• Letzte gelbe Telefonzelle Deutschlands ist abgebaut
  Es geht ein Stück Kindheitsgeschichte … „Telefonieren ohne Münzen“ … „Konnte man das auch mal mit?“
• The UN revises down its population forecasts
  „The chance of a 15-year-old boy dying by the age of 50 is now higher in America than in Bangladesh.“ – und in Deutschland sieht’s nicht viel besser aus
• Digitales Kaiserslautern: Moderne Technik soll Stadtleben verbessern
  Als hätte die Stadt keine sinnvolleren Problemecken als die Bahnhofsbeleuchtung. Grüne Welle, anyone?
• You didn’t buy ‘your’ iTunes movies; Apple can delete them anytime
  Nutzungsrecht ist eben kein Besitz
• A Beginner’s Guide To The World Of The Witcher
  Wer die Welt (und die Spiele) noch nicht kennt, sollte dies schnell ändern. Das einzig Bedauerliche an The Witcher 3 ist, daß es trotz zweier grandioser Erweiterungen irgendwann zu Ende ist.

On September 27, 2019 earMusic will continue the series of Jon Lord vinyl re-releases with “Windows”, an album featuring a cooperation between Jon Lord and conductor and composer Eberhard Schoener. Schoener, who was also involved in progressive rock masterpieces like “The Turn of a Friendly Card” by The Alan Parsons Project may also be known for being the creator of the main theme for the TV series “Derrick“.

“Windows” was recorded live at the Herkulessaal in Munich on June 1st, 1974 as closing performance of the “Prix Jeunesse International” festival under the “Rock meets Classic” banner and was broadcasted by German TV station Bayerischer Rundfunk to a potential audience of 300 million people.

The album consists of two parts, the 18 minute piece “Continuo on B.A.C.H.” and the name-giving 32 minute “Window” (without “s”), both composed by Jon Lord and Eberhard Schoener.

“Continuo on B.A.C.H.” plays with the idea of continuing on “The Unfinished Fugue”, the last part of “The Art of Fugue” by Johann Sebastian Bach and features way more Jazz influences than focussing on Jon Lords hard rock background (as the two predecessors “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” and “Gemini Suite” did) using the orchestra more as soloists than using them in a more conventional rock meets classic way.

The first part of “Window”, called “1st Movement – Renga”, was composed by Eberhard Schoener and starts with a more blues-like feeling featuring the voice of David Converdale, later contrasted by two sproaons, who make this part hard to enjoy in its entirety.

As the name hints, the second part “2nd Movement – Gemini” recycles the vocal section from “Gemini Suite”, likely some sort of compromise because Jon Lord and Eberhard Schoener were running out of time. “Windows” was a contract work for the Bayerische Rundfunk to close the Prix Jeunesse International festival and had to be finished in time.

The closing “3rd Movement – Alla Marcia: Allegro”, composed by Jon Lord reminds of “Gemini Suite” but also includes moments which would later become parts of “Sarabande”, Jon Lords following solo work.

The band consited of Jon Lord on piano, organ and keyboards, his DEEP PURPLE bandmates David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, both on vocals and Glenn also on bass, Tony Ashton on vocals and keyboard and last but not least SPENCER DAVIS GROUP members Ray Fenwick on guitar and Pete York on drums. The classical section included the Munich Chamber Opera Orchestra conducted by Eberhard Schoener, featuring sopranos Erminia Santi and Sigune von Osten, Günther Salber on violin, and finally well known actor Klaus Löwitsch as narrator.

Sadly the recording doesn’t include leaves out the “Einleitungsfanfare zu Also Sprach Zaratusthra” by Richard Strauss and all narration parts by Klaus Löwitsch without explaination. This might have been because the narration was completely in German and its content hard to guess even for native German speakers. Thanks to Youtube, there is at least a low resolution video of the whole event available for everyone to watch.

While being published on LP in 1974, the first straight-to-CD-transfer of “Windows” was released 1987 by Line Records, followed by a 25th Remastered Anniversary Edition on Purple Records in 1999 and a reissue in 2010. The current vinyl reissue is based on the 2017 CD issue.

