When twitter started its impending collapse right after Elon Musk took over, I like many jumped over to Mastodon, or more specifically to the mstdn.social[1]https://mstdn.social server. By now, anyone even vaguely interested knows “Mastodon” isn’t a thing, it’s not a … Continue reading Mastodon: Enter At Your Own Risk!
I’m messing about in between other projects with two new websites, after all it’s not that having five already plus twitter, instagram and livejournal is enough, right? Neither are really active yet, one just needs a final kick and some config work, news4tri.com will take over from my livejournal as a source to post triathlon commentary. The second, ctproduced.com will be my music website. The goal being to post as much information as I can about every album and CD I own that was produced by the legendary producer, Creed Taylor. That currently numbers some 230 albums, allowing for duplicates. … Continue reading Music Matters
“I’ll probably still be singing at 65” – Philip Bailey in 1988. Still rockin’ it at 68! Continue reading Happy Birthday Philip Bailey!
No, this isn’t a political post, it’s a blatant attempt to launch myself into the ring tone provider market(not!) As I continue to ramble, sometimes alphabetically, through my 2000+ vinyl album collection, this had been sitting staring at me. Vinyl to digital: I didn’t really remember much about this album, except of course that it contained the track that begat MAX Headroom. It’s actually much better than I remembered, electro/acid/jazz in many places. https://t.co/yBIE9yTWTu — Mark Cathcart (@cathcam) April 3, 2019 It cleaned up nicely, and after editing, the tonality seemed pretty good. I’ve done a few personal ringtones before, … Continue reading Paranoimia
As I continue to digitize my entire 2,000+ album collection, I’m constantly amazed by the quality and durability of Vinyl recordings. It’s true that I have the really poor quality stuff yet to come, as part of a dj lot … Continue reading Vinyl the perfect archive medium?
Since finishing the book, and this blog post about Maurice White, I’ve been digging through some of my other archives. I found an amazing live performance from the groundbreaking WNET show Soul! broadcast on January 10th, 1973. The accompanying video, the shows are available via pbs.org in some regions, and via WNET Thirteen, if you can access them. A low res version of which can be seen below via Youtube, is perhaps remarkable for a number of reasons. It documents a group in the midst of change. The original Earth, Wind and Fire had recorded two albums for Warner Brothers, … Continue reading Elements – Earth, Wind and Fire on Soul!
Over the year-end I read the Maurice White, Herb Powell penned autobiography, “My Life With Earth, Wind & Fire”. It was both an interesting read, and revelatory. While my early teens were heavily influenced by David Bowie, my late teens and in some respects the rest of my life was heavily influenced by the sound, and especially the mystical guidance that seemed to be coming from the group, led by it’s founder and bandleader, Maurice White. White’s spiritual approach gave endorsement to my own uncomfortableness with my Christian upbringing and doubt that a single “God” existed. I never met White, … Continue reading Earth, Wind and Fire; life and guidance
was the title of a great John Miles track from a 1976 John Miles album called Rebel. Strangely although I loved that track, it was one of the many I for the most part gave away, or sold for next to nothing in the Spring of 1983 when I moved to New York. I can remember to this day renting an estate car(American: “Station wagon”) for the day and loading up the vinyl I wasn’t going to keep, and driving down to Kentish Town in London and offloading it all at some used record shop. Of the some 2,000 albums … Continue reading Music (was my first love)
I’ve spent the last year plus digitizing my vinyl collection for personal use. I’ve done all my general soul/jazz/jazz funk and disco artists from A-K. Which in total is only about 1/4 of the collection. My passion though is collecting albums made by, former A&M producer/A&R manager Creed Taylor. CTI was initially a sub-label on A&M Records in the late 1960’s. There were a number of classic albums released including Paul Desmond – Summertime We Montgomery – Road Song Soul Flutes – Trust In Me 10-Years earlier, a 28-year old Creed Taylor, was working with a small orchestra on a series … Continue reading Secret Agent: Top-10
One of the things I’ve had most fun with since going into “semi-retirement” or as I call it, retired-until-further-notice (RUFN), is being able to spend time getting back to the music and sound editing that I so much enjoyed at the end of the 1970’s. MixES on tape 70’s stylE Back then, doing dance music mixes, for they were true mixes using the technology available to me then, meant recording a series of tracks from vinyl albums and vinyl 7-inch and 12-inch vinyl to a cassette. Reel to Reel tape would have been easier, but wasn’t affordable. I would then … Continue reading What is old is new again