Mr. Muscles is selling his 55 lbs. dumbells on craigslist. He’s made up for the complete lack of punctuation in his post by using ALL CAPS. (It’s great if you read it to yourself in a deep, super-tough guy voice.)
“SUP BROS I HAVE A PAIR OF USED 50LBS. DUMBBELLS FOR SELL NEED TO GET RID OF ASAP THEY ARE USED NOT NEW AND NOT THE PRETTY SPARLKING ONES THEY ARE WHAT THEY ARE DUMBBELLS FOR TRAINING,GETTING BIG AND MAKING YOURSELF LOOK LIKE A MILLION BUCKS. THEY ASSISTED ME IN GETTING 19 INCH ARMS SO I KNOW THAT THEY DO WHAT THEY ARE MADE FOR REGARDLESS OF APPEARANCE IF INTERESTED CONTACT ME I WILL ONLY ACCEPT 55 DOLLARS CASH NOTHING LESS SO BEAT IT WITH THE BAD JOKES ABOUT LOW BALLING ME !! IF YOU ARE SERIOUS AND WANT THEM TODAY EMAIL ME AND THEY ARE YOURS BRO THIS IS A BRICK POST PEACE AND THANKS FOR LOOKING !! I HAVE PICS OF THE BELLS ALSO WHEN YOU EMAIL IF YOU WANT TO SEE THEM THEY ARE HEX BELLS”
Also, check out the original post for the photo of the dumbells (and his “19 INCH ARMS”) http://annarbor.craigslist.org/spo/930305351.html
The New Yorker did a brief profile on Prince this week. I bet Price thought the write-up would focus on his religious and political views (which are also covered), but the author spends half the article describing the look of his new house in LA. Here’s a snippet.
Candles scented the air, and New Age music played in the living room, where a TV screen showed images of bearded men playing flutes. Prince padded into the kitchen, a small fifty-year-old man in yoga pants and a big sweater, wearing platform flip-flops over white socks, like a geisha. … In the living room, he’d installed purple thrones on either side of a fireplace, and, nearby, along a hallway, he had hung photographs of himself, in a Moroccan villa, in various states of undress. At the end of the hall, a gauzy curtain fluttered in a doorway. “My room,” he said. “It’s private.”
While I’m on the topic of Prince, a few months ago I saw the Kevin Smith Q&A where he talks at length about a shelved documentary he shot with Prince on his religious views. That portion of the Q&A is on youtube (of course) in four parts. Here it is.
Wednesday night: The Silent Years, Deastro, Wildcatting, Oscillating Fan Club, Mason Proper at the Magic Stick
Thursday: Thanksgiving!
Friday night: Wafflehouse* (featuring members of Child Bite, the Silent Years, Next Door Neighbors, ex-Rescue ) reunion show, Fordirelifesake (final show), the Weakend (final show) at the Magic Stick
Saturday night: Child Bite open for Electric Six and Local H (yeah, weird!) at St. Andrew’s
On Saturday morning, Ian Saylor and I went to Royal Oak’s holiday parade. Performing on a float in costume was a special lineup of Bootsey X and the Lovemasters featuring our pal Eddie Baranek playing bass in a pilgrim outfit, tights and all. Since it was painfully cold we didn’t stay long, but I did shoot this brief video. Enjoy.
Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the White Album’s original release date, which seems like a good opportunity to get nerdy on the Beatles, staring with the Purple Chick remaster bootlegs. Considering I first read about them back in April in Rolling Stone, I figured I was one of the last to hear, but surprisingly few of my friends are familiar with the project.
Here’s the story as I understand it. After years of complaining about the shotty audio quality of the Beatles CD releases (which haven’t been remastered since they were released in 1987), the bootleg group Purple Chick (which could be one sweaty middle-aged dude in his mom’s basement for all I know) have taken the task into their own hands. Using top quality, first-pressing vinyl as their source, they’ve issued deluxe remasters of all the Beatles albums for free on the internet. The real icing on the cake is that they didn’t stop at the released tracks. There are discs and discs of extras for each deluxe release, including the original mono mixes, the singles from those sessions, loads of studio outtakes, tracking sessions and assorted other rarities. The White Album deluxe edition is ten discs, including home demos. Last year, they released Sgt. Pepper with all four tracks isolated. These releases are nerd-only events, but events nonetheless.
