The sound!
The legendary track on "McCartney" is "Maybe I'm Amazed."
I was immediately enraptured by "Every Night," I came to love "Teddy Boy," but now my favorite is "That Would Be Something."
How could an album so slight seem like such a masterpiece today?
Starting with "The Lovely Linda" and ending with the almost bizarre instrumental "Kreen-Akrore," "McCartney" sounds like what it was, an album cut alone, outside the spotlight. It's like a vision into Paul's soul.
"That would be something
It really would be something"
It most certainly would! But you're hooked on this track long before Paul starts to sing. In an era of beats, of fake, the guitar sound penetrates, and with Paul's dancing bassline you're immediately infatuated.
And then there's the humming. The "mms." That's what makes the song magical. It's always the little things, thrown off, that penetrate us, that we can't let go of, that we want to be closer to. Oh, to have Paul hum to us, it's better than a wink, even though he's one of the most famous winkers of all time.
And then comes the percussion, almost a shuffle, with a cymbal, he's adding elements, drawing you ever closer, to the point where you can't detach.
"That would be something
To meet you in the falling rain, mama
Meet you in the falling rain"
The weird thing is that's exactly what you feel like. Like you're strolling down a wet street after dark, head bowed, thinking of the milk you've got to buy, and coming in the other direction is none other than Paul McCartney, you lock eyes, he raises his eyebrows and smiles, and then you both move on.
Wow!
And all that happens in two minutes and thirty nine seconds. There's nothing superfluous, no more is needed, it's such a contrast to a world where everybody believes an album should be seventy minutes and you've got to stretch out on a track to make your point, never mind add enough elements to demonstrate your prowess and impress your audience. But the truth is the mark of expertise is the ability to leave even the best stuff out. It's always got to be in service to the ultimate production.
Paul seems to be having so much fun, not overthinking it, just getting down what he's got in his head, further inspired by what he lays down.
And then there's the coda, an unexpected ending winking at you, waking you up when it's almost done, kind of like "Her Majesty" on "Abbey Road."
And despite all the hogwash about compression, the loudness wars, the lame sound of files, even streamed "That Would Be Something" maintains its magic, the same way so much of the greatest music of our lives sounded spectacular emanating from the speaker in the dashboard.
"That Would Be Something" was never a hit.
Nothing on "McCartney" was ever a hit. Sure, "Maybe I'm Amazed" got some FM airplay, but really the album was a brief note from Paul to us, to the listener, to be played alone at home. Reviews were not spectacular, neither were sales. No, don't get me wrong, it was far from a stiff, it just didn't have the impact of a Beatles LP.
But all these years later, "McCartney" stands out. As uneven as it may be, as slight as it may be, it's still better than any album released this year.
And if you get too deep into the details, you're gonna miss the point. Because it's truly all about the sound, the magic, the je ne sais quoi.
And nothing embodies this as much as "That Would Be Something."
If only someone this talented, with this good a voice, could throw something off like this today.
Impossible.
Spotify link: http://spoti.fi/1p1MITb
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Friday, 21 November 2014
Tuesday, 18 November 2014
It's A Pop World Because...
1. We all want something to rally around, something to discuss, a club to belong to, and right now pop is it.
2. Popularity breeds popularity. That which gains traction and sustains, becomes ever bigger.
3. They know it's about the song. Hooks, choruses, catchiness. If only other musicmakers realized this. Never forget, the Beatles didn't break these rules, and they could sing too!
4. The younger generation driving pop has never experienced anything different. Sure, they might have heard some classic rock via their parents, maybe, never forget today's kids were not brought up by baby boomers but Generation-X, but they're a post-Napster generation to whom fluffiness and selling out are de rigueur. They don't know about musical credibility, being able to either play or be true to only yourself, because they've never experienced it. Meanwhile, all those hewing to their own rules, marching to the beat of their own drummer, consistently break rule #3 above.
5. Radio rules. Bigger than Pandora, bigger than Spotify, bigger than YouTube when it comes to breaking acts. There's no pull, it's all push. You don't get to decide what's playing, you're subject to it. Furthermore, the pop stations are run like upbeat clubs wherein possibilities are endless and you're just a step or heartbeat away from your crush. Do you really expect me to move to the doldrums of depression where life is not good? That comes later, and if you think college radio rules, you can probably name its top ten, no one else can.
