Author: scruss

  • 2007 contenders

    I’m going to play the blogger’s best of the year game differently this year, but I need to keep the rules roughly the same so that I am (for once) on the same planet. I’m going to choose ten best albums, but they’re what I discovered in 2007, not just those released in 2007.

    So these are my contenders:

    • A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble — A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble
    • Air — Pocket Symphony
    • Akron/Family — Love Is Simple
    • Akron/Family — Meek Warrior (2006)
    • Animal Collective — Strawberry Jam
    • Architecture In Helsinki — Places Like This
    • Avey Tare & Kría Brekkan — Pullhair Rubeye
    • Bees — Octopus
    • Beirut — The Flying Club Cup
    • Black Lips — Good Bad Not Evil
    • Bonnie Russell and the Russell Family — Mountain Dulcimer Galax Style (1995)
    • Bright Eyes — Cassadaga
    • Caribou — Andorra
    • Cathy Fink — Banjo Talkin’
    • Colleen — The Golden Morning Breaks (2005)
    • Dan Jones and The Squids — Totally Human
    • Devendra Banhart — Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
    • Dock Boggs — His Folkways Years (1963-1968) (1998)
    • Donovan — Barabajagal (1969)
    • Donovan — Hurdy Gurdy Man (1968)
    • Donovan — Mellow Yellow (1967)
    • Donovan — Sunshine Superman (1966)
    • Enoch Kent — I’m a Rover (2006)
    • Erynn Marshall & Chris Coole — Meet Me In The Music
    • Feist — The Reminder
    • Fountains of Wayne — Traffic and Weather
    • Fred Spek’s Camp Combo — Rock Paper Scissors (2006)
    • Grinderman — Grinderman
    • Hamish Imlach — Cod Liver Oil & Orange Juice (2006)
    • Howe Gelb — ‘Sno Angel Like You (2006)
    • Ideal Free Distribution — Ideal Free Distribution
    • Jeffrey Frederick & the Clamtones — The Resurrection of Spiders in the Moonlight
    • Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter — Like Love, Lust, & The Open Halls of the Soul
    • Joanna Newsom — Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band EP
    • John Fahey — The Best Of John Fahey Vol. 2 1964-1983 (2004)
    • Johnny Cash — American I & II
    • Judee Sill — Judee Sill (2006)
    • Ken Reaume — Four Horses
    • Kevin Drew — Spirit If…
    • Kilby Snow — Kilby Snow: Country Songs and Tunes with Autoharp
    • Kimberley Rew — Ridgeway (2006)
    • Marissa Nadler — Songs III: Bird On The Water
    • Michael Hurley — First Songs (1964)
    • Mimi & Richard Fariña — Vanguard Visionaries – Mimi & Richard Fariña
    • Monica Grabin — Continental Village
    • Neil Young — Harvest (1972)
    • Of Montreal — Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
    • Okkervil River — The Stage Names
    • Old Man Luedecke — Hinterland (2006)
    • Otha Turner — Everybody Hollerin’ Goat (1998)
    • Panda Bear — Person Pitch
    • Po’ Girl — Home to You
    • Porter Wagoner — Wagonmaster
    • Radiohead — In Rainbows
    • Ragged But Right — Down Harmony Road
    • Robert Force & Albert d’Ossché — Tiger Dreams
    • Sons of the Never Wrong — Nuthatch Suite (2005)
    • Stew — Guest Host (2000)
    • The Aliens — Astronomy For Dogs
    • The Apples in Stereo — New Magnetic Wonder
    • The Arcade Fire — Neon Bible
    • The Besnard Lakes — The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse
    • The Carter Family — The Carter Family 1927-1934 (2001)
    • The Foggy Hogtown Boys — Pigtown Fling
    • The Harvey Girls — The Wild Farewell (2005)
    • The High Water Marks — Polar
    • The Houseplants — Livingroom
    • The Hylozoists — La Fin du Monde (2006)
    • The Icicles — Arrivals & Departures
    • The Ladybug Transistor — Can’t Wait Another Day
    • The Negro Problem — Post Minstrel Syndrome (2002)
    • The Polyphonic Spree — The Fragile Army
    • The Soft Machine — The Soft Machine (1968)
    • The Unicorns — Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? (2003)
    • They Might Be Giants — The Else
    • Tiger Lillies (with Kronos Quartet) — The Gorey End (2003)
    • Uncle Dave Macon — Classic Sides
    • Various Artists — Skiffle – The Best Of (2006)
    • Various Artists — The Old Time Banjo Festival
    • Vashti Bunyan — Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind
    • Wendy Arrowsmith — Now Then…?
    • Wilco — Sky Blue Sky
    • Willie Nelson — Red Headed Stranger (1975)

