First impression: Ramones - Too tough to die CD (Remastered)

From the ages of about 15 until 23 I was full of useless information about rock bands. Whether it was band members, record labels (a thing of the past, really), music videos, producers, albums, obscure one-off EPs, I just retained the information.

As I approach middle age I've noticed I've forgotten a lot, but every once in a while I revisit music trivia as an interest. Back in 2016, I became obsessed with learning about The Ramones, based on clips of their documentary "End of the Century."

With the Ramones I was curious about their ability to tour for 20 years and essentially put their entire lives into what some would call a frivolous music pursuit. I had to figure out just how this was practical for the members. Turns out the whole project was funded by a man named Seymour Stein, and without him, they would've likely packed it in after a year or two, forced to earn a living like the rest of us. Yet, they were lucky enough to be "chosen" and alive during an age when the potential for easy piracy wasn't in the pockets of every consumer. Add in their propensity to play live non-stop and a popular T-shirt logo and you can put some of the financial-security pieces together.

As with most bands, there is usually a distinction between live and recorded sound. The Ramones as a live act are impressive. Their ability to rattle off song-after-song is akin to completion of a rigorous physical-fitness challenge. The sound of their studio recordings, however, is less than impressive. The early stuff is amateurish and filled with mistakes that wouldn't have made it anywhere near wax towards the tail-end of the signed-artists era, and the album with their only hit song, "I Wanna Be Sedated" comes across as sterile and lifeless. In terms of fun-fact trivia it's interesting to note "Sedated" became a hit four or five years after it was originally recorded and released. This supports my unrelated thesis on the music video as the best promotional tool for any music act.

It seems to me like The Ramones reached a pinnacle just before they were to record "End of the Century" and because of the fuddy-duddy production on that album, it was truly a "botch-job." The songwriting on "End of the Century" is quite good, but the production ruins any chance of recorded-sound success. Again, it's a textbook botch-job. "I Remember Rock'n'roll Radio" and "Rock'n'roll High School" are amazing songs, just watch or listen to a live performance of them. The studio versions are overproduced and contain wonky and inappropriate guitar and drum sounds. It's a disaster.

I've checked out Johnny's take on it all, and his ranked list of Ramones albums from his book, "Commando" is a helpful guide. I've also read Marky Ramone's autobiography "Punk Rock Blitzkreig" and absorbed his take on everything. Still, I've only been compelled to check out the CD quality of two of their albums: Subterranean Jungle and Too Tough to Die.

Subterranean Jungle is interesting to me because it is the last album with Marky before his past alcoholism caught up with him. It's sort of like a "breaking point" album, and I like the artwork on the front cover. The music found within is pretty good and one particular track really speaks to me, "In The Park" which seems like an obscure Ramones song. The drum sound on the album is less than ideal, but quirky in it's own way.

Too Tough To Die is doubly interesting because Tommy Ramone is listed as a producer along with Ed Stasium (who manned the boards for "I Wanna Be Sedated"), and with Marky out of the picture, we hear the first drum-playing of Richie Ramone. To top it all off, the album features Dee Dee as a performer and writer. Firing on all cylinders, Too Tough to Die is like a second, more powerful pinnacle of the band. The album itself is triumphant beyond its namesake.

 

After playing through Too Tough to Die a handful of times, I can say it's the best Ramones album I've heard so far, hands down. It makes a lot of their other recorded stuff sound half-baked in comparison. Dee Dee, who is an inventor of punk rock, performs blistering vocals on the album. The songwriting and production are great. There are no dull moments. The music is "full of life." The songwriting is great, and the production is great. It's that simple.

I was also struck by the recorded sound, which features a pleasant and warm compression within the mixes that I haven't heard pulled off nearly as well in other forms of music, but perfectly suits the distorted guitars of the Ramones. The compression itself is used artfully and enhances the listening experience. It sort of acts like a sedative to the loud and choatic arrangements, and provides a uniformity that perfectly straddles the line between chilled out and energetic. To top it all off, Joey goes all out on vocals and doesn't hold back. If you're going to buy a Ramones studio album, this is the one to spend money on. - Mike.

Smart phone detox: Nokia 8110 review

I picked this phone up a while back to detox from using an LG Phoenix smartphone. I had to stop using the smart-phone for one primary reason: it was legitimately hurting my hands. I like to practice guitar and drums and I was suffering from a major bout of "Smart phone claw" or whatever it's called, where I couldn't bend my hands properly and was in pain from using the smart phone for ALL of my web-browsing, and texting

This phone is unique in that it allows for 4G LTE service, on AT&T and works flawlessly. It also allows for two SIM cards to be active at once, both a regular SIM and a smaller "Micro SD." I'm not sure why you'd need two SIMs, or who could even afford such a setup, but if you need that, this phone will work with it.

