It was 65 around here today. Pitssburgh, to our south, caught an 80 degree day, I hear. Between now and the weekend, we’re supposed to get snow. Go figure.
*The Music: WAR; Platinum Jazz [1]
Actually, it could be ANY of their LP’s tonight. The World is a Ghetto, Deliver the Word, All Day Music, Why can’t we be Friends… and a few more, besides.
None of the players was really superior, I don’t think. I mean to say you could name better players at each instrument… and certainly, their singing was no great shakes, individually. But put them all together, back in the day, and they had a sound nobody could come close to. They managed to figure out how to get a bunch of people and instruments that had no right in the world to sound good together, to sound GREAT together. One of the classic situations where the entity is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
And they have been around, too. They recorded with Eric Burdon, (Spill the Wine) [2]ex of the Animals. And they managed to overcome it(!).(Look let’s face it, during the late sixties and early seventies Burdon couldn’t carry a tune in a basket , and wasn’t so much soulful as too high to know what his voice was doing) Listen to any song off Spill the wine, other then the Title Track,a dn you’ll see what I mean… these guys were carrying Burdon. It’s really that simple.
They were performing with Jimi Hendrix the night he turned in his last public performance. (Tobacco Road) [3]
They were the combination of soulful harmony, a production sense that few can match today, and attention to audio showmanship. That last part is important. So many of today are more interested in the visual flash then what actually makes it to the recording. Well, no wonder so much of what comes out of the entertainment industry today is such utter poop. These guys came along before that whole nonsense started…
Their music was genuinely heartfelt, they had a great time playing together, and they sounded it.
* So! They’re predicting another very active hurricane season [4], just like they did last year. WhYou remember… where we had something like eight named storms, none of which came near land. Forgive me but I fail to be impressed. (Ed… and these idiots are supposed to be able to tell us about a one degree varience in world temp, much less the efefcts it will cause?)
* Suddenly, Wal-Mart is no longer on the hit list of the Democratic party. Given the amount of buttock to lip interaction going on, as well as the number of dollars now being tossed to the Democrats from Wal-mart, one gets the impression that the Democrats can be bought. The Washington Post [5] has some serious details on this stuff.
* An update on the CNN Center shooting I mentioned earlier today; Apparently a domestic thing.. an ex-boyfriend… that ended up at work… a hotel attached to the center. The woman dead, the ex boyfriend just about there… The reason CNN wasn’t all over it on their website? Because that area of CNN was the first to be evacuated.
* Wanna buy Kitt? Yeah, I mean the black TA. [6]It’ll prolly go for around $150,000.. it’s one of four known to exist. I wouldn’t mind having the thing myself but not for the economy. And I’m certainly not spending that, me if I end up with David Hasselhoff as part of the deal. (Shudder) You watch; Some yahoo will wrap the thing around a pole trying to get it to drive itself.
* Brit Hume [7] notes that Harry Reid is going back on his word. He said, before the election, that “We’re not going to do anything to limit funding or cut off funds.” So we ahve Democrats going back on a campaign pledge, huh? Who’d have thought it?
* Hume also mentions how ridiculous this global warming thing is getting;
Local officials in Belgium’s French-speaking region of Wallonia [8] have a new tool in the fight against global warming. They have approved a tax on barbequing. Experts say that up to 100 grams of carbon dioxide are produced during barbequing.So Wallonians will have to pay 20 euros — about 27 dollars — each time they fire up the grill. And the authorities aren’t kidding around when it comes to enforcement. Officials say they will use helicopters with thermal sensors to detect illegal grilling.
McQ [9] mentions this today, also, and says:
So we have the UK contemplating a one flight rule per family for aircraft use and the Belgians monitoring BBQs with heat sensing helicopters (yeah, no carbon footprint there, huh?).
The monitoring helicopter would be a worse problem than the grill, I should think…. If lowering ‘greenhouse gasses’ were the real goal, that is. He also points to the recent USSC nonsense, and suggests that such things coming here, isn’t at all out of the question.