Rivers Clothing -Jeans - disintegrated at FIRST WASH

This is the most unbelievable clothing purchase of my whole life so far!

I bought these jeans two or three months ago, and having just had the length professionally altered, I decided to wear them for the first time on Friday.

On a train into the CBD of Melbourne I noticed my hands were grubby, covered with a black dust.

It didn't take long to work out that the "dust" was off my new black jeans. The next day, along with another new pair of black jeans,  I decided to hand-wash off what I assumed was loose clothes dye. I noticed some slight fraying of the material near the stitching just under the fly. I soaked the jeans in woolwash, and then rinsed them. Still the "dye" kept blackening the water. After a few rinses I put both pairs  in the washing machine for a cold wash.

When I went to retrieve the freshly washed and spun jeans to hang them out to dry, I couldn't believe what occurred. The damage was to the one pair only. 

 

I may have been just unlucky, or there may be a lack of quality control from Rivers and their suppliers. 

But my partner Jenny had an incident at their cash register which left us both unhappy. She bought three items tagged at $9.95, but noticed a cash register sub-total of over $32.00 which she queried. At this stage, she hadn't had her visa card swiped, ie no payment had been made.  The staff insisted she show her driver's licence as ID to fix their mistake with the pricing anomaly.

She subsequently sent an email of complaint to Rivers, to receive in reply a rambling justification of their refund procedures. Figuring that her email probably wasn't read properly, Jenny sent a further email to say she wasn't happy with the reply she received as she hadn't yet made payment, which meant she hadn't applied for a REFUND, therefore Rivers treatment of her was unsatisfactory.

Not only has she not received an apology, her second email hasn't even been replied to.

We will NEVER shop at Rivers again.

I wish I had said this! It is worth reading slowly and with comprehension.

I wish I had said this! It is worth reading slowly and more than once to ensure comprehension:

A quote from author David Glenn Cox:
"We find ourselves today living in a world treed by the hounds of madness, a complicit media covering contrite parties. Multilevel media, giving more access to communication yet stunting actual communication. More noise, less voice, more sound less music, more law less justice, more medicine less life."

It sums up the bimbo society we live in to perfection.

Let the Ventures teach you how to play "Walk Don't Run" (and other hits)!

I have always loved a wide variety of music. Many of the friends I hung out with from a young age could also be accused of the same.
My Dad loved Frank Sinatra, Slim Whitman, the wonderful harmony singing on Oral Roberts radio show, (one of those dreadful Sunday evening religious rants, but the singing was great!) and many other treasures from the era, and we often listened to the radio together.

One particular friend  from my pre-teen years came from a household with a radiogram (quite rare in those days in Mildura), and he was hooked on the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, and to this day I still find Oklahoma to be the absolute cream of the genre, unforgettable, and every word and note an epitome of perfection.

In my early to mid teens my friends and neighbours formed a band, much of the repertoire being The Shadows. In those days I aspired to be a singer, (still do!) and was a Gene Pitney freak. (And still am!)

I enjoyed the guitar  instrumental  hits of the day. But it took Cream, when I about 18 or 19 to stand me on my ear enough to inspire me to want to be a guitar player. I listened to Hendrix, Yardbirds, Cream, Rolling Stones, Them, the Blues, etc and cut my guitaring teeth on predominantly vocal/guitar music. I sang and played, wrote songs, and then incorporated Chuck Berry and 50's rock hits into my repertoire.
I eventually built up my chops enough to get interested in playing the more rudimentary guitar instrumentals.

I am still playing catch-up with the genre!
Recently, I was delighted to find two complementary web sites that help my endeavours.
The first one:  http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/WALK.html

The Money Chords web-site has heaps of useful pages of information and lessons on chords, Chord progressions, and much more. Including a page on "Walk Don't Run".
The "Walk Don't Run" page has tabs for the chords used in the song, a chord chart, (chord name and number of beats, in four beat bars) and tabs for the Lead Guitar part broken up into six diagrams. The six diagrams are significant as to how the instructions are presented in the audio tracks on the next web site.

At the bottom of the page is the album cover, pictured above, with the message to:  

MP3

Click on the album cover below to "Play Guitar with the Ventures."

The next page is an absolute treasure!
http://jukebox.au.nu/instromania/instro_monsters/ventures/1965_play_guitar_with_the_ventures/

It has MP3 reproductions of the tracks of the tutorial album which the Ventures released on vinyl all those years ago (1965). The record came with a tab-type instruction booklet for the different parts.
It presented bass, rhythm, and lead parts for  Raunchy, Tequila, Memphis, and, of course, Walk Don't Run.
 The  six "money chords" tab diagrams tie in with the way the song is presented for instruction.

Unfortunately, the Money Chords website doesn't have tabs for the other three songs, but the songs are presented broken up into their constituent riffs, and are reasonably easily decipherable.

There were seven LPs in the "Play Guitar with the Ventures" series, and if you have the patience, you may find various websites with audios to many or all of these, but I'm doubtful about finding the corresponding tabs.

Good luck, and good picking!

Who killed the Polish President?

The responses on the BBC website shows a large proportion of Polish paranoia and accusations aimed at the Russians, of whom many Poles are less than fond of.

However, the dead President, whilst being very conservative on social issues, was resistant to pushes for an uncontrolled free market economy.  And his central bank chief was also on the plane and amongst the dead.
The Wall Street Journal Market Watch reports that stocks in Warsaw actually rose on Monday.
The CIA has performed numerous black ops in the past on behalf the mafia-type hoons that control the U.S. government.

However, suspicions of it being the Russians, the CIA, or even the Polish pro-business Prime Minister's  political masters or cronies, are just that and may never be proven to be otherwise.

Perhaps, after all, it was just a terrible accident......

The Bowen Handle - Vibrato tailpiece

The tremolo arm, vibrato tailpiece, whammy, call it what you will was originally conceived of as a method for guitarists to emulate the pedal steel. And it has hardly been used for this purpose since!

If you love your Gibson but rue the fact that you can't do whammy bends when you are playing your favourite Shadows, Duane Eddy, or Chet pieces, the answer may well be the Bowen Handle.
If you like to occasionally embellish chords or notes like my heroes, mentioned above, this is a very economical way of adding the capability to your favourite stop-tailpiece fitted baby. If you are a whammy freak who wishes to do dive bombs and all that extreme stuff, this one is not for you.

The beauty of fitting one of these is no drilling or mangling of your guitar. (Although, as per the photo of my Signature model, I use a strip of masking tape to stop marking the guitar with the string ball ends when raising the pitch and the tail piece dips back.) It fits on your existing string posts and your stop tailpiece can be kept either in your guitar case or preferably a safe place in case you decide to sell the guitar. It is also easily transferable to another guitar. The one in the photo has been moved to my double-cut while I'm waiting for another to arrive.




















The one I already have came packaged as "Argus Musical Instrument Parts" in packaging that included Japanese fitting instructions. At $35 it was a very good buy, but that was probably close to 30 years ago!


The Bowen Handle I have on order at the moment is chrome right-handed at $59 USD, but they are also available in gold or black, and as lefties, a gold or black lefty costing $129 USD.
The order is with Freedom Guitars of San Diego California. Shipping is free to U.S.residents.
As an overseas buyer my cost is $79 USD with shipping, and as the exchange rate is quite good at the moment, will still cost me less than $90 AUD.
Here is the link if you are interested.
http://www.freedomguitar.com/products_bowen_handle.php?UID=20100405095749114.77.4.18