AnimaMundi

Local News

The local news affiliates of the major mainstream networks in the capital district of Albany, NY are deadpan dull. They have not a hint of personality, but this, I suspect, is not unique in the USA. Some dress horrendously frumpy and talk the mono-corp-media speak. WPIX in NYC used to employ one Jerry Girard, a sportscaster. This man not only knew sports, but also had a wicked sense of humor. One night he commented on the longest collegiate baseball game in history. Eighteen million innings. Then he said: "At the end of the game there were 16 people left in the stands, 10 of them still alive." After 21 years, WPIX wanted to employ another person and relegate Jerry to weekends, i.e. a demotion. Jerry walked without a word.

During the Giants' lean years, Girard quipped: "The Giants really have to tighten their defense. I saw a linebacker with binoculars. You have to get closer to the ball than that."

Only in New York.

du soleil dans un verre

In the Northern latitudes there's not much sun to speak of. Happy New Year!

If Kermit Lynch Can Do It, So Can Alfonso Cevola

We had the pleasure of meeting Alfonso Cevola and Kim in NYC last October through a chance meeting with the inimitable Terry Hughes at Barbone, an excellent eatery on Avenue B on the LES. In a recent article, the NY Times ignorantly omitted this restaurant in an article about the eateries on Avenue B. To get back to Alfonso, I am pleased to read that he might write a book. He has the talent, humor and experiences to write one. Let's hope that it happens and that all the Muses shine on him. Although, he might not need the tenth muse. Alfonso, I know a very good publicist in NYC if you need or want one. 

Welcome Home, Mark

I wish that I could write half as well as Mark Folse, a New Orleanian who returned home after 20 years away from his city. In this post he recounts the story of the person who helped carry him back to his home in New Orleans. If you can read this and not weep, then there's no hope for you.

P.S. Mark tells me that is the Iberville projects and that they are mostly occupied. And that's St. Louis Cemetery #1 in the foreground. This one of four cemeteries that border those projects. I do remember going through it one May long ago to Marie Laveau's tombstone.

Sonics and the MP3-AAC Generation or Wine, Women and Song

                                                                                                                     

I enjoy soulful music that is recorded with great care. I enjoy the dynamics of pristine sparkling treble, meaty mid-range and deep rounded bass. It is something that I have spent thousands of dollars on over the years. No, it has not reached the point of fanaticism and never will. I have known fanatics who are constantly tweaking and flipping old gear for new. I know I could become one if I had unlimited funds, but I don't. What I really would like to learn about is the quality of sound that is on cd and mp3. So, in writing this I am on-the-job learning as I write. This is from a Stylus Magazine article: "I’m pretty anal about sound, and I’m prepared to admit it. I’m not a super-duper audiophile (I can’t afford to be), but I have spent hundreds thousands of pounds over the years on stereos, headphones, hi-fi separates, portable audio systems, and even (in my more gullible moments) biwired speaker cables and limestone slabs to position my speaker stands on, all in pursuit of the “perfect” sound: slightly more sparkle and physical *ping* in the treble (hearing the stick hit the hi-hat, perhaps, rather than a vague *splash*); a more rounded and tighter bass sound that doesn’t bloom like ugly bathwater and overwhelm the song; more realistic vocals that put the singer right in front of you, spittle-filled lips and all. You know the kind of thing… It’s like when serious wine buffs talk about being able to smell diesel or orange peel in a bottle of Shiraz: it seems like nonsense until you immerse yourself in the sensations of the discipline and find that you too are scrabbling for ridiculous metaphors to describe how something tastes or sounds or smells when you suddenly realise there are more nuances than you ever imagined." 

