Generation X, n.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌdʒɛnəreɪʃn ˈɛks/, U.S. /ˈˌdʒɛnəˌreɪʃ(ə)n ˈɛks/

Etymology: < generation n. + X n. (compare X n. 3).

orig. N. Amer.

A generation of young people about whose future there is uncertainty; a lost generation. In later use: spec. a generation of young people (esp. North Americans reaching adulthood in the 1980s and 1990s) perceived to be disaffected, directionless, or irresponsible, and reluctant to participate in society.
In recent use popularized by the Canadian writer Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X.

1952 Holiday Dec. 41/2 What, you may well ask, is Generation X?‥ These are the youngsters who have seen and felt the agonies of the past two decades,‥who are trying to keep their balance in the swirling pressures of today, and who will have the biggest say in the course of history for the next 50 years.

1964 C. Hamblett & J. Deverson Generation X 8 The ultimate responsibility of Generation X is to guide the human race through the final and crucial decades of this explosive century into the enlightenment of the next one.

1977 (title of album of punk music) Generation X.

1989 Toronto Star 24 Feb. b4 What if this Generation X turns around collectively and comes to the conclusion they can't sit around waiting, and instead‥start their own businesses.

1994 Rolling Stone 19 May 58/2 Maybe it's the pandemic shrug of Generation X, the futility felt by the young when analyzed to death by self-styled experts, carpet-bombed by music videos and wired to 157 channels with nothing on.

2004 Independent (Tabloid ed.) 31 Mar. 30/4 A study‥has found that children born since 1985 are more socially conscious, politically active, and generally nicer than the angst-ridden ‘Generation X’ who preceded them.

Derivatives

Generation ˈXer n. a member of Generation X; cf. slacker n. Additions.

1989 Toronto Star 24 Feb. b4 The other possibility‥is that the Generation X-ers will cope by changing their goals or changing their behavior.

1994 Minnesota Monthly May 60/1 They're demanding value‥as boomers step out with their kids, Generation Xers tussle with cash flow, and graying execs face downward mobility.

2002 Good Weekend(Austral.) 8 June 51/1 (heading) The reluctance of Generation X-ers to commit to relationships may not be a sign of immaturity at all.

Madchester, n. and adj.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈmadtʃᵻstə/, /ˈmadtʃɛstə/, U.S. /ˈmædtʃəstər/

Etymology: < mad adj. + -chester (in Manchester: see Manchester n.).

A. n.

Manchester, with reference to the city as a centre of popular music and club subculture in Britain in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the music characteristic of Manchester at this time. Cf. baggy adj. and n. Additions.

1989 S. W. Ryder et al. (title of record) Madchester rave on E.P.

1993 Face Sept. 84/1 For these nine years, Pickering has earned his place in British club history. From rap and funk to Italia house, Chicago house to Madchester, he was there—and often in the vanguard.

1997 M. Collin & J. Godfrey Altered State v. 157 The idea of Madchester, however, provided a backdrop over which people, both in and outside the city, could project their own fantasies and aspirations.

1999 Independent 6 Feb. 9/1 The Mondays‥were the epicentre of the Madchester or ‘baggy’ scene. A fusion of ecstasy, Acid House beats, rock music and some of the worst haircuts‥since the Plantagenets, the Madchester phenomenon peaked between 1989 and 1992.

B. adj.

Designating or characteristic of the clubs, music, pop groups, etc., that proliferated in Manchester at this time.

1990 Vox Oct. 19/1 Call the cops! Shaun, Bez and the Madchester crew are back in the double mega New York groove to prove that Armani makes the world go round.

1994 Guardian 18 Mar. ii. 12/3 These purveyors of the late ‘Madchester’ sound were most recently in the news when keyboardist Rob Collins was imprisoned for his part in an armed robbery.

1998 Rec. Collector Apr. 132/3 Fontana's interest in the group was, in part, geographical—‘Madchester’ was in the ascendant,‥though James didn't fit in with the prevailing mood of 60s revivalism and club-land hedonism.

Sturgeon's Law, n.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌstəːdʒ(ə)nz ˈlɔː/, U.S. /ˈˌstərdʒənz ˈlɔ/

Forms: 19– Sturgeon's Law, 19– Sturgeon's law.

