Using a Linux live CD for your On-line banking is much safer than Windows!

On-line banking using Windows is fraught with risk. Your PC may have a trojan without you even knowing it, logging your keystrokes, and hence your user ID and password.
Linux is much safer than Windows for banking for a number of reasons. One is that executable files can only be installed in the operating system with administrative permission which requires you to use a password. This means you would need to give permission for a dirty file to install. And the dirty files are predominantly written in a Windows format.
Most of the time files are installed using  the included software packet managers,  which get the software via secure centralised repositories.
Even better news is it is possible and easy to connect to the internet to do your banking without even installing Linux, each session only existing in memory, which disappears when you shut down. This can be done with a bootable USB stick or pendrive or whatever you want to call it, or via a bootable read-only CD. Even if a session was SOMEHOW to be infected, next boot would be clean again, with no hidden trojan.

As a musician I sometimes trawl the web for midi files, guitar tabs, or song lyrics.  I strongly suspect that in the past some of my Windows trojan infections have come from some of these pages. The text itself is not infected, and the midi files themselves have so far been clean, but the pages themselves are compromised. When the file or text is desired but the page is suspect, the solution is of course to do the trawling in Linux.

My PC has three hard drives, each with a separate operating system, each selectable by the PC's BIOS, each drive having it's own generic bootloader for its operating system. I have Ubuntu Linux, XP, and W7. I rarely use W7, so for those Windows only programs which have only been written for Windows I use XP.
Occasionally, I am unable to boot in with hive errors, I'm not sure if this is caused by a Trojan or if the drive is getting a bit flaky. Whilst I can see this XP drive with W7, doing backups and repairs leaves the W7 drive open to malicious software if this is in fact the cause.
The Windows drives can't see the Linux drive, but the Linux drive can see and access the Windows drives. This is all done transparently, unlike the old days of knowing how to "mount" and "unmount" them. And if Linux can't access or copy from, to , or delete files on the Windows drive, the drive is seriously ill and is probably a totally lost cause. I have in the past been able to retrieve data for backup on a dying drive.
With all the spam emails floating around, even a careful operator could eventually slip up and open an email that has a trojan. It makes sense to use Linux for email.
Ubuntu comes with Firefox and if the need is there to use Thunderbird for email, the bookmarks, settings, etc can be copied from one system to another.

Copying audio CDs in Windows often causes my PC to freeze and unwelcome reboots and creates lots of coasters. From trying to solve this Google resarch shows that I am far from alone, with suggestions for using different versions of Nero, to try this software or that, or update your burner's firmware. The best solution? I do all of my CD copying in Ubuntu using K3b.

Windows is also a pain ever since their MS Office software started using docx as a file extension, which is incompatible with older versions of MS Office as well as other programs. Unfortunately, Open Office in Linux (and Windows) uses ODT as a default, which, whilst it is meant to be an agreed standard which is widely used by non-MS office programs, can only be read in MS Office with a plugin installed.
My solution is to encourage the saving of letters as RTF or TXT files. This solves the problem both ways, as every program seems to be able to handle these, including Windows Notepad (for smaller files) and Wordpad.

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

" 'Cause we've ended as lovers" lyrics

Jeff Beck's sound and playing in this song are memorable, and I saw a comment, quote: "absolutely gorgeous solo that tells all the story. needs no lyrics".

However, to quote from "Chet Atkins in Three Dimensions":
"Sing. Chet was always singing! singing through the guitar! He stressed the importance of knowing the lyrics to the songs you play, , as this will help you create a more complete legato in your musical lines or phrases."
And the way Jeff plays this, I would be surprised if he wasn't aware of the complete song, the lyrics, and the pain in them.
The song was written as a very personal song by Stevie Wonder for his ex-wife Syreeta, who sang it on the Stevie Wonder presents Syreeta" album.
Watch the video clip here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Syreeta/_/Cause+we%27ve+ended+as+lovers

I find the unusual poetic phrasing to be unnatural and stilted, however the emotional feel of the song rescues it.

Sneaking kisses in the hall
Parting love notes are on the wall
Been each other's all and all each day
Lovers walking in the rain
So close we felt each other's pain
But now you say that love has died away

*'Cause we've ended now as lovers
Doesn't mean that we each other can't be friends
'Cause we've ended now as lovers
Does our love for one another have to end

I remember teaching you
On piano 'Tea for Two'
And how playing it wrong I kissed your hand
But when our love has gone and passed
Why does the good exceed the bad
Well that's one thing I'll never understand

'Cause I remember us at class
You were always the one to pass
And gave me answers right to see me through
But that was more than years ago
And who will love me I don't know
It's sad for sure but true it won't be you

Apache Lyrics

A Google for Apache lyrics brings more than 317,000 hits.
Yes! They do exist, and I am here to share them with you!
Proof exists, see the pictorial excerpt above from Alberts 1001 Hit Songs Volume 1 above.

Back in the late 50's and in the 60's little Song booklets were available, just full of lyrics of the hits of the day. The book has long disappeared but I remember the Apache lyrics being in one of these, probably again from Alberts.

I have found a blog with the full lyrics, written by Sonny James (I have reproduced the lyrics because links can go dead:

Sonny James
Apache lyrics

Lonely Silver Dove
Sweet Apache maid
Lonely Silver Dove
Sweet Apache maid

Alone, all alone by the campfire
She dreamed of her love, her delight
Away, far away on the prairie
Her love Golden Hawk shared the night

Sometimes at night with the moon he would come
Sweet were the moments they shared
But with the dawn he was gone with the sun

A smoke sign arose from the prairie
A breeze sighed a sad mournful song
The brave Golden Hawk had departed
Had gone to that great, great beyond

Sometimes at night when there's rain in the sky
She hears her love high above
He and his pony go thundering by

The address for the blog:

http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/sonny_james/apache.html

You can listen to Sonny James vocal version here:

http://www.jango.com/music/Sonny+James?l=0

It features a nice, easy vocal with girly chorus, some twangy guitar, and other interesting guitar fills.

