lonely fire

For the past 3 years, 11 months and two days, I have spent approx. 37.5 hours a week of my life here:

But no more! This Friday is my last day.  :)  In the picture there, you’ll notice my Hasler WJ250 Mail Metering Unit, fancy-pants touch screen ‘puter (viewing a certain infamous message board), and that brown box there left of center? That has someone’s ashes in it. I mail a couple of those out a week (long story).

Yeah,  I was planning on having some long, thoughtful essay on the nature of work and capitalism and yadda yadda yadda, but I’m just happy to be done and moving on with my life. You can read Working by Studs Terkel at your own leisure. I used to think there would never be a job that I could work that I would be satisfied with; but now that I’m a little older and have a better idea of how the world works in general, I feel that what I’m moving on to is the best possible choice I could ever make. I’m a much different person in many ways since I’ve started this job, and thats a good feeling.

Yeah, so if you’re in town, meet me at Dee’s in Regent Sq. for some taters and burrs! :) 

Stumbled upon this gem of a website last night, a source of reviews for psych and prog rock bands worldwide. It is especially worth noting the amount of info they have on one of their pages about Ya Ho Wa 13, the mothergod ur-root of hippie-commune-cult-worshipping-wack-job rock outfits for all eternity, as the following album sleeve and live photo will testify:

And King Fiery Jaguar Paw had yet another casually miraculous touchdown the other night:

sandy bull e pluribus unim electric blend

Xhol Caravan motherfuckers live side 1, first day (excerpt)

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band doc at the radar station sheriff of hong kong

Vladimir Ussachevsky Electronic and Acoustic Works 1957-1972 metamorphosis

Fire could you understand me jedan divian den

Juan de la Cruz band shake yr brains i wanna say yeah

Sir Lord Baltimore s/t hell hound

SRC s/t daystar

Kraftwerk 4 heavy metal kids

Adam Bohman & Roger Smith Reality Fandango the first question

Nels Cline/Chris Corsano/Carlos Giffoni Graduation side a, excerpt

Midnite Snake Shaving the Angel sacred mist

carlos santana/john mclaughlin love devotion surrender the life divine

Les Razilles Denudes high or die heatwave (excerpt)

Robbie Basho Venus In Cancer venus in cancer

gunter schickert Samtvogel kreigmaschinen, fahrt zer holle

So, anyone who’s recorded/edited music on a computer/digital audio workstation will be familiar with something like this:

Its just a visualization of the audio track you’ve recorded. I’ve always kinda wondered if the shape/outline of the audio given in DAWs was arbitrarily assigned, or agreed upon by some committee, etc. It turns out that it is (duh) a pretty accurate depiction of what sound really looks like (Mr. Obvious strikes again).

Manometric Flames and Phonodieks

Back in the 1860’s, predating Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, an instrument known as the Manometric Flame was used to visualize sound waves. In a nutshell, a manometer measures pressure; a flame manometer also measures pressure, with variances in the size of the flame it outputs (as a result of changes in the gas supply to the flame) indicating said pressure changes. If one of the walls of the gas chamber for the flame is a diaphragm of sorts, and vibrations of air, resulting from any acoustic instrument, act on that diaphragm in order to cause the pressure changes in the gas leading to the flame, the size of the flame will vary in kind. If you turn out all the lights, rotate a mirror in front of said flame, and take a picture of it, it’ll look like this:

Those particular examples are soundwaves of human speech, not sure what year its from.

The Phonodiek was developed a little later, in the early 20th century. The process is kinda complicated, but through sets of mirrors and lights, it allowed one to actually photograph soundwaves on film. The following examples came from a flute, clarinet, oboe and saxophone, respectively:

Follow this link for more info/better descriptions (and the sources of these pictures).

In the late 1920’s, when sound on film was developed, there were two different systems for it- variable density (basically an optical barcode) and variable area (similar to the DAW audio track above), which is still in use today, and is the template for the audio track that we see in DAWs these days

. How sound can be optically rendered onto film, and subsequently read off of it with light, totally fascinates me. Complete magic, if you ask me.

