the j link

ch-check it... in

2011-12-10T21:27:00.002-05:00

Boa tarde, chums!

Now it's real medical leave time! Various surgeries are on the docket; I'll be setting up camp at the hospital for a supposed "four to six weeks" beginning [this] Monday, 12 Dec. So, uh, barring entropy, catch you next February?

mandster...

2011-09-03T23:20:00.003-04:00

I

wish you were here

Click. Donate. Please.

PS - I've been scraping the bottom of the health barrel all summer... I can't fight through much more than getting up and either going to the doctor or staring at computer screens, so Mr. Blog has been pretty lo-pri. Now that my PICC line is out and it's no longer Tatooine weather, maybe I can get out and push around town a bit - perhaps that will respark the energy pilot light. Anyway, apologies all around for unannounced medical leave. I'll fill you in more thoroughly when I have more than nebulous rumors and speculation. Until then...

(us)'

2011-06-25T22:24:00.000-04:00

Well hello there! After weeks of choosing photos and [still] being sick, I present...

Primus! As the world knows, these dudes are at the top of the proverbial short list of my favorite bands, so I was pretty psyched when they rolled on in to play a show in STL. They performed on 29 May at The Pageant, and yes, I'm slow to post.

First up: the place is tiny. As in middle-school-gymnasium tiny. Sold-out, packed-like-sardines tiny. It was a strange, but wonderful, place for Primus to play - they've spent some time touring with stadium-size amphitheatre crowds, and the band has no problem selling out any Pretty Big Venue. But here they were, the main event at something slightly larger than a third grader's birthday party... Yay.

Openers for the evening were The Dead Kenny G's (name and attitude a juxtaposition of them and him), consisting of [Claypool's friends and frequent bandmates] Skerik (saxophones and keyboard) and Mike Dillon (drums, xylophone, vibes, anything else percussive), as well as a rotating bassist, currently Brad Houser. Again, that's Skerik, Dillon, and Mr. Houser. They put on a crazy show - Skerik on sax and keyboard at the same time! - and their music is quite wonderfully wild and unpredictable. A+ to that. On the downside, though, it's basically a prolonged wacky jam session, so songs are hard to pick out and the tunes are a bit forgettable. Oh well - what fun! It's saying something when you're not booing the openers or just wishing the headliners would hurry up and take the stage, no?

So, uh, about those headliners... Primus' performance was, most accurately, exciting. They're doing the whole promo tour thing backwards: rather than putting out an album and then touring to promote it, they're on the road to hype Green Naugahyde, which isn't even coming out until September! Grrr. Ergo, they played a fair amount of new material. I can't guarantee precisely which new tunes were played, but I can think of two fresh songs that were ho-hum at best; otherwise, the new tracks were hopefully signs of good things to come! The sound was weird, energetic, dark, and, well, generally Primus-y. As usual, with Les Claypool at the helm, it's all bass-centric.

Don't worry, though, it was still a classic Primus show! They couldn't leave the building without playing a pile of fan favorites, no creo. They hit plenty of highlights - "Seas of Cheese", "My Name Is Mud", "Tommy The Cat", "American Life", and even "Golden Boy" made appearances, among others. That list pretty much covers the beginnings of my bassery... Unfortunately, a few duds slipped in too *cough cough "Over The Electric Grapevine" cough* but hey, who's counting?

It should be noted that, as you'll see, the Colonel has a new custom bass. For those keeping track, it's another four-string fretted with tremelo, but not a Carl Thompson axe. Anyway, it's a purdy chunk-o-wood, and its super-clickety-clackety fun percussive tone thoroughly complements Les' slap-pop style. That's how it works when you help build your own weapons, I suppose.

Enough words! Let's have some eye candy. As previously mentioned, I spent quite a while choosing what not to inflict upon you - starting with 230+ snapshots, I pared it down to a cheap roll of film. Caption comes after photo; images courtesy the madre. Here goes.

--------------------------------

First up, across the street from The Pageant we have the Pi Pizzeria; think I could get an ink discount?

Before the show, obviously. We were at the front of the not-mosh-pit section, and the people in this photo are as far forward as they could get. Cups included for scale. When the place filled up, the floor space en frente was only twelve human sardines thick - did I mention that this venue is cozy?

The Dead Kenny G's. L to R, that's Skerik, Brad Houser, and Mike Dillon xylophoning.

Another shot of the openers, with Dillon on drums this time. White suits and curly black wigs complete the Kenny G satire.

Here they come! You'll notice a depressing lack of weird masks and hats throughout the night. I guess Les is sticking with steampunk.

That's what most of the night looked like - the Colonel more or less staring at me. Groovy.

As usual, Les takes a break to mock the people up front who are flipping him off. Always amusing, but a bit too salty to quote here! Make up your own phallic jokes as necessary.

Gratuitous blurry shot! Mr. C managed to transition his rant into "Mr. Knowitall," which the obsessed would recognize here by hand position. He is so elo-quent...

Oh my, Primus is more than just Les Claypool??? It can't be! The stripey dude on guitar is Larry "Ler" LaLonde, and the invisible drummer is Jay "Jayski" Lane. Check out Les' Dobro bass.

Les explains that Ler was worried about looking "Freddy Krueger-ish" with his attire. Point well made.

Mmm, Fender Mustang guitar solo. Not so Krueger-ish. Or Kroger-ish, for that matter.

A light shone down from the heavens, and there was... Jay Lane! And it was good.

You can almost see him back there. Nobody ever said Primus shows were well-lit.

Les makes an appearance during the drum solo, armed with his one-string whamola and requisite chimpanzee mask. Really, Ler's the one worried about looking like a weirdo?

Another example of apparent eye contact. He was close enough - who knows.

Time to saw away for a few numbers. With the derby, spectacles, and vest, he's looking like 19th century Professor Claypool.

Pedallls!!!

Sorry that it's inherently Mr. Blurrycam because of speed and lighting, but here's a glorious interlude of whacking the strings with the back of the bow. I can just feel whole orchestras cringing at the thought.

Ha! Through the blur, it's still classic. Foot up on the monitor; face in the bullet mic; arm muting the strings on the big fat fretless sixer; hands slapping away on the neck. You can spot "My Name Is Mud" from a mile away.

"Adonde va, el chico de la ciudad..." Slappity slappity whap.

Supposedly by request, Les 'n' Friends trot out for one more Primus staple pre-encore. I remember it as if it were a meal ago! And so does "Tommy the Cat."

Say, baby, that's a difficult song to sing and play at the same time.

The trio plays a couple of encores. Where do you get inflatable astronauts, anyway? (BTW, they're "Buzz" and "Neil")

And a final dose of stare plus blurhands. What a fun night, kind sirs.

--------------------------------

There you go. Tune in next time for a more well-written post submitted by monkeys!

fire this way

2011-05-27T23:56:00.002-04:00

Get ready to laugh it up, fuzzballs.

"You couldn't pay me to get a Lady Gaga album!" say so many out there...

Well, apparently you can pay me, because Amazon did! After pre-ordering the approaching dcfc album on Thursday, Bezos and Friends awarded me their standard buck o' MP3 Store credit; coincidentally, that was the same day they were offering the Lady's entire "Born This Way" album as a $0.99 download. In a bout of hipster irony that only the extremely-missed Mandy would understand, I jumped on the chance.

BTW, I've run through it once now, and the music snob lightning review is that it's very rarely mildly catchy, and there's a song partially in inappropriate German, but it's mostly just crap in a hat. It is pop, after all. However, it makes me think of my lost pal and smile.

In the redeeming "music jlink actually likes" arena, Sunday is the Primus show in STL. Enjoy the contrast.

Anyway, let the jokes and rips fly. Nerf-herders.

um, dois, três

2011-04-11T19:29:00.005-04:00

Thanks for some responses! Feel free to add more of your favorite TV/movie series, or just bash Star Wars and Star Trek; I'll get back to that next time, perhaps.

As you've probably noticed, I tend to regurgitate dates here, and today is actually one to remember. Way back on 11 April 2008, a giant pile of doctors off in a faraway land routed out my nasal cavities, hacked my neck open, and traded some tissue.

That's right: three years ago, I had a stem cell transplant.

Crazy! Since then, it's been a wild ride. I'm obviously not skipping down the sidewalk and typing 100 wpm again yet, but my life is drastically improved compared to the pre-surgery days. Remember, my spinal cord injury is C4-C5 level. I "should" barely be able to move my arms. Now I have at least minimal voluntary muscle control down to the abdominal/gluteal level. I haven't used the power chair since 2009. I used to have only enough lung power and breath control to whistle for about three seconds; now I can consistently hit and sustain that elusive low C. So much dreamlike stuff is unbelievably happening.

So, yes, progress is agonizingly slow. Feeling "lucky to be alive" is often a stretch. However, the progress seems to be unstoppable. Weekly, even daily, new and weird advancements come out of nowhere. Relative to how I was... Wow.

Woohoo.

of intergalactic proportions

2011-03-08T23:38:00.004-05:00

So, dear readers, this time you comment away to write the post, because I'm asking the impossible/infinite/unoriginal question:

Star Wars or Star Trek?

Or, something else entirely?

Yes, I am aware it's space apples to astro oranges, but I know you have a preference anyway... Just movies? Just series[pl]? The prequels? The not-prequels? The old stuff? The new stuff? Deep Space Nine? TNG? The Clone Wars? Have you bothered to read any of any of the books? Is it all space junk to you?

This is intentionally viciously open-ended. Be as super-specific, super-detailed, and super-harsh as you can, and of course, pretty please tell everyone why. No incorrect responses here (other than "Phantom Menace FTW!!!!1!!11!"). Please don't bias yourself according to my predicted opinion - just tell us some stories!

genetically, a little birdy told me...

2011-02-19T04:09:00.003-05:00

Osteoporosis is a bother. I'll tell you more when I'm a few standard deviations closer to menopause (laugh it up, DXA techs and rheumatologists).

coding one

2011-01-16T21:14:00.003-05:00

Hello, strangers! Here, have some words.

I can't say I've been up to much, which is a pretty poor excuse for not writing. Exercise options are a bit limited in the land of rural coldness. I mostly lounge around stretching muscles as much as possible, occasionally turning off the power-assist on my wheels and attempting to push in circles around my room. That, uh, obviously doesn't last very long. I think the whole place is uphill...

I guess I'm halfway proud to say I made it through "the holidays" on mere Vicodin? I don't remember if I mentioned earlier - I'm not looking back in the logs, so I'll just tell you again - over the summer I switched pain meds from oxycodone (the magic in OxyContin) to hydrocodone+acetaminophen, a.k.a. The Big V. Those of you who are for whatever reason familiar with this stuff gather that for me, after taking oxycodone for 5.5 years, dropping down to hydrocodone is akin to replacing morphine with baby aspirin. Aaaanyway, going through all those wintertime rendezvous while relying on a medicine that only cuts about 80% of the pain mustard was neither particularly palatable nor reflexively expected, but somehow it happened. Okay, I guess that was the whole story. Woohoo.

Ha, I know what I can use as paper-thin excuses for blogsilence! First, I recently upped to Windows 7 (and switched back to openSUSE; tough luck, Ubuntu et al), and I fiiinally got my grimy little mitts on a new and compatible version of Dragon. Ignore the part where I can't remember writing a single blog post using dictation/voice-recog software, and that excuse will fly... I won't extol the virtues of typing instead of talking at the moment; for now, just notice how poorly written this post is. Further, I only recently picked up a mic that is actually decent enough for regular use. In fact, I've updated quite a few of my audio toys to the point of overkill, but again, I'll save those details for another day.

My other excuse? One acronym: RSS. It owns my soul.

Speaking of, I have articles to read. Rocket.

"here's a happy one"

2010-12-24T00:59:00.000-05:00

...and six years of the nightmare.

thick skulls

2010-12-16T04:14:00.001-05:00

So, just posting links is weak sauce, but...

Why do people oppose this???

$\surd$ in

2010-12-04T20:08:00.001-05:00

Hey! Still here. Promise. I've been "busy" "doing" "stuff", but I'll come up with something in [over]due time...

Until then, check in with The Doctor!

(PS: I'm sure I could ramble aimlessly; but, any specific topic requests?)

(PPS: No, \surd is not actually a check. Deal.)

Katze is the name of the cat

2010-10-31T22:31:00.002-04:00

Merry pagan rituals to all. Be nice to your RA...

And beware the Lap Guardian!

Also known as the Washcloth Bin Guardian if the lap is taken. She's sooo evil. Mwa ha ha ha!

Bonus points for getting the band reference in the post title. Rocket.

it's a silent c

2010-10-04T01:01:00.001-04:00

10/04 - celebrate comb jelly day!

Courtesy high school AP bio. No, nobody gets it.

4t

2010-09-17T20:42:00.005-04:00

can't get rid of fire and rain
sunny days go, more soleil comes... no end
lonely times, somewhere out there waits a friend
but who cares; I can't see you again

adieu

2010-09-09T18:21:00.002-04:00

2008/5/5-2010/9/9

Later, CSCIR! Those in the 3-1-3, connote that title properly.

punk

2010-09-03T23:20:00.000-04:00

mandy... :'(

au rev, DET!

2010-08-31T20:31:00.002-04:00

Hey yizall! Sorry for epic delays. I've been ridiculously busy since my last post, and busyness will continue for a while after this one as well. I've adventured from Detroit a few times conaliso lately, and I need to 'venture another time or two [future trips, so-IL<-->chitown] to find an accessible place to live. Further, next week I'll be giving my final farewell to the 3-1-3, briefly landing in cville until I can relocate permanently to the aforementioned unknown Chiburb apartment/house/whateverlivingspacewecanfind.

As several out there implicitly censor me, that's all I have to contribute. Just pretend that all is well. Welcome to September, and adieu to the Motor City. L8r!

tables

2010-07-12T22:04:00.002-04:00

Hey hey! On with some poorly-written summarization.

As long as it's been, I still don't have much to relay about therapy. Same old stuff: rolling around on the mat for shoulder and core strengthening, sliding back and forth for transfer practice, and the occasional day of biofeedback, plus bike/Motomed/weights on my own time. What excitement, eh?

Not sure if I already told you, so here's the high-speed primer on this "biofeedback" stuff. For the etymologists out there, it is exactly what it is called, so feel free to imagine and move on. For the rest of us, biofeedback involves wiring pairs of electrodes to muscle groups, EMG-style, and watching a graph on a computer screen while I try to activate the monitored muscles. The stronger the activation, the higher the measurement on the graph. This activity has a zillion applications, but in the neuro world, it's mostly used to see how well, if at all, a person can control certain muscles when the muscles have little to no motor function. Typically, that's anything waist-down for a para, arms-down for a quad. The results show what someone must do to get the strongest activation, where in the range of motion a muscle group is the strongest, etc. It only becomes more technical beyond that, so we're done.

NOTE: wiring up to biofeedback is not the same as wiring into the e-stim bike! Where the bike sends electricity through the electrodes to my muscles, biofeedback is the opposite, measuring the strength of the electrical impulses I'm sending from my muscles to the machine. That is, the bike zaps me, while I zap the biofeedback hardware (um, essentially).

Elsewhere...

SofC: an a is gone! The madre is ok. It's hot, even for me. Blood pressure, where are you? I'm ashamed to admit that "should've went" spilled from my oral cavity a few weeks ago. I'm AT&T's iTool for two more years, but mwa ha ha ha, I grandpa'd my way into keeping unlimited* data. Should I become a twit? Don't forget, E5, A5, E3, A3, E1, A2, E0... In a plastic cup. End!

Penultimately, last week we went to an Eric Clapton concert! Yay. The opener was Roger Daltry of The Who. I'm not a big fan, but I still thought his band did fairly well. Roger looked an amusing bit like Dr. Lima, the OMA neurosurgeon in Portugal.

Sorry, btw, no photos - I forgot my camera, and though we were close enough to see everything, it was sufficiently far and dark to render phonecam pictures unintelligible.

Clapton was excellent. He's showing his years, but not through his fingers. Like Mr. Daltry's set, I only recognized about half of Eric's stuff, but that doesn't matter. His whole band was bluestastic, and Mr. C can solo with the best. I got to experience the acoustic rendition of "Layla", so my night was complete. Who cares if I was way too young to be there.

Finally, the Mensa national/sort-of-worldwide Annual Gathering was here in Detroit last week! Err, it was technically at the Hyatt in Dearborn, but sorry folks, that's still Detroit. BTW, "Hyatt" is by far my favorite American hotel to mispronounce. Anyway, I'm not in Mensa [yet], but the padre and I were able to attend freely as guests of the Steph. It was quite awesome, though there's at least one knowitall at every session (guess what, smartypantses - if you're at a lecture with a room full of Mensans, you're very likely not the brightest one within earshot). Fear not, for 'twas not all lectures; I spent a fair amount of my time going to socialize-and-enjoy sessions, sneaking into GenX stuff to hang out with Steph + other people slightly older than I, and trying out crazy local craft barley pop at Hospitality. Not sure what I'm allowed to mention beyond that. The top 2% can have fun too!

Enough nonsense for now. Fusée!

sorry, Mr. Month the Sixth

2010-07-06T17:04:00.001-04:00

oops! Neglected the entire month of June... Romance, intrigue, desire! Actually, I've happened across none of those, but there has been plenty of busy-ness. Real update soon.

BTW, welcome, Mensan(s)! Feel free to mill around (here is a mildly entertaining midpoint at which to start) until I can crank out something recent.

Type at you again eventually, pals.

gratty

2010-05-30T19:49:00.002-04:00

Hey all! Tick tock.

Hmmm, what to talk about? My pitiful little chunks of therapy have been productive - mostly working on transfer-related (transferry? transfurry?) stuff, building up shoulder/core strength and mastering the "lift and twist" timing. This may be an overly ambitious statement, but I think that not only will I be able to sliding-board transfer on my own, but also I will do so rather soon. Suck on that one, "quads are worthless" mcdoubtydoubters.

Elsewhere, what is there to contribute? I know...

THANKS!

Because of, and only because of all of your übergenerous donations, I have been able to purchase my very own FES (e-stim) bike. AWESOME. I reiterate, thanks squared plus one to all of you, as this is an incredible bonus to my future therapeutic potential (I won't be living next to rehab forever), and there's no possible way I would be able to shell out for a bike without you guys caring so much. Did I mention that you're amazing?

Ahhh, some long-lost optimism. Dig it.

anniversaire?

2010-05-05T17:05:00.003-04:00

Hey! Feliz Cinco de Mayo, and TWO YEARS since I started therapy up here in The Motor City. Pardon the Twitterish microblogging, but stuph (thanks ian4mer, of RHIT fame) has been hectic lately. Real updates eventually.

Rock out, says college jlink!

annualison

2010-04-29T00:24:00.001-04:00

Merry you-day to that person so often lurking on the other side of the wall...

from the jlink?

2010-04-23T20:46:00.001-04:00

Hey pals.

So, umm, it's been a bit more than a week back at the therapy grind! Weee. I prefer to keep this blog as upbeat and positive as possible, so I'll simply say that my optimism is waning, and I'm quite thoroughly dissatisfied with pretty much every facet of "therapy" days...

That's all.

why the big paws?

2010-04-13T19:29:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, full-blast therapy strikes again!

inky

2010-03-14T13:59:00.003-04:00

Ha, pi... What a rebel.

happy birthday t

:'(

von

2010-02-26T16:41:00.000-05:00

Hey all!

Last week I turned in a new prescription to restart full-blown therapy at the CSCIR. I would have told you sooner, but I've been a bit on the ill end. Anyway, start the countdown.

la la la

2010-02-09T16:41:00.000-05:00

Hey! Watch me advertise.

Antsy for some fresh tunes? Check out Amazon's stash of free mp3 [aka digital/downloadable] albums. The free library covers the whole spectrum of genres, from well-known artists to "what are these noises?", with a fair dose of non-Western-culture stuff. Some "albums" are merely single-song samplers, but oh well. I downloaded everything available a few days ago (DMC internet is speedy, even if I have to go to the lounge downstairs to use it), and it turned out to be 120 albums/675 songs... Do the math to figure out the ratio of whole albums to single-songers. It looks like they rotate stuff in and out often [frequently!], so it appears to be wise to check for new'uns every few days.

To get this goodness onto your computer, just make your selections and download away; Amazon makes you install their "MP3 Downloader" tool first (and only once per computer), but it's small, easy, and a truly convenient download manager. The songs are hi-qual mp3 files without DRM, so you can play them on any computer or music player that supports the mp3 format. BTW, that's essentially any device ever made - they're so commonly called "mp3 players", after all, as the format is beyond ubiquity.

I like having hi-qual, real, physical copies of music I like, so I could never depend on a digital download store for tunes - iTunes, Amazon MP3, or otherwise. However, repositories such as Amazon's free music are pivotal to supporting musicians; if I listen to stuff and actually like a band, I will...ohmy...buy albums from them! Scary how that works, I know. That's some of the purpose of the radio, too. What a strange world, people listening to music and buying what they like.

Also BTW FYI JIC, I did pick a few albums since I was trolling for recos from you:

Charles Mingus - Mingus Plays Piano (thanks, j/a)
Aphex Twin - Ventolin [EP]
Ming + FS - Human Condition
The Postal Service - Give Up
KMFDM - Krieg
Beck - Modern Guilt

I suppose I have some listening to do. How terrible! Rock yourselves out.

Technical notes: the files from the Amazon digital coffers are MP3 format, encoded in the neighborhood of 256kbps VBR, though a few tracks are done at a constant [CBR] 256kbps. That's not quite CD-quality, but it's easily good enough for all but the snobbiest of audiophiles. Amazon's download manager is compatible with Windows (probably XP and newer) and "sufficiently recent" versions (meaning I don't know which ones) of Mac OS X. I didn't check it out, but I'm assuming Linux users are hung out to dry. Feel free to leave a comment if you can confirm/deny *nix compatibility with Amazon's downloader tool. To ballpark average file size, consider that my downloading spree ended up as follows: 675 songs; 2d 1h 34min 43sec (2:01:34:43) total time; 4.95GB total space consumed. I'll leave the dimensional analysis up to you...

miles tone

2010-02-06T19:29:00.001-05:00

Let's split up some posts!

As you've seen in various pictures, the old rehab locale houses a largeish track - four wide lanes, and circa 100m per lap - so last week I went back to push circles and record some mile times. Score 26:30 with the wheels on low assist; 17:00 on high. You are correct, that's not really even up to walking speed! I usually wimpily don't go that far without at least a tiny break, but it wasn't too bad rolling nonstop. The hardest part revolved [oh yes, pun intended] around remembering what lap I was on; a 100m track yields about 16 laps for one mile, which is about 15.8 laps beyond my attention span... I should write a lap-counter-and-music-controller app so I can focus on singing along with real lyrics instead of my current lap number ("Hard Day's Night" loses its appeal when it becomes "14 14 14 14").

It should be noted that these mile times were measured doing counterclockwise laps ("run fast, turn left!", according to Mr. Genta's classic track meet pep talk), and clockwise travel would likely have been slightly faster since I'm a lefty. It's a matter of linear and rotational speed/distance/work/[kinematics] that I can explain neither elegantly nor entertainingly... Ask Mr. Genta for some assistance there. Or, jarmstro.

Anyway, those are at least baselines for tracking progress. Dig it.

with a silent s

2010-01-23T15:21:00.002-05:00

Hello all! One mini-pile of humdrum, coming right up.

Pseudotherapy has been good, I guess? Nothing overly exciting - same old legzapbike+armMotomed over the lunch hour, with a few sprinkles of other self-directed exercise here and there. With any luck, I'll be back to [eu-]therapy in a short while. Until then, I'm trying to maintain an intricate balance between working hard and being phenomenally lazy. Pretty rough, I know.

Elsewhere, approximately nada - wasting hours to tidy up the music collection, as my library obeys the laws of thermodynamics (the second one mostly, though I suppose it can't reach absolute zero either)...

It's time for some new albums, methinks. Any recommendations? Fire away.

10

2010-01-07T19:49:00.002-05:00

Ahoy! Should be PDFing paperwork; rocking some Soul Slinger, watching the snow, blogificating instead. Oh well.

As you may have gathered, I'm back in The 3-1-3 after spending a week or two in Carlinville. It was nice to be thoroughly lazy with the kitties for a bit, but it's xlnt to be back here working out again as well. A+ to the finished accessible shower at home, though - plus extra credit for constant water temperature! That's a one-up on the hydrothermal sine wave here, for sure. Anyway, posh.

Pseudo-PT is going well. I've been sticking to the leg e-stim bike and the arm bike part of the Motomed, and it's a qual workout. Like being in cville, it's nice to be relatively slacking for a short period of time, but my muscles have had copious rest time, so I'm antsy to get back to full-blast therapy.

What else? Not so sure it's wise to disclose fully one of my most drastic changes - suffice it to say that a fair load of space has been reclaimed in our suite, and Simon the cville cat got to keep one of his favorite nap spots. Mwa ha ha ha! A new page has been turned.

I suppose I should get some real work done, eh? Beware, further rambling might lead to an oh-so-riveting explanation/lecture on disk defragmentation, because I'm that exciting... Let's stay away from that sector. Har har har, nerds.

Rocket!

I repeat

2009-12-24T01:30:00.004-05:00

Five years gone.

I may have accomplished quite a fair amount throughout the duration, but I still hate it.

Not a surprise, of course; just a reminder...

d'hiver

2009-12-15T19:49:00.002-05:00

Hey all! Apparently promising more frequent updates guarantees less frequent updates... I guess I've been a bit busy lately? Excuses, excuses. Let's rock.

Snow!

My new method of therapeutic activity is, umm, acceptable... I took a week or so off after Thanksgiving, partially because I hadn't had a break since July, and partially because I felt pretty much horrendous. Last week I kicked things off, though, going in on Tues and Wed to do e-stim bike, weights, and the Motomed (active/passive arm/leg bike that doesn't implement electrical muscle stimulation). I planned on heading over on Fri as well, but both Thurs and Fri were so amazingly cold - 15 deg F, 40 mph wind? no thanks! - and I was sore from Motomedding, so I stayed in the suite and did stretches and weights and such instead. Ha, as if it's that warm in the suite...

Otherwise, hmm, what's up? Wiped and reinstalled Windows on a virus-laden lapster over the past week or so - how exciting! Piece of cake, though, as I've gone through the process literally hundreds of times. It's tedious that there are about 1048576 "Microsoft Updates" (security fixes) to be downloaded for XP by now; XP is great as far as Windows versions go, but it's undeniably rather vintage. The most dangerous part is to become the resident "computer guy", as such introduces the risk of being expected to fix everything for everyone all the time. Gotta keep nerdliness on the d-l.

Oh well, blah geek blah blah. Not much else going on. I'll be headed to So-IL for about 2wk during "the holidays" and enjoying the kitty overload... It'll be quick though, as I need to be here exercising, biking, etc. One minor dose of celebration: I think I'll have all of my holiday-related shopping done without going to a single brick 'n' mortar store! Mwa ha ha ha. I can't stand crowd behavior, particularly at this time of year... Why do people think I'm going to run over their children in a manual chair? Are your little ones' brains slower than my push speed? Am I more dangerous than the average distracted cart pusher? Ugh.

Trying hard to avoid a massive gripefest. I should go before I become even more grouchy. My apologies for the whine, but sometimes it needs to come out. Such holiday cheer!

Let me know if you'll be in the cville area soon and interested in scheduling a rendezvous! Catch you again soon... Rocket like Goddard.

not just monotics

2009-11-16T22:04:00.001-05:00

Que tal, pals! Slowster McBloggypants, at your service. So much, yet so little, to cover! My grammar is awful. Let's rock.

Therapy has been, of course, grand. Err, mostly? The Wave [vibration thing] has been in and out of commission - mostly out - so I've not used that in a while. I haven't been on the Redcord [suspension magic] for a bit either, but just because we're working on other stuff au lieu. Bummer; the Redcord in particular is an amazing workout. Instead it's been the usual list of short and long sit maneuvers, stacks and stacks of weights, and a vast array of rolling and other prone/supine mat work. Zappy bike time is always queued up for the last part of the session, bien sûr. I've probably forgotten a heap of other stuff, but hey, it's been a while... oops.

