Shakey's Spooky pics

Da Blog

Helen gives us a first-hand view of the San Diego county fires. Spooky.

Premier Amplifiers

Premier Amplifiers


Went to a party / jam session with the Alligators a few weeks back. I had met a few of the guys at another jam, but it was my HR pal Dougie who finagled me the invite.

Great food and beer, and a real nice buch of people. Jamming was lots of fun, shared keyboard duties with another HR buddy, Sean.

The harp player is way into vintage gear - we've discussed it before - and I noticed he had a Premier amp he played slide guitar through - sounded like a harp amp, there was so much distortion. Very cool. So I went on a search today, THIS:

is what I found. Premier was a cheap Fender knockoff from the 60's, lower power and way more tube distortion. But that's its beauty. There's a big section of the linked site devoted to Premier. Best thing is, these things are cheap! Just gotta find a good one...

TbT audio

Wow!!!

Lotsa VST goodies here:
TbT audio software projects Home

Tube Limiter especially sounds pretty cool. And all of it's freeware!!!

All together now: WOW!!!

How I Spent My Weekend, and a tribute to Warren Z

The First Annual HomeRec Canadian Mini Jam Fest, aka Voxfest 2003, is now history. Much jamming, drinking, eating, and carrying on with brothers and sisters from Hamilton, London, Detroit, and Utah (!!!). A jam purist would denounce some of the jamming as something other than true jams - multiple takes til we got it right, and not much extended group creativity, though there WERE moments that were more like a traditional jam. Some last minute cancellations from New York, Detroit, and Connecticut made for a smaller turnout than anticipated, but plenty of talent at every position.

It differed from the much larger Connecticut jamfest, not only in approach and size, but also content - very few 12-bar blues, or 60s/70s warhorses got pulled out here - much more GreenDay / 3EB / 90s rock content. A couple of key players, Simon and Myke, were my son's age. Creative guys with a great future, I think.

Musical highlights:
Home For A Rest, aka the Newfie jam, a hard-rocking Celtic flavored Canadian Classic - new to most of us there. We just followed Myke;
Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog, featuring my brother Rats on vocs and keys, and my recording debut on the guitar and airsynth;
Billy J's Still Rock & Roll, starring Myke, but I get a piano solo - big fun, much cooler than the fake sax thing I used to do in it;
Britney Spears' (!!!???) Hit Me Baby, completely reworked as a grungy punky moshpit jam - big fun!!!;
our Warren Zevon tribute (RIP, man...), Werewolves, with me singing and butchering the first line (bad notes, wrong words), but it got better as we went along;
a Sex Pistols cover, featuring rats again (title escapes me); and
rats' We Are All Clones, recorded by ratso, Voxxy, and me after everyone else had left - a great "end of the fest" tune.

Major props to the other jammers: Simon, Myke, PartyPants, Voxxy, Chris, ratso, and Voxxy's bass man (name has now escaped my so-called mind). What an absolute blast. We also had DJ Li'l A (Alyssa, 2) sit in on the DJBox, and minivox (Johnny, 3) was bangin' the drums. Voxxy actually played mini-v's tiny set on Clones!!! Great trashcan sound.

Other firsts:
poutine,
absinthe,
a brown beer whose name I've forgotten, but there's a 6-pack waiting at home to remind me, and
an unfortunate visual of a very drunk, very naked Voxxy, stumbling around his house after skinny dipping and drinking WAY too much - not necessarily in that order. Big thanks to my wife, who insisted we stay at a hotel!!! I need that sixpack of temporarily unnamed beer, just to help me forget the horrors my eyes have seen...

Heh heh.

DJ Li'l A in da HOUSE!!

Know what I'm SAYIN?

Child Pimp Suits

I suppose I should be horrified

But THIS is pretty funny. Apparently trick-or-treating has changed a lot since I was a kid...

Sing Ho!

Wrote this today - tried to get my songwriting buddies to chime in. Didn't happen. You can sing it to the tune of Sweet Molly Malone, but I'll try to come up with something different. And I had to change the names slightly to protect the guilty...

Oh yeah - big parental advisory on this one...

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.

Sweet Mandy had hair of a fine flaxen hue,
And she'd laugh as I kissed her pink orbs in a kneel,
But then one day she spurned me, "I couldn't love you,
For I must find a man whose tall lance makes me squeal!"

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.

Crazy-eyed Nanette, more stalker than belle,
She learned at my knee of the world, of the flesh,
Years later, I met her, amidst a dry spell,
She teased, then she cackled — a bitter, sour wench!