6. Media loves a winner. And mass media likes to trumpet that which appeals to most.
7. A criterion of pop is that you're physically attractive. And looks, and sexiness, sell.
8. Those not making pop don't stand for anything other than themselves. They don't know how to be universal. And today you don't bubble up from the bottom, but percolate down from the top. Hook them first and expand their horizons later. It's almost always been thus. From the aforementioned Beatles to John "Cougar" Mellencamp.
9. We live in a money culture, and everybody in the food chain cares about money more than music. That's right, the label heads who work for the corporation and want their bonuses to the agents filling venues. Everybody's looking out for themselves. If it ain't obvious, if it doesn't appeal to the masses, they're not interested. In other words, if your label or agent tells you different, chances are you're entering a backwater ghetto. If you're fine with that, great, but don't complain.
10. Music doesn't drive the culture, hasn't since the seventies, certainly not since the nineties. It's prevalent, but if you want to know which way the wind blows, you don't put on a record.
11. The Internet blew a hole in the scene, making it incomprehensible to most, so they gravitate to where everybody else is. See #2 above.
12. It's inoffensive. You might think it's edgy, but the truth is culture has moved, gays can marry, teens sext, what you think is pushing the boundaries is not. Pop is the perfect corporate music, which is why corporations are dying to tie up with it.
13. Income inequality. To question the system you must believe you've got access to the system. If you're an underclass loser desiring a ticket in you're willing to compromise, to do what's expedient to make it. You don't insist on writing your own songs, you're afraid of being bounced from the system, you don't want to be exiled. American classic rock was made by the middle class. The middle class doesn't exist anymore.
Pop is forever, but not this pop. The paradigm will be broken just like the Beatles killed girl groups and hip-hop killed classic rock. Especially since pop is not expanding but growing ever smaller in influence and sound, the same people write and produce all the hits.
But FM ushered in classic rock and MTV ushered in new wave and ultimately hip-hop and we're just in the middle of this internet period, we still don't know where we're going. The internet has caused chaos in the music world, as a result everyone's gravitated to order, i.e. pop. But this will not be forever. Not long from now we'll all listen via the same system. Some kind of streaming. Whether it be provided by Apple, Google or Spotify. And that new system will usher in a new paradigm, radio will become secondary. New people will come along to utilize this new system to expand the horizons. However, in the race to please everybody many will bland their sound down to do so. But it's the outliers who will triumph, those who get no traction today. And their music will be pooh-poohed at first, but what will shine most brightly is the music itself. Image is not so important in the digital age, how you look is no longer everything. And in an era where everybody can play, we respect
talent. We're going to gravitate to talent.
So, if you want to make it, practice and write stuff that grabs people instantly. If you can't play and sing, you're not gonna be a big part of the new world. And EDM is playing, just in case you didn't know. The better you are and the more you risk the greater your chances. But you're gonna be the leader, next comes the audience and after that the labels and agents. That's right, the music business infrastructure likes pop, execs understand it, they can replicate the formula. If you expect them to take a chance...
Don't.
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2. Popularity breeds popularity. That which gains traction and sustains, becomes ever bigger.
3. They know it's about the song. Hooks, choruses, catchiness. If only other musicmakers realized this. Never forget, the Beatles didn't break these rules, and they could sing too!
4. The younger generation driving pop has never experienced anything different. Sure, they might have heard some classic rock via their parents, maybe, never forget today's kids were not brought up by baby boomers but Generation-X, but they're a post-Napster generation to whom fluffiness and selling out are de rigueur. They don't know about musical credibility, being able to either play or be true to only yourself, because they've never experienced it. Meanwhile, all those hewing to their own rules, marching to the beat of their own drummer, consistently break rule #3 above.
5. Radio rules. Bigger than Pandora, bigger than Spotify, bigger than YouTube when it comes to breaking acts. There's no pull, it's all push. You don't get to decide what's playing, you're subject to it. Furthermore, the pop stations are run like upbeat clubs wherein possibilities are endless and you're just a step or heartbeat away from your crush. Do you really expect me to move to the doldrums of depression where life is not good? That comes later, and if you think college radio rules, you can probably name its top ten, no one else can.
6. Media loves a winner. And mass media likes to trumpet that which appeals to most.
7. A criterion of pop is that you're physically attractive. And looks, and sexiness, sell.
8. Those not making pop don't stand for anything other than themselves. They don't know how to be universal. And today you don't bubble up from the bottom, but percolate down from the top. Hook them first and expand their horizons later. It's almost always been thus. From the aforementioned Beatles to John "Cougar" Mellencamp.
