Sunday, December 21, 2008

Christmas cards: a humble plea

As those of you who know me are aware, I've always been a pretty atrocious card-sender (well, until I got married---any diligence now is due wholly to my wife's efforts). But I do like getting cards; in many cases they are the annual contact with friends I don't see or talk to much but still like to maintain a relationship with.

The ubiquity of cheap photo technology has resulted in many people sending photo cards, a picture with a little holiday border and a festive seasonal message. That's nice, and it adds a dimension to the "annual contact" missive. But I've noticed an unfortunate trend in this practice, and although I may be fighting an un-winnable uphill battle here, I must make this plea:

If you're sending out a photo card for Christmas, please, DON'T USE A PHOTO OF JUST YOUR KIDS.

I have nothing against your kids---they're cute kids, and I'm sure your pride in them is fully justified (even though no kids on earth are, in reality, as cute/charming/special as their parents think they are). But here's the thing: your kids are not my friends. YOU are my friends. My interest in your kids is, generally, through their derivation from you, not on their own merits. And frankly, if you think about it, that's the way it should be, and probably the way you want it.

So, if I'm getting a picture from your household, I'd like a picture of YOU. I'm far more curious to see what YOU look like than your kids. (Seeing how nobody seems to send pictures of their pretty college-age daughters, ho ho.) Sending the picture of just the kid seems to say, "We are not interesting; our child is the most interesting thing we could put in this card." Well, if you're friends of mine, you by definition ARE interesting, and worthy of being the subject of your own Christmas missive.

And I strongly suggest this applies to just about everybody to whom you send the cards. The few people who probably are more interested in pictures of the kids than you (i.e., their grandparents)---let's face it, they already have albums and albums of pictures of the kids.

Now, in case you just sent us a card with a picture of your baby on it, and are thinking, "That ungrateful asshole," please, I am always happy to hear from you, and I never mind seeing pictures of your children. I'm just saying that, maybe next time, use a picture of the whole family.

And, Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 15, 2008

Rescue Story: It's not a puppy, but...

I believe I've mentioned at some point my interest in Acoustic Control Corporation brand musical equipment. The company was formed in the late 60s and, through the early 80s, made some really top quality gear---mainly guitar and bass amplifiers, but they also made P.A. gear (mixers, speakers, amps) and had a line of guitars and basses built for them. Because their amps were for the most part solid state technology, they have largely avoided becoming sought-after "vintage" amps, although there is some indication that within the last year or so they have started to gain some cachet.

Acoustic 125 and Acoustic 150/104 rig.



Although the original Acoustics are getting a little long in the tooth now, they were great amps, and for the most part still are, and many of them are still fully functional. Some years ago friend gave me an old broken-down Acoustic model 136 bass amp, and although only one channel sort of worked and it had fewer features than most modern amps, when I actually used it I discovered that it was really a good-sounding amp. Now it's been cleaned up and had some wiring issues repaired, and it has become the go-to amp for band rehearsal in the basement. A couple years ago I picked up a model 370 bass amp head, and that began my period of limited Acoustic collecting. I now have several bass amp rigs (a 370/301 rig and a 220/406 rig, and the 136 combo), a couple guitar amps (a 150/104 rig and a 125 combo), and an example each of the Acoustic Black Widow bass and guitar. They're good-sounding, cool-looking, solid, quality amps and instruments, and inasmuch as they are examples of the state of the art from their era (70s) and mostly unappreciated today, I feel that in a certain sense I am acting as conservator of these classic pieces of musical history.

The Acoustic 370/301 rig and Black Widow bass.



Although Lord knows I've accumulated plenty of music gear, in most respects I don't really consider myself a collector---I've got different guitars and amps because either they have distinctive sounds, or they were things I wanted to try: some I've loved and kept; others I've sold (or intend to sell). But certainly, I've had guitars that a collector would have kept, because they were collectible, but I didn't. The Acoustic gear, however, is an exception: this stuff I've collected partly for its inherent utility, but also just to collect because I like having them. And as I said, I feel I am conserving them.

So far, I've been able to justify having these amps on the basis of being things I would use or might theoretically use if I got a gig of a certain type---for instance, if I was playing a big outdoor gig without PA support for the bass, I might need that 370/301 rig. That's a somewhat far-fetched possibility, but the probability is greater than zero, so, there you have it.

Recently, however, I was forced to abandon any reasonable pretext of utility, when an Acoustic 890 mixer showed up on craigslist. Back in the day, this was Acoustic's top-of-the-line mixing board, and it's a big, cool-looking old-school mixer. It comes with a "snake" that's part of the unit, which has a cable 100 feet long, so you can put the mixer at the back of a room to mix a band on stage. (It also has a shorter cable for putting the mixer at the side of the stage, or for recording.) From this page, you can read about the 890 on pages 27-30 of the 1974 catalog.

The ad ran on craigslist for several weeks. When it first appeared, I alerted the crew on the Unofficial Acoustic Forum and urged somebody to get it, because it was a really cool, well-preserved old unit, but not something I really needed. The gang there pretty much agreed that it was cool, but nobody bit.

After a while, the seller dropped the price, and I decided to take the plunge and get it. The other day, when explaining to my loving and indulgent wife why I had brought yet another bulky piece of music gear I didn't need into the house, I was surprised by my own eloquence in defending that purchase, so I figured I would post it here:

Remember, this was a very high-quality piece of gear, and although it's old now, it's still fundamentally a good, solid piece of equipment. I don't think there were a whole bunch of these out there to start with, and there are definitely not a lot of them left, and even fewer left in good condition. If you don't have the snake you can't really get full use out of this board, and I have heard that sometimes the boards get separated from the snakes. And, this set came with road cases for both the snake unit and the board. As the price started dropping, I had visions of some group of stoned kids getting this for use with their death metal band. Having bought it just because it was a cheap mixer, they would not treat it with any respect---they would probably spill drinks into its circuitry; they would break and lose knobs and graphic sliders. (Missing graphic EQ sliders are the bane of the Acoustic collector's existence, and this one still had all 27 sliders on its three graphic EQs!). If stuff went wrong, they would not fix it, causing a descending and accelerating spiral to the point where it would end up being left in some practice space when they moved out, to be discarded by an unfeeling landlord.

And I just couldn't let that happen. So I bought it, and it's now in my basement, in its road cases. And hey, if some day my band plays a show where we need to mic up more than vocals and need to bring our own PA, I could use it! Yeah, that's going to happen any day now!

The Acoustic 890 mixer, with the remote unit and snake in the foreground.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanks

Well, it's Thanksgiving evening. For much of my life, Thanksgiving night meant a card game with my friends---particularly after I moved away for school, it meant a night when the whole gang from Springfield was back in town, and everybody's family activities had pretty much wound down by 7:00 or 8:00, and there wasn't much else to do. I don't remember exactly when the last Thanksgiving night card game was, but it was a while ago. People quit coming back to town as regularly and most of them got married. A couple years ago we had most of the old gang together for a card game over the Christmas holidays, which was pretty fun.

I guess I've got a lot to be thankful for. I've got a solid job (knock wood); a happy marriage; a comfortable home; two great cats; my parents are alive and in pretty good health; my sister, who has been fighting cancer for several years, is finally showing some signs of progress, and there may be light at the end of the tunnel for her at last. I have a good relationship with my in-laws; I have a bunch of great friends; I still feel like I'm learning and growing. I'm cautiously optimistic about the incoming administration in Washington. I finally found a guitar amplifier I really like (Fender Dual Showman Reverb!), and I got a good deal on it. All in all, life is pretty good for me.

I hope things are going well for you too. Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday, October 31, 2008

Maudlin Maundering

Boo! It's Halloween, a bittersweet night for me. When I was younger, Halloween was far and away my favorite holiday, but now that Halloween has become the new Christmas, it seems to have lost some of the magic. But, as I answered the door and doled out candy to trick-or-treaters, I saw that it is still a big deal to them---maybe I just outgrew it. But in a time when all monsters seem to be friendly and people get giant blow-up Halloween snow-globe-like things for their yards, I do think something has been lost. We don't get that many trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood, for some reason. A friend of mine today told me how much candy they had bought---they got like six or seven times as much as we did (and we had a bag left over). Last year he had to recycle his daughter's swag to service everyone who came to their door. We live in a nice neighborhood and if the parade on the 4th of July is any indication, there seem to be a lot of kids. I don't know why we don't get more of them.