Yamaha Magicstomp

The Yamaha Magicstomp
is simply one of the best sounding guitar processors ever.
It has a cult following of enthusiastic users who love it because it sounds so good, and Alan Holdsworth, the guitar virtuoso uses 5 or 6 simultaneously. (Live, Allan Holdsworth uses 5 or 6 Yamaha Magicstomps, 1 clean, 1 clean chorus/delay, one for distortion and the others for effects such as pitch shifting. )
The Magicstomp came in guitar, bass, and AG (acoustic guitar) configurations. Patches are editable and downloadable from a PC with 99 firmware patches and 99 user patches being available on each unit.
Dedicated (and superb!) Shadows echo patches are available from http://www.echotapper.nl/stomp_jpatch/index.html
The Acoustic version has an Automatic Feedback Reduction system that really works, and works very well and is a blessing for amplified acoustic guitar players.
With available firmware upgrades, the Magicstomps can become the other configurations. eg a Bass stomp can be converted to an AG, with user patches from the guitar stomp included in the user patches.
These weren't cheap to begin with, but are now more than affordable on eBay.
There are a couple of vibrant and very active dedicated Yahoo groups that provide help from other users, firmware upgrade files,manuals, patches, etc.
These groups are still gaining new members and have frequent postings.
magicstomp_ub99 is a general group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magicstomp_ub99/?yguid=311128721 whilst John Dale started a complementary group magicstomppro http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magicstomppro/?yguid=311128721 which is more patch oriented, but also has a range of useful files. It makes sense to belong to both groups.
I own two, with one having AG firmware and the guitar patchset in the user patches. The other has Bass firmware with the Shadows patchset in the user slots.
The Shadows patches are fun to scroll through and strum, with each putting me in the mode to play a particular Shadows song.
I've snuck in the "Cause we've ended as lovers" (Jeff Beck) patch onto both machines because it is such a beautiful sound.

The Australian Election...

The image makers went to town on Johnny and Pete. Instead of that "I don't comprehend, but I hope you think I'm concentrating and thinking" frown Howard usually wears, he starts poncing around with a ridiculous looking grin, trying to convince us he has a sense of humour and a sunny disposition. Yeah, right!
And the smirk delivered what he thought was a brilliant barb at the opposition at yesterday's policy launch, and against all instinct worked very hard at suppressing the famous annoying smirk. Howard's grin is a ridiculous looking failure, but yes, Pete does look much better, more believable and likable without the smirk.
Johnny lost a great opportunity to win hearts and votes by looking bewildered instead of kneeling down and showing compassion when his minders bumped that poor woman to the floor in that shopping centre.
I am amazed that Labor has totally let the possibly treasonous AWB "forgets" out of this election campaign, because national propriety DOES matter.
I loved a comment in the the Melbourne rag that puts "me too" squarely back in the Lib camp because Johnny "me too"s right up Georgie.
I guess the tactics in this election are all about the future, which would be fine if we didn't have our heads buried deep in the sand pretending global warming catastrophe is somewhere deep in the future. After all, we've already had Katrina, the Mexican floods, the supertides in the UK, and a drought and water shortages in Oz that by this time next year will bite much harder than interest rate rises or housing affordability.
Johnny will be more than right, about moving from a welfare state, when he will be able to say, "why should we feed you?" and us being an opportunity society, as long as one is the owner of a fleet of water tankers.
I would like to know which Minister has heavy investments in Childcare centres, a smidgeon of intelligence based on looking at past experiences would scream that giving the money direct to the entrepreneurs won't reduce costs to the parent, but will act as a gift, a padding, to the operators.

Junk Mail

There it was, shrink-wrapped, postage paid, no sender address at all. Unsolicited junk mail, political advertising.

I'm sick of it!!!!

If enough of us did what I did, no doubt a law would be passed to make it illegal - but I got a lot of satisfaction from it anyway - why didn't I think of it before?

A letter from the Prime Minister - Internet Safety - let's look like we are doing something - with a perceived average Australian "Australian values" world view.

Leave me alone, and don't waste taxes!!!!!

I marked the unopened pamphlet with "return to sender" and dropped it in the nearest post box......

John Howard uses the public service to edit Wikipedia

He is sooooo clever....... for now!
But after the election when he no longer controls the public service, there won't be too many volunteers to skew history on his behalf, and the truth will come back with a vengeance to bite him on the bum!

And the NSW Premier, Morris Iemma is suspected of a similar misuse (ABUSE) of his public service.

This behavior goes beyond smarmy, clever-dick politics. Because it uses enormous resources against individuals to monitor and revise and reverse entries, it is against the spirit of a free press, suppresses the individual's power and is highly unethical. It cheapens the spirit of democracy, and thus helps to weaken it.

Which Wah?

In my list of must-have effects for electric guitar are: Yamaha Magicstomp (more about this incredible suite of effects later) the Boss PW10 and a good basic wah pedal.
Yes, I know the V-wah is meant to be everything a wah pedal should be, and then some, but....
it doesn't cut it for that good barking wah ala Jeff Beck in "Ain't Superstitious". My el-cheapo SoundArt wah is the closest I've found to the basic sixties wah pedals, no bells and whistles, even a touch scratchy, (as they were!) but built in a good strong chassis and casing, and an on/off (bypass) switch with full toe forward. Long pedal travel and that REAL wah pedal feel! Good battery life, too! Very similar to what the ORIGINAL Cry babys etc were like.
The V-wah is an incredible effects unit with good overdrives and distortions, and wahwah sounds, rotary sounds, talking effects, etc. Judged as an effects unit and a fuzz-wah, it is a MUST. But judged strictly as a wah pedal, it doesn't quite cut it, and nowhere near the fun! Long live the SoundArt!

I also have the Behringer HellBabe. It is strong and rugged, but power hungry. It has so many bells and whistles with parametric knobs, and a boost, etc, but at the end of the day sits in the corner as "my girl least likely" to be asked to dinner! It is very unsatisfying.

ANZAC DAY 2007 War crazies out in force....

Is ANZAC Day beyond reproach? NO! The usurping of Anzac Day by our so-called leaders isn't merely about gaining political mileage. The media is complicit in aiding the power structure into bullying any opposition to the necessary unquestioned compliance with their need for militarism to meet their ends.

We hear a lot about graffiti, precious little about corporate graffiti which overlooks our highways and train stations and can be as offensive as it likes as long as it is there to earn a less than honourable dollar.

Yeah, the girls were insensitive in disfiguring a WAR memorial, but no, it is NOT the same as disfiguring graves, and perhaps they could use it on their resumes to get jobs in advertising, perhaps redesigning Howard's anti-terror posters that are placed where we can't ignore them.

To go on with the dying for freedom thing, some did, many did not.

Some soldiers may have been idealistic with fighting for freedom as a motive, but I remember a Viet vet who was called up, then had the OPTION to be sent over. He went, not for the country, but himself, because of the generous housing loan he would get for having served in a conflict zone. Many serving in Iraq are also generously rewarded financially for agreeing to go over there.

