Answers GQ2: The Revenge - Round 4

Quelle surprise - every contestant got the same number of points, but mostly for different songs. Specifically, the songs were:

• Song 116: The La's - There She Goes. 80's hit which got a second wind after being on the soundtrack of one of Mike Myers' few good movies, "So I Married An Axe Murderer". Has about the same feel to it as the "Friends" theme, no? Two of you found this.
  
• Song 117: Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles. The vast majority - to the extent one can refer to three people this way - found this tune, which is a testament to the power of television advertising and constant MTV and radio rotation. As this song is piano-based, the intervals are very poorly suited for guitar, which means I tapped the entire thing. Worked well enough.
• Song 118: Megadeth - Dread And The Fugitive Mind. Cathy: You found this, and mucho props for that - I'm impressed. Wouldn't you agree that this is one of Dave's best songs?
• Song 119: Dream Theater - Another Day. One of their two songs which have been played on the radio (Pull Me Under being the other one). Sadly, none of y'all found it, which is a shame, as it's quite the excellent ballad. Brutal syncopation in my recording though...
  
• Song 120: Spandau Ballet - Through The Barricades. Anders; how the hell did ya find this one? I'm impressed. Actually quite kewl song guitarwise.

So; with everyone getting the same Score for Round 4, I'll simply resort to skipping directly to The Grand Poobah, The Big Kahuna, The Total Score:

1. Cathy/Sondre (tied at 24 points)
2. ...
3. Anders (22 points)
4. Pigeon (16 points)

Congrats to Cathy and Sondre for continuing to be the Leaders Of The Pack!

'Cause If I Had A Million Dollars..

"If I had" is an excellent song from the Slim Shady LP, but enough about Eminem. Anders' posting of the abysmal Little Wing cover perpetrated by The Corrs reminded me of a topic I've been thinking about for a while, but never bothered to outline beyond the one-liner format in various social settings. The concept is as follows: If I one day - presumably a fine day - would wake up and find that I had pretty much unlimited financial resources, I would buy a house with a hyooge elevator. Let's say that I discovered that I'd won all the lotteries in the world simultaneously or something, without buying any tickets. As anyone with a modicum of mathematical education knows, whether or not you buy a lottery ticket, or whether you buy a lottery ticket before or after the numbers are drawn, have precious little effect on your odds of winning, but I'm digressing. The bottom line is; in this scenario I'm filthy rich, and I'm in possession of a big-ass elevator.

In other words, I've got an unlimited booking budget and a venue, meaning I can book various artists and have them play in the venue for which their music is best suited, and because they're so overrated it ain't even funny (says I). Many of the biggest artists are nothing but franchises anyways, so I'm sure that their management would have them play anywhere as long as the chedda' was at the table. Besides; many of these artists have got to pay bills of the kind most of the population are unlikely to receive, like gold faucets, Cristal by the barrel and spendin' money for 75 of their closest friends. Just to make things interesting, I'm not necessarily limiting my list of artists to the,living - that's how much faith I have in research. With that taken care of, here's a preliminary list of artists that would definitely get a gig in my elevator (not necessarily in any particular order):

• Eric Clapton
• Robbie Williams
• The Rolling Stones
• The Beatles
• Led Zeppelin
• The Corrs
  
• The Doors
• Justin Timberlake
• Eric Clapton
• Nightwish
• KISS
• Morten Abel
• Metallica (post Black Album)
• Tom Jones
• Secret Garden
• Coldplay
• Smashing Pumpkins
• Nirvana
• Eric Clapton
• R.E.M
• Oasis
• Blur
• Bob Marley
• Julio Iglesias
• Pink Floyd
• Whitney Houston
• Moby
• Rod Stewart
• Garth Brooks
• Backstreet Boys
• Eric Clapton
• The Who
• Sting
• Jean Michel Jarre
• Kenny G
• Vangelis
• Barbra Streisand
• Bette Midler
• Boston
• Cat Stevens
• Enya
• James Brown
• Meat Loaf
• Sade
• Shakira
• Eric Clapton
• Turboneger
• Madrugada
• Dance With A Stranger
  

..Hmm..I might need more elevators

Little Wing cover done properly

....even three guitarists who don't really sing can do an infinitely better job than what the beer-guzzling backdrop singers performed in the post below:



This is from the G3 tour with Satriani, Vai and Yngwie - Live in Denver

Chicken jokes

It's that time again. TGIF!

