The Orchestrion

A fine article at Collector's Weekly details the history of the orchestrion, a mechanical contraption to make music.They describe it as "The iPod’s 4,000-Pound Grandfather", and I guess that is as good a description as any. Check out the article - it's full of pictures and video links.

The inside of a Hupfeld style A Phonoliszt-Violina,
featuring three violins accompanied by an expression piano.

Wrecking Crew Orchestra

OK, this is not really about music, but about awesomeness, and something I call EJW - Essential Japanese Weirdness. That's not a cultural put-down. Japanese culture produces some astoundingly weird (to us) artifacts, which I enjoy tremendously.

Here's a recent example - the Wrecking Crew Orchestra. Do you like Techno? Dig the movie Tron? Fan of locking & popping? Know what EL wire is? These guys have all the bases covered for you.

Arlington - by Lisa Nemzo

My friend and former employer Lisa Nemzo has done something remarkable, and I would like to share it with you, if you have not seen it yet. Please turn on your speakers or headphones, and watch this video.

I was thrilled beyond words to see this video. Lisa and I go way back; I played bass for her for several years in the mid-1970s, including a lot of gigs in and around LA, some recording, and some touring. Lisa is a tremendously talented singer and songwriter, as you can tell from this video. This video - directed by Mary Ann Skweres - was clearly a labor of love for Lisa on a number of levels. It was the last tune she co-wrote with her longtime collaborator and friend, Artie Colatrella, before his tragic and senseless death in 2011. It is also based on a true story.

In this video, Lisa shows herself to be quite a good actress, in addition to her other talents. In fact, it took me a few moments to realize that it was Lisa playing the 'mother' in the video. It also took me a while to recognize the bassist in the video - Freebo!

Lisa is asking for donations to some worthy causes - see the video's official website for details.

Carmina Burana Flash Mob

Yet another excellent flash mob from our friends in Germany!

Star Wars flash mob in Germany

I really love these musical flash mobs. They are getting more audacious all the time.

Changes to the blog

Well, actually...NO changes to this blog, really. But I've ended my "Musical Shares" column in the Oregon Mensa newsletter, so I've also discontinued updating the blog that was related to that column, and merged all of its content into this blog. That's why you'll see a lot of "new" posts, going back about a year.

There are several reasons I ended the Mensa column after a year of publication, but the basic reason is that almost nobody from Mensa was reading it (or the blog, if I can believe my traffic stats). I got very little feedback about it, and what I did get was negative (dull and not interesting were phrases I heard). It's kind of a shame, because the blog posts are full of links to what I think are cool things, but that was understandably hard to convey in a print publication. People would have had to retype long URLs or do their own Google searches.

So, I'll continue to post items of interest in this blog when I find them, and I ask for any comments or correspondence to be sent to fdmundo@yahoo.com.

UPDATE: I've also migrated my posts from the old Fin de Mundo website, so now you'll see posts going back to 2003.

Younger and younger...

Is it my imagination, or are there more little blues phenoms around than ever before?

Found on Doonesbury

Ox Cam: "Won't Get Fooled Again"

OK, this post is just possibly of interest only to my fellow bass players. Others may go back to what you were doing - nothing to see here, move along.

One of my favorite bassists is the late John Entwistle of the Who. He never moved around much on stage or did much to draw attention to himself. Frankly, who could compete with Daltrey, Townsend, and (for a while) Moon for sheer kineticism? No, Entwistle (known as "Ox" by many) just "stood there like a statue" (to borrow a well-worn lyric) and played his ass off.

Most folks don't think of the bass as an important part of a rock 'n' roll band's sound. Here's a bit of a rebuttal. An isolated camera on Ox, with his bass part isolated as well. The video is a bit degraded, but the audio thunders!

No, he's not playing a solo - that's just Ox laying down the bottom end of the tune!

Story Time: Welcome to Canada!

