Cuba/dot matrix printers

Those of you who have had the distinct pleasure of receiving an actual physical Tape Mountain product in the past decade or so know how much I love dot matrix printers. I've got an ImageWriter II on my shelf and I've printed album covers on it from my Apple //c and, I think, my Macintosh Classic, from my high school and college years respectively.

Most of the millions of readers of this blog probably do not encounter dot matrix print on a regular basis, but I do, since at my job we get a lot of certificates from Cuba, which has continued to print official documents on dot matrix printers well into the 21st century. Sometimes you'll get a certificate where you can tell the functionary hasn't been able to reink the ribbon in a while:

Yes, it's that hard to read in the source. Hooray for "Sharpen More" in Photoshop.

People get really jazzed about the classic cars that continue to do everyday work in Cuba - where is the passion for the people who keep the dot matrix printers running????

RIP Hamish Kilgour

So sad to hear that the world has lost Hamish Kilgour (of the Clean, Mad Scene, etc.) A great drummer - his spirit of lightness took the Clean's Vehicle to another level - and a very underrated singer/songwriter.

Currently listening to Boodle Boodle Boodle on 33 instead of 45. It sounds pretty good that way. My boy and I recently picked that one up on clearance from the deeply unlikely record store in someone's converted garage a couple blocks from my house:

I will always have a soft spot for the Mad Scene too. They never quite reached their potential on record, but the one time I saw them live - I think maybe at the same show where I saw Wimp Factor 14 in NYC at at CMJ sometime in the 90s? It was just Hamish and Lisa on twin electric guitars. Warm, peaceful, totally unassuming, totally underattended. I think there were green lights. I remember that Hamish was playing a Gretsch Corvette (also my guitar of choice at the time), and I struck up a small conversation (not my strong suit, especially then!). He dealt with my awkward fanboying with ease and recommended some other music for me to listen to. I walked out into the New York streets at night, completely out of the world.

Now I'm listening to the Mad Scene's Blip, which kind of appeared and disappeared in 2012 a la its title. Its carefree inconsequentiality is very pleasing. Of course they do their best work a decade and a half after everyone stops listening.

Nosh Kosh

The blog Break Into Chat recently unearthed the unreleased game Nosh Kosh for the Apple II: a gobble-em-up game designed to teach kashrut food laws to the kidz. You earn points by eating carrots, meat, or dairy, but if you eat the meat, you need to wait 6 hours before eating the dairy! Also, you are pursued by  lobsters, frogs, and swine. 

If you eat the dairy within 6 hours after eating the meat, or if you collide with the unclean animals, your little Pac-Man utters a digitized "OY!"

Also, the splash screen features two Pac-Mans (Pac-Men?) wearing yarmulkes.

There's a link at the blog referenced above. Simple, but totally charming for a few minutes.

Guilty pleasures 11/2022

 1) Episodes of Password Plus from 1979. Allen Ludden is a really good game show host - simultaneously totally smooth (his choice in eyewear is fantastic and his hair perfect) while also being warm and genuinely funny. The theme song is a pretty awesome flute strutter - searches on YouChoob for "password plus theme song" turn up the extended remix version that has a lot more wah-wah guitar, which is good, but the essence of the song is the flutes, flutes flutes flutes. Watch the episodes while you're washing the dishes. That's what I'm doing.

2) I finally found a brand of fake Ch**t*s that is as good or better than the actual name brand orange cheez curls. I think they might actually be upscale fake Ch**t*s (what a world), but when they filter down to my local expired-goods emporium, they are at a price point that cancels out the fact that they are a few months past their prime.

3) School bus mornings with a kindergartner are pretty brutal and don't allow for my usual semi-precise Ch*m*x fancy lad pour-over method, so I splurged and bought a fancypants M*cc*m*st*r coffee maker on Cr**gsl*st. I  did not realize that the very nice lady who sold it to me was wearing a lot of perfume (masked transactions!), so the coffee maker bore that odor. Fortunately, over the course of a long weekend at home with a sick kindergartner, I allowed baking soda, vinegar, and time to do their work. Today the results were finally acceptable, so I drank more coffee than is reasonable, hence this long blog post.

Spice World "Dying to Go"

Today I've been listening to Australian band Spice World's ingenious and ridiculous single "Dying to Go" quite a bit. Their excellent description:

a bright, careening guitar-pop daydream about listening to 'Spice Up Your Life' by Spice Girls and feeling inspired to fake your own death in an attempt to escape your life.

If I had ever voluntarily listened to the Spice Girls, this would probably be more resonant for me, but even without, I like this interpretation. The post-everything version of Sherwood Anderson's nervous breakdown? 

Apparently they recorded the album in five hours, all live, the night before one of the members had to decamp for Melbourne, and all the better - the recordings are fresh and raw. The chord progression and timing are basically identical to "Boys Don't Cry" but since this song is already hermit-crabbing inside a different hit song, let's go with it.

The B side does what a B side should do - it reflects, curls up inside itself, is indirect, contrasts with the bright bleak sunshine of the A-side.

I guess they have a new single coming up tomorrow and an album coming up next year - will keep an eye on them.

Las Grecas

I went through one of those moments the other day where I just wanted to listen to Las Grecas over and over again. "Te Estoy Amando Locamente" is a grade A jam and features super wild guitar and one of my favorite banging piano chords in all of pop music at the end of the intro (0:14-0:20):

Though really their stuff is best experienced in lurid 70s TV color, with every video effect available to human beings in Spain at the time:

If you listen to any of their songs too many times in a row, it will rearrange your brain, particularly if there are lurid psychedelic visuals involved. But their songs are fine minus visuals too, particularly the first couple albums or so. They're on the streamz in various compilations (Orígenes has pretty much everything you'd need). Go for it.

Indonesian Cassette Archive

Today I was playing the tracks I've uploaded to YouChoob Myoozik on shuffle. In addition to multiple tracks from my various 33-track albums coming up, a track from The Sultan's Pleasure came up. Good stuff, right? 

That made me think of the Gending Beksan^2 tape I dubbed off my high school orchestra teacher way back when. One of those mythical tapes that changed the way I listen to music, tonality, everything. I remember endless school bus rides from Tualatin to Tigard, rolling past ultrabland McMansions in adjoining neighborhoods, warbly third-hand dubs in my ears, constant rain outside always, everything seemed endless but it was over sooner than I expected.

I didn't see that particular tape on the internet (aside from my own personal mp3 collection), but Internet Archive does have 128 tapes in their Indonesian Cassette Archive, including several with titles indicating they might be just the right thing. OK, back in 72 hours or so!!!!!!!!