BOO!!!

Okay.....okay.....okay..... just a little pinprick.
There'll be no more..........

.......... but you may feel a little S+I+C+K!!!!!

Celebration Day

{A-la Ben Stein} Woooooowwwwww.........

The Tenth Anniversary of my tenure as a fitful blogger just had to coincide with a genuinely historical event - am I a lucky stiff, or what?

I'll deal with said historical even presently.  We kick things off with my debut blog, which appeared on MySpace on this date a decade previous.  As a total greenhorn, I quite naturally didn't see the full potential of what blogging had to offer for perhaps six months or so.  I simply spent that time throwing random stuff at the walls, just to see what would stick.  I soon found out two things - readers of my earliest efforts dug my overall writing style; and politics was a good avenue to instigate some legitimate back-and-forth, so long as nobody got personal / nasty.  I welcomed any and all commentary / criticism, again so long as it was not personal or nasty.

Thus was born my first point of pride as a blogger; from that original MySpace blog until this very post, there have only been TWO incidents that went to flame, out of perhaps 550-625 blogs over ten years.  All credit goes to my readers - the respect that they consistently show to my humble ramblings is the real reason the incidents of flame are a rare occurrence.  And as such, I always try to bring home the blogging-bacon in creative ways, even if I'm dealing with "hot button" subject material.

In time, I gradually became aware of the underlying potential of blogging as a powerful networking tool, and quickly set up links between all my networking nodes and the blog, which did wonders for both my blog readership, and various other endeavours {like my music} I had going at the time.  This was way cool as far as it went, but I got the biggest kick out of the simple fact that I could keep my writing chops sharp {as the tagline here has it}, and really turn my brain inside-out any time the mood struck.  And rest assured that "the mood" struck pretty damn frequently in those days.

At the zenith, I had no less than six blogs going simultaneously - forcing me to become an adept "plate spinner," until I got tired enough to just use MySpace as the nexus, with the others more or less becoming satellite "mirrors."  It didn't hurt either my readership, or the myriad other threads tied into my blogoshpere.  Good thing too, 'cos I came perilously close to total writer's burnout more than a few times, before things got streamlined.  The last thing I wanted was to end up like good ol' Uncle Ernie {"Tommy" pun intentional} Hemmingway, drowning his sorrows by deep-throating tequila worms 20 out of every 24 hours. 

I resolutely run the gamut, in terms of subject matter -  everything from food to cars, celebrities to obituaries; hobbies to music; religion to yes, politics; hell, I've even posted several humorous and/or totally whimsical installments, which always go down well {don't as me why, though}.  In short, I've covered a LOT of subject matter on these humble pages o' mine.  And again, gauging by the feedback I've received, I have to say that my modest efforts have had a positive impact about 97% of the time.  That's the most wonderful Gift I've ever had as a writer, bar none.  Thank you all for facilitating said Gift, from the bottom of me heart, Boys and Girls.  I couldn't have earned such a precious reward without each and every one of you lot supporting this mess so staunchly.

Which is a perfect segue to the historical event I mentioned in the first paragraph.  The start of my 11th year as a blogger sees me as a tiny part of The Donald's Presidential campaign - and totally DAZZLED by the HUGE coup he's pulled off.  Forget all about all of the spin and rhetoric the lame-stream media is trying mightily to induce and govern.  I can guarantee you virtually none of the pundits of any stripe even know just how massive a true masterstroke DJT's debate performance last evening really was.  In a nutshell, my Main Man The Donald stole the lame-stream media's thunder a million times over - by quietly arranging a LIVE-FEED podcast on Facebook!!

Better still, the podcast was 100% free of commentary / instant analysis and all the other bullshit that are the l-sm's stock-in-trade.  Quite simply, The Donald took his case straight to the public - pure and undistilled - and thoroughly bitch-slapped both the Hildebeast AND the lame-stream media in one fell swoop.  What's more, DJT was wearing stainless steel gauntlets, whilst doing the bitch-slapping.  While I don't have any figures handy, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that DJT's gambit absolutely buried the l-sm, in terms of overall viewership.  

