Happy Birthday to .....

[Bill]

Mozart!  250 today.   I wonder if he's celebrating?

Bill

[Ace]

I'd guess he's de-composing.

Ace; probably turning over, too, right about now.

[pat]

De-composing, that?s pretty funny.

Just think of all the extra time you?re going to have to think up all this funny stuff once you gain that extra hour.

We'll all be shaking the trees...............

[Ace]

And I'll be falling out of them..

Ace; and they'll be falling on your car.

[Bill]

If I were you, I wouldn't be climbing trees with those pointy shoes.  No wonder you fall out.    You'll be the one on top of Pat's new van next time.  

So what time will it be in Michiana when the time law changes?  Probably to complicated to figure out.  

Bill; bad enough remembering dinner time.

[pat]

Oh, not really (the time) hard at all. I think someone is just being a big baby.
Up here in the northern reaches of Michiana we?ve been leaping ahead and falling behind as long as I can remember, (Ok, some days that?s not so long).

I have all smart clocks anyway, they just change time all by themselves. They are just like little time machines.

[Bill]

Maybe a big, black and white, furry baby?  They don't care what time it is, why might he be so concerned?  

Bill

[Ace]

Well, I'm usually not black AND white.  Unless I'm wearing my other leather jacket, or that one sweater.   Besides demanding daylight savings time but no zone in particular, we're entering the debate on leasing our Toll Road.  We got a 3.something billion dollar bid for it for 75 years.  But first we got to double the rates, before letting it lose.

Now, if we were to just double the rates, we'd pick up that much extra money from it easily in a far shorter time...  And, if we lease it, we'd have to pay the company reimbursement if folks didn't drive it and chose a freer venue to travel.  And, we couldn't fix up THAT road because it'd be competing with the toll road.  So our road infrastructure which we're improving with all this extra cash would have to crumble.  

Geez.  Louise.

I am chagrined to state that I only have stupid clocks.  A lot of stupid clocks.  None of them can set themselves.  Even after I set them, some struggle to get it right.  I guess April 2 I'm gonna take a half day off or something just to set the all.  

stupid state.  We're probably bidding on one of those new Ford plants to move in.  

Ace; and lay off my pointy shoes, dangit.

[pat]

Well, there?s no need to go off and get yourself all chagrined up. Take a deep breath, relax, step back a pace, go on out and stack a few pallets and cool off.
Geez.

Say, are you ever going to put up some of those pictures of your stairs, the ones you painted?

[Bill]

But make sure they're all sorted by size and the piles are straight and tidy.

Bill

[halokid]

Mozarts probably more than turning in his grave, hes
probably prowling the streets of hollywood and California as a record label eating Zombie  ::)

[Ace]

Ok, I have no idea what Mozart would think of pop music.

I don't think there is such a thing.. anymore than there was in his day.  I really like Pop Music.  A mix of mainstream stuff.  Really eclectic.  Catchy.  Listenable.  

This whole thing with "alternative" to me represents music that isn't popular; it's an alternative.  Listening to it, you can see why.  The sing-songy "I'm depressed I'm weird I'm strange Nobody Loves me I don't know I don't care" dirge lyrics with hip hoppy beats and grungy dropped mids guitars doing the sad dance is just

not interesting.  I remember the Beatles to Al Hirt to Peggy Lee to Elvis to Ventures to Johnny Horton to Animals to Surfaris to Wayne Newton to Dion to Barry Sadler to Nancy Sinatra to Sonny and Cher to David Seville to Sam the Sham playlists, of my youth.  You'd hear anything and everything.  A lineage going to the origins of popular music, plus every cutting new wave development.  I guess that's what's sad about American Idol; there aren't any, now.  

I guess that's why I like progressive rock, as the new "classical."  That to me is what symphonic music and educated craftsmanship has evolved to....    If Mozart was around, I could see him doing keyboards in Dream Theater.

Ace; I hope he wouldn't knock out Tony Banks or Rick Wakeman, though.  I like those guys.

[Bill]

OK, I'll bite. What the heck is progressive rock...?  Give me some examples, please.
You forgot Clapton, Dylan and a few others.

Bill

[Ace]

Well, geez, Dylan isn't progressive.  He's just unintelligible.  I don't know if there's ever been an artist with that longevity and catalog of works whom no one listens to or recognizes past the first and maybe some middle years...   Clapton is a chameleon, and starting to look like one, but the coolest thing he did this year was show up in Cream, again.