So, last Saturday I hosted an activity down in the rock'n'roll basement that I called The Great Speaker Test. Over the past couple years I've spent a fair amount of time (too much time, possibly) on various music forums, reading and holding forth on various guitar- and bass-related topics. There is an immense amount of information out there but one must develop a good nose for bullshit and learn to filter the good information from the myths and hype. I've learned a lot about gear and about getting good tone, and I've noticed something interesting. While there is no shortage of opinions about which [thing x] is better---speakers, amps, tubes, guitars, guitar pickups, guitar hardware---almost nobody has actually had the opportunity to compare in any sort of meaningful A/B way any, much less most, of the available options.


If you play electric guitar, there are a whole bunch of factors that go into the sound you hear. First (and some say, most important) is the player---"tone is in the hands" is a common proverb, and its largely true. Then of course there's the instrument. The kind and gauge of strings matter; the woods (or other materials) from which it is made play a part, as do the bridge and tailpiece. Pickups (the parts that convert string vibrations to electrical signals) can be very significant as well. Then, after the signal leaves the guitar, the amplifier also plays a huge part in what it ultimately sounds like: whether it uses tube or solid state technology, and if it uses tubes, what kind of tubes, and even what brand of tubes. Circuit design and other circuit components affect tone as well. Some people claim to hear a difference between different kinds of resistors and capacitors. Finally, the speaker through which the signal re-enters the world can make as much of a difference as anything else.

Once you get more specific than "guitar" and "amp", an interesting phenomenon comes into play. People will virulently attack, or vigorously defend, the merits of various components, but almost nobody has experienced a controlled test. Different pickups are usually compared by hearing different guitars, which have lots of other factors that differ besides just the pickups. Different speakers are either compared with different amps, which makes the comparison almost meaningless. If they are compared using the same amp, it is often in different cabinets, which will color the sound, or if in the same cabinet, they are switched out which takes too much time for an exact comparison to be made---after a relatively few seconds, it's nearly impossible to clearly remember what the previous speaker sounded like to compare it to the next one. Gross differences may be apparent, but not subtle differences.

I like to think that I care about tone, so, I decided that if I was going to be honest with myself (which I try to do) I should set up controlled circumstances to be able to compare different speakers. I've accumulated a lot of gear but I had never really done any qualitative evaluation. I didn't know the actual characteristics of any of the speakers I had, or any of the well-known speakers that are popular on the music forums. Since the right speaker can make an amp, and the wrong speaker ruin one, it's a significant issue. Every day, people spend lots of money buying speakers they've never heard, based on a description they read on the web or "conventional wisdom" which is the collected opinions of a bunch of people who don't really know the difference either.

So I decided I was going to learn about speakers, to the extent I could. To that end, I bought two identical Avatar 112 Vintage speaker cabinets, and hooked them up to identical Epiphone Valve Junior amps. The Avatar cabinets are built in such a way that it's very easy to quickly swap speakers, and I made some short patch cords with alligator clips on them so wiring was nigh-instantaneous.


A few friends (including Mike from the recording project, both Dans, and Bill Tucker) came by, and some brought some other speakers, so all together we had 20 different models. It was really educational to hear side-by-side in that environment the differences between various speakers. The upshot of it was that I swapped some speakers around between my different amps and cabinets, and now several of the amps sound a lot better.

I won't take up a lot of space here with the blow-by-blow. I wrote up a bunch of observations in a thread on the GNet forum, so if you'd like more details, peruse there.

When all was said and done, I looked at the big stack of amps and speakers in my basement, and I realized something about myself, which might also be a more universal trait in humans: there are some things you can't be told, and just have to experience for yourself, but more specifically, what I've noticed is that although in theory I know that I buy too much stuff, it takes that one additional purchase to really drive home the "Oh man, I've got too much stuff." It comes as a form of buyer's remorse---not that the last purchase was something bad or a bad deal, but rather, all of a sudden a sort of "What am I doing?" kind of feeling. I reached that point with cars, and ended up selling all but one of my project Italian sports cars, and I think now I'm reaching that point with music gear. Well, guitar and bass gear, anyway. (I still need some good cymbals.)

But the thing is, if I had not gone ahead and bought all that stuff, I probably would not have reached this point. Whereas now I think my collection of stuff will start to shrink, I could not have been as happy if I had not gone through the experience of actually owning all this stuff. Part of it is the experience of learning what one really likes---if I hadn't had the chance to play a lot of different instruments and amps I would always wonder, "Well, maybe I should have X because it's supposed to be better."

This may sound like a truism to some, but I consider it something of a personal revelation---growth, if you will, and I'm happy that I can still learn stuff about myself and that I'm still growing and improving into my 40s.

While in theory now I'd like to reduce my stock of instruments and gear, I still pretty much like most of the stuff I've got, and I don't desperately need the money, so there's not a huge incentive to actually unload things. The main pressure is space in the basement, and, there still are a small number of things I'd like to try and in the interest of domestic tranquility I should get some of the old stuff out of the house before bringing new stuff in. So if you need a good guitar, bass, or amp, let me know and I can set you up.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Roll on!

Saturday was a momentous day, at least in the universe of my band the Xylenes, because it was the day of this year's Windy City Rollers draft. Xylenes vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kelly had been engaged in a many-weeks-long training/tryout program and we were not surprised at all to learn yesterday that she was among the relatively few new skaters drafted onto one of the four Windy City teams. Congratulations Kelly!

The Fury, 2009 edition, featuring Kelly (aka Mel Content) (bottom row right).

I had been pretty oblivious to roller derby until Kelly got involved in it, but there is a very active nation-wide league, with programs in dozens of cities. To the extent people know about it at all, my anecdotal experience suggests that they don't take it very seriously, considering it a show "sport" like professional wrestling, but if that was ever the case, it' s not the case in the WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association). Last month a bunch of us went to a bout with Kelly to see what it was all about and it was a blast.

As a spectator sport, roller derby provides an experience that's almost impossible to find once you're out of school, and maybe not even then. Unlike just about any other inter-city level sport, derby teams are actually of their namesake cities: the Windy City Rollers teams are made up of women from Chicagoland; when they play the Kansas City team, they are playing women from Kansas City, the Detroit team are from Detroit, etc. The Bears or the White Sox may be the "Chicago Bears" or "Chicago White Sox" but if there's anybody on either team from Chicago it is purely coincidental. So at a bout, when the fans root for "our gals," they really are our gals.

And, for now at least, the sport has not been commercialized to the hilt like most professional sports, or even lots of higher-profile college sports. There was a very organic, community vibe at the bout we went to, which I have never felt in the stands at a professional ball park or hockey arena. It reminded me of my best memories of school sports---it was like being at a really rowdy college hockey game (in a good way).

I don't know how long that state of affairs can persist---roller derby is such a fun spectator sport that I have to think one of these days the bigger world is going to notice it and sweep in with a bunch of money and all that that implies. On one level it would be nice to see the women involved get something for all the effort they put into it, but I would miss the purity that it has now. For now, I intend to go to more bouts because they're a hell of a lot of fun.

The next bout is Saturday, October 25, at the UIC Pavillion. For more information, check out the Windy City Rollers' web site.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Heads Have Not Yet Rolled

Well, as I'm sure everybody knows, it's been an interesting week, as we teeter on the verge (or maybe, continue to slide down the slope) of an epic financial crisis. As I write this, yesterday Congress failed in its initial attempt to pass the bailout package, and the Dow dropped over 700 points, putting it lower in the waning days of the Bush administration than it was when he took office. Predictably, stocks have bounced back a bit today, but still.

Note: Lord knows I could maunder on about politics at great length but I didn't really want to make this a political blog---so many other people do that, and, my experience on internet forums has shown me that it is basically impossible to have a calm, polite conversation when politics or religion enter into the discussion, and I didn't start this to get into arguments with people. But it's all around us now---it would be just about impossible to write about what's going in in my life right now without touching on some political issues, between the Presidential campaign and the financial crisis.

But anyway. I was not surprised to see the bailout fail. I think what is happening is that people who lived by the sword are now dying by it, metaphorically. The financial crisis was able to get as far as it did because so few people really understood what was going on, and even when they tried to raise an alarm, nobody really paid attention---because nobody really understood what they were talking about. This happens all over the place in the modern, complex world: regular folks tune out complicated things they don't understand, allowing shysters and rapscallions to engage in all manner of perfidy.

