Well…here’s another one for the long running series where I note people who use the Hammond B-3 organ in their bands…and here’s another one…just watching Michael McDonald on AXS and, though he is not playing the B-3, one of the other people in his band is….so, another one for the B-3 count…..
Category Archives: Misc
RIP Gene Wilder….
Well…it always a sad day when one of the good guys dies…and today is no different with the passing of Gene Wilder, one of the funniest people that I have ever seen. After I saw him in Willie Wonka, I could not wait to see him in another role and he did not disappoint…what would Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Producers be without Gene’s unique talent? I will miss him but I am thankful that we will still have him on film…RIP Gene….
Another one for the (fake) B-3 count…
Well…was going to write about Trump again today but I haven’t had time to read about the latest ugliness so I thought I’d do this one first…was watching the show “Roadies” the other day and the fake band had a B-3 on stage…so, I wonder if this one counts or not…it was a real B-3 but a fake band….I guess I’ll count it anyway…
Another one for the B-3 count…
Well…watching the DNC convention and Lenny Kravitz is playing…his band has a B-3 on stage…so I get another one for the B-3 count….
A little music…
Well…have been thinking about this one for a bit and thought I’d get the thought down before it passed…I wonder if Geico knows what the ZZ Top song “LaGrange” that they use in their motorcycle ads is about? And, I wonder if they care…that it is about a little whorehouse in Texas? Just another instance of a corporation using music that sounds good without thinking what it is really about…just like GMC using “Emenince front” by the Who…weird…oh, just watching a small concert by Peter Framton on tv…he sure looks like he is having fun and appreciates that people are still coming out to see him…
This is bravery…
Well…just had to do a short one on an article I just read out on Kos…over the weekend, an Iraqi man recognized that a suicide bomber was trying to get into a shrine to detonate a suicide vest….this brave man, Najih Shaker Al- Baldawi hugged the suicide bomber and detained him while he set the vest off…killing Mr. Al-Baldawi and the murderer….but saving hundreds of lives….this is bravery….RIP….
Stairway to Heaven…
Well…do I have your attention after that title? Hope so…but this one is a little obscure but I wanted to do something a little different today…one of my favorite bands, Led Zeppelin, and it’s founders and last surviving members Page, Plant, and Jones, have been involved in a plagiarism lawsuit brought by the estate of the lead guitar player of a band called Spirit…who you may or not have heard of…who wrote a song called Taurus back in the early 70’s that had a few chord progressions that sound something like the intro to STH. I listened to it the other day and I did find a couple of notes that kind of sound like one part of STH but the rest of it is nothing like it…and today, the court in LA agreed that the parts that the plaintiffs said were stolen have existed in the public domain for hundreds of years and that Page and Plant didn’t steal them….so two years of a cloud over the guys has been cleared and STH has been shown to be an original work….with the climate of litigation these days, I am really surprised that the case was decided as it was…and I think it was decided correctly….
Another one for the B-3 count…
Well…back to do another one on my obsession with the Hammond B-3 organ and the bands that used it…was watching a concert with the original lineup of the Beach Boys the other day and there it was… a B-3 sitting on the side of the stage but this one was painted white which was quite weird but still easily recognizable…so, add another one to the B-3 count…
RIP Muhammad Ali…
Well…it seems like every week there is another great in our lives that passes away…yesterday, we lost Muhammad Ali at the age of 74 after a short illness…it is kind of weird when someone that has been there for you entire life goes….I remember the 1960 Olympics gold medal and the brashness of that young Cassius Clay…yeah, I’m that old….and I remember listening to his fights on the AM radio since, back then, they weren’t on TV until later when you could see some of them on Wide World of Sports…I also remember the draft resistance that now I find quite strange since Ali was 25 at the time and most draftees were in their late teens…but, that’s for another time….his work outside the ring was what made him so different from other fighters at the time and was even more significant that his boxing….and is what made him the real man that he was….he had a great life….RIP Ali…
Strange music…
Well…as you can see, politics haven’t really been too interesting to me lately…after all, how do you comment on the absurdism that is the repub race…so, I think I’ll do one on some music I heard on the bike this morning. On the ride today, “Sunshine of my Love” by Cream came on and, since I was at my last water stop in the park, I could really listen to it without wind noise or any other distractions…well..it is the strangest engineering I have ever heard in a song….whoever did the recording put the drums in the right ear, the guitar in the left, and Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton singing in the middle….really a departure from the normal way that songs sound….I was going to do a similar one on how the drums sound on “Nantucket Sleighride” by Mountain…where they use the entire sonic range from ear to ear for the drums and then lay the rest of the music on top of it so it sounds like you are really at a live concert…and that contrasts to “White Room” by Cream where the drums sound like you are sitting a couple of feet in front of the kit….weird…or not weird but interesting how sound can be changed so your brain interprets it differently…yeah, okay….probably only interesting to me….