And here's the brilliant kicker - any type of media viewership generates a certain amount of advertising revenue, either directly or indirectly.  Zuckerberg may loathe The Donald's politics, but he's absolutely nobody's fool when it comes down to quickly glomming on to a potential online revenue bonanza, offered up on a silver platter like this.  No sir - ol' Snarky-Mark & The Dumbbell Bunch damn well know which side their bread's buttered on, and likely will discretely continue to curry favor with DJT going forward, even if they have to hold their noses, and gag themselves with {plastic} spoons whilst doing so!!

Item:  about 30-45 minutes into the debate, the Facebook feed developed a minor glitch, and seized up for perhaps 45 seconds or so.  When the feed was restored, there was a rather humorous byproduct of the glitch - the rest of the podcast featured a steady marquee-stream of Facebook emoticons.  I might be totally wrong in thinking that both the glitch and the byproduct were evidence of an attempted hack, but I'm basing my speculation on personal observation.  The truth could be the polar opposite of my surmise here; perhaps we'll have the gist within a week or so.  Circumstantially at least, I'm betting on my surmise.

And there you have it, my Good Friends.  My second decade as a humble blogger ought to be even more of a hoot than the first, if last night was any indication.  As always, time will tell {about the circus and the wishing well}.  

To close things on a high note, let me go on record by stating that I can't decide if'n da Hildebeast looked more like Boss Hogg, or the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man, last night!!!  

What say you?

Next several rounds of Colortini's are on me, my Good Friends.  Please feel free to indulge deeply.  

More shortly.

'Twas Fifty Years Ago Yesterday......

..........that the world first {ahem!!} experienced the devastatingly powerful Force of Nature that was my main Man James Marshall Hendrix.

To say he "revolutionized" rock music is a rather gross understatement, at least from my personal view as a 35-year scholar of all things Jimi.  No sir - a more correct and very strong case can be made for the notion that JMH revolutionized popular music as a whole, and then spread it all around the globe.  I needn't point out that his legacy today is nearly as powerful as his work was whilst he was alive, right up until the moment of his tragic passing.

Be that as it may, this posting is a perfect vehicle for me to illustrate Jimi's perpetual power with both general and personal instances.

First up is this succulent morsel:

"Foxey Lady" is of course another one of Jimi's signatures, close kin to "Purple Haze" I analyzed a while back, and equally familiar to several generation's worth of people across the globe.  However, this particular version bears much closer scrutiny.  As you can clearly see / hear  during the first thirty seconds, this Foxy Lady is chock-full of Jimi's inimitable musical mannerisms.  Too chock-full, as it turned out.

Right at the 33 second mark, Jimi seems to have gotten himself into a bit of onstage trouble; the myriad distortions and physical manipulations he rammed through his axe up to this point, have rendered the white Fender a wee bit out of tune.  True-blue trouper that the Lad was, he promptly seized an opportunity virtually no one else was even aware of.  As Mitch and Noel effortlessly maintain the furious groove, Jimi first lapses into a single-chord drone, and quickly tunes up on the fly, within his ongoing drone.  The initial effect is that Jimi simply muffed a turnaround, and was patiently waiting to rejoin the current in proper fashion when he could - the general public being more or less ignorant of  the true root of tuning issues, than most musicians would be.

Jimi drones on for ten seconds, then effortlessly rejoins Mitch and Noel with an absolutely mind-shredding lick at the 43-45 second mark that literally screams "I MEANT to do all that!"  I had to listen to it perhaps 75 times in succession initially, just to grasp the sheer audacity of what Jimi had done, it was SO subtly potent.  Here, I should point out one small but crucial fact.  This video is the "officially sanctioned"  {by Jimi's Estate} document.  The complete unedited video - which SHOWS Jimi working his special magic described above start-to-finish - can be seen in the "Hear My Train A Comin'" DVD from 2013.  Which has been one of my most prized possessions for the last 3 years.

There's even more, though.  Jimi's delectable musical "cake" here is made even more so by Noel and Mitch, who quite simply kick just as much ass - if not slightly more than - their wildly-talented band mate and frontman.  A virtuoso ain't worthy of the title at all, unless they surround themselves with compatriots of similar caliber, and Noel and Mitch definitely fill their roles brilliantly, in this instance.

