Eight years ago I came up with this idea (I was 49 years old then), to write a weekly column for this here music zine/blog, but the idea flittered away and I never wrote issue two. Rereading “issue oneâ€, I really like how it came out and feel kinda bad that I neglected the potential that presented itself to me – to shoot the breeze, to ramble on, to string random ideas together into potentially seemingly cohesive streams of serious...
RICOH THETA S The Ricoh Theta S is a one-click device that creates flawless, high resolution 360 degree images, wow! I’ve never owned a camera like this before. I never imagined that there would be a camera that can do the things this one does. I’m just a photography enthusiast/hobbyist but I enjoy creating imagery that is unusual and eye catching. The potential that this camera has to easily create extremely eye catching images is phenomenal. One of the alluring...
Leave it to David Bowie to wrap a perfectly tongue-in-cheek idea in populist medium and make a celebration of it. That is, of course, precisely what the singer has done in licensing Earthling for a fresh vinyl pressing now, almost twenty years after the album was originally released. Confused, reader? Let me clarify it for you: when Earthling was first released in 1997, much ado was made about how the music was recorded as well as the equipment which was...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 112 A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Too LP by Fidlar DATE: 12-09-15 WRITER: Bill Adams What is it about punk rock which lends itself to vinyl recordings so effectively? To be fair, Fidlar’s sophomore album, Too, also sounded good on CD, but those who have heard both and have to choose won’t be able to deny that vinyl is the ideal medium for this release. On CD, the music is mastered too high...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 109 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day-released ‘If I Can Dream’ single by Elvis Presley. DATE: 11-27-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It’s funny how, under the right circumstance a string section can really take a song to another level. Take Both of the tracks included on the Record Store Day-issued Elvis Presley 7” singlem for example; if you’re familiar with both “If I Can Dream” and “Any Part of You,” dear reader,...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 104 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into The Complete Albums Collection box set by Simon & Garfunkel DATE: 11-26-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It’s almost unfathomable how productive Simon & Garfunkel was in such a short time. While the duo first got together in 1957, they released their first album together in ’64 and their final album in 1970; that means the group released five albums within six years and set a legacy in stone as...
TITLE: I Wanna Be Literated! 094 A critical evaluation of Nowhere Men Volume 1: Fates Worse Than Death Trade Paperback by Eric Stephenson and Nate Bellegarde DATE: 12-03-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman How exactly does Nowhere Men manage to fit so much into so little? Maybe because it’s the kind of comic that practices what it preaches… at least in the sense that it brings together a super-team which, unlike the protagonists in this story, actually manages to achieve something greater that themselves. ?Nowhere...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 110 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into the Live in Denmark, 1971 2LP by Johnny Cash DATE: 12-04-15 WRITER: Bill Adams Maybe the coolest thing about the listening experience of Man In Black: Live In Denmark 1971 is the genuine reality of it. See, the nature of live albums in the twenty-first century has become focused on single artists; modern live albums simply compile a series of tracks which happened to be recorded (often in...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 111 A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the A Legend In The Making–Live at El Mocambo 2LP by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble DATE: 12-04-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It’s a far more rare event now than it used to be thanks to the internet digitally bootlegging music and making it all available for the downloading, but there are some albums which are regarded as lauded and collectible – even now. These albums are usually...
TITLE: I Wanna Be Literated! 093 A critical evaluation of The History of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell DATE: 11-26-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman You have got to give props to my main man Bertrand Russell for pulling off such a magnanimous project and pulling it off so well. As he says in the introduction, the key to writing this book involving a rundown of the entire history of Western philosophy is to touch on each of these guys just enough so...