One of the best live albums of all time is about to get considerably better. The Allman Brothers Band's cornerstone LP, At Fillmore East, compiled from the four sets recorded on the weekend of March 12-13, 1971, has been expanded, stretching over six CDs with fifteen unreleased tracks. Additionally, The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings contains the complete June 27 performance during the iconic venue-s final weekend, after the band was handpicked by impresario Bill Graham to headline closing night. The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings captures the most inspired improvisational rock unit ever at the peak of their prodigious powers, blazing their way through extended instrumental elaborations, so taut and virtuosic, that the crowds that packed the Fillmore East on those memorable nights were utterly transfixed. When it came to live performance, no other band could touch the Allmans.Correction: "Live at Fillmore East" isn't "one of the best live albums of all time," it's THE best live album of all time. Nothing else comes close. Except for this, mebbe.
'The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings' includes 37 tracks, 15 previously unreleased and a 36 page booklet with extended liner notes and never-before-seen images of the Fillmore concerts.
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| President Barack Obama plays a game of pool with Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, right, at a pub in Denver July 8, 2014. (Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images) |
Obama got to take in a little Denver flavor. Obama's motorcade drove by a sign reading "Free weed for Obama" in the city's LoDo neighborhood. Marijuana became legal in Colorado in January.No word if the motorcade stopped. I'll bet it was hard for the former leader of the Choom Gang to pass that up.
I`ve always been careful
Where I bedded down.
Last night I thought I scored an angel
And I woke up with a circus clown.
It might have been love sweet love
That made me so blind
Or it might have been plain old lust
But I think it was the wine.
My Daddy said a couple of beers are OKDaddy was RIGHT. A couple o' glasses o' wine are good with dinner, but as a staple in an all-night drink-fest? Not even. Go ahead... ask me how I know. Better yet, just re-read the lyrics snippet above. We have tee shirts...
But that wine is just no good.
It`ll make you do things you shouldn`t
And forget the things you should.
Fighter Smorgasbord
Air Frame: A formation of US Air Force and Royal Malaysian Air Force aircraft, including an F-15 Eagle from the 131st Fighter Squadron at Barnes ANGB, Mass., an RMAF SU-30MKM Flanker, a USAF F-22 Raptor from the 154th Wing at JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, an RMAF MIG-29N Fulcrum, a BAE Hawk, and an RMAF F/A-18 Hornet fly over Penang, Malaysia, during Cope Taufan 14 on June 18, 2014. Cope Taufan is a biennial large force employment exercise, which took place June 9-20. It was the Raptor's first time participating in an South East Asian international exercise. (Air Force photo by TSgt. Jason Robertson) (click to embiggen)
Gonna be a lot of slow walkin'
Gonna be a lot of sad talkin'
Gonna be a lot of flowers bringin'
It’s gonna be a lot of bells ringin’.
Over you, child, over you, now
Over you, pretty baby, if I ever hear you say we're through.
Gonna be people dressed in black
For a long black Cadillac
Gonna be a lot of bells ringin’
It’s gonna be a lot of sad singin’.
Which just goes to show even a mediocre band can produce good stuff. It ain't all "30 Days In the Hole," now... izzit?
Over you, over you, child
Over you, pretty baby, if I ever hear you say we're through.
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| Out of the nuker and before peeling |
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| Peeled, smothered in El Pinto Green Chile Sauce, and ready to devour |
Fireworks and the Lack o' Same
I miss livin' in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park once a year, and ONLY once a year... that time bein' the Fourth o' July. That's mainly because I had a ringside seat for the P-Ville municipal fireworks show, what with El Casa Móvil De Pennington only bein' about 500 yards from Ground Zero, or where the fireworks are shot off. I'd set up my camp chairs on my car hauler (for elevation, dontcha know), set the camera up on the tripod, pour myself three or four fingers o' Scotland's finest, light a cigar, and marvel. The results looked a lot like this:
Monday, July 04, 2011
Fireworks
Last night? I didn't even bother to go outdoors.We sat outside in the backyard (or what passes for a backyard, anyhoo) earlier this evening and watched the P-Ville municipal fireworks show, which happens on the grounds of ENMU's athletic fields... about 500 yards behind Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park. So we have a ringside seat, as it were. We took pictures, of course, and feel compelled to burden you with them. Without further ado...
I need a wider angle lens for this sorta stuff. All of these were shot with my Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens, locked down at 28mm, focus set to infinity, f-stops varying between f-11 and f-8, and various exposure times set between one and eight seconds. Timing is everything when shooting fireworks and these eight shots are the best of the 140 photos I took tonight (I got a lot of black screen pics, due to bein' late on the draw). Ergo, my success ratio is less than impressive. All shots are as they came out of the camera, except for being re-sized (all) and cropped (in some cases).Tonight? The athletic fields are about a mile away from where I live now and the horizon is obscured by trees... hardly worth the effort. I watched about the first ten minutes or so and then went back in the house to catch Charlie Rose, which was a lot more entertaining.(Sigh)
Thursday, July 04, 2013
Independence Day
From last year:
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Happy Independence Day!
John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence is a 12-by-18-foot oil-on-canvas painting in the United States Capitol Rotunda that depicts the presentation of the draft of the Declaration of Independence to Congress. (From The Wiki)
It's been my habit in recent years to publish the Declaration of Independence every Fourth of July, but I'm gonna do sumthin' different this year. I found this old post from 2007 and it's on topic and on-point for today...We’re not all of us language-people. But…for those who just might be such a person, I offer “The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence.”
