It's my dyslexic birthday today (I was born in '73 and am turning 37) and I know they didn't do it for me but what a great gift to stumble across a clip of a quasi-Beatles reunion as Sir Paul recently took to the stage to celebrate his old bandmate at the conclusion of an All-Starr Band concert in New York. It was Ringo's 70th birthday and the drummer had no idea this was in the works.
From the YouTube comments:
"He says that when Ringo came off stage after "With a Little Help From My
Friends," Wright was standing beside Ringo and Barbara in the wings.
She asked Ringo if he was ready for his surprise. When Ringo heard
McCartney start "Birthday," Wright said, "His jaw just absolutely
dropped!" And then in seconds, he was running on stage for his drums.
(In the video below, you can see Ringo racing for the drums.) Wright
also said Ringo had tears in his eyes!"
I'm about as far from a Pitchfork following, Fleet Iver Weekend-listening hipster as you'll find.
But I do have friends who fit that category and a recent visit to Vancouver where I got to catch up with one of those friends also introduced me to a new singer-songwriter who I think is probably very much in that mode of music listening.
"The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it
swing. It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first
half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a
magical effect." The Swinger
Former Golden Girl and definitely not-the-typical Saturday Night Live host, Betty White actually *was* the host of last night's show, mainly because of an Internet campaign that started on Facebook. Here's an article that details some other examples of Internet campaigns affecting pop culture.
As a profession, librarians constantly struggle with the fact that we aren't exactly regarded as a "cool" profession. (Man, there are times I miss working in publishing - a life full of wine & cheese parties and awards banquets, I tell you!)
Sure, librarians are trying to update their image - getting articles in the NYT about how cutting-edge we are with technology, how kick-ass we are about social justice and just how hip we are in general.
But really, that's the New York Times. They're about as far from defining trends as your great aunt Martha.
"He has declared: “When you are growing up there are two institutional
places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to
God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library
is a great equaliser.”"
I was going to save this for Music Monday but it's too good to not share right away. As one YouTube commenter observes, is this like looking at the roots of the delta slide blues guitar style?
A web site that allows you to "play" the HTML of any web site. This isn't as straight-forward as it sounds...
The CodeOrgan analyses the "body" content of any web page and
translates that content into music. The CodeOrgan uses a complex
algorithm to define the key, synth style and drum pattern most
appropriate to the page content.
Firstly, the CodeOrgan scans the page content and removes all
characters not found in the musical scale (A to G), and then analyses
the remaining characters to find the most commonly used "note". If this
is an even number the page is translated into the major pentatonic
scale of that particular note, it becomes minor if there is an uneven
number.
Secondly, the CodeOrgan defines which synthesizer to use. This is based
upon the total number characters used on the webpage - there are
currently 10 synthesizer effects and the one chosen is picked based
upon the percentage of content.
Lastly, the CodeOrgan selects a drum loop based upon the ratio of
characters on the page versus the number of characters that are
actually musical notes - there are currently 10 different drum loops to
pick from.