On that note, for myriad reasons, I'm taking a bit of a break from hardcore PT! I'm overall not pleased with myself about the whole deal, but it seems "oh well" is my only available input option. I haven't really even had a break since early July (which involved enough car time that said week barely counts), so it's time to take a few breaths and de-fizzle. Ergo, for a bit I'm cutting back from real PT to, umm, essentially a glorified gym membership? I'll be doing weights, the fancy non-power-assist arm bike, and whatever else is available at the first floor Brasza workout area, as well as sneaking in Motomed and leg e-stim bike time upstairs when they're free over lunch and such. Unfortunately, I'll have to give up the other neato CSCIR equipment - Wave, Redcord, etc. - and almost all mat work while I'm on break. That is, I won't have dedicated trainers/therapists at my disposal, so I'm limited to whatever my daytime assistant and I can accomplish on our own. Again, I'm pretty bummed - it wasn't my idea, and I will inevitably regress no matter how hard I work - but I'm trying to convince myself that it'll be nice to be "liberated" for a bit. My last day of real PT for now will be 25 Nov. Anyway, I'm tired of talking about it, so there you go; methinks you get the idea.

BTW, other than some time in Cville for "the holidays" in December, I intend to stay in Detroit despite the PT break! I have at least one xlnt reason to keep living here, but it wouldn't make any sense to pack up and move out for such a brief period, only to move right back in. Puis, just an FYI. Any other applicable acronyms?

I imagine you might be info-saturated by now, so I'll save some irrelevantales for later. Feel free to reco subjects to cover once the barrel of free-time monkeys has arrived... Otherwise, beware of approaching mundaneity!

Check out the hook while the DJ revolves it.

than never, ever before

2009-10-24T22:24:00.003-04:00

Hey cats! rrow. Interpret as you wish, because I like nonsense.

Happy 2^10 day!

So, what's up here? PT has been hi-qual, of course. Weight work has built up the guns to a sufficiently high caliber that I've caught comments/compliments from random people. That qualifies as a self-esteem booster, methinks. A+ to exercise (poor puppies, they're sick). I'm not exactly bursting with typing time, so I'll say we've been sticking to the usual exercises that work and leave you to review as nec. Giddayup!

Mega advance: I've noticed lately in the shower that I can feel the warmth of the water on my arms down to my elbows or so. Compare to the previous mark of no temperature sensation at all in my arms, and there you go.

Here in the 3-1-3, we've cut straight to winter! It was nice, sunny, 75 for a while, and one day it warped to 45/gray. There were threats of snow. Ugh. Any day now, it'll be -15/frogs.

We caught our KMFDM pals a bit ago, yay! As Mr. Willis would say, "the jam session was excellent - the crowd roared like a lion in a cage!" It was a shame we didn't get to meet them after the show, but it was cold and late and we were in a sketchy part of town [ha, a sketchy part of Detroit... zing], so it worked out, I suppose. Here they are, as seen from the only "accessible" part of Harpos, behind the sound guy:

On that note, game over! A week or so until there's time to write for realz. BTW, speaking as a total nerd, TeX/LaTeX beats the MS math editor (and Word in general) at everything. Ok, go ahead, invent your own clever ending to post 100...

ad-bc

2009-09-29T20:32:00.001-04:00

Hey reader people! Bask in the glory of this non-update...

First, happy birthday, Les Claypool!

PT has been going strong with all sorts of fun stuff at my request - Total Gym, Redcord, Wave, Uppertone, cool mat work, etc. It's been enjoyable and productive...and hard, of course! As it should be. Progress: alllmost functional (nearing 2 or higher on ASIA strength tests) voluntary control of various abdominal and related core muscles! I already knew I could stabilize myself with trunk muscles quasi-randomly when wheeling around on rugged terrain and doing leaning stuff in the room, but contractions are becoming stronger in, dare I pun, a more controlled therapeutic environment. Rock.

Elsewhere, it has become Detroitly outside - cold, windy, wet, and most stereotypically, gray. It's just the start, though, as these adjectives will only intensify as they stick around until next May or so. Yay, gray. More merrily, the hardest part of my current write->proof->fix->submit task is over, chemistry relearning and all! Yes, that's intentionally and mandatorily cryptic. Enjoy guessing.

Elsewhere elsewhere, my Wii Tennis skilz are developing from "royally subpar" back to "thoroughly average"... Why oh why am I incapable of standing a chance in any of the tennis training tasks?? I'm better at boring people away from the e-stim bikes, it seems. Watching simulated doubles matches is apparently not too enthralling.

Eh, I don't have much more to contribute, and Jeopardy[!] is distracting my nerdly soul. My apologies; a few more weeks of severely busy before worthwhile (err, less worthless) updates return. Until then... Rocket!

tossing up

2009-09-10T22:04:00.000-04:00

Hey strangers! Here's a quickie while I'm on self-regulated break...

PT has been mostly the usual stuff, with emphasis on the Wave vibration plate exercises and time in/on the Total Gym - one of my favorite activities has been playing catch [extremely poorly] while on the T-Gym or in long sit position, throwing one of those large kiddie rubber bouncy balls back and forth with my trainer. Catching = easy, throwing = not so much. I play with quite a few children's toys...

The most hilarious (and one of the most difficult) tasks has been, um, "extra strength" wheelchair propulsion? To start benignly, let's push around outside, going a fairly long distance, checking out inclines/declines/ramps/etc. To spice it up, add 1) wrist weights, 2) a trainer trying to pull me backwards via stretchy exercise tubing tied to the back of my chair. That's right, wimpy jlink, armed with wrist weights (pun severely intended), pulling someone around DMC campus in the manuchair. Someone fetch a little red wagon.

There has been one completely new exercise system for me as of last Friday. Recently the CSCIR acquired a Redcord suspension weapon, which is, in short, a bunch of bungee-style stretchy tubing (colored red, of course, or else they need a naming consultant) hanging from the ceiling. The apparatus is used to suspend the participant partially or completely above a standard therapy mat table, facilitating myriad exercises with better manipulation of weight distribution to improve task efficiency. Royally confusing? This might help.

On Friday I did two activities in "modified prone on elbows" position, face down, elbows in contact with the mat, but with the rest of my body suspended. First were scapular protractions, aka shoulder-powered pushups through elbows; in the suspended position, this works not only paraspinals and rhomboids, but also all sorts of traps and "chin tuck" muscles to keep from swinging all over the place (ha ha, sorry, dust off your anatomy book for that sentence). The other was the dynamically stationary army crawl, where I push my body forward and back through my elbows - like taking one crawl-step forward and then one back, such that I wouldn't actually go anywhere. This is waaaay better on the Redcord than our old method of rolling on bolsters! Let's just say the bolster way was rather unpleasant... So, yay, new and cool therapeutic weaponry.

That's about it for phys ther... What else? The alischool year has started here in the 3-1-3, and I've/we've been super mega busy lining up PA help to cater to my toddler needs during the day on weekdays. It's working out extremely well so far. HIPAA says I shouldn't mention anything else.

Speaking of top secrecy, my apologies, I've been writing stuff other than blog posts lately, so updates have been scarce. Lo siento again. I'm reminded that I can't do high school-level math anymore, and that I remember approximately no chemistry whatsoever... Thus, more apologies, I'll still be ravenously busy for a bit longer and probably won't be able to afford much postage. If you're itching for jlink blog amusement - ha, yeah right - feel free to re-browse around last March's musical posts and comment away! Also, I'll gladly throw in a plug for the jarmstro's endlessly entertaining musings. Read, foo!

Ok, that's about it. My vintage electric razor finally bit the dust, so I got a new one and I'm trying to raze on a regular basis - we'll see how long that lasts. It doesn't help that I have three-day stubble after about 20min... Howl, it's the wolfman. Rocket.

relocs

2009-08-11T23:23:00.003-04:00

Hey all! Perhaps I should update this century. Prepare for rambling nonsense, as always.

PT activities have been hi-qual. Beyond the typical e-stim biking, weights, and mat work, I've gotten to do Total Gym stuff and real arm biking several times... Weee. It's hard work, but oh well - easy therapy is pointless! Frighteningly enough, it's easier/less traumatizing for my posture and blood pressure to be upright in the T-Gym Norris Machine than it is to sit in the manual chair; maintaining the 90-90 position for so long isn't a truly natural human trick. Speaking of, I guess I'm getting better in the manuworld, as I don't even remember when I last used the power chair... Remember the part where at least one of my doctors told me the manuchair would be impossible and I'd be stuck in a power chair forever? Hmmm!

The biggest PT change has been that the facility was moved to a different part of the building. Today was my first session in the new digs. I was expecting a horror but was pleasantly surprised! Anything is a step down from the incredible space we used to have, but the new place is, umm, sufficiently mediocre? The track is tiny, pathetic, and barely usable, but otherwise, it's a workable setup. If nothing else, it's warmer! We'll see how it goes after inpatient neuro moves in next door.

In OT world, a bit of a surprise - monaliso came on Thurs to learn about crazy underwater hand e-stim and the like... And then I was discharged! Nobody gave me a warning...explanation...anything... I think it's that I do enough OT stuff on my own that sessions are superfluous? Who knows. I hope I wasn't kicked out.

Otherwise, life is incredibly busy but incredibly fantastic. A zillion deadlines are fast approaching, but I'm still in procrastination phase (permanently, of course). The "live-in caregiver" is moving in very soon, but I still need to organize further daily assistance, as she'll start her real job bastante pronto... I had forgotten how much work [and potentially fun] it is to teach personal assistants from scratch. I know I need to be bossy, but that's not exactly one of my best skills. Whew.

Umm, what else? I finally have my nice speakers up here, yay! No more agonizingly tinny laptop audio, and I don't have to wear the C-clamp-on-my-massive-melon headphones all the time to enjoy snob-certified sound. Oh bro, I learned from the best :-/ Now if I could just have a kitty or two, I'd never leave the room.

oook, food, proofread, post... Thunderbirds are go!

FTW

2009-07-29T19:29:00.001-04:00

Hey all! I've been feeling rather fevery for a few days, but here's something (zealously cropped for privacy) to enjoy:

That's right, weight-bearing through my legs on the Norris-endorsed Total Gym (recall, nerds, vertical force here = earth's gravity times my mass times the sine of the angle of incline [F_y = mGsinθ]).

And, much to the shock and dismay of myriad anti-progress folk, my bones didn't turn into calcium-flavored Jell-O! Ha.

It's a start - finally a move in the right direction.

brazocycle

2009-07-23T22:04:00.001-04:00

Here's a quick shot of the aforementioned arm bike, bad posture and all. Woohoo.

Happy whatever. Word out.

smrt

2009-07-19T22:04:00.001-04:00

Hellooooooooo...

Hi-qual PT and OT this week! Tues/Wed PT was actually not that phenomenal; nothing new the first day, and about 2h of thoroughly subpar mat work before e-stim bike on the second. Friday, though, new activity! Sandwiched between weights and zap biking was some time on the real arm bike. Think giganto wheelchair-turned-tricycle, with arm pedaling to provide propulsion through the front wheel. It's a hacked ten-speed, really, gears and all. I just did laps around the indoor track - no big adventures - although it was an adventure weaving around the zillion other people also doing laps. You might safely guess that I in arm cycle was a bit faster than others much harder at work crawling or walking on their own... Somehow I managed not to injure myself or anyone else. Weee.

OT was new stuff as well this week. We played the reschedule/cancel game, so I only had one session. Oh well. I think I've explained before that my arms are extremely hypersensitive, seemingly as part of the natural progression of improvement and extension of normal perception of touch sensation. For now it's to the point where I usually keep my sleeves rolled up so they don't constantly scratch my deltoid-region shoulders and make me flip out slash want to injure someone. So, in OT we're using vibration sensation to try to reduce hypersensitivity. It involves stimulating my arms with this magic vibration massage wand, starting with very tolerable sensation on the least irritated areas, currently my lower forearms close to my wrists. Right now we're dissipating some of the vibration by placing a foam ball between the vibration source and my arm, too. It's pretty benign, but we'll gradually make it more bothersome, increasing intensity and moving up to more irritable areas. Woohoo, doesn't intentional aggravation sound like fun? Like consciously getting a bad sunburn and then rubbing it with sandpaper... If therapy isn't crazy, it's not worthwhile!

Elsewhere, I just put fresh contacts in with record speed (not that fast)... I've still been rolling around the DMC for a few miles on nice days - long enough last time that one of the wheel batteries died after I got back to the room. In the rant world, some doctor felt it necessary to stand in the way of cars to lecture me on parking lot safety... Hope you're better at medicine than you are at real life, ma'am. Paralysis implies stupidity, right? Bring it. (Note: whine whine; people are in general not complete jerks.)

Game over! Insert coin. Au rev!

burnt

2009-07-11T22:24:00.001-04:00

Hey all! He returns, sort of...

Soooo, it's been a while! I'm not going to try to regurge everything; I think the quasi-accurate term for this is "taking a mulligan" on the past however long it's been, like blog bankruptcy protection. There was [were?] a visitor, a still-recurring fever, a trip to Central IL, many miles pushed around the DMC, and a heap of PT sessions... Fill in your own details, I suppose. It's probably more interesting that way.

My rambles are in shambles. More and better when I'm less pyretic. Word out.

stormy eyes

2009-06-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

m o. m o p. m o p p. Post!

PT this week: Tuesday was rolling and prone stuff on the mat, then rows and chest presses on the Uppertone, closing up with about an hour zap biking.

Wednesday saw a few new tricks, working with a sub trainer and such... First (last, actually), I ended the session with the usual FES bike party. The rest of the time was mat work - my blood pressure was behaving nicely, so we were able to do both long and short sitting exercises without issue. Legs straight long-style, I kicked off with a completely new task. We wrapped my hands together; then, like a prayer ninja, I held my arms forward with elbows bent and pushed downward against resistance. Indeed, it's not the easiest exercise to describe! Imagine you're on your knees, hands clasped, begging for mercy - from there, push your elbows downward against something. That's approximately what I was doing, except that I was seated on the mat with my legs out straight, rather than on my knees. Wow, this exercise works a slew of muscles. The actual push-down part enlists rear deltoids, mid/lower traps, paraspinals, rhomboids and lats (among others): that is, the back of the upper arm (higher than the triceps) and just about every muscle in the mid to upper back. Even better, as a side effect, this exercise works the "good posture" muscles, including abdominals, obliques, lower back and more (the "core"), as well as the upper traps and other neck-related, hold-your-head-up stuff. Hmm, how can we illustrate this? Try sitting at the kitchen table with a ridiculous slouch. Then put your elbows on the table (let's break as many etiquette rules as possible) and push down hard. See how your slouch goes away? Magic! As it were, the kitchen table description demonstrates the task rather well.

While you're still at the table, we can do the next exercise, and you can even help clean up. Do whatever is necessary to get the table at a bit lower than chest level and put an arm out on the surface, palm down (insert washcloth here for cleaning benefits). Now, wax on, wax off! The outward/arm-straightening motion (left hand to the left or right --> right) works some good shoulder and upper back muscles; the opposite move is good for pecs and anterior deltoids, not to mention cross-body range of motion. Instead of cleaning the table, I did this in long sit on the mat with a propped skater's sliding board, pillowcases, and wrist weights, but you can pretend I was doing busboy therapy if you want.

I next did some random short sit stuff for a bit since my blood pressure was remotely close to normal human levels, but by then my shoulders were rather crackly and in and out of socket, so there wasn't anything too intense. As previously noted, I wrapped up with the bike post-matting. End Wednesday session.

Friday was back to fairly normal stuff - typical Wave maneuvers, weights on the first floor, e-stim bike. Woohoo. Sorry, I blew all my words on Wednesdescriptions.

Elsewhere, I'm doing my best to wheel around and attract stares (I appear to have become a bit famous already) for an hour or two every day, with the exception of Thursday's rain and Monday's überwind. I'm traveling much faster and more dangerously than when I started bombing around a bit over a week ago, for sure. Still no accurate speed/daily distance numbers - phone GPS cuts in and out as I go between buildings (and isn't really to be trusted anyway), and though they have some distances around campus premeasured, I don't understand their crazy routes. Too bad the sidewalks aren't functionally defined, or I could just integrate! Pues, my best day was 3h, for I'm guessing 4+ miles. My posture is getting better, too, and I'm taking fewer breaks; improvements all around. I can even roll and play wheel bass simultaneously. Hyah.

Wrapping up, I'm headed to cville over the 4july weekend to meet with my Illinois "help me with managing paid personal assistants" case worker, who will hopefully [surprise] help me with acquisition of assistance up here. I should be starting OT when I come back, so prepare for tales of beans, marbles, PVC trees and mini-basketballs...

aaaaand that's a wrap! Stay tuned next time for more monotony and clean tables. Rocket!

racing and pacing and plotting the course

2009-06-22T23:23:00.002-04:00

Tag, Pepys! Let's see how this sprawls. A marvelous part of blogificating is that, unlike in more formal writing situations, I start whipping up a post with no plan whatsoever. Such is probably why it's never that good. Shucks. Let's rock.

Last round covered up to martes for therapy, so let's pick up at miércoles. And, miércoles! I only vaguely recall. There was e-stim biking for sure, as well as a giant heap of mat work. We did triceps extensions in the short-sit position - that is, sit up with hands on mat on each side; then, bend an elbow to lean to that side and push back up through that arm to straighten the elbow and return to upright position. This is amusing with barely functional triceps and barely measurable blood pressure... Further, my right shoulder exhibits subluxation (shifts out of socket) in certain motions, so we have to get it just right. I also did some prone-on-elbows stuff, i.e. face-down on the mat ("prone", opposite of face-up "supine") supporting my upper body off the mat by putting weight on my elbows. These activities are usually scapular protractions, which are basically doing shoulder-powered push-ups, and side-to-side weight shifts. Sem açúcar, prone on elbows is one of the most uncomfortable positions out there. Eh, whine whine. I think that's all for the hump?

Viernes was pretty standard, with weights, some long-sit entertainment, and a zap bike wrap-up. I'm no longer any good at Wii tennis; however, my score still magically increases when I am viciously trounced?? Wii Math is just as realistic as the rest of the console. Good riddance, Sarah/Elisa!

In the gorgeon of viernes tarde post-session, I took the opportunity to grab some headphones and push around the DMC campus for a while in the manual chair. I toured mostly familiar locations, including a few laps around the brush mall and a trip over to where the ER is and the pharmacy used to be, heading back home by way of the northern border/street-side/"[something something] Spain Elementary" sidewalk. I don't have an odometer, nor do I know how fast I go to do a rate times time equals distance calculation, but I'll randomly guess it was about two miles (3.2km).

Observations? People don't look before they pull into a driveway/loop from the street. There is no way the sidewalk curb cuts are even close to ADA compliance (you know, JKL/KG!). Pedestrians here scare me when I'm not a zinging electrified 1/4 ton of evil, though five-fingering my phone seems trivial when you consider how many large I'm sitting on at any given moment. I must modify my mobile music mashup, even if it means ruining my nerd-humorous total of 1337 songs.

Sábado, Henry Ford Museum! I'm not exactly a museum addict, but the padre and I had a few hours of fun. Mr. F was an industrial polymath, as it were, building trains and electrical monstrosities and whatnot. Not surprisingly, though, I was there for the cars and not disappointed. Go there if you're in the area or read if you're not.

Domingo, lunes were wonderfully uneventful. I went out and about both days, for a total of five miles or so (8ish km). It is outstandingly boring wheeling back and forth over the same few chunks of DMC sidewalk, but meandering too adventurously would be outstandingly unintelligent. Yay for the same people staring at me all the time, every time I pass. At least I've moved, chubbies. Get over it.

I guess we're summarized. I apologize for not having any jl pictures yet! Until then...

Sascha has not only figured out that I am no longer in my room in cville, but also solved where I have gone. Sorry, my little kitty, sneaking into a package to Detroit is not a wise way to travel.

Paz afuera! Wink.

Lima++

2009-06-16T22:04:00.000-04:00

Hey hey, home fries!

Most important for this update is that Dr. Carlos Lima and friends were in town over the weekend to give a presentation on his OMA surgery, research, etc., over at the WTLTSCIR facility in town.

I'll share a better explanation soon, I hope, but for now, a quick refresher: "OMA" stands for "olfactory mucosal autograft", which refers to an adult (non-embryonic, not NC-17) stem cell transplant procedure that involves moving stem cells from waaay up in the nose ("olfactory mucosal") to the site of spinal cord lesion ("autograft", where "auto-" indicates that the graft uses a person's own cells). I had this surgery last year, 11 April 2008, and it's why I'm here recovering and writing. That's good for now, and I'll pretend you're in suspense until I reiterate the process more thoroughly or you reread some old posts.

Anywho, Dr. Lima's presentation was hi-qual if not a bit old hat, and it was good to see/hear/brag to him about progress. I like to keep under my hat the stuff that is most important to me, but take my word that I can do quite a bit more than a C4-C5 quad should (manual chair, anyone?), and Dr. Lima deserves some credit in that regard.

The other presentations were excellent as well. There was a showcase of Japanese "robosuit" technology, implementing electrically assistive prosthetics - exoskeletons, really - to enable patients with rather high spinal injuries to sit, stand, and even walk without other assistance. Wow. Finally, Dr. Steve Hinderer of DMC/Wayne State gave a very thorough analysis of available therapeutic activities; I'm hoping to get a copy of his slides, but until then I can't begin to do justice with a summary.

In the usual realm of therapy, just a few particularly special activities happened in the past weekish. I used a new weight machine, the Uppertone, over on the inpatient neuro floor (6) of RIM. Without buttering it up too much, it's just a different, more self-contained and quad-friendly weapon for doing the exercises I usually do with the weights at first floor Brasza's gym. I did rows and chest presses - standard weighty fare. Also, for the first time in a long time, I did rolling stuff on the mat. My shoulders were not pleased! Oh well. Otherwise, no Giger since my first session, but plenty of e-stim biking and some time outside in the delicious Friday weather, being warm and relearning how to travel in a straight line with the power assist wheels.

Today-at-time-of-writing, Tuesday, consisted of some random short-sit exercises, followed by Uppertone rows/chest presses, and a wrap-up of FES bike and Wii tennis. Blood pressure and shoulder muscles were misbehaving, so it wasn't the most productive session on record. Further, I was pretty much awful at digitennis - rusty! On the optimistic side, I didn't go passive on the bike, so my leg muscles are getting back into the swing of things.

Wait, what's "going passive" all about? Ideally, the e-stim bike runs in "active therapy" mode, meaning the cycling procedure is accomplished by my own muscle power through the evoked contractions caused by the bike's timed electrical impulses. That is, I am actively pedaling. In contrast, "passive therapy" means there is no electrical stimulation of my muscles, and the cycling process is merely the bike-powered rotation of the pedals with my feet attached. In other words, I'm not doing anything, passively going through the motions of pedaling the bike. Active therapy is obviously much better - it is real exercise, since my muscles are doing the work. However, the bike goes into passive when it detects that the necessary muscles are sufficiently fatigued. Passive is better than nothing, as it's still reminding the body of a useful motion system, but the goal is to stay in active therapy through the entire cycling session.

Eh, I guess I should stop and actually post. Those who know, bask in the glory of what hasn't been said... Rock out!

chez j

2009-06-06T22:04:00.000-04:00

Whatup rock stars!

Home sweet home, I'm back for more phys therapy in Detroit. We drove all day lundi, arriving circa 00:15 mardi. Delicious. No skirting around the issue - almost 12h in the car is awful in myriad ways. Upon arrival, though, joy! I had been assigned to a crummy, essentially inaccessible suite to start until a better one became available. However, when we picked up the keys, they were for the same [slightly less crummy, slightly less inaccessible] suite I was in last year... So, without delay, I get a roll-in shower! I'm a psychotically clean person; unfathomably important and meaningful is a daily real shower to me. Yay. I'd describe the two-room suite's layout and all, but last year's explanation is much more entertaining and inaccurate. It instantly felt like home.

My first PT session started about 12h later, consisting of two hours of eval and some time on the Giger. Weee. We didn't do the complete ASIA exam, but strength testing showed that I'm about the same as I was when I stopped in December of last year - not bad, as I went almost six months without any official PT.

Mercredi was the next round. Two hours of mat work, one hour of lower extremity FES bike. Endurance isn't quite where it was, but again, not a big shocker there (oh yes, pun thoroughly intended).

Nonsequentially, vendredi afternoon was round three of PT for the week ("doing the math", that means sessions TWF afternoons for now). We started out with chest presses and rows downstairs on the weight machines; then came some push-ups and such on the Wave vibration plate, followed by significantly better performance on the leg zap bike. Soon I'll be back to ideal levels with that exercise weapon.

Rewinding a day, we hit the highlight: manual chair acquisition! After entirely too many months of insurance battles, compromises, and plain old waiting, I finally have the thing. It's me-sized. It's comfy. With the power assist, it might even be too easy to push. Wheelies all around. Smiles, too.

I'm worn out and there are approximately 6.022x10^23 things to accomplish ASAP, so that's it for now. Welcome back to a blog with a purpose!

easterly wins

2009-05-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

Therapy returns Tuesday. Get psyched.

broadway cast

2009-05-24T22:24:00.001-04:00

Hey all! I'd been putting off an update until after my doctor's appointment last Thursday, but it had to be moved to this coming Thursday, so no stories on that front. However, today it has officially sunken in - I'm out of here pronto (prontito, de veras)! Anyway, on to irrelevant uncropped pictures of kitties.

First, the incumbents...

Simon says z.

There is no caption that could make this photo of 289 ("Tommy") any better. Big black thing = upright bass.

Here come the newest residents...

Sascha, my guardian (he's so mean?), says nothing for now.

If Katze weren't secretly a fuzzy barrel, she would probably slide off the end of the bed.

Buddy steals my lap while Sascha isn't looking.

Gratuitous picture of the lovecats Sascha and [basement] Katze, hinting that I need to go to bed so they have something more interesting to sleep on.

Poof!

buck shot

2009-05-09T19:49:00.002-04:00

Pity the quickies, foo!

--still sick.

--wedding at the end of May --> heading to Detroit early June.

--hoping I feel better by then.

--I just took my contacts out with the help of my webcam; wouldn't that have been a delicious Youtube video?

--super mega awesome: MY manual chair is supposedly built, ready and waiting!

--minor hindrance: it's in Detroit.

--so goes the tyranny of the hunt.

I'm bad at parallel structure. Rocket!

signing a cease-fire

2009-04-29T22:04:00.002-04:00

*feliz a-cump!*

Hey all! Amazing how much more often I update when there are real updates, eh?

As mentioned last time, I'm cycling between wellness and not-so-wellness, not because I'm a KUB rockstar, but because I have a hi-qual Pseudomonas infection. The plan had been to break out the big guns and treat it with a superpowered intravenous antibiotic. However, we decided that I'm going to skip the antibiotic and tough it out unless I get über-mal.

"What?!", you say, "an infection that serious and you're not even going to treat it?"

Bingo. Commence ridiculous explicative analogy.

For most any bacterial infection, there is at least one "good" antibiotic that takes out the problem bacteria like microscopic machine gun-wielding Rambo. However, there are inevitably strains of the bacteria in question that are slightly genetically different, such that they are resistant to that antibiotic. In this ridiculous example, umm, maybe there are some bacteria with natural bulletproof vests or whatever. Anyway, when someone has this infection, we unleash Rambo to take it out, and he annihilates all of the bad guys but the few that have the bulletproof vest mutation.

To start, this is great - for a while, we just summon the Rambo antibiotic when someone has an infection, it toasts basically all of the bacteria, and the person's immune system either eliminates the few remaining bulletproof bacteria or tolerates them in their tiny numbers.

The more we page Rambo, though, the more un-tiny the population of vested bacteria grows (oh no, the "e" word). With overuse, Rambo eventually eliminates just about all of the non-bulletproof baddies of that particular species. But eek! Now the Rambo antibiotic is powerless and pointless. oops.

With most minor infections, this isn't a big deal; we can just switch to the samurai antibiotics, or antibiotics with grenades, or antibiotics with whatever relatively mild form of violence you prefer. As long as the bacteria we're fighting can't cause that much damage, we're not afraid to attack in a variety of ways, even if we're risking the proliferation of more resistant strains. Also, there are often so many different effective antibiotics that we can pick from them at random and no strain ever has a significant resistant advantage. For example, there are myriad Penicillin-like drugs (a Penizillion, perhaps), and we're free to use them as we please because there is trivial likelihood that a significant population of bacteria will be resistant to all of them.

However, my current infection is superpowered and megaresistant. It can cause pretty severe illness if it wants to, and the bacterial population has already developed bulletproof vests, chain mail, mine detectors, Sherman tanks, missile flak... The bacteria can battle everything short of medicinal nuclear bombs, and a tiny portion of them can even handle nukes, rendering those few indestructible to us.

So, following the Rambo pattern, what's not a good idea for dealing with this bacteria? Well, what will happen if we unleash nuclear warfare the moment we detect their existence, every single time? To start, great, they stand no chance. But slowly, the nuke-resistant strain will grow in number. Eventually the nukeable strain population shrinks until what's left are all essentially invulnerable. Problem! We can tough it out when we do this with the wimpy fever-bacteria infection until our immune systems clear it up, but the superpowered bacteria will likely take us out before our immune systems can deal.

