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Really ?

Okay, so... The Pixies I know reasonably well (though they're pretty far from punk), but I don't know the other two - will investigate.

The Minutemen were amazing. They were clustered in with hardcore, as they were on SST and had a very close kinship with Husker Du. But they were unlike anyone else on the scene for rolling free jazz and folk (!) into their songs - the lengths of which inspired the band's name. D.Boon's death was a real tragedy. Watt and I were on a music mailing list together many years ago, and what he wrote when he joined Iggy's reborn Stooges still brings me to tears. It was great to have The Secondmen play here (pre-COVID, iIrc) and have a chance to say hi.

Point of reference: The theme music to Jackass is an Minutemen tune.
 
Elektrishun said:
Yeah, but why bother, it's not worth anything. You could almost buy a new one for what it's going to cost to repair that one.
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The hours of enjoyment and problem solving I get from repairing a century-old lathe or drill press are significantly more valuable to me than the dollar cost. I am staggeringly grateful for the environment I live in that allows me the time, money, and health I have to fulfill my interests.

During my working career, I trained a lot of salespeople. The first question I asked each recruit is "What car do your drive?" Very few of them drove 1990 Yugos. Which then allowed me to segue into a discussion of cost versus value. The value I get from repairing a made in USA 1896 lathe greatly exceeds the value I see in a poorly-made new off-shore lathe of equivalent cost.

My <new> 1932 Barnes #5 11x30 manual lathe has cost me about $1000 so far. It weighs about 350 lbs, can spin a 15" disc in the gap, and was built without a spec of plastic in its design. 100% recyclable cast iron, steel, and bronze. Compared to a brand new $1000 Vevor 7x12 lathe, the Barnes is bigger, heavier, stronger, can take a deeper cut, and will likely outlive me. Highly unlikely a Vevor 7x12 will still be functional 20 years from now.
 
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whydontu said:
The hours of enjoyment and problem solving I get from repairing a century-old lathe or drill press are significantly more valuable to me than the dollar cost. I am staggeringly grateful for the environment I live in that allows me the time, money, and health I have to fulfill my interests.

During my working career, I trained a lot of salespeople. The first question I asked each recruit is "What car do your drive?"Very few of them drove 1990 Yugos. Which then allowed me to segue into a discussion of cost versus value. The value I get from repairing a made in USA 1896 lathe greatly exceeds the value I see in a poorly-made new off-shore lathe of equivalent cost.

My <new> 1932 Barnes #5 11x30 manual lathe has cost me about $1000 so far. It weighs about 350 lbs, can spin a 15" disc in the gap, and was built without a spec of plastic in its design. 100% recyclable cast iron, steel, and bronze. Compared to a brand new $1000 Vevor 7x12 lathe, the Branes is bigger, heavier, stronger, can take a deeper cut, and will likely outlive me. Highly unlikely a Vevor 7x12 will still be functional 20 years from now.
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Your sarcasm meter needs calibrating?🙂
 
Elektrishun said:
I'll meet you halfway and counter with they are not punk but not too far from punk.
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I could keep arguing this one, but I'll settle for "punk proximate" since they were produced^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hengineered by Steve Albini (RIP - when Albini died a couple of years ago we were all shocked - a heart attack out of nowhere. I wrote that up until then we knew, as bleak as things were, where America kept its stores of integrity: In Chicago. After that, it just seemed MIA.).
 
Oh, that wasn't meant to be a dig on The Pixies - Albini specifically rejected the notion of producer in favour of engineer - read his wikipedia entry and you'll get the story.
 
This may seem like ridiculous musical arcana, but all-y'all may actually find it interesting.

Over the last century there's been a lot of creativity poured into finding ways for various related parties to dip their fingers into the pockets of creative and hard-working musicians, from the original black bluesmen to Elvis and the Colonel and well beyond... all way to perhaps the worst of all: Spotify.

One of those pickpockets has long been the producer: The guy who orchestrates the recording in the studio. Not that many of them haven't made positive contributions to the music, of course. But a consistent factor has always been the producer's royalty on sales, a gift that keeps on giving, year after year.

When Steve Albini established his studio - Electrical Audio - in Chicago, he took a different approach. He liked to draw a comparison to a plumber: When you build a house, you pay the plumber to plumb it, and that's the end of your transaction. You don't mail the plumber another cheque every year in perpetuity for the work he did. But that's what happens with record producers, and they can become very rich from those ongoing royalties. So he rejected that notion as bullshit, saying "I'm just a guy in a room along with you while you play, and you're paying me by the hour to put your sound down on tape (he very much favoured analog recording) as genuinely as possible. Then we're done, and I'm not going to bleed you for the rest of your life the way producers do. So don't call me a producer, call me an audio engineer."

Albini had style.
 
He is right on Kenworth cab room but Peterbilt is worse, you can sunburn both arms in a Peterbilt sitting in the drivers seat.
The best I ever drove was a Freightliner...you could have a dance with your bunk bunny between the seats...
Oohh yaa, mentioning bunk bunnies, those early kw's had a bunk entrance so small that you needed a fairly slim bunny or she wouldnt fit thru the hole!!!
 
That is an late 1960's maybe early 1970's Kenworth. They have come a long way since then. That truck did not have power steering. The manual steering box had eleven turns from lock to lock.
 
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