9. We live in a money culture, and everybody in the food chain cares about money more than music. That's right, the label heads who work for the corporation and want their bonuses to the agents filling venues. Everybody's looking out for themselves. If it ain't obvious, if it doesn't appeal to the masses, they're not interested. In other words, if your label or agent tells you different, chances are you're entering a backwater ghetto. If you're fine with that, great, but don't complain.
10. Music doesn't drive the culture, hasn't since the seventies, certainly not since the nineties. It's prevalent, but if you want to know which way the wind blows, you don't put on a record.
11. The Internet blew a hole in the scene, making it incomprehensible to most, so they gravitate to where everybody else is. See #2 above.
12. It's inoffensive. You might think it's edgy, but the truth is culture has moved, gays can marry, teens sext, what you think is pushing the boundaries is not. Pop is the perfect corporate music, which is why corporations are dying to tie up with it.
13. Income inequality. To question the system you must believe you've got access to the system. If you're an underclass loser desiring a ticket in you're willing to compromise, to do what's expedient to make it. You don't insist on writing your own songs, you're afraid of being bounced from the system, you don't want to be exiled. American classic rock was made by the middle class. The middle class doesn't exist anymore.
Pop is forever, but not this pop. The paradigm will be broken just like the Beatles killed girl groups and hip-hop killed classic rock. Especially since pop is not expanding but growing ever smaller in influence and sound, the same people write and produce all the hits.
But FM ushered in classic rock and MTV ushered in new wave and ultimately hip-hop and we're just in the middle of this internet period, we still don't know where we're going. The internet has caused chaos in the music world, as a result everyone's gravitated to order, i.e. pop. But this will not be forever. Not long from now we'll all listen via the same system. Some kind of streaming. Whether it be provided by Apple, Google or Spotify. And that new system will usher in a new paradigm, radio will become secondary. New people will come along to utilize this new system to expand the horizons. However, in the race to please everybody many will bland their sound down to do so. But it's the outliers who will triumph, those who get no traction today. And their music will be pooh-poohed at first, but what will shine most brightly is the music itself. Image is not so important in the digital age, how you look is no longer everything. And in an era where everybody can play, we respect
talent. We're going to gravitate to talent.
So, if you want to make it, practice and write stuff that grabs people instantly. If you can't play and sing, you're not gonna be a big part of the new world. And EDM is playing, just in case you didn't know. The better you are and the more you risk the greater your chances. But you're gonna be the leader, next comes the audience and after that the labels and agents. That's right, the music business infrastructure likes pop, execs understand it, they can replicate the formula. If you expect them to take a chance...
Don't.
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Carey
There are a lot of baby boomers who don't know "Blue," but to those who do it sits right up there with the White Album, it's one of the best LPs ever made.
At this late date emphasis is upon "A Case Of You," that's the song the youngsters cover. But in the pre-CD days we dropped the needle on this hitless wonder and were enraptured immediately by "All I Want" and stayed all the way through "The Last Time I Saw Richard."
Actually, you picked a side. After playing it through. That's what we did with all our albums, drilled down deep and after knowing one side by heart we flipped the record over to learn what was on the other.
And oftentimes the side we picked was actually number two.
It was for me on "Blue," because it began with "California."
"I'm going to see the folks I dig
I'll even kiss a Sunset pig
California I'm coming home"
That's right, pig. This was back before every male deserved that moniker, tarred with the sexual advances of their brethren. At this time "pig" meant "cop." Oh, how far we've come. In the pre-9/11 days those in blue were not to be trusted. The African-Americans still know this, Ferguson is evidence of this, but the whites have switched sides, suddenly cops and servicemen are heroes. I'm not saying they never were, just that it's strange to see Bruce Springsteen extolling the virtues of veterans at the Concert For Valor. It's a head-scratcher for those who grew up in the sixties. We didn't want to go to war. We abhorred government policies. And we didn't trust the police long before Ice-T told us not to.
And I'll leave aside the excellent points that today's military is doing the job we were unwilling to, and that they're not taken care of after their days in combat are done, never mind that contractors do so much of the work, and that not every cop is a bad apple, but the point is it was very different times, where it was all about personal development as opposed to wallet development, and every young person hopped aboard Icelandic Air and got a Eurail Pass and saw the continent. Not only the upper class. Then again, we were all middle class, I didn't know any truly rich people.
But I'd been to California.
I yearned to live there.
The Beach Boys infected me, Joni Mitchell sealed the deal.
