My Music Library - 1969

1969. It was the year that not only marked the end of the 60's in a literal sense, but heralded the cultural end as well. The Summer of Love seemed a distant memory as the Manson "family" went on the rampage in California. While there was Woodstock, there was also Altamont.

Events that happened this year would affect the world for years to come.

Nixon declared the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States expected its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. In essence, it heralded a long, slow, bloody fade to our involvement in Vietnam.

Yasser Arafat was elected the leader of the PLO. Muammar al-Gaddafi, a captain in the Libyan Army, staged a coup and ousted Libya's King. Rupert Murdoch expanded his media empire by purchasing the largest selling British Sunday newspaper, The News of the World. Serious border clashes occurred between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, raising the specter of a Sino-Soviet War.

These events weren't all bad. The first message was sent over ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. UNIX, the language of computer servers for decades was born. It would later give rise to Mac OS and Linux.

Monty Python's Flying Circus and Sesame Street premiered and gave people a reason to watch PBS.

My favorite part was Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. For a moment, the world held its collective breath as Neil Armstrong took his "giant leap for mankind."

In the music world, Noel Redding finally had enough of Jimi Hendrix and the hysteria surrounding the scene and quit the band.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, known henceforth as CCR, released not 1, not 2, but 3 albums! They even played Woodstock, but they didn't go on until 3 AM because The Grateful Dead had jammed far past their scheduled set time. By this time, most of the audience had passed out from exhaustion.

The Beatles released Abbey Road, their last great album. In fact, it was the last album they recorded as 1970's Let It Be was recorded several months before the Abbey Road sessions. Their last live performance was on the rooftop of Apple HQ in January, before it was broken up by police (U2 would do something similar for the "Where The Streets Have No Name" video). The Beatles had already begun to go their separate ways as business decisions, personal lives, and creative differences drove the Fab 4 into the Mad 4.

The Doors hit bottom with The Soft Parade. For some reason, they thought it would be a good idea to add horns and aim for a more commercial sound. Morrisson was pretty much drunk all the time at this point. Except for the single, “Touch Me,” and the title track, a transcript of an acid trip if there ever was one, the album sucks (well, “Shaman’s Blues” was ok). In fact, it was painful to go back and listen to it for this post.

Morrisson's drinking and rock god status had finally taken its toll artistically and turned him into a piece of crap. It all culminated in the Miami Incident. Something must've clicked in his head at this point. In the few shows the band did several months later, Morrisson ditched the rock god persona for a more laid back performer. The wild shaman antics were replaced by a sober man on a bar stool. Leather pants were ditched for jeans, t-shirt, and a beard.

Pink Floyd released the two record Ummagumma? Yeah. WTF? The first record was live material while the second record was “experimental” studio material. Each band member wrote material to comprise 1/4 of the record and, except for Gilmour’s piece, performed it by themselves. Waters’ “Grantchester Meadows” is a nice acoustic piece while “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” is funny. Gilmour’s “The Narrow Way” is a good psychedelic rock song. But “Sysyphus” (Wright) and “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” (Mason) come across as self-indulgent dreck.

Led Zeppelin heralded the coming of the 70's with their eponymous debut. It all started with the first track off the album, "Good Times Bad Times."

"In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man.
Now I've reached that age I try to do all those things the best I can."

That bit of verse became the battle cry of every teenage male and set the tone for the next decade to come.

The album and it's follow up, II, was a mix of blues covers and hard rock numbers with even the occasional ballad (before 80's metal bands made them suck) thrown in for good measure.

While hard rock had its foundation in the Blues, where musicians went with it from there was another matter. While Hendrix was cooking out on the astral plane, Led Zeppelin was firmly rooted, digging in the dirt here on Earth. In fact, Led Zeppelin's sound was forging something heretofore unheard of: Heavy Metal.

Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones. You know them and what they delivered. I won't go on about them any further right now.

But my favorite album of the year was Tommy by The Who. You've know the story. No need to rehash it, right? It was more than "that deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball." Then again, pinball? We journey with Tommy from his traumatized upbringing to his eventual spiritual awakening. It was ambitious in its undertaking and, somehow, the band pulls it off. The album launched the band into greatness. The fact that they didn't rely on an orchestra to back them probably helped. Audiences were amazed that four musicians could make so much music on stage.

1969 revealed that the rock world was now in transition. The 60's were fading and the 70's were coming. Some bands adapted. Others didn't and faded away.

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Non-Profit Newspapers

Senate Bill Would Make Papers Nonprofits

A new Senate bill could grant nonprofit status to newspaper companies, many of which are currently struggling to survive in a worsening economic environment.

Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D., Md.) has introduced what he calls the Newspaper Revitalization Act, which would grant newspaper companies nonprofit status under the same U.S. Internal Revenue Service code reserved for religious, educational and other charitable organizations.

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Sen. Cardin said in a statement. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.

Because newspaper profits have been falling in recent years, no substantial loss of federal revenue is expected, Cardin said.

If the bill were approved, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible.

While a transformation to a nonprofit organization may not be the first choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains, Cardin said "it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat."

A number of published newspapers have run aground recently, including the 149-year-old Rocky Mountain News in Denver, The New York Sun and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which is now only on the Internet. Meanwhile, the Ann Arbor News has announced it would stop publishing later this year, and the Hearst Corp. has threatened to shut down The San Francisco Chronicle if a buyer cannot be found.

A number of other publications have gone through dramatic changes, including newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, while filed for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News will curtail the home delivery schedule for their print editions to the three days.

Gannett, the owner of USA Today and more than 80 daily newspapers, wants virtually all of its U.S. employees to stay at home and forgo at least one week's pay before July. The Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, also ordered pay cuts of 8% and 10-day furloughs for nonunion employees.

I'm still digesting the implications of this.

Free Market proponents might argue that since people are getting their news from the Internet then the newspapers should just die. But Internet news sites don't make money, except from banner ads. Subscription models have failed. So then what happens? Journalists have to get paid too. Less journalists means an already narrowly focused newsmedia becomes even more enslaved to the 24 hour news networks, where ratings rule the day. Haven't we heard enough about the Octumom or the Pop Tart-of-the-Month's run in with the Paparazzi? Local news? Gone. You're not going to find out about your town's budget hearing on CNN.

I don't believe that this should be misconstrued as a bailout. Less tax revenue? Is tax revenue even relevant with trillion dollar deficits? At least, if we get newspapers to stop worrying about the bottom line and start focusing instead on journalism, there's a chance that the quality will improve. Ok, maybe not. But at least it'll give small cities a chance to keep receiving newspapers instead of being at the mercy of national corporations who are beholden to Wall Street.

Eventually, the newspaper industry will figure out how to make the transformation from print to bytes a profitable one. Once everyone owns a PDA and has electronic banking, then some form of micropayment system will probably be established. As much as the digital gadget crowd claim they're ready for it now, Small Town, USA isn't. Read the Sunday paper online? At least if one of my kids spill their milk on the newspaper, it won't cost me $500 to replace it.

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The White Death

Little brown bat infected with a new species of Geomyces fungus that has coated its muzzle, ears and wings white. Credit: Al Hicks, NY DEC.

Lost amid all the AIG outrage this week was the report that White Nose Syndrome has killed off 90% of Connecticut's bat population this winter. This is nothing short of catastrophic. By way of comparison, even the Black Death killed no more than 60% of Europe's population. And it's not just Connecticut. Reports are coming in from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York where casualty rates in the bats' caves are 90%, 95% and even 100%! The death toll has already surpassed one million!

And it's spreading. New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia all reported cases this year. It has crossed bat species lines.

The reason why this is such a big deal is that bats eat bugs. LOTS of them. Bats are Nature's bug zappers. Depending on the species, a bat will eat anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 mosquitoes and other insects every night during the warmer months here in the northeast. Think about it: one million less bats means 1 to 3 billion more mosquitoes and other bugs get to live each and every summer night. That means an increased likelihood of West Nile virus, though that's the least of our problems.

Think about what some of those other insects eat. If you guessed "plants," you're right. If the fungus spreads to the really big agricultural states, then it's going to mean more insects free to attack our crops. Farmers will be forced to counter the attack by using more pesticides, which carry their own health risk. Yes, there are farms here in the Northeast, but they certainly don't compare in size to other parts of the country.

Fortunately, the fungus seems content with cold climate dwelling bats, so far. But it's a new species (While the fungus is genetically a member of the genus Geomyces, it looks different from the known Geomyces species, according to microbiologist David Blehert of the U.S. Geological Survey - source), so I don't know if it's certain that there aren't more surprises in store. And biologists aren't sure yet if the fungus is what's causing the die off or an opportunistic invader of an already weakened host. "Bats with white-nose burn through their fat stores before spring, driving some to rouse early from hibernation in a futile search for food. Many die as they hunt fruitlessly for insects." (source) "Once beneath the outer layer of skin covering a bat's wing, the fungus multiplies, sometimes causing the wing to bulge to five to 10 times its original thickness." Researchers are working on a fungicide to treat the scourge.

