Quantum Forest

Listening to music in the radio tends to be depressing. Same tunes, same musicians, same formulas. It is hard to find new (at least for me) sonorities in the radio, so I was happy to reencounter Tony Levin a couple of posts ago. He was playing Chapman stick in King Crimson’s ‘Elephant talk’ video, and I was curious to hear music created around that instrument.

I just bought Levin’s Stick Man. The overall sound of the album is excellent and the combination of Levin and Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson’s drummer amongst other things) is a really good fit. There are only a few songs with vocals, probably not the best, but personally I feel closer to the heavier songs like ‘El Mercado’ or ‘Chop Shop’. I highly recommend the album.

Eleven of September again, but I am not thinking of 2001—which was terrible, I agree—but of 1973. I always stop for a minute to remember as an old political campaign said: without hate, without fear, without violence. I was six and still remember.

I am preparing lectures, really busy. I took the students after more than a semester and most of them appear to be clueless. I am going over a general review, again, because they have to learn. Always listening to energetic music when preparing lectures or running analyses. This time is Rammstein’s ‘Sehnsucht’. But, anyway, I also like to go back a few years and Yes’s ‘Close to the Edge’ (yes, from 1972) is now coming from the headphones.

I start writing most of the ideas in Writeroom and then copy the lot to TeXShop. Packages included in the document preamble for the notes:

%! program = pdflatex
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{pslatex}
\usepackage{amsbsy}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{a4paper}

Although the Statistics course uses Mendenhall & Sincich’s ‘Regression Analysis’ as the basic text, I am using quite a few other references:

• Quinn and Keough’s ‘Experimental design and data analysis for biologists’.
• Searle’s ‘Linear models’.
• Harrell’s ‘Regression modeling strategies’.
• Steel and Torrie’s ‘Principles and procedures of statistics’ (the first edition!).
• Hamilton’s ‘Regression with graphics’.
• Neter and Wasserman’s ‘Applied linear statistical models’.

In addition I am also preparing grant applications, so if you try to contact me please be understanding: I will not read my email (or act upon any emails) until Wednesday next week (around September 20^th).

Moved to King Crimson’s ‘Discipline’. Now listening ‘Elephant talk’…Talk is ony talk…

I found some old CDs, including one by Schwenke & Nilo, which includes a live performance of ‘Recuerdo cuando yo tenía 20 años’ (I remember when I was 20 years old), written by Nelson Schwenke. Schwenke & Nilo was (is?) a duo from Valdivia, a city in Southern Chile where I used to live between 1993 and early 1996.

The song reflects a lot of my experiences when I was twenty, although I was actually eleven at the time the song refers to. I have hyperlinked some of the references that may not be clear for a casual reader.

I still love some of S&N songs, although I disagree with much of their politics. Anyway, they surely are consistent with their beliefs.

Recuerdo cuando yo tenía veinte años
mi pelo flotando, mi paso corriendo
saltando los charcos de calle Picarte
mi padre dormía con un ojo abierto
con el toque de queda, el alma en alerta
y yo maldiciendo milicos de mierda
con el corazon camuflado de sombras, de sombras

Recuerdo el olor de la chicha ‘e manzana
sentirse feliz por estar en la Teja
fundando ciudades, construyendo puentes
el vicerrector nos tenía prohibido
cantarle a la gente era muy subversivo
lo mejor sería agachar la cabeza
unirse al rebaño y no hacer poesía

Recuerdo en la tele Martín dale duro
jugate el pellejo como un pelo duro
recuerdo los hornos de cal de Lonquén
el gobierno escribe: así vamos bien
…mañana mejor

Recuerdo las buenas cervezas del Paula
donde Jorge Millas fumaba el futuro
lo bueno de aquello era estar convencidos
que todo lo que uno hiciera al momento
sería la llave y la puerta del tiempo
la lluvia era siempre un buen argumento
pa’ hacer navegado y bajar al invierno
al infierno…

Recuerdo a González rayando murales
y a toda la DINA escarbando mi casa
mientras yo a escondidas hacia el amor
riéndonos juntos de todo el horror
…todo el error

If you do not understand the lyrics leave it like that; please do not destroy them using any automated translator.

The CD also contained a beautiful version of Luchín, an old Victor Jara song. I think that child poverty affects me more now than ever before because Orlando is so close. And yes, I still think that capitalism is the solution.

I have been buying some music on CDs to replace very old tapes. The latest acquisitions (thanks to a bit of consulting work) purchased from Amazon:

• ‘Giros’, by Fito Páez (1985).
• ‘la, la, la’ by Luis Alberto Spinetta and Fito Páez (1986).
• ‘Para los árboles’, by Luis Alberto Spinetta (2003). Actually, this is really a new purchase for me.