    (Before you freak out at the number of CDs I bought, I do subscribe to emusic, so a bunch of these were MP3 only.)

  • go ripley!

    I drove past Ripley Wind Farm today. Looks like most of the turbines are energised (they were yawed into the wind) and one was running.

  • Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid – 2008 Green Car of the Year … in parsley!

    I don’t believe this … Green Car .com has named the Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid 2008 Green Car of the Year [archive link]. This gargantuan obesemobile has a 6 litre engine which gets a dismal 21 mpg (about 11 l/100 km in real money). But it’s okay, because it’s a hybrid! Well, bravo Chevrolet! Your greed and stupidity is killing us all.

  • M-W Visual Dictionary Online

    M-W’s Visual Dictionary Online is rather good. F’rinstance: ENERGY :: WIND ENERGY.

    Update: whoa, I just looked at this on IE, and it’s an absolute ad-beast. It has been a while since I surfed with ads enabled.

  • perfect Harmony

    Got the Harmony back from Bruce Dowd last night – wow! The work he did on it was amazing, and the price very reasonable. The sound is beautiful – plunky and warm – and the Aquila nylon strings are stiff enough to make it easy to play.

    I had difficulty keeping Nichol away from it last night. Looks like he’s got the nylon-strung bug too.

  • thappy hanksgiving (belated)

    We’re in Ohio, having had too much turkey yesterday. I think this thanksgiving was brought to you by Married To The Sea, as Mindy, Karl and Carl sat around with their laptops chortling like turkey-filled chortling things.

  • so-called wizard

    Windows has just spent the last 15 minutes searching for a driver for my Garmin GPS. Y’know, the one I use with the computer a lot. It’s claiming it’s new hardware, but in the words of Syd, “I’ve had it for months”. Oh Windows, you really are very stupid. In fact, you are a silly wizard.

  • HOT-dog!

    No Uncle Dave Macon here, but some minor banjo repairs.

    My Gold Tone BC-350 (which I still like, despite all my friends playing Rickards) has a “hot-dog” armrest, a piece of bent steel that always seemed to be in the wrong place. Ken Perlman noted its incorrectness at the past Midwest Banjo Camp, so I took it off shortly afterwards.

    But the banjo never quite seemed right without the armrest, so tonight I shifted it down a set of brackets. This isn’t quite trivial; the rest sits on two special shoes, so you have to completely remove the pair of adjacent shoes and swap them. After that you have to get the armrest level and the head tension right. But it sounds good, is comfortable to play now both sitting and standing. So what if it doesn’t quite sit straight in the instrument stand?

  • something other than wind blows here

    Dave Bidini‘s article in today’s Globe & Mail, An ill wind blows (now irritatingly hidden behind a paywall, but helpfully cached here) troubles me about what got through basic fact-checking:

    • The turbines expected on the island are open-bladed, a style being replaced in Europe by closed-blade turbines, which do less damage to wildlife.” What are closed-blade turbines? I’m in weekly contact with colleagues in the European wind energy industry. If people were installing a radically different type of machine, I’d know about it.
    • The article cites the National Center for Policy Analysis as a source. Quoting the NCPA on wind energy and the environment is a little like quoting the NRA on gun control. Check out the NCPA’s E-Team: Providing Accurate Information on Energy & Environment Issues. Overall, I’d say that ExxonMobil are getting great VFM on their donations to NCPA [PDF] if they’re now being quoted as a credible, balanced source.
  • Robyn Hitchcock Live at The Mod Club on 2007-11-14

