bygjohn's blog

Eurovision aftermath

Much to the amazement and incomprehension of some of my friends, for the last few years I've taken to watching the Eurovision. Largely as it's hilarious entertainment when consumed along with a little alcohol, even if there is a vague guilty feeling that one shouldn't be enjoying such a freak show.

Lately it's become a ludicrous behemoth, with far too many entrants (43 this year) and the voting, which was always suspect, has now become a total farce, largely due to the eastern Europeans voting for each other. Various reasons for this have been proposed, but which ever way you look at it, it isn't good. Here are a few possibles:

• People vote politically out of fear/loyalty, eg everyone votes for Russia because it's flexing its muscles again.
  
  
• People vote due to national diasporas/guest workers etc, eg Bosnia votes for Serbia because a third of the population are Serbs, Germany votes for Turkey due to large Turkish minority (this last one didn't seem to apply so much this year).
  
  
• People in the east understand their common genres better - cheesy europop with eastern tinges for the most part.
  
  
• The harsher version of that is racism - look at how black people are treated in the east (from visiting footballers to students) and it's no surprise that the UK's entry, a black guy with a retro funk tune, didn't do so well.
  
  
• Some of the eastern countries actually take the thing seriously instead of seeing it as a joke like most of the west does. Bizarre, but I suspect this is true, though some have cottoned on, eg Latvia this time. And I'd also say Bosnia, but in this case I'm not sure it wasn't some attempt at being arty, god help us. "Four knitting brides of Frankenstein and a lunatic with a clothes line" was a pretty good summary by Sir Tel. Except there were two lunatics...
  
  
• One friend reckons that the combination of recent liberation and nouveau-richeness = penchant for bling/kitsch, which while being a tad snobbish may well be accurate. Explains the cheesy europop etc.
  

Whatever, it's becoming tedious. And it's also developed more than a hint of Borat:

• The boy band types aren't quite done right. Having odd-looking people with squints/bad hair etc doesn't cut it. That includes the winner, and surrounding him with a podgy violinist and androgynous person with a mullet on skates doesn't help. NB I don't think looks should matter when it comes to music, but if you're doing manufactured plastic, do it properly...
  
  
• What on earth was going on with the funeral band for the interval act?
  

Serious surgery is needed if it's going to be worth watching again. Perhaps the eastern countries paying for their grand love-in might be a start, with the UK and other Big Four countries who bankroll it pulling out of the funding. Though it'll probably become even more Borat...

I've recently bought a load of vinyl-replacement CDs (as I'm at home anyway and here for delivery men, it seemed a good time to hit Amazon with an order). Which is fun anyway, rediscovering stuff you haven't played for a while (even though I have a turntable I rarely use it these days - mostly listen to the iPod, truth be told). But also this batch in particular has been a reminder of friends who first introduced me to various artists/records. In this case especially my friend Gaz, who I met at college, who introduced me to a whole range of music including Joy Division/New Order, other Factory acts such as the Durutti Column (well represented in this batch of CDs), Simple Minds (again, lots in this batch), The Cure (more in this batch!), plus whole genres eg P-Funk. So if you're reading this, hi, Gaz! And thanks: these records mean a lot to me and frankly are way better than most of what's around at the moment.

That said, there is some good stuff around at the moment. The new Nine Inch Nails album is great and worth $5 of anyone's money for the download version. And there's been some excellent stuff on Jools recently, such as The Imagined Village doing Cold Haily Rainy Night which was absolutely breathtaking, and the satisfying noise of the The Kills. Steve Earle's Satellite Radio was pretty good too, and I was mildly impressed with Vampire Weekend.

These musings have been prompted by trying to sort out a belated birthday present for my friend Clive (*wave*). He asked me to track down a particular work by Mozart, which wasn't too difficult in itself. However, having established what it was, I was then faced with about a zillion versions to choose from. In the end I resorted to using Amazon and sorting the results by star ratings, then choosing the first on the list that wasn't part of some enormously expensive boxed set or a second hand rarity (similarly expensive). Call me cheap...

What worries me about this is that it's really a lottery if you don't know much about classical music, and yet how you hear something inevitably colours your opinion/taste, often for a long time. Frequently budget releases have better performances, so price isn't any kind of guide, and then there's the issue of original instruments. It probably bothers me most because I'm not a huge classical fan (so how it sounds for me isn't somehow intellectually disconnected from the work itself - it's integral to the experience), and I've found that I really prefer stuff done as closely as possible to how the composer would have heard it. I suspect this doesn't bother a lot of classical fans, but for me it makes a huge difference. I used to think Mozart was tinkly, bland chocolate-box music until I heard his stuff played on original instruments. Suddenly it had an edge to it which was absent before. Same goes for Beethoven.