When there is conscription, many are so intimidated by the power structure and threats of reprisals, they will not say no, even if it kills them, which it often has.

I have sympathy for well meaning people using Anzac Day and the like for rememberance of dead and maimed comrades.

These people often are deeply religious, compassionate and well-meaning.

Their parents, teachers, and priests, who should be their spiritual leaders, often with good intentions and with no deliberate deception, aren’t up to their duty of trust, and let them down. Instead of teaching them to have a conscience based on their own thoughts and experiences, of teaching them to think, interpret and judge, and say and act, they are inoculated with that ridiculous excuse for lack of intelligent communication, FAITH.

They are drowned in what are often dangerous, erroneous and often down-right stupid world views that those in trust design into them virtually from birth, right through their childhood and schooling. And subsequently never question.

If the child has any grit in the face of these overbearing pressures from older, socially stronger and (whether the perpetrator realizes it or not) bullying “authorities”, rebellion occurs. Most are not Che Guevera: rather, James Dean, rebels without a cause. Reacting, rebelling, may be right, but the methods are often self-destructive and pointless. A hedonistic lifestyle of booze, drugs, sex, rock’n’roll, rap, say “you have loaded me with crap!”
There is a feel good factor, but no lasting betterment of the world, society, or even of the rebel.

I have disgust for Anzac Day footy broadcasts and pre-match "commemorations", politicians sound bites, the so called Left-leaning ABC news services, and jingoistic press coverage which are nothing short of out and out out propaganda used to push down to silence those who do not subscribe to their militaristic world view, and try to institutionalise this Anzac nationalistic jingoism as core Australian values.

Joel's Folkways Cafe in Mildura

On Tuesday I stopped in at my childhood home town of Mildura as a diversion whilst returning from Adelaide. Around lunchtime I noticed a little cafe which advertised that it hosts live music most evenings.
This being Tuesday, (along with Monday) it was one of the nights without the live entertainment.
What the hell, I wandered in anyway to chat with the owner.
He introduced himself as Joel (Anderson), and invited me to have a jam. He had an old nylon string acoustic as well as his own guitar.
He showed me various songs he had written. They typically had local and personal themes, many about the river (the mighty Murray). Unlike the Tamworth set, this wasn't "Country" music, but more an amalgam of folk and blues.
Nearly forty years ago I had written blues songs about my life in Mildura on the Murray River, so I was quite knocked out by Joel's choice of topic, enthusiasm and the quality of his writing.

Joel then played a "Chicken Pickin'" breakdown, at breakneck speed and complete with flashy showmanship as he alternately reached over and under the neck to play some of the notes in some of the licks. Totally mind boggling.
To show the breadth of his abilities, we then jammed on Aint Misbehavin', .

Joel's FolkwaysCafe is at 136a Eighth Street Mildura.

I wish him all the best, and next trip up I will go on a Wednesday to Saturday, and hopefully renew our aquaintance and jam with an electric guitar with his resident band.

If I don't tell you, who will?

Every text book on studio/home recording pushes the same line. You compress your recordings to get a bigger sound and to even out the spikes in the vocals, the bass, etc.
OK, if you are creating product for the mass media, eg television, radio, you give them product as required by them, they are more likely to use it..

But, artistically, come on, now! In real life all but the most controlled singers surge and spike, as do bass players and other instrumentalists. There is a real alternative when you are recording, and YOU are FREE to make your own JUDGEMENT on whether to compress, limit, et al.
The text book way can be a very good way of doing things, but it is NOT the only way, and the sky won't fall and even the thought police won't drag you away screaming if you do it any other way. They just give you a complex if you don't follow their prescribed methods.

In fact, most expert advice on recording has swung to being minimalist with EQing.
De-essing and pop filtering compensate for the deficiencies of our supposedly top notch super gear.
Compression sort of does, but not if you can get a clean, noiseless signal without it.
If I discovered the lost tribe of where-ever and wanted a true recording of their war dances, love songs, funeral dirges, or what-ever, uncompressed would probably be a lot more accurate.

John Howard, Obama, Race!

Is there something so intolerable to John Howard about the thought that the next president of the U.S. of North America could be other than of white anglo heritage, that really gets up his skirt and clouds his head with a thick fog of refusal to countenance such a prospect, that he has totally lost the plot?

Michael Gawenda of The Age refutes the suggestion that the imperious little Ceasar is racist, but when it comes to being the chosen Messiah to control the whole planet, I suspect that the thought of anyone other than an Anglo, forgetting the issue of colour, being in charge of the New world Order, the controlling Empire, is intolerable.

Is the superiority complex such that he has descended to the depths of risking his OWN little empire because he can't shut up about the possibility of President Obama?

The irony of it all is that overall Obama resembles a Kim Beazley more than he does a Dr Martin Luther King.

Nice little ANALOG delay....

It's a Crossfire Dly-303 .. made in China, I paid $49.95 at Melbourne Music Centre, you can find them on EBay, but they are near Ormond Station on North Road, (Ormond, of course!)

It's in a sturdy metal casing, I think you could drive a semi over it and it would still work!
Best of all, it sounds quite good and is simple to use. It delays fom 130 to 350 ms., the repeat control isn't oversensitive, (many pedals are hard to dial a single repeat!). The level control seems to be more or less set to max at slightly above unity, where the echo just exceeds the dry signal. The bypassed sound is straight through natural guitar sound, (many effects units, especially multi-effects can't seem to pass a straight signal), in fact the dry part of an effected signal still sounds straight. My Gibsons still sound like Gibsons with repeats. Many other effects destroy the actual guitar's sound, why would you need a Gibson, you could just use any el-cheapo, or one of those toneless Fender Strats!

The unit even comes with a nine volt battery still sealed in plastic wrap.
The battery fits into a removable plastic holder, similar to what is in many of the active pickup control pads on acoustic guitars these days. Quick and simple to access and to change batteries.

Many effects these days supposedly run on batteries, but drain very quickly and lose efficiency almost immediately, to the point where I suspect they are not meant to run on batteries at all.
I have a Behringer Hellbabe Wah pedal which seems to go crap in five or ten minutes max when used with boost when run on a battery, and a Marshall Tremolo/Vibrato pedal which was next to useless when I put in a normal heavy duty battery.
My solution is to use 200mH rechargable batteries which are in fact rated at 8.4 volts and seem to work OK. I've only just started this practice and haven't yet evaluated battery life between charges, however.

The Crossfire works fine on the heavy duty batteries, I suspect it doesn't need as much juice to drive it and will give reasonable battery life because the circiutry is plain, simple, and vintage.

