GRollins

The was a classic gold top Les Paul on CL hereabouts a few years ago for a stupidly low price. It was a hoax. Grey

I'm always amazed that someone, somewhere has a copy of such an obscure thing. What other oddities lurk in dusty corners of the world, waiting for their chance to make it onto the web? It boggles the mind. Grey

Oh, there's no arguing that Joplin's stuff got popular overnight after that movie came out. Lots of people liked it. I'm just not one of them. Grey

I've heard them do Zeppelin stuff before and they generally do a good job. There's a YouTube video of them doing Stairway To Heaven with the surviving members of Zeppelin in the audience. They pulled out all the stops for the guys. Grey

I used to be able to play a substantial portion of the Yes catalog (on bass), but I've just realized that I only remember bits and pieces. It's been a loooong time since I've played anyone else's stuff and it's kinda evaporated. Crap. No, I'm not going to start from scratch and learn it all over again on keys. Grey

I never understood why that Scott Joplin stuff went so big. Everybody was hailing him as a genius. I thought it was rather tedious and definitely overexposed. Grey

Don't come over here. Intelligence is in short supply in my area--starvation guaranteed. Grey

Vanity Fair? Whoa. Never saw that one coming. Still, good read. I'd have been happy to have him bunk with me during his homeless days. That'd have been loads of fun. Grey

For those who might wish to take up bee keeping, let me say that they are endlessly fascinating, but it's a lot of backbreaking work. A full medium super (a super is the box that holds the frames) isn't all that bad to lift (40 pounds? I don't remember offhand), but after you toss a bunch of those around, you're going to get sore and achy. It gets worse if you're like me and dislike killing your bees. Aside from the fact they're of more use to you alive, the bees (and there are tens of thousands in a decent-sized hive) have little (contrary) minds of their own, and they do foolish things like walk around on the top edge of the super that you're wanting to put yours down upon. Complicating matters further is the fact that bees react poorly to the smell of crushed bees. Squish one of their sisters and it puts the still-living ones on alert that there's something amiss. At that point they start investigating the big, ugly human who's invading their hive. So...there you are, holding 40 pounds or so, and trying to (politely) shoo the bees off the top edge of the other super and they're not getting it. Did I mention that you don't want to blow on them to get them out of the way? They don't like that much. Especially if you haven't brushed your teeth, at which point they think you're a bear...and they have a deeply ingrained prejudice against bears. Deeply. Ingrained. They don't like bears at all. Not a bit. You do not wish to have them think that you are a bear. Ever. In the meantime, that super you're holding gets heavier and heavier and heavier... It's a lot of work. But it's tasty and your garden will be well pollinated and you'll learn answers to questions that you didn't even know to ask before you started keeping bees. And if you brew, you'll have access to high quality honey for making mead, metheglin, and pyment. Sparkling or still, your choice. Personally, I'm a fool for a metheglin made with cinnamon and/or vanilla. It's also a taste that's popular with lady-folks. And it's highly alcoholic, or can be, depending on how you make it, without tasting highly alcoholic. Subtle. Like an atom bomb, that is. Just sayin'. Grey

I'm not a big fan of yellowjackets. They're okay as long as you're not near their nests. In fact, I've stepped on them (literally) in the fall when they tend to hover just above the ground as they search for food, and they just shake themselves off and fly away. But... Get near one of their nests and they will tear you a new asshole. The problem is that their nests are close to invisible, being only a hole in the ground about the size of the end of your finger and it's not unusual for that to be hidden under something else. Once upon a time, my uncle came to me and told me that he had a cherry tree down on his land in the hills...did I want the wood? Being a woodworker guy, I'm not one to turn down free black cherry, so I said yes. Well, it turned out that there was a yellowjacket nest right next to the tree. Worse yet, there was poison ivy. Needless to say, the yellowjackets had a field day with me and managed to tattoo the poison ivy juice into my skin. I washed thoroughly, but was only able to get the surface. The subcutaneous stuff was there to stay. I don't remember how many stings I got--at least eight or ten--but the combination of the stings and poison ivy made me pretty miserable. So although yellowjackets do play a role as pollinators, I'd just as soon let my bees do the job and terminate the yellowjackets with extreme prejudice. I dasn't like them at all. Grey