It sure would've been a better idea to use nuclear bombs on the über-bacteria as rarely as possible so that the nuclear-resistant population would remain insignificantly small and non-threatening...

Well, I have a superpowered infection, and the IV antibiotic is its nuclear bomb. I'm not that sick, so taking the one effective antibiotic would mostly just contribute to the proliferation of the indestructible strain. If I become extremely ill, then it's the right situation to use this last remaining weapon.

That was a horrible, holey, unclear, and noneducational example, but oh well. Isn't [quasi-]natural selection great?

ex falso

2009-04-25T23:23:00.001-04:00

¡hola! Prontito.

Surprise! My conjecture about illness due to a rocky overload was not the case. I guess my psychic urology license should be revoked.

Pues, I wasn't completely wrong; I do indeed have a small stash of kidney stones, but they are currently trivial/benign/not the problem. Rather, I appear to have a hardcore infection that will require a round of intravenous antibiotics. Yay?

I suppose this is a fair trade. I've been up and down on illness symptoms, while kidney stones would have effected a steady decline, probably into hospital-quality sickness. Also, I don't know if it will take several visits to the doc to administer the appropriate IV doses, but I can get started on that right away locally, where I would have to wait several weeks to get in for surgery. So, I think I picked the right way to ill. Insert Beastie Boys jokes here.

Looks like only my head is full of rocks.

pp&f

2009-04-21T22:40:00.003-04:00

Hey all! Here's a dose of past, present, and future... Not necessarily in that order.

First of all, happy birthday [yesterday], Ron! I think I'm prevented from saying who he is, but if you knew him, send him some happy thoughts.

Also yesterday was a trip to the dentist. Ugh. I usually don't care about such appointments, but this time I was abnormally nervous... From the way the rest of my body works, I've learned to tell when something should hurt, even if I can't really feel it; thus, despite copious Novocaine, seeing smoke coming out of my mouth and feeling that distant nerve twinge are enough to anxious me up sumpin' fierce.

Next up, manuchair acquisition progress: ha! As if anything new has happened. Let's keep dreaming for now, and pretending insurance approval doesn't travel at the speed of glacier.

On the return-to-Detroit front, I'm guessing it's a matter of weeks now. I still have some medical events on the calendar that must take place here in so-IL, such that my über-optimistic soonest return date is early May. Again, though, that's optimistically assuming the next issue is taken care of at top speed... Further, rehab is supposedly pretty full throughout May, so it might be a bit before I can squeeze into their schedule anyway.

Aforementioned "next issue": I'm not feeling all right today; I'm not feeling that great. Symptoms make me think I've reached critical mass on KUB stones - my math degree makes me a qualified telepathic urologist, right? I have a CT scan bright and early tomorrow to prove my conjecture, and then it's off to surgery ASAP. Scheduling the surgery is the potential therapy delay, as Dr. Ro-z is a busy dude. (Note: kidney stones are a pretty safe bet; I'm always a loaded calcification shotgun, but we only worry when they're causing problems.)

Bleh.

the return of the non-musical

2009-04-10T22:04:00.000-04:00

Hey all! Back to the grind of posting short, fairly meaningless updates. The music project was quite fun, but that was a giant load of work, and it's nice to get back to enjoying music, rather than strictly analyzing. Note to people who might want to pay me to do that: I'd love to - it was a blast - as long as I don't have to cover 20, 30, 40, 50 bands a day (I'm looking at you, "s*" and "b*" days). In fact, pay me and I'll blog about whatever you want.

Anyway, updates? I haven't said anything worthwhile since February...

As far as therapy is concerned, I will hopefully get back to Detroit by the first week of May. I'm cramming in all the various appointments I've been putting off - stupid bad vision, stupid cavities - so I don't think I can get back until the fourth or fifth at the earliest. Restarting therapy on 5/5, Cinco de Mayo, would be quite coincidental, as that was the day I started last year. Then the goal is for my return to Detroit to be a permanent departure. No offense to the wonderful small town of cville, but rehabilitation and recovery are far too important for me to keep burning up days here. With the help of the magicali, I think it could happen. First, though, I need to get my eyes and teeth checked!

Manual wheelchair update: in the molasses-in-January process of pushing equipment requests through the insurance process, I've made some baby steps regarding the jl-sized, power-assisted custom manuchair. Insurance semi-officially went line-by-line through my chair parts request, approving or quasi-denying each detail. They approved (again, unofficially) most of what I asked for, but there are several parts that they will either pay for a lower-quality part, or not cover at all ("convenience" items, though they have a rather skewed idea of what items are essential and what are luxuries). For these denied and halfway-approved items, I can choose whether I want to pay out-of-pocket to include or upgrade, or to do without. Without diving any further into those details, I had the opportunity to chat with the chair dude and pass judgement on these items; so, theoretically I am at the point where we're letting insurance know my decisions, they're sending their part of the check to the wheelchair people and the rest of the bill to me, and the chair guys will then put together my portable throne (ha ha, bad word choice). Thus, we've taken a leap forward, but who knows how long it will be before insurance finally finishes their part of the process; then the chair guy's expectation is at least five weeks after approval to get all the parts together and hand over the finished product. Ergo, I still have weeks, maybe months to wait - no doubt I'll be back in Detroit before the chair finally appears. After waiting months and months already, all I can say is... ugh.

Actually, there is something else I can say - a huge thanks to everyone who has donated over the past few years. If it weren't for your contributions, I likely couldn't have my own manual chair at all. For that matter, I probably couldn't do therapy either. You're enabling my dramatic physical progress, and I am eternally grateful.

On that note, let's hang it up for this round. There's more to cover - concerts and such - but I'll save that for a more desolate week. Until next time, go read some of jarmstro's recent math posts. Rocket!

all over but the listenin'

2009-03-29T22:01:00.002-04:00

Here comes the series finale...

AC/DC - undeniably, classic rock all-stars! Everybody knows a pile of their hits and recognizes them instantly... Nobody understands the lyrics, and nobody cares. The git riffs and solos are perfection. All he has to do is scream "yeeeeaaahhh!" into the mic, and everyone goes nuts. It couldn't possibly get much better for this band. They're TNT - dyn-o-mite!

Ace of Base - highlighting that the nineties were often as nongood as the eighties... Don't forget, she's gone tomorrow!

I remember hearing "The Sign", "All That She Wants", etc., on the radio at the swimming pool around 15 years ago. Sadly, I liked them then, and more sadly, I'm still slightly addicted. The nineties are sufficiently retro/roots for those my age, right?

Afrika Bambaataa - funk/rap/electronics masters. Renegades of funk, even. I particularly appreciate that they have typical goofy 1990 rap themes, rather than going on and on about crunk. As old school hip hop was supposed to be, they spent half of every song doing name checks. Yesss.

Bonus for tagging up with Überzone on several tracks for the Über-album Faith in the Future. "What is this electrofunk that's drivin' y'all crazy?"

Alarm Will Sound - a classical orchestra who focus on performing symphonic remakes of quite non-symphonic contemporary music. Their main album has been Acoustica (I suspect a play on the term "electronica"), which is a collection of Aphex Twin songs turned symphonic (catch Aphex about ten bands further down in today's post). It's impressive work - though Aphex Twin uses sounds that obviously do not occur in the natural world, AWS still pulls some slick moves with a bit of creative license (ok, more than a bit) to imitate Aphex frighteningly accurately. There are plenty of "you can do that on a cello?" moments, de veras. I would have liked to hear them try something completely out there - "Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix)" and "54 Cymru Beats" (yes, Jo, the broken printer song) come to mind - but that might be asking a little much.

Courtesy of these guys, I must always have a brief chuckle when I see the signs on fire exits. Naturally, it scores me some questioning looks from passersby, but oh well. It's a drop in the jl-is-a-freak-show bucket.

Alec Empire - yum, more digital hardcore! There's absolutely nothing to like about this guy: he's way offensive; the beats aren't foot-tapworthy, danceworthy, or even raveworthy; the bass electronics aren't pleasant; there's constant electronoise; his samples are a bit frightening; he doesn't even have the slightly cute appeal of EC8OR's female rant machine.

Citing all of that, of course I love it! My favorite sample: "besides, I felt that if I smiled one more time tonight, my face would crack." Thanks, Alec.

Alice Donut - obscure as punk can get without it being down the street in your friend's basement. Mr. Knight probably won't bother reading this, but I recall our pal Bill asking years ago, "hey Ray... Uh, have you ever heard of Alice Donut?" I think that, unless you are a member of the Donut, the answer to that question is fairly obvious. Even I only know about them from Bill.

The All-American Rejects - yes indeed, I sometimes devolve into a faux-punk emo fan. Let's keep that our dirty little secret...

Amy Winehouse - further proof that no quantity of drogas can keep people from making pretty bad music that still somehow becomes popular. I'll give her credit for her unique, Motown-esque sound, but I'll promptly take away such credit for still being so bad.

They tried to make her go to rehab, [and] she said no, no, no... But they made her go anyway.

Andrew WK - what a fun style, very standard rockish with just a dash of punk! They're very energetic and fairly positive, and their songs imbue something happy-go-lucky. However, like our pals from Nickelback ;-) , they suffer from one-song syndrome; every track they record sounds exactly like every other. "Let's have a party party party hard party party fun hard party and we'll party hard, party hard!" Repeat as necessary.

Anne Feeney - weee, current-era protesty folk. She's obviously passionate, but if you don't stop and at least pretend that there is an inkling of justice in the world for the occasional song or two, people can only listen to so much. An essential characteristic of music is the fun factor, and unfortunately, her factor is zero. Also, she falls a tad further in my rankings by reminding me of Janis Joplin... However, she is ranked very highly as a person because I deeply respect her knowledge, passion, and true concern for those who indeed feel the injustice of the world on a regular basis.

Antipop Consortium - quite the creative rap clan. I don't know much about them, but I appreciate their use of both bizarre and thoroughly everyday samples - a song on Arrhythmia lays down thumps and rhymes over recordings of a game of ping pong. Pretty slick!

Credit by association for appearing when I search for the Primus album Antipop.

Ape - a guy with a Casiotone, something akin to cartoon music... I have one album, and every song is about monkeys. I'm not kidding - one is a parody of [the wicked] Wilson Pickett's "Land of 1000 Dances", entitled "Ba-na-na-na". One of the best lines on the album (if you can call it that) is "ooh ooh ah ah ooh ooh ah ah ooh ooh I'm an ape". Delicious! It's probably pathetic that Ape made it onto my mp3 player...

Aphex Twin - the original Tim-inflicted electronica in my collection, and still my favorite. The music is just irritating to most, but it's also genius. Read up on background info. Richard D. James is quite the oddball. He wrote his own audio software...

Anyway, this stuff is the real "beeps 'n' clix". He never really caught on in the USA, where we don't really have a club scene, but his weirdness became somehow popular in his native England and the rest of Europe. Not bad, sir.

Rather than rambling more, I reco listening to "54 Cymru Beats", "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" (my favorite), and if you're brave, "Ventolin (Video Version)". I heart.

Aquabats - stole my sweater. Not the green one, which Weezer took and then lost; no, the Aquabats made off with the red one. Ska is strange sometimes, eh?

Archies - oldies masters who are surely diabetic. Candy girl, stop pouring your sugar all over them!

Arlo Guthrie - alllmost "oldies", but I think he's more like Vietnam protest-era, along the line of but not as angry as Country Joe and the Fish (that's who he sounds most like to me, a menos). He's most well-known for the slightly-protesty, 18-minute storysong "Alice's Restaurant" (you can get anything you want there, excepting Alice), which gets radio airtime every Thanksgiving because the song's antics take place around the fall holiday.

More enjoyable, though, is Arlo's "The Motorcycle Song", where he rhymes "pickle" with "motorcycle", among other "clever" lines... I simply recommend hunting this song down for at least one listen. Remember, dumb = fun.

Art Paul Schlosser - be my valentine, oh twanger of comedic anti-folk.

Artless - because "beer is better than girls are"... They are most nearly classified as "punk", I guess, and they quite live up to their name. That doesn't mean they're not fun!

Atari Teenage Riot - not to be confused with the Ataris, we have one more dose of digital hardcore. ATR is possibly the least unlistenable of the digi-core bands I'm mentioned. Though there's still excessive noise and lots of rant/yell, they're occasionally melodic, the synth-bass is clever (as in slidey), and every now and then the lyrics are a bit witty. It's no EC8OR, that's for sure.

Of course, Kyle disapproves of their Berlin Wall-era mockery of Deutschland. If it weren't for that, you'd be a huge fan, right K Griz?

ATR supplied my theme song for my trip to Portugal - I recall listening to "Start the Riot" during our descent into Lisbon, and subsequently over and over in the hospital. It's a disturbingly appropriate metaphor for the journey...

"I would die for peanut butter!"

Autechre - semi-ambient, extremely intelligent electronica. Rarely conforming to the standard four-beat notion of rhythm, or any notion of rhythm whatsoever, Autechre requires an unbelievable load of thought and concentration to grasp the essence of their ideas of music. Thus, few actually like this stuff.

Further, "ambient" music usually tries to recreate the beauty of nature, or some garbage like that. Autechre? Not at all. They seem to aim for reproducing the synthetic world with their more ambient works. For example, "Foil" reminds me of being in the MRI machine. Again, few would choose to listen to this, but the rest of you are missing out.

Finally, mad props to my brother for teaching me to appreciate these "beeps 'n' clix".

All done! And ha, I actually did it! Time for a break, then catching up on what I've been putting off all month. Thanks for reading, and add in the comments porfav!

bound

2009-03-28T22:02:00.003-04:00

Spread your sails to take in the wind. Happy birthday, Ms B!

The B-52's - mm, shacks and lobsters... My friend Nate and I - not bass player Nate, but the only other person in jazz choir who could sing down in my preferred range - used to sing "Love Shack", except with parts inverted; that is, we'd sing the girls' parts way low and the guys' up there in the clouds, with ridiculous falsetto and all. It was a sight to see. High schoolers are dorks.

Bachman-Turner Overdrive - b-b-b-baby, d-d-dumb = c-c-c-catch-ch-chy = pop-p-p-p-pular. Rock trick #2571416: if you're out of lyrics, stutter.

Bad Brains - I'm not familiar at all, but Les Claypool pointed them out as "real punk rockers" when we were talking a few years ago, and I'll take his word for it.

The Bangles - so we did "Walk Like an Egyptian" in high school pep band...including a verse where winds were supposed to put down their instruments and whistle the melody, just like in the real recording. Epic fail. High schoolers can't whistle a tune, particularly a tune they don't even recognize!

Along that line, I'm completely making this up, but bonus points for inspiring DeVotchKa to include whistling in several of their songs. He is incredible at it, btw, like a true instrument (not making that up). I'm sure they would cite the Bangles as one of their major influences...

Barry White - the subsonic love/soul crooner. I don't think I'll analyze why most people will put a Barry White album on the stereo... Only, Barry = deep, sexy voice + deep, sexy love themes.

(Math nerds: could we factor that to "(deep, sexy)(voice + love themes)"? Are those terms relatively prime? Are spoken languages groups as such under the concatenation operation? Linguistics nerds: would this make it a regular language? [answer there: no sir.])

After trying out for the high school musical freshman year and singing the tryout song "White Christmas" an octave lower than the norm (including that low C in the end, at "and may all your Christ-mases be white"), I picked up "Barry White" as a nickname. It caught on enough that my grandparents got a B-W CD for me for the holiday that year, which is how I know any of his music in the first place. I must say, his voice was absolutely subterranean. I could do it once upon a time, but my voice can't quite cut it since the tracheostomy. Sadface.

The Beastie Boys - my first rap exposure, and still probably my favorites in the genre. They've cranked out many a hit, all loaded with smart, nerdy lyrics: "I'm the king of Boggle, there is none higher \ I gets eleven points off the word 'quagmire'". Better yet, catch their brilliant observations, such as the completely non sequitur "White Castle fries only come in one size", inserted into "Slow and Low" on Licensed to Ill. They're also known for their oddball music videos, from cop show mockery "Sabotage" to giant robots in "Intergalactic" to yelling at a camera in the ground for "So Whatcha Want". Go look stuff up if you need any more background info.

I remember driving around with Tim in the Jeep, listening to the aforementioned Licensed to Ill tape and making cracks about their inarguably clever (or dumb) lines. Good times. This is when I memorized "Paul Revere", and I still know it - "I said howdy, he said hi!" We could have entire conversations with just Beastie quotes... Good times indeed.

I had a difficult time not being an idiot/jerk in several classes in college; one of my professors' names could be abbreviated to "Mike D", and it was all I could do not to make constant cracks and BB references that nobody would follow. Whew, close one.

The Beatles - you know who they are, and my stories are no doubt weak compared to yours. Help!, Revolver, and "The White Album" shaped my childhood and provide more memories by a long shot than any other music, listening to our scratched record say "Rocky Raccoo--into his room"... Though devoid of #1's, Rubber Soul has also been extremely important in my musical history.

Speaking of Beatles chart-toppers, their "1" compilation was the only single-band permanent disc in the van's CD changer. Though there were actually 27 #1 tracks, that CD was an 80min disc filled to the brim; we only had 74min blank discs at the time, though, so to make a copy I could just leave in the car, I had to leave out two tracks... So sorry Yoko, nobody likes you or your ballad with John, and "The Long and Winding Road" wasn't that great either. Thus, I don't know those songs very well, but my friends (mostly Jeff) and I know every single note and cough of their other 5^2 number ones.

Also to Beatles+van credit, they ushered in that vehicle's 100,000 mile landmark. It couldn't have been better - we were in the middle of "Piggies" and watching the odometer, and it went in rhythm even, "clutching forks and knives \ to eat the bacon! [click]" Marvelous.

Moving on, props to Paul for playing lefty basses. Some of us have to be backwards to be good!

Penultimately, you must ask jarmstro about this band. He is an encyclopedia.

Finally, a mini-survey: do you prefer the early Beatles style, their later sound, or something in between? Or, do you hate their entire collection? Sound off in the comments, pretty please!

Beck - delicious grunge and nonsense. You might know "Loser", "Devil's Haircut", "Odelay", or various others. The dad constantly tells me they sound like War (the "Low Rider" people), and indeed they slightly do.

Kudos to Beck for writing songs with utter nonsense for lyrics, landing these songs on the Billboard charts, and then getting everyone to memorize the nonsense. Have you ever paid attention to the words to "Loser"? They're not even sentences. But, the trick is that you know them by heart. Surprise, eres el perdido.

Beyond that, thanks for teaching me some other gangster Spanish, and for making me ask Texans if their trips to Houston are for pants.

Béla Fleck [and the Flecktones] - this is how you shred on the banjo.

Ben Folds - piano rocker, either solo or with ska instrumentation (but most definitely not the ska sound). "Philosophy" was one of the first songs I picked up from the Emily influence, and its intricacies/raw passion are a main reason why I liked him in the first place. He's a bit more sarcastic and a bit less passionate now, but oh well. He writes a lot about downstate Illinois; consider the recent album Way to Normal, named after the town next to Bloomington. Go ahead, math nerds, pile on the "perpendicular" jokes.

Mr. Folds is an awful lot of fun live! He came to IWU (in Bloomington) in the fall of 2004, and it was a blast. He took requests, talked to people in the crowd, poked fun at State Farm (whose HQ is on the outskirts of BloNo); he even did his usual singalong rendition of "Army", splitting the crowd down the middle to sing the sax and trumpet parts in the bridge. What fun.

Extra credit for featuring Cake's John McCrea on "Fred Jones, Part 2", and Regina Spektor on "You Don't Know Me". Duets for everyone!

Ben Harper - recommends that you not come around.

Benny Goodman - jazz/big band clarinet legend. Though I think Louis Prima wrote "Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny is the one who made that song popular. Thus, he can take credit for sparking my interest in jazz band. That drum solo still slays me.

Big and Rich - if I sang someone every Willie Nelson song I knew, we'd be moving on to the next line rather quickly. Nothing wrong with that.

The Big Bopper - he may not have any money, but...but...but...oh baby, you know what he likes. It appears to have nothing to do with personality.

Bill Aper - one of my favorite drummers for rocking hard and weird. Hunt him down solo, with Turf Surgery, etc. on MySpace!

Bill Withers - no need to wonder, for he has quite reiterated that he knows. He needs more sunshine, that's for sure.

Billy Joel - another weirder, more sarcastic keyboardist, and sort of an inspiration for Ben Folds. Everyone knows him for "Piano Man", but I'd rather hear dumber tracks like "Captain Jack" or "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)". We also did "And So It Goes" in high school jazz choir. Anyway, add your stories in the comments, because I'm not the one who knows.

BJ Thomas - get him to rehab, he's hooked on a feeling. Is that a sitar I hear in his version of the song?

Björk - yes, she's weird, her music is cacophonous, her Icelandic accent is somewhere between cute and incomprehensible (doesn't matter because most of the lyrics don't make sense), and she has a swan suit... So, what's not to like? My favorite is "5 Years", which sounds like she's singing and playing Space Invaders. Oh well. Nothing I say will change your opinion of her in either direction. Just remember, she's the hunter. She'll bring back the goods.

Umlaut bonus!

Black Sabbath - a classic rock staple, with ubiquitous hits such as "Paranoid", "Crazy Train", "Iron Man", "War Pigs", and on and on. Extra credit for inspiring an infinitude of covers, and for selling their souls for rock and roll. I'm obviously a novice, but they had to be mentioned.

Blind Illusion - in reverse alphabetical order, we have the final Claypool band of the list. To be honest, they barely qualify as a Les band - he only appeared on occasion, and there are only two or three spots on their album where you can hear a Les-brand bass trick. Rather, they're just eighties thrash metal, and pretty poor thrash at that. Their album is pretty obscure and necessary to complete a Claypool collection, but I'm here to say it's not worth a listen. Sausage and Oysterhead aren't that hot, but at least they're obviously Les; Blind Illusion could be any crummy thrash metal band. I consider it appropriate that I accidentally typed "trash metal" above. Listen to Antipop if you need Les metal.

Blondie - is the name of the band. Oh, the eighties...

Blood, Sweat and Tears - not my favorite oldies group out there, but they did create the excessively catchy "Spinning Wheel", a CHS jazz band classic, as well as the excessively goofy/awkward "And When I Die". Oh well.

Blue Man Group - the famous crew of improv musicians/showmen, known for their impromptu crowd involvement, use of giant PVC pipe constructions as musical instruments, mime-like humor, and duh, painting themselves blue. I recommend finding videos of and articles about them, rather than having me attempt to describe them further.

In my OT sessions in Detroit, we would do what we jokingly called "blue man" therapy. That is, my therapist would put a random assortment of equipment and objects in front of me, and then I was supposed to come up with something creative and challenging to do with the stuff. This is a pretty effective way to come up with OT tasks, and actually conveys the idea behind the Blue Man Group fairly well.

Blue Öyster Cult - needs more cowbell! I can't imagine how sick they are of that SNL joke. Gold star for capital O umlaut.

Bob Dylan - every band in existence since around 1961 has covered a song by Mr. Dylan, the timeless titan of singer/songwriters. For further commentary I once again defer to the jarmstro and his blog, as he has already written volumes on the musician and will hopefully pen (err, keyboard?) volumes more. Bask in his glory.

Bootsy Collins - a founding father of funk bass. Enjoy the wiki-p for detailed background info.

Have I mentioned before that I've gotten to talk to this wonder on the phone? For a few years, my bro Tim lived in Cincinnati. Bootsy is also a Cinci native, and a huge supporter of the Bengals. He performed their theme song, and can often be found around town at promotional events for the team. Tim ended up going to one of their smaller events in his neighborhood, actually hoping to have some Buckethead stuff signed - Bootsy collaborated with Mr. Bucket quite often, appearing on at least two Buckethead albums. So, he went down to the restaurant where the event was being held, and there weren't many people there, so Tim got to hang out with Bootsy for a little while. Bootsy actually got a pretty big kick out of Tim bringing Buckethead albums; most people had just been bringing in football stuff, so seeing such obscure goods caught him by surprise. (I have those autographed albums now, btw)

As I said, there weren't that many people at the moment, so Tim wondered, "hey, can you talk to someone on my phone for me?" Bootsy said sure, so Tim called and said, "John! I have someone who needs to talk to you!" I said, "um, ok...", he put Bootsy on, and we schmoozed for a bit - my phone at the time had a terrible speakerphone, so I couldn't really tell who it was. After a minute or two, I asked who it was, and he dropped his signature "ah, the name is Bootsy, baby"... My jaw hit the floor. How are you supposed to respond to that??

Uhweleruh...

The Box Tops - just received some important mail.

Brahms - ha ha, the original sleep music.

Bread - heartfelt folk rockish stuff...making it that much more ironic that Cake did a deadpan, sarcastic cover of "The Guitar Man". The guitar tricks are cooler in the original, so it's hard for me to choose which version I prefer. You'd think choosing between Bread and Cake would be easy!

Brian Eno - I spend loads of time talking about electronica/ambient artists who are skilled, weird, innovative, or otherwise interesting enough to be worth a listen. Brian Eno is none of these. His most well-known recent work is the "composition" of the startup sound for Windows 95. I recommend microwaving every CD and deleting every Eno mp3 you can find. There are so many better artists out there, even if you're just looking for ambient non-music to break silence. Just back away from the Eno.

Brian Setzer Orchestra - newer big band tunes that are still very true to the old school sound. They even appeared on the pop charts with decidedly not-pop tracks; "Jump, Jive An' Wail" comes to mind (also a prime example of gorgeous twelve-bar blues).

The whole band has some talent, but they are most thoroughly distinguished by their title man/front man/lead singer/virtuoso guitar slinger, Mr. Setzer. He's ridiculous - another one of those miracle workers who can't seem to play a wrong note. These people are so frustrating to the rest of us! His jazz shredding is prominent on all of their tracks; one of the best examples of his virtuosity is their cover of Santo & Johnny's "Sleep Walk". Wow.

Another worthless piece of minutiae is that he was supposedly obsessive/compulsive about cleanliness, always washing his hands and his axe almost to the point of sterility before playing. If you're that good, Brian, whatever floats your boat.

Bruce Channel - hey, hey Brucey! I want to kno-o-o-ow: is it pronounced "shuh-nell", French-style, or "tcha-nul", like what you flip through on TV?

His one hit was a van classic, as well as another pep band disaster; we'd play through the main part once on our instruments as written, then repeat with everyone dropping their instruments and singing the melody on top of the drums and bass line. Times like those make me glad I switched almost completely to bari sax for pep band.

Bruno Coulais - soundtrack composer for "Les Choristes". Purdy choral chansons, though I find little boys' choirs a bit irritating, and a pretty good French study aide.

Buckethead - virtuoso, at both guitar and oddity. Bucket and mask aside, he's unstoppable on guitar in any genre. In fact, buying a new Bucket album is a difficult task - if you don't have the opportunity to listen first, there's no guarantee whether it will be shreddy (Decoding the Tomb of Bansheebot, Kaleidoscalp), riffy almost classic rockish (Pepper's Ghost), airy lite-rocky (Colma, Electric Tears), pure acoustic mushy (Population Override), or what you're hoping for, which is unfathomably weird (Giant Robot, Monsters and Robots). He can do it all.

Let the bonus points roll. To start, he's collaborated with everyone: Bootsy Collins, Bill Laswell, Serj Tankian, Les Claypool, Travis Dickerson, That 1 Guy... Not to mention the groups Primus, C2B3, Guns 'n' Roses, Praxis, etc. Look at "Buckethead & Friends" for concentrated collaborative efforts, as well as the many I'm skipping.

Ok, I'm pretty much out of time, so I just recommend playing Guitar Hero II and unlocking "Jordan". Guitar Hero and real guitar are hardly comparable, but you should get the idea. eek.

Busta Rhymes - another one of my favorite rappers, for his ever-present humor and wit, as well as his constant about-to-flip-out vocal style. Woo haa! Further, he's hardcore like Quick Draw McGraw (btw, that supposedly rhymes).

One more day!

copy/paste

2009-03-27T22:03:00.003-04:00

Cab Calloway - where would we be without the tale of Minnie the moocher? Hi dee hi dee hi dee hiii.

Cake - "alt-satirical-country-grunge" is what I will call them, and they are my second-favorite band (behind the Les Claypool meta-band conglomeration). They're catchy, musically intelligent, simple-yet-complex, skilled at melody/harmony/bass/trumpet/solos/drumthump/etc., and sarcastically satirical as can be. Most importantly, their tunes are a blast to sing and play. As you've noticed by now, I pretty much always opt for their straight-faced, ironic covers over original songs.