But now, when it's all gone to hell in a handbasket, the administration et al. are trying to sell a bailout package, and what I suspect has happened is, all those people who didn't understand how we got here also don't understand how this bailout proposal is going to get us out, and since it's being pushed by the people who were supposed to be watching out for stuff like this but nevertheless let it happen, there is a very understandable hesitation to invest tons of money in an inscrutable process that doesn't really make sense. I read in a blog somewhere that calls to legislators were going something like 200 to 1 against the bailout.

Now, let's say the bailout went through. Or, eventually some sort of bailout will inevitably be hammered out---when it DOES go through. It's not going to turn things around in any kind of visible way overnight, and it is quite likely that things will still be bad and probably get worse before they get better. So in evaluating what happened, the best that proponents of the bailout will be able to claim is that things would have been even worse without it, which will of course be impossible to substantiate or quantify. One thing that's certain is that five weeks from now nobody will be able to point to anything that the bailout has achieved, but seven hundred billion dollars---everybody understands that that is a lot of money that was spent to no apparent effect. (We're talking public perception here; it doesn't matter if the money is actually all spent yet, or ever. The perception will be that when the bailout was passed, $700B in taxpayer funds went down the rat hole.) So in that circumstance, it is easy to see how it would take an exceptionally brave (or exceptionally safe, or even exceptionally patriotic, but I'm not holding my breath for that one) legislator to vote in favor of the bailout. I am not surprised at all that so many voted against it.

What I think needs to happen to get public opinion behind the bailout is, there needs to be a public purge. I haven't followed everything with extreme diligence, but I've kept up on this stuff probably more than a lot of people, and I have not heard that anyone has been fired, much less jailed, for what happened. I can't believe it never occurred to anyone calling the shots on this stuff that people will not want to pump more money into the system if it's being run by the same people. And again, maybe it's not, but to get the country behind a bailout, people everywhere need to SEE that THOSE BUMS ARE OUT. It's about perception. Heads have not rolled, and if the economy is going down the shitter because of games played by a bunch of Wall Street hotshots, by God, heads need to roll. The heads of the Wall Street investment banks. The big guys at the Fed. The big guys at the SEC. The big guys at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They all need to be publicly fired and castigated. And maybe they're not all to blame, but it is too late to worry about that now. The innocent bystanders in that group (if there are such) need to take one for the team.

I'm under no delusion that that's actually going to happen, but my point is, as a consequence whatever bailout ends up being put into place will be unpopular. Moreover, Americans are going to be far less tolerant of hardship than they would be if they knew that somebody had been punished for what happened. As it is, it's impossible to believe that any reform efforts are entirely sincere and diligent.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Old Friends

There's been a lot going on this summer, and while that should prompt more fascinating posts to this blog, I find I tend to not write because I don't have chunks of time to sit down and compose posts. I have not mastered the art of dashing off a quick note about what I'm doing, but I guess that's just my style. Maybe I do over-think things sometimes, but I figure the analysis is the value I add to what would otherwise be an unadorned list of events. I like to think that I live a fairly interesting life, but I don't know if a blog along the lines of "I did this, then I did that" would really be that interesting. I've read some where people document the minutia of their day-to-day lives and they are really not all that fascinating.

Since my last post, a few major things happened. First, back in July, I spent a great weekend with a couple of my old pals from college, who came to town for a recording project.

Twenty-two years ago (sheesh!) at Quincy College in Quincy, Illinois, we were in a band, called Tribe of Lawyers (who knew?) that played a small number of shows . . . let me think . . . we played at the English Club dance, and I think one other event in the Student Union, and one gig at a non-alcoholic bar (our drummer was in AA), which I remember most because a Coke got spilled down the back of my bass amp and fried it. It was a Peavey Mark III, and I didn't think anything could kill one of those, but after that incident it was intermittent for ever after. We played a very eclectic mix of covers and a couple originals written by my friend Mike, including the classic "Bus Boy Blues" which is still poignant.


I continue to marvel at the fact that in that obscure corner of the world, at a school which was by no means a hotbed of new rock music, I met not one but two of the most amazing guitarists I have ever seen or heard, much less played with: Mike Dunne and Barry Stock. This all took place during the 1985-86 school year, after which Barry moved down to Florida and Mike, having graduated, went back to Chicago, but for that one year we had a good time and my mind was greatly expanded, playing with those two guys. Amazingly enough, the year after they left, my friend Dan (referenced earlier) came to Quincy, another incongruous presence at that campus. He also re-enters this tale shortly.

We got together one other time, in the early 90s when Barry was living in Athens, GA, and Mike and I flew down to visit him. That was fun---we drove by Michael Stipe's house. I've seen Mike a few times since then and we've kept in touch, but I fell out of touch with Barry. But Mike had an address for him and I re-established contact late last year. In fact, he prompted me to start this blog.

Anyway, I had been meaning to visit Mike for a long time, and during a phone conversation he mentioned that he had some new songs he'd written, and he mentioned how he really wanted to get a good recording of some of his compositions. And I had a thought: my friend Dan is an accomplished recording engineer; why not set up a recording session here, with Dan on the board, to record Mike's tunes? Dan was up for it, and Mike was up for it. And why not bring Barry up to play on it? So in March I went to Columbus, OH (where Mike lives nowadays) and jammed with Mike and a drummer friend, and we made rough recordings of a handful of Mike's songs. I edited them down and sent mp3s to Barry and Dan, the studio was booked, and an airline ticket was procured for Barry. There was one minor hiccup when Mike's drummer friend bailed on the project a few weeks before we were scheduled to record, but fortunately Chris Castellan from the Bill Tucker band was able and willing to join us for the recording.



Dan, Barry and fat ol' me in the studio.
(This is Barry's picture, but he's in it... I don't know who took it)

Mike adding some keyboards, with Dan in the foreground. (Pic by Barry.)


It went amazingly smoothly, all things considered. We managed to lay down tracks for four of Mike's songs, and had a great time. Barry posted about it in his own blog, which includes a link to lots of his pictures. (In addition to his other talents, Barry is quite the shutterbug.)

We have all resolved not to let another ten or twenty years go by before we get together again. I got an e-mail from Mike just the other day and he said he's already got some new songs...

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

My Maserati

Well, today was a bittersweet day: I sold my Maserati, and the new owners came and took it away. For the past four years, for better or worse, I was a Maserati owner; now I am not.

When I was in high school, I went through a period of car mania, coinciding with my obtaining a driver's license. But, being utterly without resources, my interest in cool cars remained theoretical. For the next almost-twenty years, through years of college, law school, and living in apartments with only street parking, I was by necessity (and poverty) restricted to purely utilitarian cars that could sit out on the street throughout a Midwestern winter and would not be targets for thieves or vandals. My interest in cars remained dormant.

After I got married, however, we had a covered garage space, and I finally paid off my student loans and credit cards, and for the first time in my adult life I started to think that hey, maybe I could have a cool, fun car after all. We had a very high-utility SUV for day-to-day use, so when my old ex-mom Mercury Grand Marquis began to be more trouble that it was worth to fix, I looked around for something less practical and more interesting to replace it. I wanted to try a sports car, and I wanted to try a convertible, and so I looked for a vehicle that was both.

During my initial adolescent car phase, I had developed an interest in European sports cars---for some reason, I never really was that into muscle cars or pony cars, although I appreciate them and don't have anything against them. But something about the swoopier, higher-tech cars from across the pond appealed to me. Doing research I discovered several cars that fit my profile, and were within a price range I could reasonably contemplate, including some MGs, Triumphs, Fiats, perhaps some ratty smaller Porsches, and the Alfa Romeo Spider. Seeking out reviews, I noticed that on one site, while most of the reviews of various models were ambivalent, the Alfa owners uniformly expressed enthusiasm for driving their cars. I thought the Spider was pretty cool, and recalled the hallowed name, Pininfarina, from my earlier car phase, so I focused my hunt for one of those.

And I found a fairly nice one at a good price, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, my old stomping ground. An exchange of e-mails and photos, and a deal was struck. I went up on the train and drove it home. It was fun, it was zippy, it was red, it was Italian:


I was having a great time with my Alfa, reveling in sports car ownership, but fool that I was, I didn't know when to leave well enough alone. I became infatuated with all Italian cars; I joined the Ferrari Owners Club to hang out with the Tifosi. And I researched the history of Maserati, a name that everyone knows but nobody seems to know what they actually look like.

Maserati was formed by the five Maserati brothers in the twenties and built race cars through the thirties, with some success, but not enough success to keep the firm solvent: they went broke (for the first of many times) and the brothers were bought out in the late 30s by the Orsi family. They had a contract to stay on for ten years, but WWII ate up most of that, and in IIRC 1947 they left the company bearing their name, and went on to some further success building small-bore sports cars under the OSCA brand.

