Automated posting pre-logged on 05/25/05.

Today’s entry is brought to you by a few hundred monkeys trained in touch-typing, under the supervision of Mr. Public Domain & Mrs. Fair Use

You know, Love is a fucking Gipsy kid… We are all gypsies come from afar, after all…

And if you don’t love me, dear reader, know that I dearly, dearly love you. and beware.
You know, when he holds me in his arms and whispers to me, it does something to me. That love, mysterious, unattainable, the torment and delight of my heart… Just like when they sifted sand together on the beach, how she shook her bottom, how Chan Chan was turned on…
I saw her again the other night: it’d been such a long time. I got drunk listening to her and woke up to her kisses on my forehead. And she screamed out kicking on her side and said: j’ai perdu les pédales… Everybody knows that’s how it goes, that you live forever when you’ve done a line or two, that nothing’s ever safe: your strengths, your weaknesses… stand arms wide open in embrace: your shadow’s just a cross. There’s no happy love ending…

Dunno what this means, why I’m so sad, kind of like a dream from ancient times. Oh, Lord have mercy…

Automated posting pre-logged on 05/25/05.

I think by now it’s sufficiently clear that I won’t be coming back for a while: this auto-blog thing is just too damn convenient. Expect the Eliza-blogger-bot to kick in soon.

Music for any and all occasions. No time to linkify, I’ll leave it up to you to check out the tracks at your favorite non-traceable P2P software legal outlet…

Music To…

… Rebel Your Adolescence To:

• Mala Vida - 2:31 - Mano Negra
• Kill Your Sons - 3:35 - Lou Reed
• Common People - 5:51 - Pulp

… Rave To:

• Horny Hustle - 4:21 - Joeski & Dano
• Deus - 9:12 - Electric Skychurch
• Rez/Cowgirl - 11:47 - Underworld

… Be Drunk To:

• Alabama Song - 3:20 - The Doors
• Dazed and Confused - 6:26 - Led Zeppelin
• Les Nuits Parisiennes - 2:31 - Louise Attaque

… Drop To:

• Pacific 202 - 3:51 - 808 State
• Guitarra G - 8:40 - G-Club Pres. Banda Sonora G
• Cool Kids of Death (Underworld mix) - 13:46 - Saint Etienne

… Hug To:

• Song For Shelter - 11:26 - Fatboy Slim
• Whistle Song - 8:17 - Frankie Knuckles
• Little Fluffy Clouds - 9:07 - The Orb

… Snort To:

• Funky Shit - 5:16 - The Prodigy
• You Prefer Cocaine - 5:43 - Vitalic
• Contagious - 3:13 - Adult

… Nurse a Loveover To:

• Somewhere Over the Rainbow - 4:51 - Israel IZ Kamakawiwo’ole
• No Communication, No Love - 5:30 - Charles Schillings
• Nocturne op. 9 - 4:41 - Frédéric Chopin

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Last week-end was the start of a string of holidays known as Golden Week in Japan. All the happy wage-slave masses left Tokyo for a week-long exodus to some exotic location. And because I was stupid enough not to pick Medieval German Poetry, Sociology or some equally bulshittable major, back in the days, I was stuck meditating and doing equations in my garden, fighting with the cats over the few sunbeams that could make it through Tokyo’s many layers of pollution…

Seeing no reason I’d be the only one having an awful time, I figured I would use some time on the side to bring you my thoughts on the heaviest and most uninviting topic possible: Sino-Japanese Relations Through the Twentieth Century to our Days.

Sounds fun, innit?

Actually, this is kind of a trendy topic these days.

To be fair, the “trendy” part is rather limited, and even more so, depending on which side of the Japanese Sea you live on. But around here, this was most definitely the talk of the month, in Japanese news and all over the English-speaking nipponoblogosphere… Hell, even this guy stopped staring at his dick long enough to write a reasonably thoughtful entry on the topic.
Another very interesting read is Michael Panda’s transcription of the incriminated textbooks (you need to scroll way down to the end).

I figured I would just add my own two yens, and if possible extend it past the perspective of personal-level anecdotes: not that they do not have their place in the debate, but there should be a little more to it than the usual “oh yea, here is what the few Japanese I know say about it”…

If you are looking for a fun and entertaining read to kill the next 20 minutes, this most definitely is not it…

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A look at the sins that shape this blogging machine of a man…

And we got in close order:

1. pride
2. lust
3. wrath
4. sloth
5. envy
6. gluttony
7. avarice

What’s your personal Top 7?