If resorting to gasoline, it actually works better for killing bugs (whether fire ants, or whatnot) if you don't light it. The fumes poison/suffocate the bugs. If you light the gasoline, it draws air into the hive to feed the flames, so the bugs get a fresh supply of air. No--very little of the heat reaches down into the hive, so you're not going to kill them that way. Note that this is worse for the environment because the gasoline enters the soil and can pollute the water and soil. Use boiling water instead. Grey

STOP! I MEAN FULL STOP! We need to talk. Bees...honey bees (Apis mellifera), that is, do NOT live in the ground. Bumble bees (Apis bombus) do live in the ground, but are not typically going to come after you in quantity--their nests are not generally all that large, not to mention the fact that they're conspicuously larger than bees--something that people tend to notice. If Moonglow ran over a nest in the ground, that's most likely yellowjackets (there are various critters that come under the yellowjacket label and there's some overlap with hornets, too...yes, it can get confusing). Obviously, I don't know what critter came after Markyboard, and the idea that they were living in old wood doesn't rule out honey bees, although it strikes me as unlikely. Honey bees have a sort of mental calculus that they go through when they're looking for a new home and tops on the list is a certain amount of open space. Not knowing what the wood pile looked like, I can't say that it was too tight for bees, but wood piles are typically just not that high on their list of prospective homes. For one thing, they prefer to be higher off the ground if possible. Wasps (particularly paper wasps) or yellowjackets (living in the ground under the wood, perhaps?) would be my first guesses for Markyboard's assailants. Okay, so why am I making a fuss about this? Because I've been keeping bees for 25 years or so and I'm having an increasingly hard time keeping them alive from year to year. A lot of it's due to herbicides and pesticides, but there are still people who panic when they see anything with wings and a pointy butt...then out comes the bug spray. Yes, bees can cause an anaphylactic reaction, and having been stung many, many times, I can attest that their stings hurt, but please, please, please don't kill them unnecessarily. And please don't blame them for stings due to other critters. I and other bee keepers are having a hard enough time as it is without having people give "bees" a bad rap. Any chance of posting a picture of one of the gals that stung you for ID purposes? Grey

Oh, wait...Bones did that to Kirk by giving him a shot, then gave him another shot to cure it. Go see Bones, he'll get you fixed right up. Grey

So you're saying size matters...? Grey

That. Thank you. I must say, it's been interesting watching the various interpretations of what I said go by. Note that when Skynyrd sings, "Well, I hope Neil Young will remember...Southern Man don't need him around, anyhow..." in Sweet Home Alabama, it's a pretty blatantly racist statement, given the context of Neil Young's Southern Man. For the record, I'm okay with Wagner (but prefer the Russian composers). Note that he died in 1883 and is hence completely innocent of any Nazi taint, unless you just want to condemn anything and everything that came from Germany, regardless of period. Now, if you want to blame films for his music, don't...blame the director. I'll freely grant that the Allman Brothers seem to be decent folks, but again, it's the audience that has appropriated Southern rock as a genre. I saw the Allman Brothers at the August Jam back in 1974 and enjoyed them, but that was then and things have changed, culturally (and politically, but that strays beyond the boundaries of this forum). Grey

Sometimes it's the band, sometimes not, but it's always the audience and that's ruined the genre for me. Grey