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.

Me and Fannie was drunk, sure and I was still green,
We rolled on the grass, she was done, I withdrew,
Then in daylight I saw her, a sobering scene,
Mourned my stained knees, lost innocence, broken fly too!

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks (??) and her money and pimp will be gone.

Lucienza was hungry, a fiery Italian,
In my wagon we trysted, her panties enpursed,
Next day, told her girlfriends that I was no stallion
more schnauzer than steed, and more gherkin than wurst!

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.

Round Sharon was randy, an eager dark lass,
with an eye for rough pleasure, and forbidden whim,
She, the night that we parted, pledged love to the last,
But next evening was making the beast, astride Tim.

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.

Maybe more verses coming, but I'm about out of exes.

Mixolydian Mode

Mixolydian Mode

This guy's too cool to just mention in a post, so watch for him to be added to the sidebar. I know it's a St. Blog's page (so why aren't you linking from your St. Cecilia page, Jay???), but it strikes my musical fancy far more than it resonates with the churchy part of my persona.

Anyhow, modern technology meets the ancient troubador, or something. Very cool site. Visit it! Now!

Are you still here???

Lauren has arrived

Some things are worth cross-posting

Just got a call - I'm a grandpa again!!! My son and his wife were expecting a baby girl at the end of October, but she's here already!!! Lauren is 7lbs., 4 oz., so best guess is the docs were 6-7 weeks off in their calculations. Mom and daughter are resting comfortably.

I'll try to get pics...

9/11

September 11th

Over at my other blog, I posted a link to my CCM take on 9/11. For an entirely different view here are links (hi-fi/broadband --- lo-fi/dialup) to a collaboration of sorts that I did with Barry Morgan earlier this year. His lyrics, my melody and performance. It's a very rough sketch, featuring out-of-tune vocals, a what-the-heck-was-he-thinking drum track, and some over-the-top synth shredding. Listen at your own risk.

But I really was taken with Barry's lyric, and *I* like my melodic/harmonic environment (a tribute to Donald Fagen - I am SO not worthy...). Some context - (1) along with global and US politics, there's quite a bit of Latvian politics worked into this; and (2) the numbers all mean something. Very witty, deep writing from Barry. Worthy of a better performance, but I'm still working on it.

Lyrics copyright Barry Morgan, 2002. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Music and performance copyright Jay Ricketts, 2003. All rights reserved.

Back

Back

Wow! Talk about withdrawal - Blogger hosed up my account for nearly a week, finally fixed it last night. Got my ID crossed with someone else. Mebbe I better come up with a better ID ( they used to be changeable - wonder if they still are).

Oh well, I forget what I was gonna say anyhow. Except here's a public service message from the RIAA:

My Busted Fridge

Wish Me Luck

I entered the BLUE Microphone / Dr. Demento Summer Silly Song contest, just before the deadline.

Read about the contest here;

Read my lyrics (and a few other guys' lyrics) here; and

Listen to my song here (hifi/broadband) or here (lofi/dialup).

I'm actually hoping for second or third place, since I already have a BLUE Baby Bottle mic, the first prize offering. But I'll setlle. Ha ha.

Oh, and if you're really bored, you can read about what my homerec pals had to say about the recording here.

Limerick

There once was a jam in Connecticut

'twas all beer, camaraderie, and rough etiquette
But that reccer jgourd had
broadcast and recorded
the proof that the jams were patheticut.

They've been putting the recordings of the jams out there. Wow. Freebird was especially painful...

Don't even ask. I'm NOT posting links.

Official HomeRecording.Comp Project!

Get 'Em While They're Hot!!!

It's finally shipping, the comp CD from my Home Recording board. I'm not on this, but a bunch of my pals are.

Please buy it? Please?

I'll post a review after mine shows up. I've got volume 1 - it's pretty darn good. I've heard snatches of this (VERY early Sunday morning at Jamfest, and I didn't know what I was listening to then), it was excellent - a lot of pro-sounding stuff.

Stay tuned. Both of you...

The haircut

Here's the result of my first barbershop visit in nearly 2 years:



Won't help my modeling career (ha!) but looks better than that jamfest photo below...

Tech News - CNET.com

David 1, Goliath 0 - Blows Against the (Evil) Empire

"When a machine gets too big, it doesn't know when it's stepping on ants. But every once in a while, you step on a red ant." - Ernie Ball Inc. CEO, Sterling Ball

If they made keyboard stuff, I'd buy it. If I **EVER** buy strings for my Epi 335 (I am SO not a guitarist) again, I'm buying Ernie Balls.