Parts of this text were originally published on April 20th, 2017 as “Jon Lord – Windows“

Solange ein Benuztername keinen Umlaut besitzt, kann man den Datensatz Daten mit dem Perl-Modul Net::LDAP recht einfach aus dem Active Directory auslesen:

use Net::LDAP;
$loginUser = Win32::LoginName();

$ldap = Net::LDAP->new($ldapServer) or die "$0";
$ldap->bind($ldapUser, $ldapPass});
$ldap_base = 'OU=Users';
$ldap_results = $ldap->search(base => $ldapBase, filter => "sAMAccountName=$loginUser");

if ($ldap_results->count) {
    # was ganz tolles mit dem Datensatz anstellen
}

Sofern aber ein Umlaut in dem Login-Namen steckt, so schlägt die Suche nach „benjamin.tröt“ fehl, obwohl ein entsprechender sAMAccountName im Active Directory vorhanden ist.

Eine einfache Lösung bietet der Beitrag „Windows logon behavior if your user name contains characters that have accents or other diacritical marks„, welcher – auf das Login bezogen – folgende Ausweichmöglichkeit skizziert:

If your user name in the Active Directory directory service contains one or more characters that have accents or other diacritical marks, you may find that you do not have to use the diacritical mark as you type your user name to log on to Windows. You can log on by using the simple form of the character or characters. For example, if your user name in Active Directory is jésush, you can type jesush in the User name box in the Log On to Windows dialog box to log on to Windows.

Interessanterweise funktioniert dies auch bei LDAP-Anfragen im Active Directory, so daß eine Suche nach dem sAMAccountName „benjamin.trot“ zum gewünschten Datensatz führt.

Stellt sich die Frage, was passiert, wenn tatsächlich ein Benjamin Trot neben seinem Kollegen Tröt Platz nimmt …

Ein Perl-Skript stellt sein UI als Website mit Hilfe des Moduls HTTP::Server::Simple zur Verfügung. Eigentlich sollte ein

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

im Header-Bereich ausreichen, um anzuzeigen, daß die Daten in UTF-8 kodiert sind. Firefox weigerte sich hartnäckig und benutze immer den Default „windows-1252“ zur Darstellung, was alle Umlaute bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verstümmelte.

Erst durch Mitsenden der Zeichenkodierung im Header

print $cgi->header(
	-nph => 1,
	-status => '200 OK',
	-type => 'text/html',
	-charset => 'UTF-8'
);

ließ sich Firefox überreden, die Seite auch tatsächlich als UTF-8 darzustellen.

Back in 1969, the lineup of DEEP PURPLE had seen a drastic change: Jon Lord, Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Paice split up with singer Rod Evans and bass player Nick Simper and hired the former EPISODE SIX musicians Ian Gillan and Roger Glover to complete the lineup.

One of the first shows to feature the new lineup was the live performance of Jon Lord’s „Concerto For Group and Orchestra“, an ambitious work to unite the different worlds of a rock band and a full orchestra which lay the foundation for Jon Lords career as composer / writer and solo artist. About a year later, the follow-up of the „Concerto“ faced the light of day during a live performance at the Royal Festival Hall, again featuring his DEEP PURPLE bandmates and conductor Malcolm Arnold.

While the „Concerto“ had its focus on band and orchestra as a whole, „Gemini Suite“ did focus on the different instruments, dedicating a track to guitar, piano, drums, vocals bass guitar and organ respectively. Also contrary to the „Concerto“, which took more than 40 years to be recorded in a studio, Jon Lord went to the studio in 1971 to record „Gemini Suite“ as a studio project. At that time, the rock career of DEEP PURPLE was in full flight and Ian Gillan and Ritchie Blackmore showed no interest in participating in the recording and were replaced by guitar player Albert Lee , multi talented Tony Ashton and singer Yvonne Elliman.

The 2019 vinyl release is based on the 2016 remaster by Rob Cass, using the original stereo mixes of the album. Luckily, the remaster doesn’t follow the popular trend of brick-walling every track and preserves the dynamics and overall feel of the original recording.

There’s still no explaination why the original artwork has been dropped and was replaced by completely new design, but the 2016 foreword by Roger Glover is also included on the inner sleeve.

Parts of this text were originally published on December 4th, 2016 as “Jon Lord – Gemini Suite“