Right now, polar bears are getting most of the attention in the MSM. They're used in the political arena to draw attention to melting ice caps and climate change. As much as I hate seeing any non-parasitic species threatened with extinction, polar bears are nowhere near as important as bats, bees or frogs. They're top-of-the-food chain predators. Humans have already displaced them in their role in Nature. Their extinction would be tragic, but not catastrophic. We NEED bats. While they lack the cuteness factor (Coke has made people forget that polar bears are carnivores who eat even cuter baby seals), it's important that people are aware of this. Not only is there a dire need for a cure, but we need to find out why this new species of fungus came into existence now. If it's a random mutation, then so be it. But if there's a man-made reason, then it needs to be eradicated.

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Beer In Review - Marching On

While I've always been a fan of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, I really haven't had a chance to sample their other wares. It's been an availability issue. But that's changed. I finally got to try their Porter and it lives up to the brand.

A glass treats you to an ample quantity of rich, brown, long lasting head that floats on top of a dark brown body. Very little light gets through the pint glass, what little does reveals a faint ruby hue. There's a slight, roasted malt bouquet. Chocolate and roasted malt dance with your tongue. Caramel tones tap your taste buds, hoping to cut in. A tingle of hops arrives just before the savory finish. 5.6 ABV

The website informs us that they used Goldings hops for bittering with Williamette used for flavoring. I find this surprising. Normally the reverse is how I've seen it done. Not that you can't. I mean, I've done it with my homebrews. It's just that you don't normally see it done that way. Kent Golding is typically mellow on the alpha acids while Williamette is stronger.

* * *
Next up is the Storm King Stout from Victory Brewing. This is an Imperial Stout, clocking in at a hefty 9.1% ABV. They brew it in Downintown, Pennsylvania, which is a couple dozen miles west of Philly.

This dark brown elixir is nearly black as it flies out of the bottle. The color even seeps into the head, forewarning the imbiber that a potent concoction is on the way. No light gets through the pint glass at all. And if you're brave enough to drink it, it sticks with you the whole way down. Pacific Northwest hops provide the initial tingle on your tongue which yields to a rich, complex malt character that warms your spirit like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter day.

* * *
We'll take a break from all of the scary dark beers for something lighter: Berry Weiss from Leinenkugel Brewery. Over the summer, I went to an Iron Maiden concert down in New Jersey. The amphitheater served Leinenkugel, which I'd never heard of. I had their Sunset Wheat which was really nice to have on a summer day. Back home, I spotted the Berry Weiss and picked some up.

There's ample white head on the pour. As this is a wheat beer, there's a bit of haze to the amber (you could call it peach) body. There's no denying that this is a fruity beer. The website says that there's a mix of blackberries, elderberries and loganberries (I've never heard of the latter and elderberries always reminds me of Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail). It's a very sweet berry beer but it didn't overwhelm me. I can't say that everyone that tries it will feel the same. The beer had a very lambic mouthfeel to it so if you're into lambics this would be a good beer for you. 4.7% ABV.

* * *
And now, back to the dark stuff. North Coast Brewing provides us with the Old #38 Stout. Named after a retired steam engine, this beer has all the charm of an old locomotive. A light brown head rides atop a dark brown body. It's opaque, like the finish, but instead of burning coal (fortunately) we get a faint, roasted malt aroma. It's smooth with alternating bits of chocolate and cappuccino notes. There's a hint of hops and a nice smooth finish, like your riding the rails. 5.5% ABV.

* * *
Finally, we have the Steelhead Scotch Porter from Mad River Brewing. "Steelhead" is the name given to ocean bound rainbow trout. Just as this species of trout goes by two different names, this beer has two different styles blended together. They took elements of scotch ales and blended them with a traditional porter. The result is an intriguing mix of both styles.

This beer has an ample brown head and a dark brown body. It's quite dark. No light gets through the pint glass. There's a faint roasted malt aroma. When you drink it, bits of chocolate and roasted malts dominate but give way to the Scotch ale character. Since it shares your tastebuds with the porter elements, it doesn't get a chance to be too sweet. The addition of German Rauch malts lends a bit of smoky character to it as well. Hops are mild as the malt profile of both styles is what identifies this beer. 6.7% ABV.

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Short Watchmen Movie Review

Four of us went out Saturday night to watch the Watchmen movie and all four of us liked it. It was a really good movie, though I'm not sure if I can call it great. It's always hard for a movie to live up to a book. While the illustrations in a graphic novel make it easier, there's still only so much book you can cram onto film.

