I started thinking about the future, and what role CDs will play in their now imminent demise from mass consumption. I still buy CDs over digital music files because I’m a collector and prefer something physical to represent my purchase. All the plastic of jewel cases and discs concerns me; it’s the paper I care for. In the alternative (digital music), I don’t like buying only compressed audio. Even though I only play a CD once (to rip it to a compressed format), I want to be in control of that compression process, or at least have the option.

It’s time for a new format that acknowledges the new ways we consume and play music, as well as still providing a physical item to display the artwork, notes and take pride of place on the shelf. Technically, the format should be future-proof (as future-proof anything can be), allowing for future advances in file formats and audio specs. The format should best everything CD brings to the table.

My ideal music format is a hard cover paper case, part-digipak, part-LP cover. Larger than a CD at around 6 inches square, the cover is big enough to reveal detailed artwork and allow for a better layout of liner notes than possible with the small CD booklets. Contained within is a small casing which holds a USB flash drive, about the size of a microSD card but with a flat USB plug (without the usual metal surround, like this). This drive contains the uncompressed (or losslessly compressed) audio masters at a resolution higher than audio CDs can afford (96kHz, 24bit, 2+ channels). The drive would also contain a well compressed version in MP3 or AAC at around 256kbps, perfect for most people’s portable use. Finally, the drive would contain metadata to enable the album to play the appropriate format play when plugged into an audio device (like a home stereo, television etc.).

This would be the best of both worlds; the convenience of digital in a format that allows music consumers access to the highest quality, as well as retaining the tangible item which is great for collectors like me. With flash drives at near negligible pricing (although not quite as negligible as CDs yet), I think it’s time to do away with the technologically limited compact discs.

Universal Studios

Getting to Universal Studios by public transport was a cinch.You need to get on the Red Line train. If you’re staying up near Hollywood Boulevard this won’t be a problem as you can get on at one of the stops along Hollywood Boulevard and it will only be a few stops to Universal City (towards North Hollywood). Instead, we stayed near The Grove and Beverly Boulevard, and caught the #14 bus over to Vermont/Beverly to hop on the red line train. We walked up from Beverly Boulevard to Hollywood Boulevard once, but it was uphill and pretty brutal in the sun.

At Universal City you’ll emerge from the train station and diagonally across the road (where the Universal Studios signage is) is the waiting area for the Universal Studios tram. This tram will take you up the for a couple of minutes and drop you off at Universal Studios.

Universal Studios was the easiest attraction to get to via public transport, and loads of people were doing it.

Warner Bros. Studios

We signed up for the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Burbank. It’s a great experience being on the working studios, quite different from a day at Universal Studios. To get there we again relied on the Red Line train.

Make your way to the nearest Red Line station and head towards North Hollywood, disembarking at the Universal City stop. To the left of the Universal Hollywood Drive is the Lankershim/Universal Hollywood bus stop where you will catch the #155 bus. This trip takes about 8 – 13 minutes (this trip on Trip Planner), and you’ll get off at the Riverside Drive/Hollywood Way stop. From there it’s about a 5-10 minute walk to the Avon St building where the Studio Tours commence. You can catch the same trip in reverse at the end of your tour.

If you get yourself a tap card and use daily passes, this whole journey can be made

Disneyland and California Adventure

Now here’s the challenge. The first day we went to Disneyland we used one of the local tour operators. The service wasn’t great (we were almost an hour late to depart) and the scheduled return meant that we had to miss the evening events in Disneyland. We also had to endure the back of the minivan whilst almost every other passenger was off-loaded at their hotel.

Be warned that getting to Disneyland from Hollywood is not without effort, but it’s pretty cheap and if you’ve got the time, not all that unpleasant. Here’s how:

Again the red line train is your friend. Make your way to the nearest red line station and head towards Union Station, which is where you’ll disembark. The next leg of the journey is on the Amtrak, specifically the Pacific Surfliner route towards San Diego. You’ll more than likely want to get off at Fullerton station, not Anaheim. It’s a station earlier (so it’s cheaper) and apparently better serviced by buses. This journey is just short of 30 minutes, and was a pleasure due to the huge comfortable seats, free wifi and the joy of above land train travel. Be warned that the ticketing is more like a flight than a usual service train, so you’ll need to allow time to get your ticket and board. It should only cost around $11 each way per person, but you’ll need to be across the times to ensure you have a way of getting home.

Once you arrive at Fullerton station, make your way to the bus stops right outside the station and catch the next #43 bus heading south along S Harbor Boulevard. This will take 17-25 minutes and drop you off at the Disneyland employees’ entrance. You’ll likely be on the bus with people in Disneyland uniforms, so you can just get off where they do (though it’s fairly clear when you see it due to all the Disneyland buses). It’s called the employees’ entrance, but it’s definitely open to the public as it’s a standard bus route stop.

Being the closing day, we decided to get some rush tickets to see…

On A Clear Day You Can See Forever

Without much love from the critics or audience, this heavily reworked (“re-imagined”) revival added reincarnation to the plot which featured Harry Connick, Jr. as a widower psychiatrist who treats a young “ineffectual” gay man (David Turner) who happens to turn into the doctors new love interest, an up-and-coming jazz singer (Jesse Meuller), whilst under hypnosis. It’s unintentionally creepy, but at least they know it; Connick, Jr. addresses the audience at the top of Act II to warn, “it gets much worse.”  If the plot doesn’t give you a headache, the pyschadelic set likely will if you’re sitting anywhere other than the boxes (as we were).

