Nyuk Nyuk

Do a little time travelling with us via the United States Library of Congress.

It's easy to fall down any number of information rabbit-holes there, so allow us to point you in the direction of "The American Variety Stage, 1870 - 1920" collection , then creep a little further into the audio archives and enjoy wax cylinder recordings of some vaudeville routines and songs from the era.

Given these were recorded both for posterity and mass consumption, we can't help but wonder how many blue routines were deemed unfit for preservation. That's our loss.

This Is Just ... Cool!

Read more about Dam Drum 2.0, if you'd like.

Not Too Dear

On June 18, 2011 Paul McCartney turned 69. And based on recent news that he's getting married again, The Cute One isn't at all worried that somebody will still need him, still feed him, well beyond 64.

Say what you want about Macca. The songs he wrote with The Beatles, even some of the post-Beatles compositions, are solid enough to be molded and reformed by other performers and work just as well. Surely that's the mark of good songwriting.

8-Bit Operators, a collective of musicians who use the sound chips from the Nintendo Entertainment System, Speak & Spell and other similarly low-tech electronic devices, to make music. Two years ago they made a compilation of Beatles covers called I Want to Hld Yr Handheld, Vol. 1.

Like their previous tribute to Kraftwerk, it's a wildly uneven mix but then somebody such as poke-1,170 (aka Julian van Aalderen) puts it all together and knocks out a version of "When I'm 64" that makes perfect sense delivered in the cutesy bleeps and bloops of an old home video game console:



If that embed isn't showing up, here's a link. You might as well also lend an ear to Sloopygoop's take on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and Bubblyfish's reading of "Piggies" that gives the Walter/Wendy Carlos treatment to a song that was already tonally close to A Clockwork Orange.

The Lie of Diminishing Returns

We can't accuse Slate of biting our style because there are only a few original thoughts left in the ether, and "Forgot to Remember" wasn't necessarily one of them.

But Matthew J.X. Malady's "Eureka Lost" does explore similar territory regarding technology's ability to deliver even obscure information with alarming speed, and thus, reduces the thrill of the hunt and the allure of a mystery to solve.

Even if the chewing only lasts for the duration of Malady's article, it's worth a read.

From the Science & Technology Desk

The first item is mainly for the amazing picture from National Geographic, an x-ray image of a bolt of lightning. You can read about how it was done and some speculation on what it means, but shouldn't you have clicked by now in order to see an x-ray image of lightning?

Second comes a report with editorial (new journalism is nearly the only journalism now) from Slate. The article heralds a piece of audio hardware that allegedly makes those compressed, tinny MP3 files you downloaded sound all analog warm.

The USB-DAC could be the gold-coated CD of the 2000-teens or it could be the next stereo component you actually need.

Go science!

The Halloween News Network

Typing Monkey publisher S.L. Kreighton, like any sensible human, loves Halloween. Frankly, we think he loves it a little too much, as he spends most of October regaling unwitting staffers and our intern Marie with tales of Halloweens past, particularly those of his childhood. Kreighton claims his parents threw fairly lavish Halloween parties for him and his siblings.

Now he's discovered the Halloween News Network (HNN) podcast. It's delighfully square and sincere enough to warrant the blessings of The Great Pumpkin. Basically, if you have been charged with putting together a haunted house for your school, church or just want to make your basement spooky, HNN is for you.

The tips and tricks are fairly cheap and effective if your audience isn't too demanding. Kreighton has been taking judicious notes and we're already working on excuses to get out of the party he's no doubt planning.

If you don't want to bother subscribing to the podcast, you can see most, if not all, of the HNN episodes on YouTube.

What's Your Vocoder's Name?

The always interesting, frequently outstanding Stones Throw label is about to issue a compilation of music by the late Canadian electronic music pioneer Bruce Haack. This particular assembly collects compositions and experiments done with an electronic vocal device that Haack named "Farad."

Get the details on Farad: The Electric Voice here, along with a couple free tunes. Then get in line for a copy and pick up one for a friend.

[This isn't Farad, but it is Mr. Haack with a device he called "M" -- photo courtesy of BruceHaack.com]

We Are Your Overlords

Bossman S.L. Kreighton insisted we all listen to "Immigrant Song" this morning to, in his words "start the month off right." It is Zeptember, so we obliged him and went back to our filing.

Later, unable to get Robert Plant's Godzilla-esque wail out of our heads, we decided to give the Website Unhearit a try.

"Using the latest techniques in reverse-auditory-melodic-unstickification technology," Unhearit helps alleviate the stress caused by song tumors and earworms -- ostensibly by replacing the offending tune with something equally, maddeningly catchy.

The first result was one of the various Auto-Tune treatments of the Double Rainbow Guy. Had to stop that because rather than ease our troubles, it merely annoyed.

Clicking the "new song" button got us "Shut Up and Let Me Go" by the Ting Tings. That worked really well, except when it was done, and we hit the "new song" button again, it reloaded the same song. And again, the same song.

After refreshing the Webpage, we got a 55-second MIDI-crafted bit of silliness with a playful melody followed by a sampled voice saying "meow." It was hardly catchy and by no means capable of breaking the Hammer of the Gods or stopping two good-looking Brits who make cheerleader pop.

One last click netted the truly dreadful "Conga" by Miami Sound Machine, a band whose string of hits during the 1980s can only be washed out of the brain via self-administered lobotomy or several long pulls from a jug of grain alcohol.

So, mission accomplished, Unhearit. If we get enough "Communication Breakdown" and "Ramble On" in the remaining 29 days of this month, perhaps we'll revisit the site.


(Tip of the wizard cap to Buzzfeed)

Forgot to Remember

Our brains collect pop-culture trivia. Some of it is neatly organized in our memory, some ends up in the cerebral equivalent of a junk drawer. For every poem or sit-com episode recalled in loving detail long after the fact, there are songs and films that left impressions but, due to a lack of re-exposure and the passing of time, swirl in the subconscious like torn pages from old magazines with smudged ink and yellowed pages.

These half-remembered items sometimes gain an inflated significance. The mere fact that you remember only part of a particular story or song, and not the name of the artist responsible for its creation, let alone the name of the work itself, puts a little shine on that memory.

That afternoon when you were little and your mother brought you with her to run errands -- was that song you heard on her car radio really so special? No, it was just “Fancy Pants” by Al Hirt. And though the song is plenty entertaining on its own merits, your desire to find it again, to learn if it would captivate you with the same intensity, owes more to the situation in which you first experienced it than the song itself.

Still, these things matter: the songs, books, movies, and other entertainments. They matter precisely because of our tenuous ability to hold all of them in our heads. We may not retain all the relevant data, but what little we do remember keeps the associated sensations alive, and that’s the vital part.

In our age of “all information, all the time, anytime, whenever you want it, wherever you need it” it’s easier than ever to complete any puzzle our memories present. That’s a curse, of course, because without those knots to untie we lose some of the tiny challenges that our minds crave. Novelty and discovery weaken as the work involved in the latter becomes too easy, and the frequency of the former decreases.

The next time a pop-culture phantom haunts your memory -- some half-remembered scene from a mostly forgotten movie, or the loose melody of a long-ago hit song -- let it rattle around a while before searching for an answer. It’s a tiny little mystery, but most of us need all we can get.