A Place for My Stuff

Happy 30th Anniversary to "Hysteria"

On August 3rd, 1987, I walked into my local Strawberries record store. I walked over to the "D" artist section of the cassette tapes. There I saw a male clerk putting copies of a brand new cassette tape into the vertical shelves. I realized the album he was putting in was the same new album I precisely walked into the store for. So I asked him for a copy. That album was Def Leppard's "Hysteria". (And for anybody who still thinks "album" necessarily means "vinyl", you're wrong. "Album" is the general term for an official music release, no matter which medium it takes.)

 

I really have to put the personal importance of this album into perspective. Def Leppard was the first band I could really call a favorite. On my 8th birthday I got "Pyromania" on vinyl from my best friend Robbie, and on cassette from somebody else. I ended up joining the fan club. I bought t-shirts and posters. I sought out and bought their first two albums. I was obsessed.

But tragedy struck in 1984 when it was announced drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car accident. It took four long years for the band to recover and rebuild itself. The status quo lost interest in Def Leppard. But as a fan, I kept my loyalty. I stayed in the fan club, reading the news updates over those 4 years. I certainly got into many other bands over those years, particularly other heavy metal banda of the day, but Def Leppard was never forgotten.

 I ended up losing that tape to an irresponsible friend named Craig, a.k.a. "Blinky" due to the way he'd firmly blink his eyes, who borrowed it and never gave it back. He insisted the case had shattered. Even though I had given him back his tape of "Diary of a Madman" I had borrowed. What an ignorant jackoff.

 But by the summer of 1988, the album went huge, and "Pour Some Sugar On Me" was arguably the biggest hit of that season. My father did business with somebody who worked for the local 108FM station, and that station sometimes traded tickets with the local rock station WBCN. So after pulling some strings he managed to get 2 tickets to see them in concert.

 

It remains one of my most memorable concert experiences. Great laser show. Joe Elliot donned a Sex Pistols shirt. A lady tried to storm the stage when Steve Clark was soloing. Another lady charged the stage when Phil Collen was soloing. Yet another woman stormed the stage and made out with Rick Savage as he played the keyboard. A muscular guy in front of me showed his friend the sugar cube he was holding, motioning how he's chuck it to the stage (as others would do that day eith sugar packets). It was a way to request their big hit. Our seats were in the center, about 20 rows back. And on the way to the venue, my father bought me a replacement copy of "Hysteria". I bought the book "Animal Instinct" that day. My baby boomer father strangely ended up loving Europe, the opening band.

Fast forward to August 3rd *1997*. I went back to the same store to buy "Hysteria" on CD. I told the clerk the story. He was indifferent. What an alternative-loving asshole.  The store eventually closed and changed into a flower shop anyway.

 Like the die-hard fans of certain other genres of music, metal fans sometimes get into the delusion that they "own" their favorite bands. Then when a band they love gets immensely popular, they feel cheated. "Hey! We can't have all of these NORMAL people listening to that band! That's MY band! Our fan club is exclusive, and our own! Damnit, my favorite band sold out!" Lots of people took that attitude with Def Leppard's "Hysteria", but I never have. I even worked a couple of tracks into my solo act. It will always be a memorable album for me of great songs, and the time when my favorite band made a huge comeback when the world still was against them.

John Wetton, RIP

Here's something I had posted to my Facebook page at the end of January when the news broke.

JOHN WETTON 1949-2017

There have been plenty of famous musician deaths in this past year following Lemmy, but this one really hurts.

I knew it was coming. I followed along on all of those updates from Twitter on elsewhere of Wetton's chemo treatments. I tried being hopeful. But I'd see those photos of him with his belt tightened to its tightest setting around his waist, and the photos where he looked less and less human. He fought a long battle. And I got the news mere hours after talking about him with a co-worker.