All in all, it was pretty faithful to the book. A plot device used to bring about the ending of the story was changed, but it didn't affect the outcome of the story. The same effect was achieved. And the plot device substitution was related to something that was already being worked on in the original story. The swap enabled them to eliminate a lot of minutiae, subtle hints and side stories. Though purists are complaining about that, it works fine for the movie. It's already 2 hours and 45 minutes. While the time flew by for me plenty of whiners out there have complained that it was too long.

The violence was amped up a bit, but that's Hollywood. I'd expect nothing less with Zack Snyder (300) at the helm. The sex scenes were on target, though the last one lasted a little longer than it had to be so if someone wanted to call it gratuitous, well, so be it. Oh, if you're phobic of glowing blue penises, you might not want to see the movie. ;)

As for the acting, the actors that played The Comedian, Rorschach and Dreiberg/Nite Owl 2 were great. The voice for the guy who played Dr. Manhattan seemed odd. It wasn't what I envisioned. In the group I went with, the consensus was that the actress that played Laurie/Silk Spectre 2 was weak. I thought she was ok. The guy who played Veidt/Ozymandias came across as watered down Bowie eurotrash when he should've been Brad Pitt or Robert Redford when he was in his prime.

And the makeup used to transform actors into Nixon, Koppel, Cavett and other historical figures seemed cartoony. I don't know if that was intentional or not.

Do I sound like I'm nitpicking? I hope not because I think it's a good movie, probably a 7.5 out of 10. I already covered the story in my review of the book and since the movie is faithful to the book, I didn't feel the need to rehash it. I'd still recommend the book over the movie, but that's just me.

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Move Over Nigeria

By now, people should know better than to reply to any of those Nigerian phishing emails offering millions of dollars to any kind soul willing to help them cash a bank check. All they need is your bank account number. :)

Well, now there's a new scam out there that's up-to-date with current events. The poor grammar, among other things, should be a dead giveaway.

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From: FEDERAL RESERVE BANK, NEW YORK
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 4:23 PM
Subject: YOUR FUND PAYMENT IS READY - RESPOND WITH YOUR DETAILS FOR CONFIRMATION

From the Corporate Department
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
33 Liberty Street
New York , NY 10045

Attention; Beneficiary

The fund and its interest accrued to it amounting to US$ 4.5 Million United States Dollars is ready to be released to you as the beneficiary of the Fund and its Interest Fund upon the confirmation of your personal details. This Fund and Interest Fund is on your name. This Fund has been long over-due payment and has been officially approved for payment by the G8 Government, United Nations and the United States Government.

This is based on encouraging quick inflow of cash/liquidity into the world economy as a means of boosting the economy already ailing and bad. Based on this, we have been authorized by the various authorities and governments to urgently process and release these funds to the respective beneficiaries, all outstanding payments including With-held Lottery Funds, Unpaid Inheritance Funds, Unpaid Contract Funds and all other Funds that have not been paid till date that are enlisted in the unpaid funds files with us.

Most of these Unpaid Funds were with-held due to improper and un-official payment documentations, lack of proper verification documents to ascertain the legality, source/origin and authenticity of these funds. As a means of boosting the ailing world economy, these funds have now been properly documented and verified officially and we have been asked by the various government authorities involved together with the United Nations authority to urgently contact the recipients of these funds and get them released to them without delay. This is the reason why you are being contacted to enable you contact us urgently without delay because these funds are due for payment to the respective beneficiaries as indicated.

You are therefore required to cease or stop any further communication, contact or response to any office, person or group pf persons with regards to the release of your payment. You are instructed in your best interest to "only" contact us for the immediate confirmation of your personal details, processing and release of this fund to you. Contact us now as we have been authorized and mandated to confirm details, process this payment and get the payment released to the various beneficiaries.

We are required to re-confirm your personal details to ascertain and ensure that you are the rightful beneficiary of this Fund and its Interest Amount that has accrued to the fund which is due for payment.

The Government has therefore given us time limit within which to confirm your details and release the Fund and its Interest Amount to you. Failure to hear from you with your timely and urgently, your fund payment will automatically be cancelled.

You are here-by required to urgently contact us with your details as follows;
Your Full Name
Your Contact address
Your telephone numbers
Your sex
Your age
Your occupation
Let us know if you were expecting to receive any payment

You are required to quickly respond urgently without delay.

Faithfully yours,

Edward F. Murphy
Head, Corporate Department
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
33 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10045

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If you reply, your email is addressed to: interestfund.fedreserrvbnk@live.com
...which doesn't seem quite right of course since this email is supposedly from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Looking further into the header I discover that the email originated overseas and that an Australian mail server was used. That wouldn't happen with an email that originated from within the continental US.

Consider yourself warned.
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