Asides

“GDSP 10 – Directed by electronicalrattlebag “

Aside | | Paul Greer

reblogging of-saudade:

“GDSP 10 – Directed by electronicalrattlebag

Take a picture of yourself with an important thing.

You could tell us what the thing is, and why it is important to you.

You could tell us how it smells, feels, tastes, sounds, if these are applicable.”

“I found this quite hard because I couldn’t decide what ‘important’ meant to me. I attach strange sentimentality to all things; objects, songs, films, places. This is the Tea House.

“The Tea House has been with me for over 20 years. It’s a tin that came filled with cheap English toffees that I got for Christmas when I was six years old. I don’t remember who gave it to me, probably one of my distant aunts. After the toffees were eaten, my mother used it to hold herbal tea bags; peppermint to sooth my frequent stomachaches, chamomile to help me sleep, some awful lemon concoction that she made me drink when I had glandular fever for most of the year I was thirteen.

“I didn’t think to take it with me when I ran away from home, but a few weeks later it arrived in the garbage bag of remaining belongings that my mother unceremoniously dumped at the front door whilst I was still at school, a few stray bags of tea fluttering inside. For a while I kept money in it, then cigarettes, drugs, things to spite my mother, but it just felt wrong, and it became the Tea House again.

“The Tea House is ‘important’ because it is a tiny pocket of warmth, care and affection from my childhood. It smells like Earl Grey, is cold to the touch, clangs like a broken bell when you drop it, and its contents taste delicious.”

You all know about GDSP, right?

I set number 10, you can see the other submissions (also amazing, insightful, beautiful) for that prompt here.

 

Revealing the Hidden Kingdoms.

Aside | | Paul Greer

At BDH we have been intensely working on the compositing and enhancement for the new BBC wildlife series Hidden Kingdoms, which starts tonight at 8pm on BBC 1.

This was a very much more “enhanced” version of Natural History, telling many stories that would go unexplored in more “traditional” forms, this has raised a certain amount of media debate already.

 

The dumbest generation? No, Twitter is making kids smarter

Aside | | Paul Greer

“It used to be that students did comparatively little writing out of school; even if you were in university, there was little call for it, and few vehicles to showcase your writing. But now, as Prof. Lunsford’s research has found, 40 per cent of all writing is done outside the classroom – it’s “life writing,” stuff students do socially, or just for fun. And it includes everything from penning TV recaps to long e-mail conversations to arguments on discussion boards.

“They’re writing more than any generation before,” she says. The members of “dumbest generation” aren’t just passively consuming media any more. They’re talking back to it.”

“But technology doesn’t just make students better writers or more fluent. Digital tools also let them communicate easily with others – their peers, their friends and the world at large. And this, it turns out, can make them even more powerfully motivated to become genuinely (and wittily) literate.”

— Clive Thompson

— via eush

A few words on the tumblr purchase.

Aside | | Paul Greer

A few words on the purchase.

Something was going to buy Tumblr at some point, we have just been waiting for the moment.

I certainly think the Tumblr Elves deserve a big payoff, they made a magical, wondrous place where we have met and made so many good friends.

Unfortunately Yahoo have such a poor reputation of buying beloved places and then letting them rot or actually running them into the ground.

But Tumblr is my internet home so I will continue to be here and see how it progresses.

The most important thing is the connections that have been made, and I don’t see why we should not capitalize on the sell off too.

The walls around the internet gardens are getting higher and stronger so it is important to find ways around this.

So if you’re into what I share, do or think about, you can generally find me on most internet things. Or you can send me an email, I’m thinking of starting a list, the address is on my Tumblr page.

It’s been emotional.

Always yours,

Burningfp (Scorpio)

x

cross posted on tumblr

Rumble by Link Wray & His Ray Men (1954)

Aside | | Paul Greer

reblogging i12bent:

 


link

Guitarist Link Wray (May 2, 1929 – 2005) was one of the first Native American recording artists to produce a major hit…

Rumble was released in 1958 to immediate acclaim by young people (it is one of the only instrumentals to be banned from airplay, due to its supposed ability to incite rebellion and rioting) – later generations will know it from the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction…

Link played a heavy, distorted lead guitar and his raw sound has influenced power guitarists from Pete Townsend to Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.

Wray lived his last decades in Denmark and is buried in Copenhagen…

(via straycatsfangirl)

Also:

“Eventually the instrumental came to the attention of record producer Archie Bleyer of Cadence Records, who hated it, particularly after Wray poked holes in his amplifier’s speakers[7] to make the recording sound more like the live version. But Bleyer’s stepdaughter loved it, so he released it despite his misgivings.[8] Phil Everly heard it and suggested the title “Rumble”, as it had a rough sound and said it sounded like a street fight.”

“The 1980 Adam and the Ants song “Killer in the Home”, from their Kings of the Wild Frontier album, is based on the same refrain that is featured in “Rumble” (Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni has cited Link Wray as a major influence).”

“In an interview with Stephen Colbert on April 29, 2013, Iggy Pop stated that he “left school emotionally” at the moment he first heard “Rumble” at the student union, leading him to pursue music as a career.”

“It is also one of the first tunes to use the power chord, the “major modus operandi of the modern rock guitarist.”