Here are some schematics of the optical sound recording process. Click on the pictures for a more in-depth explanations:

Here’s a link to a lil’ movie on the history of sound in film.

And did you know that Alexander Graham Bell used a human cadaver in his experiments for the phonautograph (a precursor to the telephone)? This article will tell you a little more about it.

And who can forget Greg Sage? Interesting tidbit about his pre-Wipers days cutting records, and studying the grooves therein. Warning- page loads with sound. Click.

So, while some people may be aware of this, not everyone is, so I might as well tell you about it… I have a special partnership with an ancient celestial soundwave being known only to me… When he is in communion with our recongnizable frequencies he prefers to be known by the title King Fiery Jaguar Paw. His mentorship over the past four years has provided with sound training (pun intended) in the esoteric arts of intergalactic hyper-synaptic wavebrain thoughtshare, conducted primarily through the forms and structures we here on planet earth understand as “music.” His guidance has been invaluable to me, as I navigate the spaces and times of universal expression and mythic apparition of form and purpose.  Some playlists from recent touchdowns include:

Artist    Album    TrackName  

Dr. John    gris gris    croker courtboullion 

OOIOO    green & gold     emeraldragonfly 

Shinichi Yuize    japanese koto    shinsencho bukyoku, pt 1     (shuttlecock) 

Seiichi Yamamoto    crown of fuzzy groove    mantral 

Ennio Morricone     Morricone High    astratto 1 

Baris Manco    prog is not a four letter word comp.    lambaya puf de   

Erkin Koray    1st album   askimiz bitecek 

Davey Graham     midnight man     the fakir 

John Berberian Ensemble    oud and the fuzz    oud and the fuzz   

Embryo    prog is not a four letter word comp.    music of today   

Herbie Mann    evolution of mann    turkish coffee 

Sweet and Honey     Live At Your Cosmic Mind   last cosmic people still dreaming 

Eyes and Arms of Smoke    birthing timbers     pt 1 

Tom Recchion    Chaotica     flying weather 

Terry Riley    persian surgery dervishes    pt 1- live april 18, 1971   

Sigur Ros    Von     hun joro  Panda Bear     Person Pitch    i’m not   

Parts & Labor    Mapmaker     long way down 

The Psychic
Paramount    Origins and Primitives Vol. 1 2    the perfect request

Artist       Album        TrackName

Ed Yazijan   [no value]   orange sky, black clouds 

 Masayuki Takayanagi    April is the Cruelest Month    we have existed 

 Picchio
del Pozzo   prog is not a four letter word comp    merta 

Stone Harbour   emerge    ride 

Georg Dueter    library record    pearls  Skip Spence   oar    little hands 

Remko Scha     machine guitars (live, kremlin, 1982)     sweep 

Grey Daturas/Yellow Swans    silver/gold    silver, track 2 

Ash Ra Tempel    schwingungen/seven up darkness-     flowers must die 

Cromagnon     orgasm     organic sundown 

 Cor Fuhler    Stengam    north south 

 The Psychic
Paramount    Origins & Primitives Vol. 1 2    dsinter blues recorder  Biota   Almost Never     burn daylight pt 2 

 Sun Ra     Heliocentric Worlds Vols. 1 & 2    of heavenly things 

John Cale    Stainless Gamelan     stainless steel gamelan 

Han Bennink     Tempo Comodo     brushes/air drumming  Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid    Tongues    the sun never sets 

The Los Angeles Free Music Society    The Lowest Form of Music    disc 6- foundation boo- slow piece #1

blah, blah, you get the picture.

Showtime: Thursdays, 10-midnight.

Showchannel: 88.3 FM on your radio dial, or www.wrct.org in your web browser. Program guide and various events calendars are also on the website.

And for now, I leave you with Bollywood Hippie Freakout:

(click on this link if the embedding didn’t work)

Greetings. This is just the obligatory first post. More info on yours truly can be found here and here. More to come soon.