Bonus points, as if they need any, for Les Claypool picking up one of their drummers, Paulo Baldi, to play in various Claypool bands over the past few years (and currently). I love having him as part of the Fancy Band and such - though their songs are obviously Les-dominated, Mr. Baldi always sounds like pure Cake. Smiles to that.

Otherwise, I don't feel like sharing any personal stories; just let it be known that my love for them is entirely Emily's fault, and that she and I have clocked many, many hours having loads of fun Cake-style. Pues, learn to buck up!

Finally, Cake is a major reason why I'm still determined to play bass again. It will happen. No "perhaps" about it.

Canned Heat - hmmm, anyone familiar want to pin a genre on the Heat? They're sort of blues bluegrass or something to that effect, I guess. Their lead vocalist, a huge guy in person, has a ridiculously high voice that juxtaposes rather comically. Score random flute and jaw harp, for added confusion. They might be an early "jam band"; several of their records have just one song on each side ("Parthenogenesis", "Refried Boogie"). All of that aside, you probably know them for either "On the Road Again" or that one about "goin' up the country" (I forget the title), which was on some car commercials a few years ago.

Remember the "600-Minute Reading Club" back in elementary school, which tried to get children to read more by offering Six Flags tickets to students who read 600min (10h) over a certain period of time? Sure, ten hours of reading doesn't seem that daunting, but try getting a second-grader to sit down with a book for ten minutes! Anyway, my bro Steve and I did that every year because Six Flags is magical, and I remember piling into our Jeep and always popping in the dad's tape (from vinyl) of their eponymous album to start the ~2h journey down past STL... "On the Road Again" was our travelin' theme.

I'm glad I didn't have a particularly normal childhood in the realm of music.

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - my only contribution here is that the Cap'n was incredibly bizarre, along the lines of Mothers of Invention and other Zappa work. Could be because Beefheart and Zappa worked together intermittently, with Zappa helping produce Magic Band albums. Don't take my novice word for it, though; read through jarmstro's backlogs and harass him for more info. He's an expert.

The Cardigans - yes, the girls from the nineties pop era, and they're a secret jlink vice. "Lovefool" is still the musical magnetic north to my south. If you've never heard their elevator musicish cover of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", you're simply missing out on some quality laughs.

The Cars - eh, everybody knows them, I hope? I think they caught the tail end of the classic rock period, sounding fairly classic, but with a heavy eighties/New Wave aftertaste. Their instrumentation was a bit imbalanced, with a bassist, a drummer, keyboards every now and then, and about a dozen guys on guitar for any given song (ok, slight exaggeration). They had at least as many hits as guitarists, including "Just What I Needed", "My Best Friend's Girl", "I'm Not the One", "(Let the) Good Times Roll", to name a few. Like Herman's Hermits, they're one of those "sleeper" bands who, though they don't stand out as mega-popular, can still make a greatest hits album full of songs you know.

Those dudes from Six Ways 'til Sunday may have mutilated "Just What I Needed" into a ska cover... Someone needed to teach that front man to sing in the right octave. Yet again, "not as broken as Lance" Armstrong might have something to add.

Cat Stevens - continuing the "many flavors of weird" theme, here's another one! He had a handful of normal "hippie" hits (don't deny it, that's his sound), i.e. "Wild World", "Peace Train", and "Moonshadow", but he earns weirdo points for recording the Christian canticle "Morning Has Broken" and subsequently changing his name and converting to Islam. Figure that one out. Check with jarmstro here, too.

The Causey Way - insanity! They're sort of indie-punkish-oddball; the songs that matter have Mr. Causey singing/talking/wailing wacko lyrics, high in both pitch and speed. This stuff is pure crazy. What other descriptors could I provide? Their Wiki-p article is useless, but you should hunt them down elsewhere on teh internets. They pretended to be a cult.

I had a good time in Discrete Math 135, where our book was written by someone named Causey; nobody else cared, but I liked to imagine we were learning the Causey way.

Also, their song "Word Problems" aligns eerily with the Beatles' "One After 909"... Compare "everybody I know wants to know my brother's girlfriend's name" to "my baby said she's travelin' on the one after 909". It's like Pink Floyd and The Wizard of Oz.

Charles Mingus - jazzalicious, "Moanin'" bari sax-led work. He plays it rough and growly, as it should be. If you're looking for "elegant" or "pretty", you aren't looking for baritone saxamaphone.

The Charlie Daniels Band - some of the most popular bluegrass (and country) out there; also known as "the fat guy with the fiddle" (sorry, Charlie). Everybody knows his "Devil Went Down to Georgia", full of witty, clever lyrics and, umm, pretty busy but pretty sloppy fiddle shredding. Not as many know his (intentionally, I hope) dumb rhymes like "sittin' on a barstool \ actin' like a darn fool", which is too bad. Chuck D's band, though completely out-of-genre for the jlink, is enjoyable stuff.

Extra credit for inspiring Primus to do a cover of "Devil Went Down to Georgia", complete with hilarious claymation music video, Claypool upright bass flair, and an unknown fiddle player who actually plays in tune, for better or worse. Which recording/video is a matter of personal preference, though, as they both have their highlights. "Boy said!"

Further extra credit for using a very common meter for the lyrics; in Primus music alone, lines from "Devil Went Down to Georgia", "Jerry Was a Racecar Driver", and "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver" can be mixed interchangeably... Go to town with those.

The Chemical Brothers - masters of überstructured loops and insanely heavy beats in the electronica/dance/house/club world. Most clubbers recognize a fair number of their songs, though probably not by name.

First of all, they're waaay structured. Everything comes in units of eight - you know exactly when samples will come in and drop out, and when the beat will change. It's delicious. In fact, they poke fun at themselves for this tendency: "Loops of Fury" is so rigid, you don't even need to listen. This makes them great for dance... no surprises!

Also glorious is the extraneous window-rattling bass thump. To demonstrate, find someone with a big subwoofer and have them play "Under the Influence". See if you can get things to vibrate off the table, but don't break any windows!

Thanks to Tim for teaching me to appreciate the nuances of something otherwise extremely close to "techno".

Chicago - offbeat experts, to the point of irritation. Does anybody really know what time it is? (Does anybody really care?)

Chopin - one composition: etude, opus 25, #10 in B minor. Nobody but my brother has big enough hands to play that song so deftly. I can still hear him wail it out...

The Clash - ah, back when punks were really punks. They should stay; they should not go.

The Click Five - ha ha, what is this emo garbage? "Cool as a" what??

So I listen to Greetings From Imrie House at least once a week. It must not be that garbaginous. They did do a decent cover of The Thompson Twins' "Lies"... Your fault, Kyle! I'll take my chances.

Cliff Nobles and Company - creators of the oldies instrumental "The Horse", and inspirateurs of the first and only organized drum solo dance break in CHS pep band history.

The Coasters - all I can say is, don't talk back.

CocoRosie - sisters ("Coco" and "Rosie"), doing drugs and recording albums in their bathroom. If you can find Emily anywhere, interrogate her about them, as she is the resident expert.

Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains - a "supergroup", and creators of my second-favorite album in existence (after the Frog Brigade's Purple Onion, of course). The band consists of Les Claypool on bass, Buckethead on guitar, Bernie Worrell on keyboards, and Bryan "Brain" Mantia on drums (hence the band name). For a brief history and such, enjoy Wikipedia.

Their sole album, The Big Eyeball in the Sky, is profoundly bizarre. Each member is both weird and extremely talented, and the whole is far greater/weirder than its parts. Les uses his whole bass collection (no whamola on the album, though), Bucket uses all of his pedals and buttons, Bernie breaks out every keyboard trick known to man, and Brain explodes with creativity on his tiny minimalist drum kit. As far as lyrics go, there are actually several instrumentals, but the words to the rest of the songs are as weird as you might predict. There's a song just about Buckethead; there's a song about Thai noodles. Most of the songs are overly political, and now obsolete...

As awesome as the album is, the concert was even better. I have no reservations in saying that it was the best concert I have ever attended, and will probably be the best concert experience of my entire life. My brother, two of my school friends and I went to see it at the Riviera in Chicago, three days after the album release (concert on 25 September 2004). Actually, it started out a bit lackluster - Gabby La La was the opener, and you may have gathered from G* day that I'm not a Gabby fan. Further, I was extremely anxious to see C2B3, so any opener would have been at least slightly frustrating.

The C2B3 set was great. They played long, bizarro-jam-heavy versions of all the best songs from the album, with Gabby coming out on occasion to play sitar or provide backup vocals. The rather surprising part to me was who [my bro and] I ended up watching the most. With any Claypool show, you expect Les to be the highlight; especially, as a bassist, I'm generally locked on Les' busy hands. However, as the show progressed, Tim and I found ourselves gravitating towards the Buckethead side of the stage. As amazing as Mr. Claypool was, Bucket was simply mesmerizing. What a shock to me that was.

Anyway, again, the set was great. They were a bit sloppy, as this was the first stop on the tour, but oh well. Like a dream to me, the show culminated in my favorite song of theirs, and one of my favorites of all time - "Hip Shot From the Slab". I remember after Buckethead played about an 8min solo montage, Les walked out on stage with his six-string fretless and this ridiculous "alien with a moustache" mask on, bent over to his bullet mic, and asked, "whatcha gonna do about it, huh?" (the only lyrics to the song, repeated over and over)... Tim and I turned to each other and shared possibly the biggest grin ever. It was like a dream to me.

Squint at these dark, blurry pics from the end of the show, taken with my poor little Treo 600. One's of Buckethead - you can see his eye and mouth holes on his mask - and the other is an extremely blurry one of alien-masked Les. Consider how close we were, given that I didn't use the zoom. Enjoy!

If ever there has been inspiration to play bass again, this is it.

Combichrist - a mix of the ideology of digital hardcore with metalelectronica sound. Yup, pretty irritating. But with albums like "What The **** Is Wrong with You People", what's not to like? Thanks, Tim!

The Commodores - mmm, bass-focused seventies-era funk/soul/almostdisco. Just lettin' it all hang out.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - "southern rock" foundations. Oh, Fogerty, has anyone ever understood a word you've said?

CSS - is my favorite mistress.

delicious bands ahead!

2009-03-26T22:04:00.001-04:00

It's comb jelly post time day, by the way. I'll explain someday.

The Damage Manual - very heavy-handed "digital hardcore", but I'd call it electronica, as it is a bit too pleasant and more focused on intricate beats than angry noise. Oh well. Courtesy of the bro, I like 'em. There's my noisy two cents.

Danny and the Juniors - yup, "At the Hop", and that's about it. However, that song is mind-bogglingly catchy, and classic enough that it held a spot on one of the permanent CDs in the van's changer. Further, after listening hundreds, even thousands of times, I make the conjecture that he says "get your lips on a wet chicken at the hop!" It has to be true!

(Ha, you know that when you sing along, all you say is, "you can hm a bop a huh n ha and hm n he de da da at the hop" for almost every line...)

Danny Elfman - TV/movie soundtrack royale! He composed scores for approximately all of Tim Burton's films, from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure to The Nightmare Before Christmas to Batman. He also did copious TV themes, including [whatever the Pee-Wee TV show's name was] and The Simpsons, and even Desperate Housewives.

That cursed Batman theme was unbelievably hard to play back in pep band - high schoolers can't count - but ohhh, so cool. Note #2, our friend Mr. Claypool revered Danny's music, often trying to compare various Claypool bands to Elfman's work. At the Primus shows I attended in 2003 and 2004, random Elfman songs were used for pre- and post-show music, as well as intermission filler (pure trivia: on the official recording of Primus' show at the Aragon in Chicago, 7 Nov 2003, you can hear a few seconds of the main Pee-Wee theme before Les moseys on stage playing the intro to "To Defy the Laws of Tradition").

The Dave Clark Five - I've said over and over and over again, dumb/irritating/goofy = popular. Come on, let them show you where it's at... Flunking people in grammar class since the sixties.

Death Cab for Cutie - oh, Death Cab, how you melt me... I first knew about the Postal Service, falling in love with the lead singer (and copious electronics); at the time, I was ideologically against dcfc. Then I accidentally heard some random Death Cab song, and I freaked out. Since then, I have been addicted. He is like a dream to hear. I cried at their concert last summer. I am such a weenie. Let's move on already.

Deee-Lite - cranked out a few house/club ditties in the nineties. I must admit, I only care about "Groove is In the Heart", featuring not only a dude from A Tribe Called Quest (was it Q-Tip?), but more importantly [to me], a certain Bootsy Collins on bass and occasional vocal interjections. The song is just plain fun.

Back in eighth grade, I got to go to Disneyworld for some award thing, and I remember that for the intro to one event (same time I saw/met Christopher Reeve), an a capella group did a rendition of "Groove is In the Heart"... Brains hang onto the weirdest memories.

Deep Purple - providers of the one song everyone can instinctively play on guitar/bass, regardless of experience. Try it.

Dethklok - the stars of Metalocalypse on Cartoon Network's nighttime Adult Swim lineup, and everyone's favorite made-up metal band, in the vein of Spinal Tap. They're surprisingly good for being a comedy show first and a band second. Obviously, their songs are tongue-->cheek and hilarious. Their album, The Dethalbum - yes, they released an actual CD - is worth consideration for both fans of the show and Adult Swim-agnostic metalheads alike.

On the show and in the studio, almost all of the voices and instruments are done by Brendon Small, who also created the original Adult Swim show, Home Movies, and has appeared on nearly every AdSw show at some point. He gots da skilz - a modern polymath of sorts. Whew, comma overload.

Devo - equals eighties "New Wave". Try to detect it! It's not too late!

Die Fantastischen Vier - what's better than electro hip-hop? Electro hip-hop in German! Pretty catchy stuff. It means "The Fantastic Four", btw; I have no idea how they avoided copyright infringement on that one. Thanks, Tim! He said he used DFV as a study aide for colloquial German... Maybe not the best choice.

Dillinger Escape Plan - overly organized noise rock. I appreciate their cover of Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix)", which is ironically already very much noise electronica. They will eat your soul, too.

Dire Straits - the Sultans of... classic rock. Impressive acoustic guitar work, and extra credit for inspiring some Weird Al covers. Plus, the chicks are free.

DJ Keoki - not exactly an astronomical DJ in my book on his own, but Überzone remixed a few of his tracks, so he is at least vicariously outstanding.

DJ Soul Slinger - as you may have gathered by now, the Slinger is omnipresent in the scratch world, and a jockey deity. His standard work is impressive, sampling and mimicking myriad genres, but I most adore his continuous mixes - that is, albums with one giant hour-long track of beats. He explores the turntables as if spelunking immense caverns of sonic creativity, and as is mandatory for the best electro-anything, he's not afraid to apply excessive window-rattling bass. Yesss.

Finally, extra extra credit for being inextricably tied to my bro, who first exposed me to the "continuous mix" concept. I am forever grateful.

Donna Summer - queen of the syncopated disco afterbeat. It's pretty hot stuff.

Donovan - because electrical banana is bound to be the very next phase. Saffron, anyone?

The Doors - eloquent crooner + drugs + drugs + drugs + even more drugs = this band. No complaints! Can you believe I'm highlighting a group who were ostensibly sans bassist?? A+ for Morrison's vocal range being close to mine.

I remember seeing the video associated with "The End" way back when, and being absolutely freaked out. The song still scares me. I saw the movie at too young of an age as well - eek. So much for innocence.

Tim and I rewrote "Love Me Two Times" as "Wash Me Two Times", a PSA for proper shampoo use... Nerd alert!

Doris Day - I know nothing about Ms. Day, other than that she did the original "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps", ostensibly covered by my number two band, Cake. As usual, if you are first familiar with the deadpan, satirical Cake version of a song, the original rendition is even more comical. Perrr...haps.

Dr. Dre - as far as I can tell, the Doc has been involved with every rap album ever created. Empirically, so far so good...

Clearly I don't have much to contribute, but I refuse to be accused of forgetting about Dre!

Dream Theater - more prog/experimental rock "sleep music", which is a high honor in my collection. Sometimes they are distractingly mind-bending, but I can tolerate that!

Add please? !

eh

2009-03-25T22:05:00.002-04:00

The last of the easy days!

The Eagles - we can stab them with our steely knives, but we just can't kill this beast...

EC8OR - remember waaay back when I mentioned the world's abhorrence of the "digital hardcore" genre? Well, EC8OR is some of the best, if "best" is even a valid descriptor. This is intentionally a ton of vaguely musical electronic noise with people talking/yelling/ranting over it. So as you would guess, I love it. Plenty of song titles are thoroughly obscene, but consider one of my favorites, "Gimme Nyquil All Night Long". That pretty well conveys the idea, but if you can find that gem online somewhere, you'll know exactly the target sound of these tunes.

My brother and I decided rather scientifically that EC8OR (and similar "artists") are human repellent. If you have people around whom you wish would go away, five minutes of EC8OR is sufficient, and usually overkill. This is an empirical fact. Again, if you can find any of their songs, you'll understand.

Audiophiles will find it humorous that I re-ripped my EC8OR albums to FLAC (lossless), as if lossy mp3 somehow introduced unacceptable noise...

Edith Piaf - an old school artiste française, whom we learned about/listened to in high school French class. The only song we studied was "La Vie en Rose" (interpretively translated, "life through rose-colored glasses"). It's une chanson très jolie, and a great way to pick up some colloquial sweetheart French, but the best part is rewriting it as the homophonic "La Viande Rose" ("The Pink Meat"). French nerd alert.

Edwin Starr - protestist[?]/pacifist/gruntist songwriter extraordinaire. "War - hnnh! yeah! - say it say it say it"... He indeed got his message across. "Good God, y'all!" I predict he had high blood pressure.

Einstürzende Neubauten - pretty weird German (obviously) music that I think counts as "industrial"... Sometimes they sound like Skinny Puppy turned Deutsch, but it's generally quite unique. Frequently they loop samples of maybe choral performances?? I do know that they make most of their own clanky industrial-grade instruments, which automatically bumps them up in my book. Further, they make it onto the umlaut radar!

Electric Light Orchestra - vintage Who-ish, Allman Brothers-ish keys-n-stringsy classic rock fodder. I mostly appreciate their subtly-nonsensical name. Thoughts?

Ella Fitzgerald - helped me through a lot of high school. She was involved with everything in the jazz/big band era, recording solo versions of a vast array of famous big band and semi-classical (read: Gershwin) tunes, as well as working with Louis Armstrong and other greats of the time.

I most appreciate Ella because of her atypical vocal range. Her voice was just a bit deeper than the average jazz chanteuse, so her recordings were done a few steps lower than usual... Sound like anyone else here? It turns out that her range and mine were almost exactly the same (modulo a few octaves); thus, I always knew I could pull off an Ella arrangement of "Blue Skies", "Summertime" and the like. Curse you, sopranos! She had that swing, so I guess it meant a thing.

Elvis Costello - über-famous, often controversial, lyrically lexicographic, and royal in the realm of emo glasses. I have never gotten that much into his music beyond reading a metric buttload of articles about him, but hey, my aim is true.

Elvis Presley - Elvis = controversial, it seems. What can I say that you don't already know? Share some stories! Did any of my readers ever see him, in concert or otherwise? Has anyone been to Graceland?

Eminem - hmmm... I'm not a huge fan, but cred is due for an endless supply of clever/satirical rhymes. Bonus points for the Detroit native! Otherwise, I'll usually go for Matheatre's "Without Riemann" before his "Without Me". I couldn't skip him, or my lists would feel so empty. Any readers catch him in concert?

Eric Clapton - labeled a king/master/whatever of guitar; true, I suppose he's not been too bad over the years. Not many are aware, but he ended up doing a ton of acoustic work post-Cream, rewriting many of his famous tunes unplugged... They're good/catchy enough that I generally prefer them to the electrified originals. Extra credit for duetting "Give Me One Reason" with Tracy Chapman, and for being omnipresent on vinyl throughout my childhood. She don't lie, you know.

Estradasphere - yet another odd one, along the lines of Mr. Bungle and such. I don't know much about them and I'm not about to research, but Quadropus is a fun listen. Go hunt 'em down if you're interested, and thank Nate for the exposure!

Eurhythmics - eighties stuff that became fairly popular with their one hit, inspiring myriad covers in every genre... They did it right for bands and fans alike, and who am I to disagree?

Evanescence - ha ha, suckers! They're not on my expected radar at all, but I love this stuff, the lead singer's voice is amazing, and even though she's waaay too soprano, I still sing along when nobody's around. Just ruminate on that for a while.

Eve 6 - like Green Day, a bit too pop-punkish for me, but they did do an [awful] "Alison" song... Oh well.

Contributions, porfav?

f: this noise.

2009-03-24T22:06:00.001-04:00

The Faint - "indie" harder-than-normal rock, featuring occasional violin and a heaping helping of guitar pedal aptitude. Does he say "c-c-c-c-company trucks"? Extra credit for reminding me how to count to eight auf Deutsch, and for being permanently attached to Kyle in my mind.

Fantômas - this is easily some of the most "huh?"-inducing music I have.

For aficionados of the weird, consider their initial lineup: founder Mike Patton (Mr. Bungle, etc.) on "vocals" and other random stuff, Buzz Osborne (The Melvins) on guitar, Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle) on bass, and of all people, drummer Dave Lombardo of Slayer(!). Just imagine what this supergroup of sorts would invent, and you're pretty close.

For the less music-nerdly, the sound is just nuts. Our favorite online encyclopedia calls them "avant-garde metal", or more accurately, "absurdism" (oh no, I did more research!). It's loosely-organized, slightly metalish noise. All of their original tracks are fairly short (<2min) bursts of noise from the instruments, combined with occasionally melodic nonsensical vocal explosions.

Each album is themed weirdness. Suspended Animation has 30 tracks, each named for a day of April 2005 (the album is still only 40min or so). The Director's Cut is a bunch of Fantômas-ized covers of themes from movies, like the main title from The Godfather series. Never would you think of these songs like they did them.

To me, Fantômas serves the same purpose as Melt-Banana, providing brief ??? interludes within otherwise normal randomized playlists. I must admit, it's hard to listen to them for more than a few minutes at a time.

So, "huh?"

Fatboy Slim - the well-known DJ/knob-turner of the Big Beat genre, though I can't think of anyone else who qualifies as Big Beat. You at least know "The Rockafeller Skank", with its agonizingly repetitive sample "right about now, the funk soul brother \ check it out now, the funk soul brother", from its infinitude of TV commercial and movie/game soundtrack inclusions. You might also recognize "Weapon of Choice" (extra credit for featuring Bootsy Collins) from its hilarious music video showing Christopher Walken dancing and prancing along to the beat through a giant hotel.

Listening to enough Fatboy songs (three or four), you can pick up on his standard songwriting formula, but oh well. Even if the constructions aren't that innovative, every track is frustratingly catchy. He's got that whole rhythm thing down, for sure. "Slash dot dash dot slash dot dash dot slash dot dash dot slash dot com!" somehow becomes fun...

Norman Cook (the sole Fatboy DJ) is also famous for remixing other people's work, either on his albums or on the original artists' releases. For example, as I mentioned quite a few letter-days ago, he redid Steve Miller Band's "The Joker" on the album Palookaville (more bonus points for featuring Bootsy on vocals again!), and he appears on the Beastie Boys' anthology, as well as Groove Armada's Vertigo, to name a few. The remixes are notoriously better than the originals - compare the terrible original "I See You, Baby" with the slightly less bad Fatboy remix. Eh, I guess that's a bad example...

People tend to have a love/hate relationship with the Slim; most songs are patently repetitive into submission, so popularity revolves around the irritation level of a song's featured sample. For a well-hated song, check out today's next artist. But I argue, isn't repetition part of what makes music what it is?

Oh well. No matter what, "Fatboy Slim is [something] in heaven - [something] in [something] in [something] in heaven". Hmmm, maybe that's why people don't enjoy.

PS, Tim's fault.

Five Man Electrical Band - überhippies who wrote that song "Signs" back in the day. Unlike most people, I don't really like that song. Also unlike most, I prefer Fatboy Slim's "Don't Let the Man Get You Down", which samples the first line - "the sign says long-haired freaky people need not apply" - into submission, Fatboy-style.

Focus - go hunt down the closest thing they had to a hit, "Hocus Pocus". There are many brands of weird, and this is yet another. Thanks, Nate!

Foo Fighters - fightin' foos! I don't care about their music, but I greatly appreciate the deep coffers of Foo-related puns.

The Foundations - fans of the Powerpuff Girls, it seems, as Buttercup built them up (just to let them down).

Frank Martiniq - not particularly unique electronica, but A+ for consistently releasing albums on vinyl. Remember what "records" are?

Frank Zappa - I already mentioned his main outlet, Mothers of Invention, but Zappa by himself is worth mentioning for zillions of other reasons. He created music in almost every genre out there, from hard rock to "huh?" to classical. He was good enough on guitar that they released an album of just his solos, cut out of the middles of songs. He has asteroids and animal species named after him. Two of his children are Dweezil and Moon Unit. Anything else to add?

Frankenstein Brothers - the duet of Buckethead on guitar and That 1 Guy on his "Magic Pipe", drum rig, etc. etc. etc. Their instrumental album, Bolt On Neck, is technically impressive, but disappointingly nonweird. You would be shocked by their normalcy, Madi!

Frankie Yankovic and his Yanks - yay, pure accordion polka! This counts as one of the more publicly-pleasant flavors of weird. She probably won't appreciate this disclosure, but the mom can play accordion.

Fred Astaire - he's really a famous dancer from the days of yore, but his rendition of "Cheek to Cheek" was indeed a ubiquitous van tune. What a high voice! eek.

Frou Frou - we started the day with "indie" from Kyle, and we finish with more. Frou Frou is a bit more relaxing and "pretty" than The Faint, but oh well. Just as there are many flavors of weird, so are those of good.

G&G and the g*'s

2009-03-23T22:07:00.003-04:00

This round brought to you by the grandparents Link. (+a)

Gabby La La - a multi-instrumentalist (mostly sitar, but also tiny guitar, toy piano, and theremin) who slowly worked her way into the world of Claypool. As far as I can tell, her first appearance was a tiny cameo as a child's voice at the end of "D's Diner", on the Frog Brigade's 2002 album Purple Onion. Next were her backup vocals on the album "The Big Eyeball in the Sky", by Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains. She also opened for C2B3 on their tour in 2004. After that, she released her own solo album, one of the few non-Claypool artists to appear on Les' label (though Les plays drums and bass on most of the tracks). Following that, she played a major role on Les' 2006 CD Of Whales and Woe, subsequently touring for two years or so as part of "The Fancy Band". She is currently, umm, off the radar.

Ick. Her appearance on the C2B3 album was tolerable, but her concert performances with them were, uh, not that great. Her album does not qualify as tolerable. It's utter nonsense, so you would assume I would love it, right? Nope. Sorry, Gabby. Again, she fit in well on Of Whales and Woe, adding some slick sitar and theremin, but again again, I thought she was irritating on the Fancy tours. Further, she butchered a solo so badly at one of the shows I saw that the band had to stop and figure out what was going on. oops!

Galactic - waaay funky! Relatively new, too; it's a double-take to catch that they've been busy in the 21st century. I don't have too much to mention, but ugh, the funk is unstoppable.

Garth Brooks - yee haw!

As a holiday present for my roommate freshman year, I learned "Friends in Low Places" on the acoustic guitar and sang it for him. An octave lower than Mr. B, of course. Moral of the story: I'll never be a country star.

Genesis - only here to acknowledge their splinter skills, as they broke up to make solo groups for, umm, pretty much every member. This doesn't imply that any of them were good, though. They can't even dance!

George Clinton - lord, king, ruler of all things funk. His deliciously deep voice can be found rumbling under any group with "Parliament" or "Funkadelic" in the title; in fact, those are usually proceeded by "George Clinton and the". Beyond that, he of course has solo work, as well as co-ops with newer crews like Snoop Dogg. He's everywhere, warning, "failure to stomp will cause hazard to your booty!"

And of course...

"Think! It ain't illegal yet!"

George Gershwin - though he wrote such fully-orchestrated masterpieces as "American in Paris" and "Rhapsody in Blue", the double G is my favorite pianist, dare I say, hands down. It's 100% my brother's fault. I remember so well him whirling out those preludes with absolute perfection... At the end of prelude #2, there is a pretty walk all the way up the keys, a note in the middle, a long pause, and then a soft note way low (C#1) to close the piece; when Tim had mastered that song, he taught me to play that note and expected me to play it for him every time. That was my note.

I tried so hard to learn those preludes, but I could only get the relatively easy second one by the self-teach method. The first and third are just incredible. Someday.