Oh, give me a home where the dinosaurs roam

Our disgusting, grubby little excuse for a national leader looked utterly ridiculous last night in a photo shoot shown on TV in support of Bush's increase of Iraqi troop numbers.
He was poncing about in a military helmet, a decrepit little old man with legs starting to bow....

The (small ) minds of the the think big capitalist set.

Close to half a century ago, when I was about ten or twelve years old, I enjoyed (as many boys did) rummaging around the local rubbish tip. (These days you pay admission to get into the tip to dump, no way can you rummage!)
I still remember the day (electric sewing machines were coming in to the shops) that about fifty or so mechanical sewing machines were dumped, and this crud smashing them one by one with a hammer, in case some poor sod who would probably be unable to afford a new electric one anyway, should get something useful that was being thrown out.

About twenty or thirty years ago, Malcolm Fraser, one-time Prime Minister, sold a boat to a workmate's brother. The Bro' asked if the lifejackets were included. No, only at a price. No thanks, says Bro'. Malcolm then threw them on his rubbish pile!

Last week we had the local hard rubbish collection. It is quite a social event around Chelsea and Chelsea Heights. You put out something that may still be of use to someone else (our old letterbox has just completed its first year of service for the next door neighbours) and hopefully pick up some useful bits.
I scored a guitar stand, a foldable workbench with screwed on mitre box, a Tuner/amplifier, and some other useful items.

Collection day was Monday, though it took til the end of the week for things to be collected.
Guess what, as from Monday, the scrap collectors obviously had legal title to everyone's waste.
So prior to collection, thrown out TV's and other electrical goods had their power leads cut off, exercise bikes had their seats removed, in half a century the world has changed but the capitalist is still a selfish small minded weasel.

Capitalism is an illogical, unsustainable and morally and ethically corrupt system. Infinite growth just can't continue on a finite planet. But greed wants all, and wants to leave nothing for others.

To quote from The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (The Band)
"You take what you need and you leave the rest,
But they should never have taken the very best......"

World Overshoot day in in 1987 was on December the 19th.
This year it was 9th October. This is the day of the year when we go into ecological deficit, when we will have already consumed the total amount of new resources nature will produce this year.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=overshoot

Capitalism will surely die in an ever more rapidly approaching near future, but will take us down
with it.
The current World population is around 6.6 billion people, practically all of whom will be dead within ninety years. I haven't heard even a hint of anyone else saying it, but I will say it anyhow: In terms of misery and catastrophe and premature death, it is not unreasonable to guess that within ten to twenty years at least a quarter of these people will be dead.
The majority won't have funerals or even be buried.

Perhaps the next dominant species on this planet will be enlarged, overfed ants. They are already more social, mutually cooperative and cohesive than humans!

Jack Thomas and Jihadist Ruddock

Amazing! There is still a genuine journalist left in Australia! Tracee Hutchison pointed out in an opinion piece in "The Age" on 2nd September, that if Jack Thomas really intended contacting Osama Bin Laden it would be more sensible to tap his phone than to put in place a"Control Order" that accomplishes little more than ruin an innocent man's holiday with his family.

The law that allows the Control Orders is total shit! It is malicious and impinges on the civil liberties of us all predominantly to allow this rank excuse for a government to grandstand to its masters in the ruling elite.

The flippancy of the names within the list used to justify the Thomas Control Order shows a small minded vindictiveness, maliciousness and a cavalier attitude to what the law means to Ruddock, Howard and company. It ends up demonstrating how unfit for office these lying tyrannical scum really are.

It no doubt also serves their purpose to frighten into meek, silent submission anyone who doesn't at least publicly subscribe to their version of so-called core "Australian" values that serve as lubrication for the smooth functioning of this corner of the evil empire that now terrorises the world.
Many older migrants from Eastern European countries came to Australia to escape the dark clouds of the sort of corrupt, foreboding police state that we are rapidly evolving further and further into.
If they have eyes to see beyond the nightly John Howard press release propaganda sound bytes on Channel Two and the rest of our TV channels, they will feel fear and betrayal right to the pit of their guts!

When will we ever learn?

The Israeli attacks on Lebanon are high profile....
as are the Hezbollah retaliations......

Death, destruction, mayhem, misery, yet still just a fraction of what occurs daily in Iraq,
infinitesmal to what will occur when the U.S. attacks Iran.

Between the two U.S. wars against Iraq this sort of bombing and slaughter was almost a daily occurence, which never got reported.

And Howard's government has learnt its lessons well from its American masters, when we orchestrated events in East Timor to suit our needs and got rid of the democratically elected Prime Minister, with our "peacekeepers" reporting almost immediately to rebel army factions whom we trained and encouraged.
We got away with that one with miniscule bad press, the truth well and truly suppressed!

All over the world, daily, innocents suffer, poor and powerless, as others get comfortable at their expense, either in blissful ignorance or with callous disregard.

No one seems to care, tho the very heavens should cry out for justice.
But not for vengeance - for vengeance by it's very nature is usually taken too far......


WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN?

Windows XP Genuine Advantage nags.

One doesn't get to be obscenely rich without being incredibly small minded.
Bill Gates' Microsoft Windows XP has always been buggy and overpriced.

You can't get them for selling you crap, because they don't sell you Windows, they own it, they just sell you the rights to use it.
So they feel justified in adding their own official spyware and addware through an automatic update: the genuine adavantage nag screen. Even though they snoop your computer without your knowledge.
Then they ask you to pay the full and excessive purchase price for the licence of a system that is on the verge of being superceded: I'm sure this licence fee won't carry over to their new bug-filled system which will require a full priced licence and not just a nominal update fee.

Typical American capitalist greed and paranoia: one day I'll explain just how the record labels that whinge about music piracy rip off your favourite musicians at little risk to themselves to put their product that they so viciously defend on the market.


Here is a webpage with different methods to get rid of the genuine advantage nags.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/04/26/disable-and-remove-windows-genuine-advantage-notifications-nag-screen/

I am proud to say that I use Mandriva Linux: if you are a member of Melbourne PC User Group you can get it legit and above board on DVD for $5.00

Mega PT60R This is a great little amp!

This amp has enough volume so that I can hear myself above Tim, who is a loud drummer and the band who obviously are also loud.

It has a valve pramp using what is now an industry standard 12AX7.
The sound of this amp is GREAT!
It cuts like a knife with my Gibson guitars, and is great for pick harmonics and for feedback.

