Farishta 430

In the mid 1970's, a small American record label
called Shanachie brought out a great LP of the
Irish fiddle master James Morrison (1893-1947).
In their sleeve notes, Shanachie half apologized
for the fact that Morrison's recordings (all from
rare 78's recorded in the 1920's) were noticeably
noisier than their previous reissues of 78's by the
number one fiddler of the 20th century, Michael
Coleman. As far as I was concerned, there was no
need for Shanachie to apologize at all. I was used
to listen to cylinder recordings of all the great
uilleann pipers that recorded around 1900 and
you had to listen through - and sometimes under -
a lot of "background noise" to decipher what the
pipers were actually playing and which techniques
they used. Headache weekends happily sacrified
for a better understanding of what Irish piping is
all about. I enjoyed the Shanachie LP of Morrison
immensely.
Why this story, here on a weblog dedicated to the
beauty of ladies in glasses? Simply because some of
these portraits of Farishta in "the big guns of my
collection" are not 100% sharp. They are the visual
equivalent of the audio story about Morrison.
One advantage of 99% clear portraits is that they
leave the remaining 1% to the brain and the mood
of the viewer....