And I knew every line of that number, especially:
"I met a redneck on a Grecian isle
Who did the goat dance very well
He gave me back my smile
But he kept my camera to sell"
He was neither a redneck nor did he keep the camera.
Huh?
I always thought Joni was singing about a local, someone she got involved with who grew up there. But Cary Raditz grew up in North Carolina.
HUH?
"The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldn't sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here Carey
But it's really not my home"
But that's CAREY and he's named CARY! And to tell you the truth, being CAREY with an "e" I always pondered whether Joni was singing about a girl, but no, she admits she misspelled it, it's all laid out in this wonderful article in the "Wall Street Journal."
That's right, once I became inured to side one of "Blue" I flipped it over. And in position four, after "Little Green" and before "Blue," was "Carey."
"Come on down to the Mermaid Cafe and I will
Buy you a bottle of wine
And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down
Let's have a round for these freaks and these soldiers
A round for these friends of mine
Let's have another round for the bright red devil
Who keeps me in this tourist town"
That's Cary. He had red hair. And a cane...
"Come on Carey get out your cane"
Whew!
She's singing the truth, albeit with a few notable changes.
Turns out Taylor Swift is not the only one singing about her exes.
But in the heyday of feminism it's Joni who loves 'em and leaves 'em, she gets a story to tell, not as revenge, but as a way to stoke the starmaker machinery behind the popular song.
And eventually Cary came to California, to visit Joni. He was transfixed.
But she was out of his league. He gave her back her camera and that was it.
And I can't believe it's 2014 and I finally know all this.
Actually, if you do a bit of web research the picture starts to come clear. But back in 1971 there was no web, all we had was the album cover and rumors. Everybody talked like they knew Joni, but not only did they not know her, they knew very little.
And sure she was beautiful, but it was her talent that enraptured. The way she could sing her story and make it universal. She expressed what we were feeling, from the heart. Not her desire to get rich or revenge, but to eat up this life, to have endless experiences, get drunk and tell tales, flirt and fuck and be free.
We always wanted to be free.
Actually, we were.
And whenever we drop the needle on "Blue" we baby boomers feel this way again.
P.S. Joni may have had her fame, but Cary had his charisma, never underestimate charisma.
P.P.S. I always shoo away the locals trying to make a buck, but having paid the insistent photographer to snap we end up with this pic that is hard to stop staring at. A relic from the ages, depicting a king and queen who were not cheer captain and football star, but leads in their own movie.
P.P.P.S. Does anybody play a dulcimer anymore? Does anybody play this instrument that evidences honesty and humanity as soon as you strum?
"When Joni Mitchell Met Cary Raditz, Her 'Mean Old Daddy' - The subject of Joni Mitchell's 'Carey' recalls his time with the singer in early 1970 in a fishing village on Crete": http://on.wsj.com/1xTE8ra
"Joni Mitchell on the Muse Behind 'Carey' - The singer wrote her hit 'Carey' while camping out in a seaside cave on Crete in early 1970": http://on.wsj.com/1xzjxHL
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At this late date emphasis is upon "A Case Of You," that's the song the youngsters cover. But in the pre-CD days we dropped the needle on this hitless wonder and were enraptured immediately by "All I Want" and stayed all the way through "The Last Time I Saw Richard."
Actually, you picked a side. After playing it through. That's what we did with all our albums, drilled down deep and after knowing one side by heart we flipped the record over to learn what was on the other.
And oftentimes the side we picked was actually number two.
It was for me on "Blue," because it began with "California."
"I'm going to see the folks I dig
I'll even kiss a Sunset pig
California I'm coming home"
That's right, pig. This was back before every male deserved that moniker, tarred with the sexual advances of their brethren. At this time "pig" meant "cop." Oh, how far we've come. In the pre-9/11 days those in blue were not to be trusted. The African-Americans still know this, Ferguson is evidence of this, but the whites have switched sides, suddenly cops and servicemen are heroes. I'm not saying they never were, just that it's strange to see Bruce Springsteen extolling the virtues of veterans at the Concert For Valor. It's a head-scratcher for those who grew up in the sixties. We didn't want to go to war. We abhorred government policies. And we didn't trust the police long before Ice-T told us not to.
And I'll leave aside the excellent points that today's military is doing the job we were unwilling to, and that they're not taken care of after their days in combat are done, never mind that contractors do so much of the work, and that not every cop is a bad apple, but the point is it was very different times, where it was all about personal development as opposed to wallet development, and every young person hopped aboard Icelandic Air and got a Eurail Pass and saw the continent. Not only the upper class. Then again, we were all middle class, I didn't know any truly rich people.
