10.29.2010

BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK


Woozy Viper is from Brooklyn.  Their names are Luke and Mitch Meseke.  That is just about all they want you to know about them. 






10.28.2010

THE REFEREES ARE ALL GONE

Sunglasses - S/T EP - 2010



When I posted Magic Places' new EP, I didn't realize I was only scratching the surface of this talented Savannah crew.  Samuel Cooper is another Savannah/Athens artist with multiple bands and some of the sweetest art work I've seen (cover art above.) 

List of projects Samuel is involved in, either by himself or with one other person:
Hula Hoop  be sure to check out the music video he directed for Hula Hoop

10.26.2010

KEEP ON LOVIN ME



Magic Places is Paul M. Goerner with the assistance of a few others.  He is from Savannah, GA.  I think the band's info on mySpace can tell you more than I ever could...
"Magic Places were formed from void some-time in late 2005, when citizen-scientist Paul M. Goerner began to amass a respectable collection of volunteers, some electronic and some biologic, in the anticipation of experimenting with deep space transmission. The jarring sounds included in these expositions are an assortment of home recordings intended for such transmission and audio received at the team's Nitelab Research Headquarters, originating in extraterrestrial locations and thoughtfully processed for consumption by human beings."
I don't know what the hell that means but I love this EP.





Magic Places - A Selection of Fine Victorian Wallpapers EP - 2010
















Stream their upcoming album here...

10.25.2010

I SWEAR YOU TAKE OFF BUT YOU NEVER LAND



I'm posting this before I've even finished listening to it.  This is really, really good.  I've seen a few comparisons with the 'Merriweather Post Pavillion' sounding AnCo, but I'm really seeing a stronger resemblence to another band I posted, 'Electric Sunset'. 


Sun Airway - Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier - 2010

IT'S NOT NOTHING, BUT IT'S NOT SOMETHING

I just found this band's new EP on Sordo and had to post it.  This quick listen is some super cool chill music for the last days of good sunlight....
The only stuff I know about them was on their myspace.


TV Girl - (S/T) EP - 2010

10.14.2010

ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE...



Please read the resignation letter below from Harold 'Hal' Lewis, Emeritus Physics Professor from UCSB.  I found this on Sleeping In and must ask that everyone else read it as well.

Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.


Hal



-Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety
Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; Wrote two books: Technological Risk and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making).





My two cents...

-As far back as written history goes, we have evidence that the rulers of the world have used threats of great casualties as a means to control the general public. 

-Please learn from the past, instead of accepting it's cyclical nature as inevitable.

10.13.2010

2 ALBUMS I NEED TO RE-BLOG

1. DAYVAN ZOMBEAR posted the new Fresh & Onlys album, 'Play It Strange' last week and it has been in frequent rotation since.  I just realized it also officially dropped yesterday.  I must recommend that anyone who likes 'music' download this now.

Fresh & Onlys - Play It Strange - 2010















2.  Our friends at SpaceRockMountain posted a little gem that they found on Sordo.  This is a soul act from Los Angeles called Fitz and the Tantrums and their album is titled 'Pickin' Up the Pieces'.  SRM described this as "a more showy and lively version of Mayer Hawthorne."  I have to agree, and this is a good thing, as I already enjoy Mayer Hawthorne.  I would say that you can even pick up elements of the Black Keys in Michael Fitzpatrick's voice and style.  Let me know what you think  Excellent pick SRM!

Fitz and the Tantrums - Pickin' Up the Pieces - 2010


10.12.2010

I'LL TRY TO DO EVERYTHING, YOU DO THE REST




  YAWN is from Chicago.  They have a very tribalistic sound mixed with electronic and natural influences; their site refers to this as 'neo-soul'.  I'm posting YAWN because I want them to come to Dallas.  I've loved this EP for about 6 months or so, and really want to see them live.




YAWN - YAWN EP - 2010
















If you like this, they posted a remix album on their website you can grab.
















Be sure to VISIT the band.

SUUNS [via] thefoxandthechicken.blogspot.com

suuns
Please go to The Fox & the Chicken and download the new Suuns record.  So fucking sick.  I can't wait for the show Saturday night at Nightmare.

10.11.2010

A STRANGE YOUNG MAN, HE CAME A RIDING BY





Index is the best band I had never heard about until recently.  This is a psych-rock band that played around Detroit in the late 60's.  They put out several albums but this is the only one I have so far.  Please check it out and ask your parents why you didn't get to listen to Index when you were little. 


All there is to know about the band is in an article written by Jim Valice of Index here.





Index - Black Album - 196?

HOW CAN I SAY 'HELLO'?


Brits don't know how to react when they see the sun
Solo project from White Magic member Doug Shaw.  Shaw lives in New York, originally from the UK.  Band's name is a reference to the highlife genre of African music from which he draws almost all influence for the album.  I really like it as a whole; first and last tracks serve as more of an intro and outro for the middle three.



Highlife - Best Bless EP - 2010

10.08.2010

CUZ TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY

cooler than the other side of the pillow


All the fuzz in the world couldn't mask Matt K. Shrugg's musical prowess.  Every song has so much going on that I can say for sure that I will need another dozen or so listens before I really get the whole thing.  The fact that he chose to play blown out punk music is a gift to punk.

Matt K. Shrugg - Gone Ashtray - 2010

10.07.2010

NO MATTER WHERE I LAY I GET BURNED

i bet 20 bucks his eyes arent even open


Sonny Smith (Sonny & the Sunsets) will be in town this month at the Granada opening for Best Coast/Deerhunter.  I have my ticket already and don't think that Sonny has been getting enough Dallas love.  Please listen to this album and remember better times (before you were born.)