moon traveller herald

"We may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it." — Claude Shannon Claude the AI greeted me with some American style patter. 'Ready to clock in for the evening shift!' it said at 4pm. Then I responded ...  I used to clock in! Simplex! Hey! I'm not quite sure what you mean by that — could you give me a bit more context? Are you talking about a job you used to have, a game, or something else entirely (like the "Simplex" method in math, a band, a product)? Simplex made time clocks Ah, got it — Simplex Time Recorder Company! They were (and still are, in some form) one of the big names in mechanical time clocks — those punch clocks where you'd insert a card and it would stamp the time. Sounds like you're reminiscing about clocking in on one of their machines. What kind of job was that for? I'm always curious about the mechanics of those old punch clocks too — the ka-chunk sound, the i...

  Ran in 2008 Bo Diddley died. There are probably some competitive flamenco cats that I am not aware of - but I would rate him greatest rhythm guitar player of all time. The guitar as percussive motivator in his hands was total banshee force, but full of invention. He also had a lyrical approach that was in its turn incredibly rhythmic and original and also humorous. Mona, Who Do You Love, You Cant Judge a Book, Road Runner .. so many numbers that were part of my best days. He created a foundational style of rocknroll and he did so by reinventing the instrument called the guitar. Who would say he did not have his hand on the pulse of his time as much as the Nasa astronauts or the Beats? Say Man, Mumbles, Ride on Josephine, Cadillac, Cops and Robbers. His super session with Muddy Waters and Little Walter. An all instrumental Checker record of his I used to have. Certainly unique. Some good articles have traced his tremendous influence. Let me add a few: The Doors doing Who Do you Lo...

  A link to Chicago Northwestern by Juicy Lucy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlcrduUahU4 Might have heard this song on WTOS-FM [Wauwatosa] . About 5 years short of US 200th Birthday. The song was immediately resonating: As this was a rail line I often took. Took to, really. British group Juicy Lucy may have taken to the Chicago Northwestern too. There is a dark tale to tell. They morphed it in their song back to the Western Days when Liberty brought destruction to the Native Americans. You have to listen close to hear it, and I point out specifically here that this is biting satire accomplished for illumination. Juicy Lucy does not condone the terrible toll of the Beautiful Train. Shown below: That's my train.

 

 

Grandma couln't write. The kids took jobs.  A sister went to teachers' college. The baby My father went to BC.  Fashioned himself after Dick Powell. Read Milton and Shakespeare. He wanted to go into advertising. Was told you might have to go to New York for that - as this was Brahman   Boston. This was the mid 1930s and there was no job. Well, did some pipe fitting in the Navy Yard. Riding the subway in asbestos laced work clothes. The, promoting/selling Lucky Strikes, store to store and bar to bar up to Maine.  He gets an interview on Stillings St with Johnsons Wax. "Why should I hire a college man?" he's gruffly asked. He labors to field the rough query. Walks out and says to self "well I won't get that one.' But he gets hired. The boss was trying to see how he reacted under pressure. Now, a very long haul followed. Including 6 years in Army. But he always ready to sell the idea of a liberal education. Colleges increasingly are vocational. I don...

Why I like Shadow Ticket - For a Wisconsin guy who lived in Milwaukee for two years, the Wisconsin part of this book is a big treat. Been reading Thomas Pynchon since V [actually, before that, the short story Entropy] and this book is just a thrill. It starts with an explosion ["a pineapple" in the 20s dialect] near the Lake. Eventually, a submarine is discovered in the Lake - an WWI Austro-Hungarian job that is running rum]. It’s always back to the Lake, the beer, the cheese and the Mob. The Milwaukee Mob appears in the first words of this book. This mob was a Franchise Outlet for the more prestigious Chicago operation…but if they got you, that distinguishment on the pecking ladder of crime meant little difference.   I like what I will call word flow, somewhat like stream of consciousness, most vividly represented by the Irish Modernist James Joyce. Thomas Pynchon is among few authors capable of such composition; in his manner, a novel can b...

