Archive for July, 2008
In Frets We Trust
On this day, thirty years ago, I got my first guitar. It was an extremely cheap and cheesy Les Paul copy made somewhere in Asia, without a brand name even, and purchased from Sears. It was a cheap try-out guitar, that first step on the road to perdition. A couple of months later, I upgraded to a used Gibson SG. Was guitar playing my biggest mistake ever? Possibly, but its been good to have guitars as my steadfast buddies all these years.
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (1968) - Clarke’s novelization of his screenplay (co-written with Kubrick) clears up the ambiguities and bafflements of the movie, for good and ill. There are some minor plot changes, such as Saturn being the destination, rather than Jupiter — but essentially the same story. I can’t help thinking of Olaf Stapledon’s earlier and heavier Starmaker.
Hard Times
Hard Times by Charles Dickens (1854) - Dickens fires a hard shot across the bow of the booming industrial revolution, touching on issues that plague us to this day. His shortest novel, they say, and works just fine at that.
J.S. Bach: Cello Suites Nos. 1-6
J.S. Bach: Cello Suites Nos. 1-6 by Pablo Casals (Naxos/2000) - Vivid 1920s and 30s recordings of Bach’s cello suites by the artist who brought them into the modern performance repertoire. Intense performances and rather nice sound quality.
Guitarbench.com
I’ve just added a destination to the Weblogbog in the left sidebar: Guitarbench.com. It’s a new acoustic guitar oriented blog — lots of exotic tropical wood fetishing, zero metallic shred heading.