View from the Blues Stage: Garage Band Evolution

Garageband Evolution -

Remember the garage band era? Summer nights in the 60s, man, you could walk around your neighborhood and always catch a garage band concertsomeone belting out "Hey Joe" (the Leaves version of course) or a scratchy vocal rendition of the Yardbirds "For your Love". We had a local concert area called "The Wild Goose" in a public park that had "Big Name Bands" like the Buckinghams, Baby Huey and the Babysitters, and the American Breed. Three bucks granted you the privilege of standing inside the fence, we always stood on the outsidethats were all the action was anyway.

I saw a California band called "The People" (I love you) do a mind-blowing rendition of "I am the Walrus". Very Cool. I saw a young 17-year-old Steve Windwood belting out "Gimme some Loving" with The Spencer Davis Group. Someone said that his mother had to sign the record contract because he was under 18.

Music was everywhere--the car, the beach, and in the garages of America. It was so much more important then. We all knew which songs were in the "Top Ten". We listened to the radio like it was an auditory horse race; watching and waiting for our favorite songs to move up into the lead. Everybody had the dream of getting discoveredmaybe even one day becoming a local hero and playing the Wild Goose who knows? In any event square one of that process was the workshop-stage known to our parents as the garage. I was lucky enough to have a garage band next door to me in Oak Lawn called "St. George and the Dragons". They helped create the whole garage band paradigm for me--the petty disputes over costumes, and where people would stand at seemed much more important than the music. Whatever they lacked in musical proficiency, they made up for in volume (when in doubt play louder). They named the band after the bass players guitara garage band specialthe brand? St. George of course. Never seen a St. George instrument since.

My brother got bitten by the garage band bug and bought a guitar. A two pickup Tiesco Del Ray. He had a plan to form a band with a few of his friends but it never even gelled into a single practice session. I guess the majority of garage band plans make it about this far. Meanwhile I latched onto the Del Raylife changed after that.

I of course played the garage circuit. My first band was called "The Elements of Tyme". I thought up that snazzy name. (Tyme with a Y for extra coolness--that's what we did in the 60's--the Byrds for example...). One of the guitarists in the band couldnt play a note, but had to be in because his mom was a best friend of the drummers mom and they laid down the law that the kid stayed in. Period. Garage bands always had plenty of guitar players. Three, four, or even five six-string players was not uncommon. We let one guy in because he had suede "Monkee Boots". Sometimes thats all you needed to be in.
We quit and joined bands on a daily basis, gaining and loosing vital concert equipment with each change, while continually striving to trade up both players and toys.

I bought my first acoustic a Norma Dreadnought just before I entered high school in 1968. An acoustic gave me the freedom from my tethered amp. I took that old jumbo box with me wherever I went. I hooked up with other acoustic players. One of the guys Ted had written a song called "Ive been on that train"

Ive been on that train

Searching for that girl

Searching for that girl that I will never know

And Im crying

Crying

Crying baby for you.

Its built upon alternating Cmaj7 and Fmaj7 chords and was hypnotically melodic.

Well if Ted can write songs we all could.

And thats what we did. We started writing and recording on a reel to reel tape machine that one of the guys had. Soon we had a list of probably 50 or more songs. We called the band Woodlind. I dont remember how we came up with the name, or why we chose it, but all throughout high school it was Woodlind. We played many small venues throughout those years, and had finally made it out of the garage.

By our senior year we decided to cut a double album of our best songs. We went to another (rich district) high school and got a small string section to orchestrate our songs. It was beautiful man. The songs became more technical and complex in nature. They also became more fun.

The 20th Century Cowboy

His harp in hand he plays the stars a tune

A drunken cowboy laughs beneath the moon,

says "whiskey's good to ease the pain"

been roaming 'round for days in a daze

he doesn't care...

We found a local studio: Pumpkin Studios in Palos. Run by local hero Gary Loizzo of the American Breed. We spent many months there laying down track after track on our double album. Pumpkin at that time only had four tracks, but Gary mixed the four down to a stereo left and right, and then we overlaid two more vocal tracks on the now empty tracks three and four. These again were mixed down into stereo left and right. Pumpkin was an excellent "Studio 101" course. We learned both the mechanics and protocols of music at an accelerated pace. Gary Loizzo was a great teacher, role model, and friend. Ted and I got jobs a the Harmony Guitar Factory at 44th and Pulaski to pay for the album. All day long I glued necks onto "Stella's" in order to pay for my work with "Norma"

By the time the album was finished, unfortunately so was the band. Squabbles over time, money, and artistic differences took its toll upon Woodlind. Ted and I did the last couple of songs as single person solo cuts. Both Woodlind and the album faded away.

I was on my own now; moved on newer things like college. There I met Bob. Bob is an incredibly talented guy, musically, and artistically. He's a phenomenal singer, a skilled craftsman, and an inventor (once he actually tried to build a working set of wings with the intention of flying--no kidding he made a working model with a two foot wingspan where the tips of the "feathers" spread out like a real birds wing--it was a work of art in itself).

