The Ultra-Now Super-Lately!

Grateful Dead Shows Abound

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:26:02 -0700

Back in the 90's when I started collecting Grateful Dead shows I was lucky to get a 5th or 6th generation cassette tape and my choices were somewhat limited. Nowadays pristine early generation soundboard and audience recordings are instantly available from a variety of websites.

Let's say you're one of those Deadheads who can't get enough of 1972. Well than Project 1972 is a dream come true. Not only can you get all the shows from that year, but how about multiple sources from each night.

And to help navigate this new treasure trove of Dead material now available, get a hold of the Deadhead's Taping Compendium. Full of show reviews and interviews with members of the Grateful Dead family such as Dick Latvala of Dick's Picks fame. It's hard to read and not want to go straight to the tapes.

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Global Warming: A Rising Tide of Ignorance

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:04:52 -0700

Gore sandwich board

Regardless of what Uncle Al says, Global Warming is less a scientific theory than it is a poppular notion. The Wall Street Journal has an article delcaring it to be "mass hysteria," which I'd say is a good a description of this nonsence as any I've heard yet.

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Music directly to the people, sort of. . .

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:18:07 -0700

Indietorrent

I've been waiting for someone to figure out how to sell music directiy to the people over the internet without the burden of a parasitic record company. Trent Reznor has been pretty much blazing the way for established acts to use free to sell their brand, but for the unknown or "indie" artist giving away music might be tough when living out of a van. Maybe indietorrent has the solution. So far that solution has generated $13.05 but it's a start.

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Oprah Flirts With Veganism

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:42:49 -0700

Oprah

In some recent encouraging vegetarian related news, Oprah Winfrey has committed herself to a vegan diet during a three week "cleanse." Sure, three weeks isn't much, but when this lady speaks people listen.If she so much as turns 1% of her audience into vegans, that 74,000 less people straining the environment with their diets. How cool is that! For now though all us vegan will be watching to see how this whole thing goes.

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Phil Lesh Revisiting Classic Dead Albums on Tour

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:15:39 -0700

Phil lesh

Phil and Friends ran through eight Grateful Dead albums in their entirety during their five night stand at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. It started on May 13th with the Dead's self-titled release for the first set and Anthem of the Sun with special guest Bob Weir for set two. The following night was Aoxomoxoa and Live Dead for the two sets, including two stabs at St. Stephen, which appears on both records. Jambase has a more comprehensive review of these first two shows.

After a day off came the lovely pairing of Workingman's Dead first set and American Beauty for set two. These albums were released back to back so it makes sense to see them together in a show.

The second self titled Dead album otherwise known as "Skullfuck" or "Skull and Roses" followed on the next night. For the second set Phil skipped ahead a decade for a little Dead Set. Go to etree to get aud copies of these shows, although Phil is likely to release soundboards of the whole Warfield run as he has for other multi-night stands in the past.

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Overpoppulation Myth Unravelling!

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:54:45 -0700

Earth

I think most people have heard for so long that there is a human overpopulation problem that they take it for granted. While this theory, that there are too many people on the planet, or there will be unless measures are taken, seems to be utterly without merit. In fact the exact opposite may be true, that there is an underpopulation problem.

Most developing countries with the exception of the US have below replacement birth rates, yet I still hear some people talk about how they don't want children because there are "too many people." China is a great example of this paranoia in action, with their infamous one child policy. That's managed to upset the gender balance causing many more boys to be born than girls, but it hasn't done much to change their already declining birth rate.

Certainly there are large cities that have population issues to deal with such as transportation, education, etc, but these problems are only related to organizational and logistical shortcomings of governments. Logically populations migrate to areas with more opportunities and better resources, so instead of trying to control the amount of people on the planet, we should make it more attractive for them to move to areas where they are needed and respected.

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The Verve Are Back!

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:48:50 -0700

Verve wamu

I just got back from New York City where The Verve played a tight show, really tearing shit up. Psychedelic guitar genius Nick Mccabe had been reluctant to tour for many years, but now he's back to help this band attain the status they've always deserved. I've always thought that if more people saw the Verve live they would understand how awesome they are.

This show featured a Verve with renewed energy, exploring choice album cuts while debuting two new songs. "Already There," a Storm in Heaven cut was on the menu as well as a spontaneous "Gravity Grave," from the Verve EP. For this one lead man extraordinaire Richard Ashcroft already had the acoustic guitar on for "Drugs Don't Work" but bassist Simon Jones, clearly enjoying himself played a bit of the "Gravity Grave" bassline drawing anxious pleas from the audience. Ashcroft picked up on it saying how Simon wanted to play a "15 minute" version. He handed his acoustic back to the roadies and they were off into "Gravity Grave." Just the type of interplay that shows when a band is enjoying themselves. Excellent show all around, for the complete setlist go here.

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Livestock Creating World Food Shortage!

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:23:11 -0700

Public Enemy #1

In light of alarming articles now appearing proclaiming a global food crisis, all I can say is DUH! If anyone would bother to listen to some science-types and most vegetarians have been saying for years, this wouldn't even be a problem. Oh and that whole carbon emissions problem would be solved too.

It's simple. Cows eat many times the amount of the amount of food they will eventually become, and they consume a whole lot of fresh water. And if you think automobiles emit a lot of greenhouse gasses, guess how much greenhouse gases these bovine eco-terrorists emit? A whole lot. Worse yet, at this moment, vast swaths of pristine, virgin rainforest are being cleared to make room for more livestock to graze. These acres of ancient trees, which help soak up carbon-dioxide, are being slashed and burned so more cows can eat up more of the world's food.

At a time when the economy is faltering, meat consumption is devastating to world finances. An unthinkable amount of time and money is wasted in food production for livestock, meat production, transportation (as in millions of gallons of gas annually), massive recalls, and most crushingly the health care cost of having everyone sick, debilitated and dying. Poor diet is the main cause of heart disease which is the still the number one killer of Americans. As the threat of mad cow disease is always looming.

Eating meat and dairy products is a choice, the same as driving a gas-guzzling SUV. There are plenty of vegan foods that taste wonderful and are as healthy as can be. Instead of blaming gas prices for the food shortages, maybe the media should look a little closer. This problem has been a long time coming and even electric cars aren't going to stop us from using cows to kill us all.

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Star Wreck

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:19:03 -0700

Droids

Saturn and Jupiter Again? C'mon, Let's Go to Uranus

nobody@vox.com(tonyschmidt) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:55:55 -0700

Uranus is Sweet

Space.com has an article about how NASA and the ESA are meeting to decide whether shell out the dough for a "flagship" mission either to Saturn or Jupiter. For one thing there is already a hugely successful mission currently at Saturn. It called Cassini, maybe some of you have heard of it? As for Jupiter, although the Galileo mission was admittedly flawed it still returned good science.

Now Uranus on the other hand, has only been visited once, if you call a flyby at 80,000 km a visit. And that mission with Voyager 2 didn't do justice to what is arguably the most unique planet and moon system in our solar system. The planet is tilted 90 degrees on it's axis, how sweet is that. Instead of spending more money retreading the familiar paths, let's blaze a new trail all the way out to mysterious Uranus and see what this planet is really all about.

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