I had always known about Asia, but I don't think the Asia bug really bit me until the early 2000s. Sometime around then I was also introduced to Wetton's work with King Crimson. Being both a singer and a bass player myself, Wetton became a new source of inspiration. It wasn't long before Asia became one of my favorite bands.

The original line-up reunited sometime around 2006, and I made the effort to see them every time they came to town. I got a chance to meet John only once, at a VIP meet-n-greet in Connecticut. I made a point in telling him how incredible the (then) new album was.

In my solo act at the coffee house, I perform a number of Asia songs. I never went for the obvious "Heat of the Moment", though. "Face On The Bridge" was the first one I ever did. I've also done others I loved: "The Smile Has Left Your Eyes", "Don't Cry", "Judas", "Extraordinary Life", "Finger on the Trigger".

Well, my set list for my show tonight is pretty clear.

----

After writing this, with some time in the morning free before work, I banged out a few of these songs in the living room:

Rebinding the Mighty Led Zeppelin Real Book, part 2

Here's part 2, some details on how I fixed up a beat-up book that was falling apart on me.  I talk about the whole history behind this book back in part one.  Now, on to the fun.

In My Time of Binding

Items used:

• 9x12" binder, with no push-down opener tabs on the top and bottom ($4.99)
• Plastic sheet protector ($1.00)
• Binder hole reinforcement stickers, a.k.a. "Doughnuts"
• Velcro strips (adhesive sticker back)
• Adjustable, industrial-sized 3-ring hole puncher (borrowed)
• Individual hole puncher ($1.00)
• 3-ring binder tab separators

 

Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?

With the plastic comb binding breaking off, the first solution that came to mind was to just go find a place who could stick on a new comb.  I asked Staples, and they said they didn't do it.  Then I went to the same Staples the next day, and they said they DO offer that service.  Well, OK, then.  But if I just put another cheap plastic comb on it, would I just run into the same problem again later?  I asked if they had something else they could do, like a strong metal coil binding.  No, they didn't.  I could have searched around to see if somebody else would, but then thought of alternate solutions.


The Size Remains the Same

Most of the problems I had in this whole project came down to one simple fact: this book is 9" by 12".  We live in a world where almost all office supplies are made for 8.5" by 11".

This led to the following problems, which in turn led to a number of purchases and returns along the way:

• Most binders, even the large capacity ones, are still only tall enough to cover 11" sheets.  This means that if you put a I didn't really see the point in fitting stuff into a binder if I had half an inch of pages sticking out from either end.
• Likewise, binders typically have tabs on the top and bottom which you press in order to open the rings, and pull up in order to close the rings.  Let's call these "opener tabs" for lack of a better term.  When these are closed, they usually stay straight out, parallel with the three rings.  This means that even if the front and back covers of the binder were taller, you typically can't fit pages taller than 11" in them anyway, because the top and bottom area are bound by those two tabs.
  
• Even if I wanted to use the plastic combs again, most of these are made for 8.5x11" pages, which means they wouldn't cover everything.  The hole system was notably different too; this book used a difference spacing.
• Most devices for punching 3-ring binder holes into sheets, are made to only work with 8.5x11" paper.  They'll have a non-moveable edge that the top or bottom edge of the paper lines up against for easy aligning.  Well, that's convenient if you have paper that's 11" tall, but not for paper that's 12" tall.  Otherwise, your 3 holes will be vertically off-center.

In the end, I decided that the plan of attack was to find a 3-ring binder that could easily fit these 9x12" pages without anything hanging out over the edges, then get the holes punched in the right place.

I Can't Cover You Baby

I knew that no matter what, I was going to get some kind of covering for the front or back.  I didn't care if this was a simple sheet of plastic to put on top of the front cover and on the back of the back cover. I wanted whatever could help protect the book in the long run as I'd be shoving it in and out of my gig case in the future.

Alas, again, the big problem was finding something that would fit all the pages. Not just holding 300-400 pages, but being tall enough to support 12" tall pages, AND not have those annoying tabs on the top or bottom.

