From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V15 #240 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, October 11 2006 Volume 15 : Number 240 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: ahhh...october ["Spotted Eagle Ray" ] Re: belltown ramble ["Spotted Eagle Ray" ] Re: Beefheart reissues ["Gene Hopstetter Jr." ] so you don't like scratchy vinyl, eh? ["Michael Wells" ] Re: Ole Tarantula on vinyl [Eb ] Iggy & The Stooges's Rider [No Battling Broomes content] [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: bassists [grutness@slingshot.co.nz] Re: bassists ["Spotted Eagle Ray" ] robyn on gideon coe [wojbearpig ] Re: Ole Tarantula on vinyl [2fs ] Re: My name is "Eb", but my friends call me "Fuckshovel" ["Stacked Crooke] Re: My name is "Eb", but my friends call me [Eb ] the squirmy stuff ["ken ostrander" ] Re: My name is "Eb", but my friends call me Sharky [Tom Clark Subject: Re: ahhh...october On 10/9/06, ken ostrander wrote: > > > it says "available new and used" at amazon; but i'm pretty sure they're > all used. I think they have to say that about all third party dealers because so many of them are indeed selling shrink-wrapped, "new" overstock and such. Should be "new or used", but who am I to say... their business model seems to work just fine. I'm just some socialist. - -SER ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 08:46:18 -0700 From: "Spotted Eagle Ray" Subject: Re: belltown ramble On 10/9/06, Jason Brown wrote: > > Here are some Seattle centric clarifications. I hadn't realized how > weird these some of these lyrics seem if you aren't familiar with > Seattle Thanks, Jason. Been wondering about some of these. you slide down forth againwhere the clairmont used to be > > Again that's Fourth ave The Claremont used to be a hotel. Now its > apartments or a retirement home or something. > > > say hello ariel (r.e.l.) ont > > C-L-A-R-E-M-O-N-T This is the bit where the All Music guide thought he was referring to R.E.M. and OMD. I think maybe the separation of the letters is meant to throw the middle REM into relief as a kind of joke... Awesome song. Who is Ken? Sounds like possibly a record exec referring to the Canadian music scene, but it struck me that it might be Ken Stringfellow. - -SER ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:56:16 -0500 From: "Gene Hopstetter Jr." Subject: Re: Beefheart reissues > From: Eb > > Speaking of which, I hear Astralwerks is reissuing Doc at the Radar > Station (and Ice Cream for Crow, which I do have on CD) very soon. Any word on "Lick My Decals Off, Baby"? Because if they are, I need to sell my Rhino CD while it's still worth $100. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:02:03 -0500 From: "Michael Wells" Subject: so you don't like scratchy vinyl, eh? Since we were somewhat on the topic, here is a link to researchers at Berkeley who developed an optical scanning technique to obtain the data - - and remove unwanted noise bits from - older mechanical recordings (vinyl, shellac, whatever). You can spend rather a lot of time messing around here, and marveling at the results. http://www-cdf.lbl.gov/~av/ The link was provided by a friend at Fermi Lab, who knows one of the researchers via particle physics circles and reports that 'he's one of the brightest guys I know.' Seriously. Michael ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:22:44 -0700 From: "Spotted Eagle Ray" Subject: Re: Ole Tarantula on vinyl On 10/9/06, 2fs wrote: > > Okay, I'm confused. Essentially (in this case) you're buying vinyl (cuz it > looks cool) to gain access to MP3s. So you're buying one outmoded, > noise-prone format to gain access to a newer, lower-fidelity format. > > Why not buy the CD? (Which also gives you access to the downloads, by the > way - at least I think it does.) I find this a pretty interesting back and forth, and honestly I come down more on Jeme's side, but I'll state that my primary thing here one thing that Jeme mentioned later on: yeah, it's pretty much aesthetic, nostalgia, romanticism: 'cuz it looks cool. I'll cop to it. My ears are not sensitive enough to sort out all those subtle differences between CD, decent mp3's, and LP's (except for surface noise, as Jeffrey notes). Maybe they would've been once, but that was many rock and roll concerts ago.. So it was a slow slide, but in the end, who really wants CD's? They're just kind of too small to be aesthetically interesting (plus jewel cases break, digipals scuff) while being relatively also too big for what they are, considering that the contents of all of mine, 3,000 or so, squeezed nicely onto a 250 gig hard drive and sound about the same to me as the discs themselves. Beyond that, in the modern era, a lot of "records" I've acquired and really enjoy are vinyl rips of albums that never made it to CD, or CDR's I've come into possession of for