Meanwhile, the Orsi still built racing cars but over time started to branch out into street cars---first street versions of their racers, but by the late 50s they were building a series of high-speed touring cars. They were fast, luxurious, and exclusive.

Maserati 5000GT

It is worth noting that while many people lump Maserati in with Ferrari conceptually, in fact they are an apples-to-oranges comparison. Ferrari made sports cars: brutal little cars that were little removed from road racers, and even later when the connection was not as clear, the classic Ferrari models were still sports cars, designed to carve up the corners as quickly and efficiently as possible, and with minimal concessions to civilized niceties. Maserati road cars, on the other hand, were intended to go long distances, fast, in luxury. "Grand Touring" in the truest sense. So while Ferraris and Maseratis may have had some superficial design similarities, they had very different mission statements.

Despite a string of beautiful and powerful classic GT machines, including the 5000GT, the Mistral, and the Ghibli, the Orsis eventually sold Maserati to (gasp) the French: in the late 60s, French car maker Citroen bought the company. This resulted in some interesting technical facets to Maserati cars of the seventies, such as an elaborate hydraulic system that powered everything from the brakes to the retractable headlights and earned the ire of mechanics for its sheer weirdness, although cars like the Bora and Merak continued Maserati's string of jaw-dropping design triumphs.

Maserati Ghibli

But Citroen, too, sold the insolvency-prone company, to Alessandro de Tomaso, the guy who brought the world the Pantera. And he had a different idea of what Maserati should be.

Whereas previously Maserati had competed with the likes of Aston Martin, building very high-end, exclusive, special cars, de Tomaso introduced a new series of cars aimed at a different market niche, that occupied by the smaller BMW and Mercedes cars. This was the Biturbo series. Where prior Maserati GT cars had been swoopy and sleek, Biturbos were stubby and angular. Where prior Maseratis had been expensive and exclusive, Biturbos were---well, still expensive but not quite as expensive, and although they were still exclusive in that relatively few people had them, it was not quite the "you can't afford it" exclusivity of Maserati of yore.

This obvious move down-market did nothing to endear the Biturbo line to old-school Maserati enthusiasts, and although the Biturbo family are far and away the best-selling Maseratis ever and they kept the company in the black for many years, they remain the unloved stepchildren of the Italian exotic-car universe. Although I don't know the exact cause-effect relationship, in the early 90s Maserati left the U.S. market. The early Biturbos had some teething problems; by 1990 or so they had pretty much been worked out, but we in the U.S. never saw the best Biturbo derivatives.

After a couple decades (and a joint venture with Chrysler that produced the TC, essentially a LeBaron tweaked by Maserati, some of which had a Maserati engine), Maserati was sold again, this time to Ferrari, who put out GT cars under the Maserati badge that were basically junior Ferraris, using Ferrari engines and other Ferrari technology, to the joy and applause of the automotive enthusiast world. Ferrari of course acted as if prior Maserati history, particularly the Biturbo era, never happened.

As a result of this history, Biturbos, which were sold in this country from 1984 to 1987 and 1989 to 1991, don't possess the cachet of earlier or later Maseratis, and can be had relatively cheaply---certainly, they are the cheapest model from any exotic car maker to buy. But cachet or no, they are still Maseratis, and to a man smitten with Italian exotic cars, that affordable car dangling before him like low-hanging fruit can be nigh irresistible.

So it was that, when a 1987 Biturbo Spyder showed up on eBay for sale in a nearby suburb, I abandoned reason and judgment, and bought it.

The Maserati Biturbo Spyder I bought.

I wasn't completely foolish: there were several models of Biturbo and they came in various configurations. They all had a twin-turbocharged V6 and luxurious appointments (the inside of a Biturbo has leather on just about everything), but among the desired traits were (a) the fuel-injected engine, from 1987 on, as opposed to the earlier carbed model; (b) the five-speed manual transmission, and (c) the convertible body style. The Biturbo that sucked me in had all of these. It was one of the best models to get.

I should also say that actually, notwithstanding the bad press they get, Biturbos are not really bad cars, if they are sorted out and properly maintained. But, here's where the "exotic car" factor comes into play: Biturbos, like other exotic Italian cars, have relatively short maintenance intervals---whereas a typical Toyota can soldier on for tens of thousands of miles without trouble as long as it gets regular oil changes, exotic Italians tend to require extensive (and expensive) maintenance trips to the shop every 15 to 30 thousand miles. Now, for the last ten or fifteen years, many of the people who have bought Biturbos have been stars-in-the-eyes guys with more enthusiasm than money, and it is one thing to be able to afford to buy a Biturbo, and quite another to be able to afford to maintain it. The price of the car is like unto a Honda, but the price of service and parts is like unto a Ferrari. (Well, maybe not that bad, but not cheap.) Service and parts are more expensive, and required much more often.

As a result, just about every Biturbo still extant suffers from deferred maintenance issues. And that, unfortunately, is a slippery slope. Italian cars in general suffer if they're not driven regularly, so one little problem that sidelines a car for a while can multiply into numerous niggling little problems, which eventually results in disenchantment and the car being sold to somebody else, and the cycle repeats and worsens.

What I now know is this: if you get a Biturbo, plan on spending an amount of money equal to, if not more than, the cost of the car to get it sorted out. The only way to do it right is to go over the car, or have someone who knows them (if you can find such a person---good luck!) go over the car from bumper to bumper, replacing all the belts and hoses, checking and cleaning all the electrical connections, tuning up the engine---if you do that all at once and comprehensively, you can end up with a reasonably reliable, usable car. A sorted Biturbo can be a practical daily driver (if you don't mind it's prodigious thirst for premium gas). (Well, the electrical system---a chronic problem with many Italian cars, but particularly Biturbos---may need more attention; there's a guy who sells rebuilt fuseboxes.)

When I got my Biturbo, I knew that the owner had not been driving it regularly---he told me how it was "for special occasions," which I knew was absolutely wrong. But it seemed to be working fine, so I bought it, and instead of doing a comprehensive overhaul, I just drove it.

And let me tell you, the Biturbo may not be the most desirable Maserati model ever made, but that car was a hell of a lot of fun, and the most comfortable car for long-distance driving I've ever driven. It was a joy to drive on the highway, and even after a slog down to Springfield, I emerged without pains in my legs or back. Compared to modern cars the Biturbo doesn't have that much horsepower, but they way it's delivered is particularly invigorating. And the car cruises at speed effortlessly.

Although it was not strictly speaking a Ferrari, the guys in the Ferrari Owners Club were very welcoming to me. (Actually, you don't need a car at all to join the FOC; appreciation for the Prancing Horse is sufficient. The local FOC group was very nice to interested people.) Here are a couple pictures from FOC drives. The first shows my Biturbo with a gaggle of Ferraris by the Big Mary statue in Hyde Park:


Here's me grinning at the wheel in front of a picturesque church in the north shore suburbs:



But soon, the little mechanical problems, and some bigger mechanical problems, started to crop up. The coolant was overflowing, and a friend familiar with the cars determined that engine compression was getting into the coolant: a bad head gasket. So, full of enthusiasm and confidence, we changed the head gaskets, which is a big job on any car and a real pain in the kiester on a Biturbo. But when we bolted it all back together, it fired up, which was a great feeling. But then it started overheating. That was due to an electrical problem in the circuit that controlled the fans, which proved quite difficult to track down. When I finally got that fixed, it failed emissions testing, and when I addressed that problem at considerable expense, it developed some electrical problem. Throughout all this it was not reliable to drive, so the fun factor went out the window. Finally, about a year ago, while I was in line to get it emissions tested again, the car just died and would not start again.

Thank God for AAA. I had the car towed back to the garage, and there it sat. I was totally discouraged and could not bring myself to work on it any more.

Meanwhile, I had made another tactical error: I sold my Alfa Spider and bought a project Alfa GTV coupe. The theory was, I could use it on the track. (The Alfa Romeo Owners Club would not let me run in track events with my Spider because it didn't have a roll bar.) But the GTV I bought was a basket case. I thought it would be something I could fix up over time, but as I started working on it I discovered that it had rust in literally every panel of the car, and it was not worth the effort to fix. It had a solid engine, gearbox and rear end, so we pulled them out of it, stripped it of trim etc., and junked the body. I feel a little guilty about that now because those cars (1750 GTVs) are rare and desirable and I wonder whether somebody might not have been willing to save it, but it was in REALLY bad shape.
The Biturbo and "Scruffy", my ratty 1971 Alfa GTV.