I did see a "legal" binder (8.5" x 14"), but that was too tall.  Namely, too tall to be able to still fit the thing in my gig bag of a briefcase.  I guess lawyers have longer briefcases for this purpose?  Hmm.

In the end, the one that worked was also one of the cheapest binders in the store. For $4.99, I bought what the receipt described as a "PC Kraft Binder".  It looked very eco-friendly.  I would have preferred something more longer-lasting, like plastic.  Regardless, it was tall enough to fit 12" pages, AND didn't have those annoying tabs on the top and bottom of the spine.

Hole Lotta Love

I had a cheap 3-ring binder hole puncher at home, but as you can imagine, it was made for 11" tall paper.  I knew that trying to use it to line up 12" would just lead to weird changes in hole placement which would lead to different heights of the paper edges in the binder.  Also, I wasn't going to do this only 3 sheets at a time for 350+ pages.

I searched the office for a better hole puncher.  No such luck.  Though weeks later I did see a plastic comb book binder machine in one room; go figure.

I asked the library.  The one they handed me was for 8.5x11" sheets.  Damn.

I went back to Staples.  They had several heavy-duty, customizable 3-hole punchers for sale.  Did I really want to spend $40-$80 on a machine I probably wouldn't be using again anytime soon?  At first my brain started to rationalize, "Well maybe this would be a good investment, especially if I plan on printing up books of my own at home to sell, like that one book I was working on, and..."  No, no, no.  Let's stick to the mission.

I went back to Staples' copy and fax center.  They had a few of the 8.5x11" hole punchers around, but several of the bigger ones behind the desk with all of their other stock paper and what not.  Surely, they wouldn't let me use one of these when they could instead force me to sell one, right?  Well, one way to find out.  I had already talked to the clerk about binding books, so maybe if I could give the illusion that I was just going to borrow it for something simple, and then later pay for something else, it would all be acceptable.  So I asked if I could use the good hole-puncher.  She said yes!  I figured out the right setting, using a single page from the book as a test page.  Then I punched through all 350+ pages, taking stacks at a time as the machine could handle it.  Awesome.  Done.  "Here's your hole puncher back!"




As mentioned at the top of this post, I did end up buying some more items: reinforcement label ("doughnut" stickers), a little individual hole puncher, a plastic cover sheet, and Velcro.

Stairway to Strengthen

From here, I could have just put the hole-punched pages in the binder and be done with it.  But given how many pages there were, I knew that over time the front and back covers would still get knocked around, so I did some additional things:

• Use some "doughnut" stickers around the binder holes of some pages.  I did this with the first few pages, the last few, and some pages for songs I frequently go to.  I didn't want to have to do this with every page, of course.  But just the ones that needed the most reinforcement.  I also bound one of the test pages I used to get the hole-punching right the first time around, since it had two sets of overlapping holes.
  I made a point of getting stickers that were clear, not white.  That's because in some cases, the holes were on the edges of some of the sheet music, and using an opaque sticker would block a bit of it.  We may be talking only 1/8" of it, but blocking it none the less.
• Bought a $1 plastic report protector on clearance, and cut it up to make two strips: one to go between the front cover of the binder and the front cover of the book, and another one to go between the back cover of the binder and the back cover of the book.  Again, I figured this would prevent wear of the book covers in the long run.  This was the only thing I used the little hole puncher for.
• Also, while I was at it, I decided to put some black duct tape around the inside of the binder. This wasn't all that indestructable of a binder in the first place, so I figured I'd put tape around where it was likely to get worn in the long run: the place where the cover meets the rings.

 

"It's been a long time since I Velc and Croed..."

While I was adding the plastic sheets, I had the idea to make these lockable with Velcro.  The idea was that these pages of the book would be tightly bound while the book was closed and put away, so no amount of shaking of the bag or tossing the binder around would really jostle the pages around in the binder.  You can find strips of Velcro with peel-off sticker backs in stores like WalMart or Home Depot.  I like the strips that let you just cut off and use however much you need.

