Thursday, August 29, 2013

The Newspaper of the Future

newsPaperOfuture

(THE JUGBAND SPECIAL - Onyx Water, Kansas) A guy reading a paper at a bar today is a slug from prehistory. But give that same guy a cell phone to read this paper and he melts into the crowd. That is how stupid civilization is, you know? I like to spread out the paper and eyeball the pictures, captions, headlines and pull quotes .. with a Bud. The conceit here is that I am a master of the universe in the world of ideas.

If you keep up with the raw technology advances (and have to give eternal credit to Steve Jobs for all the 'small' advances he packed into the iPod) you can visualize a sheet of foldable paper something on the order of a kindergarten roll blanket that would be backlit and would receive the paper from the ether. It is the mass of paper that is challenging the news business you know. I bought some newsprint sketch pad at CVS and it cost about the same as a daily paper with all its content and advertising. It would not share the resemblance to a Faberge Egg which an iPhone enjoys..but it would be somewhat hip.

Alternatively would be something on the order of 

!direct transmission of signals between the Daily Planet news room and the city's human brains!


as we saw discussed by UW researchers earlier this week in the august Washington Post. Listen up Bezos! Take a hint from my patented Newspaper of the Future schema depicted above. Ill back up the truck and you shuffle the money. It's the Ink talking!


Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Warm Heart-Calm Mind Vault




Dalai Lama Foxboro May 2009: The Dalai Lama spent a few days in Boston in May 2009, and Cecelia and I were able to go to see him in Foxboro at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. Thought I would try and herald his Holiness’s message. Call us the Modern Day Quicksilver Messenger Service.

You should, he said:

“Keep a warm heart – and a calm mind.”

Remember the kindness of your mother. He went on. The kindness of a mother is nurturing – it instills inner values. He remembers his own mother as very patient and kind.

“Avoid useless fear,” he said.

Remember, people who always say “I” “Me” “Mine” are at a higher heart attack risk.

It is important to remember: “Everyone is a human being.”

With a peaceful mind comes a peaceful atmosphere. More

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Cadillac Records from the Vault


Sitting here watching BET. Hey I did a review on this one.. From the Vault...Picks to Click and Picks to Nit To make a good movie requires some simplification, I suppose. If it is the kind of simplification that distills things to the essential - it improves on what is real but possible to overlook; so I won’t quibble with the fact that Phil Chess never exists in “Cadillac Records.” But other quibbling will this way come.The movie tells a good story and gets at many of the critical elements of the blues in Chicago in America in the 1950s, which is certainly worthy of motion picture treatment. So understand that. But see that it does so without dealing with the fact that Chess was run by the Chess brothers. The film says ‘so long’ to Phil Chess and focuses on Leonard Chess, who by most accounts was in fact the determined driving force behind Chess Records, the fabled label of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Etta James and many others. Ok. Need to go further. My friend Sunnyland Slim introduced Muddy to Chess Studios.. but his character doesnt show up here. Read more. Jack Vaughan, 2009

Sunday, August 18, 2013

From the Vaults:Microsoft debuts home server

targethomeserverpeoplework_colorNuno
Jack Vaughan with help of Nuno Texiera and Jacob Vaughan

Angels

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

From the Radio Weblog vaults Elmore James The King of the Chicago Feedback

Lately (Jun 2005) I've heard Elmore James anew. He could fix on a single note, but make it ring. Shame he died at 45, his heart exploded, with little mention. But he was in approach to music acutely aware somehow of a universal harmonics, a chord Elysium. And no one had it better. One extended chord that came up from Afrik to Greece by way of Hawaii and Mississippi. Circled the globe, Jack. No one dug more into the musical values of electric signals though they still be trying.

Always felt: ''It was Elmore James invented musical electricity.'' But the one-note-ness of Elmore I'd kind of come to take for granted as a limitation. The note bloomed, expanded, of late. Who know why? There is a ringing wood chime at my neighbors where I park my car, and all of music can be spawned from it essential sound. Dust my Blues too is inevitable.

Fleetwood Mac you know I've been listening too, I mean what they now call the Original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green. I was under-astounded when I first heard Fleetwood Mac in 1969 – that was because I'd already heard Elmore James. I dont think any group has more dedicatedly attached its star to one source artist. Now I love Fleetwood Mac, who were not too proud to do a dozen to two dozen Elmo songs on their first four or five records, Cream be damned. Listening to Peter Green, Mic Fleetwood, John McVie and friends –their stuff was hard to find -- set the table for my return to Elmore. [Too: I kind of rediscovered Elmore descendant Hound Dog Taylor again in years recent. And would footnote this discussion with the note that I did closely encounter disciple J.B. Hutto in the couple of years [circa 1978] before J.B. died.]

Classical distortion, that is what Elmore found. That is an intrinsic quality of blues music, where the note is bent and beautifully hurts, and the blues approach to life. And electronics provided a means.

Reading recently Jas Obrecht edited 'Rollin' and Tumblin': The Postwar Blues Guitarists,' [gift of Peter Bochner], I found it remarkable to learn that Elmore worked in his brother's Radio repair shop after getting out of the Navy. I can only guess that nonlinearity in amplitude response and non-uniform phase response caught his fancy. In harmonic electronic distortion, output tends to hold not only the fundamental frequency but integer multiplies thereof. The note that ripples like wavelets upon water. Call and response. Touch was key as well. But note: ELmore's select choice of slide implement was A METALLIC VACCUUM TUBE HEAT COVER SHEATHE!

If you trace It Hurts Me Too from Tampa Red through Elmore James to Hound Dog Taylor you see the abstraction unwinding and the resonance abounding. With Elmore scholar Hound Dog, the hum of his overpowered amp became the fourth band member.

Besides his cosmic control of feedback, Elmore had instrumental style. Plucked strings with bowing Hawaiian [sacred steel-like] chord shimmering - augmented intervals indefinite pitch, glide - portamento - sliding for purpose to blend notse - glissando... smooth in a gliding manner.

I remember hearing ''Dust My Blues'' – one more riff on his epic trademark flagship ''Dust My Blues'' -- on the grey Kent 45 thanks to Norman, who would select my free 45 to accompany an LP I'd buy at Soulville Records next to the Rialto theatre on Main Street in Racine in 1967. I've put a lot of miles on, and seen many ramifications and enhancements and extrapolations. But I've come back to that chord. - Jack Vaughan, June 2005

Monday, August 05, 2013

Bakuluna


Bakuluna

Hammers in the morning
Their scaffolding sublime
They are making student housing
In an empty lot was mine.

'Im going - I'm going - I'm going
You tell the tender closing
But you tarry slightly knowing
Nothing special holding.

Three-one the count, two men on
I hit a high fly into the stands
Rounding second headed for third
I realize it is a dream.
- Jack Vaughan, Aug 2013

Saturday, August 03, 2013

From the Vaults - Jeff Hull paintings.

Jeff Hull’s paintings transcend a life time; they cut through blue paradises of art think and explode, exotic, rich and watery. The ordinary world is here, and is seen in a universe of visual indications. Cells of modern mind float on the canvas, and one painting enters another. Images flop along side stones emanating molecular progressions. Color is all over the place, and you are on a magical ride. This art is feedback music in the domain of the eyeball. -Jack Vaughan, May 2006



http://moontravellerherald.blogspot.com/2006/05/art-of-jeff-hull.html