Thanks for that tip, Shir.

Actually, what most intrigued me about that site is that in the background image, there's a three volume Raymond Scott Manhattan Research set. Raymond Scott is best known for his 1930's six member jazz ensemble the Raymond Scott Quintette. Their music, especially the song "Powerhouse", was pilfered extensively by Carl Stalling in the Warner Brothers cartoons. Later in his career, Scott was a pioneer of electronic music, inventing his own instruments using telephone switches and other unlikely machinery. The Manhattan research CD set collects these latter recordings.

Getting back to the background image, I was briefly excited to see that there appeared to be a THREE volume set of these works. The set I have is only two CDs. But then I realized that the set in the image is a vinyl version which, due to space issues, needed to be spread out amongst three LPs: [link]

Raymond Scott is invading my life today. Earlier this morning, I discovered this: [link]

Earlier this morning, I discovered this: [link]

I was gonna link that for you! Apparently they did a Moog figure too. How can they skip on Theremin? A little Clara Rockmore figure at the very least. (That's one of the coolest space age ensembles ever!)

Oooh, here's Clara performing on the "terpistone." Which looks to be something like a cross between a theremin and Dance Dance Revolution.

Huh. Theremin World is a pretty cool site.

The guy who runs Thereminworld, Jason, is a mensch. Just an incredibly nice guy. He's the one who shot me at the Theremin Camp in Asheville a few years back, doing Video Killed The Radio Star.

I have a release question. I have a compulsive need to correctly ID the release years of the songs in my iTunes library. Compilations throw this off, since they have the album release dates, and I want single release dates.

I'm currently confused by "Pressure Drop" by The Specials. I know this song from the 80s, but maybe that was the Maytals version, and The Specials only recorded it in the 90s.

Can anyone tell me for sure?

The Maytals would have been recording reggae, not ska, in the 1980s, and The Specials were most active in the very early 80s.

Looks like "Pressure Drop" first appeared on the 1996 reunion(?) album "Today's Specials": [link]

t edit Wikipedia link: [link]

Or, you know, I could be talking out of my ass.

Thanks, Jon. And thanks also to Scola's ass.

I have a compulsive need to correctly ID the release years of the songs in my iTunes library. Compilations throw this off, since they have the album release dates, and I want single release dates.

I just want to state for the record that there is nothing wrong with this.