But I'd been to California.
I yearned to live there.
The Beach Boys infected me, Joni Mitchell sealed the deal.
And I knew every line of that number, especially:
"I met a redneck on a Grecian isle
Who did the goat dance very well
He gave me back my smile
But he kept my camera to sell"
He was neither a redneck nor did he keep the camera.
Huh?
I always thought Joni was singing about a local, someone she got involved with who grew up there. But Cary Raditz grew up in North Carolina.
HUH?
"The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldn't sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here Carey
But it's really not my home"
But that's CAREY and he's named CARY! And to tell you the truth, being CAREY with an "e" I always pondered whether Joni was singing about a girl, but no, she admits she misspelled it, it's all laid out in this wonderful article in the "Wall Street Journal."
That's right, once I became inured to side one of "Blue" I flipped it over. And in position four, after "Little Green" and before "Blue," was "Carey."
"Come on down to the Mermaid Cafe and I will
Buy you a bottle of wine
And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down
Let's have a round for these freaks and these soldiers
A round for these friends of mine
Let's have another round for the bright red devil
Who keeps me in this tourist town"
That's Cary. He had red hair. And a cane...
"Come on Carey get out your cane"
Whew!
She's singing the truth, albeit with a few notable changes.
Turns out Taylor Swift is not the only one singing about her exes.
But in the heyday of feminism it's Joni who loves 'em and leaves 'em, she gets a story to tell, not as revenge, but as a way to stoke the starmaker machinery behind the popular song.
And eventually Cary came to California, to visit Joni. He was transfixed.
But she was out of his league. He gave her back her camera and that was it.
And I can't believe it's 2014 and I finally know all this.
Actually, if you do a bit of web research the picture starts to come clear. But back in 1971 there was no web, all we had was the album cover and rumors. Everybody talked like they knew Joni, but not only did they not know her, they knew very little.
And sure she was beautiful, but it was her talent that enraptured. The way she could sing her story and make it universal. She expressed what we were feeling, from the heart. Not her desire to get rich or revenge, but to eat up this life, to have endless experiences, get drunk and tell tales, flirt and fuck and be free.
We always wanted to be free.
Actually, we were.
And whenever we drop the needle on "Blue" we baby boomers feel this way again.
P.S. Joni may have had her fame, but Cary had his charisma, never underestimate charisma.
P.P.S. I always shoo away the locals trying to make a buck, but having paid the insistent photographer to snap we end up with this pic that is hard to stop staring at. A relic from the ages, depicting a king and queen who were not cheer captain and football star, but leads in their own movie.
P.P.P.S. Does anybody play a dulcimer anymore? Does anybody play this instrument that evidences honesty and humanity as soon as you strum?
"When Joni Mitchell Met Cary Raditz, Her 'Mean Old Daddy' - The subject of Joni Mitchell's 'Carey' recalls his time with the singer in early 1970 in a fishing village on Crete": http://on.wsj.com/1xTE8ra
"Joni Mitchell on the Muse Behind 'Carey' - The singer wrote her hit 'Carey' while camping out in a seaside cave on Crete in early 1970": http://on.wsj.com/1xzjxHL
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Monday, 17 November 2014
My New Computer
I got an iMac5k.
For those playing the home game, you'll remember my Mac Pro bit the dust on July 4th weekend. I had it limping along, able to transfer documents from my laptop, able to download Mail, but then it died completely, however I could access the hard drives via Target Disk Mode, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I have to have the best.
Well, I like to have the best. I like the features. I like to be future-proof. I'm the anti-Clayton Christensen, who states again and again that good enough is good enough. Not for me! I not only marvel at these top of the line devices, I utilize them!
Like the 32 gigs of RAM.
Sure, you'd think 16 would be enough. But then I'd have to eventually get more from OWC and throw away what I've got, and even though I'm handy enough with a screwdriver to install my own RAM I decided to just overpay and have Apple install it, at least I'll have a 3 year warranty, I bought Applecare, did I tell you that?
Not that I call for help, but if something breaks...
And the terabyte of flash storage.
I mean my laptop has run slow since Mavericks. Now the Fusion Drive is free, but how good is that gonna be a few years from now? I'm not a serial upgrader, I keep my computers a long time, not long from now hard drives will be dead, literally, and they're so slow anyway.
As for the screen... I wasn't that impressed at first.
