Willie G. Moseley

Dunno about amps and other gear, but among guitars, 90% of the new ones sold in the US are imported, and it's been that way for over a decade, at least. I think any generation is gonna be attracted to the guitars that were in vogue when said generation came of age; said instruments are time-warp machines. I identify more w/ a Silvertone/Danelectro amp-in-the-case than something like an Ibanez Rocket Roll or Peavey T-60. Most prime front-line instruments from almost any era will be assimilated by the very very rich. When I retire in less than a decade, I'm considering selling my autographed instruments to the Hard Rock...and my wife, not a player nor much of a music fan, likes their food more than I do...

Subscribed to GP in 1974; the first issue I saw in a store had Wishbone Ash on the cover so I was immediately intrigued. Stopped subscribing when I got divorced in '77. When I got back into music, I tried Guitar World for one year on accounta the icon instruments (Brian Jones' Vox etc.) as centerfolds. Subscribed to Bass Player for a number of years when I started playing again in the mid-'80s (wrote a few articles for 'em as well). The demographic of Vintage Guitar includes an average age of 44, much higher than GP or GW. Validates the name of the magazine AFAIC, which also validates how almost any guitar would probably be considered "vintage" once it got to a certain age. This means that most modern players who only handle an Ibanez w/ a Floyd probably won't fit VG's format...but maybe they will a couple of decades down the road. In fact, I've wisecracked that the more tattoos and/or body piercings a player has, the less likely he/she would be appropriate interview material for VG.

Quick bit of fine-tuning: Wasn't bassist Peter Sweval (now deceased) in both Looking Glass AND Starz???

Anybody seen the performance of "Windy" in the MONTEREY POP DVD set? The intro riff is pounded out really hard by the Association's bassist, Brian Cole, on a semi-hollow Gibson EB-2. Weird...

SHAMELESS NAME DROPPING: "Rock & Roll Soul"-Grand Funk RR on accounta I'm interviewing Mark Farner tomorrow. He's one of the good guys, and Ted Nugent sez Farner's one of the greatest rock singers ever.

Remember how Ozzy's early '80s concert w/ Gillis on guitar (and Rudy Sarzo on bass? Somebody clarify) showed a hologram of a crucifix rotating to an upside down position? To his credit, Gillis wouldn't explain it during an interview, saying "I'll let Ozzy tell you what that's about." This was one of the first Saturday night concerts on MTV.

Two words: "Wow" + "Thanky" "The world's my oyster soup kitchen floor wax museum." ---A. Belew

Tom T: Thanks for the details/minutiae. I recall it completely now; at least I got the basics right. That album also had a total eclipse of the sun IIRC ("For the first time ever on record!"), but when it started raining, they played a recording of Alistair Cooke being attacked by a duck.

"WAIDA MINUTE! SCHTOP DA MUSIC!"----Jimmy Durante POINT OF FREAKING ORDER! I'm 98% sure that the so-called rant that includes "philistine pig-ignorance" and "you excrement" is an old Monty Python sketch with minior adjustments. I think it was on their second album (1971's ANOTHER MONTY PYTHON ALBUM, which was packaged like a Beethoven symphony record, with its original title hand-scratched out and the Python title written beside it---go check it out on the web). That sketch (and I don't remember the title, based on looking on the net myself) involved some guy (sounds like John Cleese, or maybe it's Graham Chapman) who wants to be a Freemason, and he gets turned down and then goes ballistic. ("I wouldn't become a Freemason now if you got down on your lousy, stinking knees,", etc.). Then he abruptly stops and starts whining that he really does want to be a Freemason, claiming "...I wouldn't get in anybody's way", but he still gets turned down. After he leaves the Spanish Inquisition shows up. This was on the Famous Charisma Label, original label for Genesis, IIRC. As for its context to the newbie's sayonara, what does it say about a finger of farewell if it's plagiarized. Somebody back me up on this.

Hot damn! Two zingers (Jeff and Feynman) in one thread (so far)!

The thang is, Jeffro, a lot of the pseudo-intellectual threads I occasionally promulgate here are in the interest of collecting profundities or japes for a future anthology; hopefully this isn't too egregious and/or self-exculpable. Actually, I do remember that the first time I really, really kissed a girl, "Darlin' Be Home Soon" by the Lovin' Spoonful was playing on the car radio...I think Fleetwood Mac's "Sunny Side of Heaven" may have been playing when the act you described occurred. It'll be interesting to see if this thread now veers in that direction. Thanky; I just put my thesaurus back on the bookshelf.