The clean channel can sound very clean, but has Gain as well as volume, bass and treble controls.
Using gain on this channel warms up the sound more to a clean overdrive than a distortion: so real chords can be played as opposed to power chords with the sound still being clear and defined.
The second channel has a middle knob added, and has more the guitar solo type overdrive.

This amp isn't for you if your sound comes from effects rather than the amp. The only effect built in is good old-fashioned spring reverb.
It is a good, quiet amp when idling, ie a low hum level.

It isn't a pretty amp: the blue panel on the front makes it look rather garish, but the construction is SOLID. It has a metal grill speaker cover, the box is covered in carpet, and the knobs are solid aluminium.

It has a CD input and a headphone jack, a footswitch socket for channel selection, and effects loop sockets.

Melbourne Music Centre in North Road Ormond (who also trade on EBay as Melmusic) sell this (along with other Mega models) at $399.00 AU., altho I bought the demo from the shop floor for $299.

Mega claim to make OEM amplifiers for leading manufacturers and a reviewer on Harmony Central claims that Mega's Acoustic amplifier AC60R is the exact same amplifier as Marshall's AS50R. and gives it a 10/10 rating.

A terrific buy! I'm still waiting to see what the catch is!

Only the good die young...... Goodbye Dave

A lot can happen in a couple of days, highs, and lows.
My post on the 29th June 2006 mentioned our at the time upcoming recording session at SAE studios on July 1st 2006.
Back in the very distant past I had written a song titled Wrigglin' 'n' Writhin'.
About 30 years ago, I took the song into Walter Sound Studios along with a young guitar player with whom I had the pleasure of working, Dave Middleton, who had a really nice 'burst Les Paul.
I had first met Dave a few years earlier when he was 15, and we played together shortly after.

(He's the handsome young fella standing on the right in the photo above.)

In later years Dave played in my last working band before my recent reincarnation as a player. In the years after he became increasingly interested in bluegrass music and acoustic guitar, banjo, and mandolin.

Dave has been a life long friend ever since we met. I was honoured to be a guest when he married Kellee, and was always made to feel welcome when I dropped in on them unannounced, and of course I always welcomed the times he visited or contacted me.

On Saturday, we used the same song, at the insistence of my current band, who consider it a great song. (Thanks., fellas, sincerely appreciated.)
We had just finished Saturday's session, and turned the mobile phones back on, when Jenny my partner answered my phone. I spoke to Kellee, Dave's wife, who was on the line with some terrible news.
In a twist of irony, Dave, with whom I'd recorded the same song earlier, had died at four a.m. that morning from what at this stage is presumed to be a heart attack.
I spoke to Dave's brother, Mark, this morning, who explained that their bluegrass band had a good rehearsal Friday night, and Dave has been organising a folk club near where he lived in Strathbogie with a view to organising a festival. He was looking forward to a pending course on Events Management, was very excited and happy, and appeared as fit as a scrub bull.
I haven't heard playbacks of the vocal or lead guitar trax as we were pushed for time: the song still needs to be mixed, and Jed is adding a rythmn part on the 14th of July. However, the performances felt good and I expect good results.
The band, when I told them of the bad news in the phone call, said we we would dedicate our recording of the song to Dave.

Thanks, Zig, Tim and Jed, my appreciation is heartfelt.

This tragedy has left Kellee a widow, and his two young children (whom Dave sired late in life) fatherless. My love and sympathy go out to Kellee, Chelsea, and Natalie, his brothers, Mark, Jim, Scott, sister Norma, stepmum Norma, and to Betty and Heinz, and to their families.

First gig....

We had our first (unpaid!) gig since Weekend Warriors, and the first with Jed.
O.K., it was Ziggy's 50th birthday party.
He is the baby of the line-up.
It has been nine months coming, but Ziggy has been busy becoming a Bass player after a lifetime on guitar, Jed has had to learn what electric guitar and a band is all about.
Tim hadn't drummed since he was 21 years old, and I suspect he wasn't anywhere near as accomplished as he is now. In the last couple of months Tim has really impressed me with his improvement, and the way he works in with either the Bass or with my guitar playing.

In the context of where we were coming from, it has taken a while to knock together about forty songs, but what makes this band so very enjoyable is that everyone is willing to have a go and share the load, every one of us sings either individually or together, and Jed has a few songs where he plays lead guitar and I comp for him.
The team spirit in this band is exceptional, we don't fight, get on well together, and encourage and support each other.

At the gig, we were a bit patchy, in my description to the others I said we ranged from very good, to terrible , to good, to excellent! I suggested we needed to work on our consistency.
The wry reply was that we could be consistently terrible on all the songs.
With tongue in cheek, I said, yes, we could manage that with a little less effort!
It was good to have that one under our belt, it was a milestone for Jed to play publicly for the very first time in his life, but by the last bracket he was really enjoying himself and was moving and grooving. We were tight and on!
This coming Saturday we have been lucky enough to score four hours in a leading studio with Jed's son engineering as part of an assignment for his audio engineering course.
Another first for the boys and the band, we hope to get a good result and are keen as mustard to be there!

Findlay Engineering, Snowy Hydro, Bilderberg

Findlay Engineering, the arseholes, couldn't wait for the ink to dry on the paper when the new Industrial Relations legislation was passed. They sacked two unionists who "smirked" at the boss at a meeting! They were pressured by an embarrassed Government into reinstating the men.

Now the company is in the hands of liquidators...... AGAIN!
Couldn't happen to anyone more deserving. Although, as usual, the workers will lose their jobs and the owners will pay a fraction of their debts. I hope they are forced to pay their employees entitlements first!

John Howard has supposedly done a backflip over the proposed sale of Snowy Hydro. My tip is the sale will be back on the agenda by year's end, possibly after the State elections in Victoria and NSW. Big business has pressured the World Bank who willingly force struggling third world nations to sell their public assetts, including water into private hands.

Some nations are so far successfully resisting, (see my previous post on Water as a Right and Bolivia) and fending big business off. But they also had a very motivated constituency and a government more in tune with their peoples' welfare.

Howard has given in too easily and too quickly on this one. Which is why I believe he and his masters are taking a breather before looking at a modified option and propaganda exercise before the fair dinkum push to sell the Snowy.
After all, water is an increasingly scarce and valuable commodity. It will never be allowed to stay in public hands.

Many of John Howard's masters attend the highly secretive (do a google! - and even their spouses can't accompany them to the meetings) Bilderberg conference each year. Here the ultra rich and ultra powerful meet to discuss their world view and how best to steer the world in their preferred direction.
This year the agenda is tipped to include Iran. The main headache is a split between the American and European Bilderbergers on the Iran beat-up. This has delayed the attack and caused no end of frustration to the U.S. faction. And also a response to how Chavez in Venezuela has scuttled their Free Trade Agreement for the Americas.