 One by one the musicians that defined my generation are passing. I focus here on a few of these spirits that I was lucky enough to see. These are Garth Hudson, David Johansen, Barry Goldberg, Eddie Palmieri, Mark Volman, and Steve Cropper. Let's not be somber. Let's make a Joyful Noise ... I remember ... Lucky Paths Crossed ...  GARTH HUDSON - January 21, 2025 - I borrowed a bicycle to go to the ticket window at Dane County Auditorium to see The Band. They were doing the Stage Fright tour. We had gigantic imaginations in those days and cycled around the Auditorium twice, in case Bob Dylan might be found lurking. At the concert when the lights went out we joined  the crowd that ran for the front and settled in yoga positions on the floor with about a 40 foot distance to the stage. When Garth Hudson played Bach and segued into Phantom of the Opera Scale Chest Fever lead in, one could see the musical waves floating in the rafters. He was the last of The Band. I am so glad...

You have to go to "True Water Beavers, Thoughts on"  [apr 2016] to figure out why this is here at all. Click!

David W. posted some Zabriskie ruminations on Facebook...and linked to a very deep dive site on our Famous Fort Hill Neighbors. " If inclined, take a deep dip into the messianic screed of Mel Lyman, an unfortunate cultural digression from the "peace and love" ethnos of the sixties... https://www.trussel.com/f_mel.htm

  So last night, Star Trek was really good. StarTrek Next Generation? No, the regular, vanilla plain Star Trek, classic, original.  Season Two. Episode Two. They're flying through space, you know, and this big hand, gigantic hand, comes out at them.  And then when they study it, they say, well, it's not a hand .. doesn't have any flesh. It's some kind of energy field. And the hand just stops the Enterprise and starts squeezing it  Spock is looking at the scanner, and then he puts the cycle in the frequency, and they're talking to the thing over their futuristic TV phone wall display, and a face appears, and it's Apollo, from the Greek myths. He has their ship in doldrums. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, in the end, they discovered that what the original Greek myth figures were - were aliens who landed in the Mediterranean in ancient times, and, you know, left some stories for people, and then took off.  I don’t like when people suggest that Indigenous c...

  INFINITE FEEDBACK LOOP OF TIME - With regenerative and frequency modulation circuits in the early and mid 20th Century, Edwin Howard Armstrong employed feedback to great effect. The improvement in fidelity between AM and FM radio being Armstrong’s greatest achievement. One could say Armstrong took a cue from mechanical and electrical thermostats that had evolved over the previous 100 years. The work on the thermostat arguably morphed into the autopilot. All these feedback-based inventions spurred scientific thought, and the birth of Cybernetics under the tutelage of Wiener, McCullough and others. Overtime, Feedback loops were understood as essential to how natural and artificial systems were regulated to maintain stability. Ultimately, with the term ‘Cybernetics’ well in the rear-view mirror, researchers followed feedback to form the basis for recurrent Neural Networks’ use in Natural language processing.  The neural nets’ ability to analyze sentences and predict the next wo...

 He was the Indian of the group, he'd say, quoting Jimmy Carl Black of the Mothers. I remember when we saw J.Geils, who were opening for Ten Years After at Madison Coliseum. After Geils played and Ten Years was on, and We were standing up front and Jim sneaks his long-haired head from just behind the stage curtain. Points to mime come stage left and I will get you inside. Looked very Injun. A scout. And we hung out with the J.Geils Band. Getting arrested by Officer "Hash" Halverson at Cambridge Castle apartment near Brady St. We had the speakers (each as big as a washingmachine and one pointed out the open apt door) listening to Voodoo Child when the Squid arrived. In his wood shop by a turn in the Root River - right in the city but very rural. A strange overgrown patch off Memorial Dr. Showing incredible turned wood working. I think his company was called Dovetail. Discussing fending off varmints with shotgun. Singing deeply 6 Days on the Road, It’s Dark as a Dungeon Way...

In 1967 my parents took a monthlong tour of Europe, leaving me, my brother and sister with my aunt and uncle in Milton Mass in some pseudo farm and horse country outside of Boston. This was a serious dislocation from my high school friends who I was sure we're having the most wonderful summer ever at North Beach In the day and the Point at night. All I had was records I’d brung along [Happy Jack, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, The Grateful Dead, Moby Grape and Sgt. Peppers(5a)] and a little turntable. That is like: background. One night on tv there was a show about ‘hippies’. They had these guys on, and I would bet they were from the commune that John identified: The True Light Beavers. The joke was one of them had a basketball uniform top on saying “True Light Beavers”. I knew it was a put on. And I liked it. They took their name from the shirt they found at a Goodwill. Are you religious? The moderator asked. Yes, they said. Our religion is called the True Light Bea...

