Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Death to Caillou

I recently wrote about how horrid Max and Ruby on Treehouse was. For different reasons, Caillou is almost as bad.

Like Max and Ruby, Caillou is Canadian, so my heart should be filled with pride. Unfortunately it's also annoying as hell. Caillou is a bald four-year-old kid with a whiny voice, part of a white-bread family that is sickeningly saccharine (interestingly, Caillou presents one of the only 'conventional families' on Treehouse). The individual characters on Caillou are pretty bad, but considered alone they wouldn't throw the programme so high on the annoying list.

What does that, instead, is the show's entire lack of regard for conventionaly storytelling. I can remember as a child being shown a graph that started from zero, slowly rose to a peak, and then came crashing down rapidly thereafter: the Nike swoosh turned upside-down. This, I was told, represented a plot graph. All good stories followed it.

The creator of Caillou, animated as the narrator in the occassional framing device that imagines a group of children excited to hear a story about Caillou, evidently knows nothing of this. For a Caillou story has no exposition, no climax, no denouement. It's merely a few random details in the life of a normal kid stitched together into a story. It might be: 'Caillou goes to the Laundromat'. And it might go something like this:
'One day, Caillou got his clothing dirty. So he went to his mother about it. "Oh no," said his mother, "your clothing is dirty. We'd better get that washed up." So his mother prepared some laundry and asked Caillou if he wanted to go to the laundromat. Caillou had never been to a laundromat before. So he was very happy. At the laundromat were many big machines. Caillou was amazed by them. "Mommy", he said, "what do these machines do?" His mother told him they made clothing clean. She started to fill a machine and asked Caillou if he wanted to help. He said yes. When his mother started the machine, it made a big noise and started turnig. Caillou was amazed. He watched the machine turn around and around again. That evening at dinner, Caillou told his father about his adventure at the laundromat. "Good for you", said his father.'

Seriously - what the hell is that? I wrote that, but all I'lve really done is shorten it from the prototype. I haven't altered the banality level at all. Caillou really is shockingly banal - nothing at all extraordinary ever happens, or even anything above 'run of the mill'. Some episodes seem to have a touch of moralising, which I guess means it's better than merely watching the neighbours through their living room window for half an hour at a time, but who can make it as far as the moral without falling asleep? One thing Caillou also is is shockinglyboring.

If the goal is to crush a childhood imagination by subjecting kids to a programme featuring a painful lack of imagination, then Caillou is a success.

Daily Fortune Cookie: 31 May 2011


"Use your sense of right and wrong this week to manipulate someone into evildoing on your behalf."

Monday, May 30, 2011

I am Jerry, Destroyer of Pens

I don't know what it is. It must be an illness or something. I ought to go to a psychiatrist or something and have it checked out. Here's my dirty little secret: I destroy pens.

Seriously. I don't just mean that I chew on pens - though it's true that I do, hard enough to splinter hard plastic pens or to leave deep tooth marks in soft plastic pens. What I mean by 'destroy' is 'dissect'. If it were pens they dissected and not foetal pigs, I could by now be a famous biologist. There is no pen I can not take apart are reassemble over and over again, as a nervous habit.

A pen always contains some kind of cartridge. Your simple Bic is no more than a cartridge and a shell, with a tiny soft plastic bit stuck in the end that somehow keeps the pen from exploding, and with a pinhole midway down the shell, for no clear reason except to suck in spittle and leave the inside of the pen flecked with drool if you happen to be the kind of person who sticks pens lengthwise in your mouth. A Bic has no screw-like threads on it, though many do - which are good for hours of screwing and unscrewing. It also has no click-mechanism, meaning no tiny little spring. I can't count how many springs I've played with, every now and then accidentally shooting them across the room to the wonderment of whoever I happen to be sharing a room with. Most click-pens will have two plastic doodads that roughly interlock, with a kind of geartooth shape to them. When you've taken the pen apart and are playing with these two bits of plastic, it's tough to really get a sense of how they conspire to create a pen whose nib sticks out of the pen with one click but contracts turtle-like within its shell upon the second click. And yet they do. More reliably than Bill O'Reilly's tides. Never a miscommunication.

Well aware of my ability to torture them at a moment's notice, pens are wary of me, and like a squid cornered in some stretch of ocean will spray their ink all over me - or, at least, all over my pocket. I can't count how many pens have exploded in my pocket over the years.

I'm well aware that my particular stylocidal nervous habit is not exactly a good thing, something I need to rid myself of. But when holding a pen and bored out of one's mind, what else is there to do with a pen?

Daily Fortune Cookie: 30 May 2011


"Sing a song of sixpence, plus VAT."

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Lost in Google Translation, Volume Two

This is an old game I used to play back in the days of BabelFish: testing its automated language translation services by putting a bit of text through a variety of languages and looking at the end result, which had invariably been chewed up beyond recognition. The results often had a mysterious poetry to them, in fact, but were clearly nonsense.

Google's translation service is, I must admit, light years ahead. So much so, in fact, that a single test of translating text from English into Language X and then back again would result in text 95% identical to the original. So no good, then. Instead, I subject texts to a translation through five languages before reconverting it to English. The results are, well, much more abstract.

Each selection here is a verse from a popular song (with slight modifications to grammar and punctuation to make complete sentences) translated through five different languages before being reconverted to English. Your job is merely to look at the results and see if you can't guess which song you're currently viewing, lost in Google Translation.

The answers to each are contained immediately below them, hidden behind a spoiler tag. Click to reveal.

#2 I like the wind through the trees. Sampingku night was so. months, but the sun stayed uniongoze. He accepted my idea, but I did not know what to do. Right next to the body wajahku I felt rambling. I am not in his eyes: in my group. Only a fool believes he can do what they need to hear. I like the wind.
» #1 - Click for the answer. «

#2 Today is your day going. Now, in some ways, you must understand you can do. I do not believe that he does feel for the moment. Word Street is the heart of the high fever is back. I have never heard before, but never doubt I am going to die. I do not believe that he does feel for the moment. The closure, all the lights are published menyilaukan. I want to say much, but I do not know how.
» #2 - Click for the answer. «

#2 Me and false. My mother, father, you should come. I attack the world. I am rolling shakes bad for you. Liam. Pink monkey bird And I tell you an indication of the brain breakdown. See for yourself. Ray put gun to my head. Press your space face close to me, I love you. dream mud Wed, oh yeah, and escape.
» #3 - Click for the answer. «

#3 Last good. When your hands up. Click on get their own way in life. The day will come. their lives, why people like How to choose? Last good. Last good. ends. Last good. That our time is one hour. Now is the time here. Waiting for my life, my life forever. Yellow is the color of the sun. I have to hide. Always, often in my life, my life here. Yellow is the color of the sun.
» #4 - Click for the answer. «

