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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Thursday, June 24, 2004

Now it's big enough (and light enough) to focus. 6:50:31 PM    comment []

The Redemption Of Johnny Paris   This is an Adobe Audition 1.5 spectral view of the opening karate chops of the Scherzo, Beethoven Symphony #9, number nine, number nine….Hey! Remember Huntley-Brinkley? – you know, “chop-chop, chop-chop, BOOM-BAH, chop-chop!” Now you do! Look at those beautifully laddered violin overtones in the opening chop-chops. Or should they be chops-chop, like Attorneys-at-law? Then look at the fiery earth blast of the tympani BOOM-BAH.   Along with Ludwig van, I’ve been playing with some files from Johnny & The Hurricanes, the first band from Toledo, Ohio to hit the Top 40 unless you count Teresa Brewer as a band. Now, having been on the nth telephone of Toledo musical gossip in the early 60s, I blindly repeated the news that Johnny Paris (or he might have been “Johnny &,” to differentiate himself from the late great Johnny Ace) was an “egotistical butthead”, words barely understood by anyone and therefore calculated to have maximum naiveté mojo gumbo. The expression rolled off the tongue nicely, guaranteeing repeatability, such as “He waffles!” or “He flip flops!” does in current political debate. Besides, even though Johnny had the lead name in the group, his sax playing consisted mainly of riffs and fills, mere decorations to the dominant melodies of Paul Tesluk on the magnificent Hammond B3 and the “ginchy” guitar solos by Dave Yorko. So, when the original group broke up. He took the name with him and left the original band struggling to reassert their identity in Toledo, a few miles south of percolating Motown.   The band was unfortunately a novelty group from the beginning. After their initial chartbuster Crossfire, they deteriorated under unscrupulous management from (where else?) Detroit, who discovered they could claim royalty credits by having the boys play public domain music like Reveille or Ja-da with a snappy rock beat. The kids on American Bandstand played along for a while but face it, there’s no way Ja-da can fit on the same musical soundscape as Little Richard insanely screaming “a bop bop a loo mop” even when that got cleaned up for Pat Boone. The Boys were washed up and Johnny Paris split town with the name.   His name wasn’t even “Johnny Paris.” His real name was John Pocisk. Oh yeah, he was a dashing lad and easily the one who got the most pussy, but it seemed as though his musical contribution was minimal. And who the hell takes a name like “Paris” except Paris Hilton (<nudge-nudge>) or Parisoula, Saddam Hussein’s girl friend?   The Boys were good though, even though their talent was wasted. You don’t even hear the iceberg’s tip of their talent on their recordings. When I heard them play without Johnny in Toledo clubs circa 1964, they could cover anything – Sam Cooke, Booker T, Chuck Berry. They could slow it down and play cool jazz, like an Errol Garneresque Misty or set the place on fire with their own music. Before Johnny left, The Beatles opened for this band and Del Shannon singing Runaway in England. They backed rockabilly legend Mack Vickery; they were A-number-1, top of the heap.   And through it all, Johnny played stock riffs and cheesy solos occasionally.   Sentence passed.   Until tonight, that is. Using my new Adobe software as a labor of love to remix their early AM-radio limited hits to full-spectrum music, I noticed that Johnny was seriously flat on a section of his solo on Down Yonder (which, like the Beethoven Schezo, also begins with a tympani statement). Just another reason to consider him a dork, I thought. Well, let’s use this software to fix it then, I thought shortly afterwards. Yep, you can correct pitch to the key being played – but I didn’t know what key that was. So I whipped out my Telecaster to figure out what the key was. Using a computerized tuner. I got each string within a few cents of A=440 standardized tuning, then played along enough to determine the key to correct to. It was “D,” two sharps.   Now you probably have heard about the guy making a national campaign to get The Star-Spangled Banner transposed from B-flat to G so ordinary humans can sing it without screeching like an orgasmic banshee. That idea sounded good until a high-school band director wrote in to NPR’s Weekend Edition saying that key of G would have his B-flat woodwinds struggling in a key with four sharps. You see, a key that’s “C” to a guitar has two flats on say, a saxophone – which is okay, because the flatted keys require minimal fingering complexity on those woodwinds. But add a few sharps and those poor muthahfuckahs ain’t worrying about which valve to release, they’re worrying about which finger doesn’t get pushed! It’s like trying to draw while looking in a mirror, nothing just flows – a seeming simple transition from one diatonic note to the next up the scale becomes not a minor adjustment but an acid nightmare of chess computing through the looking glass something or the other, and you can't put a capo on a sax.   Yep, it’s tough – and that’s just four sharps for The National Anthem.   Add another for key of D and you have 5 notes sharped, only two natural. Quick – which notes aren’t sharped? Well, F gets sharped, then C, then G, D, A, E, and finally B. Spell it backwards and it’s BEAD, GCF. That mnemonic gets you in the ballpark but it doesn’t let you play. Look at it this way, with 5 sharps, everything but C and F are sharped. Almost every finger required for every single note!   So, I have a new respect for Johnny Paris. There was no way I could get his Down Yonder solo in tune. I am impressed that he could play anything remotely close while adjusting to the “easy” open string keys of the guitar. I tip my hat to him.   6:01:49 PM    comment []