Etymology: < the genitive of the name of Theodore H. Sturgeon (1918–85, born Edward Hamilton Waldo), U.S. science fiction writer + law n.1
Compare the following earlier use of the term, referring to a different aphorism:

1957 T. Sturgeon in Venture Sci. Fiction Mag. July 78 One who has reduced the cosmos to Sturgeon's Law: Nothing Is Always Absolutely So.

A humorous aphorism which maintains that most of any body of published material, knowledge, etc., or (more generally) of everything is worthless: based on a statement by Sturgeon (see quot. 1957), usually later cited as ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’.
Typically used of a specific medium, genre, etc., originally and esp. science fiction, and now freq. also of information to be found on the Internet.

The aphorism was apparently first formulated in 1951 or 1952 at a lecture at New York University (letter to the O.E.D. from Fruma Klass, the wife of science fiction writer Phil Klass (‘William Tenn’), 5 Dec. 2001), and popularized at the 1953 WorldCon science fiction convention (see J. Gunn in N.Y. Rev. Sci. Fiction (1995) Sept. 20).

[1957 T. Sturgeon in Venture Sci. Fiction Sept. 49 On that hangs Sturgeon's revelation. It came to him that s f is indeed ninety-percent crud, but that also—Eureka!—ninety-percent of everything is crud. All things—cars, books, cheeses, hairstyles, people and pins are, to the expert and discerning eye, crud, except for the acceptable tithe which we each happen to like.]

1960 P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding Sci. Fact & Fiction 162/2 Theodore Sturgeon once attacked it from the other side with what has become known as Sturgeon's Law: ‘Ninety per cent of everything is crud.’ The remaining ten per cent is what we call ‘good’ and ten per cent of that—one story in a hundred—is ‘really good’.

1977 Washington Post (Nexis) 29 Aug. b1 What we're in for in movies and television is a deluge.‥ If I may I'd like to quote (sci-fi writer Theodore) Sturgeon's Law: ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’. Television seems to bear that out.

1984 Computer Magazines in net.flame (Usenet newsgroup) 3 Feb., Is anyone else disgusted with what is happening to the computer magazines? I realize that Sturgeon's law is a strong force‥but this is getting putrid!

1996 PC World (Nexis) Dec., ‘Ever heard of Sturgeon's law?’ He shook his head. ‘“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” If that's true of anything, it's true of the Web. Ninety percent of everything on it isn't even worth the time it takes to download’.

foo fighter, n.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈfuː ˌfʌɪtə/, U.S. /ˈfu ˌfaɪdər/

Forms: also with capital initials.

Etymology: < foo, nonsense word appearing in the ‘Smoky Stover’ comic strip by American cartoonist Bill Holman (1903–87) + fighter n.
It has also been suggested that foo in the present compound is influenced by French feu fire, but this seems unlikely.

orig. U.S. Mil. (now hist.).

Any of various unidentified lights encountered by airborne forces during the Second World War (1939–45), interpreted variously as enemy weapons, natural phenomena, or alien spacecraft.

1945 N.Y. Times 2 Jan. 1/6 There are three kinds of these lights we call ‘foofighters’—one is red balls of fire which appear off our wing tips and fly along with us; the second is a vertical row of three balls of fire which fly in front of us, and the third is a group of about fifteen lights which appear off in the distance‥and flicker on and off.

1969 A. Coppel Little Time for Laughter ii. 200 He could hear the wild chatter on the radio. The pilots were saying something about a ‘foo fighter’ and a ‘jet’.

1988 Yankee June 102/1 Both Allied and Axis pilots reported being paced by‥‘foo fighters’.

2002 R. M. Dolan UFOs & National Security State i. 6 The last significant foo fighter sighting occurred in the Pacific, and nearly brought down an American plane.

ziff, n.

Pronunciation:/zɪf/

Etymology:Origin unknown.

Austral. (and N.Z.) slang.

A beard.

1919 W. H. Downing Digger Dial. 54 Ziff, a beard.

1924 C. J. Dennis Rose of Spadgers 137 'E lobbed in on us sudden, ziff an' all.

1934 Bulletin(Sydney) 2 May 25/4 All the Druids in that show wore long, white nightgowns and ziffs down to where the tops of their trousers should have been.

