Well, it’s been quite a year, huh. Hopefully the next one will be a little better?
Category: off topic
Christmas Day: Open thread
Me-e-e-e-rry Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing. Otherwise, enjoy this very cold day if you’re in certain parts of the northern hemisphere.
A little open thread for Christmas Eve.
So it’s no secret that I’m a bit obsessed with AI, as many people are these days. The AI art bots, mainly, which I have used to generate graphics for this blog on more than a few occasions. But also ChatGPT, a chatbot that offers a shockingly convincing impersonation of an actual human. It’s miles ahead of the glorified web search bots that power digital assistants like Alexa and Google Home.
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it! Have an open thread.
Pledge Drive Update: We’re almost there! If you haven’t donated yet, please do!
You can also give by Venmo at David-Futrelle-1.
I‘m not sure where to even start on this one, so I won’t. I’ll just show it to you. Skip ahead to 2:18 if you get bored with the countdown and/or dancers — that’s when the action, so to speak, really begins. And don’t worry, the music gets steadily better. Not during that song, no, but over the course of the show.
Today, a song from 1990: “Can’t Step Twice (On the Same Piece of Water),” by Teacher, a one-hit wonder from London, I believe. An infectious mixture of house and African music, with samples from a 1978 David Carradine kung fu film, The Silent Flute, a.k.a. Circle of Iron. Somehow this all works together beautifully.
NOTE: Another Sunday, another Tiny Mammoth Concert.
A couple of years back I was vaguely obsessed with Driver’s Seat, the one hit of a one hit wonder band with the unlikely name of Sniff ‘n” the Tears. You probably know the song; though it hasn’t been on the (American) charts since 1979, it’s had what the statisticians call a long tail, by which I mean that people still play it. Though usually not as often as I did that year.
It’s Sunday, and time for another Tiny Mammoth concert. Today, the Cocteau Twins rock out.
Suburban Lawns, a long-forgotten cult band from the early 1980s, is having something of a revival these days, with its only album reissued in a special 40-year-anniversary edition. The band, perhaps best known for their song Janitor, played quirky light punk with a little bit of a surf tinge.