For all the mess made in the script department, this reworking includes some remarkable orchestrations (by Doug Besterman), and the appropriation of a number of Burton Lane/Alan Jay Lerner songs from film. The highlight is clearly Meuller’s jazzy “Every Night at Seven,” that everyone – including Connick, Jr. – appears to be enjoying a great deal. The rest of the performances, although on track, just don’t really get anywhere; the script doesn’t give them enough coal to get up the hill.

In a season in which in the fastest closing shows are getting recordings, it’s extremely disappointing that the best of On A Clear Day won’t be captured and given the best hope for fond recollection.

Read the playbill.

Disaster!

Following On A Clear Day, we had tickets to see Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick’s Disaster, a musical parody of disaster films of the ’70s the likes of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Full of disco hits, an ensemble of stock characters all get together on a floating casino about to be hit by not one, but two disasters! Operating on a tiny stage at the Triad on West 72nd street, the props and minimal set pieces are clever and used to the greatest comic value. Kathy Fitzgerald is a delight every time she’s on stage taking on the Shelley Winters-inspired ‘Shirley’. Importantly, the pacing never slows and before you know it, it’s dawn and the survivors are being winched to safety.

See the website.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert

It had been a long time since seeing the Sydney production that I didn’t really remember much of it except for Tony Sheldon’s wonderful performance as Bernadette. On Broadway, the accents were a little off the mark and some of the jokes adjusted for the wider audience (in Sydney the bus ran over Bindi Erwin rather than a Tellytubby), but Tony’s performance was still there in all its glory. Will Swenson pulled off the sentimental moments well and Nick Adams is exhaustingly energetic throughout. The show is still surprisingly effective even with the occasional intrusion of a very tenuously linked pop song. The new, shorter opening is also a much better start to the show; gone is the cityscape dance routine that involved chorus boys slapping their forearms in an ode to drug use on Kings Cross.

Read the playbill.

Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark

Viewed from the cautious distance of the top balcony, this show was honestly the most uninvolving mess I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately the show’s writers decided to revisit the genesis of Spiderman story yet again, this time partially including Arachne, a character which doesn’t seem to do much of anything (not in this revision, at least). The score by Bono and The Edge, drenched with guitars, is a wreck with truly nothing of note. At one particularly cringeworthy point, a U2 song plays in the background of a nightclub scene. The script is littered with awkward 21st century popular culture references in spite of the show clearly being set in the middle of the 20th century. The graphic style is occasionally striking (I suspect these moments may be attributed to the ejected Julie Taymor), but there is also some really awful stuff. The grotesque inflated-heads of the citizens and their harassing monsters (of which Spiderman does away with in a matter of swings) seem totally out of place. The Green Goblin’s video work is also unpleasantly obnoxious in comparison with the more effective line art of Peter Parker’s neighbourhood.

The main draw card is supposedly the flying, which was less than slick during the performance we saw. Mechanical aspects of the Spiderman’s flights broke the fluidity that should have been there. At times we were exposed to multiple stunt Spidermans as one didn’t quite land out of view, or one had to hop into view to get ready to launch. This was probably increased by the fact that we were in the top balcony, but I suspect the same was noticeable elsewhere. The show wasn’t stopped during our performance, but I’ve heard reports it still happens. I was left with the impression that the show has the aesthetic of one of those drawings where different people all draw a shoddy part on a piece of paper without seeing what anyone else had done.

Read the playbill.

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess

This show attracted quite a bit of attention due to massive cuts to the score, remarks made by the production’s collaborators and the prefixing of The Gershwins’ to the title, most notably commented upon by Stephen Sondheim. As most reviewers realised upon opening, whatever grief the artists went through in finding this new production was well worth it. This is a lean, slim Porgy and Bess, but is still exceptionally powerful. The cast, led by Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis are remarkable in finding the real, complex characters underneath the score. McDonald’s performance in particular is defining and should be seen by anyone who loves the art of acting.

The show also looks and sounds beautiful. One of the many, small joys in this show was the use of an acoustic piano in the pit. Thanks to PS Classics (one of my favourite record labels), this is one of my most eagerly awaiting CDs of the year.

Read the playbill.

Part two coming soon…

After installing the extension like a normal WordPress plugin, you can add your NAB Transact merchant details and process credit card payments directly through NAB. They accept Visa and Mastercard by default, and you can apply separately to have American Express, Diners Club and JCB approval attached to your account.

The extension integrates with the NAB Transact Direct Post mechanism meaning that the credit card details of customers don’t touch your site (they’re posted directly to NAB over an SSL encrypted connection). That means you get away with having to adhere to complex PCI compliance. You should, however, make sure you’ve got an SSL certificate on your site. It’s not a technical requirement, but NAB will more than likely insist on it and it’s just good business.

There’s another extension in the works to integrate with the popular SecurePay service. It’s complete but just awaiting approval. All going well it should be in next week’s release.

1. Seeing the city in the distance from the back of the cab. Once we got onto Manhattan Island, I was noticed how close everything was. It seemed like one hole in the wall shop grew out of another, sort of like a fungus that grows on a slightly bigger fungus.
2. Stepping out into Times Square at around 7.30pm on a Saturday night, at low temperatures that were new to me and feeling like every direction was against the stream.
3. After doing nothing but sit and eat for 24 hours, I ordered what I had hoped would be a small sandwich in a diner. It was not. That corned beef sandwich had roughly a week’s worth of meat on it, and nothing else. This would be the norm for the next month.

Some days you catch the Mr. Whippy van.

Some days you are in the Mr. Whippy van.