Ghost Gas Station

We found this abandoned gas station at Continental Divide, New Mexico.  This old place was on the other side of the interstate from the bustling spots.  Started with a B&W version, but decided to go (again) with a color version here (those desaturated).  Check out the B&W version here, let me know what you think.

Meanwhile, here's an overview of the place.

New Mexico Desert

Just east of Mesita, New Mexico.  Another from the Southwest trip.  Taken from I-40, with my daughter driving.  Not too bad for a point-n-shoot from from a moving car....

More Petrified Forest National Park

Yes, i still have quite a few unprocessed photos from our recent trip to Arizona.  Hey, I was only last month!  I tried this in B&W, but decided the partially desaturated version was more to my liking.  Made by blending the B&W and the Color layers.  Too bad I didn't have a polarizing filter for my Point-n-Shoot....

Time tagged 1 minute before this one, Tells me pretty much where I was.  Pretty sure this is within a few dozen yards of the other, but looking South rather than North on that one.  One of these days I need a GPS enabled camera....

Slice Of life # 4848 - Elvis Is King

Fromt the interior of MartAnnes restaurant in Flagstaff, AZ.  This place was full of really cool SW / Mexican nispired art.  So what do I focus on?  The cheesy Elvis Clock.  Because, after all....  Elvis Is King!

Who Am I To Blow Against The Wind?

from Paul Simon's "I Know What I Know", on the Graceland album.  I guess Jim Croce put it a bit more graphically 14 years earlier:  "You Don't Spit Into The Wind".  Not to mention The dB'song titled "Spittin' Into The Wind"....

Did I have a point?  I don't remember.

Who am I To blow against the wind?

I know what I know - I'll sing what I said

We come and we go

That’s a thing that I keep - In the back of my head

I know this picture has been posted several times.  In a couple of versions.  But it captures the "wind" thing.

Rolling Stone's Top 100 Albums of the 80's - #80 Suzanne Vega

Continuing the series on the Top 100 Albums of the 80's.  Or at least the ones I have....
Continuing to work backwards:

#80 - Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega

Suzanne Vega's debut came out in the middle of the decade, 1985.  As noted elsewhere, she was "the first major figure in the bumper crop of female singer/songwriters who rose to prominence during the late '80s and '90s."  I don't remember this album making much commercial splash, but I wasn't following commercial splashes very closely by 1985.  (It peaked at 91 on the US charts, with no singles making the Hot 100).  But one of my friends gave me a copy on cassette, and it really captured my fancy.  It's got a great sound, and it was new and different.  This would've been not long after we bought our first house, back when we lived in the DC area.  I think the first time I played the tape I was painting the room that would be my office.  At least until the kids started coming along....

Somewhere over the course of the years, the tape got lost, but I didn't forget the music.  Earlier this year I saw it mentioned on a music related internet forum, started thinking about it, and ended up buying it digital.



Recapping: 
#92 - Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever
#85 - Neil Young - Freedom

One to the photo:  I had thought of using a photo from around 1985, when Suzanne Vega's album came out.  But while wading through my files, this one jumped out at me, and sort of seemed to fit.  I dunno...  maybe not.

I have gοt much clеar idea concerning frοm this post

A comment on one of my recent posts, from "Anonymous":

"Awеsome! Іtѕ in faсt amazіng piеce of writing, I have gοt much clеar idea concerning frοm this post."

  Um.....  what???  Verdict = spam.  There was, of course, an offer and a link, neither of which I'll repeat.  I don't get very many spam comments since I turned on "word verification".  Of course, I don't get very many comments at all, so I suppose I should be grateful for what I do get.  Not sufficently grateful to click that link, though!

Meanwhile, here's two photos for a Thursday. Doing some macro-practice in my office:

Earbuds!  Cheapies that were expensive, bought in an airport somewhere along the way.Decidedly NOT standard issue iPod.  They used to have little foam covers, but they didn't survive long in a business travel environment.

