zenmindbeginner

But how about the playability, feel, fit and finish of the necks between the Root, American Special and the MIM? How is the tone between the three?

Compare necks please!!!!

The Jimmy and Wes Dynamic Duo albums are INSANE! Tone heaven indeed. Be prepared to have your hair set on fire during this one.

Jimmy Smith Jimmy Smith Jimmy Smith Jimmy Smith Jimmy Smith

My favorite version is Herbert Von Karajan's version with the Berlin Philharmonic In Deutsche Grammaphone. EPIC.

Hair color is also meaningless. Get a perm Jay.

Was Lambert wearing a miniskirt or something? Sexuality means nothing. Mercury's candy striped hot pants and suspenders combo was more a fashion statement about the late 70's and early 80's than it was a display of flamboyant sexuality. What people do in their own time behind closed doors is none of our business. Flame on Lambert.

Bwah Ha Ha Ha Ha !!! WELL done sir!

Cell Phone in the bathroom? We're you sitting on the can? Flawless and quite perfect. That client would be an idiot not to hire you. The right hand technique is so damn good that the notes were blurring in my brain... took on an elusive quality that I only hear from the greats.

That's always been the case. Now the artists get nothing. Yeah. Funny how when the "evil corporate suits" were sidelined, everybody stopped making money. Could it be that artist selection and setting up marketing and distribution for worldwide sales are valuable skills? Nah! Even the one-hit wonders of the '60s usually came away with around $30-60K apiece--in 1960s money. Interesting... the problem is that there are more suits than ever today. Universal is a gigantic behemoth and owns rights to a significant portion of the recordings made in the last century. BMI, ASCAP, Apple... it's all corporations and suits. In fact, it's distribution that is one of the main thieves of songwriters. Nothings changed on that end. Marketing is also as usual, taken out of the songwriter's royalties and represents a HUGE cost to the artist. Songwriters are making less money because everyone is making less money... it's really a simple correlation and has much less to do with online pirating. File sharing and piracy hurts the record company and distributor the most, this is a fact. Do not fool yourself and buy the myth that has been perpetrated by the media and outspoken artists. Piracy and file sharing still have absolutely nothing to do with tour revenues, merchandising, marketing deals and licensing royalties (which are the meat and potatoes of any successful artist's income). Obviously, if someone lives on royalties alone, then they have every reason to want every single 1 to 3 cents off of every iTunes download.

Well, my bad then... it was incredibly detailed and informative and I appreciate the time it took you to type it. I learned from it. You are as smart as a whip and a very good guitar player J. Please forgive me for getting hot under the collar and dropping the F bomb earlier.

JWhitcomb, you keep droning on and on about what is legal and what is not. I am talking about illegal downloading not having much of a financial impact on the artist. And you wanna go on and on about what constitutes theft and what is and isn't illegal. You just took the strawman and ran with it. Oh and when I buy a used CD and don't purchase it new... the artist gets screwed out of his or her royalties, it's really rather simple. Who gives a shit if someone bought it in the first place, since I bought it used, I will NEVER buy it new and so the artist gets only one royalty when two people bought the CD. Argue with yourself on the legalities of theft and intellectual property. Law is law and I NEVER made any of the points that you are arguing against.

Yeah, but a lot of musicians made a lot of money and lived quite well without flushing all of it down the toilet. Jim Peterik is a great example. The guy lives LARGE in the Chicago 'burbs off "Vehicle" and "Eye of the Tiger." OMG!!! Vehicle is like on of my all time favorite songs. Legendary songs that get used in commercials and film quite often. Those commercial and film royalties are MASSIVE... way bigger than anyone can make off of mechanical royalties. It is awesome that you know who that guy is and I am just now processing the things that are alike in both songs. Friendly neighbor in the black sedan... too cool.

I agree with you but you were arguing against a point that I didn't make.

What in blue blazes are you talking about? So all the limos, private jets and Neverland Ranches were just a mirage? Michael Jackson's success was wild and exceeded reality... there will never be another MJ. His music got played so damn much that his royalties from just radio and MTV were enough to make him über rich along with his tour profits, licensing deals and paid appearances. The mechanical songwriting royalties were probably much less and we all know he died in massive debt.

This is getting a little tiring... I know good and well what theft is people. My entire point is that sometimes, illegal downloading does not always adversely affect the incomes of the artist. But you guys want to have a simpleton argument about the dictionary meaning of theft with me like I somehow don't believe on the concept or stranger yet, don't know what theft really is. That's what a damn straw man is. I love to argue.

looks like you formed your reply before I "depersonalized" mine a bit, but anyway. Lets say I make a recording, in a studio, hire a band, spend time writing songs, make an album. I decide not to bother with physical media, and just put the album up on amazon and iTunes for download. It never had physical form. People deciding to share the mp3's around the world for free rather than downloading for .99 cents certainly will be theft, unless all the work I put into creating the album in the first place has zero inherent value. The medium is meaningless, that is why it's called INTELLECTUAL property. Steve, I agree with everything that you said, I'm not arguing against your point, just trying to make a small nuanced one around shrinkage and loss prevention. I do however, believe in the concept of theft of intellectual property and your example was perfect.

