Season 484: On This Day

At last, a Dylan entry from me!

Such a simple song that a strummer needs a different instrument, so I "picked" the Firefly banjolele!

 
Hi Edwin! Here’s a Tim O’Brien song about computer struggles...

I’m Running Out Of Memory For You
Tim O’Brien
2005

Running Out Of Memory For You
Tim O’Brien, 2005

Well, I got an email from you, darlin’
It said you’d sent me a file
It was a full-length picture, JPEG format
But, I never got to see you smile…
I thought of what you might be wearin’
Just then, my server software froze
I tried rebooting, tried compression
But, it would not open past your nose…

My color screen won’t even function
It’s one big, solid field of blue
My hard drive, it went soft
My application coughed
And, I’m runnin’ out of memory for you

Well, sat alone there at my workplace
Just a’ thinkin’ of the good times that we had
I was dumping data to a zip drive
I was stroking on the old mouse pad
I went down to my computer center
Just to buy me a megabyte of ram
Then I hurried on back to my workplace
I had my memory module in my hand
I opened up my PC casing
I thought I knew just what I’d do
But, it was all for naught
There were no expansion slots
And, I’m runnin’ out of memory for you

My color screen won’t even function
It’s one big, solid field of blue
My hard drive, it went soft
My application coughed
And, I’m runnin’ out of memory for you
 
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Spot of the Antarctic, an epic journey... equal to climbing mount Everest.



As you plough through the snows of December
Remember that poor Captain Scott
Wasn't he the second to reach the South Pole?
Well no, in fact he was not.
Roald Amundsen, he was the first
Or that's what everyone reckoned.
But we've all been under a misapprehension
I've been toald that Roald was second.
When he arrived at his goal
A small patch of yellow snow marked it
For who was first to the pole
Spot of the Antarctic.
 
Hello again, Edwin! I'm sorry, I've been a bit absent this week, but this song came to me as soon as I saw your theme; it took forever to track down any chords, though! (I was, of course, wearing khaki shorts when I recorded it.)

 
Thanks for your latest contributions everyone! By my reckoning, so far we have:

  • 18 mountain/hiking songs (of which two are Dylan songs)
  • 9 computers/technology songs
  • 8 Dylan covers

We're getting late in the week now, and I'm enjoying your takes on Bob, so I think I'll lift all the limits. So you can submit as many as you like, and if you want to submit a Dylan song you don't need to submit something else first. If you do that, I'll see if I can manage to shoehorn it into one of the main sub-themes somehow.
 
Here is my entry for this season:

 
Brian (Pa) and I must have been thinking along similar lines this week, because we both seem to have the same attitude to climbing "Chomolungma" - as the Tibetans call it.

My contribution tells the tale of a self-obsessed banker and his attempt to climb the highest mountain in the world.

Hope you enjoy:

 
The "Bob's Birthday" one.

Knockin' on Heavens Door

with a nod toward Clappo's version




 
Of course I had a motive for lifting the "only one Dylan song" restriction, which is that I decided I wanted to have a crack at recording this one. This is "Don't Think Twice It's All Right", which as far as I can tell has been recorded by absolutely everyone:



I still can't decide whether I prefer doing this on tenor or baritone, so naturally I've used both. I was going to add a harmonica but it just wasn't sounding right, so I gave up.

I'm going to crowbar this into the main theme in two ways:

  • He spends a lot of time walking down the road
  • "You've just kinda wasted my precious time" is something I often want to say to my computer
 
Les Barker's brilliant parody of G Formby "When I'm Cleaning Windows"
This is :
"Re-installing Windows"

I just found this 20 mins before recording it so may
have fluffed a couple of lines hither and thither !!







It reminded me of this :

Duck.jpg

See, even microsoft know !!!
 
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Well my broadband is a little ropey today, just like in Stan's song... but I'll try to keep up as best I can. Still a bit of time to get your contributions in, I look forward to hearing what you come up with these last couple of days!
 
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My birthday, mounatins, Switzerland and plenty of drugs lead me to this tune...

 
A song about Mountains - Sowin' On The Mountain, an old gospel song.

I did this in open C tuning (GCEG), but forgot when I strummed the last chord, so instead of a C, it came out C7.

 
After making his contributions to computer science and combinatorics, Alan Turing's personal life and his death led to
The "Alan Turing law", [...] an informal term for the law in the United Kingdom, contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which serves as an amnesty law to pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. The provision is named after Alan Turing, the World War II codebreaker and computing pioneer, who was convicted of gross indecency in 1952. Turing received a royal pardon (posthumously) in 2013. The law applies in England and Wales. (Wikipedia)
In 1952, Turing was convicted of then-illegal "homosexual acts" in 1952. He was punished with hormone "therapy." He also lost his security clearance and his career. Then he killed himself in 1954, eating a poisoned apple.

We're here at the end of May, mental health awareness month in the USA, and at the beginning of June, pride month for the LGBTQIA+ community worldwide. This is a perfect time to celebrate Turing's humanity and to remind ourselves that everyone everywhere should be free to love however they love.

This 1984 Bronski Beat song captures some the desperation that young men growing up gay in Britain dealt with back in the 70s. Sadly, too many young LGBTQIA+ people still deal with discrimination and even violence in the UK and all over the world.

Let's all do our part to support our LGBTQIA+ siblings, sisters, and brothers everywhere <3



Happy Pride to you!!
 
More Alan Turing!
About his work: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-...layed a key role,machine kn own as the Bombe.



About the Variations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_Variations

I struggled a bit this week. Being married to a mathematician, I wanted to connect to the mathematical theme. One thing I can say with certainty is: 'It's not my thing!'

There were a couple of 'mathematical' composers that would have celebrated their birthday this past week. Ligeti was born on May 28, 1923. Iannis Xenakis was born on 29 May 1922.
 
Well I think that just about wraps it up for this week - thanks everyone for all your contributions!

I will have another listen to all the entries and wrap up in the next couple of days.
 
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