Last night we drove to Chattanooga to see Will Hoge perform at Rhythm and Brews. The last time we saw Will was in Nashville and it was standing room only so it was surprising that everyone within 20 miles of downtown Chattanooga was not at last nights show. I drove 80 miles and the last time I drove double that. If Will Hoge was doing shows in the 70′s Bob Dylan and Tom Petty would have sold a few less tickets because they would have had some competition. The state of music in this day and age really baffles me. That said, you all missed a great performance and thanks for leaving the best seats for me and the crew. Will Hoge’s latest album is called Number Seven and it has some great songs some of which he played last night. He also played songs from previous albums Draw The Curtains and The Wreckage. If you are not currently a Will Hoge fan then head over to Amazon and find out what you are missing. Here is my review of Will Hoge’s The Wreckage back when I was first introduced to his music. Enjoy the pics and don’t give up any opportunity you get to see him live.
Click the thumbnails for full size images of Will Hoge in concert at Chattanooga Tennessee’s Rhythm and Brews on October 20th, 2011.
Buy Will Hoge – Number SevenVisit the official Will Hoge Website
If you have been known to be giddy or drool around Hi-Fi stereo equipment then you have probably heard the name Philip R. Clements. You may have heard of Phil because of Clements Loudspeakers but those of us that go back before 1984 can tell you about a lesser known company, Phase Research Corporation.
Phase research only produced 2 models of speakers that I know of before the business burned down, literally. If you ever had the opportunity to listen to the Model R or the big brother Model RT then you experienced a changing of the guard. We no longer needed the 12″ bass driver for thunderous sound.
The Phase Research speakers were a transmission line design that used a custom 8 inch driver with an oversize magnet. They featured a design that had high free-air resonances and extended travel that turned the entire cabinet into a virtual 24″ bass driver.
Critics and audio salesmen were putting these speakers up against well known brands and models priced twice as much. The best I can remember in 1980 was $600 for a pair off model R speakers. As a teenager without a job in 1980 I could only dream…
Since I couldn’t afford the Phase Research speakers i used the spec sheet to build my own cabinets and crossover. Luckily the marketers for Phase Research Corporation were so excited about the design that they detailed it in the brochure and included a cutaway photo of the inner workings and cabinet design. Although I didn’t have anything comparable to the 8″ driver in the PR speakers I still ended up with speakers that wowed my friends and family.
For 15 years now I have been in search of a pair of my very own vintage Phase Research speakers but they are far and few between. Recently I found the larger model RT speakers for sale on eBay so I clicked buy now and exchanged my hard earned money for a pair. Sight unseen. For a day I was walking on air. I had to travel 4 hours to pick up the speakers and sadly the seller had hidden the fact that he did not have the original 8″ drivers. I was left with an empty wallet and empty transmission line cabinets.
I am still on my quest to find some Phase Research Model R or RT speakers, with the original drivers but until then I will just have to live with the memory of what was almost a dream come true.
If you are interested in the latest developments with Phil Clements you can keep up with his H-PAS speaker technology at Solus Audio and Atlantic Technology.
The first video games many of us came across back in the seventies were the squat table-top type, designed to sit at with a beer, use as a table and – this seems really funny in 2012 – some even had ashtrays built in.
Aged about six or seven, I was already utterly fascinated with the Asteroids and Lunar Lander machines in a hotel lobby near my home. One day I had a really good look at it (must have run out of 2 pence coins…) and discovered a neglected switch underneath the box which turned out to be the volume control. Wow – with sounds as well, the game was nothing short of astounding.
Turning up the volume and hearing all those little synthesised laser blasts and explosions for the first time literally transported me into space. If that little boy was already interested in games, now he was fascinated.
As humans, most of us experience the world through all five ‘senses’ and many more less recognised sensory inputs. This means that when we limit an experience to just the visual level, we are easily bored and quickly distracted. The movie industry took off properly when ‘the talkies’ were invented – and it seems as if the gaming industry too has reached maturity by developing its aural dimension.
The technical feasibility of rich, complex sound design and music in games is a large part of this story. Early developers had very little to work with in terms of both graphics and sound, with tiny computer chips and just a few bytes of memory.
