I shared this privately before, but I just got the okay to share it in public. The Bluegrass Archive is online with a website and everything. This is a MASSIVE trove of legal live #bluegrass recordings from earliest days right up to now, which you can download and listen to for free. It is one of the greatest achievements of the fan-driven #music archiving community I've ever seen. I contributed a small number of filesets out of the thousands here. #music
Note - this is a living project, so check back for additions as often as you feel like. In addition to fresh recordings of new material, older stuff surfaces all the time, and now there's a single repository for it. If you have any high quality recordings not found here, let me know and I'll help figure out how to get them uploaded.
@mrcompletely Can confirm. ⬆️
What he doesn't say is a lot of the recordings have superb sound quality. Downloaded a Billy Strings set last night and it sounded wonderful on the big system. Not just old stuff, that Strings set was from last month.
Well, apparently this is the new #GratefulDead box set - the big stadium shows from May/June 1973. Certainly one of their peak years! People have been waiting for the RFK shows in particular, and Kezar is also a long time favorite of many, though it's not one mine relative to the year (meaning it's still very good, just perhaps slightly longer than it is good, being very long).
@caravan@mrcompletely@Evdude@Itsmattgrey@DaveG924@adamopp As I’ve told my wife, I’m a record COLLECTOR, not a record DEALER so, to date, I don’t sell anything. But I have cut back on my purchases of GD boxes and record sets. I probably don’t need them all.
Except that I do.
Probably.
some lunchtime #nba thoughts after absorbing the weekend
the take that trading for Harden doomed the Clips is both true and silly. That team wasn't anything anyway. Russ will be fun on the Heat or whoever though
Philly is finally the team they should've been the last...3? 5? seasons: a fun, high-energy lineup around Embiid. They're enjoyable to watch for the first time in ages. Maxey making the leap isn't news anymore but it's deeper than that. Their team isn't perfect but it is coherent 🧵
With #StopMakingSense in the news, this seems like a good time to repost the stunning Rome 1980 Talking Heads live concert video. Without taking anything away from that magical film, believe it or not, it was filmed after the band's live performance apex which I think is fully captured in this incredible hour-plus of #music. I love SMS, but to me this is better, and it's not even very close. You may not agree but every #TalkingHeads fan should def check it out!
Lmaoooooo okay thank the #nba basketball gods the Wolves didn't lose to that scrubby ass warriors lineup after the ejections
The Draymond headlock is iconic of course and Rudy has been first team all-unlikeable for years so Dray is gonna win the PR battle among fans but really Rudy wasn't doing shit wrong there, looked like he was trying to cool it down not heat it up. But from Dray's angle it probably looked bad so he threw that lock on him from behind
Ok now that the smoke has cleared it's time for some offseason #nba takes. Note I live in #pdx and root for the Blazers but I am first and foremost a fan of the game in general. Some thoughts post trade flurry:
I still have Denver at the top until someone beats them in a playoff series. I don't think even a lot of smart hoops watchers have really accepted how great that Nuggets team was. There are a lot of potentially great teams out there, but there's one that's already great, and it's Denver.
@mrcompletely@BEK97 I can’t wait for the season to start. I feel like I say this almost every year, but I can’t remember there being this much talent in the league. In the west, every team except the blazers and the spurs have legitimate playoff aspirations (and they have Scoot and Wemby). The east is more top-heavy, but still plenty of intrigue.
@NateFederman oh I totally agree. League is massively stacked and there are very few depressing/boring teams, maybe just Charlotte? Even the other lesser Eastern teams have something interesting going on
Some thoughts on nostalgia in art/culture, especially music
Of course nostalgia is weaponized to sell you back your youth and defang any revolutionary aspects of your chosen counterculture, everyone gets this by now.
But we also live in a temporally flattened aesthetic environment, meaning all prior eras of art exist equally in the present through digital mediation, outside of commercial retro marketing cycles. So your youth genres sit as part of an enormous network in aesthetic space
🧵
What would a decentralized #fediverse#BandCamp service look like? I'll obviously support bandcamp until the bitter end and I hope it ends up fine and this is all nothing to worry about. But I think it's an interesting question.
