Dennis Ritchie, dead at 70

“K&R Book”, first edition.

Computer programmer Dennis Ritchie passed away today at age 70. Ritchie co-invented the UNIX operating system with Ken Thompson at Bell Labs in 1969, while co-authoring the C programming language with Brian Kernighan around the same period. In 1978, Kernighan and Ritchie co-authored the book “The C Programming Language”, now known as the K&R book. The peculiar syntactical styles they introduced in their coding examples from that book became known as “K&R style” or “K&R syntax”.

Without UNIX there would be no Linux, no Snow Leopard, Android, or OSX. No Google, no Amazon. Without C there wouldn’t be, well, actually, there wouldn’t be much of anything. Most stable programs that are in common use today were written in the C programming language. Our internet protocols depend on software written in it. 40 years on, C is still in wide use by many programmers for a wide variety of applications large and small. There are also a spawning of both interpreted and compiled languages that mimic many of C commands and syntax, such as Java, Awk, C++, C#, csh, Perl, and the list goes on.

 

Crappy Album Covers #327 — Already knowing your cover is crappy

I don’t know about you, but this album, by El Tadeo, is being sold by everybody from Napster to Amazon to websites as far-removed as Japan. The reason I am sure it sells so well, is because this is a comedy album with explicit content, which is dull if all you know is English. As you would guess, this album is in Spanish.I guess El Tad expects us all to plop it on our turntable and just let it happen. But I know what’s going on. El Tad is channelling the late John Lennon, who oft times wore a toilet seat around his neck in some of his early concerts. Soon, El Tad will be thinking he is more popular than Jesus. Let’s just pray he doesn’t let this toilet seat thing go to his head … doh! Too late!

The LP was reissued as a CD in 2009. I couldn’t find the year of the original pressing.

Putting cutie monsters in a child-style drawing on the cover does not excuse Alphabutt from the overall grossness in concept. Year unkown. Berkeley, California native Kimya Dawson appears to be somewhat of an activist and has at least 6 albums out.

 

Crappy Album Covers #222 — CAC Makers with a Few Fries Short of a Happy Meal

The CAC Maker Wildman Fischer, looking a few fries short of a happy meal. http://foodsci.info/other/04_-_go_to_rhino_records.mp3

Somtimes being crazy means you are some kind of mad genius. Sometimes it just means you lost it; you’re off your chumps; a few cards short of a deck ; a few fries short of a happy meal; you’re just plain crazy.

“Go to Rhino Records(Live) on Westwood Boulevard! Go to Rhino Records on Westwood Boulevard!” If you sing the above lines multiple times in a music-less, out-of-tune voice while clapping your hands, you have a good idea of the “music” that lay within this 1969 double LP. Rhino didn’t exist in 1969 you say? No problemo! We have a YouTube video from 1969 below, produced by Zappa himself.

Double LP. Lord have mercy. Frank Zappa himself was the talent scout that got this guy signed on to the Bizarre record label.

It is likely to be mostly due to his association with Zappa that this used double LP has sold on Amazon for $84.00. A true collectors item, since Frank Zappa’s estate is expressly not considering releasing this on CD. Must have had something to do with the time that Fischer was allowed to hang out at Zappa’s house and started to make an ass of himself and trash his house. I guess if Zappa were alive, he wouldn’t release it on CD either.

Sometimes being a mass murderer means you can sing birthday tunes. This is John Wayne Gacy (1942-1994), otherwise known as Pogo The Clown.

So I now stand corrected. In this article, where I write a short article about him, I claimed that he never made records. But I found this one.

This record cover shown was found on Myspace.com. A birthday record with piano accompaniment by Lucille Adams. There is a serial number on the upper right that says “JWG-33-1994”. I would suppose the the “JWG” in the serial number (Pogo’s Initials) would make that a vanity pressing. “33” are the number of people he murdered; and “1994” was the year he was executed by lethal injection.

Wildman Fischer, from the aforementioned double LP, on YouTube:

Crappy Album Covers (sidebar) — The (belated) Furr Shrine

Fans of this blog may recall that venerable, but enigmatic group of CAC makers from who-knows-where called Furr. As you can see clearly, they are pretty derivative, and the cover shown here dates back to 1977  (so I was close), according to this CAC blog.

Also, according to the same blog, some visitors categorized their music as bubblegum. Hmm… sounds believeable.

But their song titles (these guys have a track listing!) still sound like titles pulled out of the Kiss reject bin: “Sister Honky Tonk”, “Wow, yeah”, and “Goin’ Down the Road” are examples.

But if we are to believe their other links to Amazon (which I don’t), they are now called “The Furr”, hail from Winnipeg, and have a current 2007 demo released on places like Amazon and CD Baby, entitled “Furr is Murder”. CD Baby has a short bio of The Furr (if they are from Winnipeg, then why does the Canadian Amazon site list them as an Import?). It would appear from their bio that “The Furr” did not exist before 2005. Since this is a 1977 album, either the bio is wrong and they’re all old geezers (I wouldn’t want to be a geezer in all that getup), or we are talking about two different bands.

The Furr are also on Facebook. They have reportedly broken up. But, looking at a recent picture of Matt and Darcy (two of The Furr’s  former members), they don’t look a day over 25. They would have been born 5 years after this album came out. I rest my case.