This is just too cool. Figures that Jeff at Gravity Lens would beat me to it.

As any good Rush fan will be happy to tell you (at great length if you allow them), Neil Peart is a drum god. It's therefore fitting that these students would name their drum-playing robot after Peart (Pneumatic and Electronic Actuated RoboT).

The site has a definite DIY feel to it, with an outline of how the robot works, a nice collection of assembly pictures, and some videos of the robot in action.

Enjoy.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Random Penseur in comments to this post mentioned some more stereotypically "80s" groups than the rock groups I listed.

I couldn't find my 80s "pop" mix in the car, but poking around in iTunes, I put together as much of the mix as possible from memory:

1. Miami Vice Theme - Jan Hammer
2. Call Me - Blondie
3. Video Killed the Radio Star - The Buggles
4. The One Thing - INXS
5. Fascination - Human League
6. Obsession - Animotion
7. Cars - Gary Numan
8. Doctor Doctor - Thompson Twins
9. Metro - Berlin
10. On the Loose - Saga
11. Red Skies at Night - The Fixx
12. I Ran - A Flock of Seagulls
13. Beverly Hills Cop Theme - Harold Faltermeyer
14. Safety Dance - Men Without Hats
15. Airlane - Gary Numan
16. Whip It - Devo
17. She Blinded Me With Science - Thomas Dolby
18. Don't Change - INXS
19. Astradyne - Ultravox

I just burned it and now have a replacement disc!

Most people have probably heard of many of these but probably not all. Airlane and Astradyne in particular are two obscure but great synthesizer-based instrumentals that perfectly capture the peak of the analog synth sound before "digital" became the next big thing.

Update: I should note again that Ace set this meme in motion with his pop quiz the other day.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:41 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Ace put up a pop-culture quiz yesterday (I'm not telling my score, except to say that even though the questions <whiny teen voice>weren't fair</whiny teen voice>, I did much better than Robert).

This isn't a quiz, but more of a music sampler. I put together a road-trip CD earlier this year when I took my sons to the USS Lexington. It's simply entitled "80s Rock." Kind of a dream mix of the rock songs of my youth to make a 9-hour drive go more quickly (and many of these weren't necessarily my favorites back then). This isn't 80s pop, a separate CD of which I burned, but rock.

What would be your "road trip" mix of 80s rock? Let me know.

Open the extended entry to view the song list. more...

Posted by: JohnL at 08:29 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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Via Mixolydian Mode, I found this essay at Outer Life relating the imposition of a parent's musical tastes upon the child. I had a very similar experience with imprinting, at least to the extent that my parents also fed me a steady diet of Neil Diamond, John Denver, and the Kingston Trio (and Chad Mitchell, Herb Alpert, the Smothers Brothers, and others) when I was a child. Says Outer Life:

"I inherited a musical legacy from my parents that I've spent most of my life trying, without success, to forget. . . .

"Along the way, my father threw in heaping helpings of Jesus Christ Superstar every year during the Lent/Easter season. That rock opera imprinted itself in my brain to such an extent that today, thirty years later, I can still sing every word of every song. Many's the time I wondered why -- why! -- we couldn't have played more wholesome fare like Bach's Mass in B Minor or Handel's Messiah, works I never heard until well into my adulthood. . . ."

Unlike Mr. Outer Life, I still honestly enjoy the music of my parents (especially Neil Diamond) as reminders of a happy childhood that included very cool road trips to Colorado and Canada. I guess I differ from him in that my parents also loved classical music, so I got the "wholesome fare" in addition to the lighter fare. (And believe me, I got lots of unwholesome fare, as my parents' broad tastes extended to - <retch> - country and western music).

As I've written before, throughout much of college I studied classical music (I was a performance major in Organ), so I think I have the "street cred" to be a music snob. But I've found life's a lot more fun if I drop the snobbery (except as to country music -- blecch).

To Mr. Outer Life, who felt embarrassed to admit that the first album he bought was Kiss Alive, I'm proud to admit mine was Moving Pictures by Rush. To be fair, though, I was pretty sheltered growing up and didn't have to buy my "first" album, which was Spirits Having Flown by the BeeGees. (Hey, nothing's wrong with learning to be an intelligent consumer of pop culture. And part of learning is making mistakes!)

But even with a "mistake" like the BeeGees or Kiss, the music can still have meaning. And one of my standards for "good" music is whether it is meaningful. Of course that's a very subjective standard. Can you develop an objective standard for whether music is "good?" You can argue objectively whether music is complex in composition (based on harmonic rhythm, counterpoint, orchestration, etc.) or difficult to perform (any Trio Sonata for Organ by Bach). Do those factors make music good? Or just difficult?

Certainly, complex music can be a sublime experience when properly performed. Yet a simple folk melody can evoke tears, too.

And I think those emotional responses are driven largely by the circumstances of the musical experience. One piece of music can become so intimately entwined with all of the other senses involved in an experience that its quality - or lack thereof - is distorted by those subjective factors.

Let's stay with the BeeGees as an example. You hear a clip of the BeeGees' "Too Much Heaven." What comes to your mind?

For me, it is a vivid memory of my friend Craig's garage in fifth grade. A dance party, with about three girls and three or four guys, lightly chaperoned by Craig's parents. The music was mostly disco (I only remember the theme from SWAT and the BeeGees). Craig had a disco ball and the garage was lit with red lights. That night, I experienced my first open-mouth kiss with a girl. The soundtrack to that kiss? "Too Much Heaven." Was it great music? I don't think it compares to anything by Bach. But it helped crystallize one memory that I'm sure will stick with me well into my senility someday. Your mileage may vary on this particular song, but I bet you can think of a similar one.

Examples? Comments? Please share.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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