Author Archives: cleek

Listening To…

It’s been over a year since the last time I did one of these? Really?

Quasimoto -- The Unseen. Quasimoto is a collaboration between hip-hop producer Madlib and his alter ego Lord Quas. It’s got a strong stoner vibe, heavy on odd/kitschy spoken-word samples, smart and funny lyrics and smooth jazzy beats. It’s not far from Madlib’s other project, MF-Doom, which I’ve liked for a while. So, this was a nice discovery.

Quasimoto - Jazz Cats Pt. 1

DJ Spooky -- Songs Of A Dead Dreamer. Spacey, old-school record-spinning stoner hip-hop with lots of fun samples and occasional guest rappers. This and Quasimoto turned up on a few of the best-of lists I found when I was searching for ‘alternative’ hip-hop / turntablists.

DJ Spooky- 04 Galactic Funk (Tau Ceti Mix)

Fiona Apple -- Fetch The Bolt Cutters. I’m finding this much tougher to get into than her previous stuff. I think I need to sit down and really listen, because it’s just not grabbing me. It’s dense. There’s a lot of repetition in the songs, almost mechanical. And when it’s not repeating, it’s taking hard, sharp turns and big leaps. So, a very up-to-date record. But, everything else she’s done I’ve liked, so I’m going to give this some more time.

Fiona Apple - Shameika (Audio)

Tame Impala -- The Slow Rush. Much clubbier than their [his] past records with big beats and thick, lush production. But it’s still got that classic Tame Impala retro psychedelic thing. Good stuff.

Tame Impala - Let It Happen (Official Video)

The Daisy Age -- Various. This is a compilation of tunes hip-hop groups from the early 90s, most of whom formed a collective called Native Tongues. It was originally centered around NYC groups like the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, etc.. But it eventually included groups from other places, including the UK. They pioneered a jazz-centered, upbeat, playful and positive (and sometimes silly) hip-hop that contrasted strongly with the macho and often violent west-coast ‘gangsta’ rap. The style didn’t last much beyond the mid 90s, but it’s the one that grabbed me.

Seinfeld’s latest stand-up show has a joke about how a man’s casual fashion choices stop keeping up with the times the day he gets married. I got married in 1996.

De La Soul - A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays

You?

Good News

Went to the hardware store, the grocery store and the booze store. For the first time, everybody was wearing a mask. In fact, all of the stores required them.

Only took three and a half months.

Aaaaaazzzaaa

I bought a Fender Blues Jr about three years ago. And once the initial romance was over, I noticed something a little odd about it. Whenever I played an A (any octave, any position), with either of my guitars, the amp would add a little mosquito-like buzzing while the note decayed. It was definitely frequency-related, since it only happened on A’s, and also the buzzing was kindof in-tune with the note.

So I replaced the tubes and I thought that fixed it. But eventually I started hearing it again. Then I took the back panel off and poked and tapped on various things to see if I could reproduce it. Never could. Tried both of those things multiple times over these past three years. I’ve listened to every YouTube clip of people with microphonic tubes, busted speaker coils, bad capacitors, cabinet rattles, cracked solder joints, etc.. None of them were the same sound I was hearing.

Wednesday, I had had enough. After weeks of drooling over amps on the internet, I had decided to sell the BJr and my black Stratocaster and get a new Princeton Reverb in gorgeous “Bordeaux Reserve” finish – ooh la la. The old stuff was in my car, I was on the road, 40 minutes to the store. Then I started thinking about the process of trying a new amp and selling my old stuff, and COVID and masks and touching guitars and, nope. I wasn’t going to take that risk. I turned around and went home.

