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Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist

Happy Caturday, one and all!!

dv8 --

Hope you and Harper enjoyed the Chapman Stick performance last evening. (I’m so old, I can actually remember when the Stick was “the latest thing!!1!”…but a teenage me was really confuzzled about how they worked; no demo videos available on YT.) 😉

When well-played, I find them rather amazing.

Coffee?

vintage coffee.gif
dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Well, this might not have been stellar playing, but the guy was really nice and cheerful and had a wonderful attitude. And managed to fill a small theater with people, which, in itself, is a quite a feat. Publicity chops that I don’t have and don’t understand.

Even if I had a much more polished presentation of whatever kind, I don’t think I would have any idea how to generate buzz to fill a venue like this fellow did.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Yeah, and I remember hearing about the Chapman Stick from other musicians while for several years I never actually saw or heard one. There was just buzz in the musician-o-verse about it.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

Hi, dv8 --

That’s pretty much how I recall it, too; lotsa buzz back in the day, very little actual info.

Because I know so little about how to play it, I find it a bit surreal even watching someone live or on video. (I feel somewhat the same way about brass instruments; I intellectually “get” the player is using a combination of changing the tube length via valves / pistons / slide / what-have-you and embouchure.)

But I can’t “see” the “mechanics” compared with drums, keyboards, woodwinds, strings, etc.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Back in the day, there was a band called “Kittyhawk” that used it extensively. Seeing them live, as the opener for “The (formerly Dixie) Dregs, Made me understand the instrument a lot better. I got the opportunity to play one a time or two. I thought about getting one, but never followed through.

Just Sven
Editor
4 years ago

OK, I had to look up “Chapman Stick” as my first thought was “didn’t he play with Supertramp and isn’t he dead?”

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  Just Sven

Heeeeeee!

Hi, Sven!

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago
Reply to  Just Sven

Emmett Chapman has invented a cool instrument--back in teh seventies, I think--but he’s kind of a democrat, in that his business model seems to revolve around suing people.

Mark Warr (a Republican, I believe) created something called the Warr Guitar because he sought to improve on Chapman’s concept. I think, at this juncture, the two gentlemen are at peace with each other’s existence. Or at least, there is some kind of shaky truce between them.

Also, all kidding aside, Emmett Chapman is an excellent musician. I heard him play live back in the mid 1980ies when he used to go on tours promoting his instrument. (This was in Fresno, of all places)

http://stick.com/

http://warrguitars.com/

Also, please pray for Mark Warr as I understand he is now very ill.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

I remember reading about the Warr wars…

Chapman certainly can play.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Also, on a side note, When we lived in Fresno, there was this guy we knew called Brian Kenny, who is now known publicly as Brian Kenny Fresno, who was learning the stick and now plays a Warr Guitar in kind of a wacky show which defies description.

Just google him. Just do it. You’ll see.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

Checking out some of his stuff right now.

“Sexy Mail Lady”
“Older, Uglier Woman”
“Stoner Tromboner”

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

He’s quite the character.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago
Reply to  dv8

We knew him as a 20 year old kid who used to come by the house and eat our banana bread. I cannot now remember how we met him. But we talked about music a lot and he started dropping by.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago
Reply to  dv8

One day he came by and gave me a violin. Because he seemed to think It was unusual how fast I picked up new skills, instruments, etc. He was a sweet kid. Basically just a few years older than me.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago
Reply to  dv8

Or younger, I can’t remember.

Just Sven
Editor
4 years ago

Had to laugh yesterday as a friend sent me a facebook cap of another friend having an “impeachment watch party” Friday. Did I say “laugh”? What I meant was that it struck me so funny that I almost fell out of my chair.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  Just Sven

Criminy…that’s gonna be a loooooong, pointless party, methinks.

Been so busy the past few days, I’ve not been keeping up on news as much as usual. I’ve gotten the impression this week’s hearings were particularly lame “political theater”. Including a former ambassador crying on cue for the cameras.

tenor.gif
Paddy O'Furnijur
Editor
4 years ago

Happy Helpful-Caturday, Gerbil Nation!
Good morning, Fatwa, and Sven!

Sven -- you could set up a “watch the impeachment watch party” party -- bring plenty of popcorn.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

I know a lot of people up here are doing that.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist

Hi, Paddy!

enough popcorn.jpg
dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

This is how I feel about it………….

Every time I hear a snippet of it, I laugh.

In a way, though, this is similar to the Clinton impeachment--although 3 Dolla Bill was probably guilty of a few things. I just mean that the opposing party thought it was the only way to put the brakes on the socialist utopia (distopia nightmare). I don’t really blame them for that sentiment, but it was the same kind of thing. The Dems controlled the senate, so it wasn’t really going anywhere.

And, as the publicity disaster of the Dems is demonstrating today, it was not good for the Republicans back then. Because it looked like a sour grapes campaign--inasmuch as they were launching an impeachment trial that would come to nothing.