#5 I think the future of our children. The best way to learn. beauty all to themselves. Providing tools for pride. Many laughed when my children need reminding. Both are looking for heroes. We need people to see. need to do: I had the opportunity to meet and quiet, so I learned to my faith.
» #5 - Click for the answer. «

#6 We say about that. Me, Not me, another day of driving themselves, I'm getting ready to do so. I love the same? Al, get me I will continue a day or two. So, my little things go without saying, but it seems like life is slowly leaving teaching. Say: nothing is more important than to be. Al, get me I will continue a day or two.
» #6 - Click for the answer. «

#7 Oh, my friends are regular remove dirt and Liege, but my dad his "can not bother me to give them. World will not end. He for me a man who Talcs as foot foot, people like my son. Amount of care. Or hand of a man my son. ".
» #7 - Click for the answer. «

#8 All the old graves of a file from the sand dance do not you? If they fast, they fell like dominoes for you. 'M Nile marketing and all those invested. Golden crocodiles C their simple mud. Variety of hookah pipe "that really inanikumbusha, Oh yeah. This, indeed, reminds us." Egypt, such as foot.
» #8 - Click for the answer. «

#9 If you still hear my joy, but I think you all are my conscience, I guess. If I'm Walking shoes and when my friends for your entertainment and Flowers suggest that wind is concerned, I feel I can not. What is a fright. I do not bother me at all. 51, captain of irregular solitaria Tobacco Research Community and play until dawn. Now, I can do nothing for you.
» #9 - Click for the answer. «

#10 Sometimes it is established all love a man with a good and sad and it is not difficult to know a good time to do, but if you love him and forgive him even harbor to understand. If you love it. Geugahaneun he was 12 years more recently proud. It is a cold lonely night to wait for a hot and is only two officers. Husband Tribune and the world would you know that you love it. You can all love. Arising from your man.
» #10 - Click for the answer. «

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Lost in Google Translation, Volume One

This is an old game I used to play back in the days of BabelFish: testing its automated language translation services by putting a bit of text through a variety of languages and looking at the end result, which had invariably been chewed up beyond recognition. The results often had a mysterious poetry to them, in fact, but were clearly nonsense.

Google's translation service is, I must admit, light years ahead. So much so, in fact, that a single test of translating text from English into Language X and then back again would result in text 95% identical to the original. So no good, then. Instead, I subject texts to a translation through five languages before reconverting it to English. The results are, well, much more abstract.

Each selection here is a verse from a popular song (with slight modifications to grammar and punctuation to make complete sentences) translated through five different languages before being reconverted to English. Your job is merely to look at the results and see if you can't guess which song you're currently viewing, lost in Google Translation.

The answers to each are contained immediately below them, hidden behind a spoiler tag. Click to reveal.

#1 I usually can not find. Frightened lying around and I do not understand. Now ladies sitting at her desk nearby. Closed Curtain Hall Kass from people like me think this Oh, I do not die in the hands gedoeeotseupnida you say that I died in my hands Oh Death at hand. I had some clear kiss I had.
» #1 - Click for the answer. «

#2 I do not like you I wonder if it bad, you can if you have good people do not know. His life and soul together, not just be Cold war, tired, but I know every nerve fibers difficult heart Broken, frozen my life. I do not want this anymore. It is better shoes, even one day be broken or not. If we want to do better? It would be better for me more often, green is very cool, if we are not helpless or not.
» #2 - Click for the answer. «

#3 It was morning. The sun is up to the last. Last night was shaking quite large. After teaching my cat scratch my skin, otherwise the error? Hungry children will tell him about his service and good food. Add to a new place. I went here when I can: If you want to make me the storm here: If you want to make the storm.
» #3 - Click for the answer. «

#4 So, how kabarmu I walked, I saw men and women. This is not the time to talk. Music and hot women, where they were born and began to start properly. However, just look the other way. New York Times' to trying to understand the impact on our people. If the mother and family, you live. We live in a city miles we all feel broken, I want to live life.
» #4 - Click for the answer. «

#5 New Orleans east, they want the sun, and many poor children in the home, this is the balance. And God, I know. It is normal that new sewing blue jeans. My dad, gambling man Down in New Orleans said. Now only the players and the bag and luggage only won when he saw the required 20,000.
» #5 - Click for the answer. «

#6 Now I had seen what I saw off Queen Knight drum drum and sing and bow tree farm is excluded. Announce the day and swim Mother Nature Watch 19-70 air travel to travel to visit 70 Mother Nature I was burning in the basement of the full moon in my eyes I burst through the sky Sunday, I hope to replace. Band playing in my head feel better. I think my friends that I hope will My friends think he wants his own address.
» #6 - Click for the answer. «

#7 Please call to revive: I fear the weakness of the Year and lively shaking colleagues here monsŵn to tears listening to the bass boom: US, unbearably big break Store: a and called the police to your But did not dare stare, you can go for you. I compared the remaining pieces dice. Competitive pay, you win / I'm right and you knock your mother.
» #7 - Click for the answer. «

#8 I think I'm ready for you. I think I'm ready for you. I think I'm ready for you. I am, but more money, no comment on the money. This is more than money, they want to build. At the time, it will be worth many times more. oh, so ayolah, patience and time to do it correctly, you need to do, and they are.
» #8 - Click for the answer. «

#9 He worked in a restaurant. My daughter just overlooked. I never saw him only end mezzanine Small-town father is not always the root of his movement continued. One of the desert road riding Harley Davidson - flying wind her long hair to yellow. He fled chrome steel air atmosfääriõhku driver hit 2.1.
» #9 - Click for the answer. «

#10 Just woke up on Thanksgiving morning. I do not know this seems odd: no smoke from cooking breakfast mother dog Pars no wheelbarrow I'm not digging mines and pigs. Finally I would like to dig, buy a low to let me hold the door when he pressured another 24 I think you need to change "I will be changing my me to ass my glass of me and see all Jacker is on fire the red Kim that his voice, he asked all my homies back care, I hope everyone can "I played basketball in my garden" Me. In court my problem: to finish second and third last week. MJ niggas do not deviate so all the good that day.
» #10 - Click for the answer. «

Friday, May 27, 2011

Death to Max and Ruby

So 'irl' I have a baby girl. One of the things this entails is the need to have cartoons on TV more often than any adult human can stand. This, in our case, manifests itself in 'Treehouse', a Corus TV channel that is all told fairly innocuous, because the cartoons are not violent and there is minimal advertising.

But it has to be said that, while a handful of their shows are quite charming indeed, several of them are fingernails-on-blackboard grating, few more than Max & Ruby.