    Internet Archive: Details: Robyn Hitchcock Live at The Mod Club on 2007-11-14

    Set 1: 81′ 28″

    Balloon Man
    Autumn Is Your Last Chance
    Uncorrected Personality Traits
    Olé! Tarantula
    Only The Stones Remain
    I’m Only You
    I Something You
    Glass Hotel
    Cynthia Mask
    No, I Don’t Remember Guildford
    Alright, Yeah
    Full Moon In My Soul
    Swirling
    Creeped Out
    Queen Of Eyes
    Are You Experienced?
    You & Oblivion

    Set 2: 21′ 24″

    Visions of Johanna
    (A Man’s Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs
    Adventure Rocket Ship

  • Robyn’s stolen guitar(s)

    Robyn Hitchcock had his blue Fender Telecaster stolen in Toronto on Tuesday. For last night’s show he managed to borrow Barenaked Lady Stephen Paige’s black Tele.

    I also suspect that his Fylde acoustic was stolen too. He was playing a small-bodied acoustic last night.

    Mean people suck.

  • CARMA – Carbon Monitoring for Action

    Lots of maps of power stations and their CO2 emissions on CARMA.

  • whoa, I won something!

    My strategy of dropping off my business card at every trade show booth that promises quality swag paid off. I just received an MP3 player from Genivar – thanks, folks!

    It’s a weird little unit. Looks almost identical to a nano, but is your plain-vanilla USB mass storage device – something that Apple could learn from, but they’re in the business of selling players tied to iTunes. It also has a standard USB connector for days transfer and charging – Apple and iRiver please note.

    It seems it’s an S1 type player, so can play videos in its own weird format. It also has a voice recorder, which again records in its own special format (likely some hacked version of GSM).

    It will be fun playing with it.

    Update: Looks like it’s an ATJ-2135 Actions Semiconductor player of some kind. It can record in ADPCM wav (which sox can convert), or its own weird ACT format (which can be converted using this Windows-only program).

  • objects, but also a sentence

    Winter tires.

    They are fitted now, but it happened to be chucking it down when I was changing them. No fun.

  • four horses

    I really think that Ken Reaume‘s Four Horses could be my best album of the year. It’s been on repeat play all day.

    And yes, he does work in Penguin Music.

  • AlternativeBanjo – Banjo Tabs

    AlternativeBanjo has tabs for all your indie faves.

  • take it or leave it

    I got Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael from the library on a friend’s recommendation. I tried, but I don’t feel the love for the psychic gorilla.

    It’s not that the wise protagonist is a psychic gorilla. I can get past that. It’s just that the conclusions are so pat. I wonder how many readers come away with the romantic notion that they’re the only Leaver in a Taker society? (they’re wrong, of course; I’m the only one to which this applies …)

    I also didn’t get the “Takers need prophets” deal. if you decide to follow the ideas in the book, what is Ishmael but a prophet? A not-for-prophet?

    Writers like Jared Diamond (though flawed) and Julian Cope (though fried; but at least can play mellotron) wrote it better. Ain’t but the one way, as the Drude sang.

    What I did like about the library copy that I borrowed was that it had clearly made an impression on a previous reader. Crabbed on every page in tiny, infra-neat madperson handwriting was a seemingly endless thesis about something. What, I can’t tell; the diligent guardians of the Toronto Public Library erased almost every word, so I couldn’t tell if a worldview had been shattered or affirmed. Maybe it was the wisdom of the ages. Who can tell?

  • surely I’m not alone … ?

    Ottawa VIA Rail station has a circular spiral ramp that leads down from the concourse to the platform level. It has a smooth channel for a handrail which looks perfect for racing marbles or toy cars down.
    Surely I’m not the only person who has ever wanted to do this? It looks so inviting!