1947 J. Morrison Sailors belong Ships 97 We all called him The Prophet. He had a long ziff.

1971 N.Z. Listener 19 Apr. 56/5 So up he goes and finds he knows one of them, the one with the ziff.

1981 G. Kelly Always Afternoon xii. 211 ‘Better get rid of that ziff,’ she said pointing to his embryonic beard.

Northern Soul, n.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌnɔːðn ˈsəʊl/, U.S. /ˌnɔrðərn ˈsoʊl/

Forms: also with lower-case initial(s).

Etymology: < northern adj. + soul n.; apparently coined by Dave Godin, a columnist for the magazine Blues & Soul (see quot. 1971 at sense 1).

Brit.

1. A British youth movement originating in the north of England in the early 1970s, centred around dance clubs and characterized by an enthusiasm for (esp. obscure) American soul music of the 1960s. Freq. attrib.

1971 D. Godin in Blues & Soul 10–23 Sept. 21/3 Maybe there are some who read this in the Southern part of Britain who find it hard to understand just why I rave so much about the Northern Soul scene.

1979 D. Hebdige Subculture ii. 25 Northern Soul‥brought its subterranean tradition of fast, jerky rhythms, solo dance styles and amphetamines.

1995 ‘C. Croker’ in Comet Gain Casino Classics (record sleeve-notes), Presenting their Floor-Shaker Revue, a Northern Soul tour of the nation's casinos.

2. Any of various types of American soul music associated with this movement, often characterized by an energetic tempo and strong brass orchestration; (later also) British music which imitates the sound of 1960s American soul.

1979 D. Hebdige Subculture v. 85 Existing youth cultural options (punks, Northern Soul enthusiasts, heavy metal rockers, football fans, mainstream pop, ‘respectable’, etc.).

1989 Independent (Nexis) 23 Jan. 14 There are two kinds of skinhead, Original Skins like me who're into ska and bluebeat and northern soul and scooters; and the Oi Skins.

1999 Muzik June 39/1 Iran's Most Wanted impressed us no end‥by coming up on the night and asking him to spin some Northern soul.

Whatever next?

Anyway, it made me think of this by the Glaswegian cartoonist Bud Neill -

I meant to ask this a while ago but forgot, so -

a few months ago, Steve Earle's latest offering landed on my doormat...the deluxe version with DVD. The DVD has a short film of interest to fans and....Code 24/96 High Resolution Audio Mix Of Entire Album.

John Hiatt's latest deluxe package came last week. On the DVD, again a film(I haven't seen it yet) and....*24/96 High Resolution Audio Mix Of Entire Album.

What's this? I don't really understand. A high resolution mix coming out of my TV speakers?? Do I need special equipment to play this? Why is the CD not a high resolution mix?

Both are on New West...

...help!

..."you learned to play guitar on this song?"

..."well, come on up!"

No, not everything in entertainment is stage managed.

Good old BBC!!

This is now up and running. Over 500 shows can be downloaded....and more to come I believe!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/dida

Does anyone know what's happened to DID?

Nothing last Sunday and nothing today??

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00yj1hr/My_Life_in_Five_Songs_Seri...

....and, of course for anyone else interested.

It's "My Life In 5 Songs" and the guest is Justin Currie.

Kinda like a poor man's version of Desert Island Discs.....it lasts about 30 minutes.

Tom Waits is to be inducted(induced?)into the rock 'n' roll hall of fame. Neil Young gets to do the honours. On the night, I wonder who'll be in awe of who?

I'm a big fan of both but apart from the Bridge School Benefit gigs, I can't think of any time they've collaborated/crossed paths.

Have either of them played the others songs ....in concert maybe?

I know there are some home recorders here.

I've just bought a Rode NT1A condenser microphone. I've just found out my son's mixer doesn't have a phantom power supply(which the mic needs).

A quick Google search gives plenty of results for phantom power supply units priced from about £17 - £120. My main problem is that I don't really know what I need. I don't want to buy cheap stuff and have to upgrade it further down the line and I expect the more expensive units have features way beyond anything I need.

I'll probably only ever need a max of 2 inputs...guitar and vocal, and that'll be in the future when I buy another mic.

If all that makes sense to anyone, I'd be grateful of any advice.

...but it's a pain in the arse.

This is just what fell last night.