🎵 Music
🎵 Nothing Absent At The Supermarket
Twenty Two Years Ago - give or take - my friend Bob told me to take a listen to an album he has just found called ‘In Abstentia’. Still at the top of my memory banks sees me sitting beside him at the back of some grey boring conference room in Sunnyvale listening to somebody droning on as he silently passed me his wired ear buds connected to his new iPod and watched me have my mind blown as I listened to …
🔗🎵 Blackest Eyes - Song by Porcupine Tree - Apple Music
He dropped me the MP3s that evening - and in turn they got moved to my iPod for my listening pleasure. That weekend I was up in San Francisco and did a detour to this store.
Yes ‘that’ specific one - it had served me well thought the 90s and though Amazon was beginning to creep into my world - Tower still held a special place for me - particularly for special music.
… and the rest is history - I have heard it all (ok - not ‘all’ - the dude is prolific), but I do have over FIFTY of his albums in CD format and seen him live in different formats maybe eight times across two continents.
All this as a backdrop to this morning’s trip to the Supermarket.
.. and to say that if anyone spotted me this morning in the Supermarket - smiling, taking my head, bouncing even … this is why. (Jax believes Wilson’s music is sad and makes her sad.) Me? Yes it is sad - but I am with Wilson on this
“I don’t tend to write songs about things that make me happy. I tend to write songs about things that make me angry or melancholic or sad. Those are the things that make me want to express or exercise something through my songwriting. There’s a lot of beauty to be found in sadness and melancholia."
💬 Steven Wilson
In no particular order - other than this is the order the tracks got played .. and Yes … Apple Music - because why wouldn’t you?
🔗🎵 The Watchmaker - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Pariah (feat. Ninet Tayeb) - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Permanating (Ewan Pearson Mix) - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Trains - Song by Porcupine Tree - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Sectarian - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Four Chords That Made a Million - Song by Porcupine Tree - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 The Raven That Refused to Sing - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Grace for Drowning - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Index - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
Belle De Jour - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Postcard - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 PERSONAL SHOPPER - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music - featuring Elton John on ‘Shopping List’.
🔗🎵 Luminol - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
🔗🎵 Deform to Form a Star - Song by Steven Wilson - Apple Music
📸 🌊 🎵 ‘Woke Up This Morning’ … duh duh da duh
Maybe 🎵 ‘Morning Has Broken’
No 🎵 ‘Same As It Ever Was’
🎈166/366 🔗 🎵 Fascinating
🎈165/366 🎵 Memories Moving To The Future
A Musical Box - no, not 🔗 🎵 that one - though in itself well worth a watch - Gabriel at his theatrical finest in 1974.
I happened to drift around some music videos on YouTube last night - and well - some of them just needed to be shared …
Starting with a couple from Robert Plant with the Shape Shifters
🔗 🎵 1 - Robert Plant at Austin City Limits
🔗 🎵 2 - Robert Plant at Austin City Limits
And Then …
Moving on to why Music has a problem. 9 minutes from Rick Beato - listen.
🔗 🎵 Rick Beato on Music created by AI - All AI generated tracks come from 🔗 Udio
Lets see how long it takes AI to do this …
All is not lost - except it might be because we have seen time and time again how the extraordinary is not always understood and often ignored.
🔗 🎵 Guthrie playing .. in The Hans Zimmer Show … just watch Zimmer’s face during this 2 minute solo …
Who the hell is Guthrie (apart from the finest living exponent of the guitar you will ever hear.)
🎈162/366 🎵🔗 Ten New Albums I Am Enjoying Right Now - Ted Gioia
This is a track from one of them.
LOVE IT
🎈160/366 📸 🌊 “🔗🎵📼 Early one morning just as the day was dawning …”
🎈155/366 The First Vision Pro Concert Movie
I have touched on this before but after reading a Lefsetz post over the weekend, decided to expand a little and log the thinking for posterity.
🔗 Lefsetz Letter - Company At The Sphere - that’s the link to where 🖇️ this quote came from that I published this weekend. I said I’d be back…
Around 2016 - ‘the term ‘spatial’ was being coined’. - though I personally think Apple’s ‘spatial’ is a light year or two ahead of where Mr. Scoble was at the time (He’s very quiet these days, isn’t he?)
🖇️ But February this year I made some pretty logical predictions about the first Vision Pro Movie.
🖇️ And in October last year I was predicting that The Sphere was a pretty good place to start on a ‘Vision Pro Concert Series’ - and I think Apple will be the one to do it. Well, maybe not ‘doing’ it - but certainly financing it.
I still think that.
But who will be the director and/or subject matter for this groundbreaking event?
Who’s Out?
Despite Tay Tay’s global appeal, it won’t be her. The Swifties don’t have the money to buy the Pro.
Peter Jackson is deep into the latest tech to do great things, definitely a friend of Apple - and his foray into music with The Beatles is interesting - but no, no Sphere experience and besides 🔗 he is deep into his next Trilogy .. as Producer - not Director, but still ..
Original “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy filmmaker Peter Jackson and his partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are producing the movie and “will be involved every step of the way,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during an earnings call Thursday.