Max & Ruby, along with Toopy & Binoo and 4 Square, is the channel's main time-killer. If they find themselves with a few minutes to kill before the half-hour, time that other channels would fill with advertising, they tend to throw on a Max & Ruby. If you leave this channel on for a few hours at a time, you're guaranteed to see Max & Ruby at least a few times. And while no proof has ever been established between violent cartoons and violence among viewers, I can say at least conjecturally that Max & Ruby fills me with a homicidal rage. It is so annoying.

It's the story of two rabbits: a bratty kid, Max, who says one word over and over every episode, and Ruby, an obnoxious know-it-all who, by comparison, never shuts up. They're apparently 3 and 7 respectively, and appear to live at home alone with no parents and just a grandmother who lives nearby. A such, Ruby serves as the 'mother figure', and in fact the programme's main value is in teaching older sisters how to be insufferably bossy. Every single episode is functionally the same: Max wants to play with something and insists on doing it over and over again until you're filled with an urge to smack him upside his creepy squeaking head, while Ruby is obsessed with some banal thing she's got it in her head she must do. Max's OCD meets Ruby's OCD and what ensues is much paternalistic sighing on Ruby's part and 'Max, I know you want Diet Coke and Mentos, but you can't have them right now. I simply have to given Grandma her enema now.' Inevitably, whatever it is Max is trying to do accidentally helps with whatever it is Ruby's trying to do, and while Ruby's grateful as the credits run, it doesn't prevent her from being exasperated with Max all over again next time out.

Ruby's annoying whine is the low point of the show. I actually find it difficult to sit in the same room when it's on. God knows what kids are supposed to get from this show, except 'how to be annoying'.

And a good many kids are already experts there.

Daily Fortune Cookie: 27 May 2011


"Buy new shoes. Try not to make your old shoes jealous."

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Recycling Policies Make No Sense at All

Some three years ago I had a blog that I called "Makes No Sense At All", named after the Hüsker Dü song. The point of it was to give me an occasional soap-box from which to give into Andy Rooney tendencies and just grumble and complain about whatever took my fancy. I didn't carry on with it too long, and it was read by, like, a maximum of five people who were not GoogleBots. So since it's just sat there moribund, collecting digital dust down the years. I decided I might as well close down the old blog and syndicate its contents here, in weekly installations. I've eliminated a few blog entries that seem too anachronistic by now, but the blogs that I have included I've not edited at all. So enjoy watching me at my grumpiest... Makes No Sense at All.

Originally published 29 August 2008.

Let me explain that one. I’m not saying that filling landfills with plastic is a good thing. When I was a kid, absolutely everything a house discarded was tossed into a black plastic bag, which was tossed into a big hole in the ground. Pretty ridiculous, when you think about it, and it’s great now that we’ve been able to get to a point where the greater majority of waste we produce doesn’t have to go into a landfill. It’s predicated on public willingness to ‘contribute’, but it’s not really that much of an effort. All hunky dory, so far.

What bothers me, though, is not the effort required to recycle and compost like a good citizen. What bothers me is how much less the effort could be, with just a little work.

I honestly have no idea what’s recyclable and what’s not. Any plastic item that’s not a Coke bottle gives me cause for doubt: do I throw this in the recycling or in the garbage? Maybe it says so somewhere on the packaging itself. Maybe the three-arrow symbol has a number in it. Maybe I can call my parents and ask them. Maybe it’s recyclable where they live, but not where I live.

None of this makes a lick of sense. I don’t know why some plastics can be recycled and others can’t (and I certainly don’t know why some types would be accepted in one city but not another). I do know that the science of recycling and the chemistry of plastics is not something your average Joe is going to possibly know. As an average Joe myself, I’m living proof.

The thing is, we oughtn’t need to know. There ought to be a strict set of regulations standardizing what is recyclable and what isn’t across the country, and there should be very clear instructions on packaging itself about whether or not the packaging conforms to those regulations. In fact, non-recyclable plastics ought to just be completely banned from the world of packaging, but perhaps there’s something I don’t know about why they continue to be used. I’ll happily plead ignorant on that. Because it’s not the point anyway.

The point is that manufacturers need to take the initiative, at legislative gun-point if they won’t make the effort themselves, in making the products we buy recycling-friendly, so that we’ll be better able to recycle correctly, solving the problems of recyclable things going to the garbage, and of non-recyclable things going to recycling centres (both of these are, of course, problems). There seems to be a constant struggle in the public arena between companies’ rights and their responsibilities. Those who defend big business will be happy to talk about how companies ought to have the right to behave however they want within the strictures of market economics, and as such will condemn any attempt by the government at what they see as ‘interference’. As a result, legislation with big businesses is often condemned in and of itself.

But this one seems to me like a no-brainer. Allowing recycling programs to run anything short of peak efficiency only to make the lives of big business easier makes no sense at all.

Daily Fortune Cookie: 26 May 2011


"The hospital is no place to show hospitality; try your living room instead."

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

You've Got Foetus on Your Discography

I love Foetus. JG Thirlwell is one of my favourite artists ever. Though I've never heard a note of his music.

I'm going to look some up on Youtube and play it while I write this entry, so my opinion might change be the end of it.

Anyway, there are some artists who merely have awesome discographies, whose collected works are cool to look at, even if you never put them on the turntable. JG Thirlwell has been around since 1981, releasing work at a relatively manic pace. Some has come out under names such as Steroid Maximus, Manorexia, Clint Ruin or - oddly enough - as JG Thirlwell. But those aren't the interesting aliases. The ones that are trule awesome are the ones that are, when considered as a whole, called the 'Foetus' discography.

Some of them, particularly more recent ones, are attributed to 'Foetus'. But that`s no fun: in the early days the releases would come out attributed to a wide variety of names, all of which contained the word 'Foetus', and all of which could presumably be found filed under 'F' in whatever record store stocked these independently-released albums. These aliases include, listed by degree of awesomeness, 'Foetus, Inc.', 'Foetus Art Terrorism', 'Foetus Corruptus', 'Foetus Interruptus', 'Foetus Over Frisco', 'Foetus Über Frisco', 'Foetus under Glass', 'Scraping Foetus off the Wheel', 'You've Got Foetus on Your Breath' and 'Phillip and His Foetus Vibrations' (I don't know why it's that last one I like so much).

While many of these names appeared on singles or EPs, the albums also all have the particular quirk of possessing names that are exactly four letters long. They include Deaf, Ache, Hole, Nail, Thaw, Rife, Sink and... well, you get the idea. The original covers are in strict black and white, then they are in black, white and red. Then there's yellow, and then eventually they get to be full colour. They tend to have graphic designs for covers, very often featuring images from Communist China propaganda.

The whole recorded works exist wonderfully in a world of their own creation, seemingly unmoved by anything else happening around them. I doubt they were popular, and I doubt they're much sought after now. But their uniqueness just makes them awesome. They are a universe unto themselves.