artist-audition purposes. I certainly like some of the records I've acquired nonphysically better than some that I physically possess because they looked interesting enough used to be worth a $5 shot. So, briefly, the compelling reasons to have a CD sitting on a shelf slowly withered away for me. I'll keep them for-- get this-- data backup mostly, although I do have sentimental attachments to a certain amount of them. But as far as obtaining new discs, I probably purchase them in physical form a little more often than Jeme, but, just like him, I probably only listen to actual sound coming off of them once at most. Jeme: > Well, the MP3 sounds "really good" way longer than the CD will. I don't > need a permanently pressed piece of plastic for every record I'd like to > hear. The caveat there is that you have to back them up. Which can be kind of a pain in the ass if you don't want to keep buying mass-storage drives, and kind of high maintenance even if you do. Even that's no worse than reorganizing thousands of discs, especially if you change residences. You can always back them up to CDR's periodically, I suppose, but that's a lotta work, too. So in the case of OT, because I am a real fan of Robyn's, I just plain think it would be cooler to have the vinyl for admittedly dumb reasons since I'll have a digital copy anyway. If I had a hankering for it on CD, I could always burn a copy (and add "Embryo Twirl" to it while I was at it). My attachment to vinyl isn't extreme... I've ditched a lot of it... but for favorite artists, it's just kind of a fanboy thing, which should be fairly normal on a fanboy/girl list like this. Now that I have the CD, I won't bother with the vinyl, but I might've if I'd realized the deal ahead of time. That's all. Jeff again: > also, LPs take up reams of space! I'd have to build a separate shed for > LPs if my music collection were all on vinyl... Fuckin' A. But once you get a whole shitload of CD's, there's not that much difference. Maybe I just say that because I never had nearly as many LP's as I now have CD's. Just this weekend I reacquired a whole bunch of my old cassettes that I thought I'd never see again, and I dunno if I want a single one of them. Mostly a profusion of self-generated mix tapes from my music-buying heyday a decade ago, so very little unique material there (and what there was I digitized five years ago or thereabouts). Except that I never got to finish my rip-from-cassette of the "Athens GA Inside Out" soundtrack, or my rip of the unique vinyl edition of Wire's "Send" so if anyone's got that... in non-physical form, of course... - -SER ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:30:20 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: Beefheart reissues >> Speaking of which, I hear Astralwerks is reissuing Doc at the >> Radar Station (and Ice Cream for Crow, which I do have on CD) very >> soon. > > Any word on "Lick My Decals Off, Baby"? Because if they are, I > need to sell my Rhino CD while it's still worth $100. Ack. But there's the rub. As soon as there is "word," then you can't get $100 anymore. (I have that on CD, too....) Oh! Jeez. Not only is Astralwerks reissuing those two albums "very soon," but they did it LAST TUESDAY. Check Amazon. Eb, still beating himself up over the "Secaucus" thing ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:32:36 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: Ole Tarantula on vinyl 2fs wrote: > Although, amusingly, I've been acquiring a *lot* of '70s-era prog > on Lala.com. Never come across that site before. I don't quite get the system. Are you supposed to post every CD you own, or only every CD you wouldn't mind getting rid of? And if it's the former, do you have to spend all day telling people "No, no, no, no...I wanna keep those"? I see four subscribers who own Compiletely Bats. Bleh. > Fact is, my turntable is no longer connected to my speakers. Tsk. > Example: for who knows what reason, one or two Procol Harum songs > (not just "Whiter Shade of Pale": most likely "Homburg" and "Shine > on Brightly") recently popped into my head, so I went searching for > songs by that band. Ended up downloading most of the first four > albums plus a handful of tracks from later ones. I don't know exactly what I paid for my copies of Shine On Brightly (which is in really lousy shape) and A Salty Dog, but I'm sure it was under a buck. And the first album was probably $3 or $4. ;) > Speaking of which, I hear Astralwerks is reissuing Doc at the Radar > Station (and Ice Cream for Crow, which I do have on CD) very soon. > > Any reason to buy the new editions vs. the older ones? Don't know. In other news, I blew it...I hear Wind-Up is finally scheduled to reissue the first two Wrens albums, which means my extra copy of Secaucus on Grass just plummmmmmeted in value. Sigh. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:40:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Iggy & The Stooges's Rider [No Battling Broomes content] http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html . Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:20:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Receivers and Speakers OK, so I'm buying used and locally (unless someone can point to a new model with preposterously high quality/price ratio -- and even still, I'd have to insist on buying it locally for other reasons). Right now, the receivers between which I'm choosing are quite different, but I can't quite weigh the pros and cons. First is this Marantz SR580 AV Receiver. This thing does all kinds of crazy video component crap that I don't need... and it seems unlikely that I'll have need for more than two channels. But it's cheap and if it's good quality, I shouldn't pass it up. On the other hand, there's this Nakamichi TA-1A. Looks like an entry level thing, but of decent quality. It has way fewer components, but all I intend to use in the future are the MD, Audiotron, iPod dock (seemingly redundant, I know -- but it's for other people's iPods when they visit), and phonograph. It has exactly enough for that. For the speakers, the front-runners are a pair of DCM TimeFrame TF-275s... about which I can find essentially nothing online. Hints? Sooner the better so I can end this search and have loud music in my living room again. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin _______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 13:20:37 +1300 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: bassists > > > And since they were both bass guitarists, I suspect > > > it's only a question of time till he > > > falls out with McCaughey. > > > > Nah, because Scott's not really a bassist; he's a > > guitarist that's slumming it for Robyn. :) > > >My thoughts, too... "Hmmm... how can I have bass guitar get played on this >record and tour, and yet not need to be around a bass player?" See previous >comments about Arthur Kane: the only good bassist is apparently a dead >bassist. On the way, tribute songs to Entwistle, Pastorus, etc. > >Kidding. thinking of such things, am I the only one here who would love to hear some of Robyn's more acoustic-y songs with Danny Thompson on upright bass? James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 17:31:04 -0700 From: "Spotted Eagle Ray" Subject: Re: bassists On 10/10/06, grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: > > > > > And since they were both bass guitarists, I suspect > > > > it's only a question of time till he > > > > falls out with McCaughey. > > > > > > Nah, because Scott's not really a bassist; he's a > > > guitarist that's slumming it for Robyn. :) > > > > > >My thoughts, too... "Hmmm... how can I have bass guitar get played on > this > >record and tour, and yet not need to be around a bass player?" See > previous > >comments about Arthur Kane: the only good bassist is apparently a dead > >bassist. On the way, tribute songs to Entwistle, Pastorus, etc. > > > >Kidding. > > thinking of such things, am I the only one here who would love to > hear some of Robyn's more acoustic-y songs with Danny Thompson on > upright bass? My iPod offered up the Kershaw version of "So You Think You're in Love" today, and damned if it didn't sound like an upright bass Andy was playing. I suspect it was actually that big dreadnaught-guitar-lookin' thing he used to play during the "acoustic and drumpad" sections of Egyptians shows. - -SER ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 21:20:43 -0400 From: wojbearpig Subject: robyn on gideon coe c'mon get it! http://fegmania.org/audio/rh2006-09-27-bbc6music-gideon_coe/ Robyn Hitchcock September 27, 2006 Gideon Coe BBC 6music Freeview>Wavelab>Flac 01 intro 02 Museum of Sex 03 interview 04 Ole! Tarantula 05 outro Personnel: Robyn Hitchcock - guitar and voice Ruby Wright - musical saw Colin Izod - saxaphones morris windsor - percussion michelle & subr - backing vocals converted from the flacs that were posted to dimeadozen (normally i wouldn't do that but dime banned the torrent since 6music's bitrate - -- the station's only available on digital radio -- is is too low to meet their requirements for distribution as flac files and it seems unlikely at this point that someone captured the mp2 stream). enjoy! woj ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 21:42:50 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Ole Tarantula on vinyl On 10/10/06, Eb wrote: > > 2fs wrote: > > Although, amusingly, I've been acquiring a *lot* of '70s-era prog > > on Lala.com. > > Never come across that site before. I don't quite get the system. Are > you supposed to post every CD you own, or only every CD you wouldn't > mind getting rid of? And if it's the former, do you have to spend all > day telling people "No, no, no, no...I wanna keep those"? When you enter a title, you can mark it "keep" - which means it won't show up for others' trades. Incidentally: people don't ask you (or rather, shouldn't) for titles; the system does. So you don't have to worry about pissing off some large, ill-tempered person when you refuse to part with some beloved (but listed) title. None of which prevented some guy from harassing me a couple times saying please please please send me your copy of _Secaucus_. Grrr. (If it's true taht's actually finally emerging from the Creed label's retentive assholes, maybe I should e-mail the guy back, say it costs $100, and hope he bites before he finds out it's being reissued. I am an Evil Guy.) Why list them at all then? If you like to show off - or if you like recommendations that are keyed to music you want to keep rather than music you're getting rid of - or just random curiosity. A few weeks back, they changed things such that when a request for one of your tradeable CDs came in, it was mixed in with requests for the "keep" CDs...which meant that if you wanted to find which unwanted CD was now wanted, you had to scroll through screen after screen of "keep" titles. Bad idea. They changed it. (One of Lala's best features is that while it's technically still in beta (I think), they're actually responsive to members' requests and complaints. They've done an excellent job in trying to improve the system based on such requests - as well as can be expected given people's contradictory desires (*cough* artwork *cough*). > > In other news, I blew it...I hear Wind-Up is finally scheduled to > reissue the first two Wrens albums, which means my extra copy of > Secaucus on Grass just plummmmmmeted in value. Sigh. Do you (or anyone) have a link on that? Or did I miss it in the latest Wrens' e-mail amongst all the other weird news? (Wanna play with the Wrens? You can, perhaps!) - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:07:03 -0700 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", but my friends call me "Fuckshovel" . according to this argument, a kerry administration would have not only *attempted* to, for example, privatise social security and open ANWR for drilling, but would have *succeeded doing so*. (i'm doubtful about the former, to be honest; as social security is not only so incredibly popular, but there's also such a direct connection with people's everyday lives in the form of the monthly cheque.) i guess we'll never know for sure. my prediction of a republican party meltdown, however, looks (if i may say) fairly prescient right about now (not that i exactly went out on a limb there...). now then, i'd like to hear *your* arguments for the dems being to the left of the american public. what about "Hair Of The Dog"? interesting. which tracker? demonoid? and which RSS client? i fucking can't stand RSS; not because i don't think it's a cool idea, but because i've never found a client which isn't a nightmare to try to use. i'm telling you, though, if you don't have Grabit, you oughta get it. lets you not only search all of usenet, but also browse newsgroups without downloading headers. it's beautiful, i tells ya! i've been thinking of asking somebody to come haul away (almost) my entire bootleg collection. anybody wanna come get 'em? the list is at . ideally, it'd be somebody with the time and the inclination to digitise and torrent the best ones... <> from : >> i hardly think i do it, "all the time". but: HOMAGE noun 1. Ceremonial acknowledgement by a vassal of allegiance to his lord under feudal law. 2. Special honor or respect shown publicly. ok? i leave it to the reader to determine which definition fits most closely. KEN "Parents just don't understand" THE KENSTER<< but i also don't follow your logic. why would you scare-quote the *real* kenster in protest of *my* transgressions, you frigging bitch????? i don't know what the fuck an "audiotron" is...but i think i want one, if only so that i can reference "my audiotron" in conversation. not without electricity to power up your PC, it won't -- and within a decade's time, that probably won't be reliably available. see for the short argument why not, for the very long (yet endlessly compelling). no! at least not on mine -- roberta's more up-to-date, though. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:17:15 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", but my friends call me Stacked Crooked wrote: > <> > > still don't > know what the fruck is up with that.> > > from : > >>> >> like this > all the time? I don't get it.> > > i hardly think i do it, "all the time". but: > > HOMAGE noun 1. Ceremonial acknowledgement by a vassal of > allegiance to > his lord under feudal law. 2. Special honor or respect shown > publicly. Yes, I remember this explanation. Inadequate. And why doesn't your admiration take the same homoerotic form found in your admiration for me? Eb np: Neil Young's "Landing on Water" and, WOW, this album sucks hard. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 01:27:13 -0400 From: "ken ostrander" Subject: the squirmy stuff [moi]>> with the "fuck me baby i'm a trolley bus" "Spotted Eagle Ray" spottedeagleray@gmail.com> > My take on that, coming in the middle of a song that deals with aging...an anachronism-- >weren't trolly buses recently, officially retired?-- but that he's damned >proud of it in the end, and views it as enough of a virtue that it's a >reason to, erm, "get with" him. The Great Quail quail@libyrinth.com Well, maybe I am, uh...more gutter-minded than you guys, but I took the line closer to face value>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "you don't have to look very far..." freud would probably say "are you going to snort all of that yourself?" i think we all see what we want because we're looking for it. so someone looking for fun on or with decomissioned trolleys can fulfill their tangerine dream a lot easier now that they're collecting dust in a tunnel somewhere. the fecund hyperbole of scale is only one layer of the onion. play that riff 'til your hands are hollow. "Spotted Eagle Ray" >>>> It bookends "Museum of Sex" in its celebration of the squirmy stuff The Great Quail quail@libyrinth.com >>I love that song, but in my mind, "Victorian Squid" is the ultimate in squirmy erotic songwriting.<<<<<<<< yeah...it's greasy and hot; but why stop there when there's a sweet and sticky smorgasbord available?: insect mother ("in velvet and in onions"), bass ("the juicy flounder and the tender chub"), tropical flesh mandala ("floating in a moist exotic pool"), agony of pleasure ("one bee bubbles over your fleshy brimming cup"), and kingdom of love ("your dish is full of slime"). and for dessert...what else?: "the strawberries above her knees"...slurp. ken "everybody needs your meat, but no one meets your needs" the kenster "as you know we have sex and we have death; and you don't need to look too far to notice how these two operate. the main reason we have sex is 'cause we have death and we have to replace ourselves. if there was no sex then the whole thing - the whole shebang would be over. i don't know what the longest living thing is - i think the elephant - even the elephants would be gone after two hundred years. so we have to have a certain amount of sex...and then we have more. and sex has now become lots of other things: it's become recreational, it's become obsessive, it's become a pleasure, it's become something people are terrified by, it's become a reason to live, it's become something people want to dive - bomb - obliterate --whatever - people hit themselves over the head with sex -- whatever, we need it 'cause we have death." intro from 'eerie green storm lantern' FSThomas >>>>>>>>Note to self: petition state representatives to draft legislation for parenting licenses.< [Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net] > > I definitely believe that if you're going to regulate anything, killing > > should be at the top of the list.<< The Great Quail >the real issue here is neither killing nor recreating. It is about >population control. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< it's some supremely slippery sideways scuttling to posit that population control involves something other than life and death. practically speaking, you need to address the killing in one way or another if you're going to try and control a population. i've read that there is a shortage of females in china due to the years of people opting for a boy for their one allowed child. of course, it's not a pre-requisite for having children; but people do need to get a license to get married. children born out of wedlock are still stigmatized; so there is a sort of requirement. the blood test thingie is to make sure that siblings aren't going to be making babies, isn't it? over fishing is a huge global problem due to human greed more than breeding. some countries still practice whaling (for research, natch) and others detonate nuclear devices (well, industrial fishing literally scrapes the breeding grounds on the sea floor, effectively destroying future fish populations because they want more of the sea captain's return of the day today - a zero sum game). protecting the local pools seems like the only practical option. how can you keep unscrupulous fisherfolk from doing what they will on a global scale? ooooh...fishy fishy fishy fish! vanished like the trilobite. the voyage home will be sad indeed. "Spotted Eagle Ray" >The Tarantuala-Mermaid thing, I dunno, but I reckon I'll end up with copies >of both on my shelf before the year's out.