Even though many people thought Bill was genuinely traitorous, including me--at least in his intent--I also thought that the (not even possible to succeed) impeachment campaign would do more harm than good.

Which, arguably, it did.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Whenever I start a sentence with “And,” I remember my grade school admonitions not to do so. Teaching methods are very inexact, when you think about it. Students end up remembering a lot of wrong things because the simple admonitions are easier to remember than the actual rules for sentence structure.

The teachers really meant that IF you start a sentence with “And,” AND you don’t know what you are doing, you’re bound to create a sentence fragment. I had one really good teacher in 8th grade that drove this idea home by giving us a sentence in a test that began “And so, my friends,…” to trick us into marking it as an incorrect sentence.

Why am I talking about this? I dunno. Bad pedagogy has been a bugaboo of mine for a long time especially after I went back to school in the late 90ies and early 2000s.

I ended up deciding that Cultural Marxism had polluted virtually all of education--even, to some extent, the hard sciences.

And that, basically, all was lost.

And the sky is falling.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

I often catch myself trying to avoid beginning sentences with “and” because of similar admonitions as a yout’.

Barrett Wellman(tm)
Editor
Paddy O'Furnijur
Editor
4 years ago

Exactly!

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

On another note:

Do any of the old wheelies drop by here from time to time?

I was wondering if some of them lurk and maybe post every so often. The admin page says we have over 1000 members. I don’t remember there ever being that many active ones, but I wonder why we have so many,

and who they are,

why they were here…

and where they’ve gone….

In any case, I think I want to thank you guys for keeping the flame lit and giving me a place to come back to. I love you all so much. (and I’m not even drunk while stating this)

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

Teh original DHD and SqueakyWheel never had anywhere near 1K people actually posting. (Might have had a lot of lurkers, but I doubt it was that many.)

I’m gonna take a WAG and say many of those members are bots and/or spammers that got squelched…but I don’t actually have any clue.

Old hands have stopped-in on rare occasions, but it’s been this small cadre here for a long time.

For me, it’s nice to check in with Mac, Sven and Paddy every day.

Welcome back to the Sausage Fest. 😉

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Yeah, I was looking at the list later and pretty much thought that too. The core members as I remember them are mostly listed as the admins and editors now.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

Kind of amazing Jerry trusts us all not to trash the place.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Yeah, I always thought that too.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

We’ll show him!

party.jpg
Barrett Wellman(tm)
Editor
4 years ago

That looks like fun.

Barrett Wellman(tm)
Editor
4 years ago

Trust, but verify!

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist

Jerry!!1!

How are thinks in Bountiful?

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

NicE to see you jerry

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist

I just now noticed the “Epstein did not kill himself!”.

Heh.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

I think he even said, “If I ever kill myself, I didn’t kill myself.”

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

Certainly many memes of him have said that.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Music PC Geekery:

I keep trying to limp along without getting one single pro audio device for my PC. Maybe I should just get one good USB 3.1 audio device.

At least in the old days I had a Sound Blaster Live and I could use soundfonts with it. It was even supported within cakewalk so I could put soundfonts in my project folders and they’d be available as “patches” to add to my instrument list.

Now I have Cakewalk X2 which the new company still supports. (a new company owns Cakewalk and has re-released “Sonar” again. Which I think looks pretty solid and is a pretty good alternative for Ableton which everyone on the PC is using these days, I guess.

Fatwa Arbuckle: Misanthropologist
Reply to  dv8

I reckon the right choice(s) depend(s) on what you want to do.

So much gear at reasonable prices these days…

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

…true. Or one or two good pcix devices. I miss my sound blaster 64 with its on board ram that you could add ram to if you wanted.

Just Sven
Editor
4 years ago

How Adam Schiff sees his day going:

And then reality hits:

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago
Reply to  Just Sven

I remember Warren because toward the very end of my senior year in high school, he was a thing. A thing that, to me, seemed to come out of nowhere. Also, this might actually be the first time I’ve heard him, at least knowing it was him. This is giving me goosebumps. Now I can see why he was “a thing” and how he seemed to come from nowhere.

Just Sven
Editor
4 years ago
Reply to  dv8

I was in the same boat. I didn’t care for Werewolves of London or Lawyers, Guns, and Money, but years later after he died, I listened to The Wind -- what a great album especially given that he recorded it while he knew was dying. And then I started working backwards through his albums.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago
Reply to  Just Sven

and of course everyone knows motorhead. Good Solid Stuff.

Just Sven
Editor
4 years ago

Just Sven
Editor
4 years ago

Well I kilted that thread, eh?

Just Sven
Editor
4 years ago

Hi, Jerry -- you should come on by more often.

Paddy O'Furnijur
Editor
4 years ago
Reply to  Just Sven

I agree. I haven’t heard of his exploits in a ‘coons age.

dv8
Editor
dv8
4 years ago

Harper is going on the midnight oil. Probably too late for you guys. But just a heads up.