Really nice short piece about the (now ancient) technology used on the Voyager probes, published a few days ago:

Wordle 787 4/6

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Bit of a challenge this morning, about 15 mins.

Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on August 14, 2023, 10:57:10 PMI appear to have been censored.😂

Please see: http://betweenthewheels.net/index.php?topic=126.0 - second post. Many thanks for your understanding.

I suppose I should have expected a couple of negative responses but ultimately the music is the most important factor. Another member would have given Alex and Geddy a bit more space to work their magic, as well as adding some variety, flexibility and fresh inspiration to the band.

You know - when they read this thread, as I suppose they will - we must be Europe's pre-eminent Rush fan forum now - they'll be nodding their heads and thinking "yep, Slim's right again. We should have done that but by the time we realised it, it was too late".

Quote from: Fishy on August 14, 2023, 01:35:37 PMJust on the Rush vocals aspect.. I always have to laugh when Alex is shown doing I suppose backing vocals.. he must be so down in the mix that it hardly matters so you  have to wonder why even bother with the pretence that's he's actually adding anything

Yes. There's a moment on All The World's A Stage where you can hear his voice, near the end of In The Mood but despite the fact that he always had a mic I can't hear him anywhere else at all on that album.

There was of course that bizarre rant thing he died, augmented by pseudo-jazz guitar on the R30 tour.

Quote from: David L on August 14, 2023, 12:56:53 PMI'm not sure that Timothy Schmit takes any lead vocal on songs that he didn't sing lead vocals on Eagles albums.

I don't think he does. But in the alternative history that I describe, a fourth member of Rush would sing vocals that he'd sung on studio albums, and I think an audience would accept it. Same thing.

When you think about it - much as we loved them, the music of Rush conformed to quite a limited format, didn't it? Although there are a few tunes in which additional musicians were used - perhaps most notably Andy Richards on Power Windows and Hold Your Fire and the strings on Clockwork Angels - mostly, it's a case of

Geddy - bass, vocal and crude keyboards
Alex - guitar
Neil - drums

Some bands have, or had a lot more versatility than this. The Beatles are an obvious example - all four of them sang lead vocals. Paul plays piano on some of the tunes. He plays the drums on one song! Which is where the oft-repeated quote that Ringo "wasn't even the best drummer in The Beatles" comes from, although he definitely was. George Martin played the memorable keyboard part on Nowhere Man and loads of their stuff has additional musicians.

10CC as well - again, all four sang lead vocals and some of their stuff, like the Beatles, is keyboard-based.

Even the Stones used Keith to sing the lead part from time to time. Bill Wyman sings on one early tune. Actually Bill doesn't play bass on all of their tunes; Ronnie Wood and Mick Taylor both play bass occasionally. They always toured with a keyboard player.

It's a bit late now but I think that Rush should, minimally, have hired a proper keyboard player as a touring musician some time after 2112. I actually think they should have added a fourth proper member of the band to play keyboards, sing, and write.

Is it an odd thought, to have someone in a successful band singing when he or she wasn't a member during their "classic" period? Perhaps it is but, for example, Timothy Schmit joined after Hotel California but he did (does?) sing lead vocals from time to time in The Eagles. Glenn Hughes obviously wasn't in Purple in their Machine Head heyday but he has at least one lead vocal I can think of.

By contrast, I couldn't wait and I've gone early at 00:35. I'll have to find something else to occupy myself with over my morning coffee tomorrow now.

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Quick one though, about a minute so it wouldn't have occupied me for long.

I was going to get up early and do at least a Fondo today, but in the event I didn't get up until 1000. I was annoyed about that until a downpour of rain at 1100, after which I considered that I'd dodged a bullet.

But the weather brightened up nicely in the afternoon and I had mounted a bicycle by 1245.

A fairly strong wind was coming from the west and the plan was to do the westbound route for 20 miles or so, then come back. I took a longer route than usual over the first ten miles, firstly by going up through Packington and secondly by taking, on a whim, a different right turn out of Measham. I guessed that I'd probably be able to navigate back onto the usual route a bit further along and I was right. Made a change I suppose but it was a bit of a rollercoaster ride and not that interesting, so I won't do that again.



After Kings Bromley I'd done 23 miles and only wanted to do another couple (I'd decided to try for 50 miles by this time). So I went exploring for a bit. I took a left along a road called Shaw Lane, then a right turn off that, also somehow called Shaw Lane. Both the Shaw Lanes had evidently been resurfaced fairly recently with the the sharp gravel which Leicestershire County Council (or was I in South Derbyshire at this point?) is keen to distribute on its public highways. So when I came to a T junction with a main road, I took a right onto that rather than turn back the same way.

Fortunately this led to the traditional route. I came back the usual way. Back on 50.69 miles.

The weather was lovely and the puddles had all dried up within about an hour of setting off. I suppose I should have made better use of it; I was back more than three hours before sunset.

Listened to football mostly; Brentford vs Spurs and the first half of Liverpool vs Chelsea. The latter game was the more interesting.

I also listened to the Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue. Like its predecessor Some Girls, a bit flaccid. But it does have some interesting quirks.

https://www.strava.com/activities/9640867450

Quote from: Slim on August 13, 2023, 10:39:07 AMWoke up at about 0700 and kept drifting in and out of sleep .. was 1000 before I realised it. Still felt tired. I wanted to get up by 0830 or so.

I meant to post this in the "grumpy" thread but actually we had un-forecast heavy rain at about 1100. I would have gone out on a bike if I'd got up early, and got caught in it. So this turned out quite nicely and I posted it in the right place after all.

I'm at some sort of fan event with Sea Power. It's in some sort of run down area of Hartlepool in a big yard. The band are there and they're handing out food on paper plates.

I'm in a restaurant and at a table to the right and behind me there are two attractive women, both dark-haired, one a little chubbier than the other, both wearing elegant black dresses. One of them announces that they're getting married. I start to clap, hoping that the rest of the clientele will join in (which they do).

I also had some sort of dream in which I'd been living with a woman in a flat somewhere and one of us has to go and live in a different town for work .. actually I think it was somehow tied in to the Sea Power dream but I can't remember it properly now.

Woke up at about 0700 and kept drifting in and out of sleep .. was 1000 before I realised it. Still felt tired. I wanted to get up by 0830 or so.

Changed my mind:

1. Manchester City
2. Manchester United
3. Newcastle
4. Arsenal

But I'll stick with that.

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About a minute. For a moment I thought one of my old start words had come up.

1:09 The Ant, An Introduction

Not as good as the last one but does contain a couple of very memorable Python moments - perhaps most notably the brilliant psychopath barber sketch, which segues into the lumberjack sketch. A bravura performance from Palin in the former especially. But the mountaineering expedition sketch is genius, as well.

Eric Idle appears very briefly as a Red Indian in one of the sketches, though he isn't browned up this time.

Cleese gets to grope Carol Cleveland's left breast in one sketch. I suspect he wrote that bit himself, because there's a breast-groping scene in a Fawlty Towers episode as well.