“Music makes a house into a home”, Ivor Tiefenbrun, M.B.E.. More about that later.
Things are improving with our work teams in Houston – one of the five campus buildings is open and we’re moving folks out of it so that critical teams can start to occupy it – this means a lot of technology updates and is keeping me quite busy. While Houston recovers, I was shocked to see 
videos of the devastation in the Virgin Islands. All the leaves and limbs have been completely stripped bare from what used to be jungle like vegetation and many buildings are completely destroyed. I really worry about the future of these islands as they are so dependent on the tourist economy and it looks like it will be many years before they recover. We count ourselves lucky that we were able to enjoy such a wonderful vacation on St. John a few years ago (see post from February 28, 2016 – https://www.keithjrobertson.com/?m=201602).
My boss was visiting for the week so on Monday evening I took him to the 
Cowboys Club for dinner. He’s a diehard Eagles fan but really enjoyed the club and a lovely sunset from the terrace. I collected another “small world” story – my boss was a chef in Bucks County, Pennsylvania before getting into IT. He ran the back of the house operation at several restaurants and on occasional nights was a guest chef at the Ottsville Inn which my Uncle Scott and Aunt Evelyn ran for several years.
Ivor Tiefenbrun delivered one of the best presentations I’ve heard at my local audio store on Wednesday evening. He’s the chairman of Linn Products in Eaglesham, Scotland and was on a speaking tour of the United States. My friend Raj was in town from California and was able to attend with me – he’s a much bigger audio nut than I am and understands a lot of the technical details. Ivor grew up in the Gorbals in Glasgow and started Linn in the 1970s. Their famous and ground breaking product is the Linn Sondek LP 12 turntable and I was lucky enough to receive one from Diana as a gift a few years ago – hence the invite to the event. I’ve enjoyed countless hours of listening pleasure from my Linn system in my home office.
Ivor’s wit and humour reminded me of my Uncle Scott (he gets two mentions in the same week) and he obviously has a huge intellect and is very well read. He engaged the audience in about an hour of stories from growing up and starting Linn and verged off into all kinds of topics. I enjoyed one about his Dad who created special purpose machines – some for the Singer sewing factory in Clydebank. He had the audience touch someone we didn’t know and posited that touch conveys many emotions – love, hate, indifference, curiosity. He believes that music is the equivalent of “touching at a distance” and that an audio system of sufficient quality allows the listener to be touched by the emotions conveyed by the artist. He mentioned that hearing is the first sense to develop and usually the last to be lost and told a story of his mother conducting her favorite piece of music, which he was playing on one of his systems in her hospital room, while in a coma. One of my favourite quotes from Ivor that night is, “Music transcends race, class, religion, education and time”.
The last 30 minutes was a lesson in “active listening” and a demonstration of Linn’s top of the line system using the 2nd movement from Beethoven’s Emperor concerto (one of my Mum’s favourites) performed by Artur Pizzaro. It was a rare treat to hear such an expensive system which costs almost as much as a small house (in Texas at least). It turns out that Linn’s Chief Technology Officer is also a Keith Robertson. This led to an interesting conversation and an invitation from Ivor to tour his factory with him the next time I’m in Scotland.
Raj’s research before the event taught us that Linn in Scotland describes 
where a watercourse has cut through a shelf of hard rock creating a narrow, steep-sided cut through which the watercourse runs. Now the name and logo make sense – the needle in the record grooves.
The annual Americana Music awards were held on Wednesday night and I was pleased to see several of my favourites winning. Sturgill Simpson won Album of the Year for “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth” (see my May 10, 2016 post – https://www.keithjrobertson.com/?
m=20160510). One of my favourite songwriters, John Prine, won Artist of the Year. His most famous song is “Angel from Montgomery”. Charlie Sexton, who we saw a couple of weeks ago at the Kessler (see my August 28th post – https://www.keithjrobertson.com/?m=20170828), won Instrumentalist of the Year. Iris Dement, Robert Cray, and Van Morrison also won awards.
I had bought tickets to see David Gilmour’s new concert film from Pompeii on Wednesday night at the iPic theater but unfortunately had to pass that up to attend the Linn event – I’ll see it on DVD soon I’m sure. It’s amazing to read that no audience had seen a show in that amphitheater in over 1,000 years until the Gilmour shows.
Saturday started with a workout at Cowboy’s Fit followed by a delicious lunch at Neighborhood Services Grill across the way from the gym. This location of NHS opened about a month ago and proved to be just as delicious as the original that we enjoy so much on Lovers Lane in Dallas.
After lunch we went to see the movie “California Typewriter” at the Angelika Cinema. I had asked McD if she’d like to go to a movie and only told her the name of it and that Tom Hanks and Sam Sheppard were both in it. She asked if it was a documentary and if she could see the preview video – I declined on both because I didn’t think she’d approve the choice if she saw it, and because I suspected her reaction to the movie would be quite funny. My prediction was correct – she was doubled over in laughter at the end of the movie because it was so strange, dry, and geeky – including an attendee behind us in the theater asking at the end of the movie if anybody else was a typewriter collector.
The movie centers around a repair shop in Berkeley, California and various avid typewriter collectors and historians. Tom Hanks excitedly demonstrates his collection of over 200 machines and explains why he prefers some over others. I enjoyed the documentary but think it probably appeals to a very niche audience. Here’s the preview that McD didn’t get to see:
My sister-in-law, Amy, sent us this Jack Johnson video from a new song that I think perfectly captures the current sentiment about dividing walls.
I’m currently making slow progress (combination of being busy at work and the density of the prose) on Paul Auster’s book “4 3 2 1”. The book tells the life story of Ferguson in four different variations. The first couple of chapters show how small variations in the story line can start to have dramatically different impacts on Ferguson’s life. I think I’m going to enjoy getting into the meat of this one.
The Cowboys are playing Denver in Denver right now. There was about an hour long weather delay as a thunderstorm with heavy lightning moved through. The game is tied at 7-7 and looks like it might be quite exciting.