 
Fool in the Raincoat

Here's one thing I tried, but didn't end up using.

Knowing that the binder was ultimately thick cardboard, I thought I could get something to cover this.  I found a rubber textbook cover at Staples.  And on clearance!  Fits all books 8" and bigger.  Well this should work well.  Just hook up the corners, and stretch it on.  All size fits all, right?

I tried it, and noticed three problems:

• The rubber cover just barely fit.  It reached the corners, but certainly didn't cover all the edges.
• The biggest problem is that it was so tight, it would snap the binder covers backwards.  I didn't want to have to deal with my book possibly doing a flying belly flop off of my music stand.
• My binder now looked like it was wearing a condom.

So, scratch that idea.

Trampled Under Foot

At some point in the process I had the pages in the binder, and was ready to double check that the binder would actually fit into my gig case.  And...it didn't.  Damn.  The binder was actually thicker than it needed to be for the pages.  Fortunately, the cardboardy nature of the binder meant that the problem could be solved by making an additional bend on the side, so that the spine was more curved-shaped than rectangular.  If you look at the photo, you'll get an idea of what I mean.

I tried putting the binder in a drawer and bending it on the edge of the drawer.  I tried a few other things, but it wouldn't bend in the way that I needed to.  Finally, I just put it down and carefully stepped on it.  That did the trick.  Now there wasn't a huge amount of space between the left edge of the pages and the top left edge of the binder.  Now it would fit.

As you can see from the photo, this bend was actually done before I added the duct tape, though I now had a another reason to add the tape.




This book has all of the Led Zeppelin songs arranged by album.  So the only other thing remaining was putting in some chapter divider tabs, to separate the different albums.  I already had some of these tabs which I had bought last year for something else.  Time to put them to use.

And that's about it.  That's how I took one of my most often used pieces of stuff, and made it into better stuff.  And I managed to avoid spending $80 on a hole puncher.

Rebinding the Mighty Led Zeppelin Real Book, part 1

Here's the short version of this two-part blog post:

• I have a book that I use a lot, called The 'Just Led Zeppelin' Real Book.
• The book has gotten rather beat up through years of use.
• So I fixed the book by rebinding it.
• In part 1, I talk about the history behind this book.
• In part 2, I talk about how I fixed it up.

Now, let's begin!

Before describing this rebinding project of my copy of "The Just Led Zeppelin Real Book", there's some background information on this book that I'd like to talk about.  First, it might be necessary to talk about two other books: "Fake Books" and "The Real Book".  I'll get into the actual details of my rebinding process in part 2.

FAKE BOOKS

There are countless different music transcription books and "sheet music" out there.  That is, these pieces of paper with symbols on them which represent musical notes and other components of music (lyrics, rhythms, tempos, etc.), typically in the established conventional format known as standard notation.  Granted there are lots of musicians who learn songs purely by ear (i.e., listening to a recording of a song, then gradually trying to duplicate each note on ones own instrument) -- too many, in my opinion. But there's still a lot of power and convenience to having music in a written form that can then be passed on from one musician to another.  The works of all the great composers over the centuries would be lost if we didn't have such a system.

However, if a band or individual musician wants to reproduce a song, say "Day Tripper" by the Beatles, they don't necessarily need a full note-for-note transcription of everything in the recording.  Listeners, likewise, don't need to hear the original instruments and everything note-for-note, beat-for-beat from a recording to recognize a particular song.  Making a passable performance of a piece like this is called "faking" the song.  I have a "fake book" for the Beatles, which covers over 100 of their songs by just presenting the lyrics, sheet music notes for the main melody, and the chord changes.  That's really all you need to fake a lot of the rock and jazz songs out there, and those are the elements which a lot of fake books contain.  Heck, some don't even include the melody, since 1) they figure musicians who've heard the song can already sing the melody anyway, and 2) I think publishing the music along with the lyrics usually costs more than publishing just the lyrics, due to the way that copyright laws and publishing rights work.


