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The summer of 2008

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Well, the weather in Toronto has been more or less shitty this past year, and it doesn’t seem to be over quite yet!

We’ve smashed the total amount of rain for a summer ever since recorded weather history. Our past winter was the second most accumulation of snow in the past 130 years! Now they say that we’re gonna have an early winter, in the words of Charlie Brown, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”! How long can this go on for! We didn’t get hit with as much snow as Halifax, but it certainly felt like it!

So, howz it going weather wise in your neck of the world?

Keep on Jammin’




Who Killed the Electric Car

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Has anyone out there seen this fabulous documentary called Who Killed th Electric Car? My wife and I have just finished watching this doc for the second time, and it just keeps boggling the mind.

ev1car1.jpg

I realize that this is quite the off topic subject for a guitar blog, but I just honestly want to gauge where everyone sits on this one. I’ve just started off my summer holidays, with the worst stomach virus that I ever have had and taking a number of days off from work to boot, and I stumbled upon this PBS doc while being a zombie on the old couch.

I realize that you should always take everything you see/hear with a grain of salt, but what if only a fraction of the info. about this story is true? Only a fraction … it would make all of us part of the biggest scandal/scam in the history of man! I don’t know about you, but this one really makes me think about it.

Can this thing really be bad/unhealthy for us? Could this thing really bring down the economy? Has anyone ever driven in electric car and lived to tell the tale? What terrible thing can come out of this new technology? Are they protecting us from something? Well here’s a story on experiences with the thing we call the EV(electric vehicle)!

I vividly remember at dinner at my in-laws house one day, many years ago, that flashed into my mind during the first time we saw this documentary.

For many months there was this odd looking red car, it looked like the front part of some B movie futuristic air plane, sitting in my in-laws neighbours driveway. The owner of the house, a long time family friend, was out of the country for an extended period of time and I was anxiously awaiting him to return so I could inquire about this futuristic car thing. Then, the moment that I had been waiting for!

I saw the neighbour and his buddy pull up into his driveway and started to go into this car. I told them, just before serving dinner that I’d be back soon, meaning I’ll be back … well much later. To make a very long story short, they told me that it was a HOME MADE electric car! Yes a home made one! I got to sit in this thing and said, “you gotta take me for a ride in this thing, PLEASE!”

It got up to around 100 kilometers an hour, you could go about 80 km. and to recharge it you just had to charge it into any 120V outlet. They ran a chord from the dryer in the basement to do this, really I saw it. It had not bad pick up and the best was when the car stopped … you didn’t hear a thing! And yes, I lived to tell the tale!

I understand this post is not the equivalent to the protester’s in the documentaries site has on line for you that is in favor of the EV1, but it’s all I have to personally share with you!

ev1car2.jpg

I apologize for the rambling on and on about this, but I think my meds have a little something to do with this post as well!

Keep on Jammin’ (and always be healthy before all of your vacations)

Max Webster coming off the moon

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Just in case you have not heard of these guys, here is a little ditty and my old band Pylis played way back in the day.

It has everything you want in a tune to play live! It’s fun, difficult to play and most of all IT’S A CANADIAN BAND!!!!!

Enjoy!

Keep on Jammin’
Max Webster R.I.P.


The Performer tuning system by Transperformance

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The Transperformance tuning system called the Performer, will make tuning your guitar on the fly very simple. It is an interesting dream of many guitarists, whose idea’s have finally become a reality.

I’ve been recently researching modern day guitar tuning technology and I have found some very different approaches in how to achieve this.

On my other blog, Guitar Licks and Tips, I have introduced some of you to the tuning system called Powertune technology from a German company called Tronical on Gibson’s Robot Guitar. This type of tuning system that I talk about there, can be added and removed later if desired. The Transperformance system cannot brag of such luxuries.

performer1.jpg There are 4 components to this system. They are the 1 touch tuning, the LCD readout, the tuner assembly and finally a foot switch. It has the mind boggling ability to hold up to 144 pre-set types of tunings, wow! It has the range of up to Tens of thousands of distinct tunings possible. But how many does one really need? Better way too many then not enough I guess?

The Performer does not manipulate the actual sound of your guitar. It works separately from the pick ups. It does require a 12 volt battery that lasts around 120 minutes though. I can not find the total weight of the product, but I am investigating further.

The testimonials are top notch don’t get me wrong but this thing sure looks heavy to me. If you’ve ever picked up a Les Paul then you may understand my train of thought. It can be used on Fenders, thank God, as they have shown on their site. I’ve never seen this product at all, so wish me luck in finding one here in town.

In later posts, I will break each individual component of this system to the best of my ability, so stay TUNED, ha!

Keep on Jammin’

HUGE propane explosion in Toronto

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There has been a HUGE propane explosion in Toronto‘s North end had occurred around 03:25 and then 03:50. It has effected about 12,500 people in the immediate area. The injured ones have been taken to North York General Hospital. The shelters were sent to York University Campus.

Toronto has closed the busiest highway in North America – the 401. This has never been done before.