In the mid-1970s, I was touring with a band that was backing up a Vegas-style singer on the hotel/nightclub circuit. Robert York was a really sweet, guileless fellow who always paid us on time, and he had a lovely voice. Robert was perhaps not the brightest fellow I'd ever worked for, but that was part of his charm. As an example, he billed himself as "Robert York, the Singing Baritone." He couldn't understand why I giggled whenever he uttered that tautological tagline

At that time American bands had to post a bond on their instruments when they crossed into Canada to work. The amount of the bond was equal to one-third the retail value of all of your music equipment when it was new. This applied to all equipment that had not been manufactured in Canada, and supposedly was to ensure that we would not sell our filthy American gear in Canada . As you can imagine, this created quite a hardship for many touring entertainers, and you generally had to prearrange the bond with a Canadian bondsman (at a substantial fee) well before you got to the border.

We were just wrapping up an engagement in Idaho Falls, and our next venue was a two-week stint in Lethbridge, Alberta, to be followed by 3 or 4 months playing some of the nicest hotels in western Canada. I had heard from other touring musicians that there was one remote border crossing called Kingsgate where the guards—all long-haired music fans—were sympathetic about the bond problem to the point that they would let American bands cross without the bond. The only problem was, this crossing was nearly 300 miles out of our way, and so remote that if it wasn't true, we'd have to backtrack an additional 300 miles to go to another crossing. I managed to convince Robert and the other guys to take a chance and give it a try.

We got to the Kingsgate crossing about 6:00 in the evening. Sure enough, there were a couple of Canadian hippies in their official uniforms. They seemed really happy to see us. "Hey now! An American band, eh? Come on in and have some coffee, eh?" We started chatting with them, while Robert started filling out the considerable pile of paperwork involved in allowing us to work in Canada.

"Hey, you know we're supposed to have you guys put up a bond on your instruments, eh?" None of us said anything, but shot nervous glances at each other. We didn't have a back-up plan. The hippie guard went on, "But we think that's a bunch of political BS from those hosers over in Ottawa, eh? We never make the Yank bands do that; just don't spread it around, eh?" We silently relaxed, and went on chatting with the guards, letting them play with our instruments and listening to their self-deprecating, eh-punctuated jokes. Robert kept on filling out the immigration and work-visa forms for all of us.

After about an hour, all of the forms were filled out. The head hippie-guard said, "OK, then, all we need now is to see everybody's ID, and you can get on to your 'gig,' eh?" We all pulled out our driver's licenses and started showing them to him. Everything went smoothly until he got to Robert. The guard looked at Robert, looked at his ID, looked at him again, looked at his ID again, and said, "So… who the hell is Riley P. Farkas?"

Robert smiled in that sweet, clueless way we had seen many times before, and replied in his lovely singing-baritone voice, "Well, Riley P. Farkas is my legal name. Robert York is my stage name. See, it's printed on all of these 8x10 publicity pictures. Would you like one?" Our Canadian pals suddenly were not so friendly anymore. The head hippie-guard said, with barely controlled rage (an emotion I'd never seen before in a Canadian), "You stupid **** Yank! You wrote your **** stage name on all these official papers, eh? What do they teach you in school down there?" Then he grabbed the inch-thick pile of official papers—all duly signed by the fictitious Robert York—and tore them in half. "OK, start over; and this time, mister FARK-ASS, you put down your real, legal, honest-to-God, stupid Yank name, eh? Oh, and you better see about getting that bond arranged. Since we're gonna have to explain why we voided twenty-five official forms, we have to do this by the book, eh?"

Robert called his agent in Calgary, who found a bondsman the next day who was willing to drive the bond paperwork out to the lonely little Kingsgate border crossing. By the time we got across, we had been there for nearly 20 hours, through two shift changes, eating candy and the Canadian equivalent of Slim Jims from the vending machine, and had listened as each shift of Canadian hippie border guards told the story to the great amusement of the next crew of Canadian hippie border guards. We made it to Lethbridge just in time to set up and play our first set. On our first break, Robert said, "Gee, Steve, you sure were wrong about that border crossing. Those guys didn't seem friendly at all!"

Crooked Still

Here's a band with a big budget for rosin:

Seriously, isn't it cool to see a band like this with a cello player? I heard this group on the always interesting Montana Radio Cafe.