THE REAL BOOK

Unfortunately, fake books aren't always reliable. Some are a bit too simplified.  Some transcriptions are flat-out wrong.  And as mentioned, some examples like the one above don't even include the melody line written out.  Some also have very impractically tiny writing, or are books that won't stay open on a music stand.  Back in the 1970s, some frustrated jazz musicians got together and compiled what's known as "The Real Book".  It's about the size of a phone book (hey, remember those?!?), containing hundreds of lead sheets for various jazz standards.  Anybody who's a jazz musician has no doubt run into The Real Book.  They cost about $50, and were essential. If they don't own a copy themselves, then they've no doubt had a photocopied page from it thrown at them before.  This was typical for me when I was playing bass in high school and college jazz ensemble.  "Here, Bill, do a walking bass line over these chord changes" was the usual command. 

Despite the huge popularity of The Real Book, it remained a black market item.  Apparently, the makers never got the copyright clearance on the songs.  Still, copies of "The Real Book", "Real Book II", "The Latin Real Book", "The Vanilla Real Book", and other off-shoots continued to be printed up in somebody's basement and sold under-the-counter.  Sher music DID finally make a legal copy of "The Real Book", not only clearing all of the copyrights but also fixing some mistakes along the way.

THE "JUST LED ZEPPELIN" REAL BOOK

The popularity and legacy of the original Real Book has lent itself to other music books being created in the same style.  One of these is The Just Led Zeppelin Real Book.  As the title implies, it's essentially every song from every studio album as it was originally released, plus the one and only one studio B-side they ever released ("Hey, Hey What Can I Do"), all presented in the same sort of format as The Real Book.  So that means it has the lyrics, chord changes, transcribed melody, and overall general structure of every song, all printed in the nice big Real Book font.  Like the original Real Book, it also has a plastic comb binding (remember what I said earlier about many books not being able to stay open to a particular page when you have them on the music stand). Sorry, guitarists: this isn't a guitar tablature book; expecting that here would be like expecting The Real Book to show you where Miles Davis put his fingers on the trumpet buttons to play the solo of "So What".  Though this book does additionally provide tablature transcriptions for several songs, as well as guitar chord diagrams, and which special tunings Jimmy Page used on different songs.

Besides being a big Led Zeppelin fan ever since I was a young teenager, I've also enjoyed playing Zep on the bass, and in more recent years I've been the singer for no less than 5 different Led Zeppelin tribute bands.  In addition to singing with these bands, I've also done a little bass playing, mandolin playing, and harmonica playing here and there.  So this book has been vital to me.  There have been times when I've had to look up and check things to tell OTHER band members what chords were being used and what not.

This is a big book that's been slapped open and closed countless times, shoved in and pulled out of gig bags, traveled with me, and has a cheap plastic comb binding.  Needless to say, it became beat up.  It was time to do something about this.  The details of that story are continued in part 2.

 

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

A night of musical dives

The local coffee house owner extended me an offer to MC the open mic night.  They have a PA head and one speaker, but not the rest.  Well, I wasn't going to stand for that.  As planned, I drove down the street to the local music store, where Rainbow’s “Stargazer” was playing. I bought an XLR cable, a speaker cable, donated my second mic stand, and brought (but didn't leave behind) one of my microphones.  Though this night, a band was playing who had their own mics and all. Go figure!

What they didn’t have, at least not at the time they started, was their drummer.  They did however have the coffee house’s drum set (or at least somebody else’s drum set whose owner leaves it there) half set up.  “They need some drums.  Bill?”  I’ve played with enough drummers to get some idea of how to set up a drum set, so I set up the rest.  And I’ve faked my way on drums at parties before when there was nobody else to do the job, so here was another one of those times.  And like last time, with a band of baby boomers!