But the important thing about getting the GTV, the big mistake I made, was that that gave me two project cars at the same time. And there were not hours in the day or days in the week enough for me to keep on top of both of them. So neither of them really got the attention it deserved, and neither of them was really set right. The Biturbo in particular probably should have had more attention paid to it. If I hadn't been distracted by my other projects, I might have spent enough time and energy on the Biturbo to get ahead of the game with its problems. But I didn't. I watched myself become one of those car owners I would have previously derided, who bought a car and then didn't do the necessary maintenance to keep in running right. The problems with the car were demoralizing, and seeing myself in that light was more demoralizing.

There were further complications with the Alfa, as I tried to move the good parts of Scruffy to a new rolling shell. But, that's really a separate story. To further complicate matters, a friend made me an offer I simply could not refuse on a 1973 Alfa Berlina, a sedan---one of the reasons I was less than totally enthusiastic about the Maserati was that I had noticed that most of the time when we were going somewhere that we could take a fun car, there was usually someone else involved. In retrospect it was foolish of me to buy a two-seater convertible: I couldn't drive it on the track, and I couldn't carry extra passengers. Hence the attractiveness of the Berlina, which had most of the sporting potential of the GTV but had a spacious back seat. So the Berlina was a good acquisition, except that it gave me three old Italian cars, none of which ran. (The Berlina was sans engine.) This was, to put it mildly, a source of occasional marital strife.

One thing I had figured out and resolved to myself was that this year I would get down to one single project car. It didn't take too much thinking to decide that the Berlina would be that car. So, it only remained to put the Maserati and the GTV (well, collection of GTV parts) up for sale. I listed them on enthusiast forums, and put the Biturbo on eBay. It didn't sell, but I did end up making a deal with a guy who saw it there. Today his son and a friend came and picked it up. Here's one of the last pictures I took of it; you can see the corner of the Berlina in the background.


Buying the Biturbo in the first place was a mistake, and I learned a lot from owning it, even if much of what I learned was learned the hard way. But despite my less-than-satisfactory experience as a Biturbo owner, I actually have a fairly positive view of the cars. In fact, if mine had been a sedan instead of a two-seat roadster, I would have kept it and spent the time/money to get it running right. And, I wouldn't say that I might not end up with another Biturbo at some point in the future. And while I didn't think so much of it at the time, in retrospect I will admit I got a bit of a charge out of owning a Maserati. At least, I once owned a Maserati. How many people do you know who ever owned a Maserati? Never mind the details.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Addendum to web site list

Since I posted my list of favored web sites, I've added another to my "check regularly" list: Shirt.Woot! It's an interesting concept: every day, they offer a new t-shirt design, which is only available for a limited time---new designs get a pass their first week, but, after that, if it falls out of the Top 20 on their weekly sales chart, it's GONE. A really popular shirt may be around for several months, but eventually they cycle.

They also have a weekly derby that anyone can enter, and vote in, and the top three vote-getting designs are offered as part of the next week's shirts. So the shirts don't just all come from the same stable of designers, and some of the derby shirts are very cool.

I like the idea of t-shirts as art---I was looking through my drawer the other day and noticed that almost all the shirts I have are advertising in one form or another. Now, one of the guys in the Tucker band commented once that I had an impressive collection of t-shirts from greasy spoon restaurants, which I suppose I do, but sometimes I want something that is interesting visually but not Superdawg or Joe Rogers' (Springfield's Best Chili). I've acquired four Woot shirts so far, all of which are of interest merely for their own designs.

I was hipped to Shirt.Woot by Kelly from the Xylenes. Some weeks back, they had a shirt with this image:


The Xylenes being an accordion-intensive operation, several of the gals acquired these shirts. I didn't get one (that light blue is not my color) but I did explore the site and find another shirt I liked:


And, I've checked back regularly since then (if you buy a shirt on its first day, it's cheaper) and found several more I like. Here's the most recent:


Check it out---there's probably something you'll find interesting.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Some of my Favorite Web Sites

Like, I suspect, most people who spend much time in the digital world, I have a handful of sites I tend to visit on a more or less regular basis. Maybe you'll find some of these interesting too.

After checking my e-mail, one of the first sites I like to go to when I'm getting going in the morning is icanhascheezburger.com, one of the leading lolcat sites. It makes me happy.




Then, there's my webcomics: Order of the Stick and Erfworld are both found on the Giant in the Playground Games site. They are gaming comics and if you've never played Dungeons and Dragons or certain strategy wargames you might not get all the jokes (I don't get all the jokes myself), but I like them. Girl Genius is the current ongoing comic from one of my favorite comic artists, Phil Foglio. It's really an amazing epic, and chock full of trademark Foglio humor and zaniness.

There are a number of music forums I visit from time to time, more or less often as specific interests wax and wane:

Guitarists.net is a general guitar playing site, which is frequented by a lot of beginners; I will admit, I like to hang out there because I feel that my experience and knowledge about guitar stuff can be of some use---in regular life it's just obscure and arcane! I've met some cool people there, and one guy who lives in Chicago bought a bass from me.

I've mentioned TalkBass in other posts---it's really the home of the bass playing community on the internet. The guitar community on-line is fragmented (maybe because it's bigger), but the TalkBass community includes players of just about every description, musical style, and skill level. They are remarkably polite, given the wide variances in perspective and strongly-held opinions.

The Gear Page is a more guitar-oriented page, which focuses on higher-end and boutique gear, but there is a lot of knowledge in that community. On GNet I usually answer questions; if I have questions of my own, I take them to The Gear Page.

Then there are forums devoted to specific brands that I like. I've mentioned previously my enthusiasm for Rickenbacker guitars and Acoustic Control Corp. amplifiers---well, there are on-line communities of enthusiasts of each of those brands. The RickResource forum is a great font of information on Rickenbackers, while the Unofficial Acoustic Control Corp. homepage and forum have lots of great info on Acoustic gear. And, I met another Chicago-based Acoustic fan on that forum, and he introduced me to Bill Tucker, which led to my current band situation. Networking!

Sometimes I'll cruise over to the GearSlutz forum, which is a forum for recording engineers and deals with esoteric recording gear---but, they have great stories about the stupid things they've seen and heard in recording sessions. I study these stories to ensure that when I go into a studio I don't sound or act like a dummy. And sometimes I surf through the Harmony Central forums. There's interesting stuff there, but the signal-to-noise ratio is worse than on other, more specialized music forums.


I don't spend as much time on car forums as I used to, but with the Alfa convention fast approaching I've been visiting the Alfa Romeo Bulletin Board a bit more lately. It is the home of the Alfa enthusiast community on the web. I used to visit FerrariChat a lot, but my interest in owning a Ferrari has waned, so I don't go there much anymore. It's an interesting place sociologically, since "Ferrari" has so much secondary significance beyond just the merits of the cars themselves. Lots of people are attracted by the mystique of Ferrari and the lifestyle they perceive Ferrari ownership to symbolize, so you get some weird discussions over there.

Another one I visit every once in a while is the Jack Vance Message Board, where Vance fans discuss his work, and various other things. When these guys go off-topic, the discussions can end up in some pretty strange and interesting places. Part of the allure is seeing and communicating with fellow travelers from the Vance Integral Edition project (of which I posted early on in this blog).

To keep up with physics news, I periodically check Physics News. If I hadn't dropped Calculus II in college, as a result of having the worst professor ever, who knows what I might have accomplished in the world of science? I intended to take it later, but that didn't work out. That's a story for another time.

Finally, a few blogs I like to check periodically. I follow a few friends' personal blogs, which I'm not going to list here since they are of interest because I know the bloggers---if you know them too you probably already know about the blogs. But I also check these:

Acquired Taste: This is the blog of Tim Stretton, who is coincidentally a friend but the blog is his "professional" blog about writing. Tim was a VIE manager and his first book, The Zael Inheritance, was serialized in the Cosmopolis Literary Supplement, an appendix of the VIE newsletter. He's written a couple more books since and has been accepted into the Macmillan New Writers program, through which his last novel, The Dog of the North, is being published in a few weeks. Tim's blog will be of particular interest to writers, but he provides interesting insight on the writing process that I think many book fans will find interesting, and the discussion of books is a great source of recommendations if you're looking for cool stuff to read.

