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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

 

New old music - parts 13, 14 & 15

About two-and-a-half years ago, I had to gang up three Herb Alpert reviews in one, because he'd been putting out music faster than I could review it. Since then, he's actually released four more albums. Not bad for a guy who's 83! I'm only reviewing three of the four at this point, but I'll catch up on the other one (a Christmas album) later in the month. 2016: Human Nature In late 2016 Herb released Human Nature. It was originally presented as more of an EP than an album
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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New old music - part 5

Ah yes! Fresh Maynard! Straight out of 1968...     I first got into Maynard's stratospheric trumpet exploits back around 1981. Another trumpet player brought a tape (remember those?) of Birdland into high school, and I'd never heard anything like it. I was immediately hooked, and went out and started buying up whatever albums of his I could find. Initially I was drawn to more of the rock/jazz fusion work of his Columbia Records era ('69-'82) although that was certainly a mixed bag, notoriou
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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New old music - part 4

Herb Alpert and Lani Hall released their second jazz album a few weeks ago, entitled "I Feel You".     Their first ("Anything Goes") was an excellent collection of mostly older standards, recorded live at a number of venues with a small and very talented combo.   "I Feel You" is a mix of some older and some more contemporary standards, again recorded with the same group of musicians, but this time in the studio. While this results in perhaps a more polished album, it loses some of the spo
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

New old music - part 3

Once again, Sleepy Night Records digs through their vaults an old trunk, and dusts off some more "Lost Tapes":     Maynard Ferguson - The Lost Tapes Volume Two, revisits some more vintage demos and live recordings of Maynard and his big band from 1968-1974.   As with Volume One, these were never intended for release, and are presented warts and all. These are recordings for fans, to be sure. Fans of Maynard, or any fans of hard-core, heavy-hitting big-band jazz. Yes, that's a weird descri
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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New old music - part 2

I actually got this DVD months ago, but never got around to reviewing it:     The World of Maynard Ferguson was a TV special produced in 1970, featuring Maynard and his big band, plus some special guests. Just prior to this period, Maynard had hung out with Timothy Leary for awhile and had a brief fling with under-the-counter medicine, went to India where he was influenced by the culture and music and got bit by a snake, and then moved to England where he formed a completely new band. "The
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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New old music - part 12: "Good Times!"

No... I am not going to start off this blog post with "Hey, hey - it's The Monkees' 50th anniversary". Even though it is anyway. Fortunately, I'm not quite old enough to remember when they were originally on TV. But I am old enough to have started watching them in the mid-70's. Anyway, you can read all about that whole thing here. Go ahead... I'll wait. Caught up? Okay. So Rhino Records, the owner of the Monkees' properties since 1994, has a bunch of stuff planned this year for the
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2
 

New old music - part 11: "The Wrecking Crew"

This is part movie review, and part music review. Because it's a review of a movie about music. A few years ago, I'd heard there was a documentary in the works about The Wrecking Crew. I waited years for it to get released, as it was hung up in trying to get the rights for all of the music it contained. But finally, a successful Kickstarter campaign pushed it over the top, and last year it finally got released. This may not mean much to most people, since they don't know what The Wrecking C
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1
 

New old music - part 1

There's nothing quite as cool as getting new music from one of your favorite artists.   But maybe even cooler, is getting new old music from them. Stuff that, for one reason or another, was left in the vaults and never released.   Such is the case with Maynard Ferguson - The Lost Tapes Volume One.     This is a great collection of unreleased live recordings and demos from the late 60's - early 70's. Recorded by Maynard's manager at the time, Ernie Garside, these tapes - dozens of them -
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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New arcade classic

Some months ago, I posted an old drawing I'd done in high school of some sprites for a game I wanted to create. (Coming up with the rest of that game's description is still on my "to-do" list.)   Actually, truth be told, I drew videogame stuff a lot in high school. Mostly in my notebooks. Probably when I should have been paying attention in class.   This is the very concept behind a cool new game from Ambrosia Software: SketchFighter.   (The notebook drawings, that is. Not the part about m
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2
 

