Chalkhills Digest, Volume 14, Number 3

                Saturday, 19 January 2008

Topics:

                   Generals and Majors
                   Under the Blacklight
            Cleaning Those Ears; Purest Analog
                  Long live dynamics...
            Dave remembers "Complicated Game"

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It's hardly love all and somebody might / Wind up red or dead.

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Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 16:13:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Versaci <michael_versaci@yahoo.com>
Subject: Generals and Majors
Message-ID: <176222.53799.qm@web30907.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Folxtc,

That video from Australia brought back some memories.

I saw them in '81 in NYC.  I had only just started to like them,
having no idea at the time just how fortunate I was at the prospect of
being able to see them, and how much pleasure and insight I would get
from their music as the years rolled by.

They blew me away.

If you're wondering what record you might have missed in '07 I would
strongly recommend "Shrunken Heads" by Ian Hunter.

- Mike

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Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:00:08 +0000
From: Robert Wood <robert.wood@apostrophe.co.uk>
Subject: Under the Blacklight
Message-ID: <47896298.5060905@apostrophe.co.uk>

Briefly coming out of lurk mode to say I found Simon's long email about
digital music and hot mastering very interesting and agree mostly with
it. I do take issue with the Rilo Kiley issue though. Their latest
album, Under The Blacklight is excellent and Jenny Wassname is an
excellent lyricist.  Oddly  enough I found More Adventurous to be an
average album apart from the excellent Portions For Foxes and even with
that what turns it from being good to excellent are the lyrics.

All together: we're all different! :~)

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:42:07 -0500
From: Kevin <dancingweed@optonline.net>
Subject: Cleaning Those Ears; Purest Analog
Message-ID: <000601c8559e$a7fe3e30$e92c2d18@Kevin>

To homefrontradio@hotmail.com:

You said:  <<To sum up, although it seems like snobbery, the 80db range of
vinyl is a more natural fit for human ears, and it's impossible for our ears
to become fatigued in the same way via analog.  I'm investing in a
high-quality record player, and going to start tracking down the music I
like on vinyl.  If it has to be only old music - well, I can safely live
with that.  (I'm now thinking the 7" Apple Venus Box is a very good
investment indeed).>>

For the most part, I agree with you, but my question is where do you get a
good quality record player, or entire stereo system for that matter?  I find
that they're not even making receivers as good as they used to, and you
don't get the dynamics, highs and lows and stereo separation that you used
to get on most older stereo systems, and I'm talking receivers, speakers,
the whole works!  I'm so sorry now that I got rid of my older receiver in
favor of one that allowed me more inputs.  I made the comparison between
audio recordings that I'd made from the older system and those made with my
current equipment, and it is amazingly poorer.  So I don't think that it is
only the changeover from vinyl to CD's that is the problem, but it has to do
with the equipment in general that we are listening to our entertainment on.
People think that if it is bigger and louder, it is better.  Just as I think
that just because the performance is in a stadium doesn't make it better, I
say that the fancy-looking receiver isn't going to give you cleaner sound.
As a blind person, I tend to rail, these days, against newer technologies,
most importantly because it becomes more and more inaccessible to us; so my
beef here is not just the changeover to CD's and the loss of dynamics.  And
they call that progress?  Excuse me for thinking that the word "progress"
always went along with the word "constructive"!

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:07:01 -0000
From: "Tim Harris" <tim@wordsrus.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Long live dynamics...
Message-ID: <006901c8561f$de4b2260$9b01a8c0@wordsrus>

Thanks Simon for highlighting the War on Loudness

Subject: The Sound Of Music
Message-ID: <BAY128-W405C6B36D1F626C0CEAED0D0530@phx.gbl>

As an occcasional home studio recorder who moved from portastudio cassette
to hard disk
12 or so years ago Ive fallen in the trap!
I still use Cool Edit Pro (now absorbed into Adobe Audition) - and the magic
amplitude effect that is so easy to run away with is the
Hard Limiter.
I too was amazed when I first saw Oasis tracks ripped from CDs - where
everything is flat (hard limited) right up at the threshold of distortion!
The daft thing is that digital is able to do away with so much of the hiss
and other unwanted noise. Surely that is better for expressive dynamics than
vinyl should be!

Tim Harris

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:22:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Todd Bernhardt <beat_town@yahoo.com>
Subject: Dave remembers "Complicated Game"
Message-ID: <249387.98174.qm@web32007.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi:

Over at the XTCfans MySpace site (http://www.myspace.com/xtcfans), the
song of the week is "The World Is Full of Angry Young Men," recorded
during the Mummer sessions and released as a B-side in 1989.

In addition, Dave -- who plays some lovely piano on the song -- talks
about some of the technical (and not-so-technical) details of
recording and performing "Complicated Game," last week's song of the
week. Check it out at the XTCfans blog site
(http://blog.myspace.com/xtcfans).

Angry young men
What you put in is what you get out

-Todd

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End of Chalkhills Digest #14-3
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