My sister in-law’s son and husband live around a football field length away from the blast. He said that when he woke up and went outside, all he saw was like a scene from a war documentary. There were blooded people running up and down the street obviously in a state of shook.

A fire fighter has just been confirmed without vital signs on City Pulse 24. My God have mercy on his soul and may his soul rest in peace if this is true.

The company is called Sunrise Propane, and what a sunrise it was for this company! At this link, look for the “A” symbol for the exact location. It’s fairly close to our home, but far away enough that it does not effect us immediately! There were confirmed stories of people who live in Niagara on the Lake have seen a mushroom like light seen coming from Toronto! That is quite a far distance from where the explosion took place!

More to come!

Canada’s own Ken Greer

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Ken Greer has to be the best Canadian guitarist/slide guitarist/keyboardist that has ever flown (for way too long in my eyes) under the radar that I know of! He certainly has to be the most underrated Canadian guitarist that I have ever heard. And I have my brother in-law to thank for this.

He has it all, he plays it all and he understands it ways we can only dream about. Ken Greer has that special something that we all strive for in our own playing approach. Seeing him play with Tom Cochrane was like seeing a wall of sound hit you right in the face. It was like going to a nice old church with an organ that has 75 foot pipes with all the stops out. We experienced what it must of been like for people when they were first exposed to Phil Spector’s revolutionary wall of sound.

They guy plays his slide like it is a freight train rolling through you head one moment, then he tickles the plastic ivory like my buddy Tony F. from my old Pylis days! He then will pick up his axe and then blast off with some back up rhythm guitar playing that makes you just shake your head … that’s what I did throughout his show with Tom Cochrane at the 2008 Canadian Open.

I’ve been trying with no real luck in finding some of his stuff on-line to show you so if you have anything on this guy then PLEASE send me a link! I just want to give you a little taste of what it was that we experienced that faithful night.

Keep on Jammin’

Tom Cochrane at the Canadian Open

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Tom Cochrane and Red Rider were out of this world at the 2008 Canadian Open. They rekindled my love and deep appreciation for this band not only for their song writing ability but the level of musicianship to boot!

My wife’s brother called us a while ago and asked us if we wanted free tickets to the 2008 Canadian Open in Oakville (God bless this man). At first we were a little bit luke warm on the idea of watching a golf tournament, with the weather that we’ve been having here in southern Ontario this summer, until we found out that Tom Cochrane was playing a free show at the Canadian Open!

This guy is hands down my wife’s favorite band of all time. So with these tickets my wife had just received the best free tickets/concert that she ever could have asked for this year!

We arrived there right at the end of play that Saturday night to find out that nobody was around the stage at all! To say that this was our lucky day would be an understatement. The show had a general seating arrangement so we brought along our two seater foldable lawn chair just in case we could use it. With this in tow, we RAN to the front of the stage. I still couldn’t believe my eyes, nobody was there except the security guys! The beer tent was even around 50 feet behind us, mind you they were quite pricey but at that point who cared.

We were about 20 feet away from Tom Cochrane at worst and 15 feet at best throughout the show. He just rocked from the get go and just kept getting better as the set progressed.

Tom started out by singing Victory Day, then followed up with Big League, then Sinking like a Sunset. After that he did a song dedicated to his daughter Cody which I believe was called Northern Star, after that they did a slowed down version of Good Times, followed by Human Race, White Hot and Life is a Highway. They came back for an Encore and did Lunatic Fringe and ended with Boy inside the man.

The part of the show that I just couldn’t keep my mind off was the guitarist/slide/keyboardist named Ken Greer. The only thing that I will say about this guy was OMG, this guy is one !@#$%^& hell of a GREAT MUSICIAN! More to follow on this guy.

Tom Cochrane and Red Rider(Ken Greer), keep on Jammin’ for the love of GOD!

The second coming of Jon

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Just got off the old blower, that’s what we use to call the phone, with my old buddy Jon and he says that he needs a fix of Toronto back into his blood! We’re looking forward to seeing his old mug around the homestead here. hopefully it won’t be as expensive as the last time he was here.

The first time he here at our newish home, it was a long weekend. We had a few beverages and started to get a little hungry. So off we went to the grocery store and we happened to come across this store that sold fire works, what a bad mistake on our wallets this venture was going to be! By the time we left the store, we were about $220.00 richer in fire works. Oh well, we had fun and no one lost an eye.

So here’s to more action packed adventure with big Jon(Johnnie), aka Pinhead, and this time let’s really get a guitar lesson in ok buddy? Stay tuned for more updates.

Keep on Jammin’

Our new neighbours

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Long gone are the ones who use to play passable karaoke and we now joyfully enter the era of The von Drats. We finally have really cool neighbors!

We ran into them the other day and they seem to be a great fit for the neighborhood. He plays lead guitar, a huge bonus for me, and they are into renovating their new home! They are around our age and she is into sprucing up her garden!

Looking forward to getting to know them better and the best of luck to them in the future!

Keep on Jammin’

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