Chocolate and Zucchini: I'm no foodie, but I really enjoy this food blog. Blogger Clothilde Dusoulier is the daughter of Patrick Dusoulier, another friend from the VIE. She's an interesting phenomenon. She has published two books in the last few years, a cookbook and a guide to Parisian restaurants. Now, cookbooks seem to be top-down affairs nowadays: one becomes a mini-celebrity on the Food Network and then puts out cookbooks trading on that celebrity. But in Clothilde's case, she simply started a food blog, and it became sufficiently popular that she was able draw on that popularity to get a book deal---more of a bottom-up model, and very populist. It is hardly surprising, though, because her writing is absolutely delightful, and her recipes are pretty good too.

Stuff White People Like: Never have I seen such a scalpel-sharp satire of yuppie culture. This guy (who I don't know and has no connection to the VIE) has a book coming out in July which I am avidly awaiting. Although, reading the comments to his blog posts, and seeing how many people so completely miss what he is doing, may shake one's faith in humanity.


Saturday, May 31, 2008

A funny old gig story

Recently there was a thread on one of the music forums I follow, talkbass.com, about quitting in the middle of a gig, and it reminded me of a gig I played back last spring. I don't know if it really counts as "quitting in the middle of a gig", but here's the story:

It all started when I answered an ad by a drummer (let's call him Frisco Tom) who was trying to put together an oldies rock band, with an eye towards playing car cruise nights and things like that. There was a cattle call audition and while these people (Frisco Tom and a woman I assume was his girlfriend, although she introduced herself as his "producer"---let's call her Trixie) were not the most professional, it looked like it might be fun. And, one of the guitarists who had tried out was pretty good, and I thought it would be fun to play with him. I was invited to be in the band, and I said I'd do it if the guitarist I liked would, and apparently he had said something to the same effect, so we were good to go.

Frisco Tom worked near me, and occasionally we would meet in the lobby of the building, or meet for lunch. We had several conversations in which he talked a very good game about what he wanted to do, and expressed strong agreement with my desire to try to really capture the feel and arrangements of the original songs. Structurally, most 50s rock songs are not very complicated---it's easy to play just about every 50s hit ever written as one 12-bar-in-A medley. But if you listen closely, there are subtle distinctions between songs that put each performer's individual stamp on them, and I wanted to focus on those things and really try to nail them. Yes, absolutely, right there with me, he says.

After a couple weeks a band was more or less assembled. In what should have been a distressing turn of events, both guitar players in the band quit---the guy I had looked forward to playing with apparently had not told his wife he was auditioning for the band, and when she found out about it she shut it down. But, I decided to stick it out for a while. Tom and Trixie came up with a couple other guitar players, although they didn't seem to be as meticulous about the music as I was hoping for.

Now, from early on, Tom had mentioned an open stage at the local VFW hall, which he thought we should play. He seemed to think gigs might be forthcoming if we did well, and he swore that we could go there and blow everybody away. (Based on some open mics I've been to, that was at least potentially credible.)

Well, we had our first rehearsal with the full band, and it went okay---and Frisco Tom says that we should play the VFW open stage THAT WEEKEND. I thought that was a little precipitous, but he was very excited, and the other people seemed up for it, so I figured, okay.

We went there, and played, and a couple things became apparent:

1) I figured out that this, in fact, was the whole goal of the band: for Frisco Tom to get up in front of his buddies at the VFW hall and play. Any other gigs would be purely coincidental.

2) Frisco Tom's bar for what was an acceptable public performance was so low as to be nonexistent.

3) There was never any prospect of us blowing away everybody at the open stage---while some of the other performers were, indeed, awful, the main core group of guys were pretty decent musicians who had been playing together at this thing every Friday for years if not decades, and included at least one guy who had been an actual professional rock singer back in the 70s. (You've heard him on the radio.) They had a pretty high overall talent level and they were accustomed to playing together, in stark contrast to our group in both regards.

Mulling all this over subsequently, I concluded that Frisco Tom was simply delusional and decided I would not continue with his vanity project. But before I told him, he announced a new opportunity, which forestalled my actual quitting:

Ever since the first time I met him I had heard constantly about his son, who was apparently hot stuff out in L.A. doing nouveau rockabilly or something. Well, it turns out the son was going to be in town and would perform with us at the VFW the following week! I was sufficiently intrigued that I decided to stick around for one more show. The practice schedule got screwed up or something---I don't remember exactly what happened, but basically, they sent me some mp3s but we did not get together in person prior to the show.

So I showed up, and the first sign of trouble was, Frisco Tom informed me that he had cleverly (he thought) signed up twice, once under his son's name and once under Trixie's name. This is, as anyone who frequents open stage events will know, a gross breach of open stage etiquette---stage hogging. Now, Trixie was very nice but could not sing to save her life; the phrase "bovine bellowing" is particularly apt. And she was going to do a whole set of tunes. And she ended up going first. And the arrangements (if you can call them that) that they did were different from the recordings they had sent me. Worst of all, the practice at that open stage was, you got to do three songs; people who did really well were sometimes invited to do another song or two. Well, after three songs, she just launched into a fourth song, despite the fact that the performance up till then had been pretty much a train wreck. And after that, she launched into a fifth song. At that point the host basically kicked her off stage---she was preparing to do a sixth song.

Naturally, they were in no hurry to let us back up on stage again. So after almost two hours of sitting around, mortified, I decided that I was not that interested in seeing what Frisco Tom's kid would do. I had never rehearsed with them, the songs were simple 50s standards, and I knew that the regular bass player who came every week could hang with them easily, as well as I could. So I packed up and went home.

I didn't hear anything from them for a while, but I did notice that almost immediately all references to me were deleted from the band's MySpace page. Coincidentally, last week I got an e-mail from the band announcing (14 months later) that they were playing some car show. Good luck to them; I've had better things to do with the last 14 months than embarrass myself on a regular basis at the VFW hall.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Hectic over-scheduling continues...

So much for getting back on the wagon of posting regularly. On the chance that some of you are reading this occasionally looking for updates on what's going on in my life, I'll try to post some less-lengthy entries of what's going on.

For the past week-plus, Kris' cousin and goddaughter, Lauma, was visiting us; she left yesterday. We were a little trepidatious when we heard she was coming because she's 21 and from Latvia and we didn't really know what kind of person she would be or whether we would be able to show a 21-year-old from Latvia a good time, but fears were unfounded---she turned out to be a very pleasant young woman and we really enjoyed having her visit. Which was good because last weekend was very hectic. As I may have mentioned, we intended to play a Mothers' Day show with the Xylenes, so when that plan was hatched, I invited my mother up for that weekend. Well, the show got cancelled but I never called my mom about it, and when I remembered, I called and my dad said how much mom was looking forward to coming up, so they came to visit. Meanwhile, my friend Peter, who used to live around here and was my co-conspirator and boon companion in my car hobby, was in town and wanted to get together. And, somehow through a mechanism that I never understood, we ended up hosting a Mother's Day dinner for Kris' extended family. So it was a pretty busy weekend, but Lauma was a big help and made things easier rather than more difficult.

Me and Lauma at the art museum in Milwaukee.

This past weekend was pretty hectic too, with a meeting of our book club in Milwaukee and a Bill Tucker & Friends house party on Saturday, and getting Lauma to the airport and then going to my friend's daughter's graduation concert for the School of Rock Beatles class on Sunday, followed by some work on the club history article for the program of the Alfa Romeo Owners' Club national convention.

Rocking with Bill Tucker at the Castaway Collective, 5/17/08.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Back from Tour

Well, I returned from my tour yesterday. (Edit: when I started writing this, it was yesterday; now it's last week.) It was quite an experience. It has seemed for a long time like things have been building up to this, and now that I'm back I hope I can find an equilibrium again. I was proud of myself in January and February for averaging about a post a week here---I fell off that wagon in March, but I hope to get back on it again.

The tour was a really interesting experience. I'm not sure how much it was a typical band van tour experience, but it was fun and very educational.

Some weeks ago I signed on to play bass for Bill Tucker and Friends, specifically on a tour that Bill had set up of the south. Some of the gigs we were working towards fell through, but in the end we played three shows in five days. Along the way I learned a lot about a segment of society I haven't had much contact with.

My bandmates are all in their mid-twenties, about 15 years younger than me. I don't really know many people of that age group, and as I've been sliding into middle age I've seen myself settling down into a fairly regular, comfortable existence that doesn't involve interacting that much with the rest of the world, so spending six days in close contact with four twentysomethings, traveling through their community of friends and associates, was bound to be educational.

