Slow Train Coming

It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.

What a great album! I just transfered this one to the hard drive, it is so great to hear Bob really enthused with a topic. Yes, it is aggressively Christian, yes, he really did get baptized in Pat Boone's pool, and yes, this is a great Dylan album. I have the SACD, which sounds fantastic. I have not heard the remastered version that was released a few years ago. Slow Train is great, so is I Believe In You, and the title track.

This video version from an awards show rocks hard. Bob was hoping the audience would hear him, you can feel it. And he is right you know, you gotta serve somebody.



I love the background singers and the driving rhythm on this version. Rock on Bob.

250 Years

Happy birthday Guinness! And thanks for the 250 brew. It literally wiped the taste of the draft-in-a-can water out of my memory. Oh, it is not as solid as your export, not as creamy as your nitrogen infused draft, but it is tasty! Easy to drink, and it goes great with Mexican food. Try yourselves some people.

a sad put down

Way

too

watery.

Nice

ad

though.

Lights On

Here is a little lights. I heard of this lady from Stephen Meijas over at the Stereophils blog. Stephen is younger than I , definitely not an old fart, and he turns me on to new music. This is fun, well recorded and very evocative. I have the ep and it is full of sweet techno stuff. Usually, this kind of music does not catch my attention, but there is something more human and touching about this. The sound on this vid is actually pretty good, giving you a glimpse of how nice the disc sounds. And it is from 2006, definitely this century!

affirmative

I go through months were I needs me some Yes. For years, literally, I would listen to Roundabout, from the Fragile album, and sulk. Where was the bass? Oh, I could hear the trebley part of the bass on that amazing line, but where were the bottom octaves? The deep stuff? It was not on the first copy of the album I bought. I heard a little bit more on the British copy of the album, maybe even a tiny bit more on the Japanese pressing, but the bass was never in the place.

Then came cds. Fragile was one of the first cds I bought, but it sounded so tinny and tipped toward the treble that it hurt my ears. I decided I would never hear the real bass. The father of one of my daughter's classmates is a bass player in town. At some school even we got talking, and it turns out he had been searching for the same grail. Where is the bass on Roundabout? He had never found it either.

Then came the DVD-A of Fragile. DVD-audio uses a dvd disc for almost strictly music. The music is presented at much higher bit rates than cds. They sound great. And the format is dead as J. Edgar Hoover. But that version has the bass. It shakes the room when I play it. It moves your guts around. I told my friend about it, and he bought a special player just for that disc.

I am ripping that version to my computer this morning, so I can listen to the bass at the push of a button on my computer. I expect to annoy my wife a lot this month! Well, more than usual.

As for the album itself, it is hit and miss for me. Roundabout is killer, obviously, but the little sections done by the individual members are not what I buy a Yes album, well, several damn version of this Yes album for. I buy them for Long Distance Runaround, South Side Of The Sky, and Heart Of The Sunrise. The trippy stuff. Man.

Oh sure, Mood For A Day is OK, and The Fish is kind of interesting, but Cans and Brahms still sounds horrible even on DVDA. To me, that was just time that the lads could have used for a proper song.

I saw the band in Red Rocks. The bass was there in the foothills of the Rockies my friends. The band even had surround sound which they tastefully used exactly twice, once on Roundabout and once on Owner Of A Lonely Heart. Surround sound at a large outdoor arena is intense. I think 35% on the audience peeked right then.

So get out your Yes, and give Fragile a listen. Play some air guitar or bass or drums, and try to not hate me because I can hear the bass on Roundabout.

mini me

Well, mini heine is more correct. My friend Doug invited his cigar smoking friends, mine too, up to his house for a herf. A herf is where you get together and drink beer and smoke too many cigars. Good clean fun in other words. Sadly, I was the only person who made it. Happily, we had a jazzy time listening to tunes, smoking cigars, talking life and politics, and drinking beer.



I brought a Heineken mini keg to the meet. I was interested in trying one, and my own limited beer drinking capacity had kept me from getting one for myself. This little puppy was easy to use and spurted out excellent beer with no fuss. We both had several.