The phone itself is smaller than you'd think, and therein lies the major issue. Because it's so small, the keypad is almost unusable. The buttons are miniature and don't allow you to text (SMS) effectively whatsoever.

The major plus of this phone is that it's actually comfortable to use and talk with. The 4G LTE service works perfectly and phone-calls sound very clear. It's an interesting sensation to experience a great cell connection on a phone based on technology from a past era. It's actually awesome.

The other major plus is with the ability to tether the 4G signal to create a wireless network. In fact, that's worth the price-tag of the phone, in a sense. I made the decision that the Smart phone was hurting my hands so I just took my SIM out of it and put it into the Nokia 8110. From there I tether my phone's "Pay as you go" 4G LTE Data plan and create a WiFi network from the phone and instead of having "Smart phone claw" I just use a laptop (to connect to the Nokia 8110 WiFi network), like I used to back before Smart phones existed. This way I don't hurt my hands and I limit my usage. If I'm at the coffee shop, or donut shop, I don't spend the entire time on my phone, because this Nokia 8110 doesn't allow for that. Instead I just wait until later on to fire up the laptop if I want to use the Internet. That's the main draw for me.

The phone runs on a new OS called "KaiOS" that is popular in India, and it's decent, but utterly useless compared to what you can do with a Smartphone. In terms of an experiment, I do enjoy using this device as a traditional cell-phone, but in terms of replacing a smart-phone with this, it's not even a comparison. When it comes to mobile phones and how I like to interact with others and also use the Internet in a day-to-day sense, I'm still searching for the perfect handheld device. Until next time. - Mike

Digital audio forking idea

This is a technical idea for digital music I've thought about. I'm not sure if something like this exists already. The concept is simple:

On playback of a digital audio file, let's say the file itself has boolean logic embedded into the bit stream. And, let's go a step further and apply a "randomness" clause within this layer of logic, so that when a person plays back the audio, they will hear a different "comped" take of a particular instrument during a certain portion, for example.

If your guitarist records two takes of a guitar solo and both are great, this idea would allow the digital audio engineer to list both guitar solos as options for playback and even assign ordering options as well (for instance, should the takes be played sequentially, or randomly).

When the digital audio file is exported (or compiled, or "bounced") it will contain all of this boolean-logic information (i.e. set of instructions) for the playback device software to consider upon playback. Let's call our digital audio file a .wavb  file, for wav boolean.

When you playback the wavb file, the playback device would have to be able to process any .wavb-specific markup, i.e. the bit-stream information with the boolean logic and extra audio embedded. I'm not sure whether a specific playback software would even have to be developed. Existing formats may allow for this sort of concept already.

You could potentially create a song (again, digital audio only) that has different takes (i.e. two different guitar solos, or song outros) embedded into the bit-stream, so that the listener hears a slightly different version each time. I'm sure something like this is possible, and with the advancements in storage size, it's potentially even practical at some point. - Mike

Windows 2000 Professional hard-drive recovery 20 years later

In order to recover the hard-drive from a Windows 2000 Professional tower (Micron Millenia) that crashed during the summer of 2004 and has been kept inside:

First I removed the hard-drive from the very dusty interior of the tower. I plugged the IDE drive into my Asus laptop's (Windows 10) USB port using the Sabrent cable I purchased on Amazon for $20. The USB 3.0 to SATA/IDE Hard Drive Adapter Model: USB-DSC9. I hooked it up by plugging the drive into my laptop's USB port and also the 3-prong wall outlet... The drive showed up but I received "Please insert disk" error when I clicked on it inside File Explorer. Then I tried my laptop's second USB 3.0 specific port. Still showed up, but wouldn't open.

The drive showed up as a D:/ drive, but when I clicked on it, I got the message, "Please insert a disk"
When I looked for info about the drive, it said 0 GB, and "No Media."  I changed the drive letter from D:/ to W:/, which looked nice, but didn't do anything.

When I ran a chkdsk on the CLI, I found out it was a FAT32 Drive, but "No volume" and still couldn't access the files.

I changed the error code in the Registry from a 0 Hex to a 2 Dec (as per some tutorial), that didn't help...

