Monday, May 22, 2023

Thirty Minutes Through The Looking Glass Dept.


Here ya go, pals! When your grandchildren cluster at your slippered feet, gazing up with eyes undimmed by life's bitter travail, and ask "gee Gwampy, what was fychodoolia?" You can play the li'l tykes this, because this is what was.

You will need headphones. You will need a half hour to yourself. While you immerse yourself in the fractal fringe of the fun zone, try to discern the Cheshire Cat on the album cover! And th' Eye of Agamotto! Hoo boy! Some fun, huh, gang?



41 comments:

  1. Without further adieu, a-do, a-dooby-dooby-do:

    https://workupload.com/file/gvGY9FVSfys

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  2. I'm up for some "fychodoolia" !!! ...Where do I sign???

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  3. This is outstanding. Well done, good Sir!

    "Thirty minutes through the looking glass" was how we described the effects of, and code for smoking Dipropyltryptamine, back in the day.

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    1. Thanks, Babs. I've played this a lot after completion and it holds together while it falls apart and stands up while it falls over, which is all I ask of anything. The project used ten Audacity stereo tracks and two mono, and was a bitch to control (and view) - it also crashed the app a couple of times giving me the horse staggers. I somehow doubt if I'll do anything like this again - it's pretty demanding of capabilities - technical and mental - which are for the most part missing, but gee whiz, it does what it says on the tin, don't it?

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    2. Oh no, not the dreaded horse staggers!

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    3. Older readers will remember with some fondness Clarence Pune hosting "The Devil's Doorbell" TV show back in the early 'fifties, with its enthusiastic audience of high school girls! Clarence's catchphrase "it's time to tickle!" was on the lips of many a teen girl until the show was abruptly cancelled after three weeks.

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    4. Wowie, what a mindblast!

      I'm inspired to try and make a similar mix myself, however when I've used Audacity just to add track marks or extract tracks, I forget how to do it and need to refer to tutorials every time, so it'll probably never happen.

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    5. I don't think I'd use Audacity for a project as complex as this, for exactly the reasons that Farq noted. It's good for basic crossfades of two tracks. Also suitable if you do the first crossfade, save to audio, then repeat - so that the whole thing is never more than a few tracks at a time.

      But otherwise, Audacity was really built to be a basic audio editor, not a multitrack workstation or mastering platform.

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    6. First things first, “Thirty Minutes Through The Looking Glass” actually gets better with repeated listening.

      @Torgo - I’m a Pro Tools Gal, myself.

      My favorite segment of “The Devil's Doorbell” was “Laundry Day”, in which Clarence would inspect and wash “frillies” sent in by his teen girl fan base.

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    7. Some of it is pure serendipity - the bass following through into the Blues Magoos was something I only picked up on later.
      Audacity - no complaints. It's free, and relatively bulletproof, and allowed me to do this. ProTools would be beyond my pay grade, like Photoshop. I'm basically doing the septuagenarian hippie equivalent of scrapbooking - cut and paste with safety scissors and Cow Gum until me dinner's ready. Ooh look! That came out nice!
      Clarence Pune never fully explained his sudden disappearance from Canadia's National Television Network - "The Devil's Doorbell" remains a cult favorite - apparently hosting a Devil's Doorbell party to watch the two remaining episodes (the pilot is missing) is quite the thing with ladies of a certain age who still find the youthful Pune's appeal energising, and sing the theme song (who can forget "make my oyster moister, Clarence!") while getting shitfaced.

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    8. Was "make my oyster moister, Clarence!" sung to the music of The Girl From Ipanema?, or is this some sort of False Memory Syndrome I'm suffering.

      Mmmmnnn, Cow Gum.

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    9. It was sung to the melody of Buddy Holly's 'Every Day'

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    10. Babs, as ever (except when it comes to identifying overdubs), is right, of course.
      "Come on Clarence, make my oyster moister
      It's tickle time so finger on the button
      Fun like this will never fade away hey-hey hey hey hey"

      Apparently Norman Petty threatened copyright infringement, and it was this that led to the show's untimely cancellation.

