London Calling

From the latest drop of Frippinfo…

The sound from Steven Wilson’s files, downloaded, is much better than the transfer of the same files from DVD

Curious, but by no means impossible. To man the audiophile cudgels, most non-engineers have no awareness of just how analog “digital” circuits truly are under the hood.

For instance, low quality CDs suffer from “timing pit jitter”…a sufficiently un-quality-controlled CD manufacture process can cause enough variation in the timing of the pits on the surface of the CD that the CD player now introduces additional (non) harmonics that have no relationship to the music being played. The result is that gritty, ear-fatiguing CD sound that we all know so well. (Though I have to say that the best CDs these days can rival some of the SACDs, which is of course still a new format.)

Interesting to hear about this in this context…I’m inferring that the sound file was uploaded from the DVD prior to being played, so you’d think that any difference between the two should be eliminated once you’ve pulled them both into the computer.

What I’d love to try is to put a solid, buffered de-jitterer into the signal path between the DVD and the computer, and then see if there’s still a significant difference. (The Mark Levinson DAC has one that works for traditional DVD.)

There are also programs out there that let you compare two digital signals: It inverts the one and (I think) NORs it to the other to get a straight zero line, unless there’s a difference.

Oh, and it could be something simple…DVD can’t do 24/96…it can only go out to 20 bits within the traditional DVD format (DVD-A is different, of course). So conceivably, they aren’t actually the same if Steven Wilson sent a 24/96 (or better) master file.

21st Centry Prog rock…

Upsilon Acrux

And just in the off chance the Youtube embedded isn’t buchered…

In the Fripperblog Fripp writes…

One question, from a senior staff member, addressed what I understand as The Great Divide: stuck out in the desert, too far from the beginning to go back, too far from the end to go forwards. What carries us through is, primarily, our commitment to the aim. Perhaps we discover that our aim is not the life-aim we thought it might be; in which case, perhaps, the process unravels.

This definitely echos some of the themes I’ve been dwelling on here.

The problem is, a lot of the time an Aim developed in one’s youth carries with it that charge of youthful desire to change the world. And that’s not bad, I guess. In fact, that desire has probably served some quite well and caused them to be remembered for actually changing the world.

On the other hand, some of these youthful aims may actually be a sort of vehicle for some deeper need not met in childhood or youth, a need of significance or of more attention from girls or the need for material wealth (presumably because availability of the material while growing up was often in question and a source of anxiety).

I have been asking myself whether some of my youthful aims were not of this category and therefore, under the hood, kind of vapid. Or rather, what if my goal really was a form of self-elevation and need to be needed?

What occurs to me is the actual need for something like The Great Divide. Like a lot of the great quests in history and literature, there always comes a time when the initial enthusiasm is gone and what’s left is a sort of barrenness. And this is perhaps necessary for testing the quality of the aim and stripping it of a lot of that junk. Is there something real under there? Something that is for that person “neccessary”? If so, then during this barrenness that will become evident and then there will come a renewed dedication to the goal, stripped largely of its accoutrements.

Then again, why have a goal? Most people don’t. They seem to do just fine living life like regular folks and enjoying what they can. Is perhaps the formulation of a goal itself indicative of some aspect of one’s personality? I am reminded of one of the more influential books of my life, “Cutting through Spiritual Materialism”, by Chogyam Trungpa. That book is up there with Kierkegaard’s works in outline the many self-deceptive traps we generate to make it look like we are moving upward spiritually, but in reality we are merely rehashing old mistakes and recycling them into new forms so that we can say to ourselves, “Look, I’m different from before!”

The Buddhist answer to this is to recognize the true empty nature of the self and in this recognition acheive liberation from all its traps and tricks. Indeed, the Buddhists would argue that this is precisely what the self is: A sort of self-perpetuating myth that doesn’t want to die.

In the western world, however, we live much more with a giant arrow of time, and this has arguably allowed the birth of such things as western science and modern technology and medicine. As an engineer and physicist, as I grew up I found myself much more in this camp then in the Buddhist world, despite my early fascination with the obvious authority of the Tibetan Buddhists and Trungpa (who was alive at the time and, coincidentally, the Guru of my high school physics teacher).

If one, however, were to align oneself with the notion of moving things forward and helping to build up human civilization, doesn’t this require a sort of messiah complex? And doesn’t that, of course, carry with it a whole host of vanities and undropped baggage?

If it does, then perhaps The Great Divide can be strong enough to remove all that, while keeping the aim intact. In fact, perhaps the strength of The Great Divide is precisely such that it equals the strength of all of that junk, in the hopes that there’s some actual gold under all that dross.

Or maybe not. But my belief is that there is indeed some kind of intelligence “out there” underpinning life such that this is the way things work, if this be our chosen path. In other words, our actions and motions through life can stimulate a sort of self-existent intelligence in things and in our world.