I booted to BIOS and made sure the boot would recognize the drive as a Hard-Disk and not a Floppy or CD ROM drive. That changed the way the drive appeared within File Manager and seemed like a step in the right direction. It was at least represented appropriately as a hard-drive in terms of the graphic showing up in File Explorer, and looked similar to the graphic for my laptop's C:/ drive.

Using an Administrator Powershell, I tried to run a "RECOVER" command from the disk util i.e. DISK> prompt, which did nothing although looks like it does something.

I made sure the Drivers were up to date (they were), and checked out all the various info I could find within "Disk Management." I also tried to format the disk, but it wouldn't let me, said, "No Volume present" or something like that.

Finally, I realized my Sabrent power cable had a tiny switch on it, and I flicked that tiny switch (upon closer inspection in the daylight it's even labeled with "ON" and "OFF") and saw the blue light that was already on amplify and become brighter. I was optimistic at this point. But the drive itself was silent, and still no read off the disk.

Then I uninstalled the hard-drive entirely from the Disk Management window, or within the "Properties" window. At this point the physical drive finally started up and I heard it whirring. Boinkies!

The drive finally was recognized and popped up on the screen as a Micron D:/ drive and I was able to access all the files. The major mistake I made had to to do with giving the drive (I guess) not enough power supply for it to even start up. Once I amped up the amount of power I was giving it, it started up and I copied the drive over.

I'm fairly sure if I just had the power cable correctly set to the "ON" setting from the get-go I would've been in business from the start. Then again, I didn't even realize this switch was on the cable for the first couple of hours I had it set up. Also, I just read through the instructions which don't even mention the fact there's a sub-switch on the cable that determines the power flow to the unit. I guess they expect you to figure out the light goes from a dimmer blue to a brighter blue and see the slightly raised plastic text for "ON" and "OFF" on your own.

I immediately hooked up my Lacie rugged 2TB drive and did a "Select All" from within the Micron D:/ and copied it into a folder on the Lacie. This took a while to copy but it worked. Along the way, I noticed I kept getting messages about Windows 10 identifying and removing malware from the drive. Cool. I'd guess it removed around 20 Trojans.

I'll also note somewhere along the way I made sure "Show all hidden files and folders" was enabled for my browsing within the File Manager, not sure if this makes a difference for the Select All copy over I did from the root of the Micron D:/ drive. Or is there another utility that makes a "Disk Image" hmm... I should probably know this and wonder if it will impact an attempt or workflow for an OS re-install. We'll see. The tower itself is at a repair shop now, so if they can get it to POST I can have an attempt at booting up Windows with all the malware removed.

Another interesting note: This drive was from a Windows 2000 Professional computer that crashed and bit the dust around 2004. The drive had a bunch of "Trojans" on it which were identified and removed by "Windows Defender" that's on my Windows 10 laptop. Plus, exploring the drive now, there's tons of media (mp3s, wmv videos) that was hogging up the limited drive space (40 GB). No wonder it crashed, really.

You can access FAT32 formatted files on a NFTS drive, it doesn't require converting them. The mistake I made was with the cable and also not realizing that while modern drives (SSD) don't make any noise and are silent, this old one had some sort of spinning mechanism inside (I guess so it can write to the tape?) and once that started up it worked.

I also placed the drive when it was about 50% completed to copying the files over, on top of a wooden box with a space inside, so that it wouldn't overheat. I put my hand over and felt it was starting to warm up quite a bit.

Smart phone detox: John's Phone (Business version) review

I used this phone for about two years, and it solved a major issue for me. It was simple. I used to like to drink on the weekends, and this led to the occasional drunk text to a former female friend. She didn't mind the texting when we were going steady, but when I couldn't seem to stop even years after she had unceremoniously dumped me, she laid down the law. "Stop, or else."

I knew I liked to drink every Saturday at a local bar. I'd walk there at 9:45 am and the side door would open at 10:00 to let in a crew of about five or six of us to watch English Premier League games.

Now, at this point (I was 28 years old) I had stopped drinking on weekends and at night, I essentially only drank on Saturdays, and during the English Premier League season. Still, I needed to avoid the "or else." John's Phone solved this problem for me.

The phone does not handle SMS. I believe any incoming SMS may be stored on the SIM latently, but outgoing texts are more or less impossible without the help of say, a computer and some serious hacking skills. The phone book is hand-written just like the old days when men carried a "little black book" of numbers they might have collected from strange women.

