Bulletin Board of Bad Behavior

Oh god, this is embarassing. I mean, I feel like the prodigal son of paxacidus. Juggling school and work is hard enough without being forced to look for a job on top of it. Also just weird social shit going on lately with people who are friends...or are they? My cat woke me up at 2:30 in the morning by pressing his whiskers down on my hand so that they made a 180 degree angle, so I could feel all the resistance it was making right upside his face. Irritating? You bet. Do I blame the cat? No. I am not cruel to animals. But that's part of why I've not had much sleep, the other part is worry and stress and a little too much stimulation day-to-day. Thank god I'm done with job interviews for awhile, I will finally get to have a normal weekend next time
Maybe kitty will cool it a little more then, too.

Meanwhile, I have found myself once again smitten with the charms of Christine McVie, just as I was about 4 years ago when I heard the tracks she sings on/wrote for the Tusk album. Now I can't comment on anything past 1979, but boy have I been digging up as much of her earlier stuff as I can get. Gonna get this bluesy stuff she did as part of the band Chicken Shack in the late 60's. I've had her 1970 solo album for years, and liked it before, but played it for like the 9th time and something clicked and I became obsessed. Anyway, part of this was I decided I had to collect all the songs of her I could find so it meant I had to buy all these old Fleetwood Mac albums. But I didn't have much money so I decided to try and to find them cheap on vinyl. And I hit the jackpot! I got ALL of the albums I wanted by Fleetwood Mac and a little extra, except for one, only one that I am thinking of trying to go out and find tomorrow. Anyway, it's been a blast to have this cheap vinyl introduction to what Fleetwood Mac were really like during 1971-1974. And some of it's really fascinating. The album "Mystery To Me" has some curious spots on it - one track starts out with what I could swear is a drum machine - and this was 1973? Please explain! Also there is another track which is about 40% on the way to disco etc. etc. And then when Christine sings all of a sudden, and it's one of those really really good ones, holy shit. She's not perfect (even if that used to be her last name before she married) but man, she just stops me in my tracks sometimes. Big time.

The only thing I ever heard besides that from earlier than 1975 that sounded like disco was some song by Donovan from 1973. I still think it's weird that anything could have sounded like disco in 1973, but it's quite possible I'm simply ignorant of the variety of music available in the early 70's. I will say that this little Fleetwood Mac/McVie excursion has been a rather unexpectedly welcome break from the post-punk obsession. It would be nice to think that the post-punk obsession is actually something a person could actually move BEYOND eventually! (But...I rather doubt it)

And it's fun to just forget about the computer awhile and play records and stare at the really far out weird (and big, compared to CD's) LP sleeves of these Fleetwood Mac albums. I feel like a little kid. These slabs of vinyl are no more than $4 apiece tops! Just don't remember the last time I appreciated playing vinyl so much. I do long to have a few of them on CD, though because I don't want to hear the scrapes/scratches that pop up from time to time.

Also I want to make the claim that anyone who decides to try converting their mp3's into wav files will notice a sound quality improvement.