Pinball/time signatures

One of the nice things about having a preschooler is that you can watch the Sesame Street "Pinball Number Count" without end. I love hearing my boy yell out numbers in highly dramatic voices. The best.

The other day on the way to daycare, we were listening to the aforementioned Pinball Number Count, and then he wanted to listen to "I Love Rock & Roll," which would just be a bump-bump-clap R&R vehicle were it not for that confounding little measure that's missing a beat, and then we went on to Norma Tanega, whose mind was not divisible by four in the slightest, and it dawned on me: I spent an entire half hour in a subcompact vehicle listening only to music in weird time signatures by female musicians. It felt good.

RIP Fryz

So a certain electronics chain shut down. When Tape Mountain was in full on CDR burning mode, many of its discs came from a certain aisle at the Fryz in Wilsonville. I'm contractually obligated to break out this chestnut:

NERD 1 (in lateral-lisp nerd voice): You can't get good media in Wilsonville.
NERD 2 (in nearly identical voice): Yeah, you gotta go to Beaverton to get good media.

My impression of these two CD-R enthusiasts still comes out every now and then and never fails to annoy the bejeezus out of my wife, mother, anyone else. It's even more horrible when my brother takes on the Nerd 2 role. Magical.

Other indelible Fryz memoriez:

• Wanting electronics but feeling too poor to buy them (always)
• Buying the world's most garish fake-iMac transparent blue plastic CRT monitor - it was horrible garbage and died about a year later
  
• Having a sweaty salesman sell me a pretty good VCR in a space  that felt like it had never seen light, telling me that "Everyone knows Sony. Panasonic is kind of under the radar, so they have to try harder."
  
• Back when the Wilsonville space was under the even-more-ludicrouz Incredibl Univerz, buying my first CD player (a never-quite satisfactory Magnavox - the price represented like an entire 40 hours of work, yikes...) so I could listen to promo CDs from the college radio station. Feeling like I had totally Sold Out by doing so. Listening to the one cutout bin CD that I owned (Eleventh Dream Day's Lived to Tell, which was kind of a snoozefest, but when it's the one CD you own..)
  

 

Vampisoul dealz and small moments of delight

Spanish label Vampisoul, they who brought you the aforementioned Elia y Elizabeth reissues (so good), is currently selling a bunch of their old CD stock for cheap, even with postage from Madrid. Lots of great vintage Peruvian, Colombian, African stuff, all lovingly preserved and presented, with ample liner notes in many cases. And there's a CD with a goat playing the congas on the cover that makes my son crack up. I spent double figures including lightning-fast international shipping** and ended up with a gluttonous feast of digital wonder on my doorstep.

One of the deeply groovy CDs* from the Peruvian pack had a feature that I appreciated:

Why yes, that IS an inner sleeve with rounded edges. Is there any need for an inner sleeve at all in a CD case, much less one with rounded edges? Not at all, but it's a nice detail and ups the verisimilitude factor for us cheapskates who like obsolete perfect sound objects instead of cruddy warped half-ass modern vinyls at ten times the price.

One more small delight and then I'll stop: Getting packages sent from abroad! Yesterday I got a box full of Hario V60 02 coffee filters straight from Japan. The packages are delightful (photo swiped from sincere.coffee):

It is great to see the phrases "Flexible coffee style!" and "Why cone shape?" every morning. On top of that, the box was filled out with a Japanese newspaper, so I got to look at the stock page, a picture of Hello Kitty advertising something, more ads, lots of things to explain to the boy.

*Does "groovy" work as a dad joke about CDs? OK, how about "so pitted"? Wait, what year is this anyway?

**It is sad that at this point, international shipping is probably faster than shipping from the next ZIP code over. Mandatory political reference: That gross dude aimed for full-on fascism but forgot the bit about making the trains run on time?!

Auction Polka

 The great Polkadon DB brings us another Ukrainian-Canadian polka gem in "Auction Polka":

That's right - the worlds of polka and auctioneering collide, and it is in fact BETTER than you thought it would be! This pretty much sounds and looks like my youth if you move things a little farther south on the North American plains and white-bread things up a bit.

As with a lot of the stuff on this YouTube channel, zero information anywhere on the internet about this stuff. I admire that, but there must be more information... OK, on to Dizqogs, dig a little deeper - whoa, how did I not know about Leroy Van Dyke's "Auctioneer"?

OK, maybe I've heard this before? Or maybe someone riffed on this? In any case, I am delighted that he apparently turned this schtick into a career, even a movie called "What Am I Bid?" in which he earned top billing as "The World's Most Famous Auctioneer."

Thank you, internet - what a world.

NEW COSMONOX ALBUM!!!!!!

ANNOUNCING:

Cosmonox Osmono

 

The new album from the all-magnetic four-track/Language Master duo featuring yours truly. Six tracks of appropriately weird space/navel exploration furniture music. Super grotty but also super glossy.

If you would like a copy, let me know. The link above leads to Bandqlamp, but hardcopy versions are available if you appreciate having a really slick looking compact disc in your hand. I'm already planning on sending them out to certain people to whom I owe copies of Metal Remorse and Duplex Cremes.

Speaking of which, I'm three songs away from being done with The Project. A 99-track CD will soon be bouncing off the walls of my CD player, and possibly yours as well?