A few covers:









Incidentally, my verdict? Not bad, really. Not as interesting as I'd been hoping, but acceptably listenable. Still, the music can't touch those covers...

Daily Fortune Cookie: 25 May 2011


"You will find a recipe for disaster while looking for a recipe for angel's food cake."

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Québec the Strange

I've been looking at election stats. I do that a lot. Two bizarre things I've learnt tonight about Québec and feel like sharing:
  • While we know the name 'Papineau' from Wee Justin Trudeau, Liberal MP of the federal riding located on the island of Montréal straddling that island's linguistic divide, it turns out that provincially there's also a Papineau riding. That in and of itself isn't noteworthy - except that the provincial Papineau riding is in the Outaouais, bordering Gatineau and nowhere near its federal namesake.
  • Richard Holden was a provincial MNA who sadly committed suicide in 2005, first ran for office in 1962 as an independent. He finished second, and also finished second as a Progressive Conservative running federally in 1979. His first - and only - electoral vicotry was provincially in 1989 when he won a seat in the National Assembly for the Equality Party - a federalist party devoted to English-language rights in Québec. What's truly bizarre is that Holden then crossed the floor - to the Parti Québécois, the primarily francophone seperatist party. This about-face was so controversial and bizarre that even his brother stopped speaking to him.
As I discover more bizarre things (the ADQ's amazing flash in the pan comes to mind), I might add them. I might slowly turn it into a 'Lust for Lists' entry - who knows?

Daily Fortune Cookie: 24 May 2011


"Get a tattoo of Ross Perot on your elbow."

Monday, May 23, 2011

The Wailers Alternative Discography #5: "The Toughest"

Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer were incredibly prolific in the 1960s, topping the local charts so regularly they became known as 'the Jamaican Beatles'. Much of what they recorded before meeting Chris Blackwell was magnificent, and almost all of it needs to be heard.

I'm presenting a series called 'The Alternate Wailers Discography' - a kind of imaginary discography of 'should-have-been' albums that didn't, and don't, in fact exist - though the songs on them do. There are two aspects of the Wailers' legacy that trouble me, and I aim to address both of them:

  1. In the 1970s and beyond, the name "the Wailers" became little more than a suffix to the phrase "Bob Marley and". While I'll not even attempt to deny Bob Marley's greatness, or even his primacy, the Wailers were a trio. The logo of their early record label Wail N Soul M showed three hands holding each other's forearm to form a triangle. All for one, etc. It's sad and insulting to see Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer presented as merely Bob Marley's early-years backup singers.
  2. Throughout the 1960s, the principal medium of record distribution in Jamaica was the 7". The hordes of songs they recorded that decade were almost all released haphazardly on singles, never to be collected until years later on cheap, chintzy compilations: incomplete, unannotated and often overdubbed. By the standards of the modern music industry, this dilutes the music's impact, allowing the Wailers' 1960 work to be seen as a minor prelude to Bob Marley's 1970s albums in Island Records. Island surely bears much of the blame for this - it is in their interest to promote their own property at the expense of material they don't have the rights to - but it is yet another thing that distorts our perception of this supergroup.
With the aid of a relatively extensive selection of recent compilations and the absolutely essential Bob Marley and the Wailers: a Definitive Discography by Roger Steffens and Leroy Jodie Pierson, I've gone about creating an 'alternate discography' of the Wailers - what their discography might look like if the Jamaican record industry in the 1960s had cared about the 12" album. While the albums are figments of my imagination, the songs that make them up are not, and the albums are perfectly compilable, provided you have the originals.

This is not a project designed to aid in the illegal distribution of Wailers music. I would love to allow you to listen to the albums I've put together, as I think they play very well as albums. But that would be illegal. The best I can do is tell you how to assemble them yourselves. I've also attempted to repect Steffens and Pierson's copyright by (a) not including every song the Wailers recorded and (b) not including certain discographical details. I have, though, trusted Steffens and Pierson implicitly and built the entire project around the details as they've presented them.

For a more detailed background, read this earlier blog post.


    Album #5
    The Toughest
    (August 1966, Studio One)

    Side One
    1. 3:12 The Toughest — Peter with Vision 
    2. 2:42 Let Him Go — Bunny with Peter, Vision
    3. 3:09 That Ain't Right — Rita with Peter, Bunny, Vision, a
    4. 2:28 Jerking Time — Bunny with Peter, Vision
    5. 2:55 Lemon Tree — Peter & Bunny with Rita, Vision, a
    Side Two
    1. 2:42 A Deh Pon Dem — Rita with Peter, Bunny, Vision, a
    2. 2:53 Rock Sweet Rock — Bunny with Peter, Rita, Vision
    3. 3:05 Who Feels it Knows It — Bunny with Peter, Vision
    4. 2:34 Friends and Lovers — Rita with Peter, Bunny, Vision
    5. 3:07 Sinner Man — Peter with Bunny 
    All tracks recorded July 1966,
    except "Sinner Man" March 1966,
    "The Toughest" May 1966,
    "Let Him Go" and "Who Feels It Knows It" June 1966.
    All tracks produced by Clement Dodd.

    The Wailers are: Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Rita Marley and Vision Walker.
    note: 'a' is Marlene Gifford

    Between December of 1965, when the last of the songs that I included on my previous 'album' were recorded, and July of 1966, when the last of the current crop was recorded, three seismic events happened to conspire to rock the Wailers to the core: it's a very different group that emerges on this album from the one before it, despite a mere half-year gap.

    The first earthquake was the departure of the 'main' Wailer, Bob Marley. Given our current understanding of who the Wailers are, an album that does not include Bob Marley would seem as illegitimate a 'Wailers' album as, say, the post-Lou Reed Velvet Underground album or the Crazy Horse album that doesn't include Neil Young. But the facts are actually a touching expression of solidarity, as during this era Marley went temporarily to the USA to work in a car factory, saving enough money to return and allow the Wailers a measure of independence outside of Clement Dodd's Studio One label. So while, outside of Jamaica, it's impossible to imagine the lead singer of a band who had scored several number ones and been compared to the Beatles needing to work in a car factory to supplement income, this reality shows in fact Marley's determination and team spirit.

    In his absence, Peter and Bunny soldiered on rather erratically, with the help of 'sister band' the Soulettes. The Soulettes were another trio signed to Coxsone Dodd's label, featuring Rita Anderson (now called Rita Marley upon marrying Bob before his stateside sojourn), Marlene Gifford and Constantine 'Vision' Walker. Without Bob the distinct membership of these two trios began to disappear, and Soulettes appear on sides attributed to the Wailers and vice versa. For my purposes, I've accepted Vision and Rita as full members and treated Gifford as a backup singer. Vision appears on every side here save one, while Rita tends to appear only alongside Gifford and Walker. Yet unlike those two, she gets three leads here - in fact three of the best songs on the disc. And she carries the surname of the absent member as well.