Over the decades, there have been some albums that I've purchased that were so awful and/or pretentious (there's a difference in the terms) that I threw the cassette or disc out the car window before it had even played through once. Said albums were, many times, a buncha noise as far as I was concerned---and please understand I happen to have Blue Cheer's VINCEBUS ERUPTUM and OUTSIDEINSIDE both on CD, which means the albums I trashed were, uh, "noisier" than those decibel-laden milestones. Such gratuitous "I can get away with this because I'm a rock star" mentality on pretentious releases often represents some of the very rare occasions I might have agreed with some music "critics" (who are probably frustrated musicians themselves). However, if it's one I personally dislike but a lot of others like, I've always felt like you need to be able to cite legitimate reasons why you think it's pretentious (i.e., just "it sucks" doesn't cut it). Off the top of my head, I'd like to nominate the following, but may think of others later: 1. METAL MACHINE MUSIC (Lou Reed): Static from audio receivers 2. MACHINE LANGUAGE (Warren Cuccurullo): Noise 3. TUBULAR BELLS 3 (Mike Oldfield): An import (and I paid import price), and it has barely any resemblance to the first two "versions". 4. Anything with Sid Vicious participating 5. JAMMING WITH EDWARD (Rolling Stones): Half-ass jam session 6. WORD OF MOUTH (Merryweather): Some nobody brought in a buncha players like Steve Miller and Dave Mason for something hyped on the cover sticker as a super jam session, and everybody embarrassed themselves in the effort. 7. THE MASKED MARAUDERS: One of Kim Fowley's more memorable L.A. cons. The players were unidentified and were supposedly masked when entering and exiting the studio. This was a direct ripoff from a ROLLING STONE (the magazine) phony story, which the periodical owned up to. 8. Anything with William Shatner participating Others?

+1 on Fever Tree. Curiously (shameless self-promotion coming up), I'm gonna be on Greg Martin's radio show in Bowling Green, KY again (he's the lead guitarist for the Ky. Headhunters) a week from tonight, and "San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native)" is one of the songs I asked him to dig out. The primary focus is gonna be on Randy California, but a plethora "oozy-bloozy"/"woman tone" guitar songs will be spun. Will go ahead and toss in a spoiler. FT lead guitarist Michael Knust (who died in 2003) used a '66 Epi Sheraton w/ mini-humbuckers and a red-dome, two-knob Fuzz Face (dunno the amp) to get that sound, and one of the reasons I wanted Greg to play that one is it's got harmony feedback (!) at the end...

Potliquor, from Louisiana. Two late '60s albums of swamp rock at its finest. Ultravox didn't go very far in the U.S. The Guild, out of the Champaign-Urbana club scene, ca. 1970.

BLANK ONE: the Beatles on "Ed Sullivan" BLANK TWO: A Silvertone/Danelectro amp-in-the-case

I'm primarily a maple proponent but of the two choices, for me it's ebony on accounta it's harder and slicker. Would need large block markers + binding, though (a la a Les Paul Custom) on any neck of a guitar or bass w/ an ebony board...or rosewood board, for that matter

I play primarily for me peers (Boomers) so most of what works is oriented towards 50-somethings: "Mony Mony"-Tommy James & Shondells "Born to be Wild"-Steppenwolf "Missionary Man"-Eurhythmics (Surprise! Token example for aging Gen-Xers) "Do You Love As Good As You Look"-Bellamy Brothers "Stand By Me"-Ben E. King "Green Onions"-Booker T. & MGs "I Feel Good"/"Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" (medley)-James Brown "Wonderful World"-Sam Cooke (ends w/ an appropriate cha-cha-cha riff) "Come On Up"/"Love is a Beautiful Thing" (medley)-Rascals "Long Train Runnin'"-Doobies The key phrase in the leadoff post is "best songs for packing the dance floors", and for most of us, the list differs wildly from something like the top ten we like to play. I really get off on "Comfortably Numb" but we rarely do such at a country club...mainly because the patrons are in the condition as described by the title, and we want to keep things that way.... RE "My Sharona": Get well, Doug Fieger.

