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Have you re-purchased all of your music on vinyl yet? Why not? It seems to me to be the next in the evolution of music medium. In my generation, first we had tapes, then cd's/mini disks, DAT, and of course the MP3 player. But all of these are inferior to the new medium, made out of space-age plastics, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, known as the record. I am not usually in to ranting, but this is totally worth ranting about.
Its true, if you throw that kind of blue record on it might very well sound excellent. In fact for decades before any other technology was available people enjoyed music just as much as they do today on a pieces of bumpy vinyl. Because of this, there is a great heritage of sitting near the phonograph and no doubt a great deal of basements filled with heavy, dusty boxes all amounting to about an ipod shuffle worth of tunes...
Every hipster this side of brookyln (and the other side for that matter) will profess to you the reason for the resurgence is the sound: the music just sounds better.
Reality check: the audio reproduced using vinyl, even on the newest turntables lack frequency response. You can always get more data using a CD or MP3. In fact, you can get any frequency response you could ever imagine using digital means. You can in fact, re-create vinyl recordings, in perfect likeness, using digital means. Then what the hell is everyone smoking?
First problem, the speakers most of us have now grown accustomed to are no bigger than your pinky, and are usually much smaller. This is partially because the digital music revolution has made it so easy for music to be portable. We then like to have earbuds (or laptop speakers or desktop speakers or even crappy new home theatre speakers) to take along with us. Fair enough, lets all go out and buy a solid pair of (pick your favorite high end brand) for 100 bucks and start enjoying music again. Well there is a problem here too because now even though the digital storage medium is inferior, music is more and more being created to sound good on these tiny, worthless, audio reproduction devices. To prove this is the case, take out a cd of your favorite band from 10 or more years ago, say 1995 or earlier if possible. I don't even care what genre, and play it in a pair of headphones which cost you a little bit more than a DRM protected itunes track. Now switch over to something released last month and white ear jerkers. The difference, across the board, is putting glasses on a person who has been slowly going blind for the past decade and a half.
People also seem to like to have something tangible with their music. Who can blame them? Even I can't argue that a big old piece of album artwork is so much more to attach to than a cd liner note or worse yet, a 23 pixel ipod album image. I am not proposing a solution to this problem, only suggesting that buying music for the art it comes with makes as much sense as buying a refrigerator for the eggs inside (on second though mmm eggs...)
What about a musician, who loves his or her vintage analog synth pedal or tube amplifier. Thats great, honestly, if it sounds good I can't argue with that. However, chances are there is something better. We were lucking to end up with tubes in the 1950's that had a natural frequency response which worked well for the application. The fact of the matter is, today we could build an identical amplifier that is 1/8 the size and sounds better. How? Without getting too technical, we could use modern amplifier types, and digital processing, to get EXACTLY the right sound.
Which brings me to the single fundamental problem with musicians (and by proxy the listeners of); the lack of utilization of new tools. In my personal opinion, a very few number of electron artists are exempt from this. However, most people simple cannot handle a pallet this big. With the technology we have today, you can make something sound ANY way you want. Thats too many choices for most people it seems. Instead of turning the "tone" knob on the amplifier, there might be 4000 settings which can be manipulated. This is a problem for an artist who is used to a canvas which is 14x16 and uses only 4 colors of paint. It however, is not a problem for the artist who uses a landscape as his canvas, and every color experienced by man in their paint set. I know this is a daunting task at first but so ridiculously few are up to the task that it is depressing. We need to dump this lazy pro-tools culture that leads us to music that sounds so bad, we would rather listen to it on a record player.
I could probably right a book on this subject and I don't know much about it at all, but what I am saying is, learn to use the technology, don't go back into the cave, burn your fucking vinyl, but give the Album art to me because they pwn...
what can I say? I am a wanna be hipster in the end...
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I now have a few weeks since my accident where I totaled both my and another persons car. Thankfully, remarkably, nobody was injured. This single fact is how I can bare to move forward productively. There are alot of things running through my head lately regarding the risks we take every day and how avoidable pretty much any accident is, but also how impossible it is to avoid every accident.
I am a motorcyclist primarily, so the lack of a metal cage is something that I look favorably upon. After the last couple weeks, I am surprised to say I am glad to have had it. Does this mean I am more afraid to ride my bike? Should I be?
Well first you have to understand how this accident happened. There were no poor road conditions and no obvious distractions. No aggressive or outright delinquent behavior. Simply, an unfamiliar dark road and surprise (to me) stop sign along with a breif lack of focus. I keep trying to replay the event and figure out how to fix it. The fact of the matter is; the only thing I could have done was pay more attention. But how? I am not sure. The fact of the matter is that there are things on our minds and were not machines.
The fact is if it was a Motorcycle I had hit, the story would not be one of monetary damage and frustration, but rather true tragic loss. Thankfully, that is not the case. It certainly makes someone think twice about driving anything but a humvee around.
Lessons to be learned:
1. Accidents will happen, but even something as simple as taking only familiar roads in the darkness can make you a safer rider/driver.
