One of the chillens is home with a fever. I have leave available, so I’m watching and marveling at how he perked up after the bus drove out of site. But this isn’t about that.
I’m listening to Thomas Dolby and The Jazz Mafia Horns, Live at SXSW on the stereo. I like Dolby, and it’s quiet enough to let the little sicky sleep.
It’s the first time I’ve listened to it on this system, so it’s the first time I’ve noticed:
Some schmuck wolf whistles at the start of EVERY SONG.
It’s one of those ‘look at me, I’m drunk, I recognize this song, and so I’m gonna do the same damn whistle every time I can because you can’t!’
So, there’s enough of us here, and we have contacts. I want you to find out who it was (easy to do, you were at SXSW, and your friend did this annoying whistle, or your friends friend did it.’
Find this guy and smack him upside the back of his head for me. Tell’em I said qwuddit.
On Elvis Costello’s Live at the El Mocambo (a blistering set from 1978), there’s some guy going whoooohoooo!!! (unfortunately close to the recording mic) after every song and he aggravates the living feces out of me.
Better this guy than the painfully hip 20-something who stands there with arms folded, surveying the room for the behavior of those cooler than him. “Are they dancing? No. Then I won’t dance. At least not yet. I can stand here though, judging silently. That’s what music’s for, after all.”
I do indeed empathize though. The abovementioned guy sounds GREAT on a live recording.
Oh! No way. We can’t seriously stand behind hectoring music fans who are loudly enjoying themselves. They’re at a concert not a ballet. If the guy’s wolf-whistling during Bach, sure, but Elvis Costello? Let him clap and dance and sing off-key.
I guess I wouldn’t care if i were, you know, at the concert. The atmosphere really adds to things. But I get to hear him now for the rest of my life…every time I hear this album.
And I will you know…even on headphones that don’t have the fidelity to reproduce his bat-calling whistle…
It’s kinda like that old album (Billy Joel) you recorded to tape…you know how track 3 had a skip in it? And you listened to ti for YEARS? And when you finally bought the album on CD and track three doesn’t have the skip anymore and, somehow, it’s wrong?
the doors
one track with a live bit at the beginning where Morrison is talking to the crowd and there is some stupid bitch, loud as fuck agreeing with every single thing he says…I edited that part out of the track. its easy to do with any number of programs usually free online, I think Audacity is the current popular free one.
but I am with ya.
Just think, as CDs go the way of tapes and 8-tracks, the youth of America will be denied this bizarre experience. For me, it was a Ben Folds Five tape that I had to edit a song out of to fit on side A of a 90 minute cassette. To this day, when I head the CD, I’m always surprised when “Julianne” comes on.
“I dunno how many of you people believe in astrology…”
“Oh, me, Jim, I do!”
“I’m a Sagittarius, the most *philosophical *of all the signs.”
“Oh, me too!”
“Of course I don’t believe in that stuff myself.”
“Oh, neither do I!”
“I think it’s all a buncha bullshit!”
“Me too, Jim!”
I have a double live Kraftwerk album from. . . I forget where. A German concert, anyway, and through the whole thing there’s a couple of morons standing near whoever it was who snuck the recorder in. So it’s moron-speak, but all in German, which makes it slightly more hilarious. “Toll! Toooooolllll! [whistle, clap clap]”