Sospiri

Would someone give Mr George Gershwin a call, please? I'm sure he would have some definite views on this topic :-)

For many years I've used Photo Impact, from its original Ulead version through to the X3 when it was taken over by Corel and subsequently dropped in favour of Paint Shop Pro. Switching from X3 to PhotoShop 6 I find is a strain. The thing that attracted me to Photo Impact in the first place was the excellent user interface. As you mentioned adding text to pictures, something I do very frequently, I find that X3 is a dream compared with Photoshop. Bold, italics, underline, fonts, font colour & text angle are all on the task bar - I seem to have to dig for it on Photoshop or have I still got some setting up to do?

I watch some of your great pictures on here and I would just draw your attention to a freebie lookalike Lightroom called Lightzone. I'm not a great fan of Lightroom myself, so haven't spent too long checking out Lightzone, but just thought one or two of you might be interested. You have to register (free) to download it.

Three very good photographs there, Anne, and the buildings on the pier have hit me as they have obviously hit Joe. They look as if they have just been freshly painted in Brilliant White - I won't mention the brand! And the skies so threatening in numbers 2 & 3 too. Well done! Maurice

And for the jazz fans amongst us, Ken Roseking's documentary "Jazz on the West Coast: The Lighthouse"

Thanks for the tip off re: Cinque Terre, Joe. I'll be in Lucca, Tuscany, in September and then have to make my way to Brussels and that seems a nice picturesque way to go! I'll post a couple of my own photographs up when I can figure out the system! Not that far south of there is Larderello, the biggest geothermal site in Europe with lots of museums, old workshops, geysers, and masses of photogenic industrial stuff. Well worth a visit.

One more, same hotel as the last story...... Four of the band, including me, were married. The vocalist was single, but the bass player, shall we say, was known as the Ram of Xxxxxxxxx! Freqently the bass player and vocalist took willing girls, some quite young, out to a club in the forest some distance away, had their wicked ways with them, and returned them to the hotel in the early hours of the morning. On this particular night, the two girls were staying at the hotel with an aged grandmother, who'd had gone to bed early, expecting her granddaughters to follow shortly afterwards. Some hope! When the band members brought them back around 4:00am, they found the front door of the hotel closed. The night porter hated the band's guts! "No problem", the boys said, "we'll use the fire escape and go in through a first floor window". Foiled again, the window was shut, but two faces were looking out at them from the inside - the night porter and the grandmother in her nightdress! Very gentlemanlylike, the band members scarpered and left the poor girls on the fire escape to face the music. Once again, the whole band were dragged into the office later that day to be read the Riot Act, BUT the female owner then said "If you must take female guests out in the middle of the night then don't bring them back onto the premises. Leave them in the road outside and then the management can't be seen to be at fault! She may have thought that we were bad, but the band that followed us were worse. Their leader got drunk and beat up one of the elderly guests! All these munitions are the same!!!

New to this Forum, but essentially a retired Brit keyboard/vibes player now living in Greece. Here's some from a few years ago...... 1962 (early Beatles era) in a small dance hall in a South coast resort. I was part of a 5-piece, the oldest of which was the drummer at 29 and most of use were five years younger. Two girl teenyboppers near the stand, one daring the other to make a request, which she eventually did. Halfway through the brief conversation, her eyes scanned the members of the band, she turns round to her mate and yells "Christ, it's a band of old men!!!" ------------------- Around about 1970 I was roped in (on vibes) to augment a band to ten members for the local policemen's ball. It was pretty ghastly with few arrangements and comprised 4 saxes (frequently busking in unison!), trumpet, vibes, piano, bass, drums & a male vocalist, a bit of a character. After the last waltz, the vocalist got chatting to the Chief Constable and then reported back to the band - "The good news is that they liked us, the bad news, they've gone and booked us again for next year!" ------------------- In the early 1960s I was part of a quintet resident for several years in an Orthodox Jewish hotel. The band were asked not to leave stacks of sheet music on the stand as it looked untidy during the day, so being fairly lazy, we used to lay it on the strings of the baby grand piano when we'd finished playing, and, of course, close the lid. One of the owners was American and his mother (a New York resident) was a former member of the Grand Met Opera. Annually she would visit her son and stay at the hotel. On one occasion she was requested to do a recital of arias one afternoon and used a classical pianist recommended by our agent as her accompanist. She rehearsed with him elsewhere, was announced on the day, and her accompanist had only opened the keyboard lid. Straight in to the first item and she was accomnpanied by a series of dull thuds! We were all dragged into the office later, one of the many occasions when we were read the Riot Act! Happy Days!