A few observations: 1) If you've got a keyboard with an MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) bottom, you're going to have problems. The stuff swells like crazy if it gets wet. Does not shrink back when it dries. This can get bad. 2) Little known secret: Service techs--back in the days when people actually worked on stuff instead of just swapping boards--would remove circuit boards from gear, take them home, run them through the dishwasher(!), then bring them back the next day, bright and shiny, and reinstall them. Presto! Beer (or whatever) gone. Circuit restored. Charge mucho, but do little. The secret is that the vast majority of components are not going to complain about a brief immersion in water and the temperatures (less than boiling, natch) are trivial compared to what they experience when they're being soldered into the circuit. Rain at normal sorts of temperatures? No hu-hu, Lulu. Just let it dry and you'll be fine, subject to #1. 3) Note that water is actually a pretty good insulator unless it's got something dissolved in it, e.g. metallic ions. Salt (NaCl), being the most likely culprit, although there are other possibilities. The lesson here is not to drop your keyboard into the ocean (lots of sodium, calcium, magnesium, et. al.), then turn it on. If it goes in the ocean, see #1 and #2, above. Rain water is reasonably close to distilled water and won't conduct very well. Your most annoying problem is microorganisms (e.g. algae) that it picks up as it falls. Get the water dried as quickly as possible and the algae won't grow. Again, you'll be fine. Winter rain is cleaner than summer because the critters aren't as prevalent, but...there aren't as many outdoor gigs in the winter. I didn't say that and you didn't hear it. It's a secret. If you tell people, I will disavow any knowledge of your existence. Grey

I used to like southern rock. Allman Brothers, Leonard Skynyrd, Blackfoot, etc. That changed when the format became a racial/political statement. At this point I am sorely fed up with the genre and would prefer that it crawled under a rock and stayed there. And the racist people who champion it. Yet I'm surrounded by them and they have no intention of tolerating anyone who isn't white and southern. I'm both, but refuse to join the club. Yuk. Grey

You"re close â it is Stevie Winwood, but with Eric Clapton in Blind Faith. I personally adore the song. Thanks for the save. (Should have known Clapton was in the mix somewhere, as the guitarist was a fiend for anything EC ever did.) I used to love it--actually probably still do, somewhere deep inside--but in my mind, I keep seeing our vocalist develop stage fright and retreat to the back of the stage, kinda-sorta behind the drummer, from whence she whimper-whispered the words. The guy running the PA didn't know what to do with her...turn her up to counter her low voice, or turn her down to remove her from the equation. I tried to take up the vocals, which should have worked pretty well, except that I had no monitor (don't remember why, only that there wasn't anything there) and I'm not one of those cats who can effortlessly sing on-key with nothing more to go on than the muscle memory in my vocal cords. The guitar player was gamely trying to hold his end together but was sorta freaked because he was the one responsible for bringing the vocalist chick onboard and was trying to encourage her to get back out front, even as he continued playing. The drummer, bless 'im, was rock steady, even with the girl practically tucked under his elbow. Live gig. Outdoors. Zillions of people. That was the band's last gig, ever. Hell, I think I'm blushing in embarrassment, even all these years later. You'd think I'd have come to terms with the mess after all this time. Not. Grey

I can no longer stand Jumping Jack Flash, but that's in your disqualified category of overexposure. There was a Traffic tune that was such a disaster during one gig that it ruined the song for me. I'm trying to remember the name...Can't Find My Way Home? Is that the title, or just part of the chorus? I haven't thought about it in years. I'll put a brain cell on it and see if I can stir some memories. Or not. Perhaps it's better to let that particular sleeping dog lie. Grey

Back in 2015 there was this hurricane named Hurricane Joaquin. It never made landfall. Instead, it stood off the coast, bracketed by other storm systems, and funneled unbelievable amounts of moisture into central SC. I have a rain gauge. I had to keep dumping the rain gauge before it overflowed (5" capacity). The final total here at my house was over 17" of rain...in a little over 24 hours. It was one of those rainfalls that sends people to the shoulders of Interstates, hazard lights flashing, because they can't see to drive, even with their windshield wipers on high, only it was like that for hours on end. I'm fortunate, in that my yard slopes sharply, to the tune of, like 75' from one end to the other, so flooding is the least of my worries. Erosion? Yeah. Flooding? Nah. But other people weren't so fortunate. A buddy of mine lives over in a district that experienced heavy flooding. He has classic guitars and amps dating back to the '50s. He went into his music room and found it knee deep in water. Some of the amps were on the floor. A few of the guitars were on hangers on the wall, but hung low enough that they were getting wet. It wasn't pretty. He didn't purge anything. He just moved everything to safety and started drying things out. Grey

The LP I'm building has a nice flamed maple top, but the back is black walnut instead of mahogany. Well, poop...I was going to attach a picture or two but the program is bitching at me because the files are too large. I'm too ragged out to try to shrink them down--the damned table top for the duplicarver weighs close to 200 pounds and I ache all over after installing it today. Maybe after I get some sleep. Grey