I know lots of classical people place great emphasis on the value of interpretation, but for me playing stuff on the wrong instruments and mucking about with speeds etc often amounts to producing the equivalent of a bad cover version with all the edges taken off - safe music for the fainthearted (James Last plays The Beatles, anyone?).

Now I'm not spouting universal truths here: it's possible to do great cover versions (The Slits' version of Heard it through the grapevine springs to mind), and sometimes they become the definitive version (eg Soft Cell's version of Tainted Love). But I've learned to be sceptical about classical works which aren't played authentically, at least until I've heard them done "properly".

A couple of weekends ago I finally cracked and bought an iPod. Up to now, I've existed on a couple of cheapish flash players and my mobile, but following my current flash player throwing a wobbly I went looking and there is no contest in terms of build and style, at least from the range in local shops - the iPods were by far the most appealing devices.

On the whole I'm very pleased with it, but am now paying the price for being over-ambitious. I have plans to use it a fair bit pumped through my main hi-fi, only to find that many of my albums (ripped by a variety of software but all at 128k) sound 'orrid - flat and muffled. Some sound OK, but a lot are pretty bad. OK, so that shouldn't be big news, except that previously I'd had some of the same files on my Toppy PVR and they hadn't sounded too bad. Possibly as they were coming through my TV's electronics, which certainly give them a treble boost, and possibly a bit of a bass cut.

The upshot is that I've been trying to decide the best way of re-ripping my CDs and doing listening tests. Which have just left me confused, to be honest. Reading around the web, it becomes clear that the recommended method is to use LAME at 192k/VBR/joint stereo, and loads of people loathe the iTunes MP3 encoder. I want to avoid AAC as you never know what you might want to use for playback in future, and I don't have infinite drive space on my laptop for syncing to the iPod so I don't want to have huge files. Anyway, using LAME at those settings produces quite listenable files, but still a tad short on treble, and while the drums sound a bit more convincing the bass is a bit lumpy and the whole thing is short on ambience. Using iTunes set to 192k/VBR/normal stereo (joint gets turned off if you choose the "optimised" setting), the treble's back, and with it the ambience (possibly too much), but the drums have less kick and the bass is a bit vague. Some vocals seem to be a bit grainy, particularly if they are a tad distorted in the original - it gets emphasised. Upping the quality setting in iTunes to "highest" actually made matters worse - it sounds thin and weedy. Of course what I really want is a combination of the two - essentially LAME with a bit more top end! It's actually easier to choose on headphones - LAME sounds really lumpy through the supplied earbuds, the iTunes rips sound way better, though the vague bass is an irritant.

The worst-sounding rips seem to be ones I did using Windows Media Player - they're terribly dull sounding, and it's not much better at 192k. This wasn't a problem on my tatty old player as I used EQ to add the sparkle back, but the iPod EQ is less helpful and it tends to sound best with EQ off, both through headphones and the hi-fi. My hi-fi being a real one, it doesn't have any tone controls anyway, so that's no help...

Argh. I don't really want to rip any more CDs till I've made my mind up, and that's proving hard. I really don't want to have to do it all again in the future so need to find a livable-with solution, yet I really want to get on with the job so I can get the most out of the iPod.

*taps fingers*

Edit: After some more listening I'm feeling mellower about the sound quality of the 128k files - quite a few which I didn't try before don't seem so bad through teh hi-fi, and most are fine on headphones. I still plan to re-rip, and haven't given up on LAME yet. This weekend's project is to upgrade to 3.97 and try again. If it brings back a little top end sparkle and ambience and un-lumps the bass a tad I reckon it'll be OK. MP3s encoded by iTunes really seem to be too vague in the bass and the stereo image is also a bit diffuse. Though I reserve the right to change my mind again

I can't quite believe it's the last Friday of my holiday and I'm back at work on Monday.

I don't appear to have accomplished much. Still have a music project to finish off, though now it's only the CD cover that needs doing, and I've spent rather too much of the time being off-colour/ill.

I have, however seen more of my family than usual, and had an encouraging appointment with my homoeopath, who is so far way ahead of my GPs in terms of taking seriously/treating the ME/CFS.

Plus I've read a book for the first time in ages (Kathy Reichs: Monday Mourning - thanks to Julie for lending it to me). And listened to a few albums from my 25-years-with-my-employer award.

So it's not all doom and gloom

Also, the trees have started to sprout leaf buds round here, so things are definitely looking up.