This year's meeting is tipped to be near Ottawa in Canada from the 8th June to 11th June 2006.

The End of Uranium.................

I have previously alluded to the End of Oil.
The Australian Government is now pushing a debate on Nuclear power.
It is reported if Australia decides to go nuclear, it will take a decade.

But the real motivation would seem to be more about a vision of grandeur as an economic power riding on uranium mining as oil supplies rapidly dwindle to exhaustion.
It would be a short ride at the top, and fraught with the dangers of invasion for a valuable but also dwindling resource. Which I guess is why we suck up to our imperialist masters for protection. They would just draw up a new "Trade Agreement" where we allow them to rip us off, because we couldn't say no. China or others would possibly have to attack us or fight against the U.S. for control and possession of our uranium.And despite the government slathering at the jowls at the prospect of a generation of riches from uranium mining, a generation is all it is likely to be.

I said it would be a short ride....

From London's "The Guardian" of 18th May 2006, which in turn is quoting Charles Kernot, mining analyst at Seymour Pierce in London, "There is a great expectation that there is not going to be enough uranium to feed the new nuclear power stations being built all over the world".

Given that globally there is roughly 20 years of easily extractable uranium at current usage, to push such a dangerous technology is extremely short-sighted.
In any event, given construction costs and looming rising extraction costs, the power delivered will be very expensive.In other words, by the time an expensive nuclear power plant is factored into an increasingly scarce and expensive fuel supply, only the rich will be able to afford heating and cooling.

I previously believed whoever started the Generational nomenclature at Generation X to be extremely short sighted, as there was little left of the alphabet to expand on. I now realise he was extremely astute, as Generation Z is likely to be the very last of the fossil generations. The following Generation A will probably be the first to grow up in a civilisation spiralling rapidly backwards to 1950, then 1920, and if not sufficiently astute, beyond!

Cream... White Room

Music Videos | Columbus Real Estate | Free Image Host

This cartoon says it all about nationalism....

Ok, the flag belongs to the United States of North America.
(I think it very arrogant of that nation to call itself the United States of America when apart from Canada and Mexico also in the Northern portion of the continent , the word America covers Central and South America as well!)

But Australia goes on with bullshit about Australian values and the ANZAC spirit and such to pander to the base instincts of our own version of a compliant neo-fascist government.
We spend enormous amounts on the various Institutes of Sport and Cricket Academy and such, to basically amuse the masses to distract them from real world issues. (To paraphrase Karl Marx, "Sport is the opiate of the Australian people"). There is a word to cover this hype: read my lips - PROPAGANDA!

With the phony war on terror as the excuse to introduce sedition laws and such, and the hammering by our politicians and their media cronies of the phrase "Australian values" we are going down the bullying path example set by the U.S of N.A. It is an insidious form of censorship where anyone who doesn't agree with the unwritten code of politically correct normality is intimidated into submission and silence.

It is COMPULSORY PATRIOTISM!

The war on terror is a phoney war.
Yes, there has been Bali, 911 and such, but neither Oz or our imperialist mentors have dispatched troops anywhere to fight terrorists. At the time we attacked Iraq I don't recall Howard mentioning we were going there to fight terrorists in all his lying excuses.
Ok, Bush eventually promoted the idea in the U.S. , but look at the money the Yanks pour into TV evangelists. They are gullible enough to believe any crap and very slow to wake up to reality.
(Mmm, I don't think we are too different, at that!)

There has not been one genuine terrorist threat averted here or abroad by the new heavy handed laws that have attacked our civil liberties, nor would they have stopped attacks that have occurred.
The pre-existing laws were just as adequate, or, if the glass is half empty, the new laws will be just as inadequate.
In other words, the true purpose of the laws is to intimidate dissenters into silence or at best into cream-puff discussions.

Patriotism, nationalism, etc, serve no real purpose for the general populace. While we swallow this gumbo from the ruling elites, they are in fact moving our nations towards globalisation and the New World Order. We, as their puppets have less to show for a more insecure yet increasingly more demanding lifetime of toil. Our planet is ever more degraded and unattractive. Our women, our sick, and our unemployed are more degraded. We are still cannon fodder.
Capitalism is on the cusp of transition into a new phase, where capital will in fact matter less.
It will still be about power and control, but control of people and labour will be more to the fore and money less so.

The equation is simple. Lets call our ruler JimboCorp. JC needs more labour. They borrow workers from privatised but government endorsed prison systems. The modern equivalent of the chain gang is paid a nominal wage. The prison charges the prisoner for his lodgings, he comes out just as broke but possibly more bitter than when he went in.
JimboCorp needs more slaves (oops, workers) we arrest more. If JC is working on a huge project, we may have to introduce a few more laws.

If you think this is fanciful, consider the fact that the U.S. has the highest prison population in the world. (2,135901 as at 30 Dec 2004) and the highest rate as proportion of population (724 per 100,000).
U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2004:

* Whites: 393 per 100,000
* Latinos: 957 per 100,000
* Blacks: 2,531 per 100,000

Look at just the males by race, and the incarceration rates become even more frightening, June 30, 2004:

* White males: 717 per 100,000
* Latino males: 1,717 per 100,000
* Black males: 4,919 per 100,000 (4.92%!)

In Australia,the prisoner population in Australia has increased by more than 40% over the decade to June 2004. (The adult Australian population increased by only 15% in the same period.)

Indigenous people represented 22% of the total prisoner population as at 30 June 2005. Indigenous persons in Western Australia and South Australia were 19 and 13 times more likely than non-Indigenous people to be in prison.

According to a Jesuit report, "Much of the dramatic increase in the Australian prison population can be explained by the relationship between untreated mental health needs, subsequent illegal use of drugs as a form of self-medication, and the eventual intervention of the criminal justice system."

Do a Google! China had 1.43 million prisoners at a rate of 111 as of Oct 2002. It has a huge population, we go on about their civil rights, yet their ratio is much less!
Oil and coal are very rapidly getting scarcer. Nuclear power is a relatively short term option as the reserves of easily extractable uranium are limited.

If you still think this scenario is fanciful, feel free to comment. But please explain to me why a supposedly great, successful society imprisons so many, most of who are poor, black, and hispanic, and how, after all this, this society is meant to be a paragon for the whole planet!
And why I should believe the U.S. is a compassionate and virtuous world policeman!

Neil Young .... This isn't about money .....

