It's hard to form a fresh opinion (but I'll try!) about the album Zenyatta  Mondatta by The Police because I've heard this album many times before without fully realizing it. I've owned The Police complete box set since high school, and as it turns out, the order of the last eleven songs on disc 2 is identical to the tracks on Zenyatta  Mondatta. This means that to a large extent I formed my opinions about this album a long time ago.

The Police have roots in punk rock, which is evident from their early work (see disc 1 of the box set), but by this album, their style definitely shifted away from that. This album has a few kinds of songs: the political "Bombs Away", "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"; the cute "Man In A Suitcase"; the creepy/literary "Don't Stand So Close To Me"; and the rare instrumentals "Behind My Camel", "The Other Way of Stopping". It is certainly a more mature style, that overall I prefer over the intellectually lighter punk songs.

In fact, this album kind of hits the sweet spot for me between their early punk and their later, extremely political work. This is due to the lead singer of The Police, Sting, who is very active in these sorts of things around the world. However, just like Christian music, too-political music stinks because it's preachy and bland.

I would recommend this album, and the whole box set, too.

To celebrate New Years we stayed for a few days at a cabin belonging to the family of our friend Chris in Allenspark. Chris, his ladyfriend Emily, and our friends Matt, Erin, and Steve all got together for winter sports and good times. The cabin is in a very pretty place, in the shadow of Mt. Meeker (pictured above), at about 8,600 feet above sea level.

Two days before the new year a storm front arrived dropping less than a foot of snow, but bringing behind it very cold temperatures and high winds. The coldest day (New Years Eve) never rose above 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and with wind chill it felt colder than 20 below. Our friends bravely skied, and we (Melissa and I) tried to snowshoe, but we gave up after a few minutes because it was so miserable. New years day was a bit warmer, and a few of us went snowshoeing near the cabin.

Overall, it was a very fun weekend and we were glad to see our friends. And, happy new year to you!

Not too shabby! Beyond this are sustained 10%+ grades on Sunshine Canyon. Ouch!

I do not attend many live music performances. But I'm knowledgeable enough to know that there are some bands that are worth seeing in person because they bring something special to a live performance. For a jam band like the Grateful Dead, where no two performances are identical (or even reproducible), a true fan knows that a studio record is missing the full Deadhead experience. This is why the bootleg market for Grateful Dead concert tapes is (was) so big for so long. Some other bands may not make each performance as varied, but fans still want to see the band in person because it's more personal and memorable. For bands like this, releasing a live album per show, something that Pearl Jam has done in the past, allows a fan to buy a recording of the show they attended as an audio keepsake.

In light of the above, I don't quite understand the appeal of live albums like Eagles Live. The songs are as identical to the studio versions as I've ever heard from a live album. The crowd noise is minimal, as are the musings by the band to the crowd between songs. The one embellishment I can catch is "Winslow, Arizona" is switched to "Southern California" in Take It Easy (the concert took place in Long Beach, which I only learned through the Wikipedia page). The personal and unique touches of a live performance are almost absent from this recording. I don't see the point of a live album if it doesn't offer something that a studio album doesn't.

What is it with acrimony within rock bands? Apparently, the members of Eagles were so angry with each other that the final touches of this album were done with the help of at least five lawyers. At least the cover of this album, without the band on it, avoided the mistake The Doobie Brothers made.

Bottom line: Skippable. Get an Eagles studio album instead. And then go watch The Big Lebowski.

Today Melissa and I hiked in Chautauqua in Boulder up to two of the Flatirons. We didn't exactly plan to do it; we decided on our way up to simply take the steepest choice whenever trails intersected. According to the GPS (which had difficulty with accuracy due to the trees and the terrain) we climbed over total 1700 feet to above 7000 feet.

Part of the way up the trail was a large rock fall, pictured above. There is no doubt that it is left over from the process that created the Flatirons. The trail crossed the rock fall twice, and each time I found it very remarkable just how fluid-like it looked. Smaller rocks were piled up behind larger rocks, like water in a stream. The view down to Boulder was good, of course, but it was a bit hazy today.

From behind the Flatiron at the top we could see farther west into the Rockies, where the peaks are covered in snow. I'm not strong on the local peaks yet, but this photo was taken looking perhaps a bit North of West, if you'd like to take a stab at it.

We won't be having a white Christmas in Boulder, but I think being able to go for a hike like this on the Eve is a fair trade.

This is the second album I've listened to with a female lead singer, and Crimes of Passion by Pat Benatar is by far a better album than the first. Of the two, this album is much more entertaining, lively, and worthwhile.