There was something of a paradigm shift that took place among American youth in the late 80s or early 90s, by which point I was already beyond the point where I would have been susceptible to it, so I didn't really appreciate it. But younger people who grew up in the 90s and 00s have been more seriously affected by it. I think it comes from a sense that We (the country, or humanity in general) is doing bad things, of which young people do not approve and with which they do not want to be associated, but at the same time feel powerless to affect. Reduced to simplest terms, whereas when I was growing up there was generally a sense of optimism, societally, nowadays I think there is more of a feeling of pessimism, if not despair. I think this underlies the "angst" that has defined a lot of youth popular culture since the late 80s or early 90s. People of course react differently to this, but some (including some of my bandmates and their friends I met on the tour) respond by to an extent anyway withdrawing from society and living in a strange and interesting countercultural world, under the radar of society at large. One of the most interesting aspects of this is an anti-consumer mentality: "DIY" is apparently a movement, i.e., people making things themselves instead of buying them, and/or repairing broken things instead of replacing them with new purchases. Another manifestation is a practice of buying as much as possible used instead of new.

Having lived a pretty much middle-of-the-road existence myself thus far, it was interesting and thought-provoking to live in that world for a week.

But anyway, here are some pictures from the tour. First, the band:

Bill Tucker, guitar and vocals; moi, bass; Chris Castellan, drums; and John Salt, tuba.

Here's John and Chris with the Sparrowses, a husband/wife rootsy/bluegrassy duo with whom we shared the stage in Bloomington, Indiana. They also put us up for the night after that show.

We had some time before the show in Bloomington so we held an impromptu parade.

Our arty band photo. Astute blog readers may recognize the Beer Nuts t-shirt. This was at a gas station somewhere in Mississippi or Louisiana, I think.

On stage at Sluggo's in Pensacola.

On stage (well, patio) at (well, behind) the Ole Mug in Foley, Alabama.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Just a quick note

The month has been rolling on and I've been pretty busy, so I haven't been posting at the rate I would prefer. But I'm still here and I still intend to keep this blog up---just no new big news or profound thoughts to share. I did finish my essay about Norwegian black metal, but for some reason known only to Blogger, it posted it as of the date I STARTED it, not the date I FINISHED it, so it's further down on the page---it's like it was from early February. So, scroll down to that and take a look at it! I spent a lot of time putting in all the fun links to interesting things.


I've had a chance to play a bit more with Bill Tucker and Friends, the band with which I'm going on tour in April. I'm really enjoying playing with them, and I think once we get comfortable with each other it will be a very good band. The Xylenes have been hit with a spate of illnesses so we had to reschedule our intended spring show---a month ago, we were hoping to play next week, but then we missed a couple weeks of rehearsal, and rather than do a shorter or less polished show (a relative thing with the Xylenes, but still), we decided to push the date off for a bit. We are now planning on playing a special Mothers' Day show, probably actually the day after Mothers' Day. We're going to try to get our mothers involved---Kelly's mom is going to get up and sing a duet with her, and Kris' mom is going to play the chime tree with us. We're going to learn favorite songs of my mom's and Amber's mom's to play for them, since they will be there; I'm going to see if my mom will play tambourine, too. Mort's mom and Dori's mom are far out of state and won't be able to join us live in person, but hopefully we can do something for them too. We'll offer flowers to anyone else's mom who comes to the show. As Amber says, our moms are absolutely our biggest fans---it will be fun and nice to make them a part of the show.


You know how sometimes you know something in the front of your mind, but it may not have actually sunk all the way in? Over the last couple months I've probably bought too many guitars, and I'm feeling a little over-extended. I'm having to sell a couple others, which is okay because I don't play them much and I'd rather have the new ones, but the sense of urgency is unpleasant. But in each case, it was a rare and special opportunity to get something that I might not come across again, and each individual transaction could be justified on that basis . . . but, what I've now learned in a more visceral way is that there is always some once-in-a-lifetime deal out there, and one can go broke simply taking advantages of great deals that will never come again, either unheard-of prices or rarely-for-sale items. So, I am now publicly swearing off buying more guitars. If you hear that I've bought another guitar in the next six months at least, feel free to remind me that I promised not to do so, and deride me for my lack of willpower. But I don't intend to buy any more, no matter how unique the opportunity that comes along.


At least, I have acquired some really neat instruments lately . . . I posted about the Rickenbacker 330 I got in January, and mentioned the Rickenbacker 660/12 I got a few weeks ago. Well, I also acquired another neat Rickenbacker, a 340 with vintage-style pickups and a tremolo, in the limited-edition Color of the Year for 2002, Burgundyglo! It was one of those "once in a lifetime" deals---this may well be a unique guitar. Now I have a little family of Rickenbackers.


But, since I'm actively playing bass in a band again, I've been focusing on basses too. I got an SX Precision-style bass a while back, just to have as a backup. Also, I had a Jazz Bass that I got from my sister, on the understanding that if she ever needed a bass, I would give it back, or provide her with another bass at least as good, so since I decided I didn't care for the Jazz Bass, I sold it, and needed to get another bass to give Maria if she decides some day that she wants to take up bass again. After many years, she's started studying guitar again, so maybe that is not as hypothetical as it once appeared. Anyway, I had to do some work on it and I used it as the basis of some photo essays about fret leveling and nut making, which I posted on a guitar forum.


But then other amazing bass deals started coming out of the woodwork. Gibson came out with a new bass last year as part of its "Guitar of the Week" program: the Les Paul Money Bass, a limited-edition double-cutaway Les Paul bass which was pretty cool. In recent weeks, dealers have been blowing out the remaining unsold ones at way way less than the regular price, and way under what (I think) they're worth, so I snapped one up. Here it is next to my Gibson Ripper, one of my favorite basses that I've had for a number of years.


But then I came across a very rare bird for sale: an Acoustic Black Widow. I've mentioned before I think my interest in Acoustic amplifiers. Well, they also sold a guitar and bass for a while in the 70s. Some of the later models were actually made for them by Mosrite, but seem to have escaped (for the moment) the skyrocketing prices that proper Mosrites have shown in recent years (i.e., since I sold the one I had for cheap, goddamnit). Besides being one of the ultimate Acoustic collectibles, it's also a pretty cool bass in its own right. It has not arrived yet.


If you're thinking, "Damn, Chuck, that's a lot of guitars to buy," what can I say: when you're right you're right, and you're right. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have passed on a couple, although I can't say I'm sorry to have any of them! It's just made things a little tight, and I've sold a number of my old instruments and have a couple more on the block. (If you're interested in a Yamaha SBG 2000, or a Gibson Reverse Flying V, drop me a line!)









And then another friend has offered me a good deal on a Rickenbacker 4001 bass . . . but I may be able to do a partial trade on that one and he's okay with me paying him later . . .

But THAT'S IT! Gear Acquisition Syndrome: it's ugly. But, at least every time I have that realization, "You know, I've bought too many guitars," it causes me to reevaluate what I'm looking for. And I'm getting better gear, and gear that may actually go up in value, or at least hold its value.

Rock on!

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Going on Tour

Well, THIS has been an eventful week.

First, some background: one of the Internet communities in which I participate is the Unofficial Acoustic Control Corporation Forum, a forum about musical equipment made by Acoustic Control Corporation. Acoustic made guitar amplifiers, bass amplifiers, PA equipment and speaker cabinets (among other things) from the late 60s to the early 80s. At the time it was some of the best gear you could get, but for reasons I do not understand they fell out of fashion and for many years the brand was moribund, although within the last year it has been revived, and for the first time in a long time you can buy new Acoustic amps. But of significance to this story is that the amps they made in their heyday were really quite good amps, and often they can now be found for quite low prices---so the savvy consumer (e.g., me) can find good bargains. Over the last year or so I've managed to track down several Acoustic amps. A group of like-minded folk hang out on the Acoustic forum and exchange information, technical tips, and leads on gear for sale.

One of the other regulars on the board, Jesse, who runs the Acoustic MySpace page, also lives in Chicago. We met in person when we made a deal to trade a couple amps, and then I tried to help him with a problem he was having with a bass he owned. Last week I got an e-mail from him, saying that he and some friends were going to a guitar show on Sunday, and would I like to go with them? It worked out time-wise, so I went. The guitar show itself was not successful---I was looking for a Rickenbacker 12-string and they had none; hardly any Ricks of any description. If I had been looking for a Gretsch, I would have been in good shape; they were all over the place. And a not-very-surprising assortment of old Gibsons and Fenders. (Slight digression---so, not having found the guitar of my dreams at the show, I ordered a Rickenbacker 660/12 in Midnight Blue from a dealer in Wisconsin. It arrived today, but I have been warned not to open the case for 24 hours, to give it time to adjust to the temperature, having spent a couple days in unheated trucks and warehouses in the Midwestern winter. I am impatient!)

