I am currently half way through Jaques Barzun’s epic historical roller coaster ride “From Dawn to Decadence” and it is absolutely fascinating to read about famous-at-the-time but now completely obscure poets, artists, musicians, statesmen and Natural Philosophers who have fallen outside the narrow spotlight of our historical gaze but have exerted enormous influence on later works of art and science and the course of the modern world.

At first it seems absurd that these satirical “historians” in the video don’t simply watch archived clips of YouTube or consult Google or Wikipedia to get their “facts” straight – we are after all living in an age of hyper documentation that the Beatles easily fall inside – but on second thought, especially with Barzun’s book in mind, historical recollection is incredibly fallible. A few arbitrary tags here and there, a lazy archivist or straight up computer glitch may wreak havoc on data systems trying to sort and file the data for later extraction.

Given one thousand years to self replicate and self repair with little to no human intervention you can easily imagine some weird connections and aggregations being made.

Add to this the sheer scale of information these future historians would have to sift through and the probability that unrelated and inaccurate data become conflated rises algorithmically. Not to mention that the difference between a .jpeg and .wav are entirely human constructs, computers merely shifts galaxies of ones and zeroes back and forth and in the end it is humans (or alien archeologists) who will have to make sense of all the data in the end.

Finally and most chillingly of all digital media is integrally dependent on electronic devices to be stored and retrieved, what happens when cataclysmic events or wars disrupt our current mediums?

How will an alien archeologist read data from a memory stick or plastic DVD buried in the sand? At that point a printed TV guide from Japan would be of more use and what kind of a world would they construct from a weeks worth of Japanese TV?

A good drummer for me must have the best of all nuances, funk, syncopation, rhythm and most importantly dynamic range.

I am not into Top Ten lists or notions of “Best of Anything” these are just some wicked performances I really enjoy watching and listening to again and again.

First up Vincent Colaiuta, Steve Gadd and Dave Weckl share the stage.

Then Tony Royster JR when he was just twelve years of age. He has tons of stuff up on YouTube and has grown up a lot since then but this remains my all time fave. Yeah that he is so young is a novelty but I feel it wears off after the first minute when you just know that he knows what he is doing and well damn, it’s amazing for a kid to belt out a live solo of this calibre.

The jam he busts out at around 6:10 just feeds my need.

After that I love this interview with Danny Carey from Tool where he plays along with Lateralus and talks about his influences. It’s great to get a peek into the playing style of one of the most innovative rock drummers in the last 20 years.

He also talks about the art of tuning drums and playing them “open” as opposed to damping them with tape and pillows.

And just for the insanity of it all Terry Bozzio. Words… I can’t even…

And Terry Bozzio playing the legendary Frank Zappa (careful LOUD MUSIC) composition The Black Page (solo)

And in Context.

And with that we have a neat little circle of some cool drumming.

Liars “Scissor” from A Bruntel on Vimeo.

Hibi no Neiro (Tone of Everyday) from Masashi Kawamura on Vimeo.

This music video was shot for Sour’s ‘Hibi no Neiro’ (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album ‘Water Flavor EP’. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.

Director: Masashi Kawamura + Hal Kirkland + Magico Nakamura + Masayoshi Nakamura

SOUR official site: sour-web.com

2009 Zealot Co.,ltd / Neutral Nine Records

Joining him (all too briefly) are Poppy Crum a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins who conducts research on neural circuits in the auditory cortex involved in hearing in a complex acoustic environment, and fellow scientist James Johnston chief scientist for DTS.

The first 10 minutes are a crudely edited but worth watching and Mr Winer’s presentation starts in at around 09:40.

He does interesting side by side comparisons of “high end” and “low end” sound cards, dithered and undithered recordings (can you really hear the difference?), demonstrates what phase shift sounds like, compares high- and low-end converters, teaches proper test methods, explains why hearing is not as reliable as test gear, and much more.

Audio Myth Workshop

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

According to the third article only 12 artists sold over 10,000 albums in 2008 for the first time out of 105,575 new album releases that year.

Here are a collection of criticisms of the numbers.

Hecq Vs Exillion – Spheres Of Fury from Tim.Chris.Film on Vimeo.