The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization. As Moses Coit Tyler noted almost a century ago, no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style. Although many scholars have recognized those merits, there are surprisingly few sustained studies of the stylistic artistry of the Declaration.(1) This essay seeks to illuminate that artistry by probing the discourse microscopically--at the level of the sentence, phrase, word, and syllable. By approaching the Declaration in this way, we can shed light both on its literary qualities and on its rhetorical power as a work designed to convince a "candid world" that the American colonies were justified in seeking to establish themselves as an independent nation.(2)
[…]
Like the introduction, the next section of the Declaration--usually referred to as the preamble--is universal in tone and scope. It contains no explicit reference to the British- American conflict, but outlines a general philosophy of government that makes revolution justifiable, even meritorious:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Like the rest of the Declaration, the preamble is "brief, free of verbiage, a model of clear, concise, simple statement."(11) It capsulizes in five sentences--202--words what it took John Locke thousands of words to explain in his Second Treatise of Government. Each word is chosen and placed to achieve maximum impact. Each clause is indispensable to the progression of thought. Each sentence is carefully constructed internally and in relation to what precedes and follows. In its ability to compress complex ideas into a brief, clear statement, the preamble is a paradigm of eighteenth-century Enlightenment prose style, in which purity, simplicity, directness, precision, and, above all, perspicuity were the highest rhetorical and literary virtues. One word follows another with complete inevitability of sound and meaning. Not one word can be moved or replaced without disrupting the balance and harmony of the entire preamble.I don’t know just how many times I’ve read the Declaration of Independence, but it’s been more than a few. One cannot read the document without a sense of wonder at the magnificence of the words and the way they’re put together. That said, I’ve never read an analysis of the style, thought, and historical/political precedents that went into the composition of the document. This “Stylistic Artistry” essay is one of those rare things one finds on the ‘net: A Keeper. Duly saved in my “Important Stuff” directory.
What I said back then: the essay is a keeper. Much more at the link.Have a safe and happy Fourth!
I can't improve on that.
Caged Bird
Air Frame: Lt. Col. David Elliot, 27th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron commander, climbs into an F-22A Raptor on June 17, 2014, at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia. (Air Force photo by TSgt. Russ Scalf)
Well a friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that songWell, he fixed that, didn't he? Apropos o' not much... I can't remember when it was that I became open... really open... to country music but I'm thinkin' it was about the time I bought my first Lyle Lovett album, which would be sometime in the mid- to late-'80s. The Lyle Lovett station on iTunes is where we heard Mr. Coe today, like this:
And he told me it was the perfect country and western song
I wrote him back a letter and I told him it was not the
Perfect country and western song because he hadn't said
Anything at all about momma or trains or trucks or prison or gettin' drunk
I suppose I served at the right time, which is to say the assignment opportunities over the course of my career were pretty danged good compared to the airmen of today. OTOH, I can never go home again, coz only three of the bases where I served... Tinker AFB, OK; Keesler AFB, MS; and Yokota AB, Japan... still exist. All of the other bases/sites were closed long ago. This also means that 16 of my 22 years were spent at places that no longer exist, if you're keeping score.The European Diet Plan—Amy McCullough
During the 1990s, US Air Forces in Europe supported one combatant command. USAFE was made up of four separate staffs, including headquarters and three numbered air forces. There were 25 main operating bases, at which some 72,000 Air Force personnel were assigned, and a total of 805 aircraft in 34 aircraft squadrons. By comparison, US Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa now supports two combatant commands with one integrated staff, including headquarters and one numbered air force. Instead of 25 main operating bases, there are just six. The number of aircraft assigned to the theater has dropped from 805 to 204 and there are just 10 aircraft squadrons. Lt. Gen. Tom Jones, USAFE-AFAFRICA vice commander, said seeing those stats side-by-side can be "enlightening" to those who may not be aware of the command's full scope of operations. "When I hear talk back in the [United] States, and sometimes in the Pentagon, about bringing things back from Europe, I tell them there is not a lot of Air Force things to bring back," Jones told Air Force Magazine during a briefing at command headquarters at Ramstein AB, Germany, in mid June.
TheMy, how time flies. SN1 is much closer to 50 than he is to 40 and both sons could retire from their respective services if they had a mind to do so (shorter: both are working for half pay these days). Makes a body feel OLD, it does.toppicture was taken sometime before 1991. I know the approximate date because Buck isn't sporting his Gulf War I ribbons. From left to right: Sam, as NROTC cadet; your humble scribe, six or so years post-retirement (and the uniform fit perfectly); and Buck, as a Senior Airman. I hesitate to say Buck, Jr, as he isn't a "junior." "Buck" just happens to be the common nickname given to us both. Buck is the older of the two.
Summer time and a well made wheat beer seem to be nearly a perfect fit for one another as the hot sun creates the desire for something easy to drink that is packed full of refreshing flavors. To create an even brighter feel when drinking their well crafted wheat beer Marble Brewery from Albuquerque New Mexico uses the addition of wildflower honey. Wildflower Wheat uses this special addition along with an ABV of 5.2% to quickly draw drinkers into stages of high anticipation to pour and enjoy every drop as soon as possible.I'm not quite sure what wildflower honey has over your... wait for it... garden-variety honey, but Hey! Marketing. Further along these lines... I must not have a very discerning palate, mainly coz I can't taste the honey. All THAT said, the beer is quite pleasant. This is my second bottle and it's just perfect for a rather warmish day out on the verandah. I think I'll put this brew into the regular rotation.