This phone's speaker is essentially a copper penny wired up to vibrate with low-fidelity. What's sort of amusing is the headset, which I did use somewhat often. I used to call into the caller-line for the Howard Stern show every morning. I'd often be put on hold, for the full duration of the show. You listen in as you wait to potentially get on the air, and I'd do this, through my John's Phone while I walked around the city by myself.

I'd probably still be using this phone, but AT&T shut down 3G service entirely and I had too much into my number to switch to T-Mobile in order to just preserve the usage of this device. In order to solve my other issue? I quit drinking entirely. No more issues, but hey, I'm still waiting for the John's Phone 4G.

The solo artist: Personal triumph or act of vanity?

Sure, I've done it. Recorded and promoted an album of music that features solely me. My name, my music, my album. It's all about me. After the first go, it starts to beg some questions.

I recently watched a YouTube video of Cedric Bixler Zavala at "Amoeba Music" showing the audience the various albums he had picked up. I noticed he had selected several "solo" albums from different artists, for example Syd Barrett.

In the past, I might've been interested to check out the solo stuff recommended by Cedric, even eager, but I've sort of changed my stance on the whole trip over the past couple of years. My gripe comes down to motivations. I guess after the major success of say, "The Backstreet Boys" when one of the guys has a go at a solo career, it seems standard, run of the mill. But what about a relative unknown? This is where I start to inspect more thoroughly. The line of delineation is drawn across egocentrism.

If you're a capable musician, you should be well aware any combination of skills in the form of equal-parts collaboration yields the most pleasant results, every single time. That's why I'm skeptical of solo work. However, it's naive to imagine every single musician has the dumb luck to stumble across chemistry-laden musical partnerships as it they were easy to come by. This is where a solo effort begins to become more plausible.

Liner notes allow for investigation into these matters. If you look through the fold-out and find the "solo" album is actually just a long list of hired guns supporting the voice of a single person, this qualifies as vanity. However, if the musician himself is responsible for nearly everything on tape (I guess aside from engineering), the implication tips towards responsibility.

This is why I stray from generalizations. "All bands, or all solo albums are acts of vanity," is too broad of a colored brush stroke. Any musician yearning for active status has a multitude of options, if he or she chooses to self-promote and only self-promote, the jury may be out.

I built my dream app, and this is what happened

It took me two years of work to create my dream app. It's on the Google Play Store here, for now at least. The vision was clear, as were the motivations. To create an app that allows a userbase to predict the final score of a sports game, on an active "leaderboard" type of "Buddy List." This way, you could interact with friends in a light-hearted way in terms of who really knows what they're talking about before Sunday's Bears-Packers game.

 

I completed all work by myself, without help from anyone else. The first step was to create an LLC, just incase I were to receive investor interest. Then I weighed options to host the web application.

Over the two years it took to complete the app, I used Bluehost and BuyVM. Bluehost is helpful for a beginner, because they lay out the backend architecture of your site with a friendly GUI and set of menus. BuyVM requires more know-how and I wouldn't have been able to complete the setup without the knowledge I gained over the course of my tenure as a sys admin/ web app dev at a University.

In terms of the actual code writing, the most difficult aspects were the front-end interface and UX, the Leaderboard, the login mechanisms, and the overall design. I went through several iterations of the forward-facing markup before I settled on the W3.css I used for the PWA version of the app.

The backend scripting was all just written freestyle. The Leaderboard was the most challenging aspect and I actually legitimately failed trying to write it once. After a took a couple of months off I returned with a clearer vision for the Leaderboard and was able to complete it.

The app is heavily automated and updates on a single script execution that I do manually. The app would be fully automated if I were to pay for a service to put the final scores into a text file for me, but for now I do it myself. Once the scores are in the text file I just execute a single script and that updates the Leaderboard. As for building the app, it's also just a single script that completes that based off of the NFL Schedule as stored in a CSV.

I guess this puts a nail in the coffin into any conversations about, "I will create an app and become a millionaire." Hardly. I lost money making this. This should also put nails into the coffin on "portability." I wrote this app and ported it everywhere, from Ubuntu to Mac to Windows 10 to CentOS, building on production servers, and local machines regularly.

The two years I spent building this free application wasn't a total waste of my time. Over the course of creating the pages I studied Linear Algebra by myself and came to understand n-dimensionality in a proper fashion. I used a book I'd highly recommend by I.M. Gel'fand called "Lectures on Linear Algebra" and found it was quite useful and relevant to the idea of manipulating a creative idea in hyperspace. Had I not challenged myself, I would be less enriched.