Sometimes, I try to imagine the kind of person I would have become had I received the kind of love and acceptance growing up that everybody deep down craves. I try to imagine how free I’d be, how magnanimous, how full of love for others I’d be because everywhere I went I was receiving positive feedback about how wonderful I was.

No doubt I’d become incredibly well-adjusted, open, free and (deep down inside) beautiful.

Imagine living a life where, everywhere you went, people told you how great you were and how much pleasure you brought to their lives. Imagine growing up as a child and then a young adult and then on into midlife being told and even knowing deep down inside that you were great and wonderful and had brought so much pleasure and joy into people’s lives. Perhaps even more, what if everyone recognized just how talented you were. You’d be just so phenomenally well adjusted.

Right?

John Maynard Keynes, oops, I mean Maynard James Keenan is apparently making wines out in Arizona. I’d bet they’re reasonably good.

As for me, some years back I undertook the task of trying to learn about wines. My main reasons were practical at first: Getting a nice wine with a meal was just so hit-and-miss that I wanted to increase my hit rate of ordering a nice wine, preferably one that would be a good match with our food.

More than that, too, I was exposed to some wines I actually enjoyed quite a bit, so I thought it would be good to seek out more.

It’s been tough, though, because there’s so much out there. I’ve therefore focused on the Italian wines, and I’m now at the point where I can occasionally order up a really nice surprise to match our food, sometimes at reasonable prices. (Like when I ordered a nice Val d’Aoste wine to match our tomato bruschetta over at ‘Ino on the lower east side.)

So if I ever move back to the US, I’ll seek out some of these Tool wines and maybe grab a case or two of ‘em.

Funny how things pop up on the Fripperblog. There’s this…

When people get together, something happens.
When people get together with music, something remarkable happens

I was thinking about something like this with respect to music.

Perhaps music itself is unimportant.

Wha? (You may say) Zoidberg you fool. What have you been yammering about all these months in this absurd blog?

I keep thinking back to that transcendent tribal function that shows up in rare cases during a performance or, with slightly more regularity, during a church service. You know, that weird bubble experience that envelopes everyone present and gives each person something they really need (and not just want).

Can it be that the reason music feels so important is precisely and only because it is a route towards that bubble, towards that pillar of fire?

In other words, maybe the words of a song or the melodies/dissonances played are really only important because they carry within them the arrow towards this mutual human transcendant experience?

I’ve always wondered why, in all known cultures, there’s music. Why is this? Does it serve some Darwinian purpose? What’s the “use” of such music? Why melody? Why lyrics that seem so compelling but don’t explain what the hell they mean? Why does this matter to us? Why does it feel important?

Well, maybe because it’s a particularly flexible means towards that human gestalt. And maybe this has served a survival purpose (among many purposes) in our short time on this planet so far: When our hunter-gatherer ancestors were preparing to hunt the wooly mammoth so the tribe can eat, did singing and music and ceremony invoke something akin to telepathy, pulling down that trans-human bubble, so that working together in an almost supernatural way, the hunters could bag some fordible beast, or cross the alps, or dam up a river or build a pyramid or track the stars or so on?

Thus, melody or song or lyrics or seeing a band play together is in itself almost ceremonial insofar as it reminds us or redirects us back to that common point of origin? In other words, each of these things are really triggers.

Whence, then, recorded music? Where does that fit? Don’t know, but maybe the bubble isn’t limited to just a performance and a small space…maybe there are whiffs of it everwhere and a good recording reminds us of this and perhaps, occasionally, rejoins us with that far weaker global force?

These things are mysterious to me, and one wonders if mere scholars (or the mere religious) can ever fully reveal what that bubble is or what this mystery is that all humans seem to share together.

How ’bout that for some heavy-ass philosophical BS?

Well that’s what a blog’s for, nyah!

Listened to this a coupla’ times and it’s great. One of my favorite Iggy discs so far! Iggy sings in French for a couple of tunes but in a way that is distinctly non-croonerish and very Iggy. It just works, and it’s still essentially Iggy doing what Iggy does.

This one, however…

This is one by all rights I should love, as I’ve been a big fan of T Bone Burnette’s productions in this ‘genre’ for many years. Both this and Raising Sand are produced by T Bone Burnette and have a very strong cast of old school traditional acoustic musicians.

And don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad record. There are some excellent songs here. But the thing that doesn’t totally go over for me on some of them is Elvis Costello’s Crooner mode, where he attempts (with some success) to sing emotively and melodically. It’s very professional. But his other punk/pop voice, the more monotone-like one, that would have fit the bill far better in a lot of cases. What non-Americans (and even most Americans) don’t realize is just how essentially punk rock some of those old Smithsonian Folkways songs are. And coming from rural primitive America, they are very unprofessional and that is their strength and power: Real honesty.

Not that this isn’t an honest record, but I think a less professional approach on the part of the old Crooner would have brought a few more of these songs to life.

It’s still good, though, and I may end up changing my mind. The playing and the production are fabulous, of course.

