Catching up: on freezing one’s butt off for an eclipse

eclipse

Things have been a little euphoric here in the great Northeast for the last few days, to the point that my blogging has fallen off precipitously. Here’s a quick catch-up, starting with Wednesday night.

I walked outside and saw the edge of the moon darkening. I decided it was time to try my luck with a camera. I grabbed it and a small tripod and walked down the hill to the park, a large unlit area where I figured I’d have the best chance of getting a decent sky picture.

There are four large rocks on the hilltop in Robbins Farm Park, which seemed tailor made to try to position the little tripod to catch the sky. Unfortunately, though, the telescoping legs don’t hold intermediate positions, which was necessary to get the view of the sky. After a lot of give and take (and a few minutes to snap some other pictures, including this sardonic and almost unreadable LensDay entry), I eventually got the camera in position and stayed out, freezing, taking a photo every few minutes.

The result? Well, the image to the right is the only one that actually came out well. But the rest make a nice QuickTime movie. The only problem was that toward the end my hands were so cold that I couldn’t snap the shutter without knocking the camera out of position—hence the swerve in position toward the end.

Spotlight on Carl Perkins

Carl Perkins’ claim to fame among most music buffs is his brilliant “Blue Suede Shoes,” which his fellow Sun Records artist Elvis Presley made his own a year after Perkins had already taken the song up the charts. But in the heady brew of Sun Records’ brief run of brilliance, Perkins remains a distant memory for many behind Elvis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis. A new collection of his songs from the Sun years, Orby Records Spotlights Carl Perkins, should help remedy that.

Unlike Presley, Perkins’ background was tenant farming and Nashville, and this shows in his originals, which comprise eleven of the fourteen tracks on this anthology. The originals veer from blistering rockabilly to broad country, and showcase Perkins’ yelping vocals, bar room lyrics, and fiery lead guitar. The tunes also show off the capabilities of Perkins’ band; his brothers Clayton and Jay on bass and rhythm guitar and W. S. Holland on drums lay down a solid foundation on which Perkins builds what the liner notes refer to as “country guitar laced with blues and whiskey-fueled aggression” (check out the solos on “Honey Don’t” (the b-side to “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Boppin’ the Blues” for outstanding examples).

The set is short—35 minutes—but manages to cover the breadth of Perkins’ work from 1954 to 1957 at Sun, including songs from six of his seven Sun singles, two tracks from a 1957 “dance” album, and one track (“Put Your Cat Clothes On”) that was unissued during his years at Sun and has only appeared on compilations. Unfortunately the liner notes, while providing an excellent biographical sketch, leave it to the reader to figure this out; I used the excellent Perkins discography at Terry Gordon’s Rockin’ Country Style for information on the sessions and releases.

One wonders how the course of rock history would be different if Carl hadn’t gotten into a car crash on his way to appear on the Ed Sullivan and Perry Como shows behind “Blue Suede Shoes,” sending his career into a slow slide into alcoholism and obscurity (Perkins would eventually escape both in the 1980s). Perkins once described his frustrated career: “I was bucking a good-looking cat called Elvis who had beautiful hair, wasn’t married, and had all kinds of great moves.” Fortunately for us all, history has been kinder to Perkins than the market was, and he’s now recognized as one of rock’s founding fathers. This set, while brief, does an admirable job of showing why.

Note: This compilation is one of a series of Sun years reissues from Roy Orbison’s label, Orby Records, which together with Orbison’s own recordings are being newly distributed by Eagle Rock Entertainment.

Review originally posted at BlogCritics.

3-0 and a red moon

As someone wrote on a mailing list today, “I’m going to go out in the morning and shake my trees, because there will be pork in them.” The Sox just got the last out. Game 4. 3–0. I hear fireworks and horns in the streets. I’m going to bed.

But I can’t resist asking: if things come in threes, and we are having two signs of Apocalypse tonight (one atmospheric, one Bostonian), what’s the third?

When the kids learn the truth about freedom of speech

Daily Kos: Free speech, Bush style. At Richland Center High School in Richland County, Wisconsin, students were told in preparation for a visit from the President that they could not wear pro-Kerry clothing or buttons or protest in any manner at risk of expulsion.

Expulsion. Getting thrown out of school for the rest of the year. Because one chooses to wear an item that supports the Democratic candidate for president.

It’s never too early to learn that free speech isn’t for everyone, but only for those that can afford it. That schools restrict political activity during presidential campaigns instead of creating teachable moments is one of the greatest failures of our educational system to date. That the campaign would make this request in the first place is the final proof (as if we needed it) that they care neither for our rights nor our children’s education.

Suggested action? Patrick Nielsen Hayden links to the story and provides contact information for the school and its administrative personnel.

