New blogging topic: Digitizing vinyl

I've been looking for something interesting to write about, as I while away my time digitizing my extensive collection of vinyl recordings (a. k. a. "records"). The small voice inside my head, which sounds astonishingly like the small voice inside Wil Wheaton's head, sez, "Duh! Blog about what you're doing!". True that. The Vinyl Digitization Obsession (VDO) process itself is fascinating, and quite blog-worthy.

I'll get into technical details later -- details most of you will probably hate, since I still find Linux, command-line utilities, and shell scripts to be my best friends when it comes to getting anything done on a computer. For the initial post on the topic, I'd like to ruminate on the pleasures I've discovered in the activity.

Ripping a CD is not really enjoyable, but it is fast. I thought at first that "ripping" my albums would be tedious, since it has to occur in real-time. But that has become its charm. I have been listening to albums that I haven't touched in ages. Reacquainting myself with music that defined me as a young man. (Those ones are kinda scratchy.) Discovering albums that I bought at the end of the vinyl bell-curve that never got played at all due to the overlapping start of the compact disc bell-curve.

As I slog through them, I've found quite a few that deserve wider recognition. That's where the blogworthiness comes in. (I'm not sure I spelled blogworthiness correctly, even though I'm reasonably certain I made the word up.) As certain LPs catch my ear, I'll note them in the blog.

As we speak, I'm digitizing John Lennon's Mind Games. I don't ever recall noticing before that the song Out the blue is such a blatant rewrite of Sexy Sadie. I guess John was lucky he didn't have the same music publisher that John Fogerty did.

I'm Spider-Man

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 90% Superman 75% Supergirl 63% Robin 60% The Flash 60% Catwoman 55% Iron Man 55% Hulk 55% Green Lantern 50% Wonder Woman 43% Batman 40%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Lebanon from the inside

There's no better way to keep up with what's going on in Lebanon than by following the Manamania blog. The mainstream news will never tell the story of the Lebanese people as well as one of their own, especially one who writes as well as Mana does.

Her latest post is a wonderful picture essay of the solidarity demonstration engendered by Gemayel's assassination and funeral.

A Google bomb for a good cause

See this post to see what this is all about. I know having Scoble do it helps a lot more than my two-hits-per-day blog (thanks, Dad!), but it couldn't hurt.

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King

Endy Chavez!

Mets and Cards are tied 1-1 in the bottom of the eighth at this point. LaRussa just took Suppan out of the game after pitching a hell of a game. I gotta say, though, that whoever wins, the most amazing moment of any of the playoff games this year was Endy Chavez's catch of what should have been a home run by Scott Rolen. You'll see the clips over and over tomorrow. Wow.

Metablogging while watching baseball

This is the end, I hope, of another extended absence from the bjimblog.

It occurred to me while reading Dave Winer's posts on Scripting News that the reason I have these months-long gaps in the blog is that I try to make each post an major event. Dave doesn't do that. He's posting while watching the same Mets/Cards game that I'm watching. (Duncan just hit a home run -- Cards 4, Mets 2). I was treating posts too much like work.

Part of that was trying to add all those tags. I write directly in HTML, but don't want to have to remember the syntax for Technorati tags. I see that the new Blogger beta has a Labels for this post box below, so I'll start using that, and see what that does.

Concert review: Ringo @ PNC, Holmdel NJ

I have a mental checklist of musicians I would like to see in concert at least once in my life. Last night, I got to check one off the list, as I went to see Ringo Starr and his latest version of the All-Starr Band.

The whole idea of the All-Starr Band is brilliant. Much as I love Richard Starkey, MBE, I have to admit that it would be tough for him to carry a full-length concert on his own. He has always functioned best as just one Starr in a constellation. So, when he finally decided back in 1989 to give touring a go for the first time since the 1966 Beatles, he assembled a group of well-known friends like Clarence Clemons, Dr. John, and Billy Preston to join the band. He must have enjoyed the experience, since he's undertaken a new All-Starr Band tour every two years or so, inviting a new group each time. This year marks the ninth tour.

The All-Starr Band concert format is simple. Ringo starts out up front with a microphone, singing a couple of instantly recognizable hits. There is always a second drummer on the tour to keep Ringo free to play or not as the moment demands. After a bit, he retreats to his drumkit, and allows each of the All-Starrs to take a turn in the spotlight. Unlike most "host of special guests" concerts, however, everyone stays on stage and plays everyone else's songs. The resulting chemistry among the unlikely pairings is what gives these concerts their undeniable appeal.

This year's model features: 1980s MTV icons Billy Squier and Richard Marx as the guitarists, with Billy taking most of the leads; a somewhat older pair of icons, Edgar Winter and Rod Argent, on keyboards; third-time All-Starr Sheila E on drums, and the ever-reliable Hamish Stuart from the Average White Band on bass. That's it, brother -- no back-up band, extra synth players, taped backing, nothing. Every player in this band has had a Top 40 single at some point. And the thing that really struck me about this show is how much these folks enjoyed playing with each other. Billy Squier playing the lead on Marx's "Should've known better", Ringo and Sheila giving Rod a rock-solid foundation for his lead organ on "Hold your head up", and the whole band's incredible interpretation of Edgar's instrumental "Frankenstein" (the fact that a ferocious lightning storm blew through during the song didn't hurt the atmosphere) -- the pleasure that the band took in each others' talents could not help but please the audience as well. Of course, having Ringo as the Grand Old Man, reveling in the accomplishments of the rest, is the perfect touch. Still the same wise-cracking, ad-libbing Liverpudlian that he's always been -- during the storm, he asked if anyone in the band knew the chords to "Rain" -- he knows that the audience now looks to him as old Uncle Ringo, a living connection to All Those Years Ago, and he comfortably plays along.

As Ringo remarked before the band broke into "Yellow Submarine", "If you don't know the words to this one, you don't know why you're here." Well, we all knew, and we all sang, and a splendid time was guaranteed for all.

Tags: ringo, ringostarr, beatles, concert, review, music