1—->3—->5
Terrible—>Fantastic
5
Callas, Maria – Callas in Paris [1963]
4
Gas – Pop
Iyer, Vijay with Prasanna and Nitin Mitta – Tirtha
Vijay Iyer Trio – Historicity
Callas, Maria – Callas in Paris [1959]
Callas, Maria – Carmen by Georges Bizet [1964]
Callas, Maria – EMI Rarities, The
3
Auerbach, Dan – Keep It Hid
Gonzalez, Jerry and The Fort Apache Band – Rumba Para Monk
Lyrics Born – Everywhere at Once
Strokes, The – Angles
2
1
Among the things I learned this week:
* Despite the Beastie Boys’ suggestion, Jamaica is not a significant producer of mangoes. (Courtesy: FAOSTAT, nicely displayed on Mongabay.com, and University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences)
* Physiocracy. (Courtesy: Car Talk reference; Wikipedia)
* “Package store” is Northern slang for liquor store. (Courtesy: HD)
* Bitrates of various streaming services:
– Spotify: Vorbis 160kbps with some at 320kbps if a Premium subscriber
– Amazon Cloud Player: MP3 at the rate the file was saved
– Pandora: AAC 64kbps and up to 192kbps, depending on subscription
– Google Music: play back at the quality of the file, except for FLAC, which is played back as mp3 320kpbs
* Lord of the Rings is “fundamentally religious and Catholic work”, according to Tolkien. (Courtesy: Wikipedia and follow up readings).
Among the things I learned this week:
* A significant number of music videos from Russian artists have Soviet- or tsarist-era imagery and symbolism. (Courtesy: Music Box)
* I live as well (better, really) as Kim Jong Il, based on the brands of “luxury” goods he has imported. (Courtesy: North Korean Economy Watch)
* Jazz, or at least open jazz clubs, do not exist in Athens during the summer. (Courtesy: Athens)
* Pigeon houses (for more, see this description and this photo) are a serious deal in Tinos and directly connected to its arts/sculpture tradition. (Courtesy: Tinos)
* Bootlegging in the US is often dominated by immigrant populations. I suspect this is because of the high capital costs of creating a legal distillery and emigres’ limited access to capital and credit. (Courtesy: NYT)