The next stop will be…

How to begin? I guess it started when I was behind a man in the grocery store checkout line a week or so ago. The man was buying some Altoids. I used to be a fan of them but hadn’t had any in a long time so, on impulse, I bought some as well. Actually, E bought them for me.  Thanks honey! Anyway, I ate them over the weekend and saved the tin.

So now I had this tin but I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do with it. I knew there were lots of different hacks you could do with an Altoids tin so I turned to Google for some ideas. One of the first ones that I came across was a DIY headphone amp that fit inside the tin. I was vaguely familiar with headphone amps because I had considered buying one in the past but the cost was a bit more expensive than my curiosity warranted. So a DIY one seemed like a good idea.

I should explain what a headphone amp does before continuing with my story. Ideally, a headphone amp does two things. One, it allows you to use full size headphones, that have higher power requirements, with portable electronics such as an iPod or a portable CD player. And two, it makes those headphones and pretty much any headphones, even tiny earphones, sound a whole lot better. The sound is just much more expansive and has depth similar to how a good home stereo makes music sound better.

I’ve been really happy with my new home stereo setup so it seemed a natural extension to also improve my portable music experience. So after discovering I could build one relatively cheaply in an Altoids tin, I was hooked. And then began the research. After lots of reading and Google searches, I discovered that the cMoyBB is pretty much the tops when it comes to DIY headphone amps and the creator has a really nice site that details the parts and method of how to build one.

The problem was that even if I built it myself, it was still a bit more expensive than I wanted to spend since I wasn’t sure how much difference it would make in my headphone/iPod performance so I looked around the internet some more. eBay came to the rescue because the cMoyBB is based on an earlier amp design by Chu Moy called the CMoy. There were lots of prebuilt versions of this amp available on eBay for less than I would have had to spend to build the cMoyBB myself so I picked one out and bought it.

The amp arrived yesterday and I finally got to see what all the fuss about headphone amps was about. As usual, everyone else was right and my doubt was wrong. A headphone amp definitely, definitely improves the sound of your portable music. I’ve got several different portable music sources (iPod, CD Walkman, Macbook) and lots of different headphones and earphones and let me tell you, they all sound better when connected through a headphone amp, like a whole lot better. It’s like trying to compare a concert hall to a tin can, you can’t.

Now that I know how good an amp works, I may still go ahead and build my own just for the experience. I need a new electronics project and soldering up my own amp would fit the bill nicely. Plus there’s still the issue of that Altoids tin that needs a project.

I made a shocking discovery last week when I started listening to Exile on Main Street by The Rolling Stones. The classic guitar riff in La Grange by ZZ Top is not their own. Bah bah bum…! How did I come to this amazing conclusion? On Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones cover a blues song called Shake Your Hips by Slim Harpo. That song has pretty much the same riff that ZZ Top uses to such brilliance on La Grange.

Harpo’s song came out in 1966, the Stones covered it in 1972, and ZZ Top released La Grange in 1973. I think it’s safe to say that ZZ Top was certainly influenced by if not outright stole that riff. However, I’m sure with more research I might be able to discover that Slim Harpo appropriated it from somebody else as well. Such is the nature of music.

This discovery does not diminish my appreciation for ZZ Top, aka “the home team”. I’ve always been a fan and will continue to be so. As a matter of fact, I think I need to own Tres Hombres on CD or maybe even album. Hello eBay!

The links below will allow you to hear for yourself.

Shake Your Hips by Slim Harpo

Shake Your Hips by The Rolling Stones

La Grange by ZZ Top

I’m burned out on MP3′s, mostly. I’ve been missing the warm, full sound of music from back in the day for some time now so I did something about it. I bought a new stereo, CD player, turntable, and speakers. Yep, I’ve gone back to records and CD’s.

It’s everything I hoped it would be and more. Music sounds absolutely amazing again! It’s as if I’m hearing it for the first time and I love it. My record and CD collection are pretty small at the moment but everything I’ve bought so far sounds head and shoulders above any MP3 version. There’s really no comparison.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to go back to vinyl but I wasn’t sure if I would want to go back to CD’s as well. I decided what the heck because there’s a pretty large selection of music that was never issued on vinyl. And I can honestly say that even classic CD’s sound wayyy better than modern MP3′s. The word that comes to mind is expansive, it’s as if there’s more sound on a record or CD than an MP3 and in a way that’s true.

I was so happy with how my home setup turned out that I wanted to be able to take that experience with me on my commute so eBay came to the rescue with the little beauty below. It’s a used Sony CD Walkman that I picked up for about $20. It’ll play for more than 30 hours on a single set of rechargeable AA’s and it sounds fantastic paired up with a set of AKG K26P headphones. I mean like really, really good sounding.

It’s totally fun to be checking out record shops again. Who knows, this could be my mid-life crisis but it beats getting a Corvette and it’s less expensive too! Time to go, I gotta get up and change the record.

From the days when Michael Jackson was crazy in a good way. Wanna waste a couple of hours? Check out MTV’s video archive, the commercials are excessive but the content is worth it. Takes you back to when MTV played videos and wasn’t just a reality show wasteland.

The little acoustic guitar jangle that starts at 00:46 sends a chill up my spine. And I like it.

I stopped posting the songs that were in my head upon waking because they invariably became songs that I’d heard the day before once I started noticing them. It was like Schrödinger’s cat applied to music which says that the mere act of observing an experiment changes its state. Morning songs used to be totally random in the sense that I had no idea why they popped into my head until I started tracking them then they became just memories from the day before.

I decided to post today’s Morning Song because it was a return to form. I haven’t heard this song in forever and I wasn’t even quite sure what it was when I woke up. Just a little loop playing in my head that required a bit of investigation to determine who’s work it was. The lyric, track, and video are below. I leave it to you to ponder why it was in my head this morning cause I sure don’t know why it was there.

Pretty sirens don’t go flat
It’s not supposed to happen like that
Not like that
Not like that

We’ve got to keep our little click clicking at 130 BPM
It’s not too slow

Suffer for Fashion by Of Montreal
It’s from their very excellent album Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer.

The way I like it is the way it is
I got mine don’t worry about his

That little song fragment popped into my head last night. Thankfully it only took me a few seconds to place it. The line is from Sex Machine by James Brown but it’s not his version that was in my head. It was the avant-garde cover by The Flying Lizards introduced to me by my favorite cuz’n back in the 80′s. I haven’t listened to it in forever but I was pretty sure I had it in my iTunes library somewhere so I went digging and sure enough found it and guess what, it still rules.

Well I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine

I’m pretty sure that’s the lyric that spurred my next iTunes search. It’s from a song by Rush called Working Man off their eponymous debut album. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in my library so I had to placate my desire to hear it by listening to one of their excellent albums from the early 80′s, Moving Pictures. Not the same but damn good nonetheless. Rock on!

Four songs that would make a good start for a work related mix tape. Can you think of any others?

Working Man by Rush (obviously)
Matthew and Son by Cat Stevens
A Well Respected Man by The Kinks
Blue Collar Man (Long Nights) by Styx