I have a 1/2-baked theory about a Van Halen song.

When It’s Love opens with Eddie on synth and Alex tapping drumsticks w/ nearly every note. The combination adds a mechanical sound to the synth, like the tapping is part of the synth keys themselves. (1/)
My theory: Eddie was using Alex to mimic the key clicks that accompanied older keyboards. For ex., early Hammond organs clicked this way, and though it was a defect, some musicians liked the sound and later organs included a feature to replicate it. (/2) dairiki.org/HammondWiki/Ke…
Less likely, but more interesting: Eddie—a classically trained musician who named his son Wolfgang—was trying to create an exaggerated version of the click that harpsichords made, due to the wood jacks that moved inside of them.

If either of those theories is right,... (3/)
...I love that Eddie (with Alex’s help) went so far out of his way to reproduce an outdated sound to give his very modern, very slick synth-based power ballad some extra texture.

Thank you for coming to my Ed talk.

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More from @cjscalia

13 Sep
The Maytals 'Monkey Man' (official audio) #RIPToots
The Specials, Monkey Man
Toots, Pressure Drop
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12 Sep
When people talk about SNL, they don’t talk enough about band leader GE Smith, who spent much of the 80s and early 90s playing bodacious guitar and making ridiculous faces. This performance with Eddie Van Halen is a catalogue of 80s expressive excess. 1/
nbc.com/saturday-night… ImageImageImageImage
Look at how much fun they’re having! Look at how much they’re amazing each other! 2/ ImageImageImage
The episode was hosted by Valerie Bertinelli, Eddie’s wife, so naturally Eddie put on some of his best guitar-god faces. 🎸 🎸 🎸 / ImageImageImageImage
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4 Sep
I have to disagree with @TimAlberta here. When I think critically about how Goldberg describes his sources, they smell fishy. He’s often vague about what knowledge they have, or the connection between that knowledge and what they say. For example,... Image
Sometimes Goldberg says things like his sources “have knowledge of Trump’s views.” Which could cover someone in the administration, sure; it could also mean anyone in the press pool, or anyone who watches the news. 2/ Image
Here, Goldberg does *not* say that these knowledgeable people heard Trump say these things about GWB. It could easily mean that they know his views but someone told them he said this. Such phrasing from an experienced journalist is way too imprecise for me to trust. 3/ Image
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30 Aug
You know how singers will occasionally say things like, "I think you know what I'm talkin' about" after a line? It's a simple way to both vamp b/t lines and to establish a connection between the singer and listener. In one song, Donny Hathaway does the opposite...
In "Thank You Master", he sings:

"I just gotta say much obliged to you, Master'cause the walls of my room was not the walls of my grave  *My bed was not my cooling board (y'all don't know what I'm talkin' 'bout)*."

He was right—so I looked it up.
I thought it might be a Bible verse (b/c the next line refers to winding sheets), but it's not: it's a common phrase from African-American prayers and from the blues. (A cooling board is a board is a platform on which a dead body is placed before it's buried.) ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
23 Aug
One of the many frustrating aspects of French's argument is that even as he spends paragraphs discussing last term's case striking down a Louisiana statute regulating abortions, he suggests that overturning Roe is the only way SCOTUS could affect abortion law. 1/
That permits him to say that because only because 1 justice is on the record vs Roe, there’s no hope in overturning it. But as he says, the case under discussion *wasn't about overturning Roe* and came down to a bad opinion from Roberts (who reversed himself from ~2 yrs ago). 2/
In short, it's not all about Roe; other cases would impose modest restrictions on abortion, & it doesn’t take 4 new justices to make a difference on those. (And that’s just the Supreme Court—French doesn’t even mention the president’s power to appoint lower-court judges.) 3/
Read 5 tweets
6 May
From June '86-July '87, Eric Davis hit 47 HRs, batted .308, and stole 98 bases. (Not to mention his regular contributions to the highlight reel in CF.) "There was nobody else like him...at the time. There's been nobody like him since." - @dschoenfield
espn.com/video/clip?id=…
Speaking of his fielding: here he is stealing two homers from Jack Clark.
Here's a great ESPN feature about him that same season.
Read 4 tweets

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