Tag: dad

  • skiffle is fun

    I’m listening to “Skiffle – The Best Of”, and it’s interesting to see what pre-rock British artists did with folk, gospel and trad jazz tunes on the cusp of the 1960s.

    It clearly came out of the Trad boom (to which my father is still very much attached) – not just because folks like Barber and Colyer played both styles – but there are weird echoes of rockabilly. In a way, it was a short-lived answer to the US “folk scare” of the time.

    Some of it’s quite quaint and dated now. The faux American accents, untrained by constant US TV exposure are hilarious, hovering somewhere between New Orleans and Brooklyn. Lonnie Donegan’s is especially funny – “this man, he was thoisty” he sings in “Being Me A Little Water, Sylvie”.

  • in the running

    Almost ‘Best of The Year’ time. In the running are:

    A Hawk and a Hacksaw – The Way the Wind Blows
    A.C. Newman – Souvenir of Canada – EP
    Beck – The Information
    Calexico – Garden Ruin
    Casper & the Cookies – The Optimist’s Club
    Colin Meloy – Colin Meloy Sings Shirley Collins
    Eels with Strings – Live At Town Hall
    Elf Power – Back To The Web
    Erynn Marshall – Calico
    Faun Fables – The Transit Rider
    Grandaddy – Just Like The Fambly Cat
    Grant-Lee Phillips – nineteeneighties
    Hidden Cameras – Awoo
    Joanna Newsom – Ys
    Jolie Holland – Springtime Can Kill You
    King Biscuit Time – Black Gold
    Mayor McCa – Cue Are Es Tea You
    Peter Stampfel – The Jig Is Up
    Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 – Olé! Tarantula
    Sufjan Stevens – Songs For Christmas – Volume V: Peace
    Sufjan Stevens – The Avalanche – Outtakes And Extras From The Illinois Album
    The Be Good Tanyas – Hello Love
    The Decemberists – The Crane Wife
    The Essex Green – Cannibal Sea
    The Flaming Lips – At War With The Mystics
    The Handsome Family – Last Days of Wonder
    The Instruments – Cast A Half Shadow
    The Sadies – In Concert Vol. 1
    The Wailin’ Jennys – Firecracker
    Thom Yorke – The Eraser
    Thomas Dolby – The Sole Inhabitant
    Wendy Arrowsmith – Crying Out
    Yo La Tengo – I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass

    Miraculously, all of them fit on my iPod Nano, so they’ll be in heavy rotation over the next week or so while I decide.

  • Goodbye, childhood

    Goodbye:

    • headache glue cracking from finger tips
    • badly-painted pilot with obvious thumb-prints
    • squint and/or torn decals
    • undercarriage installed backwards, if at all
    • spilled tin of Humbrol enamel
    • leftover sprue rattling in cardboard box with an unidentified piece still attached
    • curious v-shaped stand that never quite stood level
    • hung squintly from bedroom light by white thread until dusty wing missing from too many runins with parental heads
    • taken down for final flight whirled round head on string until dashed against clothespole or arcing up up into neighbour’s fir tree (it’s still there today)
    • when older, packed with cotton balls nicked from sister, doused with turps, crashed flaming kamikaze onto the compost heap (sorry dad, your onions never did well on paint thinner and burnt plastic)

    Goodbye, Airfix

  • music of 2005

    It’s getting towards the end of the year, so I’m thinking about what albums I enjoyed most. These are the 2005 albums I have in my collection:

    • A Hawk And A Hacksaw — Darkness At Noon
    • Aimee Mann — The Forgotten Arm
    • Animal Collective — Feels
    • Beck — Guero
    • Bettye Lavette — I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise
    • Bright Eyes — Digital Ash In a Digital Urn
    • Bright Eyes — I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
    • Calexico / Iron & Wine — In the Reins
    • Caribou — Marino Audio
    • Dan Jones — Get Sounds Now
    • The Decemberists — Picaresque
    • Deerhoof — The Runners Four
    • Devendra Banhart — Cripple Crow
    • Dressy Bessy — Electrified
    • The Duhks — The Duhks
    • Eels — Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
    • Fiona Apple — Extraordinary Machine
    • Gorillaz — Demon Days
    • Grandaddy — Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla
    • Jennifer Gentle — Valende
    • John Parish — Once Upon a Little Time
    • Kate Bush — Aerial
    • Kate Rusby — The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly
    • Kimberley Rew — Essex Hideaway
    • Lazerlove5 — Flicker Mask
    • Lemon Jelly — ‘64–‘95
    • The Lollipop People — We Need a New F-Word
    • Malcolm Middleton — Into The Woods
    • Marbles — Expo
    • The Mountain Goats — The Sunset Tree
    • My Morning Jacket — Z
    • Of Montreal — The Sunlandic Twins
    • Sigur Rós — Takk …
    • Sleater-Kinney — The Woods
    • Sufjan Stevens — Illinois
    • The Vanity Project
    • Wolf Parade — Apologies to the Queen Mary

    I know there are some that won’t make my list (Aerial, for one) but the rest of them all have their moments.

  • Debunking the 25% Myth

    My dad called yesterday, asking, “Wind turbines do run for more than 25% of the time, don’t they?”. Seems he read an opinion piece in his favourite fair ‘n’ balanced rag (The Telegraph) that said that wind turbines only run 25% of the time.

    I see this factoid popping up more and more from the anti-wind crowd. It’s a particularly difficult one to refute in the press, as by the time you’ve tried to explain the difference between capacity factor and operation time, you’ve lost them. Or gone over your allotted time/word count, at least.

    I’ve got a year’s production data from WindShare/Toronto Hydro‘s turbine in front of me. It’s on a marginal site, one that probably wouldn’t be developed by a commercial entity. So, does it run for more than 25% of the time?

    Yes; the turbine is generating 63% of the time. I’ve defined generating as providing a net export of power to the grid. Our turbine’s a bit more cranky than most, and I have a suspicion that our metering system is dropping some production, but even so, 63% is way more than the claimed 25%. So it gives me great pleasure to say:

    MYTH: Wind turbines only run for 25% of the time.
    BUSTED! Wind turbines run at the very least 60% of the time, usually more.

    (I can’t guarantee that Country Guardian won’t quote me out of context. I could make a cheap shot about not blaming them for their paymasters in the nuclear industry requiring value for money, but I won’t …)

  • blog entry for dad

    My folks have been visiting for the last couple of weeks (we’re just about to leave for the airport), and Dad asked for some links we discussed. The following will probably make little or no sense to other readers: