Acus Gu

Messing around with dof on my iPhone, this is the sound board at our church.  Acus Gu is, of course, Acoustic Guitar.  Roland in the electric Piano...  Bass Gu on the right edge is me....  as is Bass Guitar,

like this:

Thant's my 1968 Guild Jetstar bass, with the oh-so-cool bisonic pickup.

Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam

So...  Three weeks ago, I got a new smart-phone.  New phone, new number, clean slate.  For a variety of reasons, I have been a little slow to switch all my activities over. So, after 21 days, what does my (incoming) call log look like?

10 inbound calls;  9 are spam, and 1 is my wife.

Yep, 90% of the calls I have received have been spam.  It took about 10 days before the first one, so I'm averaging 1/day.

Now, by policy, I don't answer calls from unknown numbers.  Leave a message, I'll call you right back.  None of those 9 calls left a message.  Several of those seem to be from spoofed numbers (same area code / exchange, different last-4).

Really ticks me off, but I guess it's just the way of the world these days.

Anyway, here's "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" by Sugarloaf:

https://youtu.be/fHDNWf_ws38

May your trails be crooked...

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view." 
-  Edward Abbey

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I downloaded a book to my digital device(s) today, "The Nature Fix" by Florence Williams.  Looks interesting, I'll let you know.  The quote above was on page 1, and I rather liked it. 

I've taken countless "trail" images through the years, here's a few, gabbed semi randomly.

 

 

 

 

Sunflowers!

So, last week sometime, my wife mentioned that a (mutual) friend had been out the previous weekend looking at Sunflower fields.  At Columbia Bottom Conservation Area.  Well, I was mildly interested in Sunflowers, but Columbia Bottom got my attention. Regular readers should recognize the location, it is a regular spot for me.    And when last weekend rolled around, we made the short trek over.  

Funny, somehow my wife didn't realize where Columbia Bottom was!!  She's never been over with me, and apparently never paid a lot of attention when I 've talked about it (no comment!).

Well, now she knows, and we have a fun outing.  Here's some images:

 

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And while we were at Columbia Bottom CA, I had to take some non-sunflower photos  I'm starting a TAG for the blog for this location, call it CBCA.  I'll try and update tags on older images,

Looking Down

Out for a walk this evening, on one of the many "Rails To Trails" paths in our area. This is from a stream crossing, looking down. 1.6 sec exposure, trying to get a smooth feel. But there wasn't a lot of water to smooth out...

Anyway, I still think it is interesting, hope you do too!

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Below is a long view of the path, and the bridge:

Paul Goddard

Today (6/23/2018) would have been Paul Goddard's 73rd birthday.

Paul Goddard (of course!) was the bass player for The Atlanta Rhythm Section.  A founding member of the band, he played with them from the 70's through the 80's, including all of their hits.  Goddard was one of the first bass players I really noticed, especially on the title track from 1975's Dog Days.  Which I can't find on Youtube!  He remains one of my favorites, probably tops on my Underappreciated bass palyers list.

I saw ARS a few times in the 70's with Paul Goddard.

 His solo on "Another man's Woman" from the 1979 live album was once rated by Rolling Stone as one of the 5 best bass solos in rock.  It runs close to 3 minutes, and is all kinds of awesome.  Check it out:



Paul Goddard died in 2014.

Happy Birthday Paul McCartney!

Paul McCartney (or, Sir Paul, I suppose) is 76 today!

I really shouldn't have to tell anybody who Paul McCartney is, but here goes:

Paul McCartney was the bass player for a little band called the Beatles, that changed the face of music during the 1960's.  He wrote most of their songs (along with some cat named Lennon) and sang on a large percentage.  After the Beatles, he went on to a frightfully successful second career, with the band Wings and as a solo artist.  And he's done collaborations with folk like Micheal Jackson, Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson,  and more.  And he's still touring (as recently as december 2017).

There are quite a few videos out there that feature Paul's isolated bass.  Worth checking out!

 Seriously, if you don't know Macca, you don't know pop/rock music.

Personally:  I've never seen McCartney live, but he's solidly represented in my music collection.  I have over 300 songs from his Beatles, Wings and solo career.

Happy Birthday Paul McCartney!!

Hummingbird Don't Fly Away, Fly Away....

So...

One of my friends at work decided to put up a hummingbird feeder, just outside the window we share.  Frankly I figured we'd never see anything.  We're in a pretty developed area, not especially near anything I'd expect to normally draw hummingbirds.  And for 4-5 weeks, there was no evidence of anything.

And then last Wednesday, boom!  We have hummingbirds!  And every (work)day since.  They were probably here over the weekend, but no one was here.  Pretty cool.  My friend went out and bought a networked camera, complete with phone ap.  So here's a snapshot of one of our guests:

And from the same camera, a video:

Hummingbirds are always fun!

So. I was discussing the whole thing with my wife, and she proceeded to pick up a hummingbird feeder at a yard sale where she was helping.  And less than 24 hrs later, at least 1 hummingbird has found it.

Anyway, all fun.
And the title, of course is from the Seals and Crofts song, which peaked at #20 in 1973.
Hummingbird

Under the bridge

Just a little something, playing with an image taken this weekend.  Taken from the trails that meander around the Chain of Rocks Bridge...  That's the bridge, of course.    From Choteau Island.

This one is also posted at 365project,

 Here;s the Straight Out Of Camera version, click for larger version.:

What We're Going To Do Right Here Is Go Back..... Way Back... Back Into Time

"What we're gonna do right here is go back, way back, back into time.

When the only people that existed were troglodytes...
Cave men, cave women, Neanderthal, troglodytes. 

Let's take the average cave man at home, listening to his stereo.
Sometimes he'd get up, try to do his thing.
He'd begin to move, something like this,
"Dance...dance"..

Troglodyte (Cave Man) - Jimmy Castor Bunch 

Number 6 on the Billboard Chart in 1972 (#4 on the R&B Chart)

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But that's not what I came here to talk about...

I was looking at the Blogger page and see that I've been doing this little gig since August of 2004.  Coming up on 14 years.  There's been no fame, and certainly not any fortune, but it has been a mostly fun experience.  Looking at the stats page, I see a bit over 190,000 "pageviews all time history", but the associated graph only goes back to May 2010.  That would be an average of about 65 page views a day.  Which is pathetic until compared with 13.6 page views per day last month.  Ah well, it keeps me out of trouble...  kind of.

 Sadly, I used my ISP for image hosting for the first 4 years or so, so the early years have no photos.  And for some reason (probably because there were no images) I started deleting posts a while back, so the fist couple of months are gone.  Anyway, thought I'd post a few "throwbacks" to what I was posting in June of previous years.  But then most of the early posts didn't have anything meaningful, except broken photo links.

June 8 2011 did include a "Music Birthdays" post.  You can check that one out here.  And a "This Day In Music" discussing the Top 40 for 6/8/1968.  Again, see it here.

June 8, 2012 included a music post, about Pat Benatar....

In June 2014 (June 10th) I posted a rant on public transportation that is still interesting (to me at least).

Anyway, there's not really a "so what?" here, just a little diversion.  An interesting diversion, I hope.

Quilt Shops and Photo Ops.... Staunton, IL

Quilt Shops and Photo Ops....  Staunton, IL

Take Me Out To The Ballgame....

So, last week (Thursday) my company hosted a night at the baseball game.  Almost 30 folk attended, about 50/50 with employees and SOs / kids...  The selected game was a visit by the Pittsburgh Pirates.  One of the organizers told me they picked a night when the Bucs were in town knowing that I'm a Pirates fan.  A nice gesture (or a nice story, at least).

And a good chance to play with the pano feature on my iPhone:

Busch stadium is a good spot to see a game, good sight lines, nice view of the skyline / arch....    And generally good baseball.  The image above is not from our seats, but from the SRO area behind section 346.  We went down that way looking for dinner, and hung around a while until the sun dropped a bit lower.  You see, our seats were in section 433 which is at the top right of this image.  We were in the shade at game's start, but as the sun sank, we had a full blast of glare and heat.  All good though.

The image below is from our seat, when we were back in the shade:

Not the best seats in the house, but can't beat the price.  They were free to us, but face value was $5 with a $5 credit at concessions.

It started out looking like a dull game, as the Cards scored 4 runs in the bottom of the first.  But the Pirates edged back to tie, and the game went back and forth through the last few innings until the Cards won with a "walk-off" home run in the bottom of the 9th.  But, truth be told, my son and I left early to beat the crowds and traffic and get home at a reasonable time.  But we did have a good time!

Truckin'

My first couple of thoughts on titles were bad puns on...  like "Trucked Up".  But I decided that was tacky and didn't go there...  Except, I suppose that I just went "there" here.  Oh well.

This is the old truck I found about a month ago, at Columbia Bottom Conservation Area.  Seems like I didn't post them here (shame on me!).  But you can check them out here, and here.  I revisted last weekend, a little earlier so there was a bit more light (and I knew where I was better).

Here's my favorite of the second series, others here, here and here.

So, I thought it would be interesting to do a "before and after" on this.  The's actually a fair amount of tweakage, though I hope it isn't too obvious. I wanted to make it "pop" more though.

Here's the SOOC (straight out of camera" version for comparison:

Happy Birthday Leland Sklar!

Session bassist Leland Sklar is 71 years old today!

I'm not sure Sklar is all that well known outside music circles, but he's a bona fide bass icon, and has played on over 2,500 albums.  Including music by Phil Collins, Billy Cobham, Rod Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Hall & Oates, Jackson Browne, Tommy Bolin, David Bowie, Ray Charles, B.B. King, The Doors, Peter Frampton, Aaron Neville, Lyle Lovett and countless others.   Here's some stories behind some of the songs:  LINK.

I've never seen Leland Sklar in person, but I own a ton of music he's played on.

He even shows up on some youtubes:
Mockingbird
Sussudio
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

101

Just a little something.... For a some reason I tend to notice, and be drawn to these kinds of markings on our walkways and roadways.... If you dig through my album(s) I'm sure you could find a few examples.

I'm sure it has deep meaning for somebody. Or perhaps shallow meaning....  One way of the other it isn't random.

This could qualify as for "Eye Of The Beholder" at 365project.  Except it is between sessions.