From the sublime to the ridiculous only takes one {mis}step; which is a perfect segue to the personal aspects.  I've long since eschewed any need to explain why I love the man and his work so much, even though we play vastly different instruments.  I've spent as much time researching and studying his basic biography as I have researching and studying his music.  Ergo, it is entirely proper and fitting to insert the next illustration:

This anomaly finds Yours Humbly surrounded by no less than thee, count 'em THREE musicians of quite high-caliber, indeed.  Like Jimi, I can't really do my thing properly without a measure of help from the outside.   My band mates here give me all the brilliant inspiration I can handle, and then some!  True to Jimi's philosophy, it's all about living in the moment - the past and future simply don't exist.  Carpe diem, in other words.

Wellsir, we "carpe-d" and "diem-ed" until the proverbial cows flew home to roost {sic}.  And had a right jolly old time of it to boot, IIRC.  If nothing else, like JMH, we took the music WAY beyond the point where we first found it, which has probably all but guaranteed my fate of meeting my doom at the brain-chomping teeth of a certain Muddy-Zombie I've heard whispered rumors about........

Am I worried?

HELL to the no, Cats and Kitties - in the end, I'm still locked within Jimi's overall mindset.  The story of life is Hello and Goodbye, until we meet again.

Diggez-vous?  

Two Johns, No Waiting

Rocktober 9 always leaves me with a touch of the melancholy, due to the loss of the aforementioned two Johns - aka Entwistle & Lennon, to be specific.  Both were born on this date, four years apart.  And both left us way, WAY too early.

Their biographies are well known, and readily available; my intent here is to relate how both impacted my life.  Winston Legthigh is a legitimate enigma, as far as I'm concerned.  No, I don't deny how big and influential the Beatles were {and still are}, nor John's large influence within the group.  Nor his talent, wit, etc.  I do have sour tastes regarding his politics and worldview; both being textbook cases of one believing 100% in their own PR, IMHO.  But if you overlay the man's basic wit, and especially his brilliant sense of humor on top of the negatives, well, let's just say I can almost tolerate the sour stuff.

I love to see early Beatles interviews, pre-Ed Sullivan.  John's humor was incredible, even before he really started "playing the game" with interviewers.  There's a cheeky innocence going on that's absolutely priceless, and it's evident up until February 1964 - after that, it vanished - or more likely, "grew up."  The only time post-2/64 there was more than a hint of it was his December 1968 appearance in the stillborn Strolling Bones' Rock & Roll Circus - but even that bit was ultimately ruined the instant Yoko opened her big fat yap!!  

Big Johnny Twinkle, on the other hand, also had a very, VERY special sense of humor that I glommed on to as soon as I was old enough to understand what the hell it was all about.  It also helped that he was on the second record album my brother and I ever had, namely Who's Next.  I perfectly knew the lyrics to "My Wife" long before I understood the story they told, or the wicked, hidden humor within said story.  In later years, I even had a few goes at singing it myself - since John rarely sang it in the same key twice {judging by all the live recorded evidence out there}, I figured a key-less version would suit me just fine.  It went down well enough - didn't even have to dodge one rotten tomah-to - and became the first of two tributes to my dear old Ox that I've done to date.

The second tribute to Boris the Spider's Daddy?

Ironically enough, this is where Winston and John Alec "come together" {pun deliberate} in my personal corner of life.  And to put the icing on the whole bloody cake, their synergy came from a dude who was great friends to both {and another huge influence on me} - one Sir Elton John.  In a nutshell, I fell in love with Sir Reg's "Empty Garden" the instant I heard it 'way back in the Jurassic days of 1982; a love that was cemented that summer when my brother, sister-in-law and I took in Elton's St. Louis VP Fair concert - featuring "EG" - under the Arch.  That gig subconsciously planted a seed in the back of me noggin.