Gary is a regular who sings songs himself, a cappella. This includes 18th century folk songs from Scotland to 20th century pop.  I know that not everybody would understand this in an open mic performance, but personally I admire his bravery, not to mention uniqueness.  Even most musicians I know who have played on stage are afraid to sing karaoke, all up there in front of a roomful of strangers, with nobody sharing the stage with you.  Now imagine you don’t even have the musical accompaniment. If anything, I think the only uncomfortable people are the audience, who feel they have to give him more of his attention.  As they should.  Gary did a few songs.

In between I managed to rattle off a few musician jokes. I’ve been wanting to develop a stand-up act for a long time.  I’m sure this will prove to be the breeding grounds of that.  Ya gotta start somewhere.  And although I wasn’t planning on it, I brought the uke anyway, and tried a few songs I’d been working on: “People Are Strange” (which was in my head after catching it on seeing “The Lost Boys” for the first time in years, then seeing Robby Krieger perform it live a week later), and Elf’s “Good Time Music” (because I wanted to do SOMETHING from Dio that would work in this setting, and god dammit I did).  

A guy named Dave with a beautiful longhorn electric-acoustic 6-string came by.  He’s yet another regular I guess I hadn’t run into before.  He did some stuff with the band.

The other fellow harmonica player (whose name I’m shamefully drawing a blank on) showed up, so I asked if he wanted to come up to do something.  We crudely pulled off “Crossroads”.

The band’s drummer (who unlike me, was an actual drummer!) finally showed up.  They closed the night with a few songs. I joined them on vocals and harp for “Roadhouse Blues” to close out the night.  And hey, I got free coffee and a discount off an enormous cream-filled coffee roll, for my efforts.

Was the night over?  No, because I knew karaoke was at the bar next door.  Barely any people, as usual.  I managed to buy the bar’s last bottle of water.  My voice has been pretty crappy these last few weeks, but I pulled off Aerosmith’s “Last Child” and AC/DC’s “Have a Drink on Me”.  I had to watch 3 guys cluelessly attempt “Don’t Stop Believing”, all of them singing it a full octave down and not getting their timing right.  (Do these people even know the songs they do?  Do they know that they can follow the highlighted words on the screen, in time with the music?)  The karaoke hostess trusts me to touch her equipment, so I was able to search and select my own songs, and not to mention correct a problem another singer had with the speakers, all panned to one side for some reason.

2 or 3 drunk guys invaded the hostess’s space, and started fucking around with things.  Why she let them do it, I don’t know.  But it took some time to fix things back for me, up next.  “Who do I have to make out with?” said one of the drunks, as an attempt at an apology.  “I’ll pass”, I said.  I managed to pull off “September”, after which a more sober attendee praised me and gave me a high five.  I had another song up, but by that point I had enough, so I split.

So that was my night.

I left out the parts about the x-rated text message exchanges I was having.

Vinyl Stuff (2014)

I'm currently wearing large headphones and listening to Alice Cooper's "Love It To Death" album (1971) on my turntable. I bought it in a little record store in New Hampshire some time around 1990, when my Alice fanaticism was taking off. The record was one of many items I had Alice autograph when I first met him in 1996.

No, I'm not a vinyl snob. In fact I still don't buy the claim that vinyl is some amazingly sonically superior medium. "But, but, it's how music was meant to sound!" No, it's how music HAD to be listened to, because we didn't have much of a choice. Vinyl is scratchier, distorted, and cumbersome. I have had both vinyl and CD copies of some of the same albums, listened to both through good systems, and concluded that my ears preferred the clarity of a CD. I trust my ears more than hipsters.

I got rid of most of my old vinyl, and if I buy any these days, it's because I can't find the recording on CD (some of my 1950s Martin Denny records come to mind), or it's something I stumbled upon in a store that looked really good and was cheap (some comedy albums come to mind). But even in those cases, the first thing I do is transfer it to my hard drive.