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Chain of Fools?   There's a song I ought to have (but don't).  How about "Chains", the Carole King and Gerry Goffin?  A Top-20 hit in 1962 for the Cookies, but also covered by The Beatles (on the album Please Please Me)...  Or maybe Black Sabbath's Swinging The Chain is a better fit?   Maybe not, that's not exactly a favorite song.

Rolling Stone's Top 100 Albums of the 80's - #85

While looking for links on another post, I stumbled across a lsit of the Top 100 albums of the 80's.  Looking it over, I had more of them than I thought I would.  And it seemed like a good subject for a series here.

SO, working backwards:

#85 - Neil Young - Freedom

This 1989 release from Neil Young just barely qualifies as "80's".  It represented a rebound for Neil, after an eclectic string of experiments.  There was the country album, the  rockabilly album, the electronic album....  offerings that led to a lawsuit from his record label from making being non-commercial and musically uncharacteristic.  Of course, he went on to record a blues/jazz/horns album....  All good stuff (IMHO), but he was all over the place.

Freedom brought it back to basics.  As Wikipedia notes:   Freedom was a "critical and commercially successful album in the mold of his 1979 classic album, Rust Never Sleeps".  Allmusic said it was was the album Neil Young fans knew he was capable of making, but feared he would never make again".

Freedom only managed 1 hit, but it's the iconic "Keep On Rockin' In The Free World" which reached #2 on the Modern Rock chart.  Looking at iTunes, over the past 25-ish months, the average playcount Freedom is only 1.9 plays/song.  That somewhat surprised me....  in fact, it is the least listened to Neil Young album I own.   Contrast "After The Gold Rush", at 10.1 plays/song....  hmmmmmmm

Recapping: 
#92 - Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever

One to the photo:  This one is totally random....  This was taken out of a car window, driving west on I-70 in Indiana at sunset.  Back around 2004, IIRC.  I guess it is similar to yesterday's photo in the sense of being a slow shuutter speed.  but has no connection to Neil Young at all.

Banners

With the implementation of Facebook's timeline, I've needed to create some "banner" versions of photographs.  So I waded through some of my photos, and made some (28 actually) versions with a 2.6:1 aspect ratio.  Some of them work pretty well.  I'll rotate them through my Facebook banner.

What's up now, from my recent drive to Arizona:

original

Here's a couple of previews, with links to the originals.  These are:

original

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Rolling Stone's Top 100 Albums of the 80's - #92

While looking for links on another post, I stumbled across a lsit of the Top 100 albums of the 80's.  Looking it over, I had more of them than I thought I would.  And it seemed like a good subject for a series here.

SO, working backwards:

#92 - Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever.

This was Tom Petty's first album without the Heartbreakers.  It was released in early 1989, and was quite popular during the time I was moving from Washington, DC, to the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis.  I spent 2 months living in hotels, and lots of time listening to the radio. 

FMF featured several hits, most notable "Free Fallin'", which peaked at #7.  And "Runnin' Down A Dream" which was a big MTV hit.  One of my fAvorites was the remake of the old Byrds song "Feel A Whole Lot Better"

Looking at iTunes, over the past 25-ish months, the average playcount of FMF is 3.8 plays/song.  That's probably average.

One to the photo:.  A real oldie, taken in High School (late '77), on a back-packing trip to central Pennsylvania.  And yes, that's a full moon.  I didn't have a tripod, laid my camera on the ground outside the tent flap, ste the exposure to "B" and held the shutter open for a while... Randomness in the extreme..

West Of The Fields

My screensaver is "My Pictures Slideshow", which shouldn't surprise anybody.  I have about 800 of my favorite images in a folder, to pop up at 15 second intervals.  Yummy!

Anyway, I was on the phone today, and this image came up:

This was taken back in spring of 2008, during my 6 month sojourn in Pullman Washington.  One a weekend wander in the Lewsiton / Clarkston area.  Somewhere in Hell's Gate State Park, around here.  This is one of those images that I was quite enthusiastic about when I snapped the shutter.  And then hugely disappointed when I saw the result. Once I'd done some digital-darkroom,  I was semi-satisfied .  And when I saw it today, I thought it was downright excellent (in a subtle way).  Now that I've looked at it a bit, I'm back to semi-satisfied......  phew.  Over-analyze much?

