As an extra added bonus, and to conclude this post just the right way, here is REM, featuring Kate Pierson of the B-52s with the 1991 hit “Shiny, Happy People”:
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The unusual and strange from news and popular culture.
As an extra added bonus, and to conclude this post just the right way, here is REM, featuring Kate Pierson of the B-52s with the 1991 hit “Shiny, Happy People”:
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Here is Mylon, being photographed for his 1977 LP “Weak at the Knees” while trying to get a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken out from between his teeth. While he is from the Southern US, I claim that his French name qulifies as international (hey, it’s my blog, I can do what I like!).
Mylon LeFevre was a top-selling songwriter, having had many of his songs sold to the likes of Elvis Presley. He is credited with recording with The Charlie Daniels Band, and Sammy Johns. In the 1970s, can i buy viagra members of his group Broken Heart went on to form The Atlanta Rhythm Section. |
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At least you may not need to understand Hebrew to get that this is likely comedy album. Otherwise, I can’t explain the use of a telephone as a musical instrument.
Hagshash HaHiver, literally “The Pale Trackers” is Israel’s offering to the world as a major comedy group. At least they were big in Israel, adding many phrases to the Hebrew lexicon. The HaGashashim wish you to “drive in peace; the keys are locked inside”. |
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… And both of them are from that Canadian group from Montreal called April Wine. This group was really big in Canada in the 70s and 80s, and they had some of my favourite songs that I grew up with. Trouble was, while their music was really good, their record covers consistently sucked greasy cheese balls. They were flat, cliche covers that made no impression whatsoever on the buyer. Here are two of, in my opinion, the worst album covers that April Wine had offered in this vein.
This is their 1973 album “Electric Jewels”, which is cliche in every detail and screams to the buyer nothing more than “this is an album with music in it”. It totally belies what is inside the covers of this album. Well, there is “Electric” in the title, so you might be expected to play this one a little louder.
While just about every track on this record is a strong track, capable of getting you hooked, none of its three singles made the top-10 (Lady Run, Lady Hide (peaked @ 19, lasted 5 weeks); Weeping Widow (peaked @ 40, lasted 2 weeks); and Electric Jewels (never made the top 40)). Both records in today’s posting could easily have been designed by K-Tel. |
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The cover for “Live at the El Mocambo” embellishes the design on the backdrop of one of the stages of the landmark night club. The two palm trees were part of El Mocambo’s trademark. But this idea only works as an album cover backdrop if you live in Toronto. If you are from outside Toronto, or have never been in the night club, you are left scratching your head, wondering if they’ve adopted a Jimmy Buffett sound.
The ElMo, as it is known to us locals, is located on 404 Spadina, in the middle of what they call the Computer Ghetto in Downtown Toronto. Got changed to a dance studio a few years back, then re-opened again. The Ramones played there. So did Lou Reed, Blondie, The Police, Black Flag, Jonhhy Winter, Charles Mingus, Rush, Elvis Costello, U2, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and even Marilyn Monroe. She played there in 1958. When April Wine recorded live for this album in 1977, they were opening for The Rolling Stones. Just like a Canadian band to take all that tradition, and all those bragging rights, and make an album cover that is as lame as you can possibly make it. Believe it or not, their concerts were not lame, explaining why they recorded 7 live albums in their tenure. This album reputedly has a killer live version of Oowatanite. But who would know? By 1979, I remember noticing piles of these albums in the delete bin. |
In total April Wine had released 35 singles by 1993, and 21 of them charted in the Top 40. 7 of them were hits in the U. S., with three of them peaking on Billboard in the Top 40: Could Have Been A Lady (1972), Roller (1979), and Just Between You and Me (1981). At least 3 of their albums went either platinum or double platinum.
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The Jay Gordon Concert Orchestra offers the album “Strictly for Lovers” off of the TOPS label, a CAC factory which was located at one time somewhere in the southwestern U. S. which has supplied my blog with a healthy number of CACs thus far.
There’s an attractive woman, whispering something into her boyfriend’s ear. Something like “I haff zee microfilm.” Anyone who is not a lover should stay away from this record. Turn it off! Don’t buy it! Put it back in the remainder bin! |
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TOPS made money actually selling radiation instruments, if readers of my blog will remember. This could make them part of the Military Industrial Complex. And while we are on the topic of war, here are the natives of Auburn, New York with their band Manowar, with their 1983 album (not found on TOPS, sorry), called “Into Glory Hole Ride”.