When I got home I plugged the amp in the garage, unscrewed the back panel, turned it up loud and started looking at it again. Then I discovered the problem. It was the reverb tank. That’s a little box bolted to the bottom of the amp cabinet. It’s responsible for making it sound like you’re playing in a big room. It has a set of long steel springs inside – on one side of the springs, a slightly-amplified copy of the signal from your guitar sets the springs vibrating. On the other side, a magnetic sensor listens to the moving springs; vibrating springs just happens to sound like the echo of a big room. That signal gets mixed back in with the clean signal and that gets amplified some more and sent to the speaker.


iPhone

Even with the reverb level at zero on the amp’s controls the buzzing still happened. So I never thought it could be related to the reverb. But when I unplugged the reverb tank (physically taking it out of the circuit) the buzz went away.

$30 to get a new reverb tank on Amazon. Hopefully that’s all it takes!

Update:
Yep. That was all it took. The replacement reverb appears to be identical to the stock Fender tank, inside and out in every way, except for the brand’s sticker on the new one (says “MOD”). So, it probably is from the same factory. But, it works.

Took my three years to figure this one out. So hopefully this post will help someone else in the future.

C19 – long term damage

​One in three patients who recover from coronavirus could be harmed for life, with long-term damage to their lungs, as well as chronic fatigue and psychological disturbances, research suggests.

Experts said there was growing evidence that the virus could cause persistent or even permanent trauma, including impairment to the brain and an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

NHS guidance seen by The Telegraph suggests that around 30 per cent of patients who recover from Covid-19 may be left with damaged and scarred lung tissue, if it follows patterns of similar diseases.

Pass.

Islam’s Gonna Blow Up Nashville!

We are under conviction to not only tell you but to provide evidence that on July 18, 2020, Islam is going to detonate a nuclear device in Nashville, Tennessee. Our problem with trying to warn you of this event is that it requires information on a handful of subjects that you may or may not have any inclination to consider.

…

The subjects all have a relation to Bible prophecy and all of the are interconnected. The United State of America is one theme which is prophetically the sixth kingdom of Bible prophesy yet different from the kingdoms of world history. Another subject is the kingdom succeeding the USA, the seventh kingdom of Bible prophecy, which is the United Nations.

…

Bible prophecy specifies that Donald Trump is the final president of the USA. President Trump has been typified by many biblical leaders and is marked in God’s Word … the intensity of division that is taking place between liberal and conservative Americans is manifested daily in the news.

The paper is not happy about itself. So sad.

The Tennessean is investigating how a paid advertisement from a fringe religious group was published on Sunday in violation of the newspaper’s long-established standards.

The ad featured a bizarre, pseudo-religious “prophecy,” including the declaration of an impending nuclear attack in Nashville by “Islam.”

The ad was immediately ordered to be pulled from future editions by sales executives and the investigation launched. A similar ad, one that did not mention Islam but also contained an end-times prophecy, published in the newspaper on June 17.

The newspaper’s advertising standards clearly forbid hate speech. Advertisements that do not meet the paper’s standards are routinely rejected for publication.

Seems like maybe it’s not so routine?

Another One Bites The Dust

Raleigh, N.C. — The 75-foot-tall monument that served as a tribute to fallen Confederate soldiers was removed from State Capitol grounds by a crane Sunday morning.

Saturday, Governor Roy Cooper released a statement about confederate monuments after a night of protests over the statues that said they were a tribute to white supremacy that didn’t belong on state grounds.

“I have ordered the Confederate monuments on the Capitol grounds be moved to protect public safety. I am concerned about the dangerous efforts to pull down and carry off large, heavy statues and the strong potential for violent clashes at the site. If the legislature had repealed their 2015 law that puts up legal roadblocks to removal we could have avoided the dangerous incidents of last night,” he wrote.

Tee hee.

Mask Note

The mantra about the mask is “It doesn’t protect you from other people, it protects them from you!” Mask wearing is supposed to be altruistic rather than preventative.

People take this to mean they don’t need to wear a mask if they don’t feel sick. Yet you can have C19 and not know it for days, or you might never know it. So, people won’t be wearing masks when they need them because they don’t know they need them.

So, the mantra should be: masks stop transmission.

Don’t make mask wearing conditional on the health of the wearer. Don’t make it altruistic. Just require it.