Scene / Seen (The View Today)

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The above two were in Morris Valley.  The one below was Harrison Mills.
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At this point, the sun was starting to go behind the mountain.

Scene / Seen (Victorian Graves)

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We're so safe and generic today, even in how we deal with death.  Our markers are smooth  slabs with sayings that hold as much individuality as  the statement "over the moon" does when describing a joyous event.  Graveyards of old tell stories in a few words.  The engravings would also be perceived as being triggering / in poor taste / goth / fill in the blanks, by the overly blanketed denizens that take to Twitter and Facebook to vent their desire to police everything.  These headstones convey so much more.  There is also a beauty in the site that encourages people to stop and reflect.  That doesn't exist today.
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Follow Up on Springsteen Book

Robert Wiersema worships at the church of story

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I blogged the other day about a book I read and today, this was in the news.

My Rant Today --- Remastered Songs

Who does I-Tunes think they're fooling with their crappy "remastered" versions?  I'm not talking about remixes.  Those are different takes on the same song.  No...these are the same songs, redone, many years later.  However, as years have gone by, the same studio musicians are no longer available.  People write songs, as they do poetry, because they feel it at the time.  With those remastered versions, the same emotion just isn't there.  A person isn't the same ten years down the line.  They may have written it because they were going through the pangs of a break-up or suffering through the difficulties of staying clean.  Trying to relive it, years later, just isn't going to happen.
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I know somebody who was a huge Pearl Jam fan and decided to get a tattoo that was symbolic of the band.  This was before every grandmother was getting them and the work site would still look in askance at people who had them.  Just like "Jeremy" doesn't hold the same significance for her now, the band wouldn't be able to belt it out in the studio with the same passion.
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I've heard auto tune used on remastered songs when that garbage didn't exist the first time it was used.  I guess everything has to sound the same and safe to sell to today's market.  They are used to a certain sound, but please.  Don't insult the original audience.  I have yet to listen to one of those remastered songs that is comparable to the original.  Just pay the damn royalties to the artists.
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In any other artistic domain, can you imagine this happening?  Would they go bak and rework Van Gogh?  If they touched up the deep blues a bit, would "Starry Nights" be available for resale as a new product and new profits?  It ruins the integrity of the original work.

Scene / Seen

Last night.

Until the Cows Come Home --- Gum

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Watch out.  Chewing your cud  like that makes you look like a human chewing gum.

Until the Cows Come Home --- Cows Can't Twerk

I've always liked cows and these girls caught my eye.

Scene / Seen (Out of sorts)

A hallway without doors.

Stairs with no floor.

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A lone flower in bloom with no grave.

Never Mind "Girl Power"---These Women Know How it's Done

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I mentioned this song in my last post and here is Patti Smith's rendition of "End of the World."  I would love to see her duet with Marianne Faithfull.   I think the mix of their voices would be incredible.
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This recording was done years after her original version.  There is a greater degree of pathos.  Now, let's add a little Johnette Napolitano into the mix:
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I saw a post yesterday of Ariana Grande "flexing" her arms in some attempt to promote girl power.  In reality, I suspect her P.R. team is working overtime to overcome the donut incident, but I digress.  None of these women need auto-tune and the industry needs to overcome their bias that tosses away talent (i.e. females) simply because they've reached thirty and don't have pneumatic breasts.

Music and its Meaning---Walk Like a Man: Coming of Age with the Music of Bruce Springsteen

Oddly enough, I've just read two books in a row in which the music of Bruce Springsteen is discussed at some length.  The other book was Prozac Nation.  While I don't dislike his music, I'm not a fan.  His lyrics have never spoken to me.  I always thought that his fans were girls exactly like the one portrayed by Courtney Cox in his "Dancing in the Dark" video.    This was before she went Hollywood and thus still  had the wholesome, scrubbed look of a  Noxema girl  or whatever product she used to sell in Seventeen magazine in her teen model days.  It was the music of the girls that wore pastel Gap clothing and scrubbed their sneakers with toothbrushes.  I, on the other hand, picked up my black trench coat at the Sally Ann.  I looked like /hoodlum number three in "A Hatful of Rain."  This was music for couples who went to the shore/lake/river to park, and where The Boy would loving drape her shoulders with his varsity jacket.  No---as my friend Scott laughingly pointed out to me the first time he heard the song, I was the girl in "U2's."  The  End of the World.   I had no relation to those perky girls with their nasty side-eye in the same way that Lou Grant told Mary Richards that he hated spunk.
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So, why did I pick up this book?  Robert Wiersema is a well known and recognized Canadian writer.  That's not why I got it, however.  I ordered this book from Amazon because I work with his father.  I've never met him, but somebody I know has spoken to him at a writers' convention they both attended.  I figured it was about time I picked up one of his novels.  This book is a memoir, and I like that genre.
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This is a book about the love of music and how it interfaces with our lives...mostly, our youth.  Robert writes about growing up in a small town and not fitting in because he did not play sports.  By the way, the town is around this area.  He stated something very similiar to a feeling that I've expressed numerous times---that the sound of teenage girls laughing still makes him nervous and thus he wears headphones when he's on public tansportation.  I cannot remember the fairly famous comic who stated it, but he had been bullied when he was young and said that no matter how famous he was, he too still got stressed out by teenage girls.  Robert Wiersema found solace in Bruce Springsteen and his lyrics.
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I recall how music meant so much more to me when I was young.  I would try to pull in stations from further away so that I could actually pick up the newest alternative releases.  I'd make lists of the songs I wanted to buy when I made it into the city.  Robert Wiersema would be on the hunt for bootlegs by Bruce.
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There is a lot of detailed discussion of specific lyrics, songs and concerts.  The Bruce  affecionado would benefit more from this than I did. 
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He writes of how this changes as we age....he married and had a child.  Music stilll means a lot to him, but it lacks the same passion.  I guess that's a good thing.  I mean, there's  something endearing in the stoned eighteen year old couple tht follows the Greatful Dead for a summer in a pseudo sixties van.  It lacks the same effect in a woman with long, stringy gray hair who isn't sporting a bra.  At some point, life happens and unless one has a trust fund, money has to be earned.  The music is still there; , the fat lady hasn't sung and it isn't over.  I guess that it becomes the stuff of the background soundtrack.
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This made me recall those days of laying on the floor with the lights off as I picked apart the nuance of every lyric.
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Here's a link to a story on him:
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Walk Like a Man - Robert Wiersema
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Globe and Mail Review of Walk Like a Man