This is pointless enough with just what it needs of self-centered drivel in disguise, that it might make it as the next big blog filler around: knock yourself out, but if you do, in the name of all things sacred, just do not call it a meme. Or I’ll personally go all se7en on your ass. Thanks.

Now, you don’t think I was gonna post a list of flaws without some pathetic attempt at justifying them:

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When I grow up, I want to become a snarky jaded bitter old man, just like him. Complete with asshole-tearing writing skills and all.

Ah, I wish…

No, please, don’t object: try as I might, I know I’m nowhere near that level of bitter, yet… I can’t keep up.

Plus, it just might be that I don’t care enough (I’m told caring only comes with age or when you go off your meds).

But I’m sure glad somebody does.

When doing any academic work requiring a bit more than casual concentration, my choice for musical background invariably veers toward jazz.

House or techno is great coding music, but just takes too much of my attention off; and the kind of classical I can study to, also tends to get on my nerves quickly whenever the studying doesn’t go as smoothly as it should…

On the other hand, old jazz tracks, first half of the century, New-Orleans, Dixie, later French stuff… they just got the perfect mix of bouncy instrumental and subdued beat that helps keeping you in a working groove without turning your nerves into a knot. My playlist currently rotates lots of old no-names Charleston big-bands and swing tracks, along with everything I got by Stephan Grappelli, Django Reinhardt or Sidney Bechet…

As a high-school student in Paris, my buddy Pierre and I used to hang out quite often with local jazz musicians. Pierre’s younger cousin, despite being barely pubescent, was an incredible jazz piano player. Last in a lineage of music nuts, he had been enrolled very early on in the family affair, a band that had once, in typical jazz fashion, spanned over three generations and was now composed of the son-father duo completed by a couple other professional players. Among them was Daniel Bechet, son of Sidney and all around talented drummer.

Of the numerous episodes of strangely anachronistic fun I remember from these days, one particularly stands out:

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You know, for all my left-wing political hysteria and the incredible amount of time I spend complaining about the state of democracy in the world, I am not much of a conspiracy theorist. I do not believe in that big evil masterplan to keep us all under control.

If anything, I am a strong proponent of the old “Never attribute to malice, what can easily be explained by stupidity” adage… Greed and stupidity, to be exact. And certainly many overt collusions between groups of scary individuals with similar interests. But no international cabal to hide the truth about alien abductions and the enslavement of poorer nations.

Just. plain. stupidity.

Yet, some times I can’t help but wonder. Especially when I wake up, have a look at the triumvirat that now presides over the United States of Earth, and realize they all play for the same team…

See, it all started with our beloved Consul, Supreme Commander of the Armies, followed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to be finally joined in their fight for the Greater Good by none other than the Grand Inquisitor of Our Holy Mother Church himself. That sure is quite a powerful trio we got here…

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Something for your ears at the bottom »

Good evening.
Do not attempt to adjust your radio, there is nothing wrong.
We have taken control as to bring you this special show.
We will return it to you as soon as you are grooving.

Welcome to station W. E. F. U. N. K., better known as We-Funk,
Or deeper still, the Mothership Connection.
Home of the extraterrestrial brothers,
Dealers of funky music.
P-Funk, uncut funk, The Bomb.

Parliament Funkadelic - P-Funk

Welcome to Station K.D.R.D… better known as…

Well, at the moment, it’s not known as anything. for a reason: I just made it up.

The concept is quite simple, really.

I have tons of these small tracks, pseudo-remixes, work-in-progress and all around occasional hour spent screwing around on decks with good ole music on wax. Every once in a while, I go through the length of packaging one hour of these into a nice and somewhat clean format for the enjoyment of the masses. Sometimes I even go one step shorter and only release a half-assed half-hour long mix with aforementioned musical goofing around.

All these mixes are available for your aural pleasure on the Dr Dave’s Insanely Cool Mixes Collection Page.

But this somewhat formal release scheme was still not cutting it. Three main reasons:

• Quality: Let’s face it, while I’ve gotten to a point I’d deem “fair” as a professional producer, I am still, for all purposes, a hobbyist DJ. Both in terms of skills and commitment.

  Which means that, to an overwhelming majority, times where I get on the decks and toy around with either records or computers, yield sub-par results in terms of overall mixing quality. What with the constant drinking and abusing substance while playing (OK, not this month, but I have still many ways to take my attention off whatever I’m supposed to mix). Even the Mini Mix collection requires a bit of effort, and I am a lazy person.