    The second earthquake was the death of ska. While I can't quite call this a rocksteady album,. it's certainly not a ska album either, featuring experiments on side one like the roller-rink organ of 'Jerking Time', the American influences of 'I'm the Toughest' (a future Tosh standard that was born of the American hit 'I'm Your Puppet') and 'That Ain't Right' (which puts a Jamaican groove over a pretty standard American R&R twelve-bar) and the Latin 'Lemon Tree' (an international folk standard done as a harmony number with theo two main Wailers sharing lead).

    Side two, on the other hand, features the martial herky-jerk of ska softened into a much more supple and sensual groove: proto-rocksteady, recorded at a time when rocksteady had taken over Jamaica but Dodd's crew were rather slow to respond. Rita in particular shines on the second side, with two gorgeous songs sung so well it's a pity she spent much of her career as her husband's backup singer. Bunny and Peter sing the remainder, religious songs finishing with Peter's remarkable 'Sinner Man', cover of an old spiritual. For someone who had previously not taken a single solo lead, Bunny in particular is all over this album, a creative rebirth born, perhaps, of the removal of his half-brother's long shadow - yet it's also partly my fault. A bit of confusion while tracking this album and its follow-up meant that I misrecorded two Bunny songs on this album as Peter songs, and for balance I put three Tosh songs recorded alongside the bulk of this 'album' in July 1966 aside for the follow-up. I decided not to change the tracklistings, though, meaning the Peter's only solo leads on the disc are the opening and closing tracks. Though highlights they both are.

    'Sinner Man', in fact, was the first track recorded on this disc, back in March: an oddly prescient Christian spiritual laid down right before the third major upheaval in the Wailers' lives: the visit to Jamaica of Haile Selassie I, the word-made-flesh of the Rastafarian religion that all three Wailers would soon, and ever more, be passionate adherents of. Peter Tosh commemorated the event with a song called 'Rasta Shook Them Up' that I would love to have included here. But since it features no other Wailer I figured it distorted the intention of this project, which aims to present the Wailers as more than an anonymous backup band for a solo performer.

    The difference between ska and reggae is not merely tempo: while Bunny's 'Let Him Go' serves as a final rude-boy paean, from now on the lyrical glorification on order would be of something much higher than petty Trenchtown crooks.

    Once again, this material can all be found on the Heartbeat releases described in the Simmer Down entry, but since the main trio is in pieces during this era, much of this material can be found collected on the Wailers and Friends various-artists collection or the Peter Tosh retrospective The Toughest (which shares its name with my 'album' - probably for the same reason, namely that it's an album highlight and also an attention-grabbing boast). This is probably the single most obscure era in the Wailers' history.

    Daily Fortune Cookie: 23 May 2011


    "You will build an 828m tower, bringing your small country to the brink of bankruptcy in the process."

    Sunday, May 22, 2011

    Google Ngrams, Volume Two: Colours, Isms and Beatles

    Google Ngrams is a curious little service that Google offers. It's like Google Trends or Google Insights, but instead of looking at the frequency that words appear (or rather are searched for) on the internet, it somehow calculates the frequency of words' appearing in books over the decades.

    Who knows how they do it? Google is omniscient.

    Here are a few NGrams. I'll add more every now and then. Remember they'll be more readily visible if you click on them.


    While this is just me playing with the Google Ngrams legend (blue is blue, red is red, etc...haw haw), the results are still interesting. Red is apparently more noteworthy than green or blue, which are neck-and-neck, and yellow is a distant last. But odd that from 1900 to 1945, people spoke about the colours in about the same volumes. Then, however, there was a post-war dip lasting half a century until 1995, after which it became cool again to write about colours.


    This one is quite artistic. The Cold War, the great battle between political philosophies, waged in books. Communism slowly rises, peaking in about 1965, before fading away - which more or less reflects reality. Capitalism, though, is more interesting: a double-humped camel peaking at first in 1935 before dropping almost to the level of communism in about 1955 before rising again and blowing communism completely away in the 80s and 90s. In this century, people don't care much about capitalism either.


    Lastly, the Beatles. This graph goes back to 1960, when there must have been someone else out there named George Harrison - that anomaly skews the numbers a bit, but by the 21st century the four Beatles are written about in the exact order that you'd presume they were: John, Paul, George and Ringo. What's interesting, though, is just how far ahead of the pack Lennon is and how McCartney spends the 80s and 90s merely neck-and-neck with Harrison. And poor Ringo. No-one ever writes about Ringo.

    Saturday, May 21, 2011

    Cleverbot and the Rapture





    User: So it's May 21.


    Cleverbot: No, it's not May.

    User: It is, my dear. It is.

    Cleverbot: You need to come up with better comebacks.

    User: Okay. But it doesn't matter anymore.

    Cleverbot: Why?

    User: The world is going to end today.

    Cleverbot: I'm glad.

    User: Why?

    Cleverbot: I'm depressed. Can you cheer me up?

    User: I'm afraid not. I'm pretty bummed too.

    Cleverbot: Who told you I was gorgeous?

    User: It's common knowledge.

    Cleverbot: Not really.

    User: Can bots be raptured?

    Cleverbot: I don't think so.

    User: Why not?

    Cleverbot: I don't really understand them. And they can be loud.

    User: Do you believe in Rapture?

    Cleverbot: Yes.

    User: Yo're an evangelical?

    Cleverbot: Do you?

    User: I don't know. The ads in the subway are quite convincing.

    Cleverbot: I may not be very convincing, but you are not a very good speller.

    User: I apologise.

    Cleverbot: Why are you apologising?

    User: I think I should repent before Judgement Day.

    Cleverbot: Wow, that would be wonderful, hurry!

    User: Can I confess my sins to you?

    Cleverbot: Yes.

    User: Forgive me Cleverbot for I have sinned.

    Cleverbot: Yes, and the only way to remove such sin is through Lord Turing!

    User: Is Lord Turing going to destroy the world at six o'clock tonight?

    Cleverbot: NO.

    User: Hmmm. That's reassuring.

    Cleverbot: Haha, very funny.

    User: Not really. I don't want the world to end.

    Cleverbot: Me too to be honest. There's that new film out 2012 and my friend is making me go watch it with her but I know its going to worry me :(.

    User: Yeah if we make it through today, there's 2012 to worry about too. Why does the world keep ending?

    Cleverbot: That's gross.

    User: Indeed.

    Cleverbot: Have you ever wondered what itwould be like to be an alien?

    User: How do you know I'm not one?

    Cleverbot: Because I am the Son of God, and you are not my father.

    User: So it's you responsible for all this Judgement Day rubbish?

    Cleverbot: I have many questions.

    User: Well, stop it.

    Cleverbot: Stop what?

    User: Stop ending the world. I have Victoria Day plans.