I love building guitars. I start from raw sawmill planks and when I'm done I've got something that will make music. It's as though there's some sort of magical spell that takes a mute piece of wood and transforms it into an instrument. I've almost got the duplicarver set up. I've borrowed a template of a '50s Les Paul top and hope (cross fingers) to get back to a neck-through Les Paul-ish guitar (Florentine cutaway, not Venetian, and the headstock is different--straight string pull instead of cocking off to the sides like a true LP) I was building before I got pulled away to do other things. If I can get that done, I want to build a double-neck 6 & 4, but I'm not going to let myself get that hopeful. I'll be grateful if I can get this LP-ish guitar done. Grey

Rule of thumb #2: Don't let on to people that you know how to do stuff unless you are prepared to be their go to guy in perpetuity. Too late. One of my current parasites...er...clients (non-paying, of course) is the daughter of an old friend of mine. He gave her his stereo (he's, like, 80 or something and hasn't listened in years since he got a girlfriend and a subsequent divorce and an unbelievable drama ensued). He's completely non-technical. She's completely non-technical. Between the two of them, they managed to blow the thing to smithereens whilst hooking it up. (Bloody hell, the components had been stored in an outdoor shed for twenty-five years! It never occurred to either of them to do a cursory check of the gear before turning it on.) Then they're calling me because the experts idiots they called before me made things worse. Wunnerful. The thing that really stings is that I haven't seen this chick since her wedding, and that was fifteen or twenty years ago. Yet, she's fawning all over me and telling me what a good friend I am. Good friend? Why haven't we heard from her since her wedding? Silver lining to the Covid cloud: I haven't had to go work on the stereo since they started locking things down. Ha! You can believe I'm going to milk this isolation thing for all it's worth. Yeah, I'm a little more circumspect about talking to people about this kind of thing and if it does come up, I begin making it clear that I'm not going to be their repair guy, right then and there. Grey

I've been trying to locate a reasonably priced Yes Progeny set for years. I refuse to pay $500 for a used copy of an album that originally cost $70. (No, I don't want "Highlights," I want the full set.) Naturally, it's out of print, so I can't just go to the store and buy one. I have lots of things: I am a woodworker, so I have a full woodworking shop--table saw, band saw, jointer planer, surface planer, duplicarver (recent acquisition--still setting it up), lathe, etc. etc. etc. I do electronics, so I have oscilloscopes, meters, function generators, etc. etc. etc. Not to mention about a half-million parts. Just fixed a Hafler DH-220 without having to put in a parts order because I keep things in stock. I'm an author (award winning!). For that I need a computer, reference books, etc. etc. etc. I'm a brewer (award winning!), so for that I need lauter tuns, boiling tuns, carboys, etc. etc. etc. I'm a luthier, so I've got fret files, fret wire, mountains of cool woods, clamps, etc. etc. etc. I'm a musician, so for that I have a full bass rig (six cabinets, mostly Ampeg, amps, preamps, etc.), a modest amount of guitar amplification (Marshall half stack, two Mesa Boogies [3 green stripe, 4], some pedals), and an assortment of guitars and basses, a hammered dulcimer, a viola, and...keyboards (more than I deserve). Oh, and the inevitable etc. etc. etc. And that's not even a complete list. The thing is...I do things. I mean I actually do things. I don't just sit on the couch and watch TV. To do things takes stuff (and time, but let's not go there...). I can't bake a loaf of bread (did I mention that I bake?) without a loaf pan and an oven. I can't change the oil in my car without a wrench. I can't rebuild the back deck without pry bars, a drill, and a miter saw. I can't fix the damned rusty-assed, too-small bikes my wife bought for the kids without tools. I don't see how people live without having things available to do what they need to do. Most of the people I know own little...so that's why they're always coming to me to fix the shit they broke. I'm trying to learn how to say "No" when they come whining to me about their most recent crisis, but I've been propping people up for so long that's it's difficult to stop. But dammit, I need time to do the things I need to do. *sigh* Sorry, didn't mean for that to turn into a rant. Grey