  Hence the need for an even cheaper/easier way to share some cool tunes without inflicting unfair damages to your eardrums nor spend every waking minutes doing so.

• Live Audience: this point kinda goes against the one just above, but the idea is that having an audience is good.

  Let me explain… These mixes I upload most definitely have an audience. They are downloaded, and listened to, by cool people, the world over. some of these people even send me nice notes or thank you gifts, which is really a testament to how awesome this Intarweb thingie is. But a live audience, it ain’t.

  If you’ve ever done any sort of art or music live, then you know, otherwise, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine: with the right mindset, there is a sort of pressure that drives you to expand on your usual practices and break the mold. Play/act/do whatever you would be doing in a studio, in a way that you would never have thought of doing before. The live audience is a major catalyst there.

  I hardly ever play clubs these days, and for the most part, I’m quite fine with this. But I do miss the crazy-spur-of-the-moment wild experimentations with vinyl, keyboards, sequencer, chopsticks (yea, I really did it once) and anything an adrenalin-fueled brain can summon.

• Technical Reasons: as mentioned last time, I am nearing the ceiling of my hosting quota. Each new mix I upload now requires difficult choices, moving around, shuffling of files etc. No fun. Especially for me, whose sleeping pattern is deeply perturbed by the mere thought of link rot at night.

The semi-answer to all these problems being…

KDRD: Dr Dave’s Very Own MP3 Radio Station

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1. Unnecessary longwinded and irrelevant Foreword

What does one do, on a depressingly bleary rainy Easter Monday?

1. Stay in and abuse pharmaceutical substances while watching the entire second season of Scrubs, freshly downloaded off the net.
2. Stay in and abuse pharmaceutical substances while working on a thoroughly useless piece of software instead of, say, earn a living.
3. Go to church and bath in Holy Water.

Answer: 1) and 2) (all about multitasking).

Oh wait, sorry… that’s just me.

I believe the correct answer for regular God-fearing sinners is 3).

I know… One usually partakes in such activities on the preceding Sunday. But yesterday was way too busy attending a sun-tanning contest in the garden with my neighbours.

Seeing how I nearly lost an arm to self-combustion last time Holy Water hit my bare skin, we will have to make do with the next closest topic at hand today, and discuss religions in general.

Note: Because this blog wouldn’t be what it is without its overly affected pseudo-wordly brand of cynicism, you can expect a certain amount of negative thoughts and disparaging comments on the matter at heart. We would therefore cordially invite the strongly religious and easily offended among you, to go browse somewhere else for the duration of this entry. Hare Krishnas and Jehova’s Witnesses: you can stay; you are probably accustomed to people overtly mocking your faith by now.

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A second, somewhat better, take of the Retrogressive Vol. 3 Mix. Same address, same music, better sound:

Only marginally better, but this time, no skipping CD track (and huge props to Ian for e-mailing me a clean version, less than two days after I sent him a begging email). The Timmy Regisford track still sound rather awful: after nearly taking my turntable apart, I was forced to conclude it was a shitty vinyl pressing (happens a lot with white label acetate pressings)… bah, we’ll say it adds to the authenticity….

Oh, and also: since it was recorded in faux-mono anyway (stupid mixing board issue + laziness from yours truly), I used single-channel mp3 encoding: freeing 30 much needed megs on my server drive, hopefully without noticeable difference in quality.

I thoroughly hate internet “memes”. In fact, I even hate the cheap bastardization of an interesting, yet mostly unrelated, word in order to give some sort of legitimacy to what is, in fact, nothing more than a 21st century take on the braindead chain letter thing, mixed in with a bit of “glad you asked, let me tell you all about myself” blogger hubris.

However, Bunny asked. Soon to be joined in the peer-pressure effort by our favorite bible-reading cosplay freak. And I can’t decently turn a cold shoulder on them without justifiably being labeled a stuck-up killjoy. Plus I do need a diversion from coding and who can resist a bit of self-serving writing every once in a while (all right: not like this whole blog is anything else in the first place).

So here goes… Expect a rather freestyle approach to the whole meme-answering thing, though.

Since this one was asked in French and it’s been a while: I doubled the effort and made a bilingual post.

