The start of preparations

 

That magical learning with mom, grandma moment as we try to make things happen for ourselves with the lesson being taught by tv reminds me of making home made decorations and cards for CatMas (the feline Xmas) and baking mice pies.

Actually card making is going to be on this weeks Blue Peter I believe.

Of course around then up go the Advent Calendars you can count down the days on and actually I'm trying to get bits of that organized like making out a card list, sorting out any presents although I'm fairly certain one family member won't make it as we've scarcely seen or heard anything from them all year not collecting anything left by anyone for them from last year.

I have some idea what may be for me as anyone who does really know me I prefer to work with people around these things as much as we all appreciate just having something as much as I ask others if there might be something they are looking for in return in the main.

That's what I have been working on these last few rather damp days.

Autumn ramblings

 Almost approaching Winter so reaching for more grippy footwear given the combination of weather and twisting, bumping and sinking sidewalks and pretty gloves has been something I've been doing as I've been gradually getting back on my two lower paws this last week.

 

Not the sort of weather for that although it's so timeless and summery.

Won't be long before the ghoulish comic comes here but Josie And the Pussycats were a favourite cartoon series of mine combining an adventure per episode with a musical performance you could play air tambourine to in an era that included the Archies and The Partridge family were on tv with the Monkees a repeated treat.

You could say that era and me were very much at one with each other so elements show up in the extended current version of the young me that loves music or school related anime and enjoys the whole experience of handling and playing a record as "Stack O' Tracks" the 1968 album of Beach Boys instrumental versions is current playing out from my original copy.

It will soon time to put up Advent Calendar's another childhood ritual as one square at a time we count down the magic of CatMas (you might know it as Christmas) and all that brings.

Until next time, bye.

Can we have customer service, please?

 

As one one music site I've been on since this blog started people are talking about whither or not the MiniDisc could make a come back as some youngsters appear to be rebelling against streaming plus incessant and intrusive social media taking over their lives as a way of having your favourite songs in slot in form with track titles I'm dealing with issues around another comeback media.

Perhaps to be a bit more accurate less about the media itself, its quality, but rather getting it as a very expensive as in $200 compact disc arrived in this country fine and got lost and a record I ordered in this country appears to be been due to arrive to the courier but hasn't.

The common denominator (big word of the day!) is the courier Evri better known to Brits as Hermes which when you read online seems to going through a patch of high proportions of its parcels not arriving or hitting a brick wall in their tracking system.

This is compounded by a customer service model that relies exclusively at the customer interface with a Chat Bot which isn't a thing you might feel like striking in frustration but a computer based artificial intelligence lead thing that tries to talk to you via your keyboard solving your problem.

The trouble is at no point can you converse with a human being (remember them?) and enquire what they are actually going to do as it it says is "last status was" and "we'll attempt another delivery" without saying by when.

That means you get nowhere being stuck in a loop.

Currently the cd is at the point having spoken to the seller that if it doesn't show up within the week I'd get a full refund which is a great offer by them although that was preempted by Ebay giving me the refund as Evri's service was part of their Global Shipping Program but leaves me without the disc I really wanted and we're waiting on the record possibly needing to contact the seller to ask them to pester Evri to sort it out.

Somebody needs to step in not just to sort out where all this missing items go but to mandate them to offer real email or over phone customer service with people who can sort things out.

In other words actual customer service.

Return to Revolver

While spooky things were going on last week, other things were out and waiting for me upon return.

The Beatles scarcely need an introduction known even to the youngest although in terms of recordings the earliest goes all the way back to 1962, before I was born and there's never been a point their albums haven't been available although for a brief period their earliest singles were deleted.

That era saw both the emergence of the lp album format for younger people rather than the province of soundtrack and classical music recordings for "grown ups" and stereophonic recording of popular music.

The Beatles together with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan were very much a part of this change and so not only did they produce albums that expanded upon musically their singles but because the dominant format for youngsters until the late 1960's was mono sound often from a record player with built in single loudspeakers, the method of recording was geared to the aim of making a satisfactory mono record.

Stereo was from the recording point of view the last concern and an after thought so as the beatles progressed using more instruments and effects the more the limitations showed up and their Rubber Soul and Revolver albums exposed the deficiencies compared to the mono versions.

 

That is why on October 28 this year a series of releases featuring new stereo mixes came out on download, lp record and compact disc using new computer artificial intelligence but steered by humans technology that enabled separating out some of the parts of the four track mixes into effectively separate tracks that could be mixed and placed within the stereo image in the manner many popular albums from the 1970's were by design using multitrack recording systems. 

Take Taxman for instance, there are many periods of near silence on the right hand channel as the vocals are just there or the errors in the double tracking at the start of Eleanor Rigby, the missed scat ending on Got To Get You Into My Life that was in the mono but not the stereo.

This remix centres the vocals more providing the immediacy and drive of the mono but with a more spacious feel spreading the instrumentation around the left and right channels.

 

While there is a single remixed cd available I'd forget about getting that and opt for the 2 cd version which is only a little more and adds new remixes in a similar style of the contemporary Paperback Writer single and its backwards ending vocal psychedelic Rain b side and a selection of alternate takes and session tapes that gives you a feel of just what being in Abbey Road studios in early 1966 was like.

This album in a year of many impressive albums such as the Stones Aftermath (ALWAYS UK version NOT U.S!), the Beach Boy's Pet Sounds, the Kinks Face To Face and Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde double album and hit 45's from the Motown stable of artists was truly ground breaking for making new electronic sounds never previously heard.

Does this replace all other versions? Probably not as the mono still has its magic and collectors always like different versions but this is easier as a stereo version on the ear especially on headphones.

Let's see what can be done to Rubber Soul which I much prefer in mono.