Ivan May

Well, now that Pink Floyd sold their catalogue for $400 million, I’d like to celebrate by watching that WKRP episode where Johnny Fever listens to Animals. I’m sure a lot of people will celebrate with me.

Apparently Steely Dan recorded the Schlitz beer jingle during the recording session’s for Katy Lied, featuring the late Jeff Porcaro on drums. And let me tell ya, Skunk Baxter speaking Spanish while inhaling helium is something you’ll hear only once in a lifetime!!

Hats-off to Pete Rose, one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived.

Fortunately I live in ATL so I wasn’t directly in the path of Helene. I did, however, experience a power outage on Friday and Saturday when a tree knocked down in our neighborhood. Other than that, sad to hear about the victims of Helene. Condolences to their respective families.

RIP Kris Kristofferson. Why Me is one of his best songs, a great song about prayer and the devastation of dealing with your inner demons. Surprised nobody mentioned that already.

Okay, okay, there are plenty of good artists who cover Grateful Dead songs, and while I never cared for Jane's Addiction, I have to point out how good their cover of Ripple is. I still prefer the original version of the song, with the excellent mandolin work of David Grisman, however.

I'm not sure if there are any Grateful Dead fans here, but Keith Godchaux used some Fender Rhodes on their mid 70s output (namely on Blues For Allah, Terrapin Station and Shakedown Street). I think after Brent Mydland was brought in as their new keyboard player in the eighties, he also used a Fender Rhodes until the keyboard started malfunctioning and was replaced with a Kurzweil synth.

I'm not sure if anybody remembers the band Jazzantiqua (a classically derived jazz band from New York that was very popular in the eighties), but their producer Donald York played a Prophet 600 synthesiser on several of the albums tracks.

I heard about that this morning. JD Souther was an excellent but otherwise forgotten songwriter, and it’s amazing how many songs he wrote or co-wrote for the Eagles. I actually have his debut solo album that he recorded for Asylum Records in 1972 (and is also notable for being one of the first albums to be issued by Asylum Records.)

Roland is pretty much the undisputed innovator of the electronic accordion. Why Hohner never got around to it is beyond me, tho.

Gilmour's first two solo albums, are pretty much the only ones I would purchase, when it comes to his solo work. About Face, released in 1984, was pretty good, I thought All Lovers Are Deranged was a great track despite the dated mid-eighties production.