moon traveller herald

About ready to take a summer vacation. Will post a 'greatest hits' of the last 12 months. [Geez, just had a durn podcast blow up in my face [wouldn’t move from one machine to another - it was cool; it was called Experiment in Abstraction - it discussed hillbilly hipsters, the King, and the Kinks. In the meanwhile, I will travel a bit, hike. Will fool around with Facebook . At work asked to ratchet up social mdeia effort so I am a twit on twitter. Might revive RJ-11 science blog for experimental purposes. Service-Oriented Software Architecture - if you didn’t know - is a big part of my time, and this is a good time to focus effort there - while, as I said, doing some vacating. Most key: Have an important electronic music history project that needs fruition. -Jack Vaughan

This week MoonTraveller Herald marks the orbit of the Moon of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which got there, what, aboutentered orbit around the moon the morning of June 23 after a four-and-a-half day journ 40 years after the first humanoids? In honor we run this YouTube clip ''Dedicatory Piece to the Crew and Passengers of the first Experimental Rocket Express to the Moon'' by Raymond Scott courtesy of the folks at SCLOGSE . ################################################ On American Routes radio , there was a very interesting vignette about Raymond Scott, and enthralling related conversation with Bob Moog – maker of the Moog synthesizer. Scott was a key composer behind some of the looniest Looney Tune music, and a force in electronic music. He had a stint as the orchestra leader for the Lucky Strike Hit Parade, but his very modern sounding music - he was entranced by the sound of the modern, much as one of his influences, Duke Ellington. What I d...

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. Adrien Brody gets the role of Leonard – he plays it well but brings more hair to the role than a literal take on Leonard would call for. Leo...

The Dalai Lama spent a few days in Boston, 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.” That is the basics. Yes, pretty basic. But you got to go back to basics, right? Sometimes. When you are a hitter in a slump. Or a golfer turning duffer. “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. He rode on her shoulders until he was three, and he would pull on one or the other of her ears to tell her the direction he wanted to go. He laughed remembering this spate of youthful cruelty – he laughed many times in a disarming an infectious way. We could not see the Dalai Lama especially well. We were no clos...

This is a failure. I think with blogs that wasn’t ever meant to be much of an issue..as a result, we have oceans of gunk in our information bitstream! Mea culpado! I was always impressed by Mahalia’s “Move on up A Little Higher” – the words are amazing, I’ve heard a couple of versions. But the enchantment is mostly about her singing of this song. But, like, say, the Staples’ “Last Month of the Year,” it got into my blood. “I’m going to move on up a little higher. Feast with the Prophet Daniel. I’m going to move on up a little higher. Meet my loving mother.” “I’m going to move on up a little higher. Feast of the Rose of Sharon. I’m going to move on up a little higher. And it will be always ‘howdy-howdy’ .. and never good by.” The description by the poet is of a leaving. Dying. But seen not in the sense of internment. But seen instead in terms of advancement. This is one essence of Black American vision that resonates most especially for me: There has got to be a better world anywhere. S...

Leonard Cohen is out of the stupa, out and about again. Thought about seeing him yknow. BUt the freight was heavy and it wasnt in the cards. So there I was. Yknow. And I saw a DVD at the Video Underground in Jamaica Plain. This DVD was a serious dissappointment. If I had time to rag on it I would. But suffice it to say that I liked Leonard's brief intermediary commentary. And I liked his one number [The Tower of Song] he did at the closing with U2. So go to try and buy it as an iTune. Nope, buddy, no luck, got to buy the whole soundtrack album to get that one. And why not? The parade of muscians in the movie proper are a bunch of turds that. taken together, do not make one shit. I shook hands I suppose with Leonard Cohen once..it was the Mercer Center in NYC, on an intermidable intermission waiting for the New York Dolls to wake up or hop up and go on finally. "I really like your music," I said. He was polite. Ok. So I am listening to the old birdon the wire's records...