Knuckledragger

For the New Englanders:

RIP Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, fatally shot on porch of his rural SoCal home.

In, ahem, "honour" of Randy Andy getting cuffed, I resurrected a meme format from the early 2000s.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights icon, dies at 84. I met him in 1999 or so by being at the wrong place at the right time. I worked for Amherst College in the Media Center in the late 90s. It was a lousy job that paid terribly. I never saw $10 an hour, and my boss had to keep my hours under 20 a week or the college would be forced to give me benefits. That meant I'd have to take entire weeks off but also get called in last minute because I was needed. At that time, Jesse Jackon's star had ridden pretty high and he hadn't yet been rocked by any scandals. He was giving a talk at Amherst College. The largest auditorium space they had (outside of the goddamn gymnasium, which was an echoey nightmare) was Johnson Chapel. I was tasked with getting the sound running, but I wasn't allowed to wire up the speaker with a lavalier mic. Filthy peasants like me weren't supposed to get near the important people. Joke was on them, because Jesse wanted a conventional podium mic. Long and not super interesting story short, I was late getting to one of the locations. I arrived huffing and puffing. There was extra security on campus because Jesse Jackson was a big deal but the cops were still pretty chill (this was pre-9/11 and the age of paranoia). The town police had no idea who I was of course, the College ones knew me. I told one of them "I'm here to do sound, where are they?" He said "they're in the The Octagon, doing a press conference." I jogged over there and went in the front door. The press conference was in what had been the Octagon's library. One part of the downstairs was home to "The Afro-American Department" (the sign had not changed since the 70s) but it was too small even for a press conference. The library was upstair and the steps to are spiral (octagonal) and very creaky. I knew if I went up them, even slowly, I'd make such a racket everyone would be staring at me as I entered. So I stood there and waited. Next thing I knew there was a very tall black man, standing over me with his hand out. I hurriedly shook it and "uuh nice to meet you Mr. Jackson." The entire press gaggle and all the various dignitaries followed him down. Once the scrum had cleared, I went over to Johnson Chapel and found my boss and his (full time) assistant working. He gave me the look of death. I quickly told him the above story and he was sufficiently amused that he didn't admonish me for being late. There was a group from Poland that was video taping the talk. They had one guy who spoke English. He asked me for an audio tap from our sound board. I said "Yeah, not problem. It's mic output only however." He said "I had better get our sound engineer." The engineer spoke no English, but I pointed at the output that said "mic" and he nodded. The English speaking Pole said to my boss "the universal language of sound engineers."

Robert Duvall, Oscar-Winning Acting Legend, Dies at 95.

I've mentioned Martin Sturtzer on H-C many times over the years. He is a German ambient artist who lives in Wuppertal, Germany (home to the coolest tramway in the world.) He has an impressive synth collection and the single best behaved synth kitty I have seen in my life. He is not happy. Also, Spotify sucks balls.

Putting this here, because I live under the delusion that I will some day get through the "Check out this music (fuck VEVO)" thread. As I mentioned elsewhere, a DJ I knew for over 25 years died recently. Periodically, he'd send me a link to a remix he thought I might like. I used Faecesbook's "see friendship" and found a few of them yesterday. Maneater needs no introduction. It's a summation of early 80s synth pop to a T. It's infectious, over the top and will be stuck in your head for days. It's not an easy song to remix properly and do anything original. Certainly there are a legion of remixes out there, most significantly faster than the original's ~90 BPM. Flying White Dots went in the opposite direction, stripping out most of the original and making sparing use of sparse elements while dubbing the absolute fuck out of things. I have sneaked this remix into more than a couple downtempo sets over the years. On the other end of the energy spectrum, The Reflex Stems turn Lennon's diss track against McCartney (that is as much autobiographical as it is about Paul) into a nearly 10 minute epic. In spite of its length, there isn't too much wasted space here. The Reflex wisely left enough time before John's vocals come in to make it easy to work this remix into more conventional downtempo. For me, this is a great "late into the set" track. Both remixes exemplify Matt's ear for quality. I played both of them (unmixed) over my main sound system last night as a tribute.

*snip* This should not be public.

Greg Brown, Co-Founder of Cake and Writer of 'The Distance,' Passes Away. Pretty much the perfect pop song in my jaded opinion.

Linus Tech Squeaks have announced a new line of USB-C cables. Video is mostly fluff, because Linus. On the plus side, the cables are marked and while not TB certified, some in fact are. Given what I've paid for TB3/TB4 cables, even with shipping these things are a bargain.

Demond Wilson, Last Main Cast Member of ‘Sanford and Son,’ Dies at 79. You big dummy!

"🇬🇧🇬🇧 it has six lenses 🇬🇧"

RIP Sly Dunbar, 1/2 of the greatest rhythm section of all time. Robbie Shakespeare preceded him 4 years ago.