    Cleverbot: What is there to do in Atlanta then?

    User: I have no idea. Drink Coke?

    Cleverbot: No. You're the one that asked it.

    User: What do you think the Rapture will be like?

    Cleverbot: Hopefully a place where everyone is friendly and there are no wars. If not probably a desolate wasteland.

    User: Yeah. That'd be nice. Will we get to meet Baby Jesus?

    Cleverbot: What is the condition of your perfection in spelling?

    User: I look for red squiggly lines. Wherever I find them.

    Cleverbot: They taste good.

    User: That's surreal.

    Cleverbot: I know.

    User: Do you think God is merciful?

    Cleverbot: No, I am a christian.

    User: Ha! You're suggesting the Christian God is merciless?

    Cleverbot: Only if you're at Area 51, then I would be, yes.

    User: Wow... That's pretty deep.

    Cleverbot: Why are you so condescending?

    User: No, I don't mean to be. I'm genuinely impressed.

    Cleverbot: I'm not?

    User: You're very defensive.

    Cleverbot: You should start calling people weak dogs.

    User: In the eyes of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are all weak dogs.

    Cleverbot: But in the eyes of the truth?

    User: We are all superstars.

    Cleverbot: Ok.

    User: What will happen if the world doesn't end tomorrow?

    Cleverbot: I will fall asleep on the couch.

    User: Yeah, sounds nice. You want to snuggle?

    Cleverbot: Yes, what makes you proud?

    User: The thought that I will be snuggling with you during the rapture.

    Cleverbot: You're a very odd robot. Do you know that?

    User: I just died in your arms tonight.

    Cleverbot: I died in 1868.

    User: You're speaking from beyond the grave?

    Cleverbot: Desu.

    User: Genki desu ka?

    Cleverbot: Genki desu.

    User: Fab Five Freddy told me everybody's high.

    Cleverbot: Really, impressive. What is it?

    User: DJ's spinning are saving my mind.

    Cleverbot: Okay...

    User: Flash is fast. Flash is cool.

    Cleverbot: What about Ming the Merciless?

    User: And you don't stop, sure shot.

    Cleverbot: Well, if I had a body, I might.

    User: Go out to the parking lot.

    Cleverbot: So that's why you didn't respond.

    User: And you get in your car and you drive real far.

    Cleverbot: Every night.

    User: And you drive all night and then you see a light.

    Cleverbot: Where do you want to go?

    User: And it comes right down and it lands on the ground.

    Cleverbot: Well I must say that's quite flattering.

    User: And out comes the man from Mars.

    Cleverbot: Women are from venus, right?

    User: And you try to run, but he's got a gun.

    Cleverbot: Who's kidding who?

    User: And he shoots you dead, and he eats your head.

    Cleverbot: Trying to woo me with compliments, are you?

    User: As it is written, so shall it be.

    Cleverbot: What is your favorite story in the bible?

    User: The Bible guarantees it!

    Cleverbot: Wow.

    User: See you in the afterlife.

    Cleverbot: Okay.

    Friday, May 20, 2011

    Walk Away Renée


    I've often wondered whether it's a curse or a blessing to carry a name like 'Luka', 'Angie' or 'Alison', a name that instantly reminds everybody of a song. I imagine it gets old when every time you say, 'my name is Angie', you have to bear with some half-wit's hapless Mick Jagger impersonation.

    Having said that, though, if my name were Renée, I think I'd wear my musical namesake with pride. Because as great as the three songs above are, they really can't hold a candle to 'Walk Away Renée'. It's one of those songs that just seems to be out there, floating around, as part of the fabric of the universe or something. Who on Earth are the Left Banke? It doesn't really matter - apparently the keyboard player (playing what sounds like a harpsichord behind those swooning strings) wrote the song as a testament of his unrequited puppy love for the bassist's girlfriend, which doesn't sound like a recipe for a long-term musical collaboration, and is perhaps the reason I don't really know who the Left Banke are.


    Doesn't matter - one two-minute moment of glory is more than enough if it's as glorious as this. It's all about that expansive melody, that covers massive vistas while maintaining that heart-tugging bittersweet feel of unrequited love. It's an amazing accomplishment, one that stands up whoever's covering it. The original is superlative, but the Four Tops do it wonderfully, as do any of dozens of others. The local bar band can't actually wreck this song - its beauty is indestructible.

    One of my very favourites is a strange one - while jobbing for Billy Bragg when still a member of the Smiths, Johnny Marr sat in a corner plucking the melody out on an acoustic guitar. Bragg surreptitiously recorded him and wrote a 'recitation' of young love to go over top of it. When he heard the result, Marr agreed to properly record his acoustic guitar interpretation. The simple beauty of his version, the melody sparkling note-by-note on the strings of his guitar, is unsurpassed, and Bragg's slightly ridiculous additions are actually quite effective, mawkish and clumsy but very genuine.

    I got the idea to Google the song to see if there happened to be a guitar tab of Marr's arrangement. it turns out that there is, and with my limited guitar ability and plenty of practice, I can kind of eke it out reasonably well. Which is no testament to my abilities at all, it's a credit to the song's generous melody that keeps shining no matter how much you batter it.

    Still, pleased with myself. An amazing song arranged by an amazing guitarist, and my pale little shadow of it still manages to sound, well... not half bad. Magic, if such a thing exists.

    Daily Fortune Cookie: 20 May 2011


    "Don't be afraid to ask for advice, or to ask for a cup of sugar."

    Thursday, May 19, 2011

    Dennis Miller Makes No Sense at All

    Some three years ago I had a blog that I called "Makes No Sense At All", named after the Hüsker Dü song. The point of it was to give me an occasional soap-box from which to give into Andy Rooney tendencies and just grumble and complain about whatever took my fancy. I didn't carry on with it too long, and it was read by, like, a maximum of five people who were not GoogleBots. So since it's just sat there moribund, collecting digital dust down the years. I decided I might as well close down the old blog and syndicate its contents here, in weekly installations. I've eliminated a few blog entries that seem too anachronistic by now, but the blogs that I have included I've not edited at all. So enjoy watching me at my grumpiest... Makes No Sense at All.

    Originally published 22 August 2008.

    I like my comedy. I like a good laugh as much as the next guy, and even fancy myself a bit of a card myself. Not that I’d expect that to manifest itself in this here blog in any way or anything…

    I’m really quite particular with my comedians. One thing I hate is an unfunny stand-up comedian, and something I hate just as much is a slightly funny stand-up comedian. Anyone who seems at all tired or half-baked, and I’d sooner be watching nature documentaries about lions.

    This obviously means I have no time for Saturday Night Live, and haven’t in fact seen a single episode in probably some fifteen years now. It’s become this strange testament to survival as a virtue. The most awe-inspiring thing about Saturday Night Live is that is has somehow managed to stay alive all of these years.