<<<<<<<<<<<< done and done. i think that's why i heard "ariel" in 'belltown ramble'. i've got mermaid on the brain since my daughter (she's a pisces) has been watching it every day. we get to alternate it with nemo for some variety. maybe robyn could have a hit with a cover of 'under the sea'? life is the bubbles and he has a hot crustacean band. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:34:07 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", but my friends call me Sharky On Oct 10, 2006, at 10:17 PM, Eb wrote: > np: Neil Young's "Landing on Water" and, WOW, this album sucks hard. Is that the one that Geffen sued him for? Something about turning in a product they couldn't sell? - -tc, remembering vaguely p.s. Watching the Sharks game the other night, the camera showed Neil in the audience doing "the wave". ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 01:41:01 -0400 From: "ken ostrander" Subject: don't expect not to be scratched i've spent a lot of time and energy trying to coddle my precious vinyl. when i first started buying records, i would ride my bike to caldor and have to ride one handed all the way home with my delicates. and then there's all of those moves with boxes of records. i really don't trust anyone else to move them. the one time i let professional movers do the job i was quivering with trepidation like r crumb. i finally got our basement set up with 'the library' and i hardly ever listen to my cd's down there. i figure i can play them on the computer, in the car, with my walkman, or on any of the various boomboxes around the house. when i lived in boston, i spent a lot of time and money trolling through the various shops that carried used vinyl. what a thrill to walk out with a dozen albums for fifty bucks. i used to do a radio show called the vinyl vault and would truck on my bike with my albatross bag loaded with music and digging into my neck. luckily, it was downhill on the way to the station as i was usually cutting it pretty close timewise. i can't remember the last time i bought a new release on vinyl. probably _storefront_. i certainly have to admit that there's a nostalgic quality to my preference for my rekkids. you can really appreciate the cover artwork and display it on the mantle or the wall. printing out a scanned image doesn't compare in my mind. periodically, folks make lists of their favorite "desert island disks" that they just couldn't live without; but the idea that all of the electronic doo-dads that we rely on to play those albums would not function unless you were able to setup a windmill or something. on the other hand, there are those old windup phonographs that would work in such a setting. but then, you'd have to keep your vinyl out of the sun. the idea of transferring my vinyl to some digital format seems very daunting to me. it would certainly involve acquisition of new hardware and the new-fangledy technology intimidates me. even though i'd like to be able to use my various non-digital formats on my computer, i glaze over when i read all of the lingo. i've tried using our digital voice recorder; but the recorded sound is terrible. the scratchyness doesn't really bug me like a skip does (which is what drove me to finally get a cd player in college - in the beginning i got cd copies of my favorite records; but now i try not to duplicate - i opt for expanding the collection); but overall there is a whole experience that goes along with vinyl. i maintain that there's a warmer resonance to the sound; but i have to admit that my hearing's going. "i can almost hear it raining" "Michael Wells" mwells@ImageWorksMfg.com >>>>>Since we were somewhat on the topic, here is a link to researchers at Berkeley who developed an optical scanning technique to obtain the data - - and remove unwanted noise bits from - older mechanical recordings (vinyl, shellac, whatever). You can spend rather a lot of time messing around here, and marveling at the results.<<<<< i've done a little bit of experimentation with free software (wavepad) to edit soundfiles of music and conversational bits and there are some cool things where you can edit out background noise by isolating it; but, for the most part, it does strange things to the sounds that are left behind. they make it look so easy on c.s.i. "Stacked Crooked" tews@drizzle.com >you might give the administration props for at last acting to >legalise what was already long-standing practice.<<<<<< so texas foul. of course it was to cover their asses, not to be forth-coming. how far back would you consider that it began? well before eisenhower warned about the dangers of the military industrial complex we had union busting and profiling of "radicals" by the department of justice and before that there was the legalized murder of the indigenous folk. ken " the bells are slowing down the sacrifice is due " the kenster ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V15 #240 ********************************