Mutton, beef and trout

After being delayed for several months, Herb Alpert's new album - Anything Goes (featuring his wife - Lani Hall) is finally here!     Recorded live during a brief tour last year, this is Herb's most jazz-centric album since 1992's Midnight Sun (currently out-of-print, unfortunately). There's nary a trace of the Tijuana Brass years here, and yet Herb's playing is as instantly identifiable as ever, as is Lani's singing (in case you're unfamiliar, she was the lead vocalist for
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1
 

Mr. Generous

It makes a lot of sense you know - there are probably a lot fewer of Artie's autographs out there than some people's...   29 < PreviousIndexNext >
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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Movie review - The Muppets

Well, I was going to try and write this one in five minutes as I did with the Mission Impossible review, but well, that didn't quite work out. So that means you get to do more reading. Lucky you!   I loved The Muppet Show as a kid. It was irreverent, wacky, fun, silly, sly, adult, childish, and brilliant.   I went and saw the first Muppet Movie in the theaters, and while that captured some of the feel of the show, it somehow fell short. I think I saw The Muppets Take Manhattan, but I honestl
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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Movie review - Quantum of Solace

Well, it took me awhile to see the new James Bond film - Quantum of Solace - but last week, see it I did.   I thought Casino Royale was an excellent restart to the Bond franchise, which had really ground to a halt. As much as I thought Pierce Brosnan should've made a good James Bond, the films he was in just never distinguished themselves, and seemed to all sort of blur together.   In Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig firmly establishes himself in the role, much in the way Sean Connery did. Th
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Movie review - Bolt

The last number of years* haven't been kind to Disney. They haven't had a real hit animated film in a very long time.   * That number would be 14. It's been that long since The Lion King came out. But since I hated The Lion King, I'd put the number at 16 (Aladdin). Of course, the reason for that is because they haven't had a real good animated film in a long time.   The move to CG didn't help any, as Chicken Little was one of the worst films I'd ever wasted my time seeing, and Meet the Robi
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8
 

More Tron, more fun

"Recognize" this?     Remember wanting to play it?   Well... go ahead!     Space Paranoids is now online! And it even works on a Mac!   Well... not my G5 iMac. It runs like a dog on that. But it runs great on newer Macs. (Not iPhones though. Maybe someday.)   42 Entertainment made the game last year for the Comic Con Flynn's Arcade event that kicked off Tron Legacy's viral marketing campaign, which is starting to get rather extensive.   There have been clues left on various vir
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

50
 

More Tron fun

The viral marketing campaign for Tron Legacy rolls on! Someone at Disney is having a lot of fun with this.   In case you missed the new trailer... you can check it out at Apple's Trailer site or or the viral site.  It hits a lot of the right notes. Seeing Bruce Boxleitner back as Alan Bradley, a visit to the dilapidated Flynn's Arcade (which I've been to - it's in Culver City, although I think it was an Italian restaurant at the time), the touch-surface computer console (how far ahead of
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

32
 

More surgical high jinks

I never understood the appeal of watching one's own surgery on a monitor... I don't even want to watch someone else get operated on.   13 < PreviousIndexNext >
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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More music

Some months back, I wrote an entry about some upcoming albums that were coming up that I was planning to buy. I already reviewed one of the albums in the comments (Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream & Other Delights - Re-Whipped), but hadn't gotten to the other ones yet.   One of them, "Weird Al's" new album, isn't finished yet. It's mostly finished, but apparently he has to go back into the studio for some reason (he mentioned something about silly record company politics on his site). Whenever
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

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More Holiday Treats

Well, since Fred just posted an announcement about selling off his remaining NWCGE copies of Gingerbread Man, and included a nice picture of the label artwork, I figured this would be a good time to post "the making of" blog entry for it.   First though, I want to recommend that you pick up this game. Directly from Fred, if possible. First of all, it's a really fun game (full review coming later). But also, Fred did a really great job of printing the manuals and labels. They're the best I've
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7
 

More cartoons! Now with 75% less!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about our students' 2021 Open Show. An eight-hour marathon of animated films, produced over the last two academic years (since we couldn't have a show at all a year ago). For the first time ever we held it online, since we still can't have large screenings in person. But that meant anyone got to watch it! Quite literally, from all over the world.   Of course, not everyone wants to sit through an eight-hour show.   But this Saturday night, you c
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