I usually prefer ales, but I recognize Heineken as a good German lager. Good examples of the beer have a clean taste but a rich, malty goodness under the hops. The ones from the mini keg were frankly outstanding. The exciting thing is that there are multiple choices in terms of the type of beer that is available in mini kegs. Behold. Well, behold up there as I cannot get Blogger to put the image down here.

I have seen ads for Newcastle in the mini keg. That would likely be outstanding as it would address the skunking issues I decried earlier. There are plenty of beers I would like to sample in this delivery system, but I need friends to help.

Thanks Doug and Toni for the great fun as we tried the mini keg! I hope more of our herfing pals show up for the next meeting. I will bring another mini keg for us to try.

Sweet!

Another brown ale here, this one brewed in Atlanta. And we have a winner! Well, not world class by any means, but very pleasant and likable. It pours a clear mahogany color, not much head to speak of. As the beer warms a bit you get a bit of malty and nutty aroma. This is a very smooth beer, not very complex, but tasty. The wife likes it, which is always a plus dontchaknow. I prefer it in comparison to my memory of the Pete's. This is more of a subtle nut brown, despite the darker color. No aftertaste really, so you could pound this beer. But don't cause, well we are too grown up for that around here. Right?

This has my hearty endorsement as a nice, sturdy beer. Not a classic, but reasonably priced and easy drinking flavor. Git some!

Wicked

This beer is a dark amber, slightly copper pour, lighter than in the photo. It is lightly carbonated, and tastes a bit thin if you drink it too cold, I mean at lager temperatures. You can smell the malt and nice hops in the aroma. There is not much citrus, which is a good thing as far as I am concerned. The taste is mild and pleasant, on the malty side. It gets rounder as it warms. This is not in the same league as the wonderful brown ales of England, but it is a fine American Brown that rejects intense hoppiness. You could drink several of these and enjoy them. Overall, this is a pleasant, if nondescript beer. Maybe a good brew to use to introduce someone used to light American lagers to more flavorful ales. It is unlikely to upset anyone, or impress them either. So mark it down as an acceptable, though safe choice.

Newcastle

This can be a wonderful beer, really. It can be mellow, complex, with nutty flavors. Or it can be skunked like the one I am drinking right now. The light ruins the beer and makes it sharp, sour, and one dimensional. The last one I had was nectar, this one sucks. And I bought them from the same place.

See, a clear bottle depends either on intense pasteurization like Miller does or exquisite shipping and handling. To use a clear bottle, you must protect the bottles during the entire shipping process. This one was ruined.

Or you can avoid this all and have it on tap, or the new mini keg I have seen advertised. Once I see that for sale, it is bought. But for this skunked beer, if I was not so cheap I would toss it.

I have a drinking problem

It is true. I have this problem with my alcohol consumption. A 6 pack lasts me too long to post enough about the beers I enjoy. See, I like to be drinking the beer while I write about it. Makes sense to me. But since a 6 pack tends to last me at least a week, I cannot write about as many beers as I would like to. It is a problem. I just do not drink fast enough.

And I am not thinking I can drink much more really, it does not suit me. So I will try to purchase some variety packs to help increase the number of different beers I have to taste and write about. That is really the best I can figure out to do. Sorry about the lack of beer posts, but I have this drinking problem.

It is like when I used to make beer. I would make it faster than I could drink it, so I had to buy more bottles and a frig in which to store it. Those cost money, so my lack of drinking was costing my family.

Trey

Musical Prejudice

One of my musical projects is putting my records and cds onto my computer hard drive so that I can enjoy the tunes in a more user friendly fashion. And it is great, I have them loaded up on Media Player and can listen to my cds and high resolution vinyl sourced files with ease. I expected this ability to make it more fun to listen to tunes, and to make them more accessible for my wife and children, and it has done that. For instance, it is easy and simple to listen to different versions of songs or just Ben Folds or all Beatles. My wife and oldest daughter responded by listening to music more. Cool! But I expected that.

I did NOT expect that my cds would sound so much better once they are ripped to my hard drive. I rip them at full resolution, that is what external 1 terabyte drives are for! And they sound better than they do when played by my rather nice Denon universal player. I use a M-audio sound card that can play the 24/96 vinyl files and use my Denon receiver to decode the data. And it sounds fantastic!

But those are not the real topics of the post, just encouragement for any reader of this humble blog to do the work to put their music on their hard drive. At full rez, you will thank me.