Finally…

I bought this shortly after it came on on Vinyl in about 1980 or 1981 and forgot how friggin’ fun it is. Unlike a lot of the heavy-laden pop/rock at the time, this one doesn’t try too hard and as a result acheives what it set out to do: Have fun, explore a bit, dance a bit, and have a laugh or two. I’m finding out now also that Yello is sometimes accused of inventing Techno music, which, true or not (not), the evidence is here.

I won’t bother describing last night’s dream as it was too abstract. But clearly along the same lines as previously: Pushing past a previously blocked barrier…

Seems too every time I write something about this thread it comes back to me in a dream. Or rather, there’s another small step indicated (I don’t think dreams tell you the way to go but they do seem to mirror waking-state choices and adaptations you are making.)

And you know Blogging itself is a sort of response to the condition of motivations, particularly if you have passed the point where you think your blog is going to grab the world’s attention or something. But in blogging or writing past that point you are choosing to make public what it is you are going through. And why do that, if it won’t benefit you? Well, whatever the answer to the question of “why” is, perhaps that’s where truer motivations can be found.

The parallel to music-making and public performance is obvious, no? And also why this venue seems appropriate for me to air such themes.

I guess the interesting thing is that, while I have been dealing with the question of motivation for years, for some reason it has apparently taken up some real energy in my dreams, and so indicates some kind of waking-state transformation of sorts, not that I feel any. But in my experience, as baffling as a dream may be during the days when it is dreamt, looking back a year later it becomes “obvious” and even surprising that you couldn’t understand it at the time. So, we’lll see what comes of this. It would be nice to find some newer emotional energy with which to invest my various activities, most particularly work.

Another dream, similar to the previous one.

This time no musicians, but it’s clear to me this is the same theme. And since this Blog seems to have recently become a place where this issue-arc is aired, it seems true to this current to follow through.

In the dream there was a big wild-boar in the room with me. There were maybe a few others around talking and whatever as well. The boar was big and had mean-looking tusks and very crummy-looking patches of fur, as well as a sort of chitinous hide thing over its shoulders.

In the dream I was kind of scared of the thing, but it seemed to be seeking some attention from me, so I scratched it behind its head. It seemed to enjoy that and while I scratched it I tried to place myself in the shoes of traditional Muslims and asked, “So what makes them view this animal as unclean?” Looking it, I could kind of see why. It was kind of dirty and unkempt and dangerous.

Unlike a dog, however, the boar seemed to be satisfied with its level of attention fairly quickly, and it then wandered off.

When I woke, I had the distinct feeling that I had kind of “seen” that part of me that I described in the last post, that part that had to some extent remained hidden from me.

And what is this thing? Well, it’s got something to do with what’s left of one’s motivations after you strip away a lot of the motivators of youth. Those motivations, I think, often revolve around finding significance and permanance in this vast world. It may on the surface be a desire to actually change things, but this desire really has (under the hood) a powerful drive to build oneself up or obtain some form of validation.

In recent years I’ve at least partially come to terms with some of those powerful motivators, and I’ve tried to learn how to deal with the ones that really emanate from a desire to build up the Big ME. Those are hard forces to handle because they always find a way to sneak into what you’re doing and pollute it.

But once those youthful motivations are gone, what’s left? That’s what I’ve been dealing with. Do I really care about things in and of themselves? Do I really want to change things for the sake of really making things better for others? Perhaps, possibly, when I strip out everything then all that’s left if a sort of poverty. Maybe that’s what the wild boar is.

That may sound sad, but in the Christian tradition this is actually a powerful place to begin. If we don’t recognize our essential poverty, then we can never truly begin. And if we recognize our lack, we can ask and be filled.

Yes, I’m getting it. This aspect of things here in the UK. This is one thing about the British I like quite a bit.

Today at work I had a meeting with a colleague and I was really surprised as to how much he disparaged our local leader. And this seems to reflect the general feeling in the organization about said leader. As for this leader, I’d say his heart is in the right place but he either comes or with or channels a million rediculous ideas that everyone is trying to dodge or duck or pray doesn’t fall upon one to be responsible for.

And this wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t already have so friggin’ much to do. But the guy seems completely unaware of the consequences he sets in motion by getting people to even just examine “opportunities” that are on the surface pointless and will distract us from our already way-too-overloaded workload.

So people now treat him like a monarch that needs to be patiently neutralized or placated. And I’ve seen this before: Plans-for-plans, “progress” reports that could even be “green” because progress towards a plan is being made (albeit sometimes “rebaselined”)…there are all sorts of ways the English have learned to live with capricious monarchs.

And right now, on the “tele”, there’s the Blackadder special and the Blackadder characters are appeasing or placting their own insane monarchs in precisely the same way!

It’s hilarious!

This is an aspect I can get behind: Poo-pooingor otherwise bullshitting authority so they can get back to the real fun in life: Drinking and having sex.

God Bless The Queen. God Bless the English.