George Thorogood and the Destroyers - make sure to say their name in the monster truck voice! George and his nihilistic pals are classic rock/blues rock essentials, though it's a bit sad that so many of their famous jams are covers. However, it's also quite amusing what they covered that didn't climb that high on the charts... "Willie and the Hand Jive", anyone?

Mr. T can solo quite thoroughly - he has that "can't hit a wrong note" maladie - but it's amazing/amusing/convenient that their songs are so ridiculously simple. It's either twelve-bar blues, or it's just one chord (verify with "Bad to the Bone"). Are they the Ramones of blues rock? I must confess that, minus the "good solos" part, this is inevitably what my non-bass guitar noodling became within five minutes of starting a session. G-C-D major chords for everyone!

The Ghetto Boys - because it feels good to be a gangster.

Glenn Miller - equals big band. "In the Mood", "American Patrol", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "Tuxedo Junction", "St. Louis Blues March", "Little Brown Jug", and on and on and on; these songs defined the time. They also defined about half of every jazz band's repertoire.

Thanks go to Primus for creating a complete non-cover: "a b c d e f g h I got a gal and she ain't from Kalamazoo"!

Gloria Gaynor - I won't reveal anything overly touching about this song (you know which one), other than that I prefer the deadpan Cake cover, and that I used to play Cake's bass line along with the original (eek, much faster) Gaynor recording. Dorkalicious.

Goldfinger - hmmm, fairly whiny ska. Isn't that why we like it?

Gravy Train - [no] thanks to mle for this techno train wreck. It makes me nervous.

Green Day - a bit too pop-punkified for me, but thanks for remixing "25 or 6 to 4", err, "Brain Stew".

Green Jelly - A+ for introducing Rambo to the story of the three little pigs.

Groove Armada - the name says it all, as far as style is concerned.

Tim gave me this album and told me to listen to "At the River", an extremely laid back song whose only words are an incomplete sentence: "if you're fond of sand dunes and salty air, quaint little villages here and there..." He said, "you know, the song doesn't make any sense, but by the end I'm thinking 'yeah, I like sand dunes...'" He's right.

Guns 'n' Roses - mandatory mention for being ludicrously popular, but your stories are better than mine.

Gwar - so maybe they're excessively obscene and unpleasant "shock rock", and maybe they dumped human excrement on their fans at concerts, but ignoring those minor details, they're great! "Penguin Attack"? "Vlad the Impaler"? Verses such as "dirty, filthy, dirty filthy filthy filthy dirty, filthy, dirty filthy filthy filthy"? Come on. "Why don't you just admit it?", they ask. Ok, they're awful.

Gwen Stefani - that's right. I like it. I can spell "bananas", too. She even gives Japanese lessons. Bring it.

That was awful. Please help.

huh?

2009-03-22T22:08:00.000-04:00

Hyah!

Handel - as in George Frederic, as in the creator of "The Messiah". I admittedly don't care too much about Christmas music, or the holiday in general, but this is Christmas.

The Link fam has accidentally (and incidentally) misinterpreted and rewritten most of this masterpiece. I like sheep, too! You're missing out.

Hank Williams, Jr. - surprise! I think Bocephus qualifies as "real country". You know, how they do it in Dixie. Yee haw.

Harold Faltermeyer - a popular, prolific TV/film composer in the eighties... Ok, as far as most of us know, he just did "Axel F", the theme for Beverly Hills Cop. There's nothing wrong with that, though, since everyone on the planet knows that song.

Playing "Axel F" in high school pep band was nothing short of hilarious. Any time there is a clapping interlude, there will be a riot. How deliciously dorky. Further (not bragging), since I switched between xylophone and bari sax as necessary, I knew the bass line and the melody and would play them both simultaneously (yes, rather poorly) on the xylo or vibes... If clapping interludes are dorky, then self-duetting on top of the dorkiness is loser squared.

Harry Connick, Jr. - the second junior of the day earns a mention for his rendition of "It Had To Be You", which happened to be in the same key as the arrangement we did in jazz choir.

Two things: first, this song held the distinguished title of track #1 on the permanent singalong disc in the van. Who knows how many times we mutilated this little ditty, brass solos and all. Second, my apologies to our JC director for always singing the melody an octave too low, where only I could reach... You know I couldn't resist; that low C is just begging to be rumbled out.

Heart - the nutso classic rockers responsible for "Magic Man", "Crazy on You", and ooh, "Barracuda". Wow, she has a high voice. Chalk up credit for strange slidey tricks on guitar during the main riff of "Barracuda", but pass some cred to Rasputina for turning that song into a cello duet.

I'm not about to look anything up, but if you read through some ancient posts on the jarmstro's logs, you can find some quality Heart tales. Song titles lead to endless punning.

Henry Mancini - jazzster/composer of the theme for the Pink Panther. All I really have to add is that, as "normal" as that song may sound, it is an incredibly bizarre composition to play... Chromatics + sharps = confusion.

Herbie Hancock - not just a Chris Farley joke, it's a real person! In the jazz world, he's relatively popular for infusing funk-style rhythms and such into common chord progressions, as well as writing weird parts for normal instruments and vice versa ("Watermelon Man"). Forget all of that, though, because every musician of the past few decades instantly recognizes, and knows his/her instrument's part for, "Chameleon".

Herman's Hermits - pretty popular weirdos of the "oldies" era, eh? Unlike most of the one-hit wonders I've mentioned from that time, the Hermits could actually fill an album with real "greatest hits". Scary, since one of them is inevitably "I'm Henry VIII, I Am". No Sam!

Herman and friends often found themselves in the van-bombing CD collection, though they appear frequently enough on oldies radio that putting the disc in the changer was a bit redundant.

House of Pain - completely out-of-genre for today's post, it seems, we have a dash of rap/hip-hop/hard rock. I know them best from my brother's comically-censored tape of whatever album was so popular... Put on your fish kickers and kick some fish!

That was unexciting; any contributions?

isn't many...

2009-03-21T22:09:00.000-04:00

An inkling of I*.

Imogen Heap - solo work from the front [wo]man of Frou Frou. If Frou Frou is indie, this is indie squared. She uses some neat vocal effects, and the songs are catchy and well-written. I know this isn't typical jlink fare, but it's easily worth a listen. Thanks, Kyle!

Incubus - ahh, the complex beast that is Incubus. Where to start? They generally use standard rock band git-bass-drums-vocals instrumentation, plus a quite masterful DJ scratching along. The guitar dude also plays some bizarre stuff every now and then - is that the lute on Morning View? Bonus points for citing Primus as one of their major influences!

Further, recog to the front man for mastering the "front man dance"; you know, that stuff lead singers do when they're not lead singing... It's a fine line between standing there like a moron and prancing around or whatever, also like a moron, but he's got it down.

I like their early stuff, i.e. S.C.I.E.N.C.E., quite a lot. It's crazy, busy, fairly atonal, pretty funky, not serious at all... To be sure, there is some of this brand of Incubus on every album, but it's more present in their early stages. I also like the DJ madness found in songs like "Battlestar Scralatchtica" and "Magic Medicine". Furthermore, though they gradually drifted from "nuts" to "pleasant", I was pleased with their general return to craziness on A Crow Left of the Murder... - see "Priceless".

Unfortunately, I'm a bit bummed with Morning View and Light Grenades. Morning View is almost completely devoid of atonal insanity, and, while there are a few wild tracks (the title track) and some viciously clever lyrics ("Quicksand"!), Light Grenades is also overly sane. Oh well.

In summary, A+ here! Plus extra credit for being permanently attached to my friend Dr. Mandenstein. Go ahead and rip me apart, Miss H.

Iron Butterfly - "In a gadda da vida, baby, don't you know that I" have no clue what you're talking about. A mention not for creating a catchy, popular song, but for making that song seventeen minutes long.

Isaac Hayes - a tough guy of R&B/soul and the occasional megafunk (the theme from "Shaft"), akin to Barry White... Whose vast collection of grooves is completely overshadowed by his role (and abandonment thereof) as Chef on South Park. Fair trade. Hello there, children!

Add as necessary!

just a few

2009-03-20T22:10:00.000-04:00

Hey pals! Today's pretty brief - most of the J* artists I pulled out are from what you might call "a little before my time", and I don't feel right saying much. It seems as though people assume I'm somehow magically an expert on everyone I mention, but I know nothing compared to most of you when it comes to the true rock era. Ha ha, you're old ;-)

The Jackson 5 - hmmm... Better than any of them solo? Who knows. If so, blame it on the boogie.

Jaco Pastorius - maybe partially responsible for the start of fusion jazz? He played bass for Weather Report for a while, among others, but I prefer his crazy "solo" work, by far.

A little back story: Jaco was, surprise, a bass player. His defining moment to me was prying the metal frets out of his electric bass and smoothing out the fretboard, making his own fretless bass (that he slowly destroyed over the span of his career). That's hardcore. He borderline abused the slidey tricks available without frets, as everyone should, but he was also ridiculously good at the technicalities of jazz, as well as a master at complicated harmonics (see "Portrait of Tracy").

Anyway, I guess that pretty well describes his music style. With the "help" of lots of drugs, he made some impressive, mind-bending sounds, and has no doubt inspired the destruction of many a bass guitar.

I remember trying to learn some Jaco songs - after all, my first bass was indeed a fretless (mostly Les' fault). Let me summarize by clarifying further: wow, he was good.

Jalopy Art Murder - continuing the "John's cronies" series, j-a-m is another Emily creation. This won't help at all, but it sounds kind of like a cross between Portishead and CocoRosie... Find them/her on MySpace. I have some skilled friends.

James Brown - one of the original nonsense yellers! He might qualify as a foundation of funk, but I'm not so sure. He's famous for 1) cranking out an endless supply of hits, 2) being a total jerk. But, what would the world be like if he hadn't kicked Bootsy Collins out of his band??

Janis Joplin - raspy ole Janis. I'll give her credit for being one of the most famous protesty folkers. Someone please get her a Benz already.

Also, was she the first to do "Me and Bobby McGee"? Or was it bizarro country master Roger Miller?

Jay and the Americans - come a little bit closer, there, Jose. What a weird song. Why did he run through the window? What kind of cafe is this?? Is Jay implying he's not American??? Oldies are awesome. That song ("Come a Little Bit Closer", their only hit that I know of) was definitely a van staple.

Jerry Lee Lewis - goodness gracious, another in the van bombing soundtrack.

Or, as Robot Chicken would say in a Flintstones parody, "my goodness cretaceous!"

Jerry Reed - to those my age, Mr. Reed is probably only known for "Amos Moses", if that... Yay, early bluegrass. Reminds me of Charlie Daniels quite a bit, except more humorous. Make it count, son!

Bonus for Primus covering the aforementioned "hit", and bonus bonus for having the Primus cover be somehow less funny.

Jethro Tull - classic/prog rockers responsible for Aqualung, a pile of other not-so-popular albums, and their ubiquitous flute lead. Though we think highlighting the flute is an odd thing to do in current "rock", it was even further out there in the Tull days... Thanks for clearing a path for Karl Denson, I guess? Rather, thanks for pushing multiple envelopes at once.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - speaking of envelope-pushing, here you go! There's nothing I can say to do Jimi justice. Some of the best musicians are lefties, eh?

John Williams - composer extraordinaire. Overlooking the vast majority of his work, I give him infinite credit for creating hours of instantly-recognizable music for the Star Wars movies; fans intrinsically know their entire soundtracks, but even Star Wars haters (or the completely SW-agnostic) are familiar with the various themes.

On top of the infinite credit already earned, tack on some extra for leading me to waste hours on the piano and xylophone learning the "Cantina Band" music, and a bit more for inspiring Buckethead to do the same on the gee-tar. Time well spent.

Johnny Cash - ick! Go find his cover of The Beatles' "In My Life" and Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt". Hurt, indeed.

Johnny Rivers - mostly known for "Secret Agent Man", but also a high profile victim of the rockin' pneumonia... Both of those earned permanent spots in the van CD changer, to be ruined by a crowd of high schoolers for years.

Your turn! I'm waiting for some killer Hendrix stories. Hand 'em over.

kickin' krews

2009-03-19T22:11:00.003-04:00

You have no idea how hard it is for me not to substitute a k for each q and hard c in this post, rendering it kwite kompletely inkomprehensible. Let's get Kraken!

Karl Denson's Tiny Universe - light, yet groovy "prog jazz"? They're notable to me because of their combination of a fairly typical jazz ensemble with copious DJ scratch action and a lead... flute! I don't know if you can "shred" on such an instrument, but if not, this is as close as it gets. Anyway, this is really fun, happy (meaning lots of major thirds), maybe even danceable stuff. Extra credit for "touring" alongside Les Claypool on part of the Jam Cruise series.

KGC - that's Sascha Konietsko (KMFDM and anything related), Dean Garcia (Curve), and Lucia Cifarelli (KMFDM, Drill). They made a very industrial album in 2006. As with anything so closely associated with my brother, I hope you dislike it so I don't have to share.

Kiss - yeah, you know 'em. Well, aside from "Rock and Roll All Night", most of their songs aren't immediately recognizable. However, their face paint, crazy hair, and Gene Simmons' tongue are instantly familiar. There aren't too many groups out there with that backwards identity of ubiquitous members and thoroughly non-ubiquitous tunes. Nice work, rock stars.

Kling Klang - "experimental rock", they claim to be? Whatever that is. The band consists of a bunch of guys on synthesizer, as well as - of all instruments to be not synthesized - a drummer. You might correctly guess from the name that their music is heavy on noise, but when they're being musical, it sounds like a distorted classical organ quartet (plus drums, of course). They're not the easiest listening out there, though I think normal people could tolerate. Mad props for opening for Portishead in 2008.

KMFDM - the father(s) of industrial rock. Also my brother's favorite band/obsession (if you remember your analogy notation, that's "John:Les Claypool::Tim:KMFDM"), so feel free not to like, such that a select few of us can keep them to ourselves.

They recognized Tim on sight, and even figured out who I was when we saw them in Cleveland, November 2004. Speaking of, here is a happy brother:

The Knack - o-o-of "My Sharona" fame. I could not care less about anything else they produced; I would buy a CD with 14 repeats of that song (16 if it's an 80-min disc). It's dumb, it's repetitive, a flock of kindergarteners could've written and played it, and I love it.

Yes, I'm that pathetic.

Kool & The Gang - also most well-known for a dumb, catchy song, "Jungle Boogie". eek. To their credit, they started out as a very pure, deft jazz group before being sucked into the funk/disco black hole of 70's pop. Hunt down "Summer Madness", among others. Thanks to Nate for exposure to their early jazz style.

Korn - ok, so I'm not a true Korn fan, but I am a huge fan of "Freak on a Leash", which starts out like a normal metalish Korn ditty, but about halfway through devolves into massive bass and frightening, completely nonsensical noises yelled by their main vocalist. Noise and bass seem to be keys to my musical heart, so this is a two-for-one deal!

If I recall correctly, the song also had a pretty cool "bullet time" video - ha ha, remember when MTV actually played music?

Krev Kor - another one of jl's musical friends. We clocked some hours noodling around in Bill's basement back in the day. He didn't even bother tuning his guitar. It was delicious.

That's it from me - your K submissions, please?

les is mor

2009-03-18T22:12:00.002-04:00

Here goes...

Lamb of God - overly unintelligible-screamy metal. Ergo, their studio material isn't the most interesting shredding out there. However, one of their live albums, cheerfully named Killadelphia, is great. It sounds like they're pretty talented all around in the live setting, and the screaming is even slightly less incomprehensible! Most importantly, just like Pantera's concert recording 101 Proof, the 'tween-song interstitial commentary is a riot. Duh, none of it is appropriate for quoting here, but let it be known that the most frightening metalheads are intelligent, funny, normal people too. Sort of.

Laura Fleming - a college friend with an album out! I'm beyond jealous. Check her/it out on that giant digital music store, or appreciate high quality music and get the real thing.

Le Tigre - mmm, anti-folk/indie-something/???, whatever genre you feel like at the time. I enjoy what appear to be interspersed recordings from feminist protests. No, not musical performances at protests, just protesting. [compound sentence fragment!] Truly riotous.

Led Zeppelin - a pillar in my musical Pantheon, and a muscle of the Atlas carrying classic rock. Insert other analogies as necessary.

On that note, I've been disappointed lately upon discovering that a rather large heap of Zep songs are covers. For the longest time, I was under the impression that these guys were magical with absolutely every aspect of music (sure, every artist covers Bob Dylan at some point)... Turns out that some of my favorites that I thought were pure Led Zeppelin are nearly exact covers. Sadface. I'm not going to list any because having the wool pulled over my eyes was much better than knowing the facts, so spoiling Led Utopia is your decision.

To their credit, they covered sufficiently obscure songs that even music dorks like me don't catch them right away, though this may be different for people who were around a few years earlier than I. Also, Jimmy Page + anything = amazing.

Led Zeppelin IV aka Zoso aka Symbols aka The One With Stairway To Heaven was the first non-kiddie CD in my collection (long after my Nirvana tape died, if you were paying attention)... Houses of The Holy was the second. HOTH (not the planet) is still one of the most common players in my library. These discs accompanied me on every fresh/soph basketball bus ride, back in that strange world where I hadn't heard of Primus yet. They were probably better days, eh?

---Les at the end!---

Lightning Bolt - rare bass-focused metalish stuff. From the assortment of people I've interrogated about the Bolt, I gather that only bassists like it. Prove me wrong!

Liquid Tension Experiment - part of the quasi prog rock sleep music arsenal. Their technical skills are a bit sleep-distracting, though.

Liszt - ha, another classical composer! Surprise. Liszt earns a mention several times over. As is almost mandatory, he focused on piano work. Further in that direction, [I assume that] he was possibly the most skilled ivory-wailer in existence: note that much of his work that he would play solo, i.e. the Hungarian Rhapsodies, appears in still-difficult duet form today. For that matter, note Hungarian Rhapsody #2 again, which you know from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Finally, observe his wide variety of "evil" compositions; he wrote all sorts of Faust-related stuff, as well as the funeral dirge. Yum.

Loggins and Messina - because once upon a time, mothers didn't dance, and fathers neither rocked nor rolled.

Louis Armstrong - quite sufficiently famous trumpeter and growly crooner, such that I need not elaborate. Louis and Ella Fitzgerald tagged to create some monster jazz, too.

Louis Jordan - beans. Cornbread. Repeat.

Louis Prima - points for cranking out some impressive jazz, even though people only care about his role as the orangutan in Disney's "The Jungle Book" cartoon movie...

The Lovin' Spoonful - did you ever have to make up your mind? Do you believe in magic? They sure asked a lot of catchy questions.

Ludacris - also rare on the radar, here comes some more rap. I quite dig the constant humor (gasp, wit!), as well as his technical skill at simply cranking out English clearly and quickly. Of course, there's the offensive tax, but that's part of the comedy; such is the same with regard to the brag quotient. Take it as you will/must, I suppose.

Les Claypool ["solo"] - hmmm... Purple Onion has rewritten my life. That's a pretty good summary.

Way too many stories to shoehorn into this space. Maybe I'll dodge the task with a photo or two? You can find a Claypool tale here just about any day...

Right-o, some whamola. Fancy Band, June 2007, courtesy of the blurry Treo.

Have I mentioned a million times yet that we killed time after that show?

And that he signed my sixer? Ahoy!

Finally, a gorgeously blurry shot from the darkness of the show LAST NIGHT.

PS, that's my excuse for such a poor post today. Rocket.

mucho ahora.

2009-03-17T22:13:00.003-04:00

Evidence that my posts are time-shifted...

MAN Incorporated - a fairly unhappy guy with a kick drum, a bass guitar, and a large stash of four-letter words. He'll gladly tear anything and everything apart. The sound is as basic/simple as you can get and probably counts as "punk", but he does some entertaining vocal stuff while he's talkyellsinging about whatever is making him mad at the moment. You might have gathered by now that he's far away from fam-friendly.

Manu Chao - mostly non-English multi-genre music, stealthily about drugs most of the time. In one of the rare Eng-lang songs, their lead singer claims to be the king of the bongo?? I don't think any of their songs are truly serious, but, though I know it's mostly Spanish, their accents are thick enough that I rarely catch unas palabras.

Marcus Miller - another slap-n-pop bassmaster. He has been known to duet with Victor Wooten, combining to make way more bass noises than most can grasp.

Marilyn Manson - oh no, another sort-of-popular artist? I particularly like his crunchy guitar songs like "Wormboy" and "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" - in fact, I'm surprised at how much of his arsenal I truly do enjoy, and watching him live is thoroughly entertaining. However, it's still predominantly not that great. Further, it doesn't really matter what I say, because everyone dismisses him as some Satanic baby-eater anyway.

Marvin Gaye - my all-time favorite soul-based funk artist. Four words: "Let's Get It On".

Talk about a van classic!

Matheatre - so a guy with a master's in math ed and his pal create "Calculus: The Musical". The songs are all mathematical rewrites of famous numbers ;-) To name a few:

"Five Sizes of Number" (Beatles - "In My Life")
"Differentiabul" (most well-known is They Might Be Giants - "Istanbul")
"Without Riemann" (Eminem - "Without Me")

They're not the most in-tune singers out there, but the songs are great memorization tools and downright catchy. I didn't get to see the show; Tim and Steph caught it out west and got me the CD. Yessir, I am a nerd. Sing along with the main part of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)":

f of x plus h minus f of x
all over h as h drops to zero
is the formula to find the derivative
to find the slope at one point

you'll never forget.

Maynard Ferguson - trumpet machine! Maybe I'm a dork, but works like "Gospel John" were some of my favorites in high school pep band and jazz band. He also did some fantastic trumpetized versions of songs from all across the genre universe, such as "Spinning Wheel", "As Time Goes By", "Chameleon", and even "MacArthur Park" and a Star Wars medley. On the trumpet, there are average notes, there are high notes, there are ridiculous notes, and past all of those, there are Maynard notes.

MDFMK - as you might guess, this was a one-album side project from the people of KMFDM. I'm pretty sure this was my bro's favorite album in existence, and I hope you hate it so I don't have to share. I only ask, "do you know who owns and controls the station you're watching? Does the truth you know rely on something? Does it matter?"

Meat Beat Manifesto - very very VERY bass-heavy electronica. Strange and not dance-friendly. Thanks, Tim!

Medeski, Martin and Wood - low-pressure jam/funk/bluegrass. They gots da musical skilz. Have a listen, and find Nate for stories.

Melt-Banana - Japanese girl singing/rapping/yipping nonsense over cleverly bizarre and catchy noise guitar. She sounds like a little toy-dog barking, and I love it. The best "songs" weigh in between ten seconds and a minute thirty, named something random like "Chicken Headed Raccoon Dog" or "Flash Cube, Or Eyeball". Very huh?-inducing, which appears to me my kind of noise.

Men Without Hats - can spell "safety". Everyone look at your hands.

Metallica - surprisingly enough, I am not that familiar! I did listen to "the black album" on a daily basis way back when, but fans won't appreciate that. Stuff before that disc was/is comical to me because of Lars' attempt to be a drummer... Then again, everything after that album is Lars-humorous too.

The Meters - yet another funkdamental, though they're a bit less structured/more jam-bandy than Parliament. For bonus points, Primus covered their delicious mini-jam "Tippi-Toes" on the Miscellaneous Debris EP.

Michael Jackson - "the king of pop"... Whoop dee doo.

Michael Manring - bends minds with his bass guitars. I can't tell a whole lot just from listening, but it's obvious that he likes alternate tunings and hates common chords. Beyond that, go listen!

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - ska legends with a sound closer to rock than the Reel Big Fish brand thereof. Horns sadly take a back seat to guitar-bass-drums most of the time, though there is the occasional brass 'n' sax job. The lead singer's signature voice is deep and raspy - again, much different (and easier to fake) than the way-tenor vocals coming out of pretty much everyone in RBF. They have quite the collection, but the only one Average Joe might recognize is "The Impression That I Get", aka the one about knocking on wood.

Those guys from Six Ways covered a pile of Bosstones ditties, from the aforementioned "Impression" to "The Rascal King" to "You Gotta Go"... Merrily mutilating lyrics as necessary.

Ming & FS - on their own, or as friends of DJ Soul Slinger. They find some of the best samples in the real world: "is there honey in that box?", asks Winnie the Pooh over and over. Riiight.

Ministry - maybe industrial? Mostly just really fast guitar with truly creepy samples and occasionally comprehensible vocals. "...There was only one thing that I could do [...] was dinga ding dang my dangalong ling long." That's as clean as it gets.

The Misfits - punk punk punk! Real punk, though, from some of the originals. Dig it.

The Monkees - "hey hey, we're" catchy, but not quite up to par with The Beatles, and Neil Diamond wrote most of our songs...

Morphine - grungelicious, but not the same grunge as Nirvana. To start, they were a bari sax, drummer, and magical bassist Mark Sandman; note the lack of guitar. Then the music was very much groove-oriented, with wonderfully gritty/honky sax, tight drums, and Mark's unique slide bass and baritone vocals.

Mark played some tantalizing bass riffs. He used a normal bass guitar, but with just two strings, usually tuned to the same note. He also used a slide on his fretting hand, bending from note to note to make music with mandatory foot-tapping. To top it all off, he sang through an old-school bullet mic, combining with his deep voice to make an amazing timbre. It's just plain gorgeous.

Mr. Sandman died of a heart attack on stage at a concert in Italy.

Whose fault is it that I've been so addicted to Morphine (pun intended)? Is it Jo's, because she is related to Mr. Sandman? Is it Nate's, for first playing their music for me? Or could it be Les Claypool's, as he uses a bullet mic for effect, explicitly as a tribute to the Sandman? The world may never know.

Mothers of Invention - coming early in the chronological encyclopedia of weird. They were skilled, though, which doesn't always go along with weird. I can't really explain; just dream up a co-op between Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, then call a vegetable. Any vegetable!

Mötley Crüe - worth mentioning twice, for two umlauts! And by that I mean worth not mentioning at all. They are/were indeed megafamous glam rockers, but I think Tommy Lee wins for trumping his Crüe fame by doing something else - precisely, "something", ali! He's the one they call Dr. Feelgood.

Motörhead - by the umlaut metric, only half as good as the Mötley ones, and on par with Björk. Hmmmm, maybe I need a different scale of band quality.

I don't have much to say about Motörhead, but I do have something to say about accented characters. Since I write these posts in HTML in a text editor (PSPad in Windows, Kate in Linux, FYI) and then paste into the online Blogger interface, I have to use code to make accents. It makes words with accents impossible to read - forex, Björk is spelled "B j & o u m l ; r k" (without the spaces). What's sad is that I've memorized all of the useful ones. Nerrrrrrd! Anyway, back to music stuff.

Mr. Bungle - pure oddity, with ska-like instrumentation. They're really talented musicians; however, what comes out is mind-boggling. The lyrics are mostly gibberish, but at the show my bro saw, they did the whole thing - including covers of pop songs - in Italian. Nuts.

Mr. Oizo - irritating, crunchy, lo-fi electronica. Few enjoy these gritty "beats". That's about it.

Muddy Waters - big name jazzster, whom I mention just to clarify that there is also a bar/restaurant in the STL area with the same name, and that my shirt is sadly from the bar, not the musician. (Rather, the shirt is from a thrift store, but once upon a time came from the restaurant.)

You're not having as much fun as I am right now.

¡nada mucho hoy!

2009-03-16T22:14:00.001-04:00

Neutral Milk Hotel - definitely "indie" something, but definitely not "indie pop". Sometimes they're semi-generic acoustic guitar and lite-rock vocals, sometimes strings, sometimes oddly instrumented hard that makes even thejlink raise an eyebrow. I think they get bored easily, and that's fine with me. Oh yeah, they have songs like "She Did A Lot of Acid" and "Two-Headed Boy" slipped in there, too.

Nine Inch Nails - rip me to shreds, I like NIN. The guy (don't forget, the actual "band" is Trent Reznor on everything; live performances are Reznor plus a different set of random pawns each tour) is endlessly creative/skilled with music, lyrics, and even marketing. Yes, he's a bit of a tool as a person, but oh well. This project is about music, not sociology.

I have all sorts of stories about NIN, but just like most of their/his songs, they are far from fam-friendly. I can include a quote from the bro Tim, though, that takes a satirical stab at the gradual change of focus for each album: we were talking about how the early albums like Pretty Hate Machine were very raw, and Tim says, "oh, back when he was actually angry!"

Only fans will get that, most likely, and they'll no doubt not appreciate it. Shucks.

Nirvana - I talk about grunge quite a bit, and Nirvana is the root of all that evil. Nirvana is the definition of grunge, plain and simple. Maybe I'm a little obsessed.

Nevermind was the first album, on tape of course, that was actually "mine". I remember listening to it over and over while mowing the lawn - the best time for good music, right? To summarize my appreciation, I need only point out that the tape stopped working long, long ago.

