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Dave and I were watching a Roadrunner music DVD this morning… and were amused that in one clip, not only was the word “fuck” silenced, but the singer’s mouth was blurred while he was singing it.

Accessible censorship? For the benefit of any hearing-impaired lip-reading watchers, in case they were offended by the mouth formation of the word?

Posted in music

B.L. Ochman tells us that vinyl is back. Well, for me she's the fourth horseman (horsewoman?) of this particular apocalypse – the previous three were:

• I helped a hosting client of ours with some search engine optimisation advice for their new ecommerce site for The Record Finder, a secondhand LP store in Fremantle. A week later, we decided to go to Fremantle (to eat crepes at the markets and tour the submarine, actually – check out my photos!) and I stumbled across the store itself. They have a LOT of LP's. More than I've ever seen in one place in my life!
• I broke my own personal rule about cruising eBay after 1am. I've been desperate to get hold of The Angel's 1990 release Beyond Salvation for a while, but it's out of print and hard to get because there's an international release around, with half the songs replaced by older Angels hits. I saw one going cheap, so I bid on it. The next morning I checked and realised I was winning, but that it was an LP and not a CD. In my determination to land a copy the previous night I'd set my maximum bid high enough to ensure that I wouldn't be outbid, and I wasn't. Even better, the seller is throwing in a copy of Face To Face (another Angel's LP) that he had lying around 'in average condition'. My vinyl collection is growing! I told the Record Finder dude my funny eBay story and he said it was a good thing because LP's really do sound better.
• Another eBay incident, although not an accident: Dave won another auction on a Danzig Mother single in a groovy demon's head shape. Not for playing but because it looks cool – we're going to mount it in a frame for the wall.

And now Ms Ochman says it's so, so it must be true. Also freaky: her post has a picture of Madonna. I've had to drive my boss's car out to see clients a couple of times in the past week and he has mostly terrible CDs in his car, so I've been listening to the new Madonna CD and I actually really like it. How embarrassing.

So I guess it's time to get a new record player, and get my old records off my mum, although it might be tough to make her part with them, she has hundreds herself. What's next – floppy disks?

Posted in music

I love my music, and I can’t imagine living without sound, so I always protect my hearing. There’s a couple of factors that have helped drive the importance of this home for me:

• I used to study classical percussion and looking after your hearing is a strong recurring theme – because when your ears are your living, protecting them is the only smart thing to do
• I have several friends with hearing impairment, and have seen first hand the difficulties that they face
• Dave has tinnitus – a constant buzzing in his ears – and although not caused by exposure to loud noise, it’s certainly aggravated by it.

That’s why I can’t believe the poor attitude some people have to wearing ear plugs at concerts. We use awesome “ear filters” (so-called because they don’t plug or block out noise, they filter excess decibals out) called Hearos (we have the rock n’ roll version, but there’s others as well for different purposes). They’re cheap – I think we paid about AUD $10 for a pair – washable and resuable, comfortable, and allow us to hear and enjoy every nuance of music except the extra-loud and distorted overtones that would otherwise result in “ringing” after the show. The quality of what we hear through our Hearos is far superior to what we’d hear without ’em.

Apparently the earbuds used with iPods and other portable music devices are really bad for you. Fortunately I don’t generally wear them, I listen to music at home and at work out loud. When I do wear headphones – like when playing PSP on the train – it’s not for very long and not very loud. I was surprised to hear about the problem, although on reflection it makes sense.

I was even more surpised to read a Yahoo News article on Pete Townshend, who says that his hearing damage is directly attributable to wearing headphones in the recording studio. That was a little frightening. I sure hope they come up with a way to effectively “repair” people’s hearing in the next twenty years or so – or there’ll be a lot of people living with degrees of deafness.

Posted in music