Anyway Bob and I hit if off and began writing, playing, and eventually performing. He raised the bar for me on writing and performing. Other people became interested and once again an acoustical group began to form. I played the old Woodlind tape for everyone, and it was unanimous--we would once again play these songs--we would once again call ourselves Woodlind. Only these guys were top gun musicians. The music reached a wonderful level of precision and expression.

I got Ted back in and things were like old times, only much better. The band got Larger, it was now Bob , Ted , Joey Drada , Jim , Ken , myself, and Scott on drums. We began gigging fairly regularly. We got tighter and had a following. We even hired a sound technician--Jerry. There's nothing like a competent sound technician to present live material to an audience. If you don't have one, find one--sometimes it's a make or break decision.

Well it's a long story but for one reason or another (I'll just leave it at that). I moved downstate to Carbondale. Within months I lost contact with Woodlind. Bob told me that there had been many disputes after I left, and within a year, once again Woodlind decided to call it quits.

Jerry began a business plan to open a recording studio.
After a few years in Carbondale (read my novel) I returned to Chicago. Got a job with one of the original Woodlind members as a carpenter. Who would have known that after years I still had a cosmic link to Woodlind.
Jerry now had the business capitol to rent space, buy equipment, and build a studio. As fate would have it we bumped into each other just about the time he was ready to begin his venture. We talked and then cut a deal. I was to frame his studio in return for unlimited recording there. What a deal.

So we began. Jerry made me read several texts on the acoustic properties of sound so that I would understand why we were building the studio a certain way. Although technical reading for me at the time, I thoroughly enjoyed finding out about the mechanics of sound waves. I learned a great deal about the physics of space and sound.

We finished the studio (Jerry Called the Studio "Timbre Studios" now it's ARS Studios) and I stayed on as second engineer. For a while I lived in the studio. I learned signal routing, and signal processing. I learned to mike drums. We did all kinds of interesting things, like split the lead guitar into a "DI" box to the board, and have a shotgun mike setup 30 feet from the Lead amp. We would phase shift the two signals so that the delay in the air wouldn't muddy the sound. The result was a crisp (direct) sound that was fully developed (air). Very cool stuff. We mixed and measured sound--did you know that sometimes sound is only electricity until the first time you play it back?

We took the garage bands of South Side of Chicago and made 'em sound like they never had before--powerful, layered, equalized, logically panned, and most of all colored many wonderful sonic colors. I was learning right along with them. Each band had their own individual sonic equations to solve and a sound to "find". My job was to help them find that audio groove. I really loved doing that.

I loved the post session breakfasts. 5:20 am. Denny's. Sometimes chowing with the band while discussing the night's session.
The music industry has changed so much from those garage band days. It's big business today. Nobody will lay out any investment bread on a band until it's been thoroughly market tested. They say that Elvis was just starting out today he probably wouldn't make the cut. I don't know about that, but I know the days of the "One hit wonder" bands are pretty much over.

We live in an age of specialization. We have specialists handle everything. We drink gourmet coffee, and likewise are musical connoisseurs. The listening audience is much more sophisticated these days. They are not content to listen to a song on a two inch speaker at the beach--they want full fidelity, with auditing capabilities. It's all virtual--eighty percent of our music today is born and lives within a microprocessor of some sort. Music like all other information it really isn't music but rather a binary code of 0's and 1's. Just like this page you are reading!

Woodlind had it's 20 year reunion in the mid 1990's

Copyright (c) 2005 Gary Wesselhoff

Gary "g-man" Wesselhoff is an acoustic blues writer/performer woking the Chicago Metro area. You can contact him at: gman@gmanblues.com

Please Visit my site: http://www.gmanblues.com

Reuters - Homes in the United States have lost trillions of dollars in value during 2008, with nearly 11.7 million American households now owing more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Monday.

All About Runescape Rare Items

Yes it's sad but true. Personally I don't know why Jagex did this, but I'm sure they have their reasons.
I suppose the holiday drops and rare items show how long that someone has been playing, so you can show them off as an achievement. Or perhaps they don't like the fact that some people (Smart people) will hoard loads of holiday drops for themselves, buying them from anyone else that has them, or starting bogus accounts and collecting holiday drops, then when the holiday drop event is over and it's not longer possible to get them, the hoarder would charge a TON of money for each one. Since they're no longer available, people will pay big money for them.

Personally I don't think that it's a horrible thing, but it does present people with an opportunity to collect large amounts of gold and sell it on eBay for example, that's a bad thing as it's against the rules and encourages people to use auto miners etc to gain gold.

Okay, now that we've established a bit of background information on the rare items in runescape, it's time to get down to the specifics of a few of the more popular holiday drops.