Flash forward exactly thirty years.  The Ox's sudden, shocking death in June of 2002 dealt me an emotional blow of rare power indeed - I was almost physically sick with grief.  Despite both grief and my bitterness over JAE "dying like a rock star should," I soon called the now fully-germinated seed from 1982 forward into my full consciousness.  All I had to do was change three words in the lyric of "Empty Garden," and thus was my tribute to the Two Johns complete.  By substituting "Vegas sunset" for "New York sunset," all that was left to do was perform this lovely dual-eulogy as soon as I could, which happened about eight days later.

Thanks to the ninth incarnation of my beloved Cross Town Traffic being a keyboards-bass-drums trio {my ex on the keys}, I was able to quickly concoct a most suitable arrangement.  However, I didn't reckon on the piece having SUCH a spine-tingling impact on the boards and in front of an audience.  I mean the vibe wasn't there at all during our rehearsals, but boy did it ever spring up quick the instant we took the stage!  It probably had a lot to do with the audience; they not only picked up on it from the get-go, they also reflected straight back to us, amplified from anywhere between 250 to 1500-odd times over, depending on which venue we were working.  As such, who could possibly miss the import of it all?

LSS, we kept EG in our regular setlists for perhaps six months or so, before confining it to October 9 performances exclusively.  And it's been that way ever since, with virtually no dimming of the vibe.  Downright harrowing, it is.

And that's the whole ball of wax, my dear Cats and Kitties.  May God Bless and Keep our Two Johns - With No Waiting.

Peace in, garbage out, and feel the vibe exactly the way I felt it that first time in '82:

.

Mein Kampfwagen: The One That Got Away

Rocktober, already?  Where the hell does the time go??

Oh well - I've already got a palette of blog goodies lined up for this month anyway, so let that time fly by then, eh?

To kick off this special Blogging season, I'm going to hark back to the late winter of 2015, when I told the tale of TR, my '98 Explorer Sport coupe-wagon.  Within said tale, I made mention of "Old Blue 4," which was the 1989 Chevy Suburban my brother kindly sold to me, and left it at that.  This is the rest of Old Blue 4's story.

At the time of OB4's acquisition, I was looking for a ride that would be true dual-purpose; a reliable grocery-getter / commuter vehicle, and my first-ever "hobby ride" to have fun souping up and modifying to my wonderfully warped tastes.  I'd always liked the 1973-89 "Square 'Burb" design, and OB4's original appearance quietly screamed "Go for it":

Needless to say, OB4 was more "awkwardly gaudy family land-yacht" in his original state than the wild Q-ship I had in mind, but I could easily look past his flaws and see his true potential.

After perhaps two weeks getting thoroughly acquainted with my big wagon, I embarked on the first phase of crafting my vision cautiously by tackling the outer silhouette mods first, whilst researching all things mechanical and electrical for the next several phases.  In short order, the vision I had for OB4's external appearance appeared for the first time:

  

Now that OB4's ridiculous "blang" {"bling" for white trash, natch} was history, I began to get really, REALLY excited about what the end result would be like.  Hell, I'd even done the first "custom" touch already, by the simple expedient of retaining both the fore and aft vertical kick-plates from the discarded running boards as ad-hoc mudflaps!!  Look closely at the lower rear of the front fender - all that's missing is the simple sheet-metal extension I was going to add all the way around just before painting the buggy.  If there was any justice left in the universe, the next few phases should have been a downright blast, given how well my modest first steps turned out.

True to my luck however, there was no justice left in the universe; a scant week later, OB4 became a semi-quadriplegic when his Turbo 700R4 transmission assumed a persistent first-gear vegetative state that was well beyond my means to cure at the time.  After a brief, but VERY bitter period of soul-searching, I threw in the towel, and sold off my nifty wheeled project for the proverbial "song".

However, to my unexpectedly great good fortune, when OB4's door closed, the window to TR almost immediately opened up wide - and as they say, the rest is history.  I do still miss me 'Burb more than a tad, but I've already moved well on from the outright mourning mess, if nothing else.  OB4 was like one of the free samples you can find in the local grocery store on any given day; the sole purpose is to merely whet - not satisfy - a given appetite.  My hobby-ride is still out there in the ether somewhere, waiting patiently for me to break a leg tripping over it on search!  And so it goes.........

More shortly - the next three rounds of Colortinis are on the House.