No Doubt - ha ha, if you're mocking me for liking Nine Inch Nails, eat this one up! I prefer her solo work, but this pop(!) garbage works in a pinch. Ah, I might as well confess to liking Garbage while I'm at it. I don't have anything cogent to contribute to the No Doubt discussion.

Notorious B.I.G. - Biggie Biggie Biggie, can't you see? On the minus side, he helped turn rap into a giant bragfest, but on the plus side, he was pretty good at it.

Further on the plus side, "Big Poppa" was featured in one of the Robert Goulet skits on SNL, providing me with laughs every time I've ever heard the song.

(and he's almost as awesome as the notorious JKL)

---

Half done! That was the easy half... Share some stories.

ostensibly odd

2009-03-15T22:15:00.001-04:00

The Offspring - yummy grungey punk, in the early days at least. It's amusing to watch their decline from serious grunge at the start, through slightly more traditional punk in the Smash era, to the decidedly commercialized pop-punk of Americana. eewww. Americana is the newest album I've experienced - does anyone have a report on their more recent work?

I wouldn't be so harsh with this crew, but I held them in such high regard because they're a band I clearly remember hearing when riding around with the bro when he first got his driver's license. Tim's approval is the highest mark on my grade sheet, so for them to turn into something he would definitely not approve of is very sad.

Those guys from Six Ways 'til Sunday might have covered the occasional early Offspring song...

The Ohio Players - something akin to Parliament before they turned into Parliament. You might know them from the überfunky "Love Rollercoaster", but probably not much else. I think they simply came around a year or two too early to be blockbusters.

The Orb - super-trippy electronica. As we inch closer to the beginning of the alphabet, you might realize that I constantly listen not to heavy metal, but to obscure, weird electronica that is unpleasant to the general public. After Claypool stuff, that is. Tim's fault! :-)

Os Mutantes - odd distorted-guitar mariachi? Something like that. They're currently my best Portuguese study aid, although I don't know if they're continental or Brazilian. This could be part of the reason why my Portuguese is so awful. It means "The Mutants", by the way.

(note: they're Brazilian, which means I won't be able to communicate with anyone in either location. eek, I looked something up!)

Oysterhead - next on the Claypool list, we have a supergroup of sorts in Oysterhead, featuring Trey Anastasio (Phish) on guitar and antlers, Les on bass, and Stewart Copeland (The Police) on drums, pots and pans, and anything else that makes a noise when you hit it. Surely because of Trey's influence, this ensemble seems to mark Les' foray onto the "jam band" scene, as well as a general shift for all Claypool bands away from fairly rigid structure towards longer songs (live, in particular) and unscripted solos on all instruments.

Their one album sounds pretty Phishy, whether it's Les or Trey doing vocals. Though a few songs are profoundly Claypool-grade bizarre ("The Grand Pecking Order", "Army's on Ecstasy"), it's much lighter and not-bass-focused than any other Les album. Thus, I don't find it that entertaining, but that almost universally implies that normal people will like it.

Live Oysterhead was apparently a different story. I never got to see them, but I've picked up plenty from talking to other concert-goers and browsing that one Y-something online video repository. To start, they drew an awful lot of Phish fans, so you know the mental state of most of the crowds. Then Trey rarely played an unmodified guitar - the one I know of has a mount of deer antlers for the body with a regular guitar neck attached... With that one, he could also twist a few knobs and wave his hands around the antlers like a Theremin. Yes, the correct response is "huh??" Combine that with Les' glasses with flashlights attached to the sides and Mr. Copeland's vast array of cooking utensils, and you have a certified crazy concert experience.

Ozzy Osbourne - I am an Ozznovice, but I can't leave out the bat-eater we all know and love.

plus a few more

2009-03-14T22:16:00.003-04:00

Pahoy, p'mateys! This should be quite an amusingly distracted post, courtesy of Steph and Steve rocking the Wii just a few feet away.

Pantera - metalll! Mostly nonserious and thoroughly offensive, with a hefty helping of solid guitar solos. My favorite is their "101 Proof" live album, loaded with (not clean) comic genius interstitials. Also, you might notice that I generally prefer live recordings over über-limited studio cuts.

Steph, who works for Proctor & Gamble, indulges the fake trade secret that Pantene shampoo products were named after this band because of their amazing hair...

Parliament - equals funk. Period. George Clinton. Bootsy Collins. Songs like "Dr. Funkenstein". Hmmm.

Paul Simon - I believe the jarmstro might call this more "dad music"? Here bei Link it's more "mom music", but close enough.

The Graceland album defined a huge chunk of my childhood - it's just about the only thing I remember from our family vacation to the Dakotas and Montana so many moons ago... Further, "You Can Call Me Al" is why we named my cat of yore "Betty". On a random note, here she is:

Peggy Lee - so unhealthy! Takes credit for "(You Give Me) Fever", but maybe should consider some Tylenol. I like the song for its jazzy style, catchy story, and abundance of key changes (an apprentice to Tommy Roe?), but I can't endorse it because I think it's rampantly sexist. Being playfully obscene is one thing, but I don't go for perpetuation of any sort of inequality - be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade.

A Perfect Circle - same guys from Tool, but less ambient and more politically charged. Covers of songs like "What's Going On" and John Lennon's "Imagine", too. Overall, I'd say they're more catchy but less impressive technically than they were as Tool.

Peter, Paul and Mary - massively popular folksters and masters of harmony. Van tunes.

Phish - Grateful Dead, part two? Quite skilled guitarist Trey Anastasio gets a heap of other skilled tunesters together to jam, sometimes bothering to record it. Counts as sleep music to me, which you may note by now is a rather high regard. A+ for thirty-minute songs.

Pig - solo project by Raymond Watts, of industrial rockers KMFDM. I'm not too familiar, but everyone from KMFDM deserves at least a mention.

The Pillows - responsible for plenty of soundtrackage for the anime FLCL. As with any anime soundtrack, their stuff is strange. Also, contrary to the name, this isn't too sleep-friendly.

Pink Floyd - what genre do Floyd and friends fall into? Their most unique selling points to me are an attempt at a rock opera, that album that syncs up with The Wizard of Oz, and the copious use of sarcasm before sarcasm was cool... Ah, Primus covers/covered them constantly on tour, too. By the way, which one's Pink?

Polysics - I only know "Nice", which is some messed up super mega happy 100%! J-pop sounding hyperditty with what seem to be not-words lyrics. Anyone know if the rest of their tunes are as bizarrely tasty?

Portishead - surprisingly well-known "trip hop"... All of the stories I have are too meaningful/close/sad for me to share. Sorry, pals, only mine, Tim's, and a select few others'.

The Postal Service - on a happier note, we have overly electronic "indie pop" from the front man from Death Cab For Cutie and [who cares who else]! Liking this music is almost entirely Jo's fault. I don't really feel like sharing these stories either, beyond Kyle's "Nintendo indie" labelling, and that it makes me cry with happy... This is inconvenient, as the intro to their song "Such Great Heights" is used for background on several UPS commercials. Curse you, Jo-bird!

Praga Khan - back to stuff you would more likely pin on me, Praga Khan is nutso, almost angry electronica full of top-speed beats and confusing samples. The group is big on creative name dropping and manipulation, such as the album "Pragamatic", as well as the artist's name itself (from multi-decade weirdo Chaka Khan). "Are you listening to me? We don't need that anymore." Huh?

Praxis - an odd sorta-metal group typically featuring envelope-pushing bassist Bill Laswell, keyboardist Bernie Worrell (Parliament et al), drummer Brian "Brain" Mantia (of Primus for a while), and occasionally our guitar-annihilating pal Mr. Buckethead. Did I mention "odd"?

The Presidents of the United States of America - kitty at my foot, and I want to touch it.

Probot - nothing to add, really, but I'd like to keep you thinking that I only listen to metal.

The Prodigy - living up to his name across several styles. There's the pure electronic "Music for the Jilted Generation", the continuous mix of DJ work known as "Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1", or the hard rock/electronica/wha?? album you probably know, "Fat of the Land" (the one with "Firestarter" on it).

To keep this fam-friendly, no Prodigy stories here!

Primus - moved out of sequence to the end, for emphasis. If you've ever actually heard of a band featuring the magical, mystical bassist Les Claypool, this is it. It's possibly the weirdest band to find mainstream radio time. Songs you may know:

Lacquerhead
The Antipop
Greet the Sacred Cow
Golden Boy
Shake Hands With Beef
Too Many Puppies
Mr. Knowitall
Frizzle Fry
John the Fisherman (Guitar Hero fans!)
My Name Is Mud
DMV
Mr. Krinkle
Jerry Was a Racecar Driver
Tommy The Cat
Those Damned Blue-Collared Tweekers
Wynona's Big Brown Beaver
Southbound Pachyderm

Just to name a few.

Primus is why I became a musician, a bass player. Primus is why I'm still alive. Primus has been some of my best physical therapy. Primus is my fascination and obsession. Primus is my brother's fault. Primus tortured my entire floor freshman year of college. Primus is why I have a six-string fretless bass. Primus is why my cat's nickname is Tommy. Primus is why I would play bass on my steering wheel. Primus is an endless supply of jlstories. Primus is why I will play bass again.

Happy hypothetical birthday, Tim...

quick quips

2009-03-13T22:17:00.001-04:00

Hey folks! Today's pretty lightweight. Sure, there are plenty of Q* artists out there, but I don't have anything worthwhile to say about them! The closest I have to decent stories are about...

Queen - to start, were a van-bombing necessity. Just imagine a pile of high school nerds doing (pretty poor) multi-part harmony to "Bohemian Rhapsody" with the windows down, and try not to vom.

The best almost-story about this classic rock group almost-happened in Philosophy 105 "Mind and World", which was a freshman level logic-and-arguments class I took as a junior at IWU to fulfill a general education requirement... Humorously after taking the junior/senior class "Topics in Logic" the previous semester with the same entertaining professor. Needless to say, I spent most of my time either not paying attention or antagonizing Dr. Clapp for amusement all around.

Lenny, the professor, was an avid cycling enthusiast. In fact, he randomly knew several bicyclers from Carlinville - small world! Also, since I can't really operate pen and paper to take notes (not that I did much of that in M&W), I almost always had my laptop with me, which means I had my entire music collection constantly available as well. You can probably see where this is going.

Anticlimactic conclusion: very quickly, starting with my class corruption cohort Sandy, the class realized that I had several Queen albums, including a greatest hits with "Bicycle Race"... Commence daily pleas to play that song either upon his entrance or in the middle of a quiz. It was hard to resist. If they would have offered me money or something, I probably would have done it. I wonder what Lenny would have done... He knew me fairly well from his previous Logic 360 class and was pretty casual anyway, so I doubt I would have been kicked out or otherwise punished apart from retaliatory mockery; who knows, maybe he would've sung along and done a little dance? Sadly, the world may never find out.

Moral of the story, cool-and-bored people like Sandy and Jo can be evil influences. And, btw, I want to ride it where I like.

That's all from me - now add your own!

rocktastic!

2009-03-12T22:18:00.003-04:00

Arrrr! I had to do stuff in meatspace today, so this is neither as long nor as thorough as yesterday's S marathon. If it's not enough for you, needy readers, add your own in the comments. You can type way faster than I, anyway. Doooo iiiiiit...

Rachmaninov - spell as you like. I'm not adding many classical composers because I have no classical wisdom and rarely an experience to share - haven't caught Mozart on tour yet - but some are still worth mentioning. Sergei is one in my book. To start, I have an incredible soft spot for piano compositions, which I will explain later. Then, much to the chagrin of probably everyone reading this, I don't really care about "pretty" classical work. Probably because of the bro's piano tendencies, I typically prefer to ditch the artsy, happy-go-lucky stuff for something fast, busy, and minor, or somehow off-key (slight pun intended).

Now that I've explained, I need only provide one descriptor: Rachmaninov is fury in piano form.

Radiohead - ok, yes, Radiohead has been insanely popular in both the popular and underground realms for many years now, with music everywhere on the spectrum between acoustic and extraneously electronic. You probably know them and love them. For me, they occupy a very special niche in my music collection: sleep music. It takes just the right sound to be sleep music, rather than just boring; Radiohead hits it perfectly, being relaxing, yet amusingly engulfing enough to envelope me in a trippy slumber. This is a difficult accomplishment.

Of course, there are a few songs that I will actively choose to listen to: for example, "The National Anthem", "My Iron Lung", and "15 Step" are mesmerizing.

Also, as Jo might recall, Radiohead on shuffle makes interesting statements out of song titles. For example, "Anyone Can Play Guitar", "Just" "I Can't", "Creep". Thanks, Randomhead.

Rage Against the Machine - probably the second-most angry group I know, only because every now and then they covered a neutral-attitude song. Definitely the most obscene lyrics, though; no contest on that one. In other words, I heart. Further, they deserve an inordinate amount of musical cred - their bass player can actually find that elusive thing they call "the pocket"; guitarist Tom Morello has mastered both groove and playing guitar with pencils and screwdrivers; and front man Zack de la Rocha can do timing, obscenities, flag-burning, the "lead singer dance", sarcasm, fat rhymes, more obscenities, and even wit, all at once. Too bad they had to break up - you can only be that serious for so long, I guess.

The Raincoats - I think "Lola" qualifies as educational, and should be included in elementary-level spelling lessons. Just ignore what the song is really about. Pathetic fact: I knew Weird Al's parody, "Yoda", long before I heard the original song. Que triste.

Rammstein - angry-sounding Germansanity! These growly, deep-voiced yellers have unfortunately defined the stereotype for anything Deutsch. If you actually listen, though, the music is complex, clever, quite varied, and often pretty strange. I only understand a few lines here and there, but they're not always angry... Just most of the time. For a quick potshot, they sound like morons when they sing in English. But I can't rip on them so hypocritically, since I would sound infinitely dumber trying to sing in colloquial German.

The Ramones - proof that three chords are sufficient, and sometimes overkill. Punk legends.

Rancid - standard punk. Only worth a mention from me because of "Maxwell Murder", a mostly-incomprehensible <2min track with a lightning-fast bass solo.

Rasputina - precisely not what you would expect from two girls on cello and a wood-block-addicted drummer. To summarize most effectively, consider that they opened for Les Claypool when I saw them in STL in 2006. That hint means "go listen!"

Ravi Shankar - known for his work on the sitar. He released stuff like "Sounds of the Sitar", but sorry, Ravi, that should be singular.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - more pop from jl?? You know them from "Give It Away" and "Californication", no doubt, but to me they are not pop, but fizzled-out 90's funk, with groovetastic tracks like "Mellowship Slinky in B Major" (extra points for putting the song's key in the title), their cover of Ohio Players' "Love Rollercoaster", and - here's a shocker - "Funky Monks". Unfortunately, Blood Sugar Sex Magik is the only album I can stand; the rest are devoid of funk. Ick.

It would be absurd of me not to mention their astronomical bassist, Flea. I'm not about to do any research, but he must have had both classical and "something fast" [alitrans] slap/pop training, because he can do it all. He's not quite as machine-gun as Mr. Wooten, but he also doesn't use Victor's complicated multi-slap and multi-finger-pop techniques - it's raw, unadulterated spspspspspspspsp...

Reel Big Fish - a seminal pop ska band, covered extensively by that mess that called themselves Six Ways 'til Sunday. Over the course of their albums, the gradually drifted away from ska towards rock with occasional horns, but oh well. Their lyrics are also generally focused on high schoolish issues, but oh well again. It's all loads of fun. "Sell Out" and "Beer" are great, even though they were completely out of that 6WTS front man's vocal range. Contrabass voices don't do high tenor very well. Again, ask expert saxophonist The Jod about these guys - both RBF and 6WTS.

Regina Spektor - folk/anti-folk? I appreciate all of her solo banter, as well as her duet with Ben Folds, "You Don't Know Me", on his most recent album, Way To Normal. Emily would probably deny it, but to me that song sounds like something she and I would do... She would likely deny this, too, but we were a pretty good harmonic pair back in the day; see Cake for details. Anyway, I'm running out of time, so end gush.

The Residents - loosely counts as "music". They made most of their bizarro instruments. For bonus points, Primus covered them all over the place. "Hello Skinny/Constantinople" (medley) and "Sinister Exaggerator" can be found on Primus albums, and live, Primus typically inserts "Hello Skinny" in the otherwise-empty interlude section in the middle of "Too Many Puppies". Also, in "The Air Is Getting Slippery" (on Pork Soda), Les says "me, I'd rather play Residents [...]" But I repeat, most would not consider The Residents to be "music".

Rick James - go ahead, make the jokes. He's a super freak. I don't even know what genre(s) to put on him. Not to be confused with Richard D. James of Aphex Twin.

The Ripple - "Ain't nothin' going on but a funky song." I wonder what genre they fall into.

Rob Zombie - the solo work of the front man from White Zombie. Songs like "Superbeast" are slightly angry, but most of his songs, such as "Living Dead Girl", are intentionally funny goth metal. To stick tongue further in cheek, see if you can find the video for that song. Also, look for a tour of his comically-themed house, as well as further insight to his entertaining personality, on an episode of MTV Cribs. He likes dead stuff.

Robert Randolph and the Family Band - "jam-band"/funk with an overload of slidey lap steel guitar. That's about it.

Roger Miller - HILARIOUS 50's-ish country. I won't even try to describe further, just observe that he has songs entitled stuff like "Dang Me". Also, he sings along with his guitar solos, or even in place of a solo. Weirdo.

Rogue Wave - more yummy "indie pop", sort of. Thanks, Mandy!

The Rolling Stones - ugh! Why, when there is so much better classic rock out there??

Roni Size - one of the kings of both dance beats and messed up electronica. All you need is a quote:

"Use your cloaking device? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha... I didn't think so!"

Rush - Geddy Lee, bass deity of the past few decades. Also, weird song deity. You might know them from "YYZ", a song of torture in one of the Guitar Hero games. In the classic rock world, you might also recognize "Tom Sawyer" or "Workin' Man", among others. Deliciously weird.

Geddy Lee signed one of Les Claypool's basses.

RZA - I know approximately nothing about these guys, and I don't care that much, either. I only mention them because "RZA" is a friend's name for another friend.

Bien, c'est tout. Rocket.

some bands...

2009-03-11T22:19:00.002-04:00

S = (lots of bands)/(not many hours)

---

Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs - a rare two hit wonder! Somehow they hit it big with "Little Red Riding Hood" and, of course, "Wooly Bully". Endless proof that dumb = catchy, or complete nonsense in the case of the one about discourteous sheep??

One of my earliest memories is of a commercial for "Night Court" featuring the big bald guy dancing around to The Sham's pseudo-lyrical number. Such a valuable growth experience.

Also, as I seem to be pointing out as often as possible, the one with the comprehensible story could almost always be found in the van's CD changer...

Santana - as in Carlos. Many accuse him of selling out by calling in guitar solos for everyone under the sun, but pragmatically, he's freaking amazing! He's another musician who can't seem to play a wrong note. We did "Smooth" in jazz band, but I think I was the only one who liked it. Pues, busca "Oye Como Va". You should listen how it goes.

Sausage - Gentlemen, start your engines! It's the first of a zillion bands upon which I shall elaborate that include my real musical obsession, the wonderfully bizarre bassist Les Claypool.

With that fanfare, I anticlimactically point out that Sausage's lone album is, umm, boring. It's Les and two of his earliest cohorts playing mostly empty-sounding, overly long, and insufficiently odd concoctions. There are two significant highlights, though. First, the title track "Riddles Are Abound Tonight" is a live staple with almost every Claypool side project, and definitely better live. Second, the album includes "Toyz 1988", which is a ridiculous whammy-and-tap remix - or maybe the original version? - of "The Toys Go Winding Down", which appears on Primus' album "Frizzle Fry".

To quote Ray while typing away at work, "uhh, can I have something else?"

Scott Joplin - irritates me. Sorry; like Nickelback, it's all the same. He gets a mention for creating the ragtime genre, but he can stay in that era.

Seeed - electroreggae? Works for me!

Sepultura - this is the angriest music on the planet. Fast, angry guitar. Angry chords. Angry solos. Angry drums. On the occasion that you can understand his angry yelling, it's angry lyrics. Grrr!

Sex Pistols - some of the original punks, and pretty much mandatory for any punkollection. Plus, he rhymes "anarchist" with "antichrist". I won't get into it here, but Sid Vicious and friends have an interesting backstory, mostly of drugs, almost dying, and not actually knowing how to play any instruments.

Shi-Yue - screaming Japanese girl on top of noise guitar. Think injured cat. Yet, this is the kind of stuff I like.

The Shins - what, jl likes something semi-popular?? They have a light, happy sound, and their front man has a unique-but-frighteningly-pleasant voice... It's one of the few groups I can actually identify on Indie Pop Rocks! The deal was sealed en mi corazón when I found their cover of a song from The Postal Service. Sigh...

Shirley Bassey - did the theme songs for three James Bond Movies. She was probably popular for actual good music too, but the Bond themes are much more worth mentioning because of their over-the-top horror. "Golllldfingaa... wah waah wahh!"

Shizuo - noise noise noise! He/they? is/are a founder of the Digital Hardcore genre, and if you recognize that term, you're already disgusted. If you're not familiar, lucky you. Also in digital hardcore are EC8OR and Atari Teenage Riot, among very few others. The bro Tim and I are literally the only people I have ever run across who actively choose to listen to this. So, enjoy.

Shocking Blue - accredited with "Venus", and not much else... Worth mentioning because they did that song without knowing any English. They're sort of obviously Scandanavian when they say "joor desire" instead of "your desire". I don't know any other Shocking Blue songs, but I assume they gots da skilz.

Simon and Garfunkel - you know who they are. I feel obligated to mention them, but I don't really have any S&G stories; add some in the comments!

The Sims [soundtrack] - sorry, not even a band per se, but mad props to who ever did this stuff for creating the multi-genred tunes and wordless lyrics to several squandered years of my life.

Six Ways 'til Sunday - ha ha, so once upon a time there was this rumored ska band that really just hung out in one of the members' tool sheds, bothering to play music just often enough to make the neighbors angry... Anyway, they were good except for the front man, they wrote maybe two songs and covered about two more, and you should ask jarmstro about them.

Skinny Puppy - mandatory non-pop industrial rock. If you don't know what industrial rock is, just move on.

Slayer - the metal band, known for being in some ridiculous hurry! They'll throw together a song with seven verses, nine chorus repeats, and five separate guitar solos, and it will come out at less than two minutes. For an example, see "Dittohead". To their credit, they're waaay good at shred metal guitar, their drummer can play an album's worth of kick drum in one song, and their lyrics are even clever every now and then.

The Slits - more girls yelling. Can't get enough, it seems. Thanks, mle!

Slowdive - did a catchy song entitled "Alison". I'll tell you someday...

Smith and Reno - the musicians who recorded "Dueling Banjos" for the movie "Deliverance". Ironically, it's a banjo and a guitar, not two banjos. However, this song has been getting musicians to play together for ages, and isn't that what it's all about?

Snoop Dogg - love or hate him all you want for his completely fam-unfriendly lyrics and ho-bsession, Mr. D-To-The-Double-G deserves just as much respect as love or hatred. First of all, he knows his roots: check out his collaborations with, covers of, and covers [of his stuff] by the founders of funk, rap, nonsense; George Clinton and the rest of Parliament, for example, appear on several of his albums... Wow.

Second, Snoop has created his own language. Ever heard him called "Snoop Diggity"? Has anyone inserted gratuitous z's in words you otherwise know, i.e. "Fo shizzle!" or "the K Grizzle Fizzle" (aka Kyle Griffith (ok, maybe I'm the only one who calls him that))? It's Snoop's invention, and we're all grateful.

To summarize both of these Snooproperties, I provide this quote from Bootsy Collins (Parliament = funk) in a Fatboy Slim cover (electronica) of Steve Miller Band's "The Joker" (classic rock):

"[...] fo' shizzle dizzle, my nizzle fizzle bizzle"

What does that even mean?? It means Snoop is omnipresent and omnipotent.

Snow Patrol - slightly dark, yet still happy "indie pop", whatever that is. I don't think sing-songy people with acoustic guitars can avoid the happy vibe.

Soft Cell - pathetic confession: I knew about their 80's hit "Tainted Love" first from one of the Coneheads movies, then from Marilyn Manson, both long before hearing the original version. For shame, jlaz, for shame.

Soul Coughing - somewhere along the line, a few of the best groove jazz musicians on the planet bumped into one of the hipsterest beat poets on the planet, and Soul Coughing was born. My bro introduced this group to me on one of many unfathomably long trips from Carlinville to Indianapolis; we listened to their second album, "Irresistable Bliss", three times in a row, conveniently on my other bro's new bass-heavy truck speakers. I was addicted. Then we listened to their super mega 100% weird first album, "Ruby Vroom". I was in love.

This is still one of my favorite bands. This is why I have an upright bass. This is why I think counting to 100 by 5's is a perfectly acceptable set of lyrics. Most importantly, this is one of the reasons why I will play bass again.

Soulard Blues Band - genuine St. Louis blues! There's a reason why the hockey team, as well as a Glenn Miller song, has that name, after all. For your daily geography lesson, Soulard refers to a huge load of local stuff in the STL area.

The Sounds - they're not living in America, and they're not sorry. I don't know where they are living, though, and I'm not about to do any research. Any help? They sound quasi-Scandanavian, but who knows. Anyway, fun sing-songy girl punk, I say non-sexistly.

The Specials - real ska. Nothing more, nothing less.

Stabbing Westward - cool enough to be the subject of a Wesley Willis song! Maybe that's not a sufficient condition for coolness.

The Stampeders - known for the oldies-trippy, banjorrific "Sweet City Woman", and special to me because [permanently my secret]

Stan Kenton - jazz musician whose group cranked out the most joyously dissonant rendition of "The Peanut Vendor" I've ever heard. Not high-school-jazz-band-ooh-they're-pretty-bad dissonance, either... It's cold, cruel, calculated chromatic crackpottery. Translation: certified jlink tasty.

For those who are jazz novices but nerd experts, "The Peanut Vendor" (not Mr. Kenton's version) is the song playing at the end of Office Space, when Milton is chillin'/complaining on the beach. Ha, now you have an excuse to watch that whole movie!

Stanley Clarke - one of the earlier slap-n-pop jazz/funk bassists. "If This Bass Could Talk," he writes, it would probably say "ouch!"

The Staple Singers - dare I say, a staple of funk's beginnings. I'm not particularly attached to them (har har), but you can't deny the funkdamentals.

Steppenwolf - you know, "Born To Be Wild", "Magic Carpet Ride", and an assortment of lesser-known classic rock/oldies tunes. A+ for blurring the line between popular and psychedelic.

Stereo Total - crazy girls, and a guy I think?, singing what sound like children's songs in English, German, and French! Emphasis on "sounds like". Songs include "I Love You, Ono", "Tout Le Monde Se Fout Des Fleurs", "Sous La Douche", and "Partir Ou Mourir"... I don't recommend translating those for your kids. Leave it to the mle to supply the best foreign nonsense :-)

Stevie Ray Vaughan - the quintessential blues guitarist. When I went sailing with the Scouts down around Key West, my boat's megahippie captain played nothing but Stevie Ray concert tapes and John Denver albums. If only I had known enough to appreciate the mastery... Of the Stevie Ray solos - forget John Denver.

For bonus points, this is the same megahippie who taught me how to play the didgeridoo, and how to circle-breathe (poorly) on said tube.

Stevie Wonder - golden across several decades and genres. Direct your questions about ebony and ivory straight to him, as he's Misstra Know It All (not to be confused with Mr. Knowitall, who's waiting for P day... and nobody will get that reference). Personally, I think it's a superstition: the writing's on the wall.

Styx - mostly famous for epic ballads like "Come Sail Away" (or was that Eric Cartman?), but who cares? By the magical illogic of popular music, "Mr. Roboto" somehow was a smash hit. The most pathetic/awesome part is that everyone knows it. Domo arigato, offensive-to-Eastern-culturo.

The Sugar Hill Gang - the only SH-Gang song I know of is "Rapper's Delight", which is - surprise! - a rap among three or so DJs that starts out with an extremely groovy bass line and catchy, witty banter among the emcees... And over the course of OVER FIFTEEN MINUTES, degrades to stories about Superman and dinner at a friend's house. The bass line never degrades, though. In my glory days of wasted time, I had this whole monster memorized; now I can't think of much more than something about Kaopectate.

The Sugarcubes - pre-Björk Björk. Approximately unlistenable, and I already mentioned that I enjoy stuff like Shi-Yue and the whole digital hardcore genre.

The Surfaris - hyah, wipeout. Appears to be what they did with the rest of their songs?