And this statement is EXACTLY why so many people rip off other's intellectual property with no feelings of wrong... because they don't believe they are actually stealing anything. Every other thing you claim comes down to the simple fact that you don't believe copying electronic data is theft, or you know it is but don't give a shit. With all your philosophizing about the free market and the music industry, wouldn't you argue that if you yourself cannot afford to acquire a product legally, that you shouldn't have the right to enjoy the product? Maybe you need to go work harder so you can pay for those .99 cent downloads. But you have no incentive too, because hey, it's only electronic data, right? The same argument could be said for buying used CDs... it's theft of the artist's royalties right? Is buying a used CD criminal? Absolutely not, but most of you would be crying THEFT! The artist did not get his 10 cents!!!!!! Arrggghhh!!!!! First of all, I work plenty hard thank you. Second of all, if Kmart buys a DVD player for $30 cost and someone steals it, they actually PAID $30 for the physical item that was stolen and so are out at the bottom line, the cost of the item plus any profits they would have made on the unit. If someone steals a grill that was in my backyard and I paid $50 for that grill, then the thief effectively made out with a grill that I paid money for. A binary file is simply not the same thing as a physical item that was purchased at cost or personal items that were purchased with income. My point is that iTunes doesn't buy pallets full of CDs and stores them in a warehouse... the two forms of theft are different by nature.

That's always been the case. Now the artists get nothing. They used to get less than nothing back in the day... sort of a way to funnel the wealth of artists up into the suits and corporate overlords. Very clever racket I must say. So, the $1.29 of iTunes... the artist gets what? Around 20 cents if they are lucky... you're better off selling a ringtone that nets you 24 cents per download (these are VERY high estimates and real world payouts are much lower).

Weren't there several very sobering articles in the late 90's about how much artists really make off of record sales? I read several that illustrated just how very little the artist makes in comparison to the distributor and the record label. This is from a salon article written on JUN 14, 2000 by Courtney Love (don't shoot the messenger): "The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it’s based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.) So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band’s royalties. The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable. The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations — the unified broadcast system — are getting paid to play their records. All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band. Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company. If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record. Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals … zero! How much does the record company make? They grossed $11 million. It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support. The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties. They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That’s mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry. Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million. So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven."

I am thankful and humbled that I didn't get the vacation prize.

Oh right, it's the lavish cable bills that have destroyed our middle class savings. lolz The people with lavish middle class lifestyles to my estimation, are all upper middle class with family incomes above $100,000. They are not the ones that are in trouble with debt. It s the working class and working poor that have been saddled with the most crippling wealth. There has been a longstanding policy of shifting wealth from the working class to the wealthy class in the US. Who do you think benefits from all of this middle class debt? The wealthy class who are the shareholders of the banks which hold their loans and who own the corporations that took their hard earned money in exchange for goods and services. The rich get RICHER when the middle class is saddled with debt... it's not rocket science. So... the decline of our wages means record profits from the wealthy class who get higher productivity and less labor cost. We have to borrow more money at interest rates that are too high for simple things like medical emergencies and unforeseen expenses. Who profits off of that? The wealthy class. Who owns the banks that loan money to low income college students and drags them down with a ridiculous debt that they can't even begin to pay off because the wealthy class doesn't feel like creating any more jobs? The wealthy class And why would they create more jobs? They have a GRAVY FUCKING TRAIN going right now that funnels all of the income from the poor and most of the incomes from WORKING people straight to the wealthy. You need to get out more and talk to people who WORK for a living... I mean folks who get dirty and sweat through their work shirts , who have to go to another job after their first one is over, who have to ask to get a bathroom break, who bring their lunch from home because they can't afford to eat out, people who take constant shit from abusive bosses, people who walk to work or take public transportation. Talk to some of them, they will tell you the same thing I have.

This is entirely your opinion and is fodder for at least a ten page argument. There is actual data that can represent the declining incomes of Americans since the 70's. There isn't one shred of empirical evidence that middle class Americans have chosen to become debt slaves. Absolution from thievery? Are you a priest? WTF are you rambling on about? I don't know anyone's home that has increased in size over the years... expanding homes? I live in a house built in the 30's... it hasn't increased one square foot over the years. I am middle class and have NEVER taken a vacation in my adult life and own one TV. My neighbor is supposed to feel ashamed that he has a TV in his bedroom? WTF? Don't blame middle class and poor people for technology advancements that led to improvements in living standards. What, since I am middle class I don't deserve to have a fridge and air conditioning? All of the credit card and mortgage debt that the middle class has accumulated since the 70's has purchased goods that have driven the economy. If the middle class people would have stopped spending money when interest rates started to rise... the economy would grind to a halt. It is a consumption based economy and the middle class put their asses on the line to build it up to it's current monolithic size...and you have the gall to look down on them and criticize their decisions? It's just like when the abortion opponents think that women have abortions for fun... when people go into debt, they do so with great sadness and trepidation. They don't usually have a choice, but you think that people in debt are all buying endless lottery tickets, fancy cars, multiple big screen TVs, defaulting on debt and then racking up more debt and living lavish lifestyles. I know that it is one of your sick dreams, but it doesn't bear any resemblance to reality.

Those guys are definitely BAKED. lolz! I LOVE it! The drummer is AWESOME! Great vocals too.

Perhaps my tone would have been more respectful if your first reply to my post hadn't been "fuck you." LOL!!! I know... That will make you spit out whatever yer drinkin'.