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  4. Hoo Hah! This is better than portzebie. Thanks!

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  5. Phantom Of The Rock OperaMay 23, 2023 at 4:00 AM

    I'm sure this will be 'orgasmaphonic' . And what a naughty little pussy Ole Cheshire is. No wonder he's grinning given where he's looking.....

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  6. I'm in full fychodoolia bliss, floating away in a blue cheer under the fever tree.

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  7. Would you be so kind as to identify the instro piece running just before the ash* number, from ca. 7:40-10:05?
    *Get it? A tree so hot it burns and turns to....ah, never mind).
    C in California

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    1. It's "Babaji (Twilight Raga)" an uncharacteristic piece from Blue Cheer's "Original Human Being" album, written by drummer Norman Mayell, who also played the sitar and the hand drum (whatever that's called).

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    2. Ah, thus the commended comment from Torgo. Thanks! It's a haunter, so, yes, uncharacteristic of the Cheer.
      C in California

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  8. Great mix. Couldn't identify most of it - I could only spot Hard Times.

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    1. The Hard Times track, "Blew Mind", has a direct correspondence with the overwhelming epiphany of phase that follows.

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    2. It's the kind of thing you would say, which is why I said it. So - what's the connexion?

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  9. I just heard, Tina Turner shuffled off her mortal coil.

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    1. Good coverage (rather surprisingly) here: https://www.emptywheel.net

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  10. So far, my slightly foxed Observer’s Book of Psychedelic Rock (1968, second edition) allows identification of Food: Fountains of my Mind, Blue Cheer: Babaji, Fever Tree: San Francisco Girls, Lemon Pipers: Through With You, Rick Nelson: Marshmallow Skies, Hard Times: Blew Mind, T.I.M.E.: Trust in Men Everywhere. But it doesn’t list tune two. I knew I should have bought the third edition.

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    1. Bwaveaux! Surprised you didn't get Tyewn Tew, as it's perhaps the best-known, featuring as it does Zappa, Little Feat, and Beefheart alumni. A clew!

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    2. cgm's blog "1001 Songs From 1966 You Might Want To Hear Someday" is well worth a visit - especially for fans of Claudine Longet!

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    3. Ahem. It's just that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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  11. Eagle-eared Four Or Five Guys© have ID'd most of the tracks, but even after the last (the second) is named, there are still *four* source albums for "incidental" music and sounds that I'm smugly confident are beyond your pay grade.

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    1. I'll take Songs That Don't Bogart Me for $200, Alex... What is Candy Striped Lions Tails?

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    2. Kinda sleep deprived and hit "publish" before identifying myself on that Fraternity question/answer. Apologies to you, apologies to the 4/5 and apologies to 2069...

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  12. Farq - any basic guidelines for any of us who might like to take a stab at keeping this outstanding series going? 30 minutes total length / mp3 seems pretty clear. Any other "traditions" you'd like us to maintain?

    The work crunch that I have been in for the last month or so will wind down over the next two weeks. I might have a go at doing one later next month... something like "Thirty Minutes In Another Dimension".

    I'm a bit rusty but should still have the mixing skills for it. I most definitely have a solid collection of the weird and wonderful - or at least weird - to draw from.

    The cover art is outside of my skill set though.

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    1. I think restricting it to a continuous unbroken thirty minutes is all the rules we need - that and calling it "Thirty Minutes [preposition] [location]". Glad you're getting out what I put in! Here's a useful Audacity command: cmd/control + alt/opt + k - this cuts a highlighted section out and replaces it with silence (ie does not pull everything after the cut back to fill the gap). Wish I'd learned that earlier!

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    2. On the Windoze version, Ctrl-L silences a selection. The mouse alternative sits two squares below "Help" and one square to the right. (This was quite useful when I made an FCC-compliant edit of "Billy The Mountain", replacing all the bad words with a scratched record sound effect from that Monty Python album.)

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