Living With War is Neil Young's hastily recorded yet very classy and tight anti-Bush, anti-war and anti-thought police album.
It is available pre-release for streaming listening at http://www.neilyoung.com/
Quote: "Let's impeach the President for lying", and for "spying on citizens in their own homes breaking every law in the country / tapping our computers and telephones."
"Let's impeach the President for hijaaking our religion and using it to get elected... dividing our country into colours and still leaving black people neglected"
The song ends with sound bytes of Bush talking what has since been proved to be total shit.
Mr. Young wants the album heard as a whole. The online streams play through from beginning to end
"Even if it turns out that we can't sell it with the news in it, we won't sell it, we'll just stream it," he said. "We don't have to sell it. We can still get it out there. This has nothing to do with money as far as I'm concerned."

I have never been a Neil Young fan, but this album is great. Neil seems to say what he feels. In the 60's it was the excellent song about the poor unfortunate four dead in Ohio.
Since then, he has apparently supported Ronald Reagan and later the war on terror following 911. As the neocons used this event to speed up their anti-world imperialist big brother agenda, they became more and more blatant, and despite a compliant and fawning media, via word of mouth world-wide over the internet people began to see what really is going on, and have become very concerned and alarmed. The majority of Americans have taken longer than the rest of the world to wake up, but now there seems to be a groundswell. Neil Young is very passionately part of this groundswell. At heart he is still a Raa Raa flag waving Yank (yes, I know he is Canadian, but listen to his interview!), yet things have got to a stage where he feels complelled to speak out.
I don't believe in Nationalism myself, it is jingoistic and dangerous. At least Neil Young's is like Kris Kristofferson's, where the patriotism isn't blind, my country right or wrong crap, it is aimed at redeeming and improving his country.


Sample lyrics from Neil Young's upcoming

album, Living With War:

Back in the days of shock and awe

We came to liberate them all

History was the cruel judge of overconfidence

Back in the days of shock and awe

Back in the days of "mission accomplished"

Our chief was landing on the deck

The sun was setting on a golden photo-op

Back in the days of "mission accomplished"

-- from Shock and Awe

Don't need no Madison Avenue War

Don't need no more boxes I can't see

Covered in flags but I can't see them on TV

Don't need no more lies

-- from The Restless Consumer

Won't need no shadow man

Runnin' the government

Won't need no stinkin' WAR

Won't need no haircut

Won't need no shoeshine

After the garden is gone

-- from After the Garden

Lookin' for a leader

To bring our country home

Reunite the red white and blue

Before it turns to stone . . .

Yeah maybe it's Obama

But he thinks that he's too young

Maybe it's Colin Powell

To right what he's done wrong

-- from Lookin' for a Leader

The guitarist and the end of oil....

We look sideways now at anyone who drives a Toorak tractor for their selfish use of increasingly limited and expensive oil resources. For non-Melbournians, Toorak is home to Melbourne's rich, and started the trend of having Four wheel drives (or SUV's for you yanks) for Mum's suburban runabout or for Dad to bully and agress other drivers.
As much as I love the electric guitar, in years to come electricity will become scarcer and more expensive and supplies will become intermittent and unreliable. (Sort of like what we've imposed on Iraq with our oil-hungry invasion).
Most dedicated musicians are idealists at heart, and will move on. We will still have our redneck heroes, who hopefully will deservedly be ostracised in the market place. This means goodbye to stacks and highpowered amps and stadium shows. Anyhow, everyone will be poorer and we won't be able to support jetsetting acts to bring out huge rigs with them, or to supply and run the rigs locally.
We will also be very resource concious as oil and fossil fuels will be kept for more important matters than for wasteful use of power. (Hmm, goodbye Friday and Saturday night footy under lights, and day-night cricket matches .)
The local muso will have his orchestral acoustic arch-top guitar that he can carry to the gig with his satchel of charts on the tram or train. The venue will probably have a piano set up on stage already. The percussionist will need to carry a large knapsack of tambourines, cowbells, maracas, and crash-together cymbals. And if he has muscles, perhaps a snare drum!
In the meantime, it may be realistic to give up the dream of owning an electrically hungry valve amp in preference for a solid state amp.

Wheat and the T word.

When politicians and other dangerous crackpots in society want to send us to war, they keep on about Chamberlain and appeasement prior to World War II. They tell us we should learn from history.
After the finish of the war, we accepted no excuses, such as "I didn't know" or "I was following orders". We hung them as quick as we could get them as we conducted the Nuremburg trials.

I personally don't believe in either nationalism or patriotism, whereever one currently is on Earth is where one belongs, and Government is there merely to service the people, who should NOT be there to service the Government.

Our "leaders" have contrary views to myself.On March 19th 2003 they led us to wage war on the hapless Iraqis.
From that day at least, any kickbacks to Iraq were payments to an enemy government.
That means officials who arranged these matters and politicians who either condoned, approved, or turned a blind eye to them are in fact by the politicians'own laws and parameters guily of treason.

We should learn from history: The evidence should be sought relentlessly as a matter of urgency and the full weight of the law brought to bear on the guilty parties.

Howard, Downer, and Vaille were amongst those who took us to war. I don't personally believe their declarations of lack of knowledge and the subtle inference of incompetence on their behalf. I believe that they cynically approved of the kickbacks.

The Australian Flag

The following quote is (as usual, misleading- what else can we expect from John Howard?) from the Prime Minister's web site for kids:
"When the Australian colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901, the Union Jack had been the official flag for 100 years to the day. A new nation raised an urgent demand for a new emblem. An official competition for a design was arranged, which attracted 32,823 entries. Five of these, which contained almost identical designs, were placed equal first. Apart from later changes in the magnitudes of the stars and the number of points, they had produced the present Australian flag."

In actual fact, it was Pig Iron Bob who during World War II: "issued a directive that there should be no restriction on the flying of the "Commonwealth Blue Ensign" and in 1953 "by means of a Commonwealth Act of Parliament - the Flags Act 1953 - the "British Blue Ensign" was proclaimed the national flag. Only since then has it had seniority over the Union Jack."

Prior to this, I understand the history to be that the flag was red, not blue, and the Union Jack was the superior symbol in Australia.
Menzies is usually thought of as the ultimate and ultra Anglophile, so it comes as a surprise to learn that he was such a closet radical!
http://www.ausflag.com.au/ausflag/bhist.html
So next time Grandad starts up about how "we fought for this flag", unless he is talking Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq his memory is probably unreliable!