Phish? I dunno - not seeing it.
So Who’s In?
Two very real possibilities …
U2 - deeply intertwined with Apple - remember the album? And then they were first up at the Sphere - and Zane Lowe hanging out with them, talking with them. We have seen some of the footage, but who knows what was taken off the ‘back stage’ for the first Vision Pro movie?
… but I am wondering - and well out of left field - but …
The Grateful Dead - who have always been at the bleeding edge of touring and spectacle
- The ‘Home’ band for Bay Area based Apple
- Sphere residency happening - even as I type
- Residency coincided with Earth Day 2024 (very ‘Appley’)
- Lots of San Francisco through time imagery featured in the show
- 🔗 and then there is this - Huff Post - so maybe a pinch of salt is needed, written eight years ago …but written by Bill Bradey, so not his usual subject matter - but certainly no slouch.
- Note that Mayer is also part of The Sphere residency.
It’s all fitting in for this bear.
The only hard thing to reconcile is that ‘Tay Tay’ problem. Is there an overlap?
I think there just might be.
What do you think?
I’ll come back to this later. Lefsetz has already connected some dots .. but he didn’t go on and introduce the lurking ‘hobby’ that ‘solves this’ and is a clear and present danger to the entertainment industry if they continue to focus on BAU.
The last paragraph.
You Just Can't Tell. Nobody Can.
I love listening to knowledgeable 🎵 people steeped in ‘the lore’, ‘the history’ .. I can swim in it forever. An inevitable question appears somewhere in the conversation .. “did you know it was going to be a hit?”
no clue mate
… is the usual and correct response.
Same with newsletters. You just can’t tell. I keep reading over and over different writers that are surprised when their ‘magnum opus’ falls flat and a ‘throwaway’ goes viral.
My throwaway newsletter from a couple of days ago gave me an equal numbers of unsubscribes and subscribes … no viral accelerator for me .. but after being flat for over a year - my ‘paid subscriptions’ increased by around 10%. Not only that, but the subscription broke a psychological barrier - paid for subscriptions hit ‘double figures’ 🥳
The point is that you just don’t know - right?
If you want to read it - 🔗 you can
I stumbled across this today as I was collecting 🖇️ these. I nearly moved through because ‘Kelly’ - but I am a sucker for Jeff, so …
Holy Crap …🔗 🎵 📼 Jeff Daniels
.. I was under the impression he had only recently written it - but this from 13 years ago - suggests otherwise.
If you are reading this post on my site, you will see that this link is rendered as an embedded video at the bottom of the post. (THANKYOU @rknightuk]. It will render just fine - unless the video owner wants you to watch it over on YouTube (and to be fair - there are very good reasons for that). If that happens, click on the link above and you will be taken to YouTube. The 'error' is only because the creator wants you to got to YouTube to watch it. That said - on rare occasions, it might actually be broken. If it is - sorry about that - try sending me an email and I will check if I made an error.
… another two ‘broken links’ .. has something changed?
In no particular order (except for perhaps the first two) …
If you are reading this post on my site, you will see that this link is rendered as an embedded video at the bottom of the post. (THANKYOU @rknightuk]. It will render just fine - unless the video owner wants you to watch it over on YouTube (and to be fair - there are very good reasons for that). If that happens, click on the link above and you will be taken to YouTube. The 'error' is only because the creator wants you to got to YouTube to watch it. That said - on rare occasions, it might actually be broken. If it is - sorry about that - try sending me an email and I will check if I made an error.
We all get that broken link message from time to time don’t we? What is particularly interesting on this post is to find EIGHT blocks - I wonder if it is the writers insisting on the block - I don’t think there I any other constant.
Now 🎵 THAT is what I call a lineup.
The 2 ‘permanent’ members of the Haiku Hillbillies plus their occasional phenomenal guest guitarist Tom Conway. Right there I miss Maui. And all the more special to be at Ocean Vodka.
paging // @crossingthethreshold
I love Rick Beato’s podcast channel and Ted Gioia’s writing and so was delighted to watch this meeting of minds last night …
🎈123/366 For your most happy listening pleasure … put me in such a good mood.
🔗🎵📼 The Mariachis with Hugh Cornwell perform Golden Brown
🔗 Cigarettes After Sex are playing Madison Garden.
Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of them either.
🔗 🎵 Apocalypse is their ‘biggie’. (1,233,307,237 streams. Apparently, I must have been under my rock at the time.)
🔗 🎵 📼 Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven (But Nobody Wants to Die) - not as many!
That's Entertainment ...
No - 🎵🔗 not this
We knew Ms. Redstone wanted out. Looks like it’s going to happen.
And Ellison’s Skydance seems to be in the frame for the preferred acquirer which I definitely do not get - but sure why not?
I look forward to opinions from people like Rob Long and Peter Kafka, if I were to predict - I am guessing that Long in particular might be thinking like me. (Or am I thinking like him?)
The main question is what does David think he is buying and what does Shari think she is selling - because I think they are two very different things. But Heh! What do I know?
(Side Note - The ‘Ellison’ is Larry’s son - who seems to be turning out to be a media/entertainment version of technology dad.)
🎈112/366