The crunchy, monophonic bass melody from Taico’s original Space Invaders was actually the first game ‘soundtrack’ – running while you played and even speeding up as your game intensified!
As computer technology developed in the 1980’s, arcade game developers were right on the cutting edge of digital sound. Namco, Konami and Sega were among the leaders, introducing some of the first examples of polyphonic (more than one simultaneous sound) computer music in games such as Carnival, Frogger and Dig-Dug.
The really crucial development at this point was the introduction of PCM synthesis – the generation of ‘real’ sounding tones by digitally imitating a recorded analogue waveform. As well as providing us with much-improved game music, this technology also fed the synthesiser boom of 80’s pop music and led to the development of the compact disc – and ultimately the MP3.
By the late 80’s we were used to hearing great compositions that integrated with the action. Whether you loved Tetris, Chuckie Egg or Ikari Warriors – the music had become an essential part of the gaming experience.
The importance of music in video games had always been known to the developers, but in the 1990’s it really came of age. Finally, home consoles could compete with arcade machines like Outrun on graphics and sound. Gamers responded by stopping putting our our coins in the arcades – and went shopping instead. Thanks to the compact-disc streaming technology of platforms such as the Playstation 1, we were soon speeding round the Wipeout race tracks to a soundtrack of ‘real’ contemporary rave tunes.
It is no co-incidence that this is the point in gaming history where mainstream media sat up and took notice; gaming had become a serious artistic and economic contender and was definitely no longer just for kids – the gamers had grown up. Orchestral music was being written and specially recorded by top orchestras for games like Final Fantasy, and the days of ‘bleep-bleep-zap-fizz-bleep’ were firmly behind us. The stage had been set for the huge leaps in gaming sound design we have seen since the turn of the century.
In the ‘noughties’, Rockstar Games took the importance of sound design to a new level with their GTA series. They introduced such amazing features as virtual radio stations you could control – or switch off – properly acted voice scripts and hilarious conversations throughout the game world from horny passers-by to un-amused shop staff and motor-mouthed taxi drivers.
GTA – San Andreas raised the bar in terms of bringing a whole game world to life and achieved much of this by investing in unprecedented sound design.
Technology has also come a long way since those original monophonic analogue bleeps. Techniques such as spatial positioning and the use of virtual acoustics have been taken wholesale from the film and music production industries, and their processes have been vastly simplified by developments in software and increased computing power. These techniques are very valuable to gamers for the increased immersion they offer in our new, more realistic 3D worlds.
Of course it’s not all about realistic radio stations, sound effects and voice acting. The role of the composer in the game industry has developed alongside it, and increasingly specialised, talented individuals are taking the art of writing for games to new levels. In a remarkable turn-around that no-one was expecting, the music and sound design of the video game industry is even invading our traditional concert halls and orchestra pits.
It is testament to how far games have come, but how long until classical listeners wake up to the impressive music of Michael Giacchino, Harry Gregson Williams, Inon Zur or Jack Wall? The Fallout music by Mark Morgan haunts me for days whenever I play it. These guys are still alive, writing, and selling.
Bleep!
Gez Hebburn is a writer, musician and keen gamer based in south-east England. Gez has worked extensively in music for image, and is fascinated by the use of sound and music for film and theatre. He is currently playing LA Noire and working on a project for a production music company.
I can’t keep kidding myself and pretending it’s worth the hi-def movie experience. I really hate the Blue Ray platform. The entire approach is a setback for movie viewers. Don’t get me wrong, the picture quality is great. It’s the performance, I just can’t take it. Every time I put in a disc I ask myself why I didn’t just buy the cheaper DVD so I could start watching it as SOON as I put it in. We go from the spinning startup logo to the Distributor logo or custom progress bar loading forever to a black screen that usually means it is downloading 10MB of crap I don’t want and can’t imagine why it never asked me if I wanted it in the first place to, oh you thought that was it? Nope! Then I have to wait for the processor intensive animated menus. WTF! I just want to watch the movie. I skipped a step too, many times the stop or menu buttons are over-ridden too so I have to watch the previews. I had none of this interruption with DVDs. It reminds me of the performance issues with Windows Vista. Guess what Sony? Microsoft knew they failed with Vista and nothing could save it so they released a new OS rather than fixing Vista. I think Sony needs to do the same thing. Oh stop whining, I don’t really care about your existing Blu-Ray collection, get over it. It’s time Sony comes out with Beta-7. It will be a step in the right direction, even if it is tape. It can’t be any worse than Blue-Pray or Vista.