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A little something to get your Friday night on…

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I think it was during an hopeless attempt to explain some utterly untranslatable nerdy joke to Eriko, that she admitted she had never seen Star Wars (talking about the original trilogy here, not that poor excuse for a pop-corn commercial they made recently). I thought about it, and realized I probably hadn’t seen all three episodes ever since I was a kid. Hence, tonight was Star Wars night, the first two episodes (kept Return of the Jedi for next time).

Watching it again and having to help Eriko with the story (we only had English subtitles) made me notice many funny details; some of these were quite obvious to me as a grown-up, and the rest is certainly widely known among fanboys circles. But anyway:

• The whole Japanese theme is definitely all over the place: Jedi only seem another name for Samurai, Darth Vader’s helmet is straight from the Shogun’s era and all their fights are conducted using some sort of space-katanas.
• The mystics/metaphysics angle, however, seems more inspired from Taoism than Bushido. In fact, if you take some of Yoda’s quotes and replace “the Force” by “the Tao”, I’m pretty sure you’ll find them verbatim in the Tao Te Ching
• There’s a blatant Shakespearean moment, in Empire Strikes Back, when the big hairy dude is left to lament with the lifeless parts of one of the droids (C3PO or R2D2, can never tell which is which). When he sits down and takes the droid’s head in his hands, you would probably hear him call out for Yorick if you could understand his growling…
• That one is actually a very widely known bit of trivia to anybody who’s lived in the Bay Area: these weird four-legged machines attacking the rebel base in Empire are exact replica of the cargo cranes you can see when you drive to Oakland from the Bay Bridge (they do look quite ominous too if you catch them at sundown).

I’m sure there are tons of other trivia to catch, but these really popped out when watching tonight…

Sunday, I took my roommate Eriko on a record-shopping spree in Shibuya.

The principal goal of our expedition was not for me to pack up on yet more records that I will probably have to leave behind when I move, but rather to help her get started with her career as a world-renowned DJ.

People coming over and asking you to “teach them how to DJ”, is pretty much par for the course whenever you start playing outside of your bedroom. This is how everybody get started, this is how I got started… You pick a DJ you know or that you particularly like and humbly go asking for advice and guidance.

DJ’ing, in that respect, still holds much of that old “master-apprentice” tradition that you get, both in western and Japanese craftsmanship.

But enough with the Mr. Miyagi bullcrap: Eriko didn’t turn to me because she was blinded by my turntablism wizzardry and had a striking revelation in the middle of a dancefloor. Rather because we live under the same roof and she couldn’t help but become increasingly curious about the pleasure I seemed to draw from playing with all these colorful knobs in my bedroom.

Note: If you didn’t grin stupidly upon reading that last sentence, you are way too pure to be reading this blog and have probably lived a very sheltered life so far.

Anyway, after explaining that she probably didn’t need to get the full Midi keyboard and TB-303 kit just right now, I gave her the usual drill. In a nutshell: “Sure, go for it, but not with my records, please”.

Hence the trip to the store, hence the last two days spent enduring the same continuous soundtrack of mismatched beats from the same two records for hours on end…

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A few very random observations prompted by the music in my life these days:

• Keith Jarrett is a bloody genius (dug the Köln Concert’s vinyl boxset last week-end in Koenji.)
• Sometime during the late 90’s, there was a point where it seemed House was about to break into the mainstream: radios started playing House tracks, cross-over successes appeared, major venues featured House acts.
  Eventually, the trend fizzled out and, instead, Hip Hop became the music of choice for the average dance-impaired suburban white kid…

  I take a deep hard look at any random Hip Hop producer on TV nowadays and thank the gods that House never made it to that level of buffoonery…

• My personal theory regarding Drum’n'Bass is that it is a project gone out-of-hand, developed in the Secret Research Labs of the British Dentistry Association aimed at removing patients’ fillings without anesthesia.

  An alternative theory would be that somebody once decided to make a music so caricatural that it begs to be used for one of these 60 Minutes special on The Youth of Today and the barbaric music they are into nowadays.

  Note: My current appreciation of that thankfully near-extinct musical genre is possibly biased by the fact I was just handed such a massively retarded piece of washing-machine rhythm with mission to make the sound “Phat” and to compress the bass more (you stupid tweakhead: if I throw one more inch of compression into that track, it’ll pretty much become one single pulsating bass sound with a few signature d’n'b, motorcycle-on-the-highway, sound effects here and there).

• Also among the insanely cool picks of that last vinyl hunt to Koenji: Cymande, probably one of the best funk band of all times.