Well…watching a special on Eric Clapton and saw him doing “I Shot the Sheriff”….and in the background, there’s a Hammond B-3…now, I think I may have used him before, but not as a solo…so this counts…add another one to the B-3 count…..
Category Archives: Misc
Find the cost of freedom…
Well…yeah, you’d think that this one would be a heavy essay on freedom and the cost to maintain it…nope, it about the song “find the cost of freedom” by CSNY on their live album “Four Way Street”….every time I hear someone play Taps on tv, Find the Cost of Freedom comes into my head…not sure how that association came to be but it happened last night…enough that I had to get my mp-3 player out and listen to the song….still takes my breath away…only two verses that are identical but every time I hear it I get chills…and the rest of the album is not bad, either….
Why is this?
Well….since I have time…I sit here thinking a lot and a really weird thought came to me…maybe it’s more like an observation….when was the last time you saw a bicycle ad on tv? You see ads for everything else…and many things you don’t want to see…but why is it that they don’t advertise bicycles? I mean, they sell millions of them every year but they still use the direct sales method that has been abandoned by every other industry as being too labor intensive…why aren’t the manufacturers trying to take market share away from their competitors? That’s done even in soft drinks and chips where the item profit is much lower…so I just don’t understand….can they sell all they can build without advertising? That could explain it but why wouldn’t they want to try to grow their market share or their sales? Not sure what to say but it was just a thought….
Old stuff….
Well…out on the bike today I cam to the realization that I am surrounded by old stuff…my life is entirely made up of old stuff….my car is 23 years old….I have a stereo that I bought in 1974…my newest pair of jeans is over 15 years old…..my road bike is from 1971…the gloves I wore to keep my hands warm on the bike today are from 1980….I wonder what that means? Is it that I’m cheap? Is it that I don’t like change too much? I’m not sure about any of that but I do know that over my entire life of owning cars, there have been very few of them that were not used up completely…that went straight from me using them to the junkyard. I guess it’s more that I just have never felt the need to have the latest and newest thing….I’m okay with that, too….I did buy new knives a few weeks back…but they were only $3.99 for three of them…I wonder what that says? Not much I’m afraid….
Comfort music?
Well…you hear people talk all the time about comfort food…that food from your childhood that you still eat and that makes you feel good when you do…like mac and cheese and and tomato soup…but, on the bike today, a new idea popped into my head…is there comfort music? I think so…every time I need a lift or some easy music on the ride, I always turn to my Joe Walsh playlist with songs like “the ashes the rain and I”, “Live my life again”, or the turkey song and the smile comes back and the troubles seem less than they were. I wonder if anyone else feels that way? Hmmmm….
Another one for the B-3 count…
Well…just watching the national anthem being sung by Aretha Franklin at the Lions game and her accompanist is playing a B-3…and it even has the Leslie speaker…..so add another one to the B-3 count…
Westworld and Humans….
Well…still staying away from politics for a while so I need new things to talk about…so I guess I’ll talk about a couple of shows that I have been watching lately, Westworld and Humans….I find it odd that two shows with basically the same premise: what it is to be human…are on at the same time. I guess that most stories have been told already so maybe that is why these are repeaters….in both series, the artificial humans are going through the same process of self awareness and the questions are asked of what is it to be human…and what rights they have, along with the idea of what responsibilities do humans have to them once they become sentient…or do they have any? It is an interesting concept and it is worlds away from the idea from the 1973 Westworld movie where the robots basically went crazy and started killing everyone at the amusement park where they were deployed…I wonder if that is going to happen in Westworld the tv show? I know in Humans, the artificial humans have started to defend themselves from arbitrary death that seems to be only a moment away and that is another interesting concept…do they have the right to do that? I’ve always liked thought provoking stories whether they are in books, in films, or on tv….at least it gives me something other than politics to talk about….
This…
“The roof is leaking and the wind is howling…the kids are crying since the sheets are so cold…woke this morning and my hands were frozen…tried to fix the fire but the damn things’s too old….but me, I’m getting stronger by the minute….”
Lee Michaels….
Well…no, Lee is not dead…let’s get that out of the way right off the bat….but, there was good news that I read yesterday that I wanted to relay….after the wreckage of the election, music has been the one thing saving my sanity. Yesterday, while just looking for some videos of Lee on youtube…I came across an article that said that Lee has regained the rights to all of his catalog from his record company in settlement of a lawsuit… and the even better news is that he is remastering them and is going to release them on cd and in digital for the first time…..now, you’ve heard me talk about Lee and how important he was to me and many others when he was hot in the 70’s…but that didn’t translate into the present since none of his stuff was on Pandora or Spotify or any of the other streaming services….if you want to know why I still like the guy, just go out to youtube and search for “Stormy Monday” and listen to it….and, when you are doing that, just remember that there are only two guys playing on the track…Lee on the Hammond B-3 and playing bass with his feet, and Frosty on drums…I still get chills when I hear him scream in the break….
I’m done with The Walking Dead…
Well…I have been stewing on this one for the entire week after the season opening episode last Sunday….it was the most sickening and stupid tv that I have ever seen…where the hubris and arrogance of the show runners destroyed what was one of the better shows on the air. What was the purpose of killing off two of the main characters and then destroying and humiliating another one? It didn’t move the story forward and it completely wrecked the world of the Dead family that has been constructed over the past 6 years…a family who at times did lose members but you knew they would go forward and would continue to survive….now the show runners have moved the show to a darker place where humans are much more dangerous than the walkers and there is nothing that the family can do about it. This new version of TWD is not a show that I want to spend time with anymore…this 6 year fan is over the show that has devolved into nothing more that a gore fest that makes my skin crawl…maybe that is what those folks want? But, it’s not for me….and many others…maybe it just needs to die….