The real subject I wish to address is a form of prejudice. You see, after I rip the files, they are sorted into a genre. Now the genre is typically wrong or simplistic. Ben Folds does not always ROCK, he is more likely to POP or even POWER POP. And he writes a mean BALLAD. Think Brick. I do not want to hear Brick, a BALLAD when I am wanting to ROCK out. So I go in and make more accurate genre labels for each song on each album. It takes time, but it is time well spent.

So I get an artist like Phil Keagy or a band like King's X and they are lumped into RELIGIOUS or CHRISTIAN. Huh? I guess I can kind of understand Rebecca St. James being in that genre, but it is difficult to make that fit when she does songs like this:



OK, it starts off nice and gentle, but that is rocking in the middle! I agree that her lyrics are explicitly Christian. But many of The Clash's lyrics were explicitly socialist. And I do not see their music lumped together with Billy Bragg because of the world view of the people who make it. Here is Phil Keagy. Most of his music is classified in the RELIGIOUS genre, but does that fit his wide variety and diversity of musical output? You decide. Here is Phil playing what I call ACOUSTIC.



Wow. And it is wonderful in full resolution over your stereo. It has no words, but it is RELIGIOUS? Now I am sure Phil dedicates his music to God and Jesus, way to go Phil! But so did Bach. And if this is RELIGIOUS, what is it when Phil does this?



I think that fits the genre of ROCK or AMAZING GUITAR if I had that genre. Perhaps I will! But most of Phil's excellent work is put in RELIGIOUS. And some people would rather be caught listening to Perry Como than shopping in the RELIGIOUS aisle of even iTunes.

If this is you, stop being so prejudiced. It is keeping you from knowing and listening to outstanding music. Now I appreciate and am blessed by the spiritual content of Christian music. But I love listening to the Clash and I do not share their world view. If you are avoiding good music because it is Christian, your life is the poorer for it.

So listen to some Phil Keagy, some Rebecca St. James, some Jennifer Knapp, some Petra, some King's X. Rock out with The Call, funk it up with Kirk Franklin, bob your head to Toby Mac. Heck, I am an old fart, so I am not hip to even a small percentage of the excellent Christian music being made. I will the stuff I know and love in the future, but in truth, to hear about it, you will have to seek it out. Because mainstream wants to put it in a little box that does not fit.

But you, gentle reader, are not the kind of person to accept that kind of prejudice.

Rock on.

CHICAGO VI

I was looking for a video of Al Green doing "I'm So Tired Of Being Alone" with Chicago. It is included on the remixed cd of VI. I have been grooving to that song hard! I found it, almost. The clip had been removed due to the copyright holder's somplaint. Well, I understand that, even though it makes me sad. So here is another song from the album, Feeling Stronger Everyday.

Snowbound in August

Well, it is barely August. This is a Christmas ale that I picked up because I love everything that the Left Hand Brewing Company puts out. I bet their waste water tastes like nectar! Their Mil Stout is served in heaven. On draft. Really.

So this is a lightly carbonated ale that pours with a medium brown color. You can smell the spices as soon as your nose gets near the glass. The aroma is strong of nutmeg, clove, and maybe some cinnamon. In that order more or less. The smell is fresh but powerful. If you eschew spice additives in your beer, stay away. Stay away from anyone at the next table drinking this beer!

I usually do not like spiced beer, but this is from Left Hand. So I like it! The strong spice is primarily nutmeg and it goes down easily with an interesting aftertaste. The beer loses some crispness as it warms, and the spice becomes more prominent. The alcohol is 8.6%. This spiced ale is not for everyone, but then spiced ales are a niche product. I am glad I am drinking this one, but I would save the next one if I had bought two.

Bill Lloyd, the early days

A great powerpop record by Bill Lloyd. From 1987, before he became a part of Foster and Lloyd. I had heard the title song on the local Vanderbilt radio station and enjoyed the quirky goodness. After I bought the album, I was really surprised at the quality of the rest of the songs. There is a little Alex Chilton in Bill's voice, guitar, and writing, and that my friends is a very good thing. The cd is out of print, but I have seen the music available online. Here is a low quality video of Bill blasting a song from the record. If you love powerpop, and God knows I do, this is one to add to your collection.