So why was I listening tonight? Well, I also just bought a 4-record box set from the Black Crowes, and started listening to that when I decided to put on something else. Listening to vinyl is certainly a different experience because of the rituals involved in the set up, and having to pay more attention to the process because you're going to have to get up and flip slides, let alone change records after an hour or less. I understand the appeal. But inherent superiority? No, I'm not buying it.

(Here's an older post on the same topic, with a link to a related article.)

RIP, Annette

I was just playing this song for my wife a few weeks ago before she went on a trip to Jamaica.  From one of my favorite bands, Fishbone.

(Oh, and "Annette" is Annette Funicello, singing here with Fishbone.  My wife is alive.  Just clarifying for any of you readers under the age of 30 who has no idea who she is.)

 

Rambling thoughts on Black Sabbath, 2013

 

"There's always a few people left over from the Black Sabbath concert, man."
- George Carlin, referring to the audience on his "On the Road" album

My long, rambling thoughts about the upcoming Black Sabbath album:

1) So Black Sabbath is FINALLY releasing a new studio album in June 2013.  This is going to be the first full-length studio album released under the name "Black Sabbath" since 1995, and the first full-length studio album with Ozzy since the 70s.  They announced plans for it on 11/11/11.  (Nope, albums are no longer done in a matter of weeks like they were in the olden days.)

2) I have been an avid Black Sabbath fan since I was about 13.  My level of Sabbath knowledge is right up there with my level of Carlin knowledge.  I own every Black Sabbath album, from all line-ups.  And I'll buy this one too, because not only do I like buying and listening to the newer works of artists I've come to know and love, but from the sounds and production process of it all it does sound like it will be a well-done product.

3) However, I'm reminding myself that this new album is NOT necessarily going to change my life, or suddenly become my favorite.  I'm convinced that this sort of expectation is why most people end up disliking "reunion" albums, or for that matter movie sequels/prequels, etc.  If you've been loving an album or movie for 20+ years, you've growth *with* it, and  develop a certain affinity for it.  That feeling doesn't happen when you listen to something for the first time, especially when you also have prior expectations of what it should be like.  So I think expecting the new product to change your life in one month in the same way the other did over a period of 20 years, is setting yourself up for a let-down.

4) Some fans are pissed that original drummer Bill Ward has decided to not be a part of this.  If there's one thing I'm used to by now as a Black Sabbath fan, it's line-up changes, so personally I'm not all that phased.  He bowed out due to not being happy with the contractual obligations.  I don't know what those were in detail, but I can make some guesses.  The business of paying band members often comes down the mathematics of risk analysis: if people are still likely to buy tickets to see a band even if member "X" was replaced by somebody else, but won't buy tickets if member "Y" is not going to be on stage, then "Y" gets a bigger percentage of the pay than "X".  The sad reality is that when you do the number crunching, drummers of reunion bands more often than not get a smaller cut than singers and lead guitarists do.  This would hardly be the first time that Sharon Osbourne screwed Bill Ward out of a deal (this is the same woman who sent him a fax around 1997 to say his "services" were "not required" for the first Ozzfest reunion).

5) And one last thing: They keep calling this a "reunion" in the press releases.  Bill Ward or no Bill Ward, how is this a sudden "reunion" if the three of them have been playing off and on together again since 1997?  This "reunion" has been going on longer than their original time together!  So that part's not exactly news!

 

 

Daddy's Junky Music, 1972-2011

This is late news, but I just found out about it as I was trying to check up on some of my lingering receipts (see previous post).

Daddy's Junky Music was a big chain of stores that bought and sold used musical instruments.  They were based in New England.  Like many musicians from New England, my first instruments were bought at a Daddy's store, and I'd traded and bought countless other things from them ever since.  In fact it was to Daddy's where I traded in a ton of extra musical stuff I was no longer using, sometime in the last year or two (I tried searching for a link to where I might have blogged about it, but I can't find it). 

Sadly, Daddy's abruptly closed their doors back in October 2011.

