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Stone vs. Stone

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit A: Bob Dylan’s, Keith Richards’ & Ron Wood’s gloriously ragged “Ballad of Hollis Brown” from Live Aid (couldn’t find this song without the cringey sing-a-long at the end).  Exhibit B: Same festival: Mr. Showbiz, Sir Mick, preening and prancing, desperate for your approval of him as a solo act.  My point?  I think it’s interesting that if you take Keith out of the Stones, you still have the coolest guy on the planet.  Take out Mick, and he just looks ridiculous.  Keith saunters out and owns a stage; Mick has to shake his ass and do calisthenics for it, but even then he needs Keith around looking cooler.  Interesting dynamic.

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Oh No Crypto Bro

I’ve followed this story with some delight. Apparently Michael Lewis, who wrote The Big Short, has been trailing FTX guy Sam Bankman-Fried around, so we’ll certainly get a kick-ass film out of it someday. Among many, many remarkable facets to the tale is that the crypto market has supposedly lost $2 trillion of valuation this year… and Wall Street has barely flinched.
When Sequoia Capital – allegedly the most intelligent venture capital firm – invested $210 million in FTX last year, it asked to see financial reports and instead was told “we’ll send you a few bullet points.” It’s traditional when investing that much into a firm to have someone on the board, but Bankman-Fried wouldn’t let anyone on the board of directors, which was him, an attorney, and an FTX employee.
For a company “worth” $32 billion at one point.

Zero oversight! What could go wrong?

I’ve followed developing news with Patrick Redford of Defector, who is typically hilarious. But there are several excellent reporters and twitter feeds. Ed Zitron on Twitter is great.

Here, a professor of finance at King’s College splains it to us. He keeps showing photos of Phil Spector for Sam Bankman-Fried, so gotta respect his game:

It’s an exciting time to be in the crypto world.

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Nice Gig

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Name Five Perfect First Albums

As in no bum songs. Solid from front to back. I’ll go first, and I wonder how long we can keep it going?

The Cars – The Cars
The Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols
The Ramones – Ramones
The Replacements – Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash
The Jam – In the City

Of course, you might disagree with these. That’s fine too.

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s p a c e r

I’m kind of obsessed with these guys at the moment, although this recording doesn’t capture their live energy exactly. Guitarist and drummer, the new power trio!

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Polymeter?

The Strange Brew podcast on Lennon’s musical influences circa Double Fantasy sent me down some rabbit holes: Touch and Go, and time signatures. This was never one of my Cars favorites, but I’m totally fascinated by it now.

The song’s verses feature the use of polymeter. The bass and drums are playing in a time signature of 54, while the vocals, keyboards, and guitar are playing in 44.

Bastards! While my rather limited rhythm lobe tried to tap out the beats, my remaining auditory cortex projected the contemporaneous Spirits in the Material World, which only confused me more.  Apparently that tune is 44  but so ska and misleading that you’ll fool yourself trying to count it out.

Available musicians please fix my brain and/or comment.