New iPods, new iTunes

The new iPod U2 Special Edition, iPod Photo, and iTunes 4.7 are out. The U2 iPod was widely leaked and so there are few surprises, except maybe its release 3 weeks ahead of The Complete U2, and the fact that it won’t be pre-loaded with the band’s albums, rather coming with a $50 coupon for the boxed set. Smart money says the Complete U2 will cost rather more than $50…

The iPod Photo is more of a surprise, but only because the rumor sites appear to have been correct for once. I rather like the form factor and the idea of bringing my photos around with me in easily-previewable form, and even the concept of being able to hook my iPod up to a TV with a video cable. I think that the boat was missed in one area: the iPod Photo should have a built in USB connection so that you could transfer photos straight from most digital cameras to your iPod’s hard drive. It’s also interesting that iTunes will be used to sync photos to the iPod, rather than iPhoto, but I suppose it saves a considerable amount of development effort to just reuse the existing sync code in iTunes rather than developing it again in iPhoto—then having to release bug-fixes for both apps for sync problems down the road.

Regarding iTunes 4.7: the only new feature on the Mac platform, if you don’t have an iPod Photo, is the ability to find duplicate tracks. This would have been a useful feature. Except that the criterion for “duplicate” is apparently same artist and song title. What about an artist who recorded the same song in the studio and live—in very different versions and with very different run times? At the least you’d think that run time would be included in the criteria—with a one- or two-second window to account for variations in ripped vs. downloaded versions.

Nice catch-all: Bush campaign emails show up at anti-Bush site

Wonkette: Bush letters sent to the wrong e-mail address. Wonkette points to the Dead Letter Office at GeorgeWBush.org. Apparently some people on the president’s staff can’t tell .com (the reelection campaign) from .org (the protest site). As a result, there are a ton of interesting emails that have accumulated in the catch-all mailbox at georgewbush.org, including one staffer making the career-limiting move of observing how good he would look with First Daughter Barbara Bush (load the page and search for Barbara).

The only potential smoking gun I can see on the page is the thread about The Middle Eastern American National Conference endorsement of Bush, in which the draft email has several signatories’ names missing, with the note that the names are being scrubbed by the campaign and that “we need phone numbers, city, states.”

Get the story straight

A rare glimpse from the New York Times on how the response has evolved on both sides to the missing explosives from Al Qaqaa. Josh Marshall has been tracing the emerging storylines as well, including the emergent “they were gone when we got here” theory which seems to be discredited by the facts.

In this case, one might well ask, with Pilate, “What is truth?” In this case, the only truth appears to be: The Bush administration and its proxies have known about the missing explosives for almost 18 months and haven’t done anything about them. Now that the story is breaking, based on the October 10th letter from the Iraqi interim government, the administration is falling all over itself and can’t get the story straight about what happened and why it hasn’t acted.

Leaving aside the other issues in Iraq, this is a simple failure of competence by the incumbent leader of the western world.

Alas, John Peel

BBC: Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies of heart attack at 65. Peel is one of those tastemakers who would be famous even if you only knew him through the sessions that artists recorded on his show. I’m much more inclined to pick up a “Peel Sessions” recording from a band than another live show, just because I know the performance is going to be astonishingly good (witness: Bauhaus, Joy Division, the Birthday Party, New Order, Tim Buckley, Stiff Little Fingers, PJ Harvey and Stereolab, Gang of Four, the Cure, Happy Mondays, the Buzzcocks…)

As tastemaker and enabler of amazing sound, there are few DJs who could even think about filling his shoes today. (And I think that they all work for KEXP.) Via MetaFilter.

Standards and stardust

It’s very easy for an obsessive organizer type to get lost in iTunes. All those data fields, some of which are rarely filled in—take “composer,” for instance—mean there’s always something to look at in a spare minute and to try to populate. So I was delighted to find possibly the last resource I’ll ever need for composers of popular standards (as performed by jazz singers and instrumental artists): Todd’s Lyrics and Links. In addition to lyrics, he also lists composer, lyricist, arranger (where appropriate), and the whole shebang is organized by performer. I recognize a work of obsession when I see it. My hat’s off, Todd, and thanks.

Weekend respite

The trip to New Hampshire on Saturday became a trip to Maine. We walked around the small coastal town of Ogunquit, Joy and Jefferson charmed all onlookers, we walked on the beach in 45-degree high winds, and turned around and went home. Charlie and Carie are well and are finding the same things we did with Behr paint from Home Depot: good coverage requires so many coats that the price disparity with higher-grade paints is effectively erased.

Yesterday was a bit of a work day. I replaced a few downspout sections, including one by our three-season porch that proved to have about two feet of compost matter in it. The worst part is that it was feeding into a hole in the driveway next to the house that might have been a dry well, only it was completely full. Which of course means it’s going to be a pain to excavate—especially since the entire thing is surrounded by the asphalt of the driveway. Incidentally, there’s nothing better than a reciprocating saw for cutting aluminum gutters, though the noise in an enclosed space like my workshop is akin to a motorcycle engine going inside one’s skull.

I also continued the Sisyphean task of leaf pickup. Our oak trees won’t drop their leaves for quite a while longer, so I’m just removing everyone else’s debris right now and it’s still taking hours each time.

Last night we tried having a fire in our fireplace for the first time. Alas, it burned itself out before our logs really got going. I’ll have to bring in some more kindling and try again tonight.

Now for the week, and trying to type keeping my fingers crossed for the Sox.