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)

- - - - -

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!