Pigs in pokes

This damp weather hasn't been too good for my bones but anyway a little late, here's this weeks blog entry.
It's been a frustrating week with online orders with a third of my cds ordered from the usual sites not being the discs I had ordered as the actual discs in the case differed from the title which took quite a bit of my time emailing the vendors and getting them to agree to refunds.
What I find surprisingly is that prior to dispatch no one checked the order given each disc had it's catalogue number and title clearly visible on the cd label.
More annoyingly in same respects was to get a record in the mail where not only had the vendor just put a layer of bubble wrap over the record sleeve and then thin parcel paper providing little protection from being bent or damaged by water but the record itself looked like it had had dirty water speckles all over it.
Given lp mailers, those 14x14" envelopes you put records in  easily available from suppliers, are not that dear, why dispense with using them? Equally I remain astonished they considered its condition to be acceptable.
I was able to re-order the cds from other vendors but the experiences took the shine off buying things and pose some questions about what standards are considered acceptable.

Styx Paradise Theater and Pieces of Eight on SACD

The last time I touched Styx was on May 10th 2010 when I wrote about the 24 kt edition of The Grand Illusion on Audio Fidelity Here

As I have commented in a few places before the Styx catalogue has been left as is from the early days of the compact disc and can be divided between the decent but nothing special and the clearly inferior to lp versions.

 
On January 19th 1981 the band issued the concept album Paradise Theater based on the real story of a theatre in their native Chicago which came out on laser etched lp and tape versions (8 track and cassette) which topped the US album chart and featured four forty-fives, Rockin' The Paradise, Too Much Time On My Hands, The Best Of Times that charted at #3 and Nothing Ever Goes As Planned.

 
It was an album I bought near date of release and always loved for the musicianship and story telling in a song.
This new Super Audio cd also playable on regular cd edition sounds quite a bit clear with more definition than the original disc.

Another album of theirs whose cd version left a fair bit to be desired was Pieces Of Eight  based around the story of a boxing bout which on cd sounded thin and splashy

ln September 2017 this disc that featured the 45 Blue Collar Man, Renegade and The Great White Hope was issued on Super audio cd also playable in regular cd having been mastered by Kevin Gray from the A&M master tapes.
This edition is a lot better than the 1987 original cd.

Enjoying ones music

Every so often on one site I frequent there remains a lingering thought that a substantial number of its more active users appear obsessed with the pursuit of high fidelity to the point they are no longer enjoying the music.
It's hardly an original observation as Flanders and Swann wrote the great musical satirical piece "A Song of Reproduction" very much around that in the early 1960's  where the tinkering around buildings ones own 'rig' and habitual bashing of commercial equipment was all the range.
In my experience   many people fail to get as good a sound as possible from modest equipment simply because they have not invested the time to set it up properly, using good quality leads, determining the best spot and support for their loudspeakers that move the air within the room used and so on.
Those steps that need not cost much, saving many an audio fan from spending a never ending amount on upgrading when often they've not heard all their existing equipment is capable of.
One often feels like saying, go treat yourself to a new great recording be it on record, cd or high quality download instead of spending hundreds of pounds on what turn out to be sideways changes in hardware.
One thing you soon learn with good equipment regardless of price is, recordings vary wildly in terms of their own quality to which the best good equipment can do is not make reproducing them any worse than they really are and where available, look for the best sounding recordings of your favourite artists and music. 
Unfortunately much new popular music is made much louder with less difference between the softest and loudest passages and some classical recordings have had whole passages seriously edited to perfection losing any real sense of a conductor's own character showing in how a note is performed compared to recordings in the analogue (generally pre-1980's) era so much so that many musicians seek out these older recordings because they sound more like performances with their own character.
In many ways what is sad is it's  that while the wanting to hear music well reproduced that gets people into better sound, they get locked into obsessing over hardware and their specifications so they feel obliged to spend more time thinking about that than simply playing a recording and enjoying it.
When I'm happy with my equipment, as a rule I stick with it until either I become less satisfied or it needs replacing.

Political earthquakes

He did it!
Caused a political earthquake that is in both English local Council elections making a net gain of 161 seats from only 1, second only to Labour with  17% of the popular vote.
Plus gaining 24 Seats in the European Elections with 28% of the popular vote making the Ukip party the largest UK group in the European Parliament with Labour and the Tories  at second and third.
People who supported him were called unpatriotic by Liberals, a charge so silly I refused to even consider voting for them although I have supported them nationally before now.
Suggesting overall immigration control from the EU was needed was deemed racist by people from the three main parties and supporters in the media. To me there is a difference in believing in the right of freedom of movement across the EU and setting some practical limits of the same. Most countries around the World do.
Candidates had there every email, tweet and blog scrutinized, not that sometimes they may of made a questionable comment but no more than many from the other parties and they were dealt with (and rightly so).
Somehow I feel things will never be the same and actually I'm glad the political mould has been shaken up a bit.
It was good to see although Pro-Russian separatists had tried to halt the vote for the Ukraine President going so far as to prevent polling stations opening and destroying ballot boxes (such good Democrats,eh) the popular vote was resolved by a man who wanted closer links to the west but who did understand concerns emphatically.

Just a few days to go

A few days before the grand politics day and things sure are hotting up as each party tries hard aided by their press supporters to dig up some dirty or proof of  saying one thing while personally doing quite the other.
What concerns me more is Apathy could well be in the winning lead as people just switch off  from accusation to counter accusation and that some of the material produced for the televised election broadcasts have come over as really rather poorly executed satire failing to get over what it is I and several million others should know before I consider giving you my vote.
For me, any group of people who don't have a clear plan to simplify the role and governance of the institutions of the European Union fail simply because as it has gotten bigger like any organization it needs to change, (something very belatedly the Co-operative Group in the UK have come to realize) sort out what is its core roles, put an end to the Strasbourg shuffle every month for a week and when it is clear a member state isn't happy with how it does things work with to have good trading terms outside of it.
It must be frustrating to many members to have people who just don't appear to share it's principals trying to stay in by opting out. 

*Blogged with Pale Moon under  Windows XP Pro!

Rocks off

Gawd I feel tired this morning even though I woke up early

This is for some of my  friends who are meeting up to socialize and raid the record stores  in one state in the North Eastern United States this weekend. The crates per store I've seen are just amazing!
Meanwhile I'm doing an audit of those of mine and my little friends looking at duplicates as well as anything we just bought and maybe never played while I get better following this weeks problem.

May edition

Recent events have caused me to recall what was a fixture of this time of year when I was growing up, the annual May Day Parade, sometimes broadcast live from Moscow.

The event itself divided me in that as spectacular, it never failed to deliver from the marching of the military, the split second synchronization of the young adults  who did gymnastic events and procession of armoury to Red Square. On the other hand the political repression, the subverting of much of Eastern Europe  to it's economic and military requirements  and so on was something I found disagreeable as much as the general idea of treating people as equals and providing free education, health and social care is something I supported strongly.