"Rome is burning...now listen to this fiddle tune." 4:25:26 PM    comment []

Time for a brief interlude of sanity from the ever-vigilant Steve Raker, the man who arguably invented the Delta Blues:     In response to the name, schmame bruhaha (see below), the office of Former Navy secretary John Lehman has released their list of things that may seem different, but are actually the same:   peaches and pears -- must be the same, come on, just look at the first three letters and the 's' at the end.  peas may also be the same.   'rocket popsicles' and 'rocket propelled grenades' -- almost goes without saying, the same.   'Michael Bloomberg' and 'Barbra Streisand' -- this is the same dude, no question, just look at all those letters that are the same.  And that big B, that's a dead giveaway.   'high school graduation party' and 'high level terrorist meeting' -- these two are obviously the same, they are both 'high', and isn't a party just like a meeting, of course it is.   dogs and cats -- the same   'dinner with friends' and 'training with al qaeda' -- you need to trust us on this one, they are the same.  we are the government for pity sake, we're not going to steer you wrong   sidewalks and sandwiches --has anyone ever offered you a sidewalk sandwich?  no?  see they can't because they are the same.   'John Kerry' and 'John Kennedy' -- the same.  the Democrats are trying to pull a fast one here by promoting a candidate who's been dead for 40+ years   soup and soap -- you want to quibble about one letter, one stinkin' letter?  they are the same.   'Allah Akbar' and 'I Love Lucy' -- this one's a little tricky.  again with the trust.   'car bomb' and 'Karbala' -- it's not a city, it's a bomb ...in a car ...Carbombala.     ********************************     Al Qaeda Link To Iraq May Be Confusion Over Names By Walter Pincus and Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, June 22, 2004; Page A13 An allegation that a high-ranking al Qaeda member was an officer in Saddam Hussein's private militia may have resulted from confusion over Iraqi names, a senior administration official said yesterday. Former Navy secretary John Lehman, a Republican member of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Sunday that documents found in Iraq "indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaeda." Although he said the identity "still has to be confirmed," Lehman introduced the information on NBC's "Meet the Press" to counter a commission staff report that said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no "collaborative relationship." Yesterday, the senior administration official said Lehman had probably confused two people who have similar-sounding names. One of them is Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi, identified as an al Qaeda "fixer" in Malaysia. Officials say he served as an airport greeter for al Qaeda in January 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, at a gathering for members who were to be involved in the attacks on the USS Cole, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Iraqi military documents, found last year, listed a similar name, Lt. Col. Hikmat Shakir Ahmad, on a roster of Hussein's militia, Saddam's Fedayeen. "By most reckoning that would be someone else" other than the airport greeter, said the administration official, who would speak only anonymously because of the matter's sensitivity. He added that the identification issue is still being studied but "it doesn't look like a match to most analysts." In an interview yesterday, Lehman said it is still possible the man in Kuala Lumpur was affiliated with Hussein, even if he isn't the man on the Fedayeen roster. "It's one more instance where this is an intriguing possibility that needs to be run to ground," Lehman said. "The most intriguing part of it is not whether or not he was in the Fedayeen, but whether or not the guy who attended Kuala Lumpur had any connections to Iraqi intelligence. . . . We don't know." Allegations that Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi was under Iraqi intelligence control were raised last year in an article in the Weekly Standard by Stephen F. Hayes, and later discounted by U.S. intelligence officials. No such tie was indicated in the commission report. The commission staff report, released Wednesday, prompted a vigorous response from the Bush administration, which had cited since 2002 an al Qaeda-Hussein link as one reason for going to war. Just last week, Vice President Cheney said in a television interview he "probably" knew intelligence about Iraq's ties to terrorists that the commission had not received, but added, "I don't know what they know." On Sunday, Lehman said, "The vice president was right when he said that he may have things that we don't yet have." Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton have asked the administration to provide any additional information it has. Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said no new requests for information have been sent, but the panel has long-standing requests for documents. Cheney's spokesman, Kevin Kellems, said that, to his knowledge, the vice president has received no new requests. © 2004 The Washington Post Company   4:19:07 PM    comment []

Watering the plants this morning, I noticed that one of the pepper plants had fallen over, probably from that thunderstorm yesterday, I thought. Then I bumped it with my knee and noticed it didn't give like a stalky plant alone. Yes, my poblano plant is with child! A baby poblano, so small it can't even get in focus yet. 6:25:11 AM    comment []