  I was posting this to Jim Haas's Al Compas site - It is abbreviated versus version on this site . Jim had posted I'm a Little Mixed Up as part of his show.  Ode to Betty James - On a sunny Derby Day/Milwaukee/the East Side/up by the pagoda-looking gas/station around 1971 / got lost /got lost just / a few blocks from home. /And kids came out / climbing over rubble /singing "hippies in town" / singing "hippies in town" / me and dave and jim did / a sort of cold tremble / when a car engine would start /it was like a slow explosion / as we found our way / got back to the pad / and there is an old hippie / fellow traveller playing / I'm a Little Mixed Up -JV

  Why did the band Television call itself television? To me, the singers were bathetic – overly off key, gushy, posing – posing as singers or feeling human beings anyway. So if they were thinking Television is lacking in human feeling, they picked a good name. They were in the punk days * , in New York, where lack of talent was not a show stopper. Was the name an attempt to challenge the dominant medium? To bring it - and all its production values - down from its pedestal? McLuhan called it medium cool. I am not too satisfied with the Internet's answers to these questions. I'd say by the time of the band Televison, TV was a drone - a hissing signal that put nations to sleep. Iggy had previously come up with "She's got a TV eye on me." I guess that is about whatever comes to your mind. Maybe the drone or the stare of TV is what Television was critique-ing...McLuhan focused on the CRT emissions and electromagnetic field effect possible ... and its effect on libido/p...

Bedrock City Flintstone World lasted a long time. Here's how it all started. And a lesson to be learned on Chef Boyardee. 

  On the town. Twas the second annual Ed Raymond OffBeat Freedom Trail trek. Fort Independence on Castle Island (where Sgt. Edgar Allan Poe heard the tale that became The Cask of Amontillado) Foley’s on Berkeley (where the Boston Police Strike of 1919 was fomented), the Malcom X mural in the Station formerly known as Dudley, Roxbury puddingstone, Mission Church. Also playing records. And wrap up picking stones on the beach (with a geologist!) and sea food at Wollaston Beach with the friends and family. Here I might list some cool spots in Boston/Cambridge IMHO. Castle Isle In Your Ear Records Stero Jack's Records Foleys in the South End Mission Hill Fitzgerald Park Mission Church Public Garden Longfellow House Harvard Yard The Glass Flowers Amelia Earhart Statue Maj. Shaw Statue John Kennedy birth place Edgar Allan Poe birth place The Emerald Necklace Olmstead's Workshop River Charles Braves Field Lexington Green

The Bold Stump reunion brought together John Ruetz, Mike Brusha, Jim Haas, Jeff DeMark, Paul DeMark, Syd Matterrer and myself, and here I provide some background thoughts on preparation of the presentation. In my imagination, it was a little journey on music toward the "castle of heaven." Mars Cheese Castle Hwy I-94 My boy-0’s and I put a lot of effort into the undertaking. It being our 3rd appearance as The Bold Stumps at George’s Tavern on Main St in Racine Wis., more than a few twists and turns had occurred. That's since our 2018 outing at George's . A change in the band this year, as Bob Stepien retired from the grind, and Syd Matterrer took up the bass on this. Twists, turns and Stumbles - not the least of which was the global COVID pandemic. Cue the Blues: “That’s life”. Several of our players are pros - I am not one of them. For me it was a learning experience in collaboration, negotiation and expression. I felt I could deliver the songs if I could inhabit the...

Have a poem yall...two from the Vault combined. Taking vacation - see you there after! - JV i. Waiting for Bob La France to pick me up in the Long Red AMC Marlin All anticipation in the night of Nitty Gritty Playing Wilson Pickett's Greatest Hits in the anticipation Eyeballing a zit in the truth-telling mirror Getting psyched When Everybody Needs Somebody shook the radio Entering the long dark dusty archive - Soulville - to get the 45. And I Found a Love. 634-5789 - A Racine Exchange! ii. But the Juke Box at the Lucky Cue is the altar where we share these offerings.  he Lucky Cue was punk for us!  Recall The Cue: You walk in there and the juke box is playing.  Two long rows of greenfelt tables, pinball machines up front, more tables and a mezzanine level in the back.  And the juke box is playing  96 Tears,  Sometimes Good Guys Dont Wear White,  You Gonna Miss Me, and  Pushing Too Hard, by  Question Mark and the Mysterians,  the Standells...