The album includes the hit "Hit Me with Your Best Shot", a confident song about female empowerment that is much more convincing than any of Babs stuff. "Treat Me Right" is similarly strong. "Hell Is for Children", about child abuse, became a bit of a radio hit and may have helped lead to the 1980's theme of musical telethons such as "We Are the World" in 1985.

My recommendation is that this album is worth checking out. If you listened to the Streisand album, I think this is especially good advice.

I don't often post twice in one day, but I had to show this:

Sunset was at 4:36pm (and the sun fell behind the mountains even before that), but as you can see above, it actually got warmer as the sun set. The wind also picked up at the same time, and the air pressure fell, indicating that the heat was due to the wind warming up as it blew down the mountains. Boulder weather is weird!

In the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin the main character works in an electronics store, similar to Circuit City or Best Buy. Along one side of the store is the ubiquitous wall of TVs, all playing the same video for purposes of comparison between different sets. The store manager has decreed that the same video (and accompanying audio) will be played on repeat, all day long, every day, for the last two years. The video is of a performance by Michael McDonald of his song Yah Mo B There, which drives many of the employees crazy.

Michael McDonald was the lead singer for The Doobie Brothers for the album One Step Closer. Listening to this album a few times this week has felt a little like being an employee of the fictional store. It's the kind of smooth rock that has very little substance and gets played in elevators or dentists offices. Only seriously messed up people like this kind of music, which describes the store manager exactly. But it doesn't describe me (I hope!).

The album has exactly one thing going for it: a rare xylophone solo on "Thank You Love." I haven't heard a xylophone solo since music class in grade school.

If you follow the Wikipedia link to the page about the band (above), you'll find out that the band was in a very fractious mood during the making of this album. Many of the band felt overshadowed by McDonald and disliked his musical influence on the band. The tension in the band is obvious in the cover photo. Slumped shoulders, blank expressions, crossed arms, one member is almost entirely hidden, and McDonald is off to the side (in the white shirt) leaning away from the others. This is the kind of picture one gets from sullen teenagers, not adult musicians wanting to sell millions of copies of their record.

Here are some pictures I took on my mountain bike ride on Thursday, two days ago, from the Flatirons Vista Trails south of Boulder. The trails are decent single track that is just a bit more bumpy than I like (this kind of bumpy is not the same as technical, it's just annoying). If I had a full-suspension bike I would probably not find the bumpiness so grating. Indeed, most of the riders I saw on the trails had a full-suspension bike.

The weather lately has been dry and mild, as the photos show. The autumn precipitation so far in Boulder is well below seasonal averages. In contrast, apparently the high mountains have been dumped with snow all fall. I guess I brought some San Diego with me to Boulder.

According to Wikipedia, AC/DC's Back in Black is the second most sold album, behind Michael Jackson's Thriller. Interestingly, it peaked at only #4 on the US album charts, and none of its individual songs ever reached the top 10. To sell nearly 50 million copies without reaching the top of the charts indicates that this album has had great longevity in the last 30 years. This is likely due to its many genuine hits that continue to get played today. As an example, many of the songs off this album are included on the Iron Man 2 movie soundtrack, which continues to reinforce the popularity of this album.

If I'm in the right mood, I like AC/DC. That mood has to be a not very quiet mood, as AC/DC should not be played softly. Overall, I like this album. I had already heard most of the songs on the album, as will have most of my readers (see above). This also means that this album can be safely missed, for the most part, because sooner or later, you'll hear one of the tracks anyway.

Update 7 Dec: I failed to mention that this is the first album I've reviewed that doesn't have the image of the musician(s) on the cover art. The band had their specific reasons for this (see the Wikipedia link above). I find it interesting that contemporary albums often do not have the image of the artists on the cover, but that 30 years ago a band had to have a specific reason to do this.

As far as I can tell, the voice auto-tuner did not exist when Stevie Wonder made this record. However, there are a couple tracks where either his voice has been somehow altered in post-production, or he's doing some weird things on his own. And I mean weird: I think it's more distracting than musically worthwhile.

Most songs on the album are what you would expect from Stevie, mostly Motown, with a bit of influence from Reggae. I have listened to Stevie's "Greatest Hits" album which includes a few songs where he experiments with rapping. Thankfully, "Hotter Than July" does not include any Rap songs by Stevie (he's not a good rapper).