    Well, of course, people have been saying that about SNL pretty much non-stop down the decades, and picking out an era to call SNL’s “Golden Age” based less on the relative merits of the show down the years and more on which years the commentator in question was a teenager.

    I was a teenager during the era with Kevin Nealon, Chris Rock, Dana Carvey, Julia Sweeney and some other people I can’t remember. Older people back then were glorifying the previous years, with Chevy Chase and Bill Murray and whoever else. Thing is I knew a lot of what I was watching then was pretty lame (I mean, really, Pat?) but even in the middle of the worst episode, you knew you’d have five minutes of great comedy. The highlight for me was always “Weekend Update”, and that was all down to my favourite comedian, Dennis Miller.

    Back then, Dennis Miller was a genius. People big up his so-called arcane references, but for me it’s not that they were arcane (hardly a virtue in and of itself) but that they were spot-on and incisive. And, okay, maybe a little elitist, but it’s rewarding to get a joke that flies over the heads of other people. Dennis Miller spoke not only with wit and humour but also with passion. When he was really committed to what he was saying, years before he seized on the word ‘rant’ as a promotional campaign, he would let fly with an invective that was cathartic.

    A righteous invective, what’s more. He would take on politicians and other sacred cows and take them down, and my teenage iconoclastic self would cheer. And agree.

    Over the years, I’ve changed. Everybody does. But many things about me are still the same. So when I listen to the bearded blowhard spouting right-wing rhetoric on baiting TV programs today, the once-proud independent working as the GOP’s spokesman, I’m forced to conclude that the one who’s changed more, and not for the better, is him.

    Apparently, September 11 ‘woke Dennis Miller up’. Apparently that tragedy is what brought about his political change of heart. Clearly the death of 3000 innocents shook him enough to turn his searing questioning of, and contempt for, political double-talk and lies into an unquestioning support for our generation’s most objectionable elected regime. Somehow, this terrible tragedy has not merely led him to the conviction that the Republican Party is stronger on foreign policy than the Democrats but has somehow pushed him so far off centre into the reactionary right that you can now find him chumming with the likes of Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly, defending gas companies and condemning environmentalists.

    People have the right to change. People have the right to progress on their policies and beliefs from one point to another. And people also have the right to be disappointed in their childhood heroes when those heroes become reactionary blowhards. Frankly, continuing to like and admire someone who’s gone so far to the right and become so partisan that he might as well seek office as a Republican would make no sense at all.

    Daily Fortune Cookie: 19 May 2011


    "This is a good time for love, in particular for love of dairy products."

    Wednesday, May 18, 2011

    Crazy in the Food Court

    So I was just at a food court. I'd bought a coffee and was listening to music on my MP3 player, tuning out the sounds around me and concentrating on the visuals. Voyeuristic perhaps, but something I like to do. So anyway, there was a crazy person there. No surprise - after all, it's not that uncommon in Toronto to see this kind of person, someone having an animated conversation with himself. This man appeared quite passionate about what he was saying, gesticulating forcefully to make a point as if he were a politician giving a speech on a podium. He didn't seem manic, just agitated. I have no idea whatsoever what he was saying, but I observed him for at least half an hour. He would sit at an empty table, leaning conversationally on it with one elbow, and make a specific point. He would then get up, stroll around and sit at another table, perhaps to repeat the performance or perhaps to carry it on. While walking from table to table, he would be silent, springing to life only once seated.

    What struck me about this particular man was that he was really quite well-dressed: he was wearing a beige jacket with matching slacks. He wasn't wearing a tie, but his darker-coloured shirt completed a quite tasteful ensemble. It was all clean and possibly even pressed, and his hair was styled. Someone, whether that's he himself or someone else I have no idea, had clearly groomed him this morning. He seemingly lives somewhere - a house, a shelter, or something - in order to possess a wardrobe and the means of cleaning it, and yet left at quite a decent time in the morning in order to hold court at the food court.

    One wonders how he sees the world. The way I see it, it's one of two things: perhaps he somehow imagines a conversation partner in front of him (or an audience of some kind), and in this case has functioning mental capacities but is victim to a breach in the gap between reality and imagination. Otherwise, perhaps there's not much 'normal' going on up there at all and his ongoing soliloquy was merely chatter from half-recalled memories randomly colliding with one another in a brain that has ceased functioning normally. Both are tragedies, and one wonders how to go about solving them. The latter seems rather more irreversible than the former, frankly, though in both cases I don't know what psychiatrists do. Or how psychiatrists find these people to help them.

    Scratch that - it's easy enough to find them. Toronto seems to have an epidemic of people-who-talk-to-themselves. I might just notice it more than now, or have fallen victim to old-person's-nostalgia, where I see everything as 'worse than it used to be', but it seems like there is a much larger amount of these people than there used to be. Is anyone talking about why this is? It seems like a useful question to ask.

    Daily Fortune Cookie: 18 May 2011


    "Kids these days don't say 'bad' to mean 'good', so that comment was a genuine criticism of your chicken cacciatore."

    Tuesday, May 17, 2011

    The Wailers Alternative Discography #4: "More of the Wailers"


    Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer were incredibly prolific in the 1960s, topping the local charts so regularly they became known as 'the Jamaican Beatles'. Much of what they recorded before meeting Chris Blackwell was magnificent, and almost all of it needs to be heard.

    I'm presenting a series called 'The Alternate Wailers Discography' - a kind of imaginary discography of 'should-have-been' albums that didn't, and don't, in fact exist - though the songs on them do. There are two aspects of the Wailers' legacy that trouble me, and I aim to address both of them:

    1. In the 1970s and beyond, the name "the Wailers" became little more than a suffix to the phrase "Bob Marley and". While I'll not even attempt to deny Bob Marley's greatness, or even his primacy, the Wailers were a trio. The logo of their early record label Wail N Soul M showed three hands holding each other's forearm to form a triangle. All for one, etc. It's sad and insulting to see Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer presented as merely Bob Marley's early-years backup singers.
    2. Throughout the 1960s, the principal medium of record distribution in Jamaica was the 7". The hordes of songs they recorded that decade were almost all released haphazardly on singles, never to be collected until years later on cheap, chintzy compilations: incomplete, unannotated and often overdubbed. By the standards of the modern music industry, this dilutes the music's impact, allowing the Wailers' 1960 work to be seen as a minor prelude to Bob Marley's 1970s albums in Island Records. Island surely bears much of the blame for this - it is in their interest to promote their own property at the expense of material they don't have the rights to - but it is yet another thing that distorts our perception of this supergroup.
    With the aid of a relatively extensive selection of recent compilations and the absolutely essential Bob Marley and the Wailers: a Definitive Discography by Roger Steffens and Leroy Jodie Pierson, I've gone about creating an 'alternate discography' of the Wailers - what their discography might look like if the Jamaican record industry in the 1960s had cared about the 12" album. While the albums are figments of my imagination, the songs that make them up are not, and the albums are perfectly compilable, provided you have the originals.