MP3 compression results in a loss of sonic dynamics that includes color, space and depth. MP3's now have a bitrate of 192kbit/s while uncompressed compact discs have a bitrate of 1,411.2 kbit/s (16bits/sample x 44100 samples/second x 2 channels / 1000 bits / kilobit) There are people I know who think that some audio compression encoding is better sounding than CD quality! All this is important to your relationship with a song. People want loudness and that's what they are getting at the sacrifice of a complete range of the sound spectrum. Much like the international sameness of some wines that have no sense of place or distinction. The art and craft have been diluted to an average or the LCD. In acoustics, loudness is measured in peaks and averages. For better or worse, our ears respond to the average loudness rather than to the peaks and troughs, so record companies and artists are aiming at loudness at whatever cost. And the cost is high. Some artists are mixing their masters with exactly this in mind. The resultant sonics are horrendous distortion. The loudness compulsion goes back a ways in recording history. The Beatles asked Parlophone to press their albums on heavier vinyl for more bass. Then there was poor delirious Phil Spector and his "wall of sound." Nowadays, music with a loud signal is referred to as "hot". Highly extracted hot wine, anyone? The highs and lows of a wine are softened to be internationally palatable. When the music is compressed it becomes hotter, i.e. the peaks and troughs are ironed out so that they are almost level. Then the signal is increased. Modern cd's have a much more consistent volume level. People aren't really listening closely for the changes in volume, because there are none. It's non-distracting background music, easier to ignore. The same with generic wine. People are drinking them and not expecting something surprising, inspiring or challenging. They want safe predictable wines with no unexpected turns or twists. Loud, big Parkerish wines with the volume set at 93+. As a result, the space between the notes and the space surrounding instruments is lost. Not only are the volume differentials flattened when you compress music, but bass and treble frequencies are pressed into the midrange and the space surrounding instruments is lost, making them less easy to separate when you listen. Muddled. Warm dymanics keep listeners on their toes and will make them continue listening. "It's not how loud you make it, it's how you make it loud."

"Bass frequencies drive music, they give us a physical sensation to hold onto and ride through a song. Play "Unfinished Sympathy" on a decent hi-fi and the sub-bass shots that open the song hit you like a punch in the belly and a pillow-whack to the chest. Play Girls Aloud's superficially sonically savage "Wake Me Up," Nine Inch Nails meets Gwen Stefani, on the same set-up, and it sounds flat and lifeless. Treble frequencies by contrast add imaging—a sparkling, accurate treble hit can almost be seen—think Jacko's early 80s work with Quincy, all those pointillist pricks of light over the top; cymbals, shakers, and twinkling keys. Try The Killers though and their cymbal work is so muddy and indistinct that it's hard to even identify, let alone hear clearly. Speakers work by moving air molecules. Overly compressed music moves a LOT of molecules, but it doesn’t move them very precisely." 

When your ears tire easily, it is because the flat sound of the mid-range relentlessly pounds your tympanic membrane and your brain nodes. Ear damage results mainly from the loudness of the mid-range. Music is about peaks and troughs, tension and release. Un-dynamic hot music doesn't let up at all, thus fatigue and unmusical sounding. Always looking for something new because one is tired of the flatness. Dynamics take you emotionally. You can ride the ups and downs, the textures in sound. A well made wine does the same thing in tastes and flavors. You can ride the nuances and notes. Compression itself is not bad. It's the overuse of it and the consequent extremes. People don't know when to stop.

"Compression is a way of life. A week's worth of radio broadcasts have become an hour-long podcast. Think of those plastic bags you can get for clothes with a hole to stick a vacuum cleaner nozzle in so you can suck all the air out and pack them tighter. We squash fruit into smoothies, social policy into soundbites, vitamins into pills, entire meals into cans and English into txt spk, all so we can consume things quicker than ever before. But quicker is not the same as better. Meanings, subtleties, and understandings are lost because we don't have the time to pick up on them."

Very few people that I know sit down and listen to music. Even fewer sit down and listen with good wine. "The subtle nuance of the release of a reverb tail" is a lot like the long silky finish of a 1992 Alion Reserva.

 

Remembering Those Musical Artists 2007

Red Kelly at "The B-Side" gives tribute to those musicians who passed away in 2007. We lost some great people.

Kiss It Good Bye

Mark Folse is one of the most respected NOLA bloggers. This is another reason why you should be reading him.

Just try not to look out the window of your plane as it approaches the city, lest you be reminded that the cost of that low-fare to the City That Care Forgot is the displacement of a million of your fellow citizens and the destruction of their unique culture, the intentional eradication of an entire, genuine way of life. Forget that someday the consequences of that loss will come home to you.

NYTimes Metropolitan Diary

One my favorite parts of The NY Times is the Metropolitan Diary. When I worked I used to read it on Mondays. Then I lost tract of it for many years. Just recently, I found it on line again. This was in the December 17th edition.

