...or, bring your leader to us

 

The Washington Post had an article --- a highly skeptical one --- about UFOs, yesterday.

UFO Mania Is Out of Control.  Please Stop.

by Joel Achenbach

------------------ [excerpt] ------------- The lack of resolution to the UFO debate appears to be built into the inquiry.  The subject is interesting only to the extent that the phenomena under scrutiny remain mysterious --- and therefore outside the normal boundaries of logic, journalism and science.

__________________________________________

some of the Reader Comments:

^  The real aliens are just kicking back while their drones survey the situation and scare the humans.

^  Aliens made him write this to throw us off the scent.

^  "We have come for Donald, his mission is complete.  He has destroyed all common sense and intelligence in this place, the United States.......we will drop him in the land of China next....."

^  Maybe the weird things we have observed are semi-autonomous probes.

^  I hope one of them is NOT my ex-mother-in-law.

^  When is the last time you tried to talk to ants, and why would we?  Sure, a few scientists might want to, but most people find ants irrelevant or irritating.

We are the ants on the surface of the planet.

        That "they" (if these aliens do exist)  would want to communicate with humanity might not be reasonable thinking.  What would any very, very advanced civilization gain?  Can we, with our limits, even understand anything they are or want?  Do they even have goals or wants as we understand the concepts?

        We don't know anything about these things.

        Everything else is the same thinking:  "I see lightning, must be the gods.  I just proved I am right."

        We don't know anything, of any sort, about these things.

^  Extremely well thought out article.  However, I don't necessarily agree that "UFOs are a distraction".  For me, the idea of it all is more of an escape.  Much like the movies I watch, the books I read, the games I play, the music I listen to, pondering the possibility of other civilizations existing beyond ours is a breath of fresh air for me.  

        In fact, this recent "flap" has been the catalyst for some truly amazing conversations of late.  Then again, I approach the subject from a place of hope and not one of fear.  I'd like to think if anything could bring us all together, it'd be something altogether not us.

Either way, great job here.

^  It took a mere 120 years for us to go from powered flight to sending a semi-autonomous probe to another planet.  That is a blink of an eye, really, on the time scale of our galaxy.  We did it, it is completely plausible that someone sent a probe to our solar system.

An AI-based probe solves the problem of super long space flights.  It just turns on and phones home when it arrives. ... There is no green tentacled aliens in there driving.

I don't have the answer.  I just think that this is an important scientific problem.  And we should devote resources to observation and cataloguing of these things.  It is the first step to finding out what they are.

The data does not make any sense.  Which is a GREAT thing in science.  Let's gather some more data and figure this out.

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over my head

 

---------------------- [excerpt from Life, by Keith Richards with James Fox] ------------------------------- 

                          I grew up listening to really good music, including a little bit of Mozart and Bach in the background, which I found very over my head at the time, but I soaked it up.  

I was basically a musical sponge.  

And I was just fascinated by watching people play music.  

If they were in the street I'd gravitate towards it, a piano player in the pub, whatever it was.  

My ears were picking it up note for note.  

Didn't matter if it was out of tune, there were notes happening, there were rhythms and harmonies, and they would start zooming around in my ears.  

It was very like a drug.  

In fact a far bigger drug than smack.  I could kick smack; I couldn't kick music.  One note leads to another, and you never know quite what's going to come next, and you don't want to.  It's like walking on a beautiful tightrope.

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jukebox jumpin' with records

 

St. Louis, Missouri, in the 1940s when Chuck Berry lived there during his teenage years

"I made records for people who would buy them.  No color, no ethnic, no political--I don't want that, never did."

~  Chuck Berry

        "Back In The U.S.A." is another one of those jubilant songs from rock's early era that I first heard in the form of a cover version.  August 1, 1978 Linda Ronstadt's single "Back In The USA" was released -- from her album titled Living in the USA.

