are giving vinyl a spin too. Best Buy is testing sales at some stores. And online music giant Amazon.com, which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has been in business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.

The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer is The Beatles album "Abbey Road." But musicians from the White Stripes and the Foo Fighters to Metallica and Pink Floyd are selling well, the company says.

"It's not just a nostalgia thing," said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer. "The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound."

While I am a devoted music lover, I've never considered myself a geeky audiophile by any stretch of the imagination, but even I can hear a difference between vinyl and digital.  It definitely sounds different, and sometimes those differences equal up "better" sounds.  I always think of a track on the first Bill Bruford's Earthworks album, "Up North."  I got the LP of that first and the bass used to rattle the furniture in my bedroom at even modest volume.  It resonated so much you could feel it.  It was beautiful.

When I got the album on CD I was disheartened to find the bass on "Up North" no longer loosened my fillings.  It sounded clear, but it didn't feel the same.  Others have claimed that analog LP's sound "warmer" when compared to digital formats, and I have to say they have a point.  For much of the music I listen to it wouldn't matter very much - Marshall Crenshaw sounds like Marshall Crenshaw no matter the format - but my classical LP's sound better than my classical CD's.

Like many people I have also picked up a turntable for the first time in years recently.  It has been a joy to rescue my 500+ albums from the cold and dank of my parents basement and hear them again after so long.  (This is true even if the wife isn't happy about the heavy cardboard boxes filled with records lying in the middle of the office floor.  LP storage is still a problem without an obvious solution.)  It is true that part of the enjoyment is the tactile feel of putting the needle down on a groove, or opening a gatefold sleeve to see the large format graphics.  I had forgotten how artistic a great album sleeve could be.  The art direction on The Alan Parsons Project's Eye In The Sky album is spectacular, though you would never know it if you only experienced it on CD.  (The flip side of this is also true.  Yes's Tormato is unworldly ugly at LP size.)      

Audiophiles say they also want the format's overall experience — the sensory experience of putting the needle on the record, the feeling of side A and side B and the joy of lingering over the liner notes.

"I think music products should be more than just music," said Isaac Hudson, a 28-year-old vinyl fan standing outside one of Portland's larger independent music stores.

The interest seems to be catching on. Turntable sales are picking up, and the few remaining record pressers say business is booming.

But the LP isn't going to muscle out CDs or iPod soon.

Nearly 450 million CDs were sold last year, versus just under 1 million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Based on the first three months of this year, Nielsen says vinyl album sales could reach 1.6 million in 2008.

"I don't think vinyl is for everyone; it's for the die-hard music consumer," said Jay Millar, director of marketing at United Record Pressing, a Nashville based company that is the nation's largest record pressing plant.

It has been awhile since I've picked up a new LP, although I've been eying a couple oldies on Ebay to replace product that has gone missing from my collection over the years.  Now that my snazzy looking Crossley (an art deco styled console no less) is upstairs at my beck and call, I think I will soon enjoy the childhood pleasure of putting on a new record while I flip the sleeve around in my hands to take it all in.  Hell, for old times sake I may even call up my mother to inform her of my trip to the record shop.  Now, if I can only find a late night record shop I'll be in nostalgia heaven. 

Cannibals

Apropos Rich's post from yesterday about Ted "I Got Mine" Turner. We got cannibals.

Peg Leg Peggy Polly

I got a girl, her name is Peg
She looks kind of pretty but she's got a wooden leg
She's got a leg shaped like the leg of a chair
But when it comes to dancing, no one can compare

Peg Leg Peggy she really knows how to hop
She really knows how to hop
She really knows how to hop
When it comes to dancing she's the queen
She sounds just like a sewing machine
Peg Leg Peggy she really knows how to hop
She really knows how to hop
She really knows how to hop
(J. Entwistle, Peg Leg Peggy)

Okay, inquiring minds want to know one thing: who rides on who's shoulder? The Telegraph reports that a parrot is about to be fitted with a wooden leg.  

A one-legged parrot that keeps slipping off his perch is to be fitted with a 'wooden leg'.