I have some ideas but I'm interested in hearing from others.
@mrcompletely case in point, just learned that bandcamp used to have RSS but killed it in 2017 or so. yeah, any service like what i'm describing would require dedicated maintenance & more a listener/community service than for artists. i saw a bandcamp alternative called faircamp, maybe aligns some (in a non fedi way) with what you're thinking about. https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/faircamp
#Reading a seemingly reasonably well written period #sff novel (Babel by RF Kuang)
setting is early 19th century Oxford U
explicit focus of the novel is on language
character uses modern idiomatic phrase in dialogue ("say more")
Friends, I almost DNF'd it right there. You can't do that. Obviously that's on the editor as much as the author, but what are we doing here? Suspension of disbelief is a privilege not a right.
@colin_howells yeah I was out on hyperion after the first one, I don't think chaucer in space is that great an idea and didn't find anything else going on for me, but I really am a picky bastard
Harrison has a broad catalog, but just start with Light. Unless you just want a great non genre novel in which case Climbers is really nice. Viriconium is the one most start with but it's so weird and varied i think it's a tough one to grapple with
Alice Coltrane, John McLaughlin, Carlos Santana and Friends
3.4.1974 Kabuki Theater, SF
Live performance FLAC download
A new to circulation recording of an essentially unknown show. There are not many live recordings of Alice from the 1970s so this is quite special. Quality is good, not great, but also not bad.
Working on live music recordings for circulation is a great hobby. The music itself is often amazing of course, but I've also gotten to work with some great people and get to know them a bit that way. Jesse @bourgwick and I talk music and such pretty often and that's always a real pleasure. For this Alice project I reached out to Jeremy @theheatwarps based on his incredible Electric Miles blog, which is wonderfully insightful. Working with him has been awesome. Thanks Jeremy!!!!
@mrcompletely@bourgwick@theheatwarps initial rumination: recording sounds great and excellent research! Spawned a deeper dive into that Illuminations record, been listening to Eternity a lot lately. I am more a fan of spiritual jazz than free jazz. All the comments from stage sound appropriately devotional, feels like I am back on the ashram. Coltrane's wurlitzer is utterly hypnotic, quotes her husband sometimes, delicious. cons: the best track is cut, cosmic lesson enjoy what is there
Molly Tuttle is a fantastic performer. Highly recommended. Very charismatic. Strong band. Excellent singer. Good songs, some very good ones. She's also the best acoustic player of her generation that I've seen so far. Her technique is exquisite without letting it get in the way of art. The moments when she switches into precision flatpicking/crosspick mode are astonishing! Her wrist freezes rock solid and all the motion goes into her fingers. And her left hand reach is immense. Wow! #bluegrass
Setlist was mostly stuff from the last two albums, some of her back catalog, Dire Wolf (very nice), their version of White Rabbit (fun) and an unplanned/request solo version of Standing on the Moon. Her take on that is truly wonderful and of course really points out what a brilliantly written song that is. Funny, she started doing that tune a couple years back, and since then she's been taking off like a rocket. She deserves it. Delightful show and again just an astonishingly accomplished player
@mrcompletely thank you for this report. I had plans to see her in Bellingham on Saturday but other plans got in the way. I still have one ticket left if you know anyone up there who would be interested in it for face value. The show is sold out.
I've been listening to a lot of live #Prince recently and among many takeaways I'm wrapping my head around is confirmation of what I've long suspected - to my ear he was the greatest electric rhythm guitar player there's ever been. He was also an astonishing lead player in the post-Hendrix blues rock style of course, but his time sense was so ideal, so razor edged sharp that it could make an atomic clock feel sloppy, and of course his feel for funk and swing accents was quite literally perfect
@clifff@Rosey@Stoneycase k I been plotting how to do it across a couple platforms. I'll keep you two in mind as first branches for mastodon. I need to do a discord branch as well
@mrcompletely@clifff@Rosey@Stoneycase please do make an announcement when you have time. I could do cloning and shipping. I do just sit at a computer all day…