"A group of about a dozen suited gentemen entered a subway car with me a few months ago. All wore ID’s that identified them as city and state transportation authority personnel. I sat down and opened my novel, but the train didn’t move. After seven or eight minutes, I looked up at the tall official straphanging above me. “Are we delayed because of you folks or in spite of you?” I asked. “Oh! You’re here!” he responded, without missing a beat. “I didn’t see you get on.” Then he called over to a co-worker halfway down the car. “John,” he said. “She has arrived. Tell them we can get started now.” John just chuckled, but a few seconds later, we were on our way."

On December 10th:

"The Diary story of St. Martin of Tours (Oct. 15), who gave a beggar half his cloak, reminded me of a New York moment in late October 1956. I was an 18-year-old actress at the Blackfriars Theater, which was run by the Dominican order. Dominican priests take a vow of poverty and own nothing, not even their clothing, which is issued by the order.

Father Robert A. Morris, who worked at the theater, offered to share a cab on a windy night of freezing rain. I lived at the Barbizon Hotel for Women, only a few blocks from the priory.

As we were driving down Lexington Avenue, a scantily clad man staggered into the street and ran into an oncoming car. The impact tossed his body into the air, and it landed beside the curb.

Father Morris ordered the cabby to stop and call the police. I watched from the cab as he ran to the man, removed his black wool coat and covered the man with it -- not half the coat, as St. Martin did, but the whole thing. Then Father Morris knelt in the freezing rain, administering the last rites.

Shivering, he returned to the cab in his soaking clothes. ''He needed the coat more than I do,'' Father Morris said. And then a soft afterthought: 'I hope the Dominicans will give me another coat.'"

Oscar Peterson

The extraordinary jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson, has died at age 82. We went to see-hear him in the 1980's at the Troy Music Hall. At least, I saw the great heir to Art Tatum once. He was a phenomenal artist that could play "deep blues grooves balanced with technique and tenderness," as Herbie Hancock said in his obit.

Winter Solstice Ramblings

Alfonso's dark moody Barolo-Amarone-Ripasso-tinged musings started me a-thinking about a solstice meditation.

Hedley Lemarr in Blazing Saddles: "My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention."

Tomorrow is the longest night-shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. In this part of the world, it occurs at 1:08 am EST. We are supposed to have about 9 hours of daylight. As if it is not dark enough, nature being what it is, conspires to make it darker due to lack of sunlight. Grey December and the "sky is a hazy shade of winter... Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts of unpublished rhyme, drinking my vodka and lime." Summer is born on the winter solstice, as winter is born on the summer solstice in June. The solstice in Europe used to be on the 25th until Pope Gregory XIII changed the date to the 21st in 1582. Thus, he got a calendar named after him. How convenient, helpful and less pagan for the Pope to do that for us holidazed folk.

"On the night of Winter Solstice, as seen from a northern sky, the three stars in [Orion]'s belt align with the brightest star in the Eastern sky [Sirius] to show where the Sun will rise in the morning after Winter Solstice."

On the night of the solstice, the Sun ceases to decline in the sky and the length of daylight reaches its minimum for three days. In Greek mythology, the seven days either side of the solstice were Halcyon Days. After this, the Sun begins its ascent from the pit of darkness and the days grow longer. A Sun reborn and a return to light. Nature's elegiac-swan-song night sea journey reiterated in the individual, like Jonah in the belly of the whale. It was the time of the year when all the cattle were slaughtered so that they would not have to be fed through the winter, i.e. fresh meat/chestnuts roasting over an open fire. Most of the beer and wine was fermented and ready for drinking at this time. The months of famine, January-April, would weed out the unhealthy. You get the idea. Serotonin levels are low, melatonin high, circadian rhythms out of whack. Sorta farblunget. The clave is 2-3 or 3-2. Evergreen yourself up and bring that light to the top of the tree. Rekindle and re-source. Why in tarnation do they put a star on top of the tree anyway? Most are looking for what's under the tree, non?

In the spirit of St. Nicholas of Bari, maybe a Pugliese red would be more appropriate rather than an overpriced Brunello. I'll have to brood over it for a while. Thanks, Alfonso and Terry, my most recent friends of centered vino. You are scintillae in a deep dark glass of red wine of the earth.