George, a ten-year-old African Grey, lost a claw after being attacked by a wild animal which broke into his cage a year and a half ago.

The missing limb means whenever George tries to sleep, he slips off his perch, squawking "Bloody Hell!" in surprise.
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Concerned for her pet, the bird's owner Sheila Weare sought advice from experts at the University of Salford.

Mrs Weare, from Crewe told the BBC: “You can tell by the way he fidgets that he's not comfortable and he has to bite the bars of his cage at night to balance."

In the hope of giving bird and owner a good night's sleep, the perch will be fitted with a specially-moulded slot, into which George will be trained to insert his stump at night. 

The real problem will come when the pirate tries to balance on the parrot's shoulder. Polly will want a truss after that. There is actually one element of this story that disturbs me greatly: Dr Glyn Heath, who is the person making the parrot's new leg has also constructed "a 'wheelchair' for a paraplegic rat," according to the report. 

Now I'm going to have nightmares about rodents on skateboards.

(Side note: If you have never heard John Entwistle's Rigor Mortis Sets In album (where Peg Leg Peggy appears), you have missed some of the greatest lead bass ever played.)

I’ve Seen The Bright Lights Of Memphis…

..And the Commodore Hotel. I linked a video of Paul Barrere and Fred Tackett of Little Feat performing Dixie Chicken.  One commenter noted that it wasn't quite the same without Lowell George. (Maybe different, but still good, mind you.) Well, I just found this clip while rooting around amongst the interwebby tubes. Enjoy. 

Brutal Cold Envelopes Midwest

Accuweather is calling for even more brutally cold temperatures through the Midwest in the next few days. The northernmost areas will have sub-zero temperatures through the day while the midsection will see "balmy" single digits. And it is going to be a very, very cold day for football on Sunday:

The Midwest Regional News story reports two shots of frigid Arctic air by Saturday will spread out of the northern Plains into the Midwest before reaching the East Coast and the Deep South Sunday.
 
The combination of cold air and frigid winds will produce potentially dangerous conditions for anyone venturing outdoors for extended periods.

Motorists traveling across the northern Plains and Upper Midwest should prepare a winter emergency kit for their vehicle.

The Severe Weather Center lists the widespread wind chill advisories and warnings in effect from the Dakotas to northern Indiana.

International Falls, Minn., this weekend will live up to its nickname "The Icebox of America." Temperatures through Monday will fail to rise to zero, and overnight lows will be at least 20 degrees below zero with the wind creating RealFeel® temperatures of 40 degrees below zero.

RealFeel® temperatures overnight across the northern and central Plains include:

Flag Island, Minn.: -48°
Warroad, Minn.: -44°
Bemidji, Minn.: -43°
Devils Lake, N.D.: -41°
Spencer, Iowa: -33°

It will be bitterly cold Sunday for both National Football League Conference Championship games. The RealFeel® temperature will be hovering around zero when the New England Patriots take on the San Diego Chargers in the early game at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass.

In the late game at the "Frozen Tundra", better known as Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.,  the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants at kickoff will deal with an actual temperature in the single digits and a RealFeel® temperature near 10 below zero.

I just stepped outside a few minutes ago. It is currently a tropical 7° F under absolutely clear skies with virtually no breeze. It's going to be a three dog plus an electric blanket plus a Salamander** night tonight. In honor of the occasion, it seems fitting to think of warmer times. Ten Degrees and Getting Colder sounds pretty good right now. (Gordon Lightfoot song at that last link.)

** UPDATE: The Salamander reference is a joke, folks. Those are not something one uses in a tightly enclosed structure like a house.

Soft Winds, Oscar

As you watch this video, pay attention to the sheer joy on the face of the master playing the piano, Oscar Peterson. I don't know when this was recorded, but the man playing guitar is Joe Pass, who died in 1994. The song is Soft Winds.

Oscar Peterson has passed away. He was 82. The world is a poorer place.