This cover has been fodder for many a CAC blog, mostly because of the overwhelmingly subconscious homosexual slant involving handlebar moustaches and loincloths. OK… maybe a little more than subconscious. I suppose they could have called their album “Hairway to Steven”, but the Butthole Surfers already have that album title. Manowar is notable for owning their own label and distribution system. They are a true “Indie” band. Their label is called Magic Circle Records. Wikipedia says that Manowar broke the longstanding record in 1994 for the world’s loudest rock band. Beating The Who by 3.5 decibels, their Hanover concert was measured at 129.5 decibels. Over the years, The Swans, Motorhead, AC/DC, Deep Purple, My Bloody Valentine, and The Rolling Stones have all surpassed this, breaking the 130 decibel mark. Manowar beat them all in 2008 with a Magic Circle Fest concert that measured 139 dB. Guiness Book has stopped making records of “loudest concerts” due to the prospect of encouraging hearing damage. |
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The funk/disco/R&B duo The Brothers Johnson’s 1980 recording, “Light Up The Night”, was the high water mark in their career as a duo. Rolling Stone listed this record as #48 in the top 100 records of the 1980s.Looks like George is using his Johnson to light up Louis. Probably didn’t help sales, which went to #5 on Billboard’s Top 200 despite the album cover.
The record did not release any pop hits, but likely had at least one dance club hit, “Stomp!”. The Brothers Johnson were probably best known for their mid-70s pop hit “Strawberry Letter 23” (peaked on BB as a single at #5 in 1977). |
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Now we have a guitar as a phallic symbol. But they always kind of were. The drummer never gets the girl. It’s always the guitarist. Lead guitarist? Even better. They are the alpha males in the group (if you want to carry the analogy to apes).Chicks also dig motorcyles. And motorcycles and guitars together? SCORE!!!! Evidently, Ray Nelson’s invention of a guitar-shaped motorcycle never quite caught on, except as novelty. Nelson rode around the country in one which he built himself in 1980.
He also recorded this record 10 years earlier with a few colleagues of his. The idea stuck in his mind to build a motorcycle that had a guitar motif, from the drawing on this album cover. If the drawing was followed exactly (it probably wasn’t), they would probably find that the fretboard was blocking the headlight. Nelson has made several selefless contributions to society, through his “Guitars not Guns” campaign aimed at wayward youth, and also by being a foster parent. |
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The TI-Nspire comes with a great deal of programming tools, but after many updates, it is still crippled by the lack of an input statement.
Without input, what you have is a collection of functions. You have to run and re-run functions with new parameters each time to enter a list.
Of course they provide their spreadsheet, which requires the user to tab to a new cell after each input. Then to go to the first cell of the new row, you need to arrow down then left for several arrow presses until you return to the first cell of the row below. Once all your data is input, TI says you are given two choices: either run your function on your spreadsheet (the output going into a new column), or run your program in calculator mode, using the variables from your spreadsheet as parameters.
Running a TI-84 with an input command, I input data into multiple lists, pressing only the enter key until the end of the list (list length was the first data entered). These lists ended up in the table, namely L1 to L6. To correct my input, I could always return to the table and correct anything I needed. If the list consisted of multiple items for each row in a table, that was no problem. The program I wrote took care of the tabulation and did the calculations on columns, storing the output in new columns, as the code below illustrates.
I can only see the Nspire becoming most useful after the raw data is fully tabulated. I can see how formerly complex calculations and metadata generation becomes greatly simplified once the table is in place, using the Nspire. I have appreciated how cutting and pasting, and the invocation of spreadsheet-based functions greatly resemble that of Microsoft Excel. Before we appreciate the math power it holds, it is comparatively a slog, with having to navigate back and forth across a spreadsheet.
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This is a TI-84 Program to input student marks based on 4 categories and calculate statistics on class evaluations. Indentation is for presentation only. You cannot indent code in the TI-84.
VARIABLE DICTIONARY
K: Knowledge out of A: Application out of
T: Thinking out of C: Communication out of
N: # of tests I: Counts test #
L: Knowledge mark B: Application mark
U: Thinking mark D: Communication mark
Z: Used in calculating student's percentage
Y: Amount of mark accounted for so far
L1, L2, L3, ... L6
... arrays which hold raw scores or mid-stage calculations,
each array element accessed through counter I. These are the
lists stored and tabulated as they appear on the TI-84.
PURPOSE:
This program attempts to convert the 4-mark grade awarded to
students to a percentage overall grade. While many teachers
consider this a "no-no", students appreciate it, and have
a better feel for what the mark means.
