Blue J

I am, I’m getting bold…

So I haven’t even gotten to post the pics I was going to of the last instrument I was talking about (which I will, still)…but today I picked up my very first electric guitar. Gibson Les Paul Standard 50s reissue, gold top. The only amp I have is the Fender bass amp that I bought for my son, and I have no pedals at all. So I’ve got some more to do, haha.

The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner Last week I finished The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer. I’ve been reading a lot, while I was away.

I have never been there myself, but I definitely want to, at some point. More like 6-7 hours for me, but that’s still worth it, haha.

The Band- Stage Fright (50th Anniversary Edition)

This was the SB album that you turned me onto first, several years ago. Really good stuff.

It is! And thank you. It is the rarest guitar I own- fewer than 80 of them were ever made, and that was over a 20-year period from 1899-1918. I bought it from Robert Corwin, who is a music photographer of some renown (Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, etc, from several years at the Newport Folk Festival in the mid to late 1960s). He now lives close to Philadelphia. This is is his website: www.vintagemartin.com I’ll see if I can get some pictures together of before and after (and during) the repair of my guitar and post them here.

I finally got someone to fix the cracks and completely refurbish my 1907 Martin 1-30, which didn’t even have a bridge on it when I bought it. It sounds fantastic. So much volume and presence for a parlor guitar.

I’m doing okay, it’s good to be around, thanks…how are you doing, Mick??

Presto songs performed live always had more gusto, more punch to them. I agree with you about the studio album; it’s just painfully thin. But that being said, I have a wonderful soft spot for it, I love the album. Much the same for Roll the Bones, I really like it. All except for that last song. Awful awful. Nine songs, 43 minutes, would have been just fine. (But yes, I like the album overall, a lot!) I ❤️ the piccolo snare.

I’ve been on a huge Blue Note jag for the past couple of weeks: Art Blakey Moanin’ Caravan Buhaina’s Delight Drums Around the Corner Art Blakey!!!!! Jazz Messengers!!!!! Free For All Herbie Hancock Takin’ Off My Point of View Empyrean Isles Inventions and Dimensions Maiden Voyage Speak Like a Child Fat Albert Rotunda The Prisoner Hank Mobley Roll Call No Room for Squares Jackie McLean Consequences Jackknife Lee Morgan Lee Morgan Indeed! Here’s Lee Morgan City Lights Candy The Cooker Lee Way Sonic Boom Tom Cat The Sidewinder Cornbread The Rumproller Infinity The Procrastinator The Gigolo Caramba The Search for the New Land Live at the Lighthouse

People can be cold, and say lots of things online that they would never say to someone else in person. And then there are just plain old differences of opinion. I have an addictive personality, which takes various forms. And I’ve lost a larger-than-my-share number of friends and relatives (including two of my siblings) as a result of their own choices, or those of other people close to them. I learned to live with that and make peace with it, a long time ago. I can’t fault anyone else’s sensitivity to that kind of thing, I mean someone else who has had similar experience. We’re all different in how we react to things. But I agree with everyone here who’s saying don’t let one person, or even two people, spoil the whole community for you.

I was not aware that cassettes were making any kind of a comeback until you told me, Laura…lol :) Back in the early 2000s, so about 20 years ago now, I was heavy into transferring a bunch of my cassettes to CDs. I did that a bunch, and then I stopped, while I still had hundreds of cassettes I had not transferred yet. And I do still have quite a few of them. Lots of 90-minute tapes that had albums longer than 45 minutes, so some of the B-side would be taken up with it, and then use the rest of the B side with some filler, of something totally different. Nostalgia, indeed…and I guess that’s why I haven’t thrown them all out. A quick aside- my high school had its own FM radio station (like 50 watts or something, you know, like two miles away you could get very good reception- but still), and I was involved in it for my sophomore through senior year- my senior year I was the music director, actually. And I happen to still have a cassette that I recorded of one of my own on-air shifts, at that time (1990). I found that cassette among all my other things, and it was just bizarre, as an adult, to listen to 17 year-old me, on the radio. :lol:

I would love to see either one of those. Or, you know, both. I have a quick Hot Tuna story. I never have seen them live, so this is not about a show that I saw. But…back in the days when people traded live music back and forth, on blank audio CD’s- I had a list posted at a site that I was pretty active on, and I was talking to this guy who had shown some interest in some things, and one of them was a Hot Tuna show. It happened to be the only HT show on my list, and he had attended it- at Commack Arena on Long Island, September 11th, 1976. And it is a scorcher of a show; it’s four discs long, and they are chock full, I mean it is close to a five-hour performance. And the sound quality is incredible. This guy was asking me about all of that, and he couldn’t believe that I had this show, and that I said it sounded so good. Needless to say, he was interested in it…at the time of that conversation, though, he was leaving in three days to go to London to see Cream at the RAH (this was in 2005). But he really, really wanted it. So…I got his mailing address, burned the discs that night, and sent it to him by guaranteed overnight delivery. He had it in his possession the day before he flew out. I don’t think I ever heard from him again after that; we never properly ‘traded’ anything. But I was just stoked to be able to do that for him. Now I’m sitting here wondering if you might have been at that Tuna show too, custom!

Happy belated! (How is it that I always, always miss these on the days they occur?)

Charles Mingus- Blues and Roots

That was the very first thing I noticed when the site was up and running again.

Happy belated, mate. I disappear for just a couple of days, and look what I missed! Hope you had a great day, though.

Marc Ford- Live in Germany

So…I decided to upgrade to front row, VIP, going to meet them, and get a signed Epiphone guitar…among other swag. But getting to meet them, and thank them, and be front and be front row for the gig- that’s the stuff, right there. Hey, that's pretty cool! Will this be your first time meeting them? This will be my first time meeting Chris and Rich, yes. Actually the very last time I saw them before this was in 2009, and I met Sven Pipien (bass), Luther Dickinson (guitar) and Adam MacDougall (keys) after the show. But not the brothers. And yeah, I’ve never done anything like this. This will also be exactly my 50th time seeing them play live. My first was in August of 1992.

So…I decided to upgrade to front row, VIP, going to meet them, and get a signed Epiphone guitar…among other swag. But getting to meet them, and thank them, and be front and be front row for the gig- that’s the stuff, right there.

Led Zeppelin III

Your first time logging in after the shutdown will hang up a little as pages and images are getting cached. Plus, the board is archiving some old threads right now, so periodically we'll see a brief but major slowdown (maybe even a 404 error message) as it takes a handful threads off of the main database and moves them onto a different one. If you happen to log in when it's in the middle of that task, you'll see a slow loading time for a bit. I'm going to take the archiving process really slowly so we're not constantly seeing those slowdowns all day every day. Just came back on and it loaded up right away. Thanks for all the work to get things fixed. Yes, big thank you, 73, for doing all that you do.

Past couple of days: Everything But the Girl- Amplified Heart Art Blakey- Free For All John Coltrane- Ole Coltrane Herbie Hancock- Inventions and Dimensions Return to Forever- Light as a Feather Guided By Voices- Crystal Nuns Cathedral The Black Crowes- Live at Ferrocarril Oeste Stadium, Buenos Aires, Argentina- 25th January 1996

I only wish I could!