I was listening again Pequeño ángel (little angel) by Spinetta (in la, la, la) and thinking of Orlando:

Dame tu luz pequeño ángel
que si te vas se va mi vida
antes que el sol cuelgue sus alas.

Cuento las notas de las horas
tengo la piel de tu llovizna
en cuanto el sol cierre sus alas.

Luz, sólo luz
respirándome
hay un rumor que me lleva al mar
en tanto que en la sombra
más te busco y más te tengo acá.
Dame tu luz pequeño ángel.

and also listening ‘Instant-taneas’, ‘Gricel’, ‘Estoy atiborrado con tu amor’, and a bunch of other great songs. I am still trying to make sense of ‘Para los árboles’, which is quite different from other Spinetta things. Nevertheless, that happens all the time with El Flaco: he is a little ahead of all of us, showing the way to new sounds and styles. Eventually, I will get there. I only need to listen the CD a few more times.

I was writing a Python prototype of DogSim, an inheritance (sense Mendel) mode simulator, happily coding and brushing up my Python coding. I usually listen to energetic music while coding, and this time was the Red Hot Chili Peppers turn. First was Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik, then ‘Californication’ and then ‘By the way’ (my least favourite album). But no, wait a minute: ‘By the way’ would not play at all in my laptop. Tried again, and the disk was not recognised. What was going on? Quick Google search and then discovered that the Australian released CD had ‘copy protection’ that would not allow it to be played in a computer.

I understand that artists may not like someone making a million copies of their CDs and selling them for a profit. But from there to denying a legal user the possibility to play a CD in a computer… that is way over the top. Over ninety percent of my listening is in my computer while working, the other ten percent is listening children’s music in the car. So, what happens when I am faced with that situation? Well, I just have to circumvent the protection, so I can make a copy of the CD that plays in my computer to listen to the bloody thing, so I can justify spending the money in an overpriced piece of plastic.

My web search found a reference to IsoBuster, a data recovery software that mounts the CD and ‘shows you all the tracks and sessions located on the media, combined with all file-systems that are present’. So it gets around the typical double table of contents problem that renders CDs unplayable in a computer. Then one can copy the music contents to the hard drive and then back to another CD. The funny thing is that I did not manage to mount ‘By the way’ in my crammy Matshita UJ-820S CD drive—so I need to try in my desktop computer—but I managed to get a copy of the enhanced version of Portishead’s Live: Roseland NYC. The latter has given me grief for many years, always trying to use its special player to play in the computer, not letting me do any other thing.

What is the point of the whole exercise? Commercial piracy will not be deterred by some lame form of protection, but end users will be really annoyed. May be music companies should read Cory Doctorow’s presentation on digital rights management.

P.S. By the way, a lot of this copy protection issues are completely side stepped in my mac.

I finally decided to upgrade my old trusty Koss UR-20 el cheapo headphones for something a bit more expensive—although still ultra cheap for audiophile standards: Sennheiser PX 100. They seem to be one of the best cheap headsets and they are very comfortable. I will throw away the Sony earbuds and use my Yepp with the Sennheiser.

Almost simultaneously I bought a couple of nice CD in ‘Music without frontiers’, which is my favourite music shop in Hobart. I was looking for another Piazzolla CD but this time live. Stephan did not have any live concerts—I think I will have to order The Laussane concert, although see this page for corrections on the names of tracks—but he had The rough dancer and the cyclical night -Tango apasionado. This album is good, but not of the same stature as Tango Zero or La Camorra. If you like Jorge Luis Borges’s writings, as I do, you may be interested in this Borgessian connection with Piazzolla.

The other CD I bought was Nóis 4’s Gente (the BBC has a review and Daniella Thompson has another one). This recording is a nice exploration of Brasilian music including classics and new songs by Nóis 4. My favourite track is still ‘Influência do Jackson’, although this is the type of album that grows in me with each time that I listen to it, so I expect that the ‘favourite track title’ will keep changing hands.

Last evening I took a bus home, while reading Reason & Imagination, by Rafe Champion. By the way, Rafe’s book is quite readable considering that is dealing with Popper and Bartley’s philosophy.

The bus was starting its trip when a bus inspector jumped into it, and started explaining aloud that he was going to ask for our tickets (looking for fare evaders, of course). I was transported back to travelling by bus in Chile during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

After the 1982 recession in Chile, there was an explosion of the number of people working in buses: selling small things (like ice cream, combs and keyrings), playing music (there was even a guy playing a full size harp!), doing theatre, puppet shows, etc. At some stage around 25% of the Chilean economy was informal. In 1987 Electrodomésticos released a song entitled Señores pasajeros (part of the album ‘Carreras de éxitos’). The language is trite and baroque: creating a collection of clichés.

Señoras y señores pasajeros
tengan todos ustedes muy buenas tardes
en primer lugar
deseo expresarles
que es totalmente ajjjeno a mi voluntad
el molestarles, el incomodarles
o el perturbarles en el transcurso de vuestro viaje.