If the user chooses not to enter a certain category, then s/he
should enter "0" when prompted at the beginning for what that
category is out of. For example, if the teacher chooses to omit
the category "Application", then s/he should enter "0" in response
to
AP OUT OF? 0
The user is never prompted for an application mark again.
This program allows for missing sections. Up to 3 of the four
categories can be missing and an adequate percentage will be
calculated, assuming:
Knowledge 30%
Application 30%
Thinking 20%
Communication 20%
PROGRAM: MARKS Clear Entries ClrAllLists Input "NO OF TESTS? ", N Input "KN OUT OF? ", K Input "AP OUT OF? ", A Input "TH OUT OF? ", T Input "COMM OUT OF? ", C For(I, 1, N, 1) 0->L 0->B 0->U 0->D 0->Y 0->Z If (K>0) Then Input "K? ", L (L/K)*.3->L1(I) L1(I)->Z .3->Y End |
If (A>0) Then Input "A? ", B (B/A)*.3->L2(I) Z+L2(I)->Z Y+.3->Y End If (T>0) Then Input "T? ", U (U/T)*.2->L3(I) Z+L3(I)->Z Y+.2->Y End If (C>0) Then Input "C? ", D (D/C)*.2->L4(I) Z+L4(I)->Z Y+.2->Y End Disp "MARK: ", (Z/Y)*100 (Z/Y)->L5(I) End (L5*100)->L6 1-Var Stats L6 |
UPDATE: I had to type in the above code by hand, since no Windows-based editor is available for this coding, and there is no editable file for this code that I am aware of, except through the calculator itself. In the process, I spotted some errors, which have now been corrected. In the old code, “Y” appeared to be counting a possible total of 1.2 instead of 1. Also, the Communication mark was based on 30% instead of 20%. Since I have no serious intention to maintain the code on this blog entry, send me a comment if you have any other difficulties with this code.
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One of the serious disadvantages of programming the TI-84 is the utter lack of syntax structuring for the purposes of readability, such as indentation. Notice also that the IF statement takes up two lines. THEN seems to be treated as though it marks the beginning of a statement block, ended by END.
But, I suppose in the service of reducing the keyword count, END seems to end any statement block, such as a FOR loop. There is also another problem with not being able to move backward to correct data until after the program has finished execution.
While readability was an issue with the TI-84, I am still willing to live with that for the want of an INPUT statement in the NSPIRE. This code allows for efficient keying in of long lists of data.
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Here in Toronto, there has been a radio station that has historically been one of the most highly rated stations in Canada. Around the late 80s/early 90s, it changed format and severely lowered the power of the transmitter to the point where the reception remained poor, even in Toronto. Recently, there is no music anymore, not even the obscure oldies that I was accustomed to hearing. CHUM had been an all-music station for the almost all of the past 50 years (they were an all-sports station for less than a year in the early 2000s).
Instead, what I have been hearing in the past couple of weeks has consisted of nothing more than an on-air audio feed of City Pulse, the audio feed of our local cable all-news station. How far we’ve fallen. From fast-talking DJs to fast-talking news reporters referring to imagery you can’t see without a television.
CTV-GlobeMedia, after purchasing CHUM Limited, probably nuked the old format because of licensing laws. They likely own just enough media (newspapers, radio, TV) in the Toronto market that won’t quite land them in jail, or in a lawsuit. The National Post assures us, however, that the advertising is different from CP24’s. And I think they have a radio-only weekend show.
Nowadays, a google search for CHUM AM or 1050 CHUM results in the website for CP24 occuring at the top. CTV GlobeMedia acquired CHUM and CP24, while the rest of CHUM Limited got sold to Rogers, including CITY-TV. Until the sale, CHUM Limited was the world’s largest privately-owned broadcaster. CHUM Limited used to also own several radio and TV stations across Canada.
Many people, including myself, will wonder what will happen to the weekly CHUM Charts, which were archived at CHUM’s website. It is an historical archive of what Canadians have been listening to since the 50s. In my opinion, an important bit of Canadiana. An attempt to follow a link set by another blogger resulted in a redirection to CP24. Entering “CHUM Chart” as a search string yielded nothing. In removing the archive, they are removing our collective memory of what made the charts over the past 50 years in the Toronto area.
Some sites that obtained chart info from the CHUM Top 30: Craig Smith (only lists #1 singles). The historical property at 1331 Yonge Street, home to 1050 CHUM since 1959, has now been sold to a condo developer, and the station facilities have now been moved to a new site to coexist with CHUM-FM, on 25o Richmond St W.
CHUM has existed as a radio station since 1944, and was the first radio station in Canada to run an all Top-40 format in the mid 1950s.
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