Guitar Licks

Guitars, tips and great music discussions




You are here: Home / Archives for Culture

I got a Match PIK for a birthday present

by

I recently received a belated birthday present from a volunteer at our hospital.

She came up to me in my work area and told me to close my eyes and hold out my hand. I thought it was a joke and I thought it would be nice to be at the butt end of one for a change, so I did what I was told. She then dropped what seemed to feel like a piece of cardboard in my hand and excitedly opened my eyes! What I found was what looked like a match pack, but the wording on it said Match Pik?

At that time, everyone around me was looking at me including Connie and they were all smiling. I thought wow, a pack of matches, how nice?! She then said “Happy Birthday Chris!”. I followed up with “Oh, you shouldn’t have!”.

Upon further examination of this bright red pack of matches that I just accepted as a birthday gift, I saw the words “Jim Dunlop USA” near the bottom of it. At this point I was thinking to myself “What the hell is this?”.

matchpik

Looking back at Connie, she was laughing at this point and said “Open it!” When I did, I found six .88 mm grey guitar picks inside! What a fabulous gift! I’ve never seen anything quite like this before so I gave her a little hug and we all had a laugh at my expense.

Keep on Jammin’




The Village People are still at it?

by

The Village People, those crazy 1970’s concept band kidz, are still at it today. Songs like YMCA, Macho Man or We Want You to some music lovers, is the soundtrack to their youth! They, to some music lovers dismay, are still dancing well into the new millennium after 30 years. After a reported 85 million records sold, they must be onto something?

Ok, I have something to admit to you all on this post. Yes, I did dance to a few of their songs at a high school dance, but in my defense, it was because everyone else was!

The village People’s music was everywhere way back in the day. Of coarse there was still folk and rock styles playing on the airwaves but, this music had that catchy beat to it to appealed to most of the general public.

The one thing that I want to know is, did any of them play an instruments? Actually, I don’t really care, it’s just a general question. Not that I hated these gentleman’s style of songs but, their music(the structure/configuration and level of difficulty to play live, a band in the background that is) but, sometimes it just rubbed me the wrong way. This is just me, I always look for this quality in a song while listening to any form of music.

thevillagepeople The history of the band was always something of a mystery to me in my youth. Of coarse we did have the internet back then. When I was in high school, I remember writing very basis computer functions on a piece of cardboard that you placed into some sort of device that was attached to this OLD, HUGE computer! This was how information back then, besides from books, was read.

During the bands hay days, I had an old buddy of mine who was really big in the disco scene. His name was Sal, and in his parents basement, they paid homage to this genre of music.

They made this very elaborate bar they had to entertain their house guests. At first Sal had his folks buy him this MASSIVE stereo system. Now here is where it gets both bizarre and wonderful.

Once disco started to gain more common acceptance throughout the world, he had them open up their wallet and install a disco dance floor about 1/4 the size of the one that they had in the movie Saturday Night Fever!

The lights and how they interacted with the music that went through his stereo underneath their dance floor was a real wonder to the eyes. This device that he had was called a Light Organ. It made the lights turn on and off to the beat of the music!

When you heard the bass, mid range or the treble sound in a song, certain lights would light up on the floor. It was really neat as a kid. (Note: this is for Chris Noto and other Rickenbacker lovers out there, in 1971 they made a guitar with this light organ technology in it!)

The Village People’s popularity went up and down over the years, yet their songs still stay alive in the back of our subconscious … until it comes up in conversation. We may hear one of these songs being played at a wedding and we just think about the old days when we boogied on down and maybe what we wore during those times … am I right?!

Now the question that I have for you is, did you dance to any of the Village People’s hits when you were young AND are you still proud of yourself after all these years? (LOL!)

Keep on Jammin’

You know the Toronto garbage strike is over when …

by

The City of Toronto and the striking outside workers union has just about reached a conclusion to their 39 day labour dispute.

My wife and I, living in the Danforth/Beach area, have not noticed that much of a garbage issue during the strike. For the most part, people here have been stepping up to the civic plate and helping keep our little area clean for all of us. Well except for our renter Redneck Neighbors that is! Unfortunately, I’ve seen on TV some parts of the city have not been that successful. Some people here can be quite the bunch of “City’its”! (Ha!)

