words

Overheard in the office: "My tires were slippy and didn't have any gription". I've heard "slippy" where "slippery" was meant before; this seems to be the same linguistic quirk that produces "prolly" when the word is "probably". But "gription" was a new one for me, and quite entertaining. (It would be clever were it intentional.) We all got a good laugh out of it. (The coworker was not serious; the neighbor he was quoting was.)

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Yesterday at a meeting the CEO introduced a new employee, who previously worked in the military as a translator specializing in Hebrew. So the CEO said "can you say something in Hebrew for us?" and the employee said "ken" (yes). I found myself longing for the idiomatic knowledge that would have allowed me to respond with the functional equivalent of "smart-aleck". Oh well. :-)

Julia Ecklar

I am currently listening to the new CD re-issue of Julia Ecklar's "Divine Intervention", which came in today's mail. Wow!

DI was a cassette that was published back in 1986. I bought it, of course -- I was buying lots of filk, and I loved Julia's voice. And this album was like nothing I had ever heard in fandom before. Filk was about voice (not always high-quality) and guitar, and maybe the occasional cough from the audience (most of what I had was live recordings, from cons). The first filk I bought was probably "Minus Ten and Counting", so I knew that studio recordings did sometimes happen. They weren't up to the level of "professional" studio recordings; filk tapes sold a few hundred copies, so who could afford that?

But someone raised money to produce a "real" tape -- with a kick-butt engineer, orchestral musicians, stunning arrangements (sometimes overdone), and Julia's voice. It was a wonderful, ground-breaking recording (with no real followers, though).

But cassettes rot over time, and it's been out of print for years. Fairly early on I made myself a copy and played that into the ground, so my cassette is probably in ok shape today -- aside from being 16 years old. I mean, it's not like I had the forethought to really protect it or anything.

But now, Eli Goldberg has worked miracles and it's out on CD. The notes in the booklet suggest that a fair amount of digital excavation was involved; he had an analog tape master to work with, and first he had to clean the mold off of it. The resulting CD is very pleasant, and far ahead of what the cassette could do. (And I see that there are bonus tracks, newly-recorded, coming up in a few minutes.)

So Eli, when are Julia and Mike and the gang going to do a new album? If this is what 16-year-old salvage can sound like, I can't wait for new material. :-)

More info: http://www.prometheus-music.com .