Beatles Forensics

"I, I could see"

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Yes, when John Lennon and Paul McCartney appeared — in one of the photos in the latter’s current exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco — to be contemplating handwritten notes that were blurry, which is to say, not the focal point of the image, I sure did take a close-up shot and flip the detail upside down so I could ascertain what song they were in the process of writing. It was “I Saw Her Standing There.” The exhibit is Paul McCartney Photographs 1964: Eyes of the Storm, which runs from March 1, 2025, through October 5, 2025.

When I first entered the exhibit, I found I immediately had an early Beatles song running through my head. Then it occurred to me that what might be neat would be to wander around the galleries and ask visitors what they were hearing in their heads. But then I realized that in some room several rooms away, audio from an ancient live performance was playing, and thus seeping into all the other galleries, and that the song in my head was, in fact, the song that the playback had ever so quietly placed there.

Font Generation

Or: Things fall apart

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Whatever new generation of cash register printers kicked in some years back is now, in turn, old enough that it’s begun to show signs of idiosyncratic deterioration, and the resulting glitch of mechanical shortcomings is coming into its own. I am here for these unintended fonts.

Scratch Pad: Teensy, Lowe, Athena

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ Afternoon trio for passing bus, passing plane, and passing person singing to self

▰ Me: It’s incredible what you can do with merely a Teensy 4.1 and access to a 3D printer.

Also me: I can’t believe entire days have to pass before items arrive by mail.

Then: Me slaps me upside the head. 

Exit, pursued by a bear — which symbolically represents self-flagellation regarding impatience.

▰ Been a few years. If you’re headed back in time, please tell late-teens/early-20s Marc that in the future he’ll live a few blocks from Golden Gate Park where, quite often, Nick Lowe will perform (for free!) as part of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. Also this year: Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, and Rosanne Cash (and, admittedly, a buncha people I’ve never managed to dig, but such is festival life).

▰ I have many favorite spots in the art museum at Stanford. In first place must go this statue, which is “a copy of a copy,” and the sculptor of which apparently lived backward in time (1935–1892).

▰ That was bizarre. I got some post directed at me from what was apparently a scam account claiming my Mastodon account had been shut down due to copyright infringement, and when I clicked on the post to see more details, it disappeared, likely because some Mastodon security apparatus removed it, or perhaps because the scammer backtracked.

▰ Finished reading one novel this week, but it’s one I’m editing, so I won’t identify it. Also read a bunch of comics, though not enough to round up to a graphic novel. And maintaining pace on Blood Meridian, Moby Dick, and one other.

 

Dave Scott, Live

At the Black Cat

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Great evening on Wednesday, July 23, at the Black Cat in the Tenderloin, catching the jazz quartet of trumpeter Dave Scott, in from Brooklyn with bassist David Ambrosio, plus, up from Los Angeles, pianist Leonard Thompson and drummer Mark Ferber. Fantastic performance, all Scott originals.

Disquiet Junto Project 0708: Vocal Chords

The Assignment: Do something with layers of the sound of your voice.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0708: Vocal Chords
The Assignment: Do something with layers of the sound of your voice.

Step 1: Create simple chords by layering the sound of your voice.

Step 2: Do something with those chords.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0708” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0708-vocal-chords/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How long can you go without taking a breath?

Deadline: Monday, July 28, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 708th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Vocal Chords — The Assignment: Do something with layers of the sound of your voice. — at https://disquiet.com/0708/.