Night Music

Here's a bit of a rarity, via YouTube. Ind and Sylvia Tyson gave an aspiring songwriter a huge leg up in the music industry when they recorded two of his songs on an album they released in 1964. Ian and Sylvia divorced and went their separate ways in the mid 1970s but they got together again for a reunion concert in 1986. That aspiring songwriter from two decades in the past, now successful on his own, joined them on stage. Ian and Sylvia performing a Gordon Lightfoot song with the composer. A classic trifecta.

Early Morning Rain:

Nicky’s Got A Girlfriend!

Why does the press remind me of a gaggle of school kids standing around chanting some 'brilliant' witticism like, "Nicky's got a girlfriend," when I read something like this? Oh, that's right, because that is exactly how they are behaving. French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently went to Disneyland Paris with a very beautiful woman and the press is doing a happy dance.

The respected news weekly L'Express posted a photo of the duo on its Internet site, and at least two other magazines said they would run the images.

The president's office would not comment on their status. But the daily Le Figaro, seen as close to the conservative, newly divorced president, ran a front-page image of the Italian-French Bruni on Monday with the headline: "Carla Bruni: The President's Girlfriend."

Christophe Barbier, the editor of L'Express, said he called Bruni, whom he described as a friend, before going public with the story.

"She confirmed the relationship," he said.

Sarkozy and Bruni visited Disneyland on Saturday when the park was thronged with visitors, L'Express reported. Several photographers reportedly were on hand and openly snapped photos of the pair, who seemed at ease with the attention.

Colombe Pringle, editor of Point de Vue magazine, said she believed Sarkozy and Bruni made themselves available to photographers deliberately.

"Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni wanted people to know," she told France-Info radio. "Otherwise, I don't know why they would have gone to Euro Disney to look at the Mickey (Mouse) parade."

Hey, he's newly single and over 21. She has a lot of talent, too. More power to them both.

Feeling Blue?

Dunno if it's the temperature that is approaching zero where I live, and rapidly, I might add, or what, but I'm feeling (probably looking, too) a bit blue. So what better to lift the spirit than a bit of music from the son of Russian Jewish immigrant parents who wrote one of the most quintessential pieces of American music. How about none other than George Gershwin himself playing the George Gershwin composition Rhapsody in Blue. Solo. (In two parts, darn the technology.) But the playing will blow you away if you have never heard it before.

The Day The Music Died

63 years ago on this date, a a single-engined Noorduyn Norseman UC-64 bearing the United States Army Air Force Tail Number 44-70285 took off from the runway at Royal Air Force Twinwood Farm on a flight to Paris. On board was Major Glenn Miller, on his way to entertain troops who had liberated the French capitol. The aircraft and Glenn Miller were never seen again. The world lost a great talent.

Led Zeppelin Or Lead Balloon?

Dueling reviews this morning from two papers about the Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London last night. The Washington Post carries a review by Erik Huey, a lawyer from the US, who praises it to the moon and back:

I'm an attorney now, staring down the barrel of 40. But think of the person you were decades ago — adolescent, unshackled by cynicism and Weltschmerz, full of youthful abandon and an unblinking belief in the sheer possibility of things. And if you grew up in the '60s, '70s and '80s, Zeppelin may well have been the soundtrack to your adolescence.

As they launch into the opening chords of "Good Times Bad Times," the band seems to acknowledge the limitations brought on by the passage of time. "In the days of my youth/I was told what it means to be a man,/Now I've reached that age/I've tried to do all those things the best I can." Indeed, they're doing pretty well, for old guys.

By the time they finish their second and third songs — "Ramble On" and "Black Dog" — it is becoming clear that, even if they are not gods who walk the Earth as men, these are no mere mortals before us. And this is going to be no mere rock show. We are witnessing history.

Meanwhile, The Daily Mail has a review by James Delingpole that is somewhat less than enthused:

No matter how proficient Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, the three survivors of the Seventies' heyday, played, no matter how good it is to see them back on stage still breathing and vaguely compos mentis, there is something deeply sad and unedifying about rockers who go on rocking past their natural sell-by date…..