Una vez preclaro lo anteriormente dicho por el suscrito
solicito
vuestra infinita caridad
el immenso cariño del pueblo chileno
hacia el necesitado.

Les deseo desde el fondo de lo mas profundo de mi corazzzón
a todos ustedes y los suyos
que el futuro les depare toda clase de felicidadesss
y caigan sobre ustedes
todas las bendiciones del creador
asimismo como también
para el respetable señor conductor
de esta máquina
que tambien cumple una tarea importante
en nuestra ciudad, ciudad, ciudad.

Ajjjeno (ajeno), corazzzón (corazón) and felicidadesss (felicidades) are not typos, but Cabezas is playing with the pronunciation of bus buskers and peddlers.

After my latest hard drive crash I was facing an upgrade to my mp3 player software. I was tired of the peculiarities and sluggish interface of Musicmatch and went shopping around.

The obvious first stop was Winamp, which I first used around 1997. Unfortunately, Winamp could not make work the CDDB connection with Graceland, an issue probably related with me being behind a corporate firewall. I was looking for something with a small footprint and I settled with Media Monkey and even decided to forkout the US$19.95 for the gold edition. Media Monkey relies on freedb to obtain the album information, which works perfectly fine from my computer, and it is a very responsive smallish (~4MB) program. Yes, there are smaller mp3 programs (like Cool Player, for example) but they do not have all the features I was looking for.

The same day I received a parcel from my parents, with a compilation of the first two albums by Electrodomésticos. With this CD I have completed the music I was looking for year and a half ago.

Many years ago,when I was a child, I remember listening to some classic Astor Piazzolla pieces like ‘Adios Nonino’ and ‘Balada para un loco’. At the time I thought ‘it sounds OK’ but that was it. Four years ago, I ripped a CD—called The Soul of the Tango with an excellent recording by Yo Yo Ma—to mp3 files¹. I listened to the songs over and over again, but I could not find any more Piazzolla music in Hobart.

Last week I found a couple of excellent studio albums with Piazzolla performing his works:

• La Camorra (The solitud of passionate provocation)
• Tango: Zero Hour=* (Tango + Tragedy + Comedy + Kilombo² = New Tango).

I have to acknowledge that I am currently obssessed with the sound of these two recordings. It is great to hear again so much passion in music. My favourite songs from these albums are: La Camorra II, Fugata and Sur: Regreso al amor (from La Camorra) and Milonga del Angel and Contrabajísimo (from Tango: Zero Hour).

There are many recordings with the work of Piazzolla, with highly variable quality. Thus, one needs to be careful when buying and this list seems to cover safe choices. As an example, I bought The Soul of Tango: Greatest Hits, which has a good selection of songs but abominable sound quality (Correction 2005-09-08: only some of the songs sound really bad, while for the others sound quality is OK). Do not confuse ‘The Soul of the Tango’ with ‘The Soul of Tango: Greatest Hits’!

If you are willing to try a combination of tango, classical music and some jazz, please give Piazzolla a chance.

PS 2005-09-13: I just bought another Piazzolla CD.

¹ I later purchased the CD—it took me a while to find it in Hobart. This example shows that mp3 are not evil (as music companies complain) but that they provide ways of trying music that one would not buy otherwise.

² Kilombo, usually spelled Quilombo is an Argentinism meaning a Whorehouse, and implying the supposedly chaotic nature of this type of enterprise.

This post is an utterly miscellaneous brain dump:

• Last week I got pharyngitis and am still taking antibiotics, situation that I really dislike.
• Yes, I am a doctor in the real sense of the word, despite what the physician that prescribed antibiotics thinks.
• Last Saturday I got one of the worst haircuts ever—at least that I can remember—at Just Cuts. Yes, it is my fault for first choosing to go to a such dubious place: avoid it if you can. Nevertheless, every time I passed outside Paul’s barber shop he was busy. Today I went to his place with my tail between my legs and beg him to have it fixed. We had a laugh, had it fixed and he made me promise not to repeat my sin.
• Cooked a beautiful marinated octopus pasta last night. Looking forward to eat the left overs at lunch time.
• Last Christmas I got a few vouchers from ‘Music without Frontiers’, one of the few music stores in Hobart where one can find something outside the ‘top 20′. I went back to my old listening habits, and got:
  • Blues and Roots by Charles Mingus.
  • Live at Scullers by Ray Brown Trio.
  • Close to the Edge by Yes.
• Andrew told me that last Saturday was Captain Beefheart’s birthday. I did not know who CB was so I will have to borrow some of his art.

It is hard for me to get interested in current mainstream music: no challenges, one can guess what is coming so easily that tends to be a big yawn. That’s all folks.