Red Dwarf: The Movie

Finally, a TV-spinoff movie that might not suck...

Try Before You Buy!!!

Miditech 49

I submitted this review to Musician's Friend - wonder if they'll use it:

I bought one of these based solely on the feature list - big mistake!!!

Though it plays well enough, the wheel and knob response times are so painfully slow that they are unuseable. At least 1/4 second delay on every pitch bend, every mod wheel move, every knob turn. Key touch is lame, but about like every other cheap controller - no worse than the Oxygen, for example. But the knobs are worthless...

Overall Rating: 2 out of 10 stars

Update: Racheloni's ABOUT page is now much improved...

How we dealt with the power thing

For once, we actually handled it! Yay for our new generator, which we paid way too much for back in the ice storm (February? March?). We cut back to lights, fridge, freezer, alarm clock, TV, a couple of fans, and the microwave - attempting to use the dryer browned us out - but it made for a bearable couple of days, and, for once, it didn't all end in throwing out a few hundred dollars worth of meat. The rest of the fam stayed at sis-in-law's in Davison MI - they kept their power the whole time. We figured Grandma wouldn't handle the heat well.

Other power failure related observations:

Never heard much about Lansing, where I work, from the Detroit and Port Huron radio stations I was listening to. Got sent home Thursday after the failure, and mistakenly assumed we wouldn't be working Friday, after I attempted to call the office and the phones were down, and then attempted to call an old team leader's cell, and got routed straight to his voicemail. Finally got a call about 11:30 asking if I was coming in, since we had a hot release we were working on. I made my apologies, and was in by 2:30. Turned out they'd had power all day, but the HP/Oracle system we were testing wasn't brought up until shortly before I got there - so hopefully no career damage.

Our closest gas station had gas, but an incredibly long line. The next town over, Imlay City, had full power, though, so I headed there. Real long lines at the first station, but the next one, run by a church friend of mine, was much better - got in and out in less than 1/2 hour. Was also able to buy ice, though if I'd have been 5 minutes later, it would have all been gone. I was real pleased to see no gouging going on - gas was $1.589, ice was $1.24 for a 7 lb. bag.

Had a family get-together Saturday night, decided to go out to dinner after - THAT was an adventure. Most restaurants were closed due to water quality issues - Finally went to Loon River in Sterling Heights, a wild game place. Our drinks were in styrofoam cups, we had paper plates, couldn't get veggies or pasta, no fountain pop. It was still fun, though. We felt sorry for the waitress, as portions of our family can be, um, difficult. So a bunch of us threw in extra $$ for a tip after our host paid and left. Hope it made up for the challenge we presented.

Oh yeah, and the haircut went as scheduled...

Ridge: Power Outage May Be Result of Clandestine Connecticut Ritual

In a late breaking story, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge reported that investigators are uncovering a chain of events that may have caused yesterday's power outage. Little is known about the "Homewrecker" cult believed to be responsible, but a Connecticut gathering last weekend apparently caused a power drain that set off an eventual failure of the Northeast Power Grid in Niagara Falls, NY.

An unnamed spokesman for the agency claims that this scenario was actually discovered as a possible cause of failure several years ago, but can only happen when four guitarists on the same circuit all take solos at the same time, each with their gain set to an unreasonaby high level. The likelihood of any such event was dismissed as "laughable" by FEMA researchers at the time. When pressed for details, Ridge declined further comment "until we know more."

In a separate, but possibly related, series of events, investigators are trying to trace the movements of four of the cult members, whose paths traced the exact route of the failures. They were known to have left the cult gathering and ostensibly traveled through the soon-to-be-blacked-out states and provinces of Connecticut, New York, Ontario, and Michigan. Their names are not known, but they are believed to have traveled in two vehicles, and to use the aliases "The Rat", "The Duck", "The (crappy) Beetle", and "The Sheep-Boy". It is unclear at this time if their animal names are somehow related to the mysterious practices of the Connecticut cult.

The spokesman further stated that the cult member known as "The Rat" was at one time believed to have wielded a weapon nicknamed "The Zucchini". Although these travelers are only wanted for questioning at this time, they should be approached with caution, as they may still be armed. The spokesman also mentioned that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, after conferring with Ridge and his staff, was quoted as saying, "Let's make sure these boys get a fitting welcome at Guantanamo."

Copyright Faux News, 2003. All Rights Reserved.