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Play it live
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Category Archives: music
Go Commando!
Rare, weird, and awesome.
Hmmm…a little tough, this one. This amp, it’s something special. It has a sound all its own, and it’s a damn good one at that. It came out in the fifties, eight speakers, each being eight inches in diameter. Talk about wild! It opens up like a suitcase, with four speakers in each half. You can separate the halves and put them wherever you want with enough cord between them to place them at opposite ends of the stage. Craziness.
It sounds pretty fantabulous with that Astatic Velvet Voice microphone that’s sitting on top of it. Yep, real good. I can make that thing *honk* and positively *squall!!!!* But still, I don’t use it much, just not much at all. It should be getting used, or at least be getting passed around so that other people can get to play with it, enjoy it, and then send it on to someone else. I’ve had some fun with it. Now I have some very important interests and need money for other things, things that seem to be leading me in a pretty incredible direction. Might be time to let this go and pursue those other things. This may be holding me back more than it’s helping me. I had a friend come over and try this tonight, and he really liked it. He can take good care of it, and he appreciates it for what it is, a unique piece of sound equipment with a storied past.
Diagrammetry
So...what does that say exactly?
I spent quite a while trying to read this stupid schematic off the bottom of this amplifier through the stupidly small hole in the back of the cabinet this evening. I thought if I took a picture I could blow it up and read it. I’m still not sure this is going to work. I’m going to sell this obscure amp, so I need this info to put in the ad for it. Why did I buy this thing in the first place? Well, it’s a Kent amplifier, and I had found a Kent microphone at a swap meet, and I thought that it would be cool to have one of each. For the record, that was at least ten years ago, and I never once took this thing out of the house after I bought it. Time to move on!
Commando Tubes
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Ah, the legendary Danelectro Commando 88 – or part of it, anyway. This is a lesser known vintage amplifier, but really huge in harmonica circles. It has a reputation, part of which is that Chicago harmonica master Little Walter played one back in the day when he was making mind-blowing records with Chess up north and basically doing for harp what Hendrix did for guitar. I have one, which is kind of amazing. I got lucky and found it at a guitar show years ago. I honestly don’t play it that much…so…I dunno…it might be time to allow it to move on into some other player’s hands who will give it a good workout. Maybe.
Affects and Side Affects
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RAM chip, chord book. Totally related, right? Well they are, sort of. Here on the blog where we are all about creativity, it’s no surprise that both of these are linked to my creative growth. Well, that, and I ordered them both off the interwebz, if you need one more obscure way they’re related. I know the mail media link is a thrilling one, but let’s put that aside and look at the whole creative thing, since that’s pretty much why I write on here all the time.
The RAM I hope is going to be a huge help with my photo stuff. You’ve no doubt noticed that the photo posting has slowed until it seems as if it has stopped altogether. It has not, I assure you. I’ve still been taking photos (almost!) every day. I have all of them either on my hard drive or on my camera. However, processing all those photos gets ridiculously time consuming, particularly when I have over a hundred to go through and I want to switch back and forth among five or six of them and pick the best one. Right about the time I start doing that, the virtual memory in my lappy kicks on, and then everything…slows……..to……….a………….crawl. It can take me two hours just to pick through ten photos. Granted, I’m a perfectionist, but the slowosity of my hardware isn’t helping things any.
Enter my brother, who informs me that the whole slowness thing is caused by this virtual memory issue, and that if I got more RAM I could whip through dozens upon dozens of pictures as well as run iTunes, Word, and my web browser all at once and never have a hiccup. This sounds like more than a good deal to me, so I only kind of reluctantly shell out money I don’t really have to get this stuff which should perform what is really an invaluable function: that of making my creative efforts more easily accessible and enjoyable. This is pretty key stuff, as in the past I’ve hamstrung creative efforts by trying to get by with the minimum. Then I’ve been unhappy with the results, and then I’ve called the whole thing a failure. I’m pretty much done with working against myself these days, and I realize that my creative efforst are important enough and valuable enough that I actually DO deserve to spend money on them.
This sort of thing – purchasing the RAM – is the sort of side-effect that working toward a goal has. I didn’t set out to update my computer when I decided to take more pictures, it’s just something that has come with the territory. I didn’t set out to learn more about how my computer operates, but it happened. The same thing was the case with my outboard hard drive – just happened as a matter of course. It’s really interesting to see how all this stuff comes about when I pick up on something and go after it.
The same sort of thing has happened with my drawing stuff. I started with a handfull of pencils that a friend had given me. Now I have a whole box full that I’ve bought for myself. I also have a sketch book and some regular lead pencils for other types of drawing. I’ve been hanging out a lot more with a friend of mine, because she likes drawing. I’ve been noticing visual art more and taking a greater interest since I started drawing. There are some other projects in the works related to this subject, and I hope I’ll have some other developments to report on in the coming months. It looks like I’m going to learn matting and framing in the near future as well – not that I planned on that, it…just happened. I think there’s a trip to the art museum coming up as well related to “refilling the well” as the Artist’s Way puts it, and that will be an outgrowth of all this drawing stuff too.
The guitar chord book – well, that’s kind of obvious, now isn’t it? I…didn’t really plan on buying that, but they guy who is teaching me things, he said that’s the book he first used over forty years ago. I wanted to learn a few things, so I’m going to give this a shot. Working on guitar stuff has led me to listen to music differently and led to new conversations with new people. This interest was also responsible for my nephew getting a ukelele from me for his birthday this year, in a weird sort of related twist. The people who are being affected by my interests are not just me, which is a cool thing to note. (If my nephew ever ends up on Youtube singing Jason Mraz tunes, I’ll be sure to let you know.)
Now, off to work on some photos or guitar or whatever the heck else…
Everything’s better with reverb.
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Fender’s finest in the early sixties, a brown tolex model. I love the artistry in the lettering. It’s not just a simple block style. The words look like they are promising something pretty fantastic, and this unit delivered it. I like the lighting I got on this one too. Beats another photo of me driving to work, eh?
Hitting the Note
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Countdown with guitar
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Why, yes, I did stand in front of a nine-foot-long sparkly guitar all night long on New Year’s Eve, why do you ask?
Chicken Nuggets
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This scene is part of an extended song/beat poem/performance art piece known simply as “Chicken Nugget.” I wish I had the audio to go with it!
It’s a party!
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When you invite a bunch of cool musicians over to your house for a party, you end up with a wall of amazing gear like this! The evening sounded as fantastic as this photo is promising. It was great to be involved, and I appreciated being invited.