For those not Apple-savvy, the iMac5k has 14.7 million pixels, four times as many as the traditional 27 inch iMac. Hell, it's got more than a 4k screen, the new television standard. As for traditional HD?
Well, that's when I saw the difference, when I connected my old 23" Cinema HD Display as an extra monitor. It seems so dull, I can see the pixels, fonts are not sharp.
So I'm sold.
Did I tell you I got the Core i7 and the upgraded video card too?
I got carried away. I maxed the machine out. To the point where it cost as much as my old Mac Pro.
But not as much as a new Mac Pro. Which I was tempted to buy. But I don't use software that uses multiple cores, so the iMac is actually faster.
But the deciding point was the screen. You can't buy a 5k screen for the Mac Pro. Dell just announced one is coming, but it alone is gonna cost way north of two grand.
So I'm happy.
Although I wish there were a few more inputs. I loved being able to plug my headphones into the front of my Mac Pro.
But the reason I'm writing this is because I took a phone call on my iMac.
So I'm just sitting here and I hear a ring and there's a growl notification in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and I click to answer it and my iMac functions like a giant speakerphone! Very cool.
Not cool enough to buy just for that, but an added bonus.
And I decided to upgrade my iPad too. Because I'm still living with an iPad One. Yes, I'm admitting it. It runs so slowly, never mind being unable to be upgraded to the latest iterations of iOS.
And I didn't get cellphone capability, I never used it in my old iPad, and really, my iPhone is enough, but I did max out the memory. They price these things so well. Another hundred bucks for double the memory? I don't ever want to run out.
So I'm gadgeted out.
But I don't have enough time to learn and employ all the functionality.
I used to buy Pogue's books and read 'em cover to cover.
But now Apple upgrades the OS every year and the new iteration of the "Missing Manual," the Yosemite version, isn't gonna be available until January.
So I'm flying blind.
But Yosemite is the most stable OS launch I've experienced. I always wait for the .1 version, which was just launched today, in fact. But I haven't had any problems with 10.10 on my iMac, I guess I'm ready to install it on my MacBook Pro.
https://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/
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For those playing the home game, you'll remember my Mac Pro bit the dust on July 4th weekend. I had it limping along, able to transfer documents from my laptop, able to download Mail, but then it died completely, however I could access the hard drives via Target Disk Mode, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I have to have the best.
Well, I like to have the best. I like the features. I like to be future-proof. I'm the anti-Clayton Christensen, who states again and again that good enough is good enough. Not for me! I not only marvel at these top of the line devices, I utilize them!
Like the 32 gigs of RAM.
Sure, you'd think 16 would be enough. But then I'd have to eventually get more from OWC and throw away what I've got, and even though I'm handy enough with a screwdriver to install my own RAM I decided to just overpay and have Apple install it, at least I'll have a 3 year warranty, I bought Applecare, did I tell you that?
Not that I call for help, but if something breaks...
And the terabyte of flash storage.
I mean my laptop has run slow since Mavericks. Now the Fusion Drive is free, but how good is that gonna be a few years from now? I'm not a serial upgrader, I keep my computers a long time, not long from now hard drives will be dead, literally, and they're so slow anyway.
As for the screen... I wasn't that impressed at first.
For those not Apple-savvy, the iMac5k has 14.7 million pixels, four times as many as the traditional 27 inch iMac. Hell, it's got more than a 4k screen, the new television standard. As for traditional HD?
Well, that's when I saw the difference, when I connected my old 23" Cinema HD Display as an extra monitor. It seems so dull, I can see the pixels, fonts are not sharp.
So I'm sold.
Did I tell you I got the Core i7 and the upgraded video card too?
I got carried away. I maxed the machine out. To the point where it cost as much as my old Mac Pro.
But not as much as a new Mac Pro. Which I was tempted to buy. But I don't use software that uses multiple cores, so the iMac is actually faster.
But the deciding point was the screen. You can't buy a 5k screen for the Mac Pro. Dell just announced one is coming, but it alone is gonna cost way north of two grand.
So I'm happy.
Although I wish there were a few more inputs. I loved being able to plug my headphones into the front of my Mac Pro.
But the reason I'm writing this is because I took a phone call on my iMac.
So I'm just sitting here and I hear a ring and there's a growl notification in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and I click to answer it and my iMac functions like a giant speakerphone! Very cool.
Not cool enough to buy just for that, but an added bonus.