The title is largely random, from R.E.M.'s song from the Murmur album.

Takin' You Down

I saw in the media today that John Geils is sueing the J. Geils Band.  Apparently he's been kicked out of his namesake group, or at least not invited to participate in their next tour....  Bummer.

The post title references the J. Geils song from their "Love Stinks" album.  I "acquired" this one in my college days.  One morning after a party, it was in the stack of records that had been played.  I asked around, nobody claimed it.  Call it squatter's rights, I still have it 30+ years later.  Guess it offsets some of the ones that were loaned out and returned trashed.  Ah, dorm life.

Not a bad album, but not quite outstanding....

Oh, And I HATE The Stupid "Cloud".....

So, last night I decided to buy a couple of MP3 songs from Amazon.... No big deal, I do it quite regularly.  But this time, I get a note that I need to update my Amazon-downloader....  "whatever".

Except now my new purchases are stored on my "Cloud Player", and not downloaded to my computer.  Except I don't have a stinkin' cloud player.  Or didn't till now.  Nor do I want one.  Yeah, I'm a old fashioned guy, I use one of those quaint little iPod things, and don't need internet connectivity to access my 14,000 songs.

Anyway,  when I try an purchase the songs, Amazon says "open your cloud player"....  At which point it wants to upload every song on my computer back to the cloud.  Uh, NO.  JUST GIVE ME MY SONGS I JUST PURCHASED!

I finally figured out how to find 2 of the 3, but the last eluded me.   I finally rerted to live-chat help, where a fine person on the other end of the internet was able to help me out.  He (?)  showed me how to override the new default setting, and set up a "download again" of that missing 3rd song.  And he also tried to convinve me why the cloud is such a wonderful thing (A view which I still don't share).

What should have taken about 3 minutes ended up closer to 45 minutes  And I'm still ticked.

And I had a pleasant email from Amazon this morning, reconfirming that "due to the new change to our Amazon MP3 section on our website, all the future MP3 purchases will be directly saved to Cloud player".  They gushed about the joys of having free remote backup, security of files and all that.  Without mentioning the part about no downloading the files to your computer anymore.  Or that putting all my music into a cloud wouldn't be remotely free.   At least I know how to override the setting.  For now, at least.

But it really irks me that I now have a cloud, even though I didn't ask for it, don't want it and won't use it.  I'll tell you one thing for sure:  I won't be upgrading from the free cloud to a costed one!  Maybe I'll go back to iTunes as my primary source for purchaisng music. 

And Get Off My Lawn!
Oh yeah, The photo is just a snapshot taken on the drive home from work a while back

The Blackest Crow

At one of the overlooks at the Painted Desert part of the Petrified Forest National Park.  This rather large, disheveled looking crow was hanging out on the plack (or is it plaque?).  Kind of intimidating fellow...

The title is from Tim O'Brien's song from the album "Songs From The Mountain"

The questions of a thousand dreams, What you do and what you see

So, I've been listening to Buffalo Springfield's "Last Time Around" this weeked, courtesy of the local library system.  Previously, my Buffalo Springfield knowledge has primarily been throuigh the "Retrospective" album (which I've had in one format or another since the late 70's).

Anyway, the song "Questions" came on (written by Stephen Stills), and the lyrics jumped right out at me.  It's the same as later used in the later portion of the Crosby, Stills Nash & Young song "Carry On" (written by Stephen Stills).   Or, as noted in the description of the YouTube link:  "Classic song that would develop further into Carry On". 

Oh, the questions  Of a thousand dreams

What you do and what you see  Lover, can you talk to me

Girl, when I was on my own  Chasing you down

What was it made you run  Trying your best just to get around

And really digging on Bruce Palmer's bass on the Buffalo Springfiled version...

Bottom line, there's 3-4 songs from "Last Time Around" that I'll be picking up on MP3, thanks to the test drive.