        I heard it, and felt that it was great -- and then I had to discover Chuck Berry and all his music, and he was the writer of that song -- released in 1959 on Chess Records, it was a hit for him then, and again for Ronstadt 19 years later.

        What was most surprising and exciting to me when I heard the Chuck Berry original recording was the presence of a sort of chorus of voices singing behind and against the main lyric, going

Uh-huh-huh,

Hoo  -  hah!

and

Uh-huh-huh,

Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah

or

Uh-huh-huh,

Oh  -  yeah!

This added component is like a party:  it expands the song's energy and deepens its groove and mystery; love it.

_____________________________________

You-Tube it --

There's a video on m.youtube in adblock, uploaded by

PowerBigMeat

that sounds really good --

and <PLAY>

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oh well-oh well, I feel so good today

 

We just touched ground on an international runway,

Jet propelled back home from overseas to the U.S.A.

New York, Los Angles, oh! - how I yearned for you

Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge

How I long just to be at my home back in ol' St. Lou!

Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway?

From the coast of California to the shores of the Delaware Bay

You can bet your life I did, till I got back to the U.S.A.

[instrumental]

Looking hard for a drive-in, searching for a corner café

Where hamburgers sizzle on the open grill night and day

Yeah - and the jukebox jumpin' with records like in the U.S.A.

Well, I'm so glad I'm livin' in the U.S.A.

Yes I'm so glad I'm livin' in the U.S.A.

Anything you want, we got it right here in the U.S.A.

I'm so glad!

(I'm so glad!)

I'm so glad!

(I'm so glad!)

...

_________________________________

Using a computer or device of your choice, listen to the record

"Back In The U.S.A."

by Linda Ronstadt

(On m.youtube in adblock, a video of this song uploaded by

JMEKJDH

has Good Sound.)

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all we've got to do is persevere

 

"Tumbling Dice" is a song from the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. album.

        They recorded the songs in France.

        ---------------------------- [excerpt from Life, by Keith Richards] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- We looked at studios in Cannes and elsewhere, reckoned up how much money the French were going to suck out of us.  Nellcote had a large basement and we had our own mobile studio.  The Mighty Mobile, as we called it, was a truck with eight-track recording machines that Stu had helped to put together.  

We'd thought of it quite separately from any plan to move to France.  It was the only independent mobile recording unit around.  

We didn't realize when we put it together how rare it was----soon we were renting it out to the BBC and ITV because they only had one apiece....

        So one day in June it trundled through the gates and we parked it outside the front door and plugged in.  I've never done any different since.  When you've got the equipment and the right guys, you don't need anything else in terms of studios....

        The basement in Nellcote was big enough, but it was divided into a series of bunkers.  Not a great deal of ventilation----hence "Ventilator Blues."  The weirdest thing was trying to find out where you'd left the saxophone player.  Bobby Keys and Jim Price moved around to where they could get their sound right----mostly standing with their backs to the wall at the end of a narrow corridor, where Dominique Tarlé took one of his pictures of them with microphone cables snaking away around the corner.  

Eventually we ended up painting the microphone cable to the horn section yellow.  If you wanted to talk to the horns, you followed the yellow cable until you found them.  You wouldn't know where the hell you were.  It was an enormous house.  Sometimes Charlie would be in a room, and I'd have to tramp a quarter of a mile to find him.  But considering that it was basically a dungeon, it was fun to work there.

        All the characteristics of that basement were discovered by the other guys.  For the first week or so we didn't know where Charlie was set up because he'd be trying different cubicles every night.  Jimmy Miller encouraged him to try down the end of the corridor, but Charlie said, I'm half a mile down the damn road, it's too far away, I need to be closer.  

So we had to check out every little cubicle.  

You didn't want to add electronic echo unless you had to; you wanted natural echo, and down there you found some really weird ones.  I played guitar in a room with tiles, turning the amp round and pointing it at the corner of the room to see what got picked up on the microphone.  I remember doing that for "Rocks Off" and maybe "Rip This Joint."  