A little late posting this but most of it is still fresh in my mind. On Wednesday February 10th the family, some friends and I packed into the Jeep Cherokee and headed out on a 3 hour drive to Knoxville. We ignored the snow warnings and were pleasantly surprised with the weather during the trip up. We missed a turn that cost us about 15 minutes but we made it just in time to meet Brandi and the band at the Disc Exchange in Knoxville at 6:30pm.
If you live in Knoxville or pass through stop in because the people at the Disc Exchange are extremely friendly and they have VINYL! It is a throw-back to the old days. It reminded me of the seventies when my dad, mom and sister would head down to the record store on a Saturday and browse the latest releases for an hour or so. Funny thing, Brandi loves Elton John and I would have been looking through the Elton albums back in the seventies. I was a big fan but I do give a portion of the credit to Bernie Taupin, I love great lyrics. Where was I? OK, so Brandi plays 3 or 4 songs for the crowd of 100 or so all crammed in the corner of the record store for this up-close and personal mini performance. Just about the time everyone started realizing it wasn’t a dream she was whisked away, after all, she had a concert to do at 8pm. I’m not sure how we got lucky enough to attend this special performance but I thank the Disc Exchange and anyone else who was responsible, thank you Brandi Carlile, it was a treat. After she left, we browsed the Vinyl and a few of us purchased some CDs. I already had Give Up The Ghost on Vinyl so I bought the CD. The store had some autographed lithographs they gave away with the purchase so that was a bonus.
At this point we just barely had an hour to eat so we drove toward the Bijou Theatre where the concert was being held. A couple of laps around the city and we decided to park by the theater and eat across the street at Dazzo’s Italian Castle Pizzeria. We were really pushing it for time so we ordered meatball subs and a pizza. As 8pm approached we knew we weren’t going to make it. Both the waitress and the Chef apologized because they knew we were going to the Bijou for the concert but it was our fault for cutting it so close, not theirs. The food was great, I had not had NY style Italian food for some time, since 1993. (Maybe some day I will tell the story about moving from Miami to the back-woods of North Georgia)
So we missed quite a bit of the opening act, Amy Ray (1/2 of the Indigo Girls). The tickets didn’t say anything about an opening band and let me tell you, for those that know Amy from the Indigo Girls, forget-about-it. I think she was doing “Bus Bus” when we walked in and hearing it live makes the recorded version sound bad (it’s not). It was wall-to-wall rock-n-roll from the heart. I didn’t know much about Amy because I was not a fan of the Indigo Girls. The little I had heard from the Girls back in the day made me think of Joan Jett meets James Taylor and that’s not an Ice Cream flavor I prefer. I can tell you I have ordered Amy Ray’s latest from Amazon and I will review it soon because she was smokin’ at the Brandi Carlile gig. It might be hard to be objective though because I just read that she used to cover Dire Straits in the early years of her career so she already gets a big thumbs up. My hats off to the kid on the drums too because he was beating the hell out of them. Visit the Amy Ray website.
So now to the main event, Brandi Carlile. She has so much to give and she does. The twins, Tim and Phil are a great complement to her unique voice and gift for words and music, the songs. I have always been drawn to artists who write their own songs and have very unique voices, a voice that makes them try harder, from the heart. Great voices that require effort always felt better to me than the ones that flow naturally. I love to hear Janice Joplin, Mark Knopfler, Ricki Lee Jones, Tom Petty, Deana Carter, Will Hoge, to name a few. Back to Brandi, the first time I heard Brandi was on the Pat Monahan (Train) album “Last of Seven”. She sings on “Pirate on the Run” and steals the show (sorry Pat). I admit I was late to the Brandi party but I’m catching up.