Also on the jaunt to the guitar show was Jesse's friend Bill and Bill's friend Kevin. Bill is a musician and had with him his latest CD, and we listened to it in the car on the way to the show. I liked it. In the course of the conversation, Bill mentioned that he was looking for a bass player for an upcoming tour. Such statements conjure visions of months spent crisscrossing the country, but it came out enventually that the tour in question was only about a week in duration---basically a trip from Chicago to New Orleans and back, stopping along the way to play shows. Six out-of-town dates were planned, with shows in Chicago before and after to bookend the event.

Now, I have been in many bands and played hundreds of shows at all kinds of venues, but one part of band life I never experienced was the indie van tour. As I've grown older and gotten more settled, I had just assumed that I never would---I wasn't going to quit my job to go try to be a rock star.

But I could certainly see taking a few days off from work to live the dream. So after a conversation with Jesse in which he assured me that Bill was a good guy and stable, I offered my services. Bill seemed receptive and after the show we came back and jammed a bit, and it seemed to go well. I was invited to meet and audition for the rest of his band, which happened yesterday. That went well too---I like the music, I like the band, and they seemed to like me. And most importantly, Kris had no objections to me taking off for a week in a van with a bunch of musicians, believe it or not.

So, it looks like it's on! Come April, I will be going on tour as bassist for Bill Tucker and Friends, playing dates in Bloomington, IN, New Orleans, Pensacola, somewhere in Alabama, and Chattanooga, with the shows before and after in Chicago. Jesse and I are going to outfit the band with a full Acoustic backline, which will be news in certain circles.

I am really looking forward to this. At 41, I assumed my chance to do this was behind me, and I am really tickled that I will get to do it after all. It should be a hoot, and provide lots of fun stories and pictures, and you can read all about it here. As the plans are confirmed I will post specific info here.

In other news: before I started this blog, I had a blog of sorts on my MySpace page. I didn't update it as regularly as I do this one---I'm not sure why, but for some reason I'm more likely to post here. Anyway, if you just can't get enough of my musings, you can find more of them there.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

A Great Band

From time to time I feel shame because I don't go see more bands. There are few things I love more than a good live music performance, but the transaction costs of finding the good bands can get kind of high---bars don't seem to exercise much quality control, and before I invest the time (and usually lost sleep) in going to see one I like to have at least a decent expectation that they have some merit.

So last year I e-mailed a bunch of my music-savvy friends asking for recommendations of bands to go see, and my friend Dan (not the friend Dan who came to the Big Brew, another friend Dan---I have multiple friends Dan), recommended a good one. Dan works as a recording engineer and a live sound man at local venues, so (a) he sees a LOT of bands, and (b) it takes a lot to impress him. But he mentioned that he was actually going to see this band on his night off, which was about the strongest recommendation for a band I can imagine.

Dan

The band in question was Union Pulse, who are from Milwaukee. I joined Dan and some friends at a show at Elbo Room, and I was very impressed. They are a thrashy pop-rock band, but they do it remarkably well: they have a very high-energy stage show, their songs are hooky and memorable, and James Redding is an ohmygod guitarist. It's so refreshing to go watch somebody play who is so in tune with the guitar, who throws off neat little licks and riffs so effortlessly. They have some tunes up on their MySpace page, but the studio recordings, while good, really don't do justice to these guys. Their forte is their live show.

So anyway, they came back through town on Saturday, thanks to Dan's intercession---his band had a gig and the club told them they could book another band on the bill, so he called up Union Pulse, and they came down. It was another great show. I tend to get kind of jaded about the music scene but seeing a show like that reminds me that yes, there is still great music out there to be found.

If you know of a good local band, or at least someone who plays in Chicago regularly, post a comment and let me (and all three other people who actually read this) know about it!

And, check Union Pulse's schedule of upcoming shows---they've been playing in other parts of the country, so maybe they'll be somewhere near you. If you have a chance, go see them---you won't be disappointed.

(Ironically, I didn't get to see Dan's band play on Saturday because they were on last and I had to catch the last train home. But next time, I'm there!)

Union Pulse in action, apparently around Christmas.

Monday, February 11, 2008

The Big Brew

Well, it's been a bit longer than I intended since my last entry, but I started working on an essay of sorts that is taking longer than I thought, and it's been a busy week or so, too. But eventually that will see the light of day.

In the mean time, yesterday I had some friends over to make a batch of beer.

I got interested in beer (for its own sake, as more than just a social lubricant) in my later college years---Coslow's pub in Champaign had a fairly wide selection of beers, especially for the time (mid-late 80s), and I discovered the joys of McEwan's Scotch Ale, a thick, dark, sweet beer unlike anything I had ever had. When I was in law school, I decided to take a stab at making some beer of my own. There was a shop in Ann Arbor that sold kits, so I whipped up a few batches. They were okay. I made some more while I was living with my parents studying for the bar, but when I moved up to Chicago to start working I was really cramped for space, so my brewing equipment stayed in Springfield.

Many years later, after I got married, we went down to Springfield and brought up all the rest of my stuff that was still at my folks', and my beermaking paraphernalia made the trip up. Then, a couple years ago, some friends mentioned making some beer, and we pulled it out again, supplemented with some of another friend's gear, and made some more beer. I believe that first batch was an English Brown Ale. It turned out well, and more beer followed. Another friend, coincidentally, was starting a homebrewing club around that time, which I joined, and for about a year we brewed fairly regularly.

As part of my newly invigorated brewing hobby, I joined the American Homebrewer's Association. They have a promotional program: "Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day," which is the first Saturday in November, when they encourage members to invite non-brewing friends to a brewing session, in hopes of getting them interested and involved. So for the past two years I've hosted a small brewing party. In 2006 we had a good time but none of the attendees caught the bug, but in 2007, several of the people who came subsequently got their own kits and started brewing beer! One of my co-workers, Katherine, had brought her husband Jim to the TaFtHB Day party, they had a good time, and for Christmas she got him a kit. And, Kelly from the Xylenes picked up a kit for herself too.

To encourage them, I thought it would be fun to get them together and make a big batch of beer. The brewing club had a big conical fermenter (the Fermenator) that was going more or less unused, so I borrowed that, everybody came over, and we brewed up 10 gallons of Kolsch, a golden ale style native to Koln/Cologne (depending on whether you speak German or French). Brewing is actually about a one-and-a-half man job, but it's a lot more fun with a few friends around. And more excitingly, everybody brought examples of their homebrewing endeavors, and their beers were good! My friend Dan besides helping out at the recent TaFtHB Day brew, was part of the first brewing session here in Chicago from a few years ago---he hadn't brewed before, but he took to it like a duck to water---he brought four beers, a mead, and a gruit he made. All were well received, although the gruit (a beer made with various herbs rather than hops) was of more historical interest. Hops are relatively recent additions to the conventional recipe for beer, having only come to prominence in the last few centuries. It was interesting to see what beer may have been like before they became standard. Dan's gruit was made with wormwood, gale, and rosemary. Jim had a pithy comment: "I wouldn't buy a six-pack of it, but I'd buy something like it." It was an experiment, and may be subject to further refining.

Kelly had made a "Pilsener" (although fermented with ale yeast) that turned out light and tasty, and Jim and Katherine brought a red ale. While poking around in the basement I found a 12-pack of beer still left from the first TaFtHB Day brew, back in 2006. We cracked a couple of them open, and that beer---an American red ale--- had aged very nicely! Certain light styles may suffer from age, but most beers will continue to get better for a long time before they start getting worse. Unfortunately, most homebrewers don't have the patience to keep their beer around for months and months! But I had forgotten this stuff was there, so I've still got 10 bottles of what is now excellent beer! This year's TaFtHB Day brew was a Belgian dubbel of sorts, turned out great from a flavor perspective, but it did not carbonate as expected. We added carb tabs to about a case of those bottles, and we'll see if that works to give them some fizz.

The Fermenator was free because the beer club had gone moribund about a year ago, but interestingly, when I inquired about using it, the rest of the club members were asked if they minded, and many of them responded with comments along the lines of, "Hey, we should get back together and make some more beer!" So it looks like, after this batch is done, the club may be re-vitalized.

In the mean time, as Charlie Papazian, the godfather of American homebrewing, says: "Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew!"