Suspended - Illinois Wesleyan's male a capella group. As a music and theatre school, you can safely guess that they were pretty good. Live performances were hi-qual too, as they joked around the whole time, and IWU was small enough that everyone knew everyone else. Weee.

My apologies to A Touch Of Class, IWU's female a capella crew - I never had the chance to see/hear!

The Sword - impressive hard rock/not quite metal, with some bizarre borderline-fantasy themes. Gots da skilz, ey do. Props to the S-bro for exposure, although they were apparently in one of the Guitar Hero games as well.

System Of A Down - no, that's not correct capitalization, but oh well. They're closer to pop than I usually get, but I heart the stuff that was too nuts to play on the radio. Bonus points to front man Serj Tankian for collaborating with Buckethead; anti-bonus to jarmstro's bro for playing that same SOAD song on the keyboard in the shed, quite ad nauseam. Meh. Any tales from the gallery - probably those approximately my age?

---

Done. I didn't even proofread that mess... Anyway, there are my 2300+ words. Now add yours!

trop

2009-03-10T22:20:00.001-04:00

This collection of t* artists should help you realize that I can't possibly list even all of my favorites (or least-favorites), let alone every t* band that has ever existed... When I miss your favs, don't get mad - tell your own stories in the comments!

The Tallywood Strings - a bunch of cellos and such, covering pop albums symphonically (and sans lyrics). That's just a guess, as I'm not about to do any research; I just know that they remade Radiohead's "Kid A" (the whole album, not just the song). While it's semi-interesting for the first few listens, it's really just sleep-inducing - even more than the original Radiohead album. Not that "sleep-inducing" is a bad characteristic, though. Yet I do prefer Radiohead's bizarro electrosamples, instrumentation, and "huh?"-inducing lyrics.

Ted Heath - I don't know if Ted's the one playing it, but I'm all about his music's heavy emphasis on the bari sax in fun big band/jazz tunes. "Big Deep" is one of the best tracks. Lots of honk on the bari, as it should be, rather than trying to be smooth and elegant. Disclosure: after figuring out rather quickly that I was horrible at keyboard bass, I picked up bari sax in high school jazz band.

The Temptations - worth a Motown mention. I thought I had a story, but I guess it was just my imagination.

Tenacious D - a hilarious break from my typical playlists of "real" or "good" music. Sometimes you have to do things gently, discreetly...

That 1 Guy - one of my newest obsessions, as you may read in one of my posts from last October. He is deliciously strange - think of Ween-like lyrics (catch Ween on the W post from a few days ago) on top of a complicated, one of a kind Whamola-like contraption. He's quite the one-man band.

That 1 Guy stands alone as the only [relatively] big-name artist I've met before hearing any of his music, or knowing anything at all about him - rather serendipitously, we talked for a minute back in September while I was waiting in line for the concert featuring him and Buckethead; I didn't even recognize him until he said who he was. Crazy. He was in a hurry, or else I would have badgered him for autographs.

Thelonious Monk - pushing the jazz envelope. Not much else to say.

They Might Be Giants - yet another strange ska-ish band with almost big band instrumentation and an endless supply of creativity. A reasonable example of their style is the theme song to "The Oblongs", to be found on Cartoon Network's late-nite Adult Swim. More important, educational, and comical, though, is their rather famous cover of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)". Go listen to that, then wait for Matheatre to come around in a few days. Trust me, it's worth it.

The Thompson Twins - 80's heaven! Lies, lies, lies, yeah. Let Kyle tell the stories about these guys. They're nicked from ole Saigon.

Tokens - who in their right minds would come up with something as genuinely messed up as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"? Oh, apparently these guys.

That song was most definitely a staple for bombin' around in the van. Too bad most of you missed out on those likely-embarrassing times... It doesn't get much better than pulling up to a stoplight with a van full of high schoolers wailing this song with the windows down.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - these guys were just barely before my time, so they're worth a mention, but I'm relying on you to tell some worthwhile stories in the comments.

Tom Waits - I'm mostly familiar with this barely-comprehensible growl-crooner for his vocal contributions to Primus on "Tommy the Cat" and Coattails of a Dead Man"... Dig through jarmstro's blog for analysis from an expert.

Tommy Roe - an oldies guy, basically a one-hit wonder with "Dizzy", which I don't think was really even a hit. It's a little bit catchy and has an avant-garde (at the time) use of strings, but the real highlight is a music theory "feature".

Often, songs will change keys about 2/3 of the way through in order to add energy, cheat to make the song longer, or just for kicks. "Dizzy", however, means business. I listened and counted: in two and a half minutes, "Dizzy" changes keys SIX TIMES. That includes twice in the first few measures, before he even starts a verse! What's worse is that each change is upward, so the song just gets higher and higher, rendering the song unsingable. With six changes, the song moves up at least half an octave (maybe more - the piano's in the other room, and my name's not Jana), so if the beginning is in a comfy singalong range, you don't stand a chance of keeping up - literally - by the end. That is, unless you're Mr. Roe, apparently.

Tony Orlando - if you even recognize who this is, you're probably thinking something about tying yellow ribbons, right? Though I spent several years with a radio that only picked up the St. Louis oldies station, I have heard that song a total of zero times. In contrast, I quite enjoy his collaboration with this mysterious "Dawn" character, the fruit of which being the light-hearted, sweet, yet absolutely hilarious love ditty "Knock Three Times"... One of the earliest uses of sound effects instead of lyrics on record, I believe. Also responsible for a fair amount of ceiling damage and plumbing issues, no doubt. I have to stop writing and listen to this song (another "bombin' around in the van" essential, btw).

Tool - for when you need something angry and cryptic to sleep to, I guess? None of the songs I actively like are clean enough to mention here. Their front man, Maynard, could use a little work on varied syllable emphasis.

Tower of Power - tower of funk power! Their live recordings are nothing short of addictive. Even normal people, i.e. not me, are willing to groove along with them on loop.

The only non-gushing story I have is pretty weak - one of the Tower's biggest hits is "What Is Hip?", which is groovalicious and a lot of fun on their live albums. Contrast this with commercials for HAP, consisting mostly of people asking, "what is HAP?", and then having experts explain/advertise. Observe pun. Ok, maybe it's only funny to me. For the gold medal, I still don't know what HAP is. All I know is that what is HAP today might become passé...

Tracy Chapman - confession #1: I am one of the few on the planet who dislikes this excessively well-written, genre-defining, passionate folk stuff. Tough luck, mom. Confession #2: I love "Give Me One Reason", and it's one of the few songs I learned to play (and can still play) on the acoustic guitar. Oh, irony.

Trashmen - haven't you heard about the bird? Everybody knows that the bird is the word!

Why is it that irritating = catchy?

A Tribe Called Quest - ah, rap from the days of yore, when it was about random stupidity instead of crunk stupidity.

Troggs - simple = catchy as well, off in the one hit wonderland.

Trout Fishing in America - courtesy of one of my high school English teachers, I bring you extremely intelligent, yet agonizingly catchy lyrics about Napoleon and vegetables, spoken/sung over barely enough guitar and bass to define a chord. I may be off my dot, but I've listened to these four or so songs enough that every word is permanently etched into my brain...and that I can still keep up with "Proper Cup of Coffee". I thank and blame you, Mr. Oser (and I apologize for my intentional abuse of punctuation and pronouns). PS, van-cruising classics.

Tsunami Bomb - screaming girl punk, except when it's sing-songy punk. If you would like them, you're probably already famliar... Thanks to Em/Bill for this one.

Turf Surgery - speaking of Emily and Dirty B (and friends), here they are! I unfortunately was never around to see them live, but you can catch them on MySpace. You might simply label it "punk" if Emily couldn't play so many instruments.

Twista - quite the fast rapper, plus some decent beats. Brings back memories from freshman year of college...

Type O Negative - the gothiest of goth metal, combined with intentionally laugh-out-loud lyrics. They sound angry and evil until you notice they're covering "Day Tripper" or "Summer Breeze". Then they sound like you're playing records at half speed. At the end of a live show, their front man (Peter Steele) would often pull the strings off his bass guitar. As a bass player, I can confirm that this is a difficult task. He would also occasionally play a full-size classical upright bass horizontally, like an electric bass... Hmm, something else I may or may not have done on a regular basis (bassis?)...

The bro and I joked that this was the only band we could truly sing along to. His voice is subterranean. Both Tim's and Peter's, for clarification.

Whew! That's it for today. Comment away.

um, anyone?

2009-03-09T22:21:00.001-04:00

The u-calm before the rst-storm...

U2 - these guys (Bono) are (is) frantically and illogically rich and famous without my help. Let's keep it that way.

Überzone - the electronica/DJ squad to beat, and one of my closest bonds and memories with the bro. Thus, I don't care if you like them, as I would prefer to keep them to myself. However, not liking them is difficult. To summarize their greatness, here's a quote from Tim:

"Can you imagine, an Überzone remix of an Überzone song? The world would simply blink out of existence."

De veras, they're that good. I got a kick out of TV news the other day, too - they were televising British PM Gordon Brown's address to the US Congress, and he kept mentioning his strong feelings about and the importance of "faith in the future"... Which is the title of Überzone's most popular album. British politicians have good taste, eh?

Please don't complain or accuse if I don't mention whatever band/group/artist - add them in the comments!

v* monologues

2009-03-08T22:22:00.001-04:00

The Vapors - I think they're [catchily] "Turning Japanese", I really think so... And I'll leave it to you to solve what that song is about.

VAST - Visual Audio Sensory Theater, that is. Airy, rockish tunes with copious strings and electronic sprinkles. Occasionally there's something thumpy/groovy, but sadly, these skilled musicians produce the kind of music you put on as background you don't have to pay attention to.

Also, pals, I bought your stuff on CD - shouldn't you be AST?

Verve - remember their borderline lite rock smash, "Bittersweet Symphony"? Go ahead and mock me because I honestly still like that song, but the rest of their collection is nonexistent. Not to be confused with...

The Verve Pipe - some punks from the Motor City. I haven't listened to them much, but their name confuses me to no end.

Victor Wooten - best technical bass player I know. Some musicians are incapable of playing a wrong note. He is one of them. Further, one of the mock rumors about him is that he has eight arms/hands; listening to any of his music, you'd believe it. Check out "Me and My Bass Guitar".

Back in 2005, we saw him in Springfield, IL. Several times before and during the show, we had to evacuate the building for fire alarms; on one evacuation, he brought out a bass, someone came up with a practice amp, and everyone gathered around while he played right there on the sidewalk. Amazing. We schmoozed for a while after the show:

He signed my socks. This is not just an unbeievable musician, but also an incredible human being. There's so much more to say, but let's move on.

Victor Wooten and Steve Bailey - here we have the duo of the aforementioned VW bass fiend and Mr. Bailey, who plays a six-string fretless bass, similar to what I preferred to play (as well as that Claypool guy).

---

Interjection: what the heck is so special about "six-string" and "fretless" on a bass guitar? Typically, a bass has just four strings (EADG, like a mandolin or the lowest four on a standard guitar). A six-string bass adds another string lower than the lowest (B) and one higher than the highest (C). Musicians, observe that they're all tuned to fourths, unlike the six strings of a standard guitar. While the extra strings make playing (and muting) more complicated, it's a tradeoff for a wider range and quite increased versatility to play without having to fly up and down the fretboard all the time. There are even songs you simply can't play without the extra strings. I might explain the convenience further...some other time.

Then "fretless" refers to the [lack of] little metal bars up and down the neck of a guitar or bass that ensure that you play notes in tune with a bit of wiggle room for finger placement. A fretless bass, just like upright basses and violins and cellos and such, doesn't have these metal bars. Thus, to stay in tune, the player has to be insanely accurate with finger placement. As an aide, electric fretless basses usually have lines on the neck where the frets would be - classical stringed instruments don't even have this convenience, so playing is entirely skill and guesswork (or laden with masking tape). The obvious disadvantage here is that most people think frets are the best thing since sliced bread, so getting rid of them seems nuts. Also, it's basically impossible to play chords even remotely in tune without frets. However, I argue that ditching frets is the most liberating experience in the world of guitar. (Actually, I started with a fretless, so I more accurately argue the inverse...)

---

Anyway... This is really interesting instrumentation because they produce "normal" jazz/rock with just basses. Most often, Victor is absolutely wailing away at the melody while Steve plays both the bass line and rhythm guitar part on his sixer - walking up and down on the lowest strings and playing mini-chords on the highest two. Pretty complicated, but it truly sounds like they have an extra person playing backup guitar along with them. Then sometimes they will trade roles - Victor will take the role of bass, playing some incredible slap-n-pop foundation, while Steve solos away in the higher registers, sliding all over like you're supposed to when you don't have frets. Either way, it's always technically impressive fusion, jazz, or pedal-heavy instrumental rock. Look for their version of "A Chick From Korea".

I'd like to pretend that Nate, Mike and I sounded even half this good with the same instrumentation. In reality, though, it was more like Mike rocking away on drums, Nate playing equally as good but more thumpy/trippy than Victor on the 4, and me being aimlessly slidey and ashamed on the sixer. But someday, Nate, we shall do it again, and I shall not suck.

Violent Femmes - "college rock" meets country, before "college rock" existed. Best part: often at concerts they would have random people play backup brass and sax without sheet music, practicing, or even a set list. Consolation prize: their catchy "Blister in the Sun" has the same story as The Vapors' "Turning Japanese". Worst part: their front man sold out said song for TV commercials and such without consulting with, or even mentioning such to, the rest of the band. Bad form!

who are these people

2009-03-07T22:23:00.000-05:00

W* band overload! Here goes.

War - you know, the "Low Rider" guys. They were semi-prolific, but the rest of their hits are basically not-quite-satisfying recreations of the "Low Rider" groovefunk. As extra credit, though, the "Low Rider" bass line is how I learned the safe notes to hit when playing in a minor key... Musicians know what I'm talking about. Valuable stuff. For extra extra credit, the Beastie Boys sample various chunks of that song throughout their "Licensed to Ill" album. Weee.

Weather Report - possibly the original fusion group? They cranked out gobs and gobs of mind-bending jazz (the definition of fusion, as far as I can tell) throughout the 70's and 80's with a large, constantly-morphing pile of virtuosos, basically starting by playing nonsense and gradually turning it into frighteningly well-written and complicated songs. To me, their highlight was having crazy, drugged bassist Jaco Pastorius play with them for a while. Jaco = ridiculous; I'll tell you more when we get to the J day. I could theoretically worship most of the musicians that ever appeared on the Weather Report roster, but I sadly don't have any knowledge/appreciation of virtuosity on the bongos...

Ween - the W stands for weird. Throughout their slew of albums, they satirically cover quite a few genres, from country to hard rock to "are you kidding me, someone actually published this nonsense?" For example, take "12 Golden Country Greats", which is actually just ten decent country/bluegrass tunes about who knows what. Contrast with "GodWeenSatan: The Oneness", a collection of 29 tracks of screaming about bees and weasels. It may be hard to believe, but all of these albums demonstrate quite a bit of creative talent. They opened my mind even further, and as you will see, I listen to some extremely odd "music". "Help me scrape the mucus off my brain," they request...

Weezer - a [pop-]grunge staple, though their front man/vocalist is a little short on testosterone. I appreciate that he says "unngh" constantly. However, I like his emo glasses more than I like almost all of their music...

Wes Chapman - wicked, sort of classical solo acoustic guitar. Read that again. 'Nuff said.

Wesley Willis - roamed the streets of Chicago with strong vocal cords and a Casiotone keyboard, "singing" about schizophrenia, bus rides and Coke machines. I refuse to pin a genre on his work. Also, to keep this blog kid/work/grandparent friendly, I don't think I can quote many lyrics... However, I recommend ditching this blog, heading to your favorite music repository, and checking out songs like "Termites Ate My House Up", "Rock N Roll McDonald's", "Kris Kringle Was a Car Thief", "Jesus Is The Answer", or my favorite, "I'm Sorry That I Got Fat", as well as any of the myriad less appropriate ones. Is it possible to be a Casiotone expert?

Tale of jealousy: my bro got to see Wesley in concert, including talking to him, getting autographs, and doing the famous/infamous headbutt. The days of Willis were better times indeed. "Diet Pepsi - uh huh!"

The White Stripes - another slightly generic grunge staple. I'm not extremely familiar, but they're slowly growing on me, heavy-handed bass lines and all.

White Zombie - can't go wrong with almost-shock rock. The bass lines are surprisingly complex, considering she usually only uses one string! "More Human Than Human" was one of my first exposures to music that isn't all hunky dory like the Beatles and most oldies in general... Defined/ruined my musical tastes for probably the rest of my life. oops.

The Who sold out, and that's ok with me.

Wilbert Harrison - a 12-bar wonder of "oldies". Also a one hit wonder, as far as I can tell, cranking out "Kansas City" and not much else. That's fine. In high school pep band, we usually played that one at approximately double speed... Not much time to breathe on the ole bari sax.

Wild Cherry - play that funky music 'til you die. 'Til you die? Yeahh, 'til you die. If you actually listen to the lyrics to that song - not likely - it tells this really weird story about some loser who finds funk and it changes his life, or something to that effect. Not really worth the research to spoil an otherwise simple, fun little ditty.

Willie Nelson - ohno, jlink mentions a country artist?? Surprise! Shotgun Willie is full of sarcastic/tongue-in-cheek mockeries of even his own musical style, which is pretty much mandatory for me to tolerate country. I like "Sad Songs and Waltzes", later covered by my beloved Cake.

Wilson Pickett - the wicked one. Na, na na na na, na na na na na na na na na na, na na na na...

Wings - eewww.

Contribute!

xenophiles

2009-03-06T22:24:00.000-05:00

Pobrecito solitario x.

XTC - these guys are so 80's they started in 1978. I only know about them because of their album "Drums and Wires", from which Primus covered two songs. D&W is comical - bask in the glory of awkward, goofy "strange girl" songs like "Helicopter", or slightly frightening, still goofy songs like "Scissor Man", and everything 80's in between. "Snipping snipping snipping goes the scissor man \ maybe you are in his book of names" goes the song about a mystical vigilante who cuts up kids who don't behave... Play that one for your elementary schoolers.

Any X* artists to contribute? Pretty please?

ya got trouble

2009-03-05T22:25:00.000-05:00

These later letters simply don't have many artists to claim.

Yann Tiersen - soundtrack for "Aemelie". Evidence that all you need to sound French is an accordion.

Yello - ever seen "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"? Know that song, basically the movie theme, that's mostly a slowed-down-deep voice saying "ohh yeahhh" and "beautifullll", plus a repetitive "chikachika"? That's a Yello masterpiece. Once upon a time, the bro and I would speaksing along at the same pitch as the modified voice... Ahh, the subterranean vocal days.

Yellow Note - another one of DJ Soul Slinger's cohorts. Less funk, more weird. Still fast!

Yo Yo Ma - must be mentioned, but needs no introduction. The folks on The Daily Show claimed he was President of the US for a few minutes because the inauguration was running late and YYM was on camera when Bush's term officially ended... President Ma would be fine with me, except that he already holds a ruling position - he is the king of cello, after all. Also, Mr. Ma, your name causes me much difficulty: searching my music collection for "yo yo ma" yields entirely too many irrelevant results. I need a more substantial least common substring, sir.

Nerds rejoice. I'm just getting warmed up. Comment comment comment!

zounds, he's really doing it!

2009-03-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

Some Z action, before you catch some zzz action.

Zao - metallllll!!! I like to try to find unique characteristics for metal bands that most people would lump together as "shredding and screaming"... For these guys, the guitar riffs are inordinately pleasant; if you close your eyes and pretend really hard that everything is waaay less distorted and a little slower, it could almost be a bunch of classic rock ballads. That ruse doesn't last long, though, as they yell at you the whole time. The only time I understand any words is when they randomly vom the song title.

Zen Guerrilla - "jam band" meets noise guitar and megadistorted vocals. But, not yelled! I thought I had a story here, but I guess not. Plus one for a misleadingly punk-sounding name.

Zero 7 - some music exists to take you to relaxation; other music exists to be enjoyed once you are there. This is the latter. One word: groove.

The Zutons - deliciously odd indie pop? One of my friends from school likes to make up new lyrics to "Zuton Fever". All sorts of interesting fevers going around, it seems... Sorry, weak anecdote.

Speaking of fevers, remember: the only prescription is more cowbell.

The Zyphoid Process - how do you define "indie"? Is it a musical style? Is it the defiance of major record labels? (Is it a kind of food?) Or is it some WAV files your buddies recorded from a random impromptu concert they did one night?

I had some good times with part of this band. We got together and jammed a few times - an interesting feat with two bassists and a drummer... We even played at an "UnderCover" contest, but with me on regular guitar very poorly. I miss those nights in the AKAK basement. Nate and Mike are way more skilled than I ever was and ever will be. I miss the three-man slingshot, too, but we'll leave that for another time >;-}

Comment, then go do something else!

#begin.

2009-03-03T22:27:00.002-05:00

Hey! Here goes... Let's start with numerical bands; then for dramatic effect, we'll traverse the alphabet (loosely) in reverse. These are a bit reviewish, but it's a start. On with the numbers!

1.8.7. - real funk instrumentation meets energetic, fast-paced electronics and DJ work. Look for them on compilations from DJ Soul Slinger, one of the kings of scratchelectrofunk, as well as the bro's passions. PS, they're fast... And funky!

The 101 Strings Orchestra - liars! ¡Tocan casi totalmente los metales! Even so, these are some fun, upbeat, dancey "Latin" tunes (note: "Latin" is a place, not a genre). For bonus points, enjoy the unintentionally goofy lyrics about dancing and cats and such, and claim that you're studying colloquial español. Most importantly, dance.

Why in the world am I so familiar with this stuff?? Remember when that Apple jukebox program used to sort with numbers at the top, rather than the bottom? I accidentally listened to 101 Strings through most of college. Now that numbers are relegated to the end of the iAlphabet, I accidentally listen to [the first few seconds of] a-Ha's theme song to The Living Daylights ad nauseam... On the rare occasion that I use that media player anymore, that is.

The 5.6.7.8.'s - responsible for the irritatingly catchy "Woo Hoo" song on Vonage commercials... Anything else? Beats me. The song is actually on the soundtrack to Kill Bill, Vol. 1. As astoundingly dumb as the song appears to be (ok, is), it's perfect 12-bar blues; jazz musicians, unite! You don't get to hear the slick drum solos on the commercials, but oh well. One of my goals for this project is to do absolutely no research or fact-checking (this is a blog, after all) - has anyone actually heard more from these folks?

Good enough for the get-go. Add your bands and harassment in the comments!

nutsity

2009-03-01T22:24:00.001-05:00

Hey, alley cat! Join me here in March, the month of madness...

My crackpot idea: completely straying from the usual medical/health theme of this electronic rag, I think I'll spend 27 days - one for each letter, plus a day for numerical names - talking about bands. Lots and lots of bands. It won't be anything in particular, i.e. reviews, just random stuff. I browsed the coffers of Amarok and made a list of at least 500 artists to choose from on my end, but there's no way I'll cover that many. We'll see what develops. Be prepared to read some nonsense, and to add some of your own.

So, I write and you add. That sums up the plan. I'll start in the next few days, obviously, or else we'll run out of month. Thoughts?

As Megaman would say in X4... Get ready!

that certain feelin'

2009-02-20T11:23:00.000-05:00

Avast ye, scurvy dogs! Time to sail those high seas. Aye, board if ye longs to see the morrow!

Know what rocks, he says with a double dose of sarcasm? Anxiety rocks! Here is just one of its many flavors: often, and quite unpredictably, my body decides it's awake time at some absurd hour. For example, today I powered up around 6am, circa 3-4h after finally entering suspend mode last night. The exit from hibernation is by no means casual, either. No; rather, the eyes open wide, the skin crawls with itch, and the brain bursts onto the scene at full throttle. Thoughts fly through the mind with little trace - even multiplying exponents, one of my favorite mathtivities, is futile. By this time Xanax (alprazolam), my main anti-anxiety med, is mostly ineffective, and I just have to get up and explode. But the day is shot by then, meds or no. Armchair sleep experts, have at it!

BTW, writing about anxiety is difficult whilst still under the anxinfluence...

Imagine the Utopia in which bed is a place of rest, not a straightjacket. What a luxury, eh?

Go go gadget logarithm!

des milles

2009-02-15T19:29:00.000-05:00

Hello, friends old and new! Ikimasho.

In medicaland, I'm doing well, so it's back to a few hours per day in the manual chair with no trouble. Speaking of manuchairs, it turns out that the re-request for my real j-sized transporter has not even made it to insurance yet! Waiting for red tape clearance is awwwesoommmme.

In place of a thousand more words of nonsense, enjoy this scanned Polaroid gem with the Käp'n, Cleveland, 6 Nov 2004...

poco

2009-02-07T23:23:00.000-05:00

Hey, pals and palettes! I think I missed a round...

...probably because I don't have much to report. Medically, I've had to take a little break from the manuchair courtesy of some minor minor minor decubitus stuff. However, we're mostly healed, and I was con manuelita for a few hours yesterday without a problem. I'm in 'er right now, too. (les blessures par pression, mon cul!) After all, I'm either moving forward or backward, and that was quite a bit of backward time. One good thing resulting from the time off, though, is that it seems my neck/shoulder/back muscles had a chance to go through the natural strengthening process of breaking down and rebuilding, as sitting upright with decent posture doesn't feel as difficult or painful. Woohoo.

Elsewhere, similarly little. Without ruining too many secrets, I might have the chance to relocate permanently, grace à the magical peliroja? More on that at another time. Otherwise, I'm using the "good posture" excuse to watch the same few concert DVDs over and over... That is, my TV is positioned relatively high, so to watch it while in the manuchair I must keep my head up and shoulders back - proper posture! Else I can't deny, I have little inspiration not just to slouch over the computer in an absolutely horrendous position. Unfortunately for the p's, this means I've watched the Hallucino-Genetics DVD approximately 6.022x10^23 times in the past month or so. I still love it.

I've been watching entirely too much Robot Chicken as well - "Will help ever arrive?"

Methinks that's all. Tune in next time for more letters, numbers and punctuation. Rocket.

SJ-arrrr

2009-01-23T19:11:00.000-05:00

Hey all! Today I was featured in a little article in the State Journal-Register, Illinois' main non-chitown news rag. You can find the online version here. Quite the dandy feature, and no offense to the skilled and decidedly entertaining author (should write an article about himself!), but I feel bad not clarifying the occasional ambiguity that might have you scratching your head - particularly if you're one of the few who has kept up with the blog. This also a convenient opportunity for some elaboration. Here goes:

--The car accident was in 2004, the second winter after high school graduation in spring 2003 (and yes, the secret's out, I was the valedictator).

--Ha ha, yes, I did officially name my kitty 289, but he goes by Tommy, as it's a bit more feline-recognizable. Why 289? Well, 17 is irrationally one of my favorite numbers (quite rationally, actually), and 289 is 17 squared. There you go. Nerd alert.

--One of my friends pointed out that the article's wording seems to imply that during the stem cell surgery, they accessed the stem cells in my nose by going up through my neck. eek! The surgery was basically a three-step process once I was in the operating room. First, they opened my neck to inspect and prepare the spinal cord lesion site. Then they left my neck alone and went up through my right nostril to harvest cells from deep in the nasal cavity. Finally, after preparing these cells from my nose, they went back to my neck to transplant the cells at the cleaned-up injury site.

--Just for clarification, I was in Portugal April 7-21, and the surgery took place on the 11th. I was then in Detroit from May 5 through December 18.

--I play (non-bass) guitar lap-style, using splints on both hands to push on the strings like some bizarro piano. Upon returning from Detroit, though, I put just the lowest and highest strings on my favorite bass, such that I can hold it normally and sort of play it that way, splint-free. Maybe there will be pictures sometime.

--Musicians mentioned: Les Claypool, Victor Wooten, Bootsy Collins, Buckethead (and my Bucket concert experience). Too bad you can't put hyperlinks in the newspaper! Also, be on the lookout for more music-themed posts in the near future.

Anyway, xlnt article. Thanks to the SJ-R, and to you for reading both there and here. Rock it.

demijour

2009-01-21T22:04:00.001-05:00

Twelve hours straight in the manual chair (let's call this one "manuelita") today. hrrrg.

Little else to report. Ding!

nothere

2009-01-09T22:04:00.001-05:00

Howdy folks! End "holiday" hiatus.

The biggest deal to report is that I'm back in cville for what will probably equal winter hibernation. It won't be therapy hibernation (rehabernation?), though - there are all sorts of activities/exercises we can improv here, including short and long sit, prone and supine "mat" (= bed) work, weight training with stretchy theraband resistance material, a zillion occutherapy/ADL tasks... Et cetera, et cetera.