And I decided to upgrade my iPad too. Because I'm still living with an iPad One. Yes, I'm admitting it. It runs so slowly, never mind being unable to be upgraded to the latest iterations of iOS.
And I didn't get cellphone capability, I never used it in my old iPad, and really, my iPhone is enough, but I did max out the memory. They price these things so well. Another hundred bucks for double the memory? I don't ever want to run out.
So I'm gadgeted out.
But I don't have enough time to learn and employ all the functionality.
I used to buy Pogue's books and read 'em cover to cover.
But now Apple upgrades the OS every year and the new iteration of the "Missing Manual," the Yosemite version, isn't gonna be available until January.
So I'm flying blind.
But Yosemite is the most stable OS launch I've experienced. I always wait for the .1 version, which was just launched today, in fact. But I haven't had any problems with 10.10 on my iMac, I guess I'm ready to install it on my MacBook Pro.
https://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/
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Serial
"'Serial' Podcast Catches Fire: In the sleepy world of podcasts, 'Serial' has emerged as a global phenomenon": http://on.wsj.com/1usgkcY
Is everybody just a lying sack of shit?
Nothing's organic anymore, everything's being worked. The internet was supposed to kill the major labels and allow the unsigned to break through but the majors are more powerful than ever and the marginal are even more so. Marketing triumphs. Isn't that the story of Taylor Swift? Not that the music is so revelatory but that she utilized social media and the new internet tools to get her message out, ultimately getting everybody to talk about her? I salute you Taylor, you won!
At the modern game of today.
But what about the little people? We've got a society so focused on winners that normal and average no longer cut it, everyone is a brand, everyone has an app, everyone is trying to not only be famous, but rich, as if it was easy. Did you read the Travis Kalanick article in "Vanity Fair"? Probably not, you were too busy building a shrine to yourself on social media, but what he says is having a successful app/business is extremely difficult, that there are more losses than victories, surprises at every turn. At first he was too worn out to even start Uber. Today everybody thinks it's so easy that they don't even believe they're taking short cuts, just following the yellow brick road to success, ain't that a laugh.
And that's all to say that when I saw the WSJ article on "Serial" I was intrigued.
When I saw the "Guardian" article on the same show I was put off.
Obviously, NPR is working it.
That's how low we've sunk. The bastion of unadulterated truth is now no different from the rest of the for profit game players, tilting the board so they win.
In other words, nothing is organic anymore.
But that does not mean "Serial" is not good, it's FANTASTIC!
Because it's all about story. And life is about story.
And it's intimate.
And not black and white.
That's what I hate about today's world, there's no room for nuance. If you're rich, you're great. If you're #1 you're unimpeachable.
But sometimes things deserve the hype.
It's always those who live in the trenches, never those who are lauded. I had no idea who Sarah Koenig was. I've never ever listened to an episode of "This American Life." But this podcast is so intriguing, it's better than "Newsroom," better than all TV, never mind movies, you need to check it out.
The story is a guy's in jail for killing his high school girlfriend. He's been incarcerated for a decade and a half, did he do it?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Sarah is investigating the case. And it's not a TV show building to a tied-up ending.
The "killer" changes his story.
The discoverer of the body went into the woods 127 feet to pee, and then didn't when he uncovered the deceased, someone who was even hard to pick out in photos of the crime scene, she was that buried. Furthermore, he was a notorious streaker who called the cops to complain his clothing and cell phone were stolen from his car when the truth is they were nicked from the wide open by a female police person who he exposed himself to.
That's right, he lied.
Everybody's lying. All day long. They do it so they don't pay the penalty, so you don't dislike them, we live in a land of duplicity.
As the story unfolds you find everybody's guilty, everybody's changed their story. How do we find the truth?
And it happens every day in real life. People are not honest. They believe they'll lose out if they are. Did you cut that fart? OF COURSE NOT! Were you at your girlfriend's house this afternoon? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
It's the human condition.
That's what screwed up music, it lost touch with the human condition. Add movies to that pile.
But if you want to know what it was like in the old days, with families glued to the radio, listen to "Serial."
You can go to the website, but it's easier to listen to as a podcast.
If you're unsure how to do this, just go to the Podcast app on your iPhone or iPad, it's built in, search on "Serial," and then subscribe.
But be ready to dedicate hours to the enterprise. You'll be dying to, to employ a pun.
Because we all go to high school, we've all got friends, we've all been dumped, we're all worried we're going to get the losing end of the stick.
What is motivation for action? Why did a girl who was only a friend write letters exculpating the culprit and then deny what she said years later?