2. Even the person that pulls out in front of you when you are riding, is likely not a person who is a negligent human, but is more likely just making a mistake as we all do. I have seen people make alot of bad decisions and not end in an accident. But still, I cannot point to a bad decision I made, simply a reaction that did not occur. We are all fualty machines in this way and its clear we need to program ourselves constantly.
3. I am a much better rider than I am a driver. I can't imagine making this mistake on my bike. I would never have been on that dark road at night (largely for fear of large animals) and I would have likely, noticed the stop sign. Is this wishful thinking? Probably quite a bit, but there is no doubt in my mind, that there are fundamentally different things happening in your brain between driving and riding. Its hard to say what the actual implications of this is. What I can deduce is that the defensive riding is the ONLY kind of riding you want to be doing at any point, period.
4. Even though it was a terrible accident, I believe that even if a collision did occur with a motorcycle, the outcome would have still not been fatal, assuming the rider was well equipped with safety protection. WEAR YOUR GEAR, and wear your SEATBELT why the hell not, seriously?
The bottom line: I messed up huge. We all do it. We're all human. If you are like me, and riding is something that you live for, then there is no question that the risks are worth it. No matter what you drive/ride/fly whatever, no matter how good a driver are you are not perfect and you can screw up. It has been very hard for me to come to terms with that. But the fact is, the more effort taken to avoid such problems, the less likely they are to happen... be cautious and appreciate every day. We all have fewer of them then we tend to acknowledge.
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This week is absolutely terrible
The only good thing is that nobody was hurt
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The Milan Motorcycle show is going on right now and I will look through all of it and put some of the cool stuff up here because I just cant help myself but for now heres alot of music for a few days:
Last night I almost just fell asleep because its getting dark very early and Im reminded of how much I really want to move somewhere else and experience something totally different. Instead I went and saw Portugal The Man; who I love dearly.
Theres a recording of this that I will have uploaded soon.
Sunday night was spent at the Bug Jar listening to the Dark Holler Duo and Horse Feathers,
Check out the recordings at Recordings
Photo taken by Weezer Steve
The alleycat race was just rediculously fun. yeah, so we gave up on checkpoints but thats not the point.
There will always be a special place in my heart for punk rock especially on holoween. I have to hand it to the guys that put that together, so much work for one show an it really showed, It reminds me alot of the good ole days of basement and teen center shows,,,, only more betterer and with bikes. So many good people.
I may have found a couple of points for the ole scavenger hunt as well...:-D
Props to Erich. for the great photos check out some more of his work here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/unprofessional/
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| the average human lives 28000 days |
I rode my motorcycle in today.
Why? This is the obvious question. I get asked this at work all the time. The simple answer is I do it because I like to. No, the roads aren't snowy yet and if they were I wouldn't but seriously? Only 28,000 days to ride, and Ive gobbled up almost 8000 of them riding in a box. The time is now. Release the sentinels!
...In other new I am going to be a pirate for halleycatween
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This past weekend I took off from cross racing to take a trip down to new york to see my man Dan Deacon. The show was actually called the Baltimore Round Robin and featured a crapton of really great guys from Baltimore. Needless to say I had a fantastic time and I had my H2 along.
Here are the bands:
adventure
blood baby
dan deacon
the deathset
dj dog dick
double dagger
future islands
height
lizz king
nuclear power pants
smart growth
videohippos
I am not even sure who is who in the recording but have a listen at www.troyrank.com/Shows/BaltimoreRoundRobin.mp3
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I am loving Cyclocross season. I love dark rainy days in the fall and there's nothing more satisfying than riding your bike through the mud for no good reason. Here are a few shots from last weeks CX race courtesy of Zack and Kerra:
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This past Wednesday I took a ride out to Club Infinity in Buffalo to check out MC Chris and Reggie and the Full Effect. Had a great time and took some recordings with the zoom H2. They can be found here Let me know what you think.
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I love xkcd.com
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Were now on our motorbike trip across the country. Read about our adventures!!!
Update: We're all done with the trip but check out my blog and pictures!
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It's been a while since I've posted a bike of the month or anything else for that matter. Its summer and here are of the few things I have going on. I've been planning for a trip across the country which ill be departing on in a couple of weeks. I plan to make a new section on the site for a static blog for all my trips and Ill be adding pictures and even some video from a waterproof camera I have mounted on the front fairing of my st1300. There's a couple of test videos on my youtube account to give you a taste. its going to be a low budget trip since I plan to buy a house soon, which means a lot of adventures camping in places we probobly shouldn't camp and usurping semi-public bathing facilities. I havnt decided where to host my photos yet (since I don't really want to host them here) I have a flickr account but I was looking for something a little different. If you have any suggestions e-mail them to me ar troyrankATgmail.com. So keep an eye open for these and the blog should be live july25-august 8th so if you're interested in vicarious motorbiking adventures be sure to check that out.
peace
-Troy
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