I define progressive as well crafted forward thinking eclectically blended music idioms mixed into a thought provoking dynamic blend.  Often with neoclassical elements and enigmatic lyrics.  Wide range of instruments, complicated meters and great dynamics (soft to loud to soft) and rock country pop classical folk jazz bits intermixed. My favorites range from the Yes and ELP and Jethro Tull and King Crimson and Pink Floyd beginnings through Genesis I and II and Yes and Bowie and Porcupine Tree and BeBopDeluxe and Dream Theater but I wasn't a huge fan of Kansas or ELO or some of those.  And I live within Peter Gabriel and Steve Hacket and even Phil Collins spin offs, too.  And Yes.

Yes, of course, has lived through the whole lifespan and still rocks.  Albeit they're resembling the elfin characters from songs a lot more now.

As much as I enjoy complicated dense musicality, I love the thick boogie of That Little Ol' Band from Texas and own everything Doyle Bramhall II and Hendrix and Elvis Costello and the Beatles ever put out, too.  I like a lot of stuff.  Just not country, or dweedly jazz (that sounds like someone blowing scales, repeatedly).  And Diana Krall, plus her husband which I already mentioned.  

I still have boatloads of cassette tapes which I can not play in my car, and won't bother with at home, since I'm just gonna go with a CD in either, now.  What a waste.

Ace; the LP's are in the crawlspace...

[Bill]

"Often with neoclassical elements and enigmatic lyrics.  Wide range of instruments, complicated meters and great dynamics (soft to loud to soft) and rock country pop classical folk jazz bits intermixed. My favorites range from the Yes and ELP...."  If we mix all that in one piece, sounds like (not intended) we wind up with generic music with wide volume fluctuations.  

Geez.  I'm sorry I asked. I won't admit here that more than half of the artists(?) you mentioned I've never heard of, or knowingly listened to.  That would be showing my musical naivet?.

Does your CD collection duplicate the collection of cassettes?

Bill; the LPs holdin' up the computer?

[Ace]

I happen to like wide volume fluctuations.  Often, when driving, I will randomly hit the "+" and "-" buttons on my Sony player just to create that effect.

Nice of you to quote my poast instead of coming up with something original.  I should copyright these things.  And no, I haven't needed to shim up the component stand; it isn't sinking.  Although it is stinking, if I put on either Paula Abdul CD I own...

Look, go to Amazon or CD Now or somewhere and sample some of these.  Heck, I did that when Pat recommended Gentle Giant plus when Iggy or somebody said that Scandinavian ClassicalMetalGothic group was a'ight.  

And sure, the cassettes are from the CD's, except for some old ones that were off the first play of a record.  I had the mobile collection, and then the home one, but now they can be one and the same.

Ace; I've also got Milli Vanilli.  That could be worth something, someday.

[Bill]

Ok, smart guy.  You know I use Firefox - you did that on purpose, just to let me uncover a new difficulty. :P  See Software Help poast.

Dangit.  

Bill; nuthin's ever easy.

[Ace]

Oh, sure.  Try to change the subject.  "Go look at this, over here."  Then, "go look at that, over there."  I have no idea what you use.  But if it's one of those offbrand discounted web browsers, then there you go.  You should buy retail and go with Top Of The Line Genuine Microsoft Products, like me.  Well, not "Me" but me.  I use Internet Explorer, the real article.  Bundled and intertwined with the the whole dang OS and everything else.  You couldn't remove this puppy with a chainsaw.  It's so dang ingrained, the registry has entire sections dedicated to its root system.  

Anyway, the volume has remained constant here, so I think everything is working ok.  I've got a volume control on the speakers, plus on the keyboard.  Plus on the taskbar.  I could change volume 8 ways to Sunday.

On my class A amp, it actually works best to max out the volume to run the power amp at full, then control the gain separately.  Plus, I have a separate volume pedal if I feel like it.

ace; I'm a smart guy.  My mom was right.

[Ace]

I don't know.. I think Brian is off his rocker.  Brian Wilson, that is.  He was on one of those seasonal celebratory hold it holiday wait Christmas dangit specials doing "Little Saint Nick" which consisted of him mumbling "the little saint nick" in a monotone and jerking spasmodically.  It was sorta scary.

I tell ya, ya gotta wonder why the Beach Boys bother.  I mean, it's Mike Love and that guy who's a cousin of the Wilsons and that's it.  Everyone else is new or dead.  Would you imagine the Stones if they were Keith's nephew and one of Mick's wives, and Charlie Watts?  Criminy.

I know, the Stones had 3 guys die and one leave but as long as they let Keith stay then that's enough.  "Rolling Stones: CSI."  Heh.