A minor quibble: This album was released in late September 1980, well after the summer heat that is beading sweat on Stevie's face ended. I think that it should have been released earlier (or later) in the (next) year, because listening to this in late November feels a bit out of synch with the calendar. I haven't sweated due to the weather in months!

Today we went to the Cal-Washington football game. This was the last game held at Memorial Stadium before it is torn down and rebuilt. It's about time - the bleachers are falling apart, the concrete is deteriorated, and it's seismically unsafe. The outcome of the game was not a good one: Cal lost 16-13 on the last play of the game, where Washington scored a touchdown. It rained (and even hailed) for much of the game, which I suppose is kind of poetic.

We ran into Paul (pictured above), an old Cal Cycling friend of mine. Unlike me, he's been to Cal games all season. I've only witnessed their futility on the TV until now. Washington had the ball on 4th down, with half a yard to the end zone, with one second on the clock. If Washington had been stopped, Cal would have won the game and gone to a bowl game. As turned out, Cal could not stop Washington, and finished the season with a losing record, and no bowl game.

This album hits all the typical country themes: a woman leaving a man ("Lucille"), American military ("Reuben James"), inter-class (or perhaps race) love and intolerance ("Long Arm of the Law"), prostitution ("Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town"), gang rape and revenge ("Coward of the County"), and love (every other song on the album). What strikes me is how similar these topics are similar to those in rap music, but since it's sung by a white guy with an actual tune behind it, it's somehow more socially acceptable. Perhaps it's because most of the non-love songs here are in the third person, while in rap it's often in the first.

Would I recommend this album? Eh, I'm fairly ambivalent about that. The first sentence above notwithstanding, the album isn't actually as country as I'm making it out to be. I'm generally not a fan of country, so this is actually a small amount of praise. It might be worth a listen just so you can say you've heard Kenny Rogers sing about the topics above. Or you could not, and go on with your day with the knowledge you're not missing much.

We're flying to Oakland next week for a whole slew of events with family. I haven't decided if I'm going to opt-out of the advanced imaging scanners (AIS) or not. The TSA and FDA claim the X-ray backscatter imaging machines are safe, however they reference studies looking at a different energy-band of X-rays than are used in the machines. The millimeter-wave machines are likely safer. My decision may depend on which type of machine they're using (if Denver has them yet, they didn't the last time I was there) and how much time we have before the flight.

I am a firm believer that most of what the TSA does is "security theater," wherein they do things that appear to make us safer by responding to specific threats, but it does not (and can not ever) address all the different attack vectors terrorists might use. In particular, the AIS machines and the "enhanced" pat-downs (more like "feel-ups"), which have been introduced ostensibly in response to the "underwear bomber" from a year ago, fail to address "internally" stored explosives, so to speak. Not that I'm hoping for it to happen, but as soon as this fairly obvious attack vector is tried, what will the TSA do then?

I have some ideas.

• Have passengers to disrobe into hospital-style gowns with open backs. Then they must perform ten deep squats in view of a TSA agent. They have the option of visiting the bathroom beforehand to prevent "accidents" (or get rid of the evidence). This will have the side-benefit of preventing obese and disabled passengers from flying, allowing the airlines to reduce seat and aisle width and legroom even further.
• Tell passengers to show up to the airport six hours early and give everyone a strong laxative. This may be combined with the above, in order to "facilitate" the discovery or disposal of explosives.
• Sedate passengers prior and during to each flight period, giving them a 24 hour window over which the flight may occur. This prevents the terrorists from being conscious to set a bomb off, or set a timer beforehand. To prevent the use of air pressure-sensitive triggers, the sedated passengers would spend time in a high-altitude chamber.
• Good ol' fashioned cavity searches. Anything for security, right?

Sure, the things above sound ridiculous, but so does wasteful security that responds to specific threats, which is what we have now.

The River, by Bruce Springsteen, is a double album that reached the number one spot 30 years ago this week. Springsteen is one of my favorites, he ranks first in my list of number of plays on Last.fm.

I can't say that this is one of my favorite Springsteen albums, but I don't dislike it. It's the beginning of the path to Nebraska, an album I definitely have to be in the right mood to listen to. I think that's why this album isn't quite what I normally want out of Springsteen. I generally want upbeat, rocking songs out of Springsteen, and this only partially delivers. But, I'm comparing Springsteen with Springsteen, and all Springsteen in my opinion is better than most contemporary popular music (e.g. recent Black Eyed Peas). Which is to say that, this album should be listened to, unless, of course, you have bad taste in music and actually like current popular music (e.g. Justin Bieber).