A few years ago, I was working on a project that was going through a difficult phase. During that time, the History Chanel was running it’s engineering disasters 1 through 15 (?) and I would get home every night and watch each episode and think to myself that my problems aren’t that bad.
I’ve seen this bridge collapse on TV shows that feature engineering disasters BUT I’ve never had the pleasure to see this clip with the narration. I love that style of broadcasting. Thanks for sharing!
Some time back, a college chum of mine sent me a mix tape out of the blue. I was really excited to get it because he and I had been in separate bands at the same time back in the day, and while our tastes weren’t all that similar, there was a fair ammount of overlap, and the stuff he liked that I didn’t was at least interesting. I felt like I was learning stuff from it, even if I didn’t really enjoy it all that much, you know?
Imagine my surprise when the Mix CD (“Things I’m really in to now!”) was nothing but boring-ass hippie-crap songs by Crosby, Stills & Nash (Not even any Young!), and America and whatnot. If there’s a backbeat in there anywhere I can’t find it. Thinking it was a joke, I called him up, but, no, it turns out that he got less and less in to performing live, and settled on EZ listening from 40 years ago, and has somehow managed to convince himself that this kind of music – which we both scoffed at back in the day – is really great, and he can’t understand why I’d want to go off and listen to ‘new’ music when there’s so much great old stuff around.
Heartbreaking! I looked away for a moment, and when I turned back my friend had been replaced by a fogey. A really boring fogey, musically speaking.
Has anyone else out there had this happen to their friends? Or themselves? How does one cope with it?
In fact, I’m a big fan of lounge music, and I’ve got a CD of completely inappropriate Muzak covers of top 40 songs around here somewhere. I firmly believe that interesting things happen when you cover a song in a different style than it was recorded in intially (For instance, Reel Big Fish’s Ska covers of “Take on Me” and “Hungry Like The Wolf” or Lee Press-On’s swing covers of Oingo Boingo songs and “Hot for Teacher.”)
I got nothing against low and slow. I just don’t understand how someone can hit an age where they look at all the cool, neat, experimental music being done by so many people in the world and say “Nope, there’s nothing I want there. It’s all about boring, wheedly geriatric hippies playing useless songs I’ve already heard a thousand times.”
I guess it represents that people have lost the desire to challenge themselves a little bit. I’m not sure how that happens. Can you explain how all the joy and wonder went out of your life, Lars?
It’s hard to find the worthwhile among the new and figure that it will rise to the surface eventually. In my teen years there was a lot of nostalgia for the 60s and heard a lot of stuff from the era.
Since I’ve already visited that era, I’ve decided to bypass that time and go directly to music from the 20s and 30s. Forget the Beatles, I’m a fan of Whispering Jack Smith and Phil Spitalny and His All Girl Orchestra. Give me Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven…always cool and never boring.
TCW… I’m a big fan of the “test of time” when it comes to music, art, etc. Though there are undiscovered gems out there to be sure — maybe even form the 1960s or today!
Yep, undiscovered gems will emerge. Very well-stated. I’m not anti-anything contemporary just picky with my time. There’s so much to discover from the early part of the 20th century that I find plenty to keep me entertained. I have a better appreciation of music and movies by being familiar with what came before.
Absolutely not, John! I love it too and should have said so in my first comment. This clip so cool and has the bonus of no injuries save for the engineer’s pride.
back in the 80s MTV had a contest where the winner got to push the plunger on some old tenement building in NYC set for demolition (maybe it was tied to the movie of the same name?). Best contest ever.
Louis Armstrong kicks ass! He really does. As Joe Jackson once said, “Every medicine cabinet in the world should have some Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway records it it, just for emergencies.” I love Cab, I love Louis, I love the other Louis (Armstrong), and the third Louis (Prima) is frequently brilliant. I love 20s and 30s and 40s swing. I’m less enamored of the 50s swing Vegas sound, but it’s got it’s occasional charms.
Personally, I’ve never been one for nostalgia. I’m not one of those people to listen to 60s music becuase “There’s all the peace and love and it was an optomistic time to live and blah blah blah” crap. If I listen to it, it’s because I like the experiment that was Psychadelia, though I prefer the early, more experimental Prog Rock from the 70s that grew out of it. If I listen to 30s music, it’s not because I’m nostalgic for the time (Which, let’s face it, kinda’ sucked), but rather because it’s good, fun, complex, interesting music. I don’t want to live in the 80s again, but I like the sound, and I’m always interested to listen to bands from that era that I managed to miss the first time around.
