Quartz City

• Spiritualized and Mark Farrow
  Interview with Jason Pierce and Mark Farrow on the design of Spiritualized’s recent album covers.
  (tags: design music spiritualized)

After reading enough about Muxtape and the growing ILM thread on it I finally checked it out. Not bad at all actually and it’s a good way to investigate a lot of music in a hurry. It’s worth your time to check out before it gets shut down.

In the meantime, here’s my contribution to the pile - subtitled “What the 90s should have been”

1. Busride - “Sunny Car”
2. The Telescopes - “High On Fire”
3. Lanterna - “Silent Hills”
4. Alphastone - “Soulweed”
5. Saddar Bazaar - “The Process”
6. Silvania - “Oval”
7. Spectrum - “Undo The Taboo”
8. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - “Hide And Seek (single mix)”
9. Drop City - “Living In The Machine”
10. Clouds - “Pocket”
11. Bailter Space - “Remain”
12. I, Sharko - “Water”

• Up and Then Down: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  The mass psychology of designing and engineering building elevator systems. Plus the guy who was stuck in an elevator for 45 hours
  (tags: architecture building engineering)
• RIGZONE - Your Gateway to the Oil & Gas Industry
  Petroleum news gateway. Mostly industry news.
  (tags: oil news energy)
• Stairways in Los Angeles - CommunityWalk
  (tags: los.angeles)

Going against the tide of Flickr curmedgeons, here’s some Flickr video from the QC archives:

Alkali flies on the ground at Mono Lake. They don’t bite at all, but it’s unnerving walking around them and seeing them flee and reorient as you walk around.

Some Mono Lake shoreline to go along with the flies.

A flyby of the last remaining Northrop Flying Wing prototype.

Stars Of The Lid are touring the US right now, and if the Echoplex show was any indication you would be well served to check it out. And Their Refinement Of The Decline was on my 2007 top ten and there’s very few ambient groups out there who bring something interesting to their live shows.

Some clips for you:

• FrontDeskTip.com - Your First Bet should be at Hotel Check-in
  Reporting on the $20 room upgrade trick at Vegas hotels
  (tags: hotel nevada las.vegas travel)

It’s one of those modern myths you always hear rumors about but never really see in action. Someone has a Les Paul goldtop hidden under a bed for forty years or there’s an old barn out back that has a rare car sitting in it. Still, on occasion it does happen…

Reader Dan Veneman recently shared with us an interesting little barn find. It appears his buddy recently inherited a ranch in Salida, California, that included a 75,000-mile 1956 Ford Thunderbird.

Let’s not forget that amazing 180 car find in a Portugese warehouse. Sadly, most of these barn finds are languishing in the “I’m going to fix it up someday” category.

ExDetectives are on yesterday’s DrugMusic podcast. (RSS link)

R.I.P.

Ned says it much better than I can. I recall that my first real exposure to Neu! was from one of those KUCI cassette tapes.