Winter without professional hockey is really not winter at all.

NHL lockout has chilling effect on business -

No kidding!

JEAN-LUC PONTY, STANLEY CLARKE, AL DI MEOLA "Memory canyon" - YouTube

JEAN-LUC PONTY, STANLEY CLARKE, AL DI MEOLA play "Memory canyon" from the Rite of Strings

Wherein Stanley Clarke allows us to see his soul.  Astounding music! 

Hey Hippies! Ravi was just not that much into your indulgences!

The Telegraph:

Until Ravi Shankar, most people in the West were familiar with Indian music – if at all – only as background noise in establishments with flock wallpaper, and would not have been in a position to discern the fine distinction between a morning raga and evening one, or even know whether in Shankar they were listening to a virtuoso or a rank beginner. 

But Shankar could be a fastidious man. The rock audiences who came to pay homage he haughtily dismissed in his autobiography as “these strange young weirdos”; while his appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock festivals – the great quasi-religious gatherings of the alternative society – were apparently painful ordeals, where the audiences were “shrieking, shouting, smoking, masturbating and copulating – all in a drug-crazed state… I used to tell them, 'You don’t behave like that when you go to hear a Bach, Beethoven or Mozart concert.’” Quite.

 Here is the master: 

R.I.P.

spfq412.pdf (application/pdf Object)

spfq412.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Grateful Dead Live at Alumni Stadium, U. Mass/Amherst, May 12, 1979

I am proud to say I was at this show and it was awesome. Patti Smith opened. 

Grateful Dead Live at Alumni Stadium, U. Mass. on 1979-05-12 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

Paul Kurtz, prominent "secular humanist" has died.

R. Joseph Hoffman has a good write-up at the The New Oxonian.

Be careful with that ax Allan!! Holdsworth & Chad Wackerman "Tell Me"

Allan Holdsworth remains one of the great guitarists of modern music.
Chad's not bad a drummer either.

Allan Holdsworth Chad Wackerman "Tell Me" - YouTube

Let's make this go viral! "Big Jet Plane"

With apologies to Joni Mitchell...

A great protest video!

Big Jet Plane - YouTube

Reconnecting with Mission of Burma - "Semi-Pseudo-Sort-of Plan"

My God the world has passed me by.  I just I need to get my ears out more often....

Very nice! Mahavishnu Orchestra Live at BBC 1972

Geese at rest at Lake Quannapowitt

Lake Quannapowitt, Wakefield at sunset, August 21, 2012. 

 

The Great Jimmy Smith, "Organ Grinder's Swing"

Jimmy Smith - Organ Grinder's Swing - YouTube

A Bleg: Jenifer Ann Gibson....I have your manuscripts!

What do I do with them?

VQR » John Dos Passos, 1896–1970: Modernist Recorder of the American Scene

VQR » John Dos Passos, 1896–1970: Modernist Recorder of the American Scene

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, NR pays tribute to the great Milton Friedman

Kevin Williamson explains the genius of Milton Friedman  in his NR piece "An Economics of Love."

Friedman’s libertarianism was based on an economics of love: for real human beings leading real human lives with real human needs and real human challenges. He loved freedom not only because it allowed IBM to pursue maximum profit but because it allowed for human flourishing at all levels. Economic growth is important to everybody, but it is most important to the poor. While Friedman’s contributions to academic economics are well appreciated and his opposition to government shenanigans is celebrated, what is seldom remarked upon is that the constant and eternal theme of his popular work was helping the poor and the marginalized. Friedman cared about the minimum wage not only because it distorted labor markets but because of the effect it has on low-skill workers: permanent unemployment. He called the black unemployment rate a “disgrace and a scandal,” and the unemployment statute the “most anti-black law” on the books with good reason. He talked about two “machines”: “There has never been a more effective machine for the elimination of poverty than the free-enterprise system and a free market.” “We have constructed a governmental welfare scheme which has been a machine for producing poor people. . . . I’m not blaming the people. It’s our fault for constructing so perverse and so ill-shaped a monster.”

More from Friedman's former student, the great Thomas Sowell.

A Great Keyboardist Has Died, The Magnificent Jon Lord, RIP

Jon Lord, who made the keyboards sing in Deep Purple had died at the age of 71.

He was one of the best keyboardists in rock and roll putting the organ on par with the guitar. He will be missed.

Aphorism for the day

By way of Robert Fripp's Diary for Tuesday, 26th June 2012

"There are few things as convincing as death to remind us of the quality with which we live our life."

"With 'freedom' in fashion, is libertarianism back?"

Let us hope so! 

"What's that old saying? First they mock you, then they imitate you and then they become you," he said. "And that's how I feel about libertarianism."

Linux review; Go Ubuntu laptops!

I'm going to get one of these some day! 

My belief is that consumers who use Ubuntu as a operating system will be hard off trying to find a notebook at this price with such a high level of performance and quality. System76 definitely put all the best hardware inside and polished it off well.

A tough job but someone's got to do it

NYT: Romney’s Former Bain Partner Makes a Case for Inequality

Why Sowell is always worth reading

Quote for the day:

Some would apparently prefer a society where all-wise elites would decide what each of us "needs" or "deserves." The actual history of societies formed on that principle -- histories often stained, or even drenched, in blood -- is of little interest to those who mistake wishful thinking for idealism

Quote of the day

The very readable Dan Flynn provides the quote of the day.

"The Left doesn’t learn from its history because it doesn’t know its history. It’s too busy dreaming up the future."

Memorial Day 2012, Wakefield, Massachusetts

Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, Betsy Sheeran greets the audience at this year's Memorial Day commemoration.

Brownies from Wakefield Girls Scouts drop rose petals around the town's World War II monument on May 28, 2012 during commemoration.


Meanwhile a member of the Wakefield High School Marching Band plays taps to close out the ceremony at Veterans Memorial Common. (photographs by Frank Conte).

Introducing The Bridgebuilders!

I fell in love with this band when I first heard "Sandy Boys."

Glenn Gould - Scarlatti sonata in D minor "Pastorale" - YouTube

Glenn Gould - Scarlatti sonata in D minor "Pastorale"

My compost bin

I'm am avid compost fan! Here's my first attempt at building one. It's a work in progress so be kind.

The Kinks - Sleepwalker, 1977

One of my favorite songs from the Kinks



Oh yeah! Oh yeah!

R.I.P. Whitney Houston

A beautiful voice sings no more!



The Ultimate Whitney Houston Playlist

News: "Pa. groundhog 'predicts' 6 more weeks of winter"

Pa. groundhog 'predicts' 6 more weeks of winter!

Well it's been a mild winter with lower than average snowfall so we cannot really complain.

Larks Tongues In Aspic (Part 2) The Dream Theatre rendition

DREAM THEATER takes on King Crimson's illustrative Larks Tongues In Aspic (Part 2)

God bless David Bowie

The Guardian on David Bowie

Bowie was an early adopter of the internet, but he didn't really fit with the notion of a star in the 21st century, an era when the manufacturing of pop music has been laid bare on the TV and where stars are perpetually available on Twitter and Tumblr. Rock music currently exists in a world of 360 degree connectivity that's supposed to bring the artist and the fan closer and reveal the real person behind the myth. But as the best of his umpteen biographers David Buckley pointed out, with Bowie, revealing the real person behind the myth is missing the point: "the myth has far greater resonance and is far more intriguing than stolid attempts to identify a 'true' essence … his appeal has lain in the generation of myths." Those myths look likely to remain intact forever, which seems perfectly fitting