We Call It "Riding The Gravy Train!"

Board room discussion I can only imagine:

Q: How can we make Corn Flakes more appealing to children?

A: Cover them in sugar and put a cartoon tiger on the box...Duh. Idiot.

Q: As much as I love this idea, how can we make them even sweeter and less healthy thus even more appealing?

 A: Umm...Throw marshmallows in there too?"

BRILLIANT!

Where Were You?

Only two and a half today...But they are all really good!

 

David Gilmour is the half one.  I have something like thirteen songs to get off the second DVD.

Go Away, Heartbreaker(s?)

I'm going to start this out by saying I really enjoy Led Zeppelin II.  It is one of my favorite albums, and I'm not too particularly familiar with Train outside of their Drops of Jupiter song.


I am currently listening to Train Does Led Zeppelin II.


It's pretty underwhelming so far.


Underwhelming, but not so bad as to declare "all life to be bullshit" like the article I read on this a couple of months ago declared.


Anyway.


Whole Lotta Love is just plain underwhelming.  The vocals are off, the guitar is off enough to throw me off.  I almost turned the album off after the first minute and a half, but decided that wouldn't be fair.


What Is and What Should Never Be AND The Lemon Song were pretty unexciting.  The first is a decent, slow moving song, but the second has some moments where the song should jump out and grab your attention.  This one really didn't.


Thank You is probably the best sounding track on the whole album, and I suspect that may be because it sounds the closest to the original out of everything.


There has been something bothering me about what little I had heard of it, but couldn't quite place my finger on it.  I have it now.  Track 5, Heartbreaker is what tipped me off.  The guitar just sounds wrong.  Someone gave me a copy of Dred Zeppelin's Un-Led-Ed (link to Amazon Page), and the guitar in Train's cover sounds like it is tuned pretty much exactly like that one.  Which was one of the reasons I did not care too much for that album.


The guitar stands out more in the beginning after listening for it, but the first few notes of that particular song are where it stands out the most.


Some of the articles and reviews I read for this train album claim that it is a "note for note recreation" of II.  In some ways it is true to form, in other ways it is not.  She's Just A Woman's opening line sounds (on the original) like he is more or less saying "fip cent hat", whereas Pat actually goes so far as to say "fifty cent hat" and it really doesn't flow correctly with the pacing of the song.


I feel like they probably went with the actual wording and everything of the album, as opposed to going for the full feel of everything with the shortcuts and whathaveyou that made it flow as well as it does.


Ramble On is decent though.


Moby Dick is Moby Dick.  Enough said.


Bring It On Home...What am I hearing?  It sounds like the microphone is in his mouth or something?  The second part of the song's instruments sound pretty much on par with what is expected though.


All in all, not the worst album I have ever heard.  I imagine it is like any Led Zeppelin album...Better heard in concert, but I have no desire to see Train in concert, so I guess that is it. 


I realize there will be a whole lotta people who are being exposed to this material for the first time via Train, so there is that.  But do yourself a favor.


Go buy the original.

TEAR DOWN THE WALL!

Today's CDs:

Is There Anybody Home?

Today's higher quality music converisons:

 

Eight Days A Week

I've been ripping all my cds again at a higher bit rate than back when I had a tiny mp3 player with no space.

Today I got through:
 

The Beatles: Live at the BBC Volumes One and Two
 

Jimmy Page & The Black Crows: Live at the Greek
 

Moxy Fruvous: Live Noise
 

B.B. King & Eric Clapton: Riding With The King

This Thing Is Built Like A War Machine

2016 is (thankfully) almost over.

Turn The Page

So the last couple of years I have been listening to audiobooks more frequently while I drive to and from work.


About a week and a half ago I started on the Harry Potter books.  I read the first one years and years ago, but I remember so little of it.


This comes of reading rather quickly and not being particular interested. But I figure now that I have a child who will, at some point in his young life, want to read them, I probably should.


So they are being read to me in audiobook format.  If I have time, I will pull out the actual book and pick up where the iPod has left off.  I must say.  They are more interesting to me this time through.  Although I have discovered that there is something about experiencing media through a medium that bypasses the optic nerve that I just find so much more engaging.


I have always been a fan of audio dramas.  Big Finish has done some wonderful stuff with Doctor Who over the years.  The BBC has done an amazing job adapting all five books in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy and both Dirk Gently books.


But that is just me.


I'm weird.

They Asked Us To Stay For Tea And Have Some Fun

With regard to my last post. I did not vote for the man. Nor did I vote for Hillary or Gary. I voted for the person who I felt was best for the job that was actually running. I was fully aware that my candidate of choice was not going to win. I was tired of the "a vote for a 3rd party is a vote for Hillary" rhetoric from the one side and "a vote for a 3rd party is a vote for Trump" rhetoric on the other. I feel that a vote for one of the two main candidtates just to keep the other out of office is a wasted vote. I also feel that a vote for a candidate that you do not feel is ideal for the job is a wasted vote. Is he my ideal president? No. But you are not going to see me chanting and protesting about it. You're not going to see me moving to Canada or Mexico or anywhere. I am not disparaging anyone for who they voted for. I am glad if your guy won, I am sorry if your gal/guy lost. That is what should make our system work. Diversity. We are a diverse nation, and we deserve a diverse government, but we'll see what happens. I, for one, will wait patiently for the next election and hope that America has woken up enough to be truly outraged and present the 2020 election with several outstanding, well qualified candidates. You will see me holding out hope for that day, but you probably won't see me holding my breath.

We're Just Two Lost Souls Swimming In A Fishbowl

Today was a very hard day.

We buried our youngest child this day.

He/She was miscarried sometime around ten weeks as best as we can tell. 

As I said the other day, it is very hard to know that there is a person that you created that you will never get to meet.

Anyway, it was a very small thing. Myself, my wife and her two youngest sisters.  We made a tiny coffin out of some white fabric and a little wooden keepsake box from Hobby Lobby, dug a hole under our youngest sister's tree, said a few words and buried our unborn baby.

 

It is not much, but I feel that we did right by our child.  Given that one of the other "acceptable options" was flushing it down the toilet.

I decided that the baby deserved something better than that, so there we have it.

Dear Child,

I want to let you know that despite the fact that you never got a shot in this big, bad world, you were, and always will be loved.

It hurts to know that we will never get to meet you, never get to teach you, never get to learn from you, never get to play with you, never get to see you grow up, never get to meet your older brother.

There is a very long list of things that begin with "never get to...", but "be loved by your family" will never be on that list.

After we buried you today, I got into the car and the song "Wish You Were Here" had just started. I am not ashamed to say that I cried.  I'm not ashamed to say that I came home and wept for a few minutes because I wish that you were here.

I cannot come up with a good way to end this letter, so...

I have loved you since the day you were conceived. 

-Your Father.