….Ah yes, Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven. Let us suppose, as many think, that it really is the greatest rock song ever written.

Is that sufficient justification for its three surviving originators - one now looking like an accountant, one like a Muppet in a white fright wig, one like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard Of Oz - to creak back on stage and play it not quite as excitingly as they could in 1971, 1972 or 1973 for an audience of mostly staid, pot-bellied, middle-aged men in a smokeless environment named after a mobile phone company?

And if they insist on doing so, shouldn't it be renamed Stannah Stairlift To Heaven?

Stairlift to Heaven. I like that. That's even better than Stairway to Freebird. Which review is right? Well, they probably both are, at least to some extent. A lot depend on what you expect from these performances by old bands that reunite. If you expect them to sound exactly as they used to, you will likely be disappointed. To a younger audience, these guys would seem hopelessly dated and well past their prime. But doubtless some people will be thrilled - and would pay big bucks for tickets, even to see a Muppet in a fright wig.

Call Any Vegetable

Call any vegetable Call it by name
Call one today When you get off the train
Call any vegetable And the chances are good
Aw, The vegetable will respond to you

(Some people don't go for prunes…I
don't know, I've always found that if they…)
Call any vegetable Pick up your phone
Think of a vegetable Lonely at home
Call any vegetable And the chances are good
That a vegetable will *respond* to you
(Frank Zappa, Call Any Vegetable)

I suspect that Frank Zappa would have got this group. The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra is making vegetables respond to them. It's edgy, it's avant garde, it's high in fiber and contains no cholesterol and it takes the term playing with your food to a new level.

I think maybe this guy is a fan. Or auditioning.

Attack Of The Robot Guitars

Gibson Guitars is releasing a new, robotic guitar that keeps itself in tune all by itself – even after a string change. It will also retune itself into six different preset non-standard tunings at the push of a button.

Help is at hand from what is described as the world's first robot guitar — an electric guitar that not only keeps itself in tune even after string changes but also allows players to access six non-standard tunings at the push of a button.

After 15 years of research, Gibson Guitar is launching a limited edition Les Paul Robot Guitar next month that has set players abuzz with both enthusiasm and scepticism.

"It will not make you a better guitar player but it will allow the average player to access some very sophisticated tunings," Gibson Guitar Chief Executive Henry Juszkiewicz told Reuters on Tuesday.

The six non-standard preset tunings were used on hits ranging from "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones and Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" to Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" and Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game."

Gibson says the robot guitar is aimed at amateurs who have a hard time keeping their guitars in tune, as well as professionals who now use technicians during concerts to keep about 100 guitars tuned to different keys.

Next up: a guitar that simply plays itself, relieving budding artistes from having to actually learn how to play! No more of that mundane, repetitious 'practice.' No, sirree.

Seriously, I rather suspect that these will prove to be somewhat less than robust in actual use. I'm guessing that in 20 or 30 years (or less) none will still be functional, while my old, run of the mill Les Paul Standard will still be chugging along.

*Sniff* Tiny Tim Would Be So Proud…

The ukulele is experiencing (another) revival. This time Britain is seeing a resurgence in the popularity of the little four-stringed wonder.

Music shops report a roaring trade in the tiny guitar-shaped instruments while some schools are abandoning recorders to set up their own ukulele orchestras.

A reputation for being easy to pick up and play, coupled with its resemblance to the guitar are said to be driving the classroom revival.

Ane Larsen, director of the Kitchen School of Music, teaches school children in Devon and in east London where her lessons have replaced long-running recorder work.

She said unlike the recorder, the ukulele left mouths free for singing and taught children both rhythm and melody. She said "It's definitely becoming more and more popular."

The little, guitar-shaped ukulele lets little kids make music really quickly. My own youngest son picked one up and figured out how to play well enough to perform publicly in two weeks. And they can be used for an amazingly wide range of music styles. Led Zeppelin for example. Then there's the late Israel Kamakawiwo Ole. He's in a class by himself. Over the rainbow, Iz.

UPDATE: Sam sent this link via comments. Jake Shimabukuro does George Harrison.