Back to the concert, Brandi proved to be quite the entertainer, some humor, some “angry” Dylan, talk about mom and niece, she let us all in and she stole our hearts by giving her own, it was a fair swap. The theater is so intimate that we got to hear her unplugged, completely, I mean she did a song without a mic and it resonated all the way to the back of the theater. I kept thinking selfishly “don’t strain those vocal cords this early in” but she pulled it off and it was an experience you can’t get from a recording. As they played song after song time went faster and faster, to the point where you are thinking, man this is almost over, but it kept going and then we get some more personal time. Brandi does some Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn. Joking about bad country in a good way and making the whole experience even more personal, it was great. If you haven’t seen Brandi Carlile live then I encourage you to find out when she is touring near you and get your tickets because this is one performance you don’t want to miss. Visit the Brandi Carlile website.
…and then we drove home in the snow.
I like guns by Steve Lee, this video just made my day. “…I ain’t gonna shoot any-one, and no one shoots at me because I got a gun!”
Watch until the end if you like blowing stuff up.
I read some great reviews about this BluRay player and I really wanted something that had a fast startup time and BD Live 2.0 so I put the JVC XV-BP1 on my Christmas list. My wife was feeling like Santa this year so she got it for me and I was like a kid in a candy store, or maybe a kid on Christmas day would be more appropriate. The first Blu-Ray movie I tried was The Mask with Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz. It played great and the load times were as advertised, I was excited. Then I played another movie and the audio didn’t work on pass-through. It only worked if I set it to PCM-Multi. So now I’m nervous, I did my homework, my Magnavox Blu-Ray was junk so I justified the JVC. Let me try something else, so I pop in John Mayer’s Where The Light Is – Live In Las Vegas… Still no audio on passthrough it only works on PCM setting.
So I start looking on the Internet for others having this problem and it comes up blank, no hits. This can’t be true, am I really the only one? Next I jump over to the JVC site and search for firmware and I see that my firmware is 6 months old. Apparently this thing has been in the warehouse for awhile. I download the newest firmware, put it on my flash drive, boot the player, it installs and BAM! it works. Man am I happy. If you have this same issue be sure your flash drive is formatted FAT not NTFS or it won’t work.
You can get the firmware update for the XV-BP1 Blue-Ray Player at JVC Firmware Update.
I got my tickets to the Brandi Carlile “Give Up The Ghost Traveling Show” tour date in Knoxville. It’s at the Bijou Theater on Wednesday February 10th. Can’t wait!
If you haven’t heard the new album you need to get it now. One of my sons gave it to me for Christmas, on Vinyl! I was already a big fan and this album doesn’t let you down. Brandi just keeps on giving and keeps my hopes alive that the music industry will turn around and start rewarding talent rather than hairdos, cowboy hats, and cleavage.
For you Elton John fans he gives an appearance on this album, he rips the piano and even adds a few vocals.
The video feed of some U.S. Predator drones in Iraq have been hacked by locals using software that cost about $26. The tabloid headlines offer little hope for humanity but when I see something like this or that commercial space flight challenge back in 2004 I am reminded how remarkable the human race is. People still show signs of determination, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. It also points out how the Government overpays for everything. Basically they could have paid a couple of tech savvy kids a few thousand (rather than 12 million) to strap a camera phone on a gas powered model plane and security might have been better. Oh well, read the article at the Wall Street Journal.
In similar fashion I saw where an Air Force forensics worker was able to recover the data from a 5.25 inch floppy disk after it had been cut up with pinking sheers. After the NSA and CIA either failed or estimated the data recovery cost over 1 million the “little guy” went to work with some scotch tape, a couple of floppy drives and SUCCESS! A murderer confessed. All for less than $150. Jim Christy is pretty famous now after that.
This was very cool, on Thanksgiving day seven turkeys showed up in my front yard. It’s not the first time but they don’t come by every day and it’s usually only 4 or 5. I guess they smelled the turkey cooking so they knew they were safe until next year. They stopped by in the morning and the afternoon.
On the menu: Turkey, Green Bean Caserole, Squash Caserole, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Dressing, Corn Souffle, Sweet Potato Souffle, Pumpkin Bread, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Pie and plenty of Reddi Whip Cream.