In a way, I'm not really too surprised.  The clerks at all these places were typically dicks.  Like most music store clerks, they were once-aspiring-and-failed rock stars, bitterly sitting behind a counter and always busy with something or somebody else.  The staff at other stores like Guitar Center have almost always been, at least in my experience, more attentive and sometimes more knowledgeable. 

Of course, I know that's not the main reason why Daddy's closed.  The main reason they closed is the same reason why a lot of brick-and-mortar ("B&M") specialty stores close: not being able to compete with the internet.  Even before the internet became a house-hold thing, I knew that if you wanted to buy or especially sell an instrument, it was always better financially to go through the want-ads.  If you wanted to sell something, Daddy's would give you next to nothing for it.  As my lucrative guitar-trading uncle had always said, "Daddy's is a rip-off".  The only reason I sold a bunch of stuff to them that summer was to get rid of the stuff once and for all, instead of having to place a dozen different ads to Craigslist and follow up on all of them.

But the internet had hurt Daddy's in more ways than just providing a forum to buy and sell things 1-on-1.  A lot of warehouse places like MusiciansFriend.com can sell you brand new instruments for cheaper than Daddy's and other stores can compete with. 

What's the advantage of having a B&M musical instrument store?  The first and most obvious one is that get a chance to play something before you buy it.  A second advantage is that you get to talk to people who are knowledgeable about the various models of various instruments and can make suggestions for you.  Some of them also host clinics, which is when a well-known musician will give a lecture and do Q&A afterwards.  Then there's just the joy of not knowing what you'll find when you walk into a used music store.

Unfortunately, it's all too easy for somebody to try out an instrument in a store, get free advice from a clerk, then walk out the door and order the same instrument on-line, without a penny going to the B&M store.  Hell, lots of people can whip out their smartphone to go check prices and buy the item on-line, BEFORE even leaving the store!

So while it's sad to see Daddy's go, again I'm not too surprised.  As one of the articles below mentions "If you can't make it with a music store across the street from Berklee, you’re pretty much sunk".  It does make me wonder how rare used musical instrument brick-and-mortar stores are going to be in the future.  There's only so much a teenager can learn by flipping around YouTube.

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111027/NEWS02/710279965&source=RSS

http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-05/ae/30364212_1_berklee-college-music-school-instrument

http://www.eagletribune.com/latestnews/x717137553/Daddys-Junky-Music-closes-all-12-stores

Another "30 Day Song Challenge" Indulgence

The 30 Days are already over, but I'll throw in a few more of these.  Go here if you don't know what I'm talking about.

"A song that describes you"?  Well I suppose I should go for something about clutter or being a pack rat, but nothing comes to mind right now.  A different song that does come to mind though is "Bananas" by Deep Purple.  Besides earning the nickname "Bananas" due in part to the "Banana" episodes I did for my radio show, I especially like the lyrics "Don't help me, I'll help myself" and "Now my life is richer than rich, 'cause I studied mathematics".

 

Next on the list is "a song that you used to love but now hate".  I guess that would include songs that I used to like, but heard them so many times that I got sick of them.  Pretty much anything from Metallica's self-titled album comes to mind.  I was already sick of it entering college in 1993, and EVERY person in my dorm either had that CD or had a room mate who had the CD.  And the damn thing got played every day.  I will go so far as to say that it is the most overplayed heavy metal album of all time.  I'm not even going to bother posting a clip here.

Then there's "A song that you hear often on the radio".  Well, I listen to Sirius XM radio these days, not FM/AM.  I find this song showing up a lot on the stations I listen to:

 

And finally (for this installment anyway) "A song that you wish you heard on the radio".  If there was a song I wanted to hear, then chances are good that I've already long since bought the album and can listen to it whenever I want.  Though as Alice Cooper pointed out, classic rock stations seem to select from the same 100 songs.  It's nice to get into the deeper tracks.  In fact, there's one XM radio station specifically built on this idea.  How about...ANY song from The Residents?