Certainly the passage of time filters out a lot of the crap, but a lot of the good gets burried, too. I like launching out in to the trackless wastes of unpopular bands and genres, and seeing what gold nuggets I can find. Most people seem to go through that phase, and most people seem to grow out of it around college age. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Just weird I guess.
Floyd, that was a terrible, terrible song that I’d forgotten existed. Curse you for bringing it back to my attention!
Republibot 3.0, you mention a “third Louie,” but list Armstrong twice and Prima once. I assume one of the Armstrongs was meant to be Jordan? If not, he should be.
Guys we have a problem. I jsut got off the phone with my congressman’s office and the girl said they only have 22 dems voting NAY against the bill. CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN!
R3 its an open thread…and the health care vote is a tad more important than music. 1/6th of our economy….1.8 trillion dollars more in our buget deficiet.
@ Stephanie: Oh, I see. They don’t have humor where you’re from. I get it.
In any event, obviously you and I got off to a bad start, and I do think that we should chat and try to find some middleground where you and I can agree and get along like grownups. It shouldn’t be too hard to do, we’re both members of the same country, we speak the same language (English!), we’re members of the same political party, we worship the same God, and we both presumably exhibit physical bilateral symetry. Clearly, with all that overlap, we must have *something* in common. Email me here: three@republibot.com
Seeing Hillary Clinton giving another speech today, I have to wonder why she’s speaking so slowly lately. Is she smoking pot, or is she trying to speak like Obama?
A few years ago, I was working on a project that was going through a difficult phase. During that time, the History Chanel was running it’s engineering disasters 1 through 15 (?) and I would get home every night and watch each episode and think to myself that my problems aren’t that bad.
I’ve seen this bridge collapse on TV shows that feature engineering disasters BUT I’ve never had the pleasure to see this clip with the narration. I love that style of broadcasting. Thanks for sharing!
Some time back, a college chum of mine sent me a mix tape out of the blue. I was really excited to get it because he and I had been in separate bands at the same time back in the day, and while our tastes weren’t all that similar, there was a fair ammount of overlap, and the stuff he liked that I didn’t was at least interesting. I felt like I was learning stuff from it, even if I didn’t really enjoy it all that much, you know?
Imagine my surprise when the Mix CD (“Things I’m really in to now!”) was nothing but boring-ass hippie-crap songs by Crosby, Stills & Nash (Not even any Young!), and America and whatnot. If there’s a backbeat in there anywhere I can’t find it. Thinking it was a joke, I called him up, but, no, it turns out that he got less and less in to performing live, and settled on EZ listening from 40 years ago, and has somehow managed to convince himself that this kind of music – which we both scoffed at back in the day – is really great, and he can’t understand why I’d want to go off and listen to ‘new’ music when there’s so much great old stuff around.
Heartbreaking! I looked away for a moment, and when I turned back my friend had been replaced by a fogey. A really boring fogey, musically speaking.
Has anyone else out there had this happen to their friends? Or themselves? How does one cope with it?
Crosby, Stills & Nash and America are too edgy for me. I miss real Easy Listening with Mantovani and the 101 Strings.
We are the future. Get used to it.
This is for you R3:
In fact, I’m a big fan of lounge music, and I’ve got a CD of completely inappropriate Muzak covers of top 40 songs around here somewhere. I firmly believe that interesting things happen when you cover a song in a different style than it was recorded in intially (For instance, Reel Big Fish’s Ska covers of “Take on Me” and “Hungry Like The Wolf” or Lee Press-On’s swing covers of Oingo Boingo songs and “Hot for Teacher.”)
I got nothing against low and slow. I just don’t understand how someone can hit an age where they look at all the cool, neat, experimental music being done by so many people in the world and say “Nope, there’s nothing I want there. It’s all about boring, wheedly geriatric hippies playing useless songs I’ve already heard a thousand times.”
I guess it represents that people have lost the desire to challenge themselves a little bit. I’m not sure how that happens. Can you explain how all the joy and wonder went out of your life, Lars?
It’s hard to find the worthwhile among the new and figure that it will rise to the surface eventually. In my teen years there was a lot of nostalgia for the 60s and heard a lot of stuff from the era.
Since I’ve already visited that era, I’ve decided to bypass that time and go directly to music from the 20s and 30s. Forget the Beatles, I’m a fan of Whispering Jack Smith and Phil Spitalny and His All Girl Orchestra. Give me Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven…always cool and never boring.