This page lists details on all the Purple Chick releases. They’ve now expanded to remaster concerts (dating back to the first Quarrymen performance where Paul met John) and are, as one blog put it, “making all other bootlegs obsolete.” You can download the deluxe copies for yourself at various bittorrent sites on the internet or try this blog for a taste of the remasters. Thank you internet.
Speaking of Beatles bootlegs, one infamous track that remains unreleased is “Carnival of Light,” an experimental piece helmed by McCartney recorded during their psychedelic period for an electronic music festival. In an interview last week, Paul hopes the track will now finally be made available to the public. Of course it depends on the approval of everyone’s widows. Oh, and Ringo, who finally has some free time to think about this sort of thing now that he’s refusing all autographs. After years of hype, I’m prepared to be underwhelmed by its release, but who knows - maybe I’ll be amazed.
In other White Album non-news, I was just learned from wikipedia about Francie Schwartz, Paul’s live-in girlfriend during early tracking of the album. Apparently this was his transitional relationship between Jane Asher and Linda. In this interview she talks about the period when she lived with Paul, John and Yoko, sang backups on ”Revolution 1″, and listened to Paul composing “Hey Jude” at home.
For bedside Beatle reading, in the past couple years I’ve read two great Beatles books - engineer Geoff Emerick’s Here There and Everywhere, (which has great fly-on-the-wall studio stories, recording tricks and bits of trivia, such as Paul audibly saying “Fuck!” when he biffs a note on the “Hey Jude” piano track or George blowing up at Yoko when she got out of the bed to steal the food off his amp) and Barry Miles’ McCartney: Many Years from Now, which is the closest thing to a McCartney autobiography that exists and shows that despite Paul’s reputation as “the cute one,” he was the most cutting-edge, musically-inclined and perfection-driven of the fab four. Also the most hyphenated.
And for the Beatles mega-nerd who wants THE LATEST BEATLES NEWS, there’s this Beatle blog on WordPress that is updated almost daily. Its latest post? Paul McCartney mused to Rolling Stone today about his collaboration wishlist, and topping the list are Bob Dylan and David Byrne. “Girl Is Mine” remake with Dylan anyone?
Finally, I’ll leave you with the fourth single on Apple Records, a brass band recording written and produced by McCartney.
Sorry for the lack of updates in the Party Rats department. I’m here to report that I did happen into some Party Rats recently, and they are incredible. Much brighter than you’d expect, those Party Rats. On Tuesday I received a package in the mail here at SSMCENTRAL containing two packages of Party Rats, 4 mix cds, a business card for a graphic designer and an envelope of old picture recipe cards. Thanks RJ! I’m going to wear those Party Rats while I cook and listen to the mix cds you gave me. All while thinking about hiring someone to do graphic design for me.
The fifth installment in the instant album party series is now posted online at www.instantalbum.org.
For those unfamiliar with the Instant Album Party, it goes like this. A bunch of musicians show up, put their names in a pot, and are randomly drawn to create spontaneous bands. Bands are drawn one at a time, cannot include more than two members of a real band (only one if the real band is a trio), and immediately have one hour to go downstairs and write/record a song. At the end of the party you’ve got an instant album from unlikely collaborations. The idea came from this man’s mind:
This time the party churned out five tunes, covering the following timeless topics: Jeeps, peeing, the fall season, nads and dads, and instant album parties. Attendees included members from Suburban Sprawl’s roster - The Pop Project, Child Bite, Javelins, the World Play and the Recital - plus friends from the Hard Lessons, Lightning Love, the Decks, Starling Electric, Mick Bassett & the Marthas, Fuckin’ Gnarly and others. The songs from this instant album party and all others are available for free on the website.
This swan, doing double duty as traffic marker and muse, was referenced in two of the songs:
Each person wrote a short summary of their experience. You can read each person’s account, download the songs, and browse through pictures taken by attendees at www.instantalbum.org. Enjoy!
Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the White Album’s original release date, which seems like a good opportunity to get nerdy on the Beatles, staring with the Purple Chick remaster bootlegs. Considering I first read about them back in April in Rolling Stone, I figured I was one of the last to hear, but surprisingly few of my friends are familiar with the project. 
