If you’re looking for a sign that we live in a digital world that cares not for the physical manifestations of our analog past, you need only look at Paul Mawhinney’s record collection. At over 3 million records, it’s the largest in the world. He’s trying to sell it due to his advancing age and health problems. Unfortunately, as he puts it, “no one gives a damn.”
Paul’s been building his collection for most of his life. He used to run a record store, and while running it he never sold the last copy of any album or single, instead keeping it for his archives. Over the years, those really added up.
Now, at an advancing age, stricken with diabetes and legally blind, Paul wants to sell the collection. It’s been appraised at about $50 million, but Paul is asking a mere $3 million. He’s had no serious offers, and an eBay auction back in February fell through.
In a time when you can access pretty much whatever music you want online, hard copies of albums are declining in value, both monetary and sentimentally. But to see such a mindblowing collection as this sitting in a basement, unwanted, is really heartbreaking. This is historic, no matter that we live in the iPod era or not, and it belongs in a museum. If only one cared enough to buy it.
Talk, its only talk
Arguments, agreements, advice, answers,
Articulate announcements
Its only talk
Talk, its only talk
Babble, burble, banter, bicker bicker bicker
Brouhaha, boulderdash, ballyhoo
Its only talk
Back talk
Talk talk talk, its only talk
Comments, cliches, commentary, controversy
Chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat,
Conversation, contradiction, criticism
Its only talk
Cheap talk
Talk, talk, its only talk
Debates, discussions
These are words with a d this time
Dialogue, dualogue, diatribe,
Dissention, declamation
Double talk, double talk
Talk, talk, its all talk
Too much talk
Small talk
Talk that trash
Expressions, editorials, expugnations, exclamations, enfadulations
Its all talk
Elephant talk, elephant talk, elephant talk
I jumped in the river and what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
All the figures I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt
I jumped into the river
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
And all the things I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt
“Hello, Dr. Richard Feynman? May I congratulate you on the Nobel Prize.”
- “Look, this is a heck of an hour–”
“But aren’t you pleased to hear that you’ve won the Prize?”
- “I could have found out later this morning.”
“Well, how do you feel now that you know that you’ve won it?”
- “Look, some other time…”
And so Richard P. Feynman, Ph.D., FRS, and Richard Chase Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, first sleepily learned that he was an awardee of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics.
If you really really love music, you should own this. This is pure and beautiful minimal music in the vein of Steve Reich, Harold Budd and Brian Eno with hints of Philip Glass. To top it off it is packaged in a crafty letter pressed casing. You can listen to a sample on the website.
Robert Haigh is well known as the respected drum and bass producer Omni Trio. However during the 80s he produced experimental (modern classical) music and now he is returning to his roots. I wrote about his previous and equally wonderful album here (in Dutch).
In the words of Robert Haigh himself:
“[Written on Water] came out of the attempt to find a balance between two of my major interests: counterpoint and economy of structure.
Most music has some form of counterpoint, how one sound or tone relates to another is the key to evoking possibility; an E note paired with an Eb creates an openness where several potentialities of key and structure are suggested. Using too many tones or sounds can have the opposite effect and limit possibilities by over definition – this is where my second preoccupation; economy of structure, comes in.
Structurally instrumental in this is the use of gradual development and apparent repetition. I say ‘apparent’ because in reality no repetition can be found. Every note, tone, sound, etc. is always in a completely new space, unfolding as uncharted flow in the moment.
This quality of ‘always new’ was the inspiration for the title. Like writing on a surface that leaves no trace with every mark, music is the perfect expression (and metaphor) of how ever-fresh reality is when unmediated by the freeze framing of conceptual thought.”
Hundreds of insect species spend much of their time underwater, where food may be more plentiful. MIT mathematicians have now figured out exactly how those insects breathe underwater.
Now this is interesting stuff… BBC News has a story about a woman called Delia Derbyshire who produced the theme song of the famous Dr. Who science fiction television series. Paul Hartnoll from the techno outfit Orbital is quoted…