And this is for you TCW:
TCW… I’m a big fan of the “test of time” when it comes to music, art, etc. Though there are undiscovered gems out there to be sure — maybe even form the 1960s or today!
Thanks, Floyd! That was the bee’s knees!
Yep, undiscovered gems will emerge. Very well-stated. I’m not anti-anything contemporary just picky with my time. There’s so much to discover from the early part of the 20th century that I find plenty to keep me entertained. I have a better appreciation of music and movies by being familiar with what came before.
The joy and wonder went out of my life when Diana Rigg left The Avengers.
[Huge, Evil Grin. Duck & Run]
Am I the only person who loves to see big shit go boom?
Absolutely not, John! I love it too and should have said so in my first comment. This clip so cool and has the bonus of no injuries save for the engineer’s pride.
back in the 80s MTV had a contest where the winner got to push the plunger on some old tenement building in NYC set for demolition (maybe it was tied to the movie of the same name?). Best contest ever.
Louis Armstrong kicks ass! He really does. As Joe Jackson once said, “Every medicine cabinet in the world should have some Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway records it it, just for emergencies.” I love Cab, I love Louis, I love the other Louis (Armstrong), and the third Louis (Prima) is frequently brilliant. I love 20s and 30s and 40s swing. I’m less enamored of the 50s swing Vegas sound, but it’s got it’s occasional charms.
Personally, I’ve never been one for nostalgia. I’m not one of those people to listen to 60s music becuase “There’s all the peace and love and it was an optomistic time to live and blah blah blah” crap. If I listen to it, it’s because I like the experiment that was Psychadelia, though I prefer the early, more experimental Prog Rock from the 70s that grew out of it. If I listen to 30s music, it’s not because I’m nostalgic for the time (Which, let’s face it, kinda’ sucked), but rather because it’s good, fun, complex, interesting music. I don’t want to live in the 80s again, but I like the sound, and I’m always interested to listen to bands from that era that I managed to miss the first time around.
Certainly the passage of time filters out a lot of the crap, but a lot of the good gets burried, too. I like launching out in to the trackless wastes of unpopular bands and genres, and seeing what gold nuggets I can find. Most people seem to go through that phase, and most people seem to grow out of it around college age. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Just weird I guess.
Floyd, that was a terrible, terrible song that I’d forgotten existed. Curse you for bringing it back to my attention!
Republibot 3.0, you mention a “third Louie,” but list Armstrong twice and Prima once. I assume one of the Armstrongs was meant to be Jordan? If not, he should be.
I’m sure he meant Louie Loui-I
(Thanks for the Bob Willis song, though)
you’re welcome R3.
Guys we have a problem. I jsut got off the phone with my congressman’s office and the girl said they only have 22 dems voting NAY against the bill. CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN!
I can’t really see what that has to do with people resigning themselves to a life of boring, repetetive music when they hit middle age, but ok, sure…
R3 its an open thread…and the health care vote is a tad more important than music. 1/6th of our economy….1.8 trillion dollars more in our buget deficiet.
My cousin posted this today, and I thought it was hilarious: Newsbleep Ponders Beverages
http://ow.ly/1608Gs
Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale this year is amazing.
that is all.
Link to the Hill apparently we have 29 Dems on the right side of this thing…we need 11 or 12 more…
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/66091-current-house-healthcare-bill-whip-count
Yikes!
Thanks for the link!
@ Stephanie: Oh, I see. They don’t have humor where you’re from. I get it.
In any event, obviously you and I got off to a bad start, and I do think that we should chat and try to find some middleground where you and I can agree and get along like grownups. It shouldn’t be too hard to do, we’re both members of the same country, we speak the same language (English!), we’re members of the same political party, we worship the same God, and we both presumably exhibit physical bilateral symetry. Clearly, with all that overlap, we must have *something* in common. Email me here: three@republibot.com
San-Fran-Nan is speaking.
I have it on mute.
we need 8 more dems to vote Nay…we are slowly creeping up. I don’t think Nan has the votes. Of course I have been wrong before…cross fingers..pray.
My congressman won’t vote for it.
Seeing Hillary Clinton giving another speech today, I have to wonder why she’s speaking so slowly lately. Is she smoking pot, or is she trying to speak like Obama?
Unless my information is wrong….we have 6 more Dems to go….Lincoln Davis is supposedly voting Nay to.
anyone out there, my mom is in the e.r. tonight, heart problems, please pray for her, thanks
praying for y’all Wanks…
Praying for your mother and you, Wankette.
Just saw this, Wankette. Pray she’s well.
I am, Wanks.