No Saturday Delivery

Today was the first Saturday of the rest of my life with no Saturday delivery of the Elgin Courier News.  Two words:  awful.  While I won't deny being a creature of habit not being able to walk out in the snow in my slippers with no socks ala that kid in "The_Polar_Express" was truly bothersome.  I think this is a Sign_o'_the_Times with newspaper readership as I recently wrote about but to wake up and not be able to go get a newspaper like Henry Hill in my robe at the end of Goodfellas I felt like my breath was being sucked out of me like when Jimmy Conway is trying to get his money with a phone chord from Morrie.

So I came up to my computer to read my Courier News on the internet.  While I'm almost internet savvy (I can successfully copy and paste) with RSS feeds and my Google Reader.  This is fine for news of the Miami Dolphins from the Miami Herald or news from the 

BBC, it's not the newspaper as I know it.

I'll breathe, I'll take a chill, but what am I gonna read with my cereal later!

Newspapers as a Momento

I enjoy reading my newspaper every morning.  I know said activity (sad activity?) is archaic in today's instant message, twitter, internets at your fingertips world we live in but I do enjoy my morning coffee and reading the newspaper.  Even for myself, I'll read something in the paper and I'll have read the same story the night before on the Internets and say, "I read that last night on the 'net, why do I even subscribe to a paper?"  I like to eat reading a paper too and sitting at my desk with my computer and a burrito just isn't the same as sitting there at El Faro with my Chicago Sun-Times with salsa roja dribbling down my chin.

So I've noticed changes in my paper, the Elgin Courier News, is making several changes, dropping Saturday editions altogether and switching to tabloid format.  Even the mighty Chicago Tribune recently switched to a tabloid format for newsstand sales to spruce sales.  Columnists are leaving papers in droves including some of my faves in recent months Jay Mariotti and Robert Feders (his last column for S-T is linked here) of the Sun-Times.  Music writer Mark Guarino was unceremoniously released from the Suburban Chicago Daily Herald.  Mariotti claimed the future of media is the Internet but went to write for "cutting edge" AOL?  AOL?  You're so 1996, Jay. 

My point here and I do have one is that even though newspapers are becoming more and more passe regarding how to get your news, I find it ironic that when there's a big news story, like the recent inauguration, what do people buy for a keepsake?  

A newspaper.  

How many copies did you buy?

Peanut Butter

With peanut butter in the news again this week regarding peanut butter salmonella I'd like to remind everyone, or "spread" the news, if you will, the proper (and only) way to eat peanut butter.  When removing peanut butter from the jar you are supposed to leave a section of peanut butter completely unscathed by human hands or butter knife.  You leave one section untouched for as long as humanly possible.  The depiction pictured above/left is in the early stages of a peanut butter jar (probably one sleeve of saltines worth, eaten open-faced, of course)  This isn't a IMHO or YMMV issue, it's the only way.

 

An esteemed colleague of mine (pictured right) agrees with me on this issue.  I wish I could supply the exact link to the "Calvin and Hobbes" strip regarding peanut butter removal and retrieval but to most peanut butter addicts, this is what we do.  Trust me, it's the only way.  

Beatles Cartoons

One thing I've found an interest in recently with my fellow music buff/snob, (well, okay I'm the music snob), my 4 year old daughter, are Beatles cartoons.  These cartoons originated in 1965 and ran 'til about 1967.  The era depicted in the cartoons is the mop-top era even though some of the songs used in the cartoons are from "Revolver" (1966) and even "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" from 1967. We all know the Beatles were far removed in more ways than one from the "moptop" era by this time.  The cartoon characters are humorous caricatures of the Beatles with actors supplying the voices.  The individual cartoons are about 5 minutes in length.  The actual songs are sung by The Beatles themselves.  There's no shortage of madcap hilarity and bad puns.  Hey, nothing wrong with a good bad pun, I always say.

This cartoon is one we've taken exceptional interest in.  It's from the "Revolver" record and the song itself is 2:03 of pop bliss with And Your Bird Can Sing.

Can you recognize the voice of John Lennon from other childrens programing?  Think Bass-Rankin Christmas specials. . .Why the voice of John is none other than the Burger Meister-

Meister Burger from "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town".  I watched it this past Christmas with my daughter and it reminded me of my childhood claymation crush of Jessica Kringle (ooh la la, Go Santa Go Santa!).  The voice of Lennon (and George Harrison, for that matter) is American voice actor Paul_Frees.

Once again, since we know everything we read on the internet is true, here is a wikipedia article on The_Beatles Cartoon.  If you'd like to watch more Beatles cartoons just search YouTube.

Victor Jara

"Fences that fail and fall to the ground

  Bearing the fruit from Jara's hands."

--Calexico

On Calexico's latest record, "Carried To Dust", the opening song is titled, "Victor Jara's Hands" which was intriguing to me enough but the only investigating I did was ask my wife (who is from Mexico) if she had ever heard of him.  She hadn't but she likes Celine Dion, so I at least got that going for me, which is nice . . . I guess (rolling my eyes).  Recently I began reading a book by Pablo Neruda's widow, Matilde Urrutia, "My Life With Pablo Neruda".  The opening chapter begins at the end of her life with Pablo Neruda in their homeland of Chile with the U.S. backed September 11 1973 coup  when Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende.  It was during this chapter I saw Victor Jara's name again. As I always say, "If two or more people say I look like a horse, I had better start looking in the mirror."  Or in this case, if I see two or more Victor Jara references I had better start investigating.

