Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Poor dude. He's suffering major neurological decline.

From the article: " More details about Wilson’s condition were included in a capacity declaration. It said Wilson, the writer behind dozens of Top 40 hits including “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” and “Good Vibrations,” would find it “emotionally very stressful” as well as physically difficult to attend any court hearings in person. “He is easily distracted” and “often makes spontaneous irrelevant or incoherent utterances,” the declaration from Dr. Stephen S. Marmer, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, said.

Wilson also has a “very short attention span and while unintentionally disruptive, is frequently unable to maintain decorum appropriate to the situation,” the doctor told the court, adding that Wilson is taking a drug called Aricept to treat his dementia. The doctor said Wilson has trouble following instructions, except when he’s taking voice lessons or during physical therapy. “This is based on long-standing muscle memory,” the doctor wrote."

At least they're keeping him at home, which I'm sure is a good thing to be in familiar surroundings. Interesting that he's 'taking voice lessons', I guess that's to try to stimulate portions of his brain to try to keep them from atrophying?

I've been seeing articles about his condition and the plans for this conservatorship, I knew this was coming and pretty much inevitable.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/brian-wilson-conservatorship-daughters-rights-1235018053/

It was taken from the back of a van and is now back in Paul's hands. It was used in the recording of the first two Beatle's albums and is still in its original case! The guitar is only slightly the worse for wear and needs a little restoration work before it'll be in playable form.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/paul-mccartney-lost-lost-bass-found-1234969159/

I picked up a copy a few weeks ago and finally listened to it, and I found the vocals kind of muddy. It seemed to me that the diction of the ladies has faded a bit with time, or possibly the mix of the album just isn't quite what it should be.

While I do wear hearing aids, I have no problem hearing lyrics on albums by other artists. I was wondering if others with this album might have noticed the same thing, or not.

It has some great stuff on it, and some stuff that was, IMO, not so great. Overall, a good album.

The person who passed away was also a minstrel, and I was able to get a copy of his song collection and I retrofitted it to fit my band, which was useful, so I'll be playing his music, which I hope pleases his friends to hear his music one last time. I didn't know the deceased, but he had pretty good taste in music and was a good arranger.

This will be the second memorial that I've performed. Interestingly, the first one I did I gained a best friend, and she's organizing the memorial for the second group! She recommended me to them, and I'm happy to help. Fortunately my band is large enough to play this guy's songs without alteration, aside from rearranging the instrument order to fit where the instruments are in my band.

I also solicited requests for other music to play, and one song was Paralyzer. There was a lot of music where all I had was a song title, and I had to search and make inferences as to who the band was. And I usually got it right.

And I found this video. Which is pure awesomesauce! The music is good, too.

They Might Be Giants' John Flansburgh was in a serious car accident returning home from a gig. He broke SEVEN RIBS, some with multiple fractures. Fortunately this did not result in any internal organ damage, he got lucky there. Several future concert dates will have to be postponed as he recovers.

The problem here is that injured ribs are extremely painful when injured. While I've never broken them, I have a condition that flares occasionally from strained ribs that is just terrible. I can imagine what John is going to go through and wish him a speedy recovery.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/they-might-be-giants-postpone-tour-john-flansburgh-car-accident-1365241


Depeche Mode lost a founder. Keyboardist Andy Fletcher passed away at the age of 60 from natural causes. He was a co-founder and was with the band from their founding through their latest album. In 2020, Depeche Mode was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm glad that he got to see that honor.

The Rolling Stone article was quite nice.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/depeche-mode-andy-fletch-fletcher-dead-1359207/


Jim Seals of the soft rock duo Seals and Crofts passed away, he was 79. The duo started out backing John Denver, and after meeting while playing for a band called the Champs, they moved to California "where they also played with or wrote songs for a wide range of artists, including the Monkees, Buck Owens, Gene Vincent and Rick Nelson."

Jim's brother Dan, was half of the duo England Dan and John Ford Coley. He passed in 2009. Jim suffered a stroke about five years ago which ended his singing and touring career. Darrell Crofts is apparently still alive.

Jim's birth year is unclear, thus his age is listed as 79 or 80.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jim-seals-seals-crofts-singer-behind-summer-breeze-dead-at-80-1364260/


And finally, Alec John Such, Bon Jovi’s Founding Bassist, passed at 70. He played on the first five albums. Such was there when the band was formed in 1983 and left eleven years later.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/alec-john-such-bon-jovi-bassist-dead-obit-1363317/

Not much to be said. Jerry is gone and John Mayer's been filling in for him, Bill Kreutzmann's been having increasing health problems - not Covid-related - and didn't join in for a Mexico concert series last year because of concerns for playing in the heat, bassist Phil Lesh passed entirely on this Dead And Company tour, and now it's all coming to an end.

The schedule has been announced on the band's web site, tickets went on sale this morning. The tour starts June 11 at Dodger Stadium and ends July 16 at New York's Citi Field.

And then the Do-Dah Man will get some sleep, because he won't be truckin' no more. It has certainly been a long, strange trip that has finally come to an end.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/dead-company-final-tour-1334902/

Things are heating up for streaming service Spotify. Last week, Neil Young asked that his label, Columbia, pull his music from their platform. Young says that it is quite a financial hit as Spotify represents 60% of his streaming income, at the same time he says that Spotify is also the lowest resolution of his streaming music, something that he cares about: a few years ago Young tried to launch his own compression codec which was an amazing failure. Neil said that he doesn't mind his songs being off Spotify as his music sounds better everywhere else.

