Great, readable essay by William Gibson on the season that changed his life. He has some fascinating thoughts on H.G. Wells that have made me want to dip back into that writer's work.
I just learned that William Gottlieb died last night. Like every jazz fan, many of my images of the jazz greats come directly from his photography. Billie Holiday with her head back, eyes closed; Django Reinhardt, cigarette a-dangle, fretting a run; a skinny Frank Sinatra looking beyond the microphone . . .all are indelible Gottlieb images. You'll probably see lots of obituaries in the next few days, but a visit to the Gottlieb collection at the Library of Congress might be the best place to remember him.
Unreleased Fillmore East, Fillmore West, and Winterland performances available as 128kbps streams. I haven't been able to get it working completely glitch free, but some of these performances are pretty amazing and I'd buy 'em if they were available in a non-compromised format. Wolfgang, BTW, was Bill Graham's birth name.
Stephen Brown argues that Sid Vicious and Mozart shared the quality of primitivism, by which he means the winnowing away of unnecessary complications. I see his point with Sid, but in Mozart's case, I see it as the essence of the refining fire. Still, a good read and well-argued, even though, IMHO, wrong.
Yet they've been largely ignored by the industry. I don't expect it to change either. My take is that women are buying more e-gear now because a lot of the tech has become mature—for example, you can buy a five megapixel camera for a reasonable price this year. But watch how the industry tries to court the female consumer. You'll see brighter colors and "simpler interfaces" billed as woman-friendly. Sheesh, most women want what I want: a good product at a good price. Instead, they get vanity mirrors.
The woofer for the Anat Ref Pro and Studio II is also an exclusive YGA design. "From the voice coil to the surround and cone, the woofer is the ultimate expression of what can be produced for our enclosures and sub-amp technology."
Speaking of great jazz websites, Rod from Loughborough has a dandy 'un in wordsandmusic. It's just what the title says: thoughtful words on music Rod likes, linked to examples, deep references, and videos.
MIT Media Lab has posted a survey seeking to discover "what words people use to describe sounds—and whether everyone uses a common vocabulary, or whether the choice of words is related to a person's musical or cultural background—and how the chosen words relate to a sound's timbral characteristics."