I also think Paul McCartney is bearing an uncanny likeness to Tweety Bird, these days.  

Ace; I taught I taw a ...

[pat]

Yeah, those are most of my favorites too.
Scary.

So, what did you think of Gentle Giant?

I also think Van der Graff Generator/Peter Hammill, Nectar perhaps Arthur Browns Kingdom Come and Hawkwind would qualify as early progressive bands.

Then there were the Tubes, but they were just plain nuts.

[Ace]

They did have that one good song.  You know, my favorite period of music was the 80's, during the post punk power pop years.  A lot of one-hit wonders, sorta like the original British invasion.  Cars/Blondie/Journey/Police/DefLeppard/ElvisC/RobertPalmer/BelindaC/GoGos/Heart/VanHalen/Yes(LonelyHeart)/Bruce/CheapTrick/the usual suspects. Plus the sidetracks of Bowie and SRV and Judas Priest and other flavors.  Short, catchy, punchy ditties.  Made for radio.  Along with some fine cuts by the Hooters and Tommy Tutone or whoever did 8675309 and Flock of Seagulls and the Knack.  So much music, so condensed.  The golden age of Pop.

There are a ton of bands and performers now, too.  Just lost that catchy pop song crafty thing.  Either silly spastic teen fluff or rap crap or metal dirges.  I did like the original Grunge stuff too, with Soundgarden and Alice in Chains and Nirvana.  But not Pearl Jam.

I liked Gentle Giant but I haven't bought any yet.  Which one did you say was the best one?  I just ordered a (new) 4 cd Hendrix box set of previously unreleased concert and studio cuts.  For someone like me who's heard them all, it'll be interesting.  I can still do a decent rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.  

Ace; purple haze is always in my brain.

[pat]

Gosh, I just don?t know which one I?d recommend as the first one to buy, I pretty much like them all.

Maybe the first one, titled aptly enough Gentle Giant.

But then again, Living in a Glass House is good, as is Octopus. And then there is Free Hand and Acquiring the Taste.

And the Three Friends album is swell.

Geez, I don?t know, just pick one, I?m sure you?ll want to listen to all of them eventually.
But, you can?t go wrong with Three Friends.

I wonder though, did you ever listen to Spirit? I especially like their Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus album.

[Bill]

You guy are making this all up, right?  

Bill; you can fool some of the people....

[Ace]

Yeah, Spirit was great.  Old bald drummer and Randy California.  Animal Zoo and Nature's Way and Mr. Skin.  You know, Randy played with Hendrix for a time.  I oughta pop that into the car.  

When I would get ready for high school I'd pop on an album.. I'd have on Donovan, Melanie, Beethoven, Ravi Shankar, Bookends, Let it Be...  And the alltime best album to get dressed to:

Slade.  Although with Gudbuy t'Jane, there was a chance you'd cross dress.

Ace; I was one of the Young Dudes.  I'd carry the news.

[Ace]

I really like "Odessa" by the Bee Gees, but I never got the follow-up with the TT's.

And Joni Mitchell was a'ight when she was free of men in Paris.  You know who I always liked?  Joan Baez.  Now that's a vibrato that can peel paint.

I'm just glad disco died.  Not soon enough, that's for sure.  Hip hop can't last forever...

Ace; can it..?  :-[

[Ace]

I Hate Disco.

I hate it in its time.
I hate it all the time.
I hate its bouncy beat.
I hate its smelly feet.
I hate its stupid shoes.
I hate it has no clues.
I hate its doublenit.
I hate its lack of wit.
I hate Apache ties.
And polyester guys.
I hate Stayin' Alive.
I'm glad to see it die.
I hated that hand jive.
I hate the Jackson 5.
Demolition Night's Alright
With Comiskey Park alight.
Disco was dumber than a brick.
It was enough to make me sick.
Just give me Power Pop.
Let's kill rap, and then
hip hop.

Ace; makes me want to bang my head.  

[Ace]

Well, I don't think it was Epstein or Horeshack...  

You know, I was just thinking... when I was in a band in HS we opened our set with "I've Got A Line On You."  Best Spirit song not on 12 Dreams.

Ace; I'm much too fat and a little too long.

[Bill]

You want to turn the volume back down please.  And who the heck is Spirit?
Something in a bottle?

Bill

[Ace]

And I didn't even fluctuate on that one.  That was all him.  

Next, we'll probably be brutalized by bass and terrorized by treble.

Ace; he's probably got a quiana shirt on, open to his navel...  

[Bill]

Thanks.  Now what the heck is a quiana shirt?

Bill; I like spirits, too.