How to ruin a classic

The Corrs is a band that I've never paid any attentiont to. I know they are a couple of siblings (from Irland?), and in my mind I did for some reason believe they were decent musicians and songwriters.

However, I came by this unplugged version of Little Wing. Yes, I know, it is a bit overplayed, especially after Stevie Ray Vaughan recorded his version of if, but it's still a great little song. And Hendrix was best on his more love key tunes, in my opinion. Anyway, here is the Corrs version. And what strikes me is that they've replace every signature lick and all that makes this tune great with bonafide elevator music. Kenny G could have done that any better. And, the poor dude with a Gibson made Dobro that comes in with a solo later in the song, doesn't help. Too little, too late. Gibson Dobro's aren't the best sounding out there, and to make things even worse, it's played through a pick-up, which results in a quacking tone that sounds obnoxious. Judge for yourselves:

Back In Bergen

So; after my PhD administrator bash I'm now in Bergen to git some bidness done, and to meet up with people I haven't seen in a while. As I strolled over to the rental car company to pick up my ride, I didn't expect much. After all, the web page defined the rental car classes in relations to Peugeot models, and I've had my share of rental cars of french origin, thank you very much. As a matter of fact, the two worst cars I've ever driven have been french cars with less than 10 000 km on them. Turns out I got a Toyota Prius. A red one, even, and as everybody knows, red cars are the fastest ones. The thing is ultrasilent (save for some noise from the bearings or something at low rpms), roomy, totally kewl-looking, and handles like a dream. It's got an automatic transmission which for me is a throwback to the Buick Regal we used to have stateside, only this one has more of a joystick feel to it. I'm lovin' this car, save for the fact that some sadistic freakshow set the language on the status display to - you guessed it - french. Putain!

It's even been a productive day, as me and Dr. H got to put the finishing touches on a major manuscript and submitted it to one of the better journals in my field - yay. This particular manuscript has taken almost exactly one year from the initial experiments were done to submission of what we hope is the final version, but it turned out well - I'm quite pleased with the finished product. And Dr. H made a kick-ass TOC graphic today, so that's also gonna get some exposure in the very near future. I really need to get some better graphics software than what I'm running now - that's becoming obvious. The only nasty surprise came after we started the online submission process. I'm a stickler for following the "Guidelines for authors" for a given journal, so I was pretty surprised when we found out that the online submission thingy has all kinds of extra hoops we've got to jump through, plenty of criteria not found in the "Guidelines" and some tedious double bookkeeping type crap. Why in the blue hell they changed the previous web interface is beyond me, as the new thing is very reminiscent of how another publishing house does it's online bidness. And that ain't necessarily a good thing. Oh well - the deed is done, and now we've got to wait for the wheels of peer-review to start turning.

There was even time for some TGIF with Dr. H and the A-man himself this evening - holla'

On the way back to the hotel, I stopped by Troldhaugen. It's been way too long since the last time I was there. When I lived at Fantoft during my student years, I walked out to Troldhaugen quite a lot. Something about that place is just so serene, despite the fact that you can hear the noise from the highway everywhere on the compound. Back in the day I even used to lug my guitar out to Troldhaugen on particularly nice days, and just sit down by the water and just play. Sure beat the hell out of the view from my place.

The thrill is gone

Nope - this ain't about one of BB's most famous tunes, but rather about how the concept of a PhD defense is fast losing the magic it once held for me.

Never saw that one comin' round the bend, did ya?

Today I fulfilled the actual "attending and administrating" part of my second tour of duty as Administrator, Coordinator, Third Opponent and Coffee-go-getter of a PhD defense, and already it starts to feel like the PhD defense process is becoming a routine. And by the way; that is not at all meant as a derogatory remark about any of the participants, be it candidate, opponents, Department Head, adviser or any of the other cast members. It's just the way it is, and yet another sign that it's been a while since my own defense. Four years and two days, to be specific.

Good thing the odds are good for me getting to do this gig twice more this calendar year.

La freakin' cucaracha.