Why was the only evidence given for conviction done so by a friend who wasn't much of a friend, in other words someone the convicted didn't know so well?
And why is it that word of mouth, which ruled the internet only a couple of years back, has been trumped by marketing?
I don't know.
But I do know we live in a phony world and we're just looking for some truth.
And "Serial" delivers this.
http://serialpodcast.org
http://www.itunescharts.net/charts/podcasts/
"Man and Uber Man": http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/12/uber-travis-kalanick-controversy
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Is everybody just a lying sack of shit?
Nothing's organic anymore, everything's being worked. The internet was supposed to kill the major labels and allow the unsigned to break through but the majors are more powerful than ever and the marginal are even more so. Marketing triumphs. Isn't that the story of Taylor Swift? Not that the music is so revelatory but that she utilized social media and the new internet tools to get her message out, ultimately getting everybody to talk about her? I salute you Taylor, you won!
At the modern game of today.
But what about the little people? We've got a society so focused on winners that normal and average no longer cut it, everyone is a brand, everyone has an app, everyone is trying to not only be famous, but rich, as if it was easy. Did you read the Travis Kalanick article in "Vanity Fair"? Probably not, you were too busy building a shrine to yourself on social media, but what he says is having a successful app/business is extremely difficult, that there are more losses than victories, surprises at every turn. At first he was too worn out to even start Uber. Today everybody thinks it's so easy that they don't even believe they're taking short cuts, just following the yellow brick road to success, ain't that a laugh.
And that's all to say that when I saw the WSJ article on "Serial" I was intrigued.
When I saw the "Guardian" article on the same show I was put off.
Obviously, NPR is working it.
That's how low we've sunk. The bastion of unadulterated truth is now no different from the rest of the for profit game players, tilting the board so they win.
In other words, nothing is organic anymore.
But that does not mean "Serial" is not good, it's FANTASTIC!
Because it's all about story. And life is about story.
And it's intimate.
And not black and white.
That's what I hate about today's world, there's no room for nuance. If you're rich, you're great. If you're #1 you're unimpeachable.
But sometimes things deserve the hype.
It's always those who live in the trenches, never those who are lauded. I had no idea who Sarah Koenig was. I've never ever listened to an episode of "This American Life." But this podcast is so intriguing, it's better than "Newsroom," better than all TV, never mind movies, you need to check it out.
The story is a guy's in jail for killing his high school girlfriend. He's been incarcerated for a decade and a half, did he do it?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Sarah is investigating the case. And it's not a TV show building to a tied-up ending.
The "killer" changes his story.
The discoverer of the body went into the woods 127 feet to pee, and then didn't when he uncovered the deceased, someone who was even hard to pick out in photos of the crime scene, she was that buried. Furthermore, he was a notorious streaker who called the cops to complain his clothing and cell phone were stolen from his car when the truth is they were nicked from the wide open by a female police person who he exposed himself to.
That's right, he lied.
Everybody's lying. All day long. They do it so they don't pay the penalty, so you don't dislike them, we live in a land of duplicity.
As the story unfolds you find everybody's guilty, everybody's changed their story. How do we find the truth?
And it happens every day in real life. People are not honest. They believe they'll lose out if they are. Did you cut that fart? OF COURSE NOT! Were you at your girlfriend's house this afternoon? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
It's the human condition.
That's what screwed up music, it lost touch with the human condition. Add movies to that pile.
But if you want to know what it was like in the old days, with families glued to the radio, listen to "Serial."
You can go to the website, but it's easier to listen to as a podcast.
If you're unsure how to do this, just go to the Podcast app on your iPhone or iPad, it's built in, search on "Serial," and then subscribe.
But be ready to dedicate hours to the enterprise. You'll be dying to, to employ a pun.
Because we all go to high school, we've all got friends, we've all been dumped, we're all worried we're going to get the losing end of the stick.
What is motivation for action? Why did a girl who was only a friend write letters exculpating the culprit and then deny what she said years later?
Why was the only evidence given for conviction done so by a friend who wasn't much of a friend, in other words someone the convicted didn't know so well?
And why is it that word of mouth, which ruled the internet only a couple of years back, has been trumped by marketing?
I don't know.
But I do know we live in a phony world and we're just looking for some truth.
And "Serial" delivers this.
http://serialpodcast.org
http://www.itunescharts.net/charts/podcasts/
"Man and Uber Man": http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/12/uber-travis-kalanick-controversy
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Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
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