In fact, it might be easier to look at what I can't do here, due to a lack of people or equipment. Obviously I won't be cooking with Giger; sadface, I'm one of the few who actually like that machine. No Wave either. There will be e-stim biking - until insurance shells out for a bike of my own, some awesome family friends in town offered to let me visit and use theirs. Note to insurance: this does not mean I should not get one. The only significant logistic limitation is that there are just two other people here, so exercises that require more assistance, e.g. some short sit stuff and the "bicycle" supine abdominal work, aren't going to happen. (Also, just to torment the docs, therapists, and others who so vehemently oppose that I should do any weight bearing, I'd like to point out that our friends have a standing frame as well. Mwa ha ha ha.)

Ergo, it's no internationally-reknowned SCI recovery facility here Bei Link, but there's plenty to be done.

All that said, my most important workout has been something else completely. Knowing that I'm waiting so anxiously to get my own manual chair and ditch the electrowheels, another client at the CSCIR very very VERY generously gave me a fully-customized spare chair that he had at home taking up space, serving as a coat rack. WOW. Despite that it's built for someone quite less gigantic than I, it is absolutely fantastic. Thus, my main therapeutic activity has been spending as much time as possible in this thing. I shall not dance around the fact: this is hard! Size has nothing to do with difficulty, either. I'm used to lounging around in the rolling La-Z-Boy, so spending even just an hour or two en manuel, sitting up perfectly and trying to push around my severely-sloped room with standard unmodified rims, is work work work. That's the idea, though. My back/shoulder/neck muscles scream and the pain meds flow, but each day seems to be ever-so-slightly easier. I can actually sit at my desk, rather than sideways next to it, for the first time in years. Hrrrrg!

Hmmm. Otherwise, various entertainment. Visits to family and from schoolpals; smiles. Slowly re-ripping the music collection to FLAC. "Playing" a little bass/guitar. Sleeping plenty. I dunno, my personal life is profoundly boring to most everyone.

I suppose that's all for now. Feel free to propose discussion topics and questions in the comments so I have something worthwhile to write about! Otherwise, I might just do mathematical proofs. You've been warned. Rock out.

devoid

2008-12-24T01:19:00.002-05:00

four years post-injury...

still sucks, pals

dull blades and evil penguins

2008-12-07T22:04:00.004-05:00

Hello kitty! We're pretty light on worthy news this time. Wait, is any ever worthy?

PT: Wed and Fri were both bike/weights/sit in some order - long sit on the W, short sit for the F. Lots of "reach out and touch" action during sitting, which rapidly devolves into "picture people's faces and punch hard"... Remember, an angry patient is a strong patient! Grrr.

OT: Thurs session was violent in a more ninjaish fashion. Our plan for the rest of my OT time is to play around with all sorts of orthotic toys; this round was knives. Hyah. I tried out several different weapons, but the main conclusion was not to eat therapy putty.

Burnt hand update: 'tis in great shape. I'm keeping the worst finger wrapped to protect the part that remains slightly open, so there are still birds for everyone, but we're not afraid to use the grip gloves for weights, Giger, etc. No more hookers, I guess.

Dumb joke spoiler: for those who have been following along and wondering, the "hookers" are just wrist straps with metal hooks on them, mostly useful for operating the cable-based weight machines without using hands or fingers. I'm not kidding, though, each is quite prominently branded "The Hooker". Not exactly P-C marketing genius.

More stuff with a colon: the plan is still to return to cville 'round the 18th. It's way way cold here. Insurance is being dumb about getting a manual chair, but I think we can out-dumb them. Badtz-Maru is by far the best Sanrio character. Most animals have colons. I heart coffee.

Methinks that's all. Catch you on the cosmic highway.

vvvvvvvv

2008-12-02T21:27:00.001-05:00

Hello all! Prepare to be oversummarized, though somehow still windily.

Last week's therapy was more of the new stuff. I don't remember exactly what happened when, but there took place tricep/shoulder exercises on the Wave vibration plate, more of the bolster-supported army crawl, some long sitting (legs out straight), a brief session of improvised weight training (careful with the hand), all sorts of leg e-stim bike - surprise! - and some more peanut sitting.

Wave work is way way effective! Perhaps even wave effective. Har har. I can do much stronger tricep extensions on that machine vs. without vibration because I can constantly feel where my triceps are and what I need to do to contract. Cooler, though, was the peanut party; once the PT put my hips into proper pelvic tilt position (pull the hips forward so that my lower back is unslouched and back/legs are at the perfect posture angle), all of my back/shoulders/neck/head would just snap into place and I would all of a sudden be sitting perfectly upright! Even better, after getting into this position, I could use my lower trunk muscles to hold it without assistance for even up to 30sec or so. eee! If only I could get into the position on my own...

So that was last week, which was only MTW (lunes/martes/miercoles, lundi/mardi/mercredi, segunda/terca/quarta, mon/dien/mitt, getsu/kay/sui... choose your poison) due to the holiday and my lack of desire to go in on F (v/v/s/f/k, respectively).

This week so far: Monday was leg zap bike, more improv weights, and some short sit stuff. After a delicious four days of nothing, my muscles were recharged and ready to go... But joints? Not so much. Hello, pain meds.

This Tuesday was another interesting variety pack. Bien sûr, warmup on the leg bike. Then Wave craziness. I started out doing bizarro pushups - most of my body lying chest down on a mat/table/whatever, hanging off the end from the chest on up. To do the exercise, put hands on the vibration plate and push to elevate the upper body. Verdict: I am such a wimp. Recall from grade school P.E. that pushups are almost entirely a tricep task, and also recall from just about any previous post that my triceps are mega weak! The vibration effects helped a bit, but I still needed mod/max assistance to pull these off. PS, hanging half of your upper body off the end of a table does not yield any comfort whatsoever. However, impossibly difficult? Incredibly uncomfortable? Sounds like the ingredients for an effective workout to me!

Also on the Wave were a few other slightly more tame shoulder and tricep exercises. Then it was off to one of the big mats for some "bed mobility", aka rolling side to side. Shoulders voted no to this stuff rather quickly. Snap crackle pop.

To wrap up Tuesday, I had my first real return-of-OT session! Yay. I put coins in a cup for the whole session. That was a lot of nickels. It was fairly hard since my hands were so stretched out from all the hand-body support I had done earlier on the Wave. Tenodesis (magical natural passive hand grip) just doesn't work with rubber fingers. Sure would be easier with some voluntary digital control.

Anyway, what did I do with the recent super-long weekend? Well... Nothing, of course! Wednesday we had a floor mini-party with food, festive tunes, and cream cheese oreo magic. Thursday: sleep. Friday: sleep. Saturday: sleep. Sunday: sleep. I strive to be the most boring person on the planet.

Hand update: still keeping my most burnt finger wrapped, although it's fixing itself much faster than I expected. The blisters on the other fingers have essentially disappeared. We're still taking it easy on the wrapped one since one of its wounds hasn't closed up yet; hence, no Giger, careful weight bearing on that hand, and improvised methods on the weight training. No arm e-stim bike either, as that would also require grip gloves. At least I can do weights with Hookers!

Might that be all? Possibly maybe. Björk out.

toasty

2008-11-22T22:04:00.001-05:00

Gratuitous incremental update! Enough has happened differently in the past few days that I should probably write before I forget...

Thursday night wasn't so good! I burned my hand pretty hardcore. Actually, they're rather minor burns (I don't remember my burn degree characteristics; feel free to offer up a guess in the comments), but I blistered up three fingers like a pro. Now I'm all antibacterialized and gauzed up - it was impossible not to open up a few of the blisters, either accidentally or on purpose... eewww. Fortunately, this all happened to my non-dominant hand, so I can still do stuff with ole lefty. Also on the bright side, the, umm, "most expressive" finger is now basically splinted straight - very convenient in case I run across certain people I'm not too fond of.

Skipping the obvious negative parts, let's try to find some optimism: at least it doesn't really hurt. My fingers are more tingly than usual, but it's not uncomfortable. In fact, I'd like to look at it as positive overstimulation, like the Wave machine I talked about last time. That is, I'm constantly reminded of all those hand muscles, all the way out to my fingertips; feeling them all the time might help my body rewrite the neural pathways to improve finger control? Maybe that's a long shot, but long shots are often what it takes.

BTW, Effington could be a wonderful effingplace. Thanks for the interruption (and Central Illinois geography lesson), Mr. Folds!

Back on track, Friday's PT session was obviously messed up. We didn't really want to do anything involving hands, so that cuts out a large chunk of the arsenal: no Giger, weights, sitting balance (involves hand weight bearing), arm e-stim bike, etc etc etc. We ended up breaking out the new "pseudo army crawl with body supported/rolling on bolsters" activity from recently, as it puts weight on the elbows and keeps my hands free to slap myself in the face and inadvertently pass the bird to passersby. Again, this exercise set is tough on every muscle from my neck down to below the bottoms of my albatross shoulder blades. Further, my shoulder joints eventually start to sublux under so much pressure. This time was particularly über-rough too, since I didn't have the Giger warmup beforehand to work out all those joint kinks and back cramps. Eh. Is rehab supposed to be lounge around time? Bring it.

After the crawl work was a nice long workout on the leg zap bike. Then there wasn't really anything else I could safely do, so when I was done giving Wii tennis lessons ;-) I cut out a few minutes early. The rest of the day was a giant waste of time, as usual.

Finally, the Steph dropped by for a bit today. Smiles.

Speaking of wasting time, I have concerts to listen to and air guitar to play. It counts as unofficial occupational therapy in my book, anyway - those who have seen air Claypool know I'm not kidding. Hasta luego, mis amigos!

~~~~~~~~

2008-11-20T22:24:00.002-05:00

Tomodachitatchi wa konbanwa! Ha ha, that's not right at all. Prepare for something even more disorganized than usual...

OT is back! After such a long insurance-induced hiatus, occupational therapy is back on for my remaining month or so this year. Who knows what we're going to do? Welcome to "Blue Man" therapy. Smiles.

Also, I've been moved to Monday afternoons - good riddance, morning session! Smiles times two to that one.

I don't think I mentioned officially yet, but for now we're planning to stick it out up here until just before that fat-guy-and-elves holiday. Most importantly, it's the best move for the mom's health care; also, insurance somehow decided that I now have unlimited phys and occu therapy visits, so sticking around won't completely obliterate the pocketbook (oh wait, too late for that). We do plan to go back to so-IL for the holidays and winter hibernation, though.

Phys therapy this week has been stuffed with new activities! Err, mostly. Monday was classic Giger and weights, plus the arm zap bike. Wednesday was a regularly-scheduled muscle strength/control evaluation, then the standard Giger workout and a little more time than usual on the arm e-stim ergo. Those muscles (biceps/triceps/traps) are getting quite a bit stronger, so I'm able to do harder work on that machine... Even though my muscles inevitably regret it the next day. Eh, oh well! As for the muscle eval, I'm usually one for thorough disclosure, but I like to keep those results to myself; just trust me that cool stuff happens!

Backtracking a day - do I ever do anything in order? - Tuesday was new stuff day. We did typical Giger/leg bike bookends, but with Wave and "peanut" exercises in the middle.

The Wave machine is basically a giant vibrating plate. Giant, as in something on which you can sit, stand, or lie down. As far as I can tell, the idea is to have constant full-body stimulation while you do exercises. Then all of your muscles are being cued while you work; that is, since the muscles are being stimulated, you can feel where they are and are more likely to be able to contract the right ones. Sorry, I know that's a bit of a tough concept. In short, it just means you're being shaken into knowing how to do the right work. Further, the vibration intensifies the exercise since you have to fight it was well.

To clarify, here's what I did. First, I was positioned face-down (prone, pals!) on the plate, propped up on my elbows. Then we let the vibration run, and I would push through my elbows to raise and lower my upper body - sort of like elbow push-ups, trying to arch my back like a kitty cat. The vibration stimulation helped by triggering the necessary back muscles; usually I have a hard time with similar exercises because I simply don't know what to do to activate the right muscles, but with the vibration I could feel where they were and had a much easier time finding the pathway to get them to react. Again, sorry, difficult notion for the average abler.

The other Wave exercise consisted of sitting upright next to the plate, leaning sideways with one hand on the plate, and bending/straightening that arm with the torso as weight resistance. This is a classic tricep workout that was much more effective with vibration, as the triceps are another muscle that's just hard for me to find.

Moving on from that explicative disaster, after vibrationland I did some sitting balance... On a peanut! Said "peanut" is like two large yoga-style exercise balls fused together. You know, a big rubber Venn diagram of sorts. Anyway, the goal is to sit straddling the peanut and keep upright. It's a bit easier on this equipment than on the table because the shape induces a more proper pelvic tilt. I was having some difficulties though, since (1) my blood pressure started acting strangely, and (2) the abdominal binder makes it quite difficult to breathe when I am in absolutely perfect posture... But aside from these minor setbacks (come on, breathing is overrated), the peanut was enjoyable and effective.

Ok, therapy tales exhausted. Not much going on otherwise. Cold cold cold. Happy birthday to the punk of punks, who no doubt won't be reading this.

I am ambivalent about Teen Jeopardy - should I feel good because I know almost all of the answers, or is it a blow to the self esteem because there are a few responses that I don't get?

Ponder. Ask. Rock out.

where's the butter

2008-11-16T20:16:00.001-05:00

Boo!

Let's see... Rehab rehab rehab, as well as an ER party. It's been a week of old and new since Montag.

Tuesday was Giger, bien sûr, followed by a pretty sad hour of short sit mat work. Subterranean blood pressure made it pretty unproductive, although by the end I was holding my own for the most part. "Oh noes," you might be thinking, "ur BP has ben teh grate fur so lonng! What givz?" Uhweleruh, when I do the Giger, we loosen up my abdominal binder (see "corset") because the combination of Giger position (inverted ladybug) and tight binder makes even my blood pressure skyrocket; after the Giger, though, we were sort of rushing to take care of a thing or two, and I forgot to have the abdobinder retightened... oops! My blood pressure is pretty dependent on that thing, so without it I am inevitably flirting with unconsciousness. Also, if you're thinking in lolspeak, you might want to get that checked out. Tuesday's session was rounded out with some lower extremity e-stim biking.

The rest of Tuesday was oh oh even better! Taste the sarcasm. I went to the ER directly after therapy because my blood was supposedly - that's the key word - dangerously thin. As in, if you know blood stuff, my INR from the last test was about 12 (again, supposedly). So, we went over and waited circa two hours to see someone at the ER. First thing they did, of course, was draw some more blood to check INR and Protime, the other clotting test, to see if my blood was still water before administering vitamin K, a hardcore blood thickener. It's a good thing they waited on the K, because tests showed PT/INR were right on - a little low, even. If I would've had the expected 500mg tablet of vit K, I think my entire body would have turned into one giant clot... Instead, the doc ruled that tests from Monday were erroneous and that I was a-ok. That's good - healthy is the way to be - but it was a six-hour adventure, and I want my Tuesday back.

On a related note, I predicted last time that my hands would be giant green blobs by now after so many pokes for so many blood tests... Wrong! The bruises are staying small and dark, so I'd say they're more like "bullet holes" than "hulk smash". btw, this paragraph is more gory than An Inconvenient Truth.

Moving on, Wednesday was a pretty cool therapy day. Post-Giger, we did some completely new prone (face-down) mat work. Describing this one should be interesting; prepare your imagination. It was a bit like army crawling in place. Most of my body was rolling on bolsters - think those rolling factory conveyor things used for sliding boxes along and such - and I was holding myself up on my elbows. Then for the first part, I used my shoulders and lats to push myself forward and back, rolling on the bolsters. For the second activity in this position, I shifted my weight left and right, trying to get all of my weight on one elbow so I could lift the other one and reach that free arm forward. Not surprisingly, this stuff was way hard and a bit uncomfortable. My back muscles are megaweak, so I always run out of steam on prone work right quick; similarly, they are not particularly willing to stretch quite as far as required for these exercises. However, hard and uncomfortable means effective and worthwhile. Bring it on.

Speaking of, after these prone exercises (and some supine ab crunches), I got to do the upper extremity e-stim bike! It's been a while because that part of the bike was broken, but I'm finally plowing through this biceps/triceps/traps nightmare, err, workout, again. I love this ridiculously grueling part of the bike. I coasted through the rest of the day just fine, but when I got up the next day my traps were so sore I could barely hold my head up. Yesss.

Friday's session was more textbook, coasting through Giger->weights->leg bike. Not even a trip to the ER!

Hmm, in non-therapeutic news, my typing wrist/hand/finger splint is broken as of about halfway through this post, so updates might be a tad more brief for a little while. That's probably a good thing anyway. Otherwise, not much going on. It's snowing. Brrr.

Ok, plenty. As Chop Chop Master Onion might say, "that's it for today!"

hulked

2008-11-10T20:32:00.005-05:00

Hey hep cats! Feeling existential? Let's rock it.

Therapy has been therapy, of course. Some sitting, some weight training, all sorts of Giger and RTI bike. Such is as you likely predicted. Nothing profound really happened in the three sessions (WFM) since the last post, other than constant flak for my previous statements about weights, so let's move on to something more gory.

Beware, the following is not for needlephobes...

--------------------------------
My hands are hilariously rainbowed again.

If possible, when I need to have blood drawn or an IV inserted, I have it done in my hands. This choice is for 1.5 reasons: first, I can't really feel sharps in my hands (that's an ASIA 0-1 on pin prick sensation, for those in the SCI-testing leet); also, kind of the same reason, I'm way way hypersensitive in the normal elbow poke zone. Then I've been stuck a million times in the past week or so. It started with surgery day last week, when they first tried to put the IV (and simultaneously draw blood) in my left hand several times, unsuccessfully, and blew a vein in the process. The IV eventually went in the right hand. You might guess that all of this was sufficient to turn my hands wonderfully green - hence the title of the post.

But wait, there's more! I take blood thinners because I had a hardcore clot in 2005; thus, surgery messes up my regimen, since thin blood is dumb when I'll potentially be cut up, and afterwards I have to monitor very closely until everything's back to normal. In other words, I had to go back and be poked again on Wednesday to check up. This one was not so great because they didn't have any of the tiny butterfly needles around, so we used the next-smallest ones on hand (pun pun pun). Let's just say it was not a particularly small weapon.

Then I had to go back in today for another check. Yay! This time we did have a butterfly, but I was not sacrificing quickly, so filling up the bottle took a long time and lots of pokes. I predict that in a few days, both of my hands will be purple and green to the point of featurelessness. It reminds me a bit of my Portugal experience - at any given time, I would have at least four IV leads in either hand... I was green up into my forearms. They really wanted to turn me into the Hulk, I guess. Eu não posso fazer!

Optimistically, as I said, I don't really feel it in my hands, so none of this has been a big deal. In contrast, if any of these pokes would have been higher in my arms, I think I would've had to injure someone.
--------------------------------

End nasty needle stories!

Worse than all the pokes is this lovely Detroit weather! All last week it was 60's-70's and gorgeous. Weekend: cold/rain/sleet. This morning on the way to therapy it was snowing. Summer clearly told fall to shove it and cut straight to winter. This isn't all too different from c-ville weather, but what's bad is, where a little below freezing and a bit snowy is as gross as it gets in mid-IL, I know this is just the beginning of Detroit's, umm, beauty?

Hmm, what else? Watched Juno again. Still awesome. Got the That 1 Guy discography. Addicted. For those of you who like extremely strange music - Nate - this is great stuff. It's like Ween with a whamola. What could go wrong? Nobody even knows what I'm talking about.

Ok, that's as far as we'll go for now. Sure took a bunch-o-commas. Keep an eye out for JLink's Complete Guide to Pharmacology, coming soon. Stay warm and such.

quickie

2008-11-04T23:23:00.011-05:00

Que onda, toda la gente. A lightning round post.

Had kidney stone surgery este Lunes - lithotripsy action. Weee. I've had this surgery several times, but this is the first time my kidney has actually hurt afterwards. So, I missed therapy Monday - for the surgery, obviously - as well as today (Tuesday) (terca) because my kidney hurt quite a bit. I'm hoping to feel good enough to do at least a lightweight workout tomorrow (Wednesday) (quarta). After all, as nice as it may be to sleep all day, I'm here to work...

On a related note, Tylenol 3 is like eating Sweet Tarts for pain relief. I'll stick to my oxycodone, thank you very much.

Therapy was pretty humdrum last week. If I remember correctly, I lifted weights every session. No offense to pumping iron - I know it's extremely important for progress - but it's also not overly exciting... Oh well.

Otherwise, update: I have no clue how long I'm going to be here. As long as the mom is illin' in the hospital or going there almost every day, I guess I get to stay and keep doing therapy. That's good and bad all in one, as the sick mom is extremely not good, but therapy gives me a purpose in the world. Once I'm out of therapy, my life returns to being a waste.

Also apart from therapy, the weather's been fairly nice. It's been 60-70 degrees F lately, and it's supposed to be like that for a few more days before it returns to the inarguably unpleasant standard Detroit weather. At least I don't have to be outside much.

You know? I'm in a terrible mood. I quit for the day. Go read something worthwhile.

PSA

2008-11-04T21:27:00.002-05:00

Censor censor censor!

That's all for now.

jacques chiractober review

2008-10-25T23:23:00.003-04:00

Hey all! It's been so long, there is no way I can put together an all-inclusive update to bring you completely up to speed. Here are some randomized entertaining parts. If I skip anything you want to know, either ask in the comments or make it up.

Apart from the distributed time at home, phys therapy is going quite well. The short breaks actually appear to have helped my body rest and rebuild even stronger, so it seems. I've improved across the board. More weight during lifting. Average Giger revs have marginally increased, barring days where dysreflexia cuts time short. Neck strength is getting better for sitting balance. Same with arms. And my traps are ridiculous. Apparently my trunk muscles are getting a bit stronger, too: sometimes those conniving therapists of mine will leave me sitting upright under my own power - no arms, even - without telling me. Sneaky people they are.

Manual chair propulsion (with the power assist wheels) is getting waaay easier with practice. Back in the days of warmer weather, we went on a few trips around the DMC campus, finding all of the non-ADA-compliant ramps to various buildings and trying to take them on. We've been in the up and down world of "the tunnels" a bunch, too. I've taken the manuchair home overnight a few times as well to test out the skilz on relatively boring (to you) daily use stuff. Let's rock it already!

(For those familiar with the DMC underground system, miercoles I did a few laps for warmup, then went from the CSCIR all the way down to the end of the downhill hot part with the pipes and back, then the other direction to the other end elevators, up to the ground floor, and through the hospitals past Wendy's. And back.)

Further, an update on the manual chair acquisition story: schooled. Last time I checked in with you guys, I needed to demonstrate sufficient incline/decline/propulsion/stability/everything skills in order to get the doc's Rx approval, necessary to ask for stuff to be covered under insurance. Let's just say that has been done, and then some. QED.

On the not-so-optimistic end, there are a few sad notes. First of all, Katie's gone! My awesome main therapist has been transferred temporarily. Positive: I still have the same rockin' trainer, and my replacement PT is also pretty much sweetness. Also a bummer, an assortment of the most inspirational people on the floor either left recently or about to leave. Boo. Next on the ugh list, insurance is about to give up (already has, really), so I don't think I get to be here much longer. Continuing, I had another DXA last week, and it confirmed that my bone density is indeed terrible. Eh, I don't want to talk about negative stuff anymore.

Finally, I spent today with my hands in an electrified bucket of water. I heart neurology.

Beyond therapy, umm, it's cold here! Detroit weather is not cool. Er, I guess it's extremely cool, and that's the problem. Fortunately, it's not far from the room to the RIM. So far, I've been able trick myself, too. I have quite vivid memories of several occasions at school when it was way below freezing, there was heavy sleet/snow/wind, and I was trapped outside my building because the accessible door was either frozen shut or just plain broken... So before I go outside here I just think of those times, and then it doesn't seem so bad out. This has a second benefit of getting me pretty fired up, and anger improves therapy performance! Ha ha, you know who you are.

Otherwise, I severely hacked my phone, and as a "computer guy" who does not fear the technical aspects, it is delicious. On a related topic, I'm trying to figure out some good certifications to pick up in order to improve my prospects in the computing job world. A+ and similars are pretty much out, since I can't physically manipulate hardware very well. Once upon a time, someone recommended getting into WWAN stuff. I like *nix/platform-agnostic projects, too, and I'm all about the educational sect. Any suggestions?

Ok, drugs say I should probably stop talking. I would like to say, though, thanks to everyone for diligently checking for updates all this time that I've been MIA. I'm sorry to have abandoned you; you're the ones that matter, after all. Continue being amazing, and I'll do my best to keep up.

children fear and critics rage

2008-10-16T23:23:00.004-04:00

29 September 2008. Majestic Theatre. Detroit. Buckethead, featuring That 1 Guy. Photos courtesy of the mom and my old Moto Q, usually without zoom because we were that close. Click the pictures to see them full size, of course. Caption comes after photo.

"Let's begin." --Stick Pit
-----

My brave, brave front row cohort for the evening.

Opener: That 1 Guy. Awesome, impressive, bizarre. He plays a homemade concoction - two one-string "basses" made out of metal pipe and connected by a bunch of metal pipe joints - and a little drum kit thing. Lots of buttons all around. Here he's using a classical upright bass bow.

We actually met this dude before the show. We were inside getting out of the rain, and someone asked me, "you know who the opener is?" I said, "yeah, I think it's 'That 1 Guy'..." And out of nowhere the Guy himself walks by and says, "hey, that's me! Hope you like it!" Crazy.

Upright slap bass technique, combined with words from BizarroLyricLand. (example: while improvving a bit, he rhymed "biotch" with "iotch". Delicious.)

More upright slap style - here you can sort of see both necks on the bass contraption. (Technically a true double bass? Har har, music nerds...)

Goofy singing face #1 of many.

Let's play with a drumstick. Whamola, anyone?

The tiny drum weaponry.

Uh oh...

For triangulation purposes, to demonstrate how close we were. Compare with other head-on and his-left-side photos. Also, he's showing off his guitar strap antics. The big metal thing on the left is That 1 Guy's instrument. Mr. Striped Shirt was actually next to us, not in front.

Classic. Gorgeous. Creepy.

Shred shred shred shred wail.

Mmm, elastic guitar strap

More blurry, but a better demo of what he does quite a bit. In case you haven't gathered yet, his git strap is stretchy; he likes to push the thing away from his body to get weird bends/distortion while still playing notes with his fret (left) hand. Buckethead? Weird guitar noises? Go fig. BTW, blurry as it is, this is probably my favorite photo from the collection - he's shoving his guitar in my face, after all.

Here he hides behind the speaker stack stage right, poking his head out to stare at the crowd. (Another good triangulation photo, since he's really offstage at this point.)

Slap pop slap pop

Posefest.

Magic killswitch button!

Reminds me of some other slap/popper I know...

Nunchaku!

Next he picks up a giant rubber chicken and invests a solid minute or two walking it all the way across the stage. Yesss.

Robot dance also mandatory

He's not too bad at it, either.

Again, bad blur obfuscating guitar insanity. By now you may have also noticed that he never looks at what he's playing. This means he spent a lot of time sharing stares with all of us up front.

tappy tap, shreddy shred

Magic button, even more up close!

Another standard "huh?" mask break. Sadly, I recognize that mask from another concert...

Why pick when you can 8-finger tap?

The original robot wail maneuver.

Eight fingers again. His hands are huge.

Could it be merely six digits?

That 1 Guy returns for some jam time.

Simultaneous Bucket shred and T1G thump/wallop/???

Turn, pose!

PS he's pretty good.

To close, something dreamlike: so about 2/3 of the way through Buckethead's set, he picks up some unidentifiable object from on top of his equipment and starts playing some bizarro Star Wars-like riffs/noises, using the object as a guitar pick of sorts. This goes on for about a minute. Then he stops, walks up to the front of the stage, crouches down, pushes everyone's grabby hands away... And directly hands me a little R2-D2 action figure, pictured - the thing he had just been playing with. I reiterate: Buckethead stopped the show to single me out and hand me something. Wow. :-D

(Still only the second-best concert ever, Tim)

choose your time zone wisely

2008-10-15T20:44:00.005-04:00

happy birthday, jarmstro,

smartest human I know!

you should read his blog and leave best wishes...
(because it's waaay more interesting than mine)

sugoi, ne? desu yo.

(it's the 16th, btw, but he's in Japan, so he really lives in the future for most of us)

cryptically speaking...

2008-10-13T00:27:00.003-04:00

he's coming

(jo knows)

...

2008-09-17T22:05:00.002-04:00

brotherrr
clone
DJ
cohort
ally
accomplice
idol

best friend

gone