RE Hawkwind: semi +1, although I don't have that many albums, I've got a live DVD or two and dubbed the audio over to CD. Best album ever from 'em was SPACE RITUAL, a live 1973 two-fer. Back then, if I had a date in my apartment that wasn't working out, all I had to do was put on the spoken word "Sonic Attack" from that album, and she'd be outta there so fast she'd leave a vapor trail....appropriate analogy, considering the band's approach...

Many, if not most of us have gone from records to tapes to CDs and beyond, and will often acquire an album we always liked in any new format that becomes the listening standard. Well, even if you're not replenishing your collection, what artists do you have the most albums by, and why? Could be stuff that was available on older formats PLUS newer releases on the newer formats. And yes, some of us have eveything a certain artist or band ever released, but that's not necessarily the intent of the inquiry. You might be subjecting yourself to potential derisive remarks by admitting to owning a buncha albums by certain artists (as I'm about to do), but so what----it's your money and your listening collection. As for me, the reigning champ is MOTORHEAD: Loud and always unique. Musical influence RE bass playing and "singing" (angle of the microphone, that is), too. 23 CD albums, a four-CD boxed set, one DVD/CD combo, one VHS. I've also got a number of CDs by the Alan Parsons Project (melodic, well-produced/sonically-stunning, nice hooks...lyrics can be a bit banal at times, tho). Tangerine Dream (mostly live stuff): I've always liked their use of VCS3s and related synths to set a bass "riff" and rhythm, then they add odd-but-listenable textures on top. You find yourself listening in a different way, and it usually doesn't get as boring as one might think. Disprortionate amount of TD live material in my own collection. The Ventures: The greatest and most influential instrumental rock band ever. Bogle, Wilson (and occasionally Nokie) are probably all now in their 70s and can still come up with great stuff.

Ex-smoker here, too, and whilte I think most ex-smokers are probably among the most anti-smoking, personal attitude-wise, most probably aren't crusaders about it. The bottom line for me is I'm not so sure a complete smoking ban for clubs or restaurants or whatever is appropriate, for the reason that patronage of such establishments is optional, plus I don't know that the gov't needs to be that involved. I'll always ask for a non-smoking section table or booth at a restaurant, and most of the places I play seem to be pretty well-ventilated/air conditioned so what smoke there is usually doesn't bother me....and I play at places frequented by peers, age-wise, so they're more laid back/experienced/worn out like me. There's been some non-smoking gigs along the way, though, and I've enjoyed those a bit better. And BTW there's this new cigarette comin' out where the manufacturer claims you can't get any type of lung irritation on accounta it's got this hyper-powerful filter on it...but what they don't tell you is that you can get a dreadful hernia off of the draw...

Doing an impersonation of River Phoenix in that location is in poor taste...

IIRC, Love is an ordained minister for some religious group, albeit not a traditional Judeo-Christian organization...and I don't think it's TM-related, either. Accordingly, one wonders if he could perform an exorcism ON HIMSELF if he chose to do so....

I guess I was too naive to differentiate between "riffs" and "tone" back then, but while a lot of mid-'60s RIFFS (including the Yardbirds' stuff, "Psychotic Reaction", etc.) caused me to do an impersonation of Nipper, the RCA mascot, the first TONE that caused me to do likewise was on "Sunshine of Your Love." Many folks call it the "woman tone" on accounta that's the term Clapton used; I called it "oozy-bloozy"...

The Terry Reid Group opening for Cream: Chastain Park, Atlanta GA, 27 OCT 68. I hitch-hiked some 200 miles to get to this show.

As noted on the other thread, Thorogood opening for ZZ TOP, '97 Kansas opening for Yes, 2000---definitive bands in that genre Kansas opening for STYX, '03 Georgia Power Co., (the original) Santana, Joe Cocker, Chicago (in that order)---Atlanta Municipal Auditorium, Oct. '69 Bob Seger System opening for MC5---December 1970....JEEZUS! Lynyrd Skynyrd opening for ZZ TOP---1999 (you coulda flip-flopped the order, IMO, and there wouldn't have been any difference) Derek Trucks Band opening for the Allmans (i.e., Trucks doing double duty)---October 2002 John Waite, Peter Frampton, Journey---June 2001 (I think); a good mix for radio-friendly listeners May think of some others