Harsh. Based on Reality. But Ultimately Wrong

The excellent Letters of Note blog today has posted a late 1967 letter from a record company executive to one of the managers of the Grateful Dead, scolding the band for their unprofessional behavior in the studio during the making of the album Anthem of the Sun.

I think it is funny as hell to read this now. Here are some bits:

...the most unreasonable project with which we have ever involved ourselves.

It's apparent that nobody in your organization has enough influence over Phil Lesh to evoke anything resembling normal behavior. 

With their attitudes and their inability to take care of business when it's time to do so would lead us to believe that they never will be truly important.

The Dead were certainly weird in those days. Anthem of the Sun is one of their more out-there and experimental efforts. But it has some gems, including attempts to capture their astonishing jamming of that period on pieces such as The Other One (cf. 1968 version and 1989 version).

It's not surprising that music industry folks thought they would fade away. Looking back over the long history of the band (they continued until the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995), it's clear that the Grateful Dead were never going to fit comfortably in the music industry. They didn't make product, they created an atmosphere in which music could come into being. Sometimes it was pretty lame, but mostly is was fabulous.

Letters of Note adds that the producer referred to in the letter eventually quit the project; "apparently the final straw was a request by guitarist Bob Weir to create the illusion of 'thick air' in the recording studio." I remember reading or hearing about this -- I think in Phil Lesh's memoir Searching for the Sound  -- as an example of Bob Weir's inventiveness. Lesh says, if I remember who said this, that what Bobby was really going for was the sort of compression that is now a standard tool in all recording studios. It didn't exist in 1967. They hadn't invented it yet. But Weir knew it was needed.

A Winter Walk on the Beach

We had sunshine and blue skies today, so I took advantage of the change in the weather to walk the beach and the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach this morning.

I was out early, but the tents and signs and flags were already going up for the Polar Bear Plunge to take place in the afternoon. By the time I was done and headed out of town, the town was filling up with plungers and their friends. But I still got some quiet alone-ish time on the beach.

Columnist Slams Redskins Owner and I Cannot Disagree With Him

I am a Redskins fan. I have been since the 1972 season, when I was 10 years old and first learning about the game of football. It should be no surprise to football fans that I am not happy with the current ownership of my team. And neither is Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten.

In his column, Memo to Dan Snyder: Thank you for your stewardship of the Redskins, Weingarten starts with the fact that Redskins owner dan Snyder has been trying to get a reporter fired for having written an unflattering article.

I just want you to know you have my full support in this matter, as I support everything you have done during your stewardship of the Redskins. You rock. I wish you good health and long life and hope you run the franchise for many, many years to come. I say this with utmost sincerity as a lifelong fan of the New York Giants.

I know you are taking some criticism today from carping media types. They seem to think that you are not only behaving like a petty, vindictive bully but also that you are being strategically stupid - by bringing a vast new audience to a three-month-old, otherwise-obscure alternative-media piece, which can be found here.

I cannot disagree with what Weingarten has written. Except that thing about the Giants. Don't much like them.

A Lightning Trip to Wilkes-Barre

Karen and I made a fast trip to Wilkes-Barre with our eldest this weekend. We'd planned it a while back around a hockey game our daughter's boyfriend would play there. His game was cancelled, but we made the trip anyway, giving the two of them a chance to see each other and us a chance to spend time with them as well. And Wilkes-Barre is a place we had not yet seen.

Daughter #1 is a freshman at Villanova and her young man is at a prep school in Kingston, PA, across the river from Wilkes-Barre. He's a talented hockey player, and a good kid. We missed the opportunity to watch him play, but took the pair of them out for excellent steaks at the Ruth's Chris Steakhouse that is part of the new Mohegan Sun Casino at Pocono just outside Wilkes-Barre.

And we had a bit of a walk-around in Wilkes-Barre in a gentle, pretty snowfall. We were surprised by what we thought was a grand-looking mosque, but turned out to be the Irem Temple, designed in the "moorish" style more than 100 years ago as an auditorium for the local masonic lodge. It has a wonderfully-decorated front door, but appears to be deteriorating badly.

Word Clouds From the State of the Union Speech

NPR is playing with some of my favorite on-line tools this evening following President Obama's fine and inspiring State of the Union speech. They've asked folks, via twitter, to respond to a very brief survey asking for three words in reaction to the speech. and they are running the results through the wordle word-cloud creator.

First, here's a quick word cloud of the speech itself.

The NPR 3-word reaction survey used a simple Google Documents form and collected about 4,000 responses in the first half hour after the speech. Clearly, people either tickled by, or annoyed by, the President's salmon joke dominated the resulting word cloud.

I somewhat prefer the preliminary, test version they did with the first few thousand responses. NPR is also creating different word clouds based on different segments of their respondent community.

I Guess "Flat Featureless Former Cornfield Estates" Was Taken

Driving down Delaware Route 30 from Gravel Hill to Millsboro today, I spotted two new subdivisions with nonsense names: Stoney Ridge Estates and Kingston Ridge.

Sussex County Delaware is distinguished by its flatness. We start at sea-level and rise gently to around 40 feet above sea-level. Gravel Hill itself is one of the few places even close to worthy of the name "hill" (other than the landfill). It goes up to about 50 feet above sea-level for very short stretch.

The nearest "ridge" is a two-hour drive to the north, in northern New Castle County.

By the way, "Stoney" Ridge? This is essentially a large sand-spit of a peninsula. One thing we don't have a whole lot of is stones.

I Am Easily Amused

I spent a bit of time today at work checking out a new on-line data exploration and mapping site from the GIS company ESRI. Community Analyst was announced as part of a federal government GIs conference (I was watching via twitter). It is a promising tool and may be a real success.

But this brief post isn't about substantive things. No, this post is about the silly little things that amuse me.

Community Analyst is in beta testing. The makers are looking for feedback. As a dutiful data freak, I immediately looked for the feedback link and found the first thing to comment on: it is a "feeback" link.

What I wanted most of all at that point was to be the first to have noticed. And I was!

I got a kick out of that.

From the Archives: Punkin' Chunkin'

punkin 3
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

In the old days, Punkin' Chunkin' was a small, homey affair. We used to attend it back when when we were first married; back when they held the thing just north of Lewes at the Eagle Crest Aerodrome.

In those days, the "big guns" were rotary-arm hurlers and giant metal slingshots. None of the compressed-air canons that they use today.

In those days, there were some "special" chunkers. Here, for example, is the famous "illegal mortar" chunker which made a few appearances. And there was a pilot who flew over several times, heaving pumpkins out of the cockpit.

These are photos from an old desk drawer I've started sorting through. I've been scanning a few and adding them to an archives set.

A Quiet Evening at Home

Polly digging the fire
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Sometimes, the best thing to do is build a nice fire, load up the crockpot, turn on football and/or an awards show, and settled in with wife, kids and cats for a quiet evening.

"The King's Speech" is as Good as They Say It Is

Karen and I went to see the movie "The King's Speech" this afternoon. It is a really good movie; well written, well acted, and inspiring.

Colin Firth plays Bertie, who eventually became King George VI of England after his brother abdicated. Bertie's problem is having a crippling stutter at a time when public speaking, amplified by the new radio technology, is needed to lead England in World War II.

Geoffrey Rush plays Lionel Logue, an Australia speech therapist living in London, to whom Bertie goes, reluctantly, for help. The movie is the story of their relationship and efforts to fix the stutter.

We were surprised to find the theater stuffed with folks for the matinée. It may very well have been a sell-out, which you don't usually expect on a Saturday afternoon. Having seen the film, though, I guess I know why.