Gene Pitney found dead in hotel

Last Updated: Wednesday, 5 April 2006, 10:42 GMT 11:42 UK

Gene Pitney found dead in hotel

Gene Pitney

Obituary: Gene Pitney
American superstar Gene Pitney has been found dead aged 65 in his bed in a Cardiff hotel.

Pitney - who found fame with Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa - was pronounced dead at the Hilton hotel at 1000 BST.

He was on a UK tour and had shown no signs of illness. The cause of death is not yet known but is not suspicious.

When I was about 14 or 15, I used to be glued to the radio, listening to the Beatles, Stones, Animals, all the great bands. But my hero, the greatest singer of them all was Gene Pitney. The first record I ever bought was a Gene Pitney 45.
The only record player available to me was a non electric wind-up 78 phonograph. It was in the external laundry of a railway house in Irymple. I would screw in the sharp needle and spin the platter by hand to an approxiamate but wavering 45 rpm, and sing my heart out!
Over the years I collected virtually every LP of his that I could get hold of, including second-hand items which he sang totally in Italian.
Since CD's came out it has been very hard to get anything but the same core songs repackaged as Best of, Greatest Hits, and the like, along with some later material.
But his 60's and 70's albums were superb, and very innovative.
Gene had a huge vocal range.His trademark was multitracked vocals, of which he was the unrivalled master. (Of course, Les Paul had done it earlier on guitar!) In live performance, Gene would sing one part, and his pianist/musical director another.
The orchestrations were lush, but exciting, with superb arrangements.
The dynamics in his songs were superb.Gene did with voice and orchestra what Cream did with a trio: start a song simply, gradually build up to a huge finish. Usually with a soaring falsetto.
There were some great guitar parts, (one of the best 60's whammy bar solos was "Lips Were Redder")and the piano solo in "Billy You're My Friend" is as good if not better than it ever got in popular music.
The songs were very carefully chosen and varied, but one of his favourite personae was the shy romantic, who either lost or never managed to get the girl. Believe me, I used to thoroughly identify with that!
Back when we all grew up with the daily fear of nuclear annihilation, he sang
"Let's put our hearts together, there's nothing we can't face,
Now hate has gone forever, and love has taken it's place".
He sang of family separation (Don't Let the neighbours know), was a seasonal worker in "Follow the sun', running off to join the circus, gave advice to a young runaway, (Fool Killer), he told us East is East and West is West, and about a town without pity (Perhaps it was Tulsa, or maybe a town 24 hours away).
Then there were his girls: Maybe Mary Lou had eyes of Cornflower blue, but Brandy was his true love's name!
There is an industry full of Elvis, Buddy, Roy, imitators. Gene was simply inimitable.
A true great, who will be sadly missed.

The Alexander Technique

I have just finished reading "The Working Singer's Handbook" by Roma Waterman.
With apologies to Roma, I found the concept of the book great, and she seems very enthusiastic, but overall the book left me unimpressed.
I did find the chapter on posture very helpful and enlightening, however, and Roma has made me aware of the Alexander Technique.
Matthias Alexander 1869-1955 was a Shakespearian actor who was prone to voice failure during performance. There was no medical basis for his voice problems, so he studied himself in the mirror.
He discovered that he pulled his head back and down as he spoke, causing restriction in his breathing, the larynx was depressed and there was consequent tension in his voice muscles. To quote Matthias: “We tend to pull our head down and back into our neck (each individual in his own characteristic way) initiating a downward pressure, a collapsing influence on the rest of the spine and the whole body structure connected to it. For most of us, this pulling down is so habitual that it does not feel wrong and usually becomes even stronger when we ‘do’ something. In other words, we misuse ourselves most of the time, but particularly badly during activity.” (Alexander, The Use of the Self, p. 43).
Alexander had seen that the head/neck relationship not only governed the efficiency of his vocal production but influenced the overall pattern of muscular and postural use in his whole body.

To begin to apply his method beneficially, when you sing, be careful to have a good erect posture, neither leaning backwards or forwards, especially keeping the bodyline straight from the hips up, including the neck. Neither tilt your head forward nor back, and if you are aware of good breathing technique, you will have a good, open relaxed pipe to and from your voice box.
For the singing guitarist, use a boom on your mike stand, and avoid shoulder hunches.
If you watch any of the Cream video clips on my posts, watch Jack Bruce, who is quite good in his posture. Eric Clapton, on the other hand, either leans in to the mike, or tilts his head back when he intends to back off from the mike on the louder passages. Jack has always been a better and stronger vocalist than Eric!
If you are a drummer, the ideal is to wear your mike, because of the probability of strong and frequent body movement when you play.
But above all, if you are a serious singer and you can afford it, find a singing teacher who is aware of the Alexander Technique, and work on this very important aspect of your craft.
When you sing, your breathing should fill all of your lungs, which means your diaphragm muscles should be strong, and should push out! (Which is why opera singers, male or female, always look heavy around the waist!)
Your breath should come out smoothly, and gradually, in other words it should be controlled.

Which brings me to Dubyoo, (not Dubya, the mongrel president).

Lie on your back, put a phone book on your diaphragm (just under your rib cage), and take a deep breath in. You should be able to lift the Mother at least two inches, if your diaphragm is strong, it should be three to four inches. Pitch your voice to a note that lies comfortably in your midrange, preferably your natural speaking pitch, and let the breath out gradually while repeating "Double you, double you, " til you run out of breath. You should at least get to a minute! An early hurdle to overcome is the tongue twister when you are saying "double you" but hear "you double".
This exercise will strengthen your voice and increase your breath control.

To increase your vocal range (to its natural limits):
In broad terms, our voices have three distinct registers. (Johnny Cash lived in the bottom register, with an occasional foray into the bottom of the middle.)
Warm your voice up first, then: Start the dubyoos on your mid note, say "double you" three times, go as high as you can for three, as low as you can for three, back to the middle, til you run out of breath. I doubt if you will last as long as the straight dubyoos!
A good session would be five of each variation, unless your voice fatigues. If not, try ten of each.
If yes, think about Alexander!

PIG OF THE WEEK!!!!

That power-freaking miserable wanker from a hydraulic hoses factory who was on one of those current affairs shows on commercial tele Thursday night, who was in seventh heaven and almost having orgasms at his new-found sack power with the negation of Unfair Dismissal laws in the new IR legislation.
And that dickhead who backed him up from the shop floor will learn the hard way, when he has to work harder and will eventually burn out, will be sacked as soon as his usefulness diminshes. No doubt he will squeal louder than a stuck piglet!
Anyone who could possibly support this rubbish legislation after watching this report must surely have a distorted sense of values.