Victor Jara was a singer-songwriter, teacher, poet,  political activist, and a native of Chile.  In the days following the coup Jara was publicly killed on September 15, 1973.  He was, more or less, mutilated, in Chile Stadium.  This stadium was later renamed "Estadio Victor Jara" in 2003. Legend has it the military forces cut off his hands as he began to sing protest songs.  "They are killing people."  Neruda would say before his own death in 1973, "How can you not know what happened to Victor Jara?  He is one of the mutilated, they destroyed his hands.  The body of Victor Jara, mutilated, how can you not know?  Oh my God!  If this is how they kill a songbird . . . and they say he sang and sang, which riled the soldiers." Urrutia recalled this moment in her memoirs.  Neruda, who was battling cancer but making progress died himself on September 23, 1973, indirectly as a result of this coup.  Matilde Urritia had been trying to keep disturbing news from Neruda in fear it would send him further spiraling but he found out anyway.  This explains his incredulousness to Urritia in not knowing about Jara.

In my research I also found out that Jara's name is paid homage in several song including The Clash's "Washington Bullets",

"As every cell in Chile will tell, the cries of tortured men, remember Allende in the days before, before the army came, please remember Victor Jara, in the Santiago Sadium, es verdad, those Washington Bullets again." 

I think The Clash just said in just a few song lyrics what others try to say in entire books, or er, um . . . blogs.  Jara is also mentioned in songs by U2 (One Tree Hill) and Arlo Guthrie.   Folksinger Phil Ochs, who had performed with Jara in South America, organized a benefit in Jara's memory in 1974 titled "In memory of Salvador Allende" which included the likes of Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, and Pete Seeger.

One cannot under-estimate the educational powers of music.  All it takes is to hear a song, get an ounce of curiosity, do a little research, and you become richer as a result.  I think Bruce Springsteen summed it up best in his song, "No Surrender".

"We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school."

--Bruce Springsteen

When a 45 is not a 45

I just got my copy of the 7 inch single of Okkervil River's Will Sheff covering The Wren's song, "Ex-Girl Collection" with the B-side of The Wren's Charles Bissell covering Okervil River's "It Ends With A Fall".  Back in the day, I woulda called this a "45", however, this is a 33 1/3.  Like they say, if it looks like a 45, walks like a 45, is little like a 45, and has two songs like a 45, it must be a duck. It's not a 45, or a duck, as I found out without reading the fine print.  Will Sheff ended up sounding like Alvin (my favorite Jonas Brother. . . oh wait) as I had the record on the wrong speed.  Okay, so I'm not the first person to do that but isn't it a shock to the system when you forget to change the settings from 45 or 33 (or 78) or vice-versa?

So once I got the record on the right speed the Sheff cover of one of my favorite Wren's songs of all time is outstanding.  Sheff enunciates some of the lyrics I couldn't understand from the original, though the original is better.  Bissell does a good job with "It Ends With A Fall" but at this point I'd rank the Sheff cover a little higher.

Journey Back to the Center of the Record

I love playing records.  Playing them not in the form of a digital download (paid for, of course, well, most of 'em), not in the form of a cassette, not in the form of a CD, not even in the form of an Edison Cylinder.  I like them in a good ol' slab of black (in most cases, black) vinyl with a hole in the middle.  I wanna look at both sides and have this mental anguish of whether to play "side one" or "side two".  Truth be told, I usually play both sides all the way through.

Playing records hasn't always been this way.  I did buy my first records with my very own money in the late 70's with the likes of "Wings Greatest" (I'm at an age where I honestly asked, "You mean Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?") and then subsequently The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970, better known as the Red and Blue records.  My albums came on red and blue vinyl.  I also bought a batting glove that day, all for about $20 on sale at K-Mart.  I played the crap out of these.  I re-listened to them recently and they do sound surprisingly good despite the (to use today's vernacular) "play counts".  I've always taken good care of my records but more on that in another post.

Most of my early vinyl consisted of what became known as "classic rock".  I built a modest collection of albums up til about 1986.  I didn't buy that many records post 1986 because CD's were really the thing so I figured "Why buy more albums when I'm gonna get a CD player soon enough?"  Inexplicably, I didn't get a CD player 'til 1989.

Once I got the CD player my record collection suddenly became, like for so many others, obsolete.  It had gone the way of Beta video tapes, 8-Tracks, and the powdered wig.  My record player lived in a closet.  I don't think I bought another piece of vinyl 'til 1993 when Pearl Jam's Vitalogy because it was released a week earlier on vinyl before the CD.  The next vinyl release I bought was Son Volt's Wide Swing Tremolo in 1998 for the same reason, it was released on vinyl a week before the actual CD release.  It wasn't until about 2003 that I slowly became converted or that I came back to vinyl "full circle", pun very much intended.  I slowly began to find plentiful slabs of glorious used vinyl!  I sifted through bins at garage sales and what record stores that remained in this world began to stock vinyl again.  I mean stocked records, not just a token few or a milk crate of records in the corner.  Entire sections of the store reverted back to vinyl!  Then artists began to release their new material on vinyl.  It even became hip with the "hipsters" and buying vinyl became the rage with all the kids.  New records come with a digital download for people to still listen to their records on their iPod.  This was the greatest idea in the download era.

To me, listening to vinyl is how music is really meant to be heard.  I've heard all the stories of a "warmer" sound with an actual record and while I can agree with that, I just like the idea of listening to vinyl actually creates a good "listening" atmosphere.  You have to actually spend time with a record, decide on which side, listen, spend time with the liner notes, stare endlessly at the jacket or gatefold, turn the record over, put on another record.  I listened to Led Zeppelin II for the first time in years (FM radio overload kept me from this record for eons), I opened the gatefold and I was transported back to being 17 years old star-gazing at the gatefold of Zep II.  Larger than life, indeed.

It's funny, as I write this first post of the new year praising the spinning of the black circle, I've been listening to all digital music in the form of mp3's on shuffle.  Go figure.   Enjoy your day and best of luck in the most important of life decisions, "side one or side two?"