As a matter of fact, last weekend I decided to drop off 4 bags of garbage at the Bermondsey Transfer station. I’ve heard that the waiting time for drop off was around an hour long. So, I brought along the Saturday Star newspaper, a coffee and some juice with me in anticipation of a long lineup.

As I drove there, I was wondering what I would be up against. On most TV reports, you see angry citizens screaming at the striking workers. On other news clips, you see strikers screaming at angry citizens. You think to yourself, why can’t we just get along?

To my pleasant surprise, I was the only one in line … besides the strikers that is. I slowly drove up to the gate. I was greeted by these two really nice guys. We chatted for around 3 minutes and they said ” if you want, you can just drive right on up?”. Wow, absolutely NO CONFRONTATION so far.

Then I drove up to the gate. There were around 8-10 guys just milling around and talking. Beside them under a really big tree was about 20 strikers, just passing the time by playing cards and drinking coffee.

The guy at the other gate was really cool. I stopped the car, got out and started a conversation with him. It was nice to see that the stories the TV stations were airing where totally opposite to what I was going through.

Now a bunch of guys came up, around 10 of them, we shook hands, talked for a while, had a smoke, I finished my coffee and then they asked very politely “Do you have any garbage you’d like to drop off?” I then said yes and all of them proceeded to the back of my car!

At this point, I was starting to get nervous. We are only allotted 2 bags per car and I had 4. We’ve been told through out the dispute to save all of our recycling for later date and the four bags was our total of garbage for what had been a month or more of garbage strike (maybe 6 weeks if you count when the last garbage pick up was!). I opened the trunk and they just went in and grabbed everything! I sheepishly asked if that was ok and they replied “Sure, why not?”

So that was my big experience with the BIG GARBAGE STRIKE OF 2009! Through all of the gloom and doom that the media was portraying to us and the rest of the world, it was not as bad as they said – at least in my experience.

The latest news regarding the garbage and civil workers strike …

Garbage collectors were back on the streets early this morning, clearing out the trash from overflowing garbage bins after they – and other outside workers – ratified the latest settlement Thursday.

Whew! Glad that’s over with!

The Toronto Beaches Jazz Festival was a blast!

by

My wife and I went to the 21st Annual Toronto Beaches Jazz Festival and we just fell in love with this event! Imagine, 2 km of closed street with 50, yes you read that correctly, 50 bands playing on street! They were at just about every other corner. Each band that night played 3 sets from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm. They all staggered their performances so as not to drown out each other.

It really was a magical night! We quickly found some parking, walked along the boardwalk and got to the beginning of the street fest faster then I thought we would.

We were first greeted by the sounds of a jazz fusion band with this fabulous violinist graciously blasting out solo with all he had! Then came the smell of the Beaches Festival, the FOOD! Note: if you plan to attend next years event, GO HUNGRY. Too many types of food to mention in this post.

The atmosphere was really electrifying. The relaxing buzz, that seemed to be coming from everywhere, was quite family friendly. Kidz, dogs and everything in between where out there last night. There weren’t all that many people walking around at first, but that certainly changed 2 hours later.

The styles were very diverse. We first witnessed a fusion band, then a Dixie land band, followed by Salsa/flamenco guitar players, a BIG BAND (all were really tight) then a blues band. The organizers were trying to highlight Big Band’s, Swing, Dixieland, Smooth, Post-Bop, Afro-Cuban, Fusion, Funk, R&B and Soul sounds. Wow, is to put it lightly.

This video captures the sounds of this band correctly. The Visual well …

At the end of the night the band we both found the most intriguing was a band called Project Phoenix. We were so impressed that we bought one of their CD’s titled Milestone. Go and listen to the song called “Jump for it” on their site. It was the last song they played last night and it was purely brilliant!

So if you love any of the styles that the Beaches Jazz Festival provides us at their event, then this is a must see for next year! See ya then!

Beaches Jazz Festival, Keep on Jammin’

It’s the summer time and making posts ain’