Christmas 2014

Pretty much last entry of the year so I'm looking at old routines a bit here.

This is a photo I do like a lot for capturing the two boys sharing a tale about a book they've been reading and shows boys can look stunning in a kilt as well as short trousers.

Christmas being here, there were a number of Annuals, those perennials from my childhood where you got a softback book featuring cartoon strips from your favourite comics, extra features, quizzes  and games.

This time of year for me has been more as it was as a young boy for a long time and truth be known, I just love it as that.

As the initiated know, I do read this comic a lot loving the adventures of Minnie The Minx, Dennis The Menace and the Bash Street Kids so here's this years annual which is always published for the next year.

A comic I used to love but has folded from weekly publishing was the Dandy with Korky the Cat and Desperate Dan of Cow Pie fame but they do specials such as this years annual so I was mighty glad to get that one.

Things like that and selection boxes of chocolates are what I most look forward to at Christmas apart from Christmas dinner with my parents.

Styx: The Grand Illusion, Paradise Theater and Pieces of Eight on compact disc

This blog has been going for a bit, mainly centring on photography but I do have other interests so over a few issues I'll look at them here.

In 2010 Mr Kevin Grey remastered The Grand Illusion with its hits Little Miss America and Come Sail away for the specialty cd label Audio Fidelity, keeping more of its warm sounding mix in than most on this gold plated regular cd.

As I have commented on one music site before the Styx catalogue has been left as is from the early days of the compact disc and can be divided between the decent but nothing special and the clearly inferior to lp versions.

 
On January 19th 1981 the band issued the concept album Paradise Theater based on the real story of a theatre in their native Chicago which came out on laser etched lp and tape versions (8 track and cassette) which topped the US album chart and featured four forty-fives, Rockin' The Paradise, Too Much Time On My Hands, The Best Of Times that charted at #3 and Nothing Ever Goes As Planned.

 
It was an album I bought near date of release and always loved for the musicianship and story telling in a song.

This new Super Audio cd also playable on regular cd edition sounds quite a bit clear with more definition than the original disc.

Another album of theirs whose cd version left a fair bit to be desired was Pieces Of Eight  based around the story of a boxing but which on cd sounded thin and splashy

ln September 2017 this disc that featured the 45 Blue Collar Man, Renegade and The Great White Hope was issued on Super audio cd also playable in regular cd having been mastered by Kevin Gray from the A&M master tapes.

This edition is a lot better than the 1987 original cd.

Comic tastes

Comics have been an interest of mine from early childhood onward although as with many you find your parents cancel any orders when they think you're too old for them even though a good number read them over the age of sixteen well into adulthood.

The world of comics has changed in the last fifteen or so years with a good number I grew up with having ceased publication and indeed in late 2012 we even lost The Dandy.

The one that still survives comes from the same publisher, D C Thomson and that is the Beano which has changed a bit over the years as indeed it had to to stay relevant to today's children.

The copy pictured here is last weeks edition, dated 13 September with a mixture of old favourites but set in 2014 and some newer cartoon strips.

I still go to our local shop and buy a copy.
 

Joni Mitchell - The Studio Albums

There were a number of things I didn't get around to getting in the lp era  and one was gathering a collection of the talented Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell's groundbreaking early albums which together with the Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Neil Young elevated Canadian rock challenging that of Great Britain and the United States.

The Studio Albums 1968-1979, released October 29, 2012 surveys Mitchell's discography from the folk-rock poetry of 1968's Song to a Seagull through to her more exploratory jazz collaboration with Charlies Mingus, 1979's Mingus. 

As a set of albums each is richly rewarding to explore to the keen musicologist interested in seeing an artist and sounds develop rather than just wanting just another set of songs written and performed in the same style.

That was never my thing really.

Each disc is reproduced in gatefold card format replicating the jackets of the original Reprise and Asylum lps of the era and held in cardboard clam type box.

At the rear there is a listing of each album and the tracklisting that aids the process of select a disc or two to play.

When it comes to the mastering the Reprise discs use the more recent HDCD masters that play on regular players and have the Avacado coloured label when the Asylums use plain silver with logo in colour resign.

Recently I got a near mint used edition because such sets are often more rewarding for artists such as Greatest Hits sets that may include well known songs like Woodstock or Big Yellow Taxi.

This set doesn't include her live albums of the period but you can get them separately if you wish.

The XG series

Sometimes you see the various members of the XG series of cameras Minolta had out from the late 1970's until about 1982 that filled the gap in their range between the entry level SRT 101b which was manual exposure only based on a 1960's SRT101 design and the top of the range XD7 (US/Canada: XDII) and its 1979 cut down version, the XD5.

With one exception the main failing of the range was when in manual mode the shutter speed information wasn't displayed at all which made using it as a manual camera hard going.
All used more plastics than the others to bring modern automation at more affordable prices and used the less quickly responding Cds photocells rather than the much better silicon ones of the XD series.

In addition unlike the XD series these used a cloth shutter with a corresponding slower flash sync speed.

The only one I have some time for is the XG-M which dates to around 1979/80 which did display shutter information in manual mode and also had a depth of field preview so you could use it easily for landscape photography for which is fairly well featured.

All had non TTL flash.

Their replacements were the X300/X370n and X9 models that had most of their features but with better photocells included.