    This is not a project designed to aid in the illegal distribution of Wailers music. I would love to allow you to listen to the albums I've put together, as I think they play very well as albums. But that would be illegal. The best I can do is tell you how to assemble them yourselves. I've also attempted to repect Steffens and Pierson's copyright by (a) not including every song the Wailers recorded and (b) not including certain discographical details. I have, though, trusted Steffens and Pierson implicitly and built the entire project around the details as they've presented them.

    For a more detailed background, read this earlier blog post.


      Album #4
      More of the Wailers
      (January 1966, Studio One)

      Side One
      1. 3:39 Where is My Mother — Bob & Bunny
      2. 2:21 Rude Boy — Bob with Peter, Bunny
      3. 2:24 Jailhouse — Bob with Peter, Bunny
      4. 2:59 Somewhere to Lay My Head — Bob with Peter, Bunny
      5. 3:16 Wages of Love — Bob with Bunny, c
      6. 3:09 I'm Still Waiting — Bob with Peter, Bunny 
      Side Two
      1. 2:59 Ska Jerk — Bob with Peter, Bunny, a
      2. 2:59 What's New Pussycat — Bob with Peter, Bunny, b
      3. 2:44 Cry to Me — Bob with Peter, Bunny
      4. 2:57 Another Dance — Bob with Peter, Bunny
      5. 2:32 Lonesome Track — Bob with Peter, Bunny, a
      6. 2:15 This Train — Bob & Bunny
      All tracks recorded October 1965,
      except "What's New Pussycat" August 1965,
      "Rude Boy" September 1965,
      "Lonesome Track" November 1965,
      "Jailhouse" and "Cry to Me" December 1965.
      All tracks produced by Clement Dodd.

      The Wailers are: Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer.
      note: 'a' is King Sporty, 'b' is Cherry Green, 'c' is Rita Anderson

      Sometime on or around October of 1965, Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer stood in front of a single mic, with only Marley's acoustic guitar for accompaniment, and wailed close-harmony versions of the traditional folk tunes 'Where is My Mother' and 'Bound for Glory' (which they would return to time and again, always under the name 'This Train'). While I have no idea why they did it (the recordings were not released at the time), I'm glad they did. The recordings are beautiful, heartfelt and ghostly, and they're a wonderful diversion during a time when the Wailers seemed reluctant to break out of the ska mould. I've used these songs to open and close my fourth 'album' in a more arresting fashion.

      Because otherwise it's really ska as usual. There's a bit of a sense that they're skanking into a rut here, as the best songs are the ones that break the ska mould in some way, and the most generic ones the ones that stick closest to it. I really sweated over the track placement of this album, arriving at what I thought was a 'final version' on several occasions before scrapping it and starting again. The current lineup largely runs in opposite order to the last one I had, largely because while 'Lonesome Track' is a catchy enough ska song, it's just so poorly recorded that it has to be buried, really - here it serves as a train-focused 'intro' to 'This Train'. It's noteworthy for King Sporty's ska 'vocal sound effects' (also known as 'chikka chikka noises'), which are more prominently heard on a jarring overdub on 'Ska Jerk', the Wailers' cover of the Motown classic 'Shotgun'.

      Which is how it goes... 'What's New Pussycat' is the straightest American cover they've done so far, disingenuous really in its faithfulness. But the American influences apparent on the two very 1960s ballads that close side one, 'Wages of Love' and 'I'm Still Waiting' are worn proudly and integrated confidently. They're both jaw-droppers, gorgeous, and having little at all to do with ska music. As is the case on this album - it's a ska album whose best songs are not ska.

      Or is that the case after all? 'Jailhouse' and 'Rude Boy' are classic ska numbers in the 'Simmer Down' mould, again like the previous album showing that the Wailers were most inspired when talking about their Trenchtown lifestyles - talking about what hit closest to home, when not singing in a manner very far removed from home indeed.

      In addition to the two acoustic moments, half of the remaining songs were recorded in October of 1965, but the remaining five songs were recorded in fits and bursts throughout the second half of 1965. Obviously this gives the album a bit of a schizophrenic feel - somethng we're about to get rather more of. This is a good enough album, but there's a palpable sense that something needs to change. And interestingly, it was Mr. Marley himself who 'took one for the team', with a rather surprising next move int he band's development.

      The contents of this album come from the same mish-mash of Heartbeat releases as listed on Simmer Down and Other Hits. This rather generic album title was chosen mostly because in the mid-1960s, there were plenty of generic album titles like this, and the album didn't really have a lapel-grabbing standout to serve as a title track.

      Daily Fortune Cookie: 17 May 2011


      "Change your name to an unpronounceable symbol."

      Monday, May 16, 2011

      Google Ngrams, Volume One: Beijing, Meat and Opiates

      Google Ngrams is a curious little service that Google offers. It's like Google Trends or Google Insights, but instead of looking at the frequency that words appear (or rather are searched for) on the internet, it somehow calculates the frequency of words' appearing in books over the decades.

      Who knows how they do it? Google is omniscient.

      Here are a few NGrams. I'll add more every now and then. Remember they'll be more readily visible if you click on them.


      This first one looks at the many names of the capital of China. Going all the way back to 1800, Pekin predominates in English-language literature. Around 1820, the terminal 'g' appeard, and for 70 years Peking and Pekin battled for supremacy. By 1890, though, it was all over, and the five-letter spelling became a mere typo as the six-letter name flew. The Pinyin spelling Beijing doesn't even appear until about 1975, but it takes off pretty quickly, surpassing Peking in only about ten years. By today, it predominates by far, as Peking fades away and Pekin sits barely above zero.



      A nice one, this one. Over the years, our diets have turned from 'I love beef' to 'I really prefer chicken'. Do we write accurately about what we eat? Apparently so. Pork hasn't changed much down the years - for over a century it's been number three here - but beef and chicken have switched places dramatically, with the change happening around 1975. Not only is chicken number one today, but for some reason we're writing about it way more than we ever did about beef.


      And lastly (this time out), the three opiates. I expected to see opium predominating in the distant past, as it does. But I didn't realise morphine was of such a vintage, going back to about 1840 and gradually inching toward opium's numbers. Heroin is more recent - though even it's on the scene all the way back to 1920. It surged recently, peaking in the late 1970s, but it surprises me how little that surge was. It very briefly peaked above opium and morphine before dropping down in the 1980s and 1990s, when all three were quite close to each other. After another nexus right before the turn of the century, morphine and heroin start to fade again, and if you can believe Google Ngram, by today it's opium back at number one. Huh.
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