Venus and Mars Are All Right Tonight

Every once in awhile I find myself missing my vinyl. My mother had passed down the first albums that I had truly loved when I was still quite young. Highway 61 Revisited had already changed my personality for good by my tenth birthday. But it wasn't until high school that I started collecting albums seriously for myself. At that point I was more of a Paul person than a John person. I loved Wings. It brought back the AM radio days of being a child in the seventies.

I don't actually remember when and where I bought Venus and Mars. I know I bought it used and as it would have been over ten years old so the stickers and poster were long gone. I probably bought it as a cheap single for "Listen to What the Man Said" a song that had spent some time on the radio and still got some soft rock airplay in the eighties. But there were all kinds of gems I had never heard before: "Venus and Mars", "Rock Show", "Magneto and Titanium Man" and my favorite "Spirits of Ancient Egypt".

A couple of months ago I started missing this album. I gave my records to a friend for safekeeping years ago. She is notoriously hard to pin down so I haven't actually seen any of them for over a decade. Now Venus and Mars is just obscure enough to make finding tracks on a P2P difficult which is usually my cue to check on itunes for the odd tracks. Of course I ran into the Internet Beatle Wall as none of their music existed in a purchasable electronic format. I found a couple of the songs on a share site but not all of my favorates let alone the whole album which plays well as a single piece.

Cut to this morning when after prolonged negations the iTunes started selling unprotected, high quality music files including much of the Wings catalog. I shy away from buying music. Until the music industry stops suing their fans for the sake of "starving artists". I want very little to do with them. They could stop peer to peer tomorrow and it still wouldn't make me give them any of my music. I'll listen to what I've got till they change the business model. But when one of them makes a move in the right direction I willing to send a little love their way.

It wasn't easy though. Apple's servers are getting hammered right now. I've never had a more difficult time downloading from Apple. Not even last February when everyone was jockeying to be the billionth iTunes download. If that is any indication it would seem that Apple and EMI have made the right choice to stop making it difficult for people to enjoy the music that they pay for. The wonder of it all, baby.

A Face From My Past

This is a reprint from my iWeb site. I thought I would include it here because I don't want to ever give out the address to that site again but there are some people that I still keep up with that remember those times.

While idling googling my past, which I do from time to time, I came across notice that Bill Skiff, the father of my high school girlfriend had passed away last summer. Bill had been a manager of a couple of different cab companies in San Francisco. I dated his daughter for half of my junior and most of my senior year. He was one of those classic S.O.B. types, a little too in your face for my taste and had a real difficulty listening to anything anybody else had to say. Still, he was a good guy to have as your girlfriends father. He knew all sorts of people and edges, got me my first job, taught me how to bowl. There was some fun times back then. Then again it was a weird time for everybody. For Sheri and I, it was to be expected, we were in high school and didn’t know jack shit. about anything. For Bill it was a transition as his kids were growing up and his marriage was falling apart. I still remember helping his wife empty the house while he was at work the day she moved out on him. Apparently she wasn’t the only one that had a problem with him. Anyway, rest in peace Bill. God or Satan, it doubt it matters, I imagine you’re talking either of their ears off.