The most commonly talked about runescape rare item is the party hat, sometimes called phats for short. They come is 6 different colours, red, yellow, blue, green, white and purple.
Pretty bad graphics by it's one of the rare items in runescape and presumably it's value will constantly increase.

Another rare item is the Santa hat. This was a Christmas holiday drop in 2002. Again, very rare and highly priced. Not sure about how much it costs compared with the party hats.

And finally, the last tradeable runescape rare item holiday drop that I'm going to talk about, is the Halloween masks. As far as I know there were only 3 colours and other than that, they looked exactly the same. It could have been picked up on Halloween 2002.

In 2003 and beyond, holiday drops were made to be no longer tradeable, and will never be tradeable for the forseeable future. So if you want holiday drops you'll have to either shell out massive sums of money for the old ones that are tradeable, or wait until the next holiday event to be able to get your own, for free of course :) I hope that has helped you gain a bit of insight into the world of rare items and holiday drops in runescape.

This article was brought to you by Runescape-Tip.com, if you want to learn more about runescape rare items and other tips, then check out http://www.runescape-tip.com You are free to publish this article on any website you wish as long as the links remain clickable and active and the resource box is fully intact.

AP - After going months without a full-time job, Daniel Ramirez has decided it's time to return to family in Mexico.

The Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board - Information to Get You Going

Wii Fit balance board is split into four quadrants, the thought process being that maintaining your balance means you're doing the movements correctly. A must have if you're considering playing Snowboarding or Skiing games.

The Balance Board has a weight limit of 136kg so if you want to use it and your already over that weight you'll have to start loosing weight right now. Once you're down to the weight limit and you start using the board, the weight will drop off you even more and you'll be as fit as a butchers dog.

To use it the user stands on the board and controls the on-screen action with their own movements.

This certainly is a clever device. It is pressure sensitive and detects shifts in balance in any direction so during play the balance board becomes a Snowboard, Ski's or a Tightrope. The middle seven poses are a little more intense, and all require the use of the Board in some fashion.

The strength exercises set a pressure range that you must match, and the aerobics use the Board (and the Wii-mote for jogging) to calculate your score. There are even Snowboarding and Skiiing exercise games involving Slalom Courses, amongst many other activities that are, incidentally aimed at the casual games market. You can use the Wii Balance Board for daily Wii Fit tests which are offered by the actual console to evaluate two key measures that everyone can track via progress charts.

The Wii Fit Balance Board is the latest phenomenon to hit the internet and it has again put the Wii games console at the top of the pile. Nintendo has said it has at least ten games in development that support the board and not just fitness games either. So who knows what's next eh?

John Milligan.

http://www.computer-games-store.co.uk

For your Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board please visit the above site's homepage and later why not scroll to the bottom to the superb Amazon Store which also stocks the Board.

An excellent resource for all those consoles and games you've ever wanted, including the Nintendo Wii, Wii Fit, ps3, xbox 360 and Ipod Nano 8GB and lots more. No searching all over the web for different bargains. There's loads of choice here with all the top sellers and best prices. You certainly will not be disappointed.

So, if you're hungry for that bargain console, game or accessory, then go to the website, have a good browse and enjoy your shopping experience.

Reuters - Whether it's a Tiffany diamond or a three-year-old lawnmower, more and more Americans from all social classes are pawning their possessions to make ends meet.

Don't Let Xbox 360 Red Lights Stop You From Gaming

After a hard day of work or school you settle in for a cool night of playing some pretty intense video games. You fire up your Xbox 360 then the unbelievable happens...The Xbox 360 red lights or "red ring of death" appears and your game playing is put on permanent hold. That's the bad news, now for some good news. About 90% of Xbox 360's that develop this problem can be easily fixed.

This is great news for you because you can save your ailing Xbox and have it up and running in no time at all. If you call Microsoft about this problem they won't tell you how to fix it yourself. They will try and talk you into sending it in for them to repair. If you listen to them it will cost you around $140 plus shipping and about 3 weeks turn around time to get it fixed. And the saddest part is they won't guarantee you that they can fix it.

When my system died on me about a year ago I did a lot of research to find a way to repair my Xbox 360 red lights problem without sending it back to Microsoft. I found an inexpensive guide to help me fix my dead console. This guide consists of an easy to follow guide and videos to help you get your Xbox up and running in about an hour.

If you decide to fix your system yourself you will find that it requires no special skills and no special tools. You may find that you need some parts to fix your Xbox. However, these parts can be easily found at your local hardware store. Once you view the videos and read the step by step manual, you won't believe how easy it is to fix your own Xbox 360.

If you can't wait 4 to 6 weeks to have your Xbox 360 repaired and if you don't want it to cost you at least $140 I have great news for you. I have discovered a great guide and video you can use to get you back to gaming in no time.

You can find out more about the Xbox 360 red lights problem here.

AP - The men around Lindsey Graham ignored his powerful political title - U.S. senator - and instead addressed him by rank - colonel.