Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaques Beraques  Boooooooooooooyakaaaaaaa |
Booya indeed!
I know you all want to see photos, and you'll get your chance...but I want to point you to something you may have missed, either because it became to noisy where it was posted, or because it was moved to a place that I think few people will read it. A few days ago there was an interesting thread started in So Much Gear, So Little time titled "We are living in a Golden Age". The OP said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by days There are a lot of complaints about music and the audio industry on this forum, and at some point in most of these discussions someone (usually an old-timer) is going to lament, “It just ain't what it used to be.”
That's for sure. It's much better than it used to be.
There is more good music out there than ever before (you just have to know where to look). Gear has never been cheaper (after adjusting for inflation) and more easily available and better (especially at the lower and middle price points), which, in turn, has made it easier for people to record great-sounding music at home and in small studios. Thanks to the Internet, information about recording and audio has never been more accessible and plentiful. The web has also made it ridiculously easy to distribute music, especially internationally. (Based upon my web site download stats, my music has more listeners in Europe than in my native US. How would it have been possible before the Web for a non-touring guy like me, with no record label deal, to make music in a room in his house, and then to have it listened to around the world?) Also, a music enthusiast no longer has to turn on a radio and endure commercials, inane DJ patter, and dozens of bad songs before he finds something he likes. Instead, he can go directly to MP3 blogs, Internet music services, customizable on-line radio stations, and listen to only the stuff he likes, including niche and subgenre music that would have never gotten played on the radio before. Or, for the price of a medium-sized pizza, he can get a monthly subscription to something like Napster, where he can play about 80 percent of the music that's been recorded over the last forty years. It's almost too good to be true.
Of course, there are some qualifications to the above, such as the demise of the big studio paradigm (but is that really such a bad thing?), the difficulties in marketing non-label music in the Internet age, and, perhaps most conspicuously, the absence of really great music. While it's undeniably true that we are being inundated with lots of good music (almost all of it coming from indies and almost none of it from the mainstream), we don't see Beatles/Hendrix/Wonder/Dylan/Clash/Drake-level music anymore. (And I don't think that it's because of the demise of big studios and big labels, although I'm sure many of you would disagree.) |
An lively discussion ensued, with many agreeing (about different aspects or from different perspectives) and some (mostly anti-filesharing/anti-piracy types) dissenting. I saw enough different ideas that I decided to try to summarize them and also annotate them with postings I've written to my blog that are not about construction.
The summaries are
here and
here (split because of arbitrary GS post length limits). Yes, they are long, but I think there's a lot of insights to be gained, which is why I wrote them up.
Then a whole bunch of people steered the discussion to "the music business sucks because nobody can play" joined later by "...and anybody who can play are just ******s." Even John Lennon was disparaged as a lousy guitar player, using his own self-deprecating statements as "proof". Anyway, after several pages of complaints about "******s", the whole thread was moved to the Moan Zone, which I'm sure is the wrong place for it, but I guess that's what happens when a whole bunch of frustrated GS members decide to wank all over something.
So...do check out the guided tour to the
context of the studio, and then feast your eyes on the latest progress, either
at the blog, or below (which are not on the blog)...
All the lower blocks are shrouded to protect them from the grout:
The actual bond beam, still wet:
The bond beam revealed:
And the other side...no drips, no runs, no errors!
Here's the bite taken out of our brand new sand and gravel piles for the grout. Combined with the cement, it was enough to fill 120 buckets!
Enjoy the weekend!