Apple took advantage of it by launching a playlist on Apple Music's streaming service.

Young actually first gave Spotify an ultimatum: you can have Young or Rogan: not both. They chose Rogan. Well, they had good reason: Spotify paid $100,000,000 for the exclusive rights to Rogan's podcast and back catalog, and apparently don't really care if he spews misinformation about vaccines and the Covid virus and just about everything else in the known universe in general.

Seemingly without prompting from Neil, his fans flooded Spotify's customer service in hordes and started unsubscribing. They hit the online customer service boards so hard it started crashing under the load. And the bad PR and unsubscribes drove down Spotify's stock.

Ouch.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/spotify-support-buckles-under-complaints-from-angry-neil-young-fans/


And that's no where near the end of the bad news for Spotify!

Joni Mitchell is pulling her catalog off Spotify in support of Neil Young! That, I'm sure, will cause another cascade of fans to walk.

Interestingly, Neil and Joni, both Canadians, are also both Polio survivors! Good reason to be pro-vaccine and come down very hard on vaccine and virus misinformation!

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/music/joni-mitchell-says-pulling-spotify-joining-neil-young-protest-rcna14048


So now Rogan has to make the apology tour circuit, or at least record a video, and make promises to "do better". He says he's a fan of Neil Young's music and doesn't want to see Neil leave Spotify. He says "he doesn’t “always get it right” on his podcast and promised to “do better” going forward". So the predictable BS. And Spotify lost $2,000,000,000 in market valuation last week. The article continues "Copping to the fact a lot of what he says on his hugely popular podcast is “not that prepared or fleshed out,” one-time self described “moron” Rogan also thanked his $100 million paymasters Spotify for “being so supportive during this time and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them.”.

Well, GEE. Considering two BILLION is greater than what they paid for him, I'm sure major stock holders and board members are seriously considering whether or not to just cut him loose and look for ways to void his contract.

Continuing the article: “If there’s anything that I’ve done that I could do better, it’s having more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones,” ... “I would most certainly be open to doing that. And I would like to talk to some people who have differing opinions on the podcasts in the future. I do all the scheduling myself and I don’t always get it right.”

And there's the problem in a nutshell. John Oliver had a wonderful demonstration as to that fallacy in, if I recall correctly, the first season of Last Week Tonight talking about climate change deniers bringing out "scientists" who don't believe climate change is real debating actual climate change scientists. It makes it look like it's a 50/50 split when it's far from it. So what Rogan is suggesting doesn't fix things, it spackles over the problem and makes it look like there's viable discussion to be had when the science is pretty clear-cut that Covid is indeed a virus to be taken serious, vaccines protect people and seriously reduce the illness if you get it, and fringe cures like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquin don't work. Oh, and you can't make the latter by boiling orange and grapefruit rind at home - apparently that's the latest fad. The drug is just a tad more chemically complicated.

Oliver had a fake news set set up where one scientist was debating another, then flooded the set with 98 more scientists debating the denier. Somehow I doubt Rogan is going to do something like that.

https://deadline.com/2022/01/joe-rogan-spotify-covid-controversy-neil-young-joni-mitchell-1234922830/


So fire up the popcorn popper!

The box set consists of: "David Bowie 5. Brilliant Adventure (1992 – 2001) will also include remastered editions of Black Tie White Noise, The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, and ‘hours…’ along with the live album BBC Radio Theatre, London, June 27th, 2000 and the odds and sods collection Re: Call 5. It arrives on November 26th as a seven-CD set, an 18-piece vinyl package, or a digital download."

Personally, I quite liked Black Tie White Noise. Earthlings, I thought was a little more so-so, but I haven't given it a listen-through in some time. I'm not familiar with Buddha, Outside, or Hours.

Toy was recorded in 2000 with EMI/Virgin, but never released. The label was in serious financial straits at the time, not coping well with file sharing and such, they're also suffered huge losses with the abject failure of Mariah Carey's movie, Glitter. The album was shelved, Bowie ended up leaving the label and founded his own, abandoning the album.

A poor quality bootleg of the album became available a few years ago, I don't follow that scene. I knew someone who was big into music bootlegs, but that was about four decades back. I don't even remember the dude's name now.

Well, now we get a chance to hear it come the holiday season! I've never before bought a multi-disc package like this, but for Bowie, I can do that.

Five minutes of footage from over 56 hours worth that he's working with! It's not a trailer or a sneak peak, just a montage of cool stuff of the Fab Four working/clowning around in the studio and on the roof top of the famous Abbey Road performance.

Alan Parsons received his first engineering credit on Abbey Road, I wonder if he'll be visible in the footage?

He's in the final edit and about half-way through: since he's based in New Zealand, and NZ has dealt with the pandemic, he's back to work.



I have no evidence for this, but I'm guessing that he did a full restoration process on his footage like he did for his World War I documentary to bring it up to modern hi-def standards, so it should look and sound quite stunning when it releases in August '21.

Regardless, I'm quite looking forward to this and expect it'll end up in my collection.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/peter-jackson-beatles-sneak-peek-1106383/

Wooties! Man, while Adam Lambert is not Freddie Mercury, damn that kid is good!

I so wish I'd gone to the effort of seeing them in Phoenix a couple of years ago.



https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/watch-queen-adam-lambert-perform-i-was-born-to-love-you-japan-1066710/