But as weird as it was to record there, especially at the beginning, by the time we were into it, within a week or two, it was totally natural.  There was no talk amongst the band or with Jimmy Miller or the engineer Andy Johns, "what a weird way to make a record."  No, we've got it.  All we've got to do is persevere.

        We would record from late in the afternoon until five or six in the morning, and suddenly the dawn comes up and I've got this boat.  Go down the steps through the cave to the dockside; let's take Mandrax to Italy for breakfast.  We'd just jump in, Bobby Keys, me, Mick, whoever was up for it.  

Most days we would go down to Menton, an Italian town just inside France by some quirk of treaty making, or just beyond it to Italy proper.  

No passport, right past Monte Carlo as the sun's coming up with music ringing in our ears.  

Take a cassette player and play something we've done, play that second mix.  

Just pull up at the wharf and have a nice Italian breakfast.  

We liked the way the Italians cooked their eggs, and the bread.  And with the fact that you had actually crossed a border and nobody knew shit or did shit about it, there was an extra sense of freedom.  We'd play the mix to the Italians, see what they thought.  If we hit the fishermen at the right time, we could get red snapper straight off the boats and take it home for lunch. // end - excerpt.  

{Life   

Back Bay Books - 2010}

_____________________________________

On You Tube type in

tumbling dice, linda ronstadt

and listen to her excellent cover of this Rolling Stones song.

(The one uploaded by "Linda Ronstadt" has good sound.)

_________________________________

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Rock and Roll 101

 

When I listened to Linda Ronstadt's version of "That'll Be The Day" I used to think, "Who's Charlie Stark?"

But there is no Charlie Stark -- the lyrics say,

When Cupid shot his dart

He shot it at your heart...

That's where I would get sidetracked.

Both versions of that song are very rhythmic and bouncy--I like 'em all...Buddy Holly's unmistakable vocals sound so pure--like a midnight dream.

        Linda Ronstadt's band is in the '70s rock groove -- their track sounds like you're at a rock-and-roll lounge --

it's loungier, and scroungier.

__________________________________

Today's song is;

on You Tube, type in

tumbling dice, rolling stones

and <PLAY>.

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learning stuff backwards

 

I was in college when I first heard Linda Ronstadt's cover version of the Buddy Holly song, "That'll Be The Day."  I said to a friend of mine Kevin McNamara, who was a musician, "That is a great song, I love that!"  He replied that it was a Buddy Holly song.  I don't think I really knew from "covers" in those days, until he mentioned it.

Kevin McNamara.  (Approximately half of all men in the state of Massachusetts and especially Boston are named that.  Seems like it, anyway.

        It's like the name John Smith, or Jose Rodriguez.)

Kevin played guitar and sang, & wrote songs.  One evening I heard someone singing a Bob Dylan song in the stairwell of the dorm where I lived freshman year, so I followed the sound, and there he was.

I guess I did know that Peter, Paul & Mary had recorded a version of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind".  So I sort of learned about cover versions gradually as I encountered more music.

About a year later, listening to a bunch of Rolling Stones albums on loan to me from the apartment building manager (a law student), I heard the song "Not Fade Away."

        I remember excitedly informing somebody, "Listen to this Rolling Stones song, it's great!"  I start playing "Not Fade Away" and was swiftly informed -- 'that's a Buddy Holly song.  The Rolling Stones just covered it.'

So, a lot of the great early rock and roll songs, I discovered through cover versions.  Even Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" -- the first time I heard it was from a band called The Jaguars, playing in Cambridge.  Similar to when I heard "Not Fade Away" and "That'll Be The Day" -- I thought it was something new.  I asked the band's lead singer during their break what was the name of that last song, and did he write it.

        He loved that.

        (to his band-mate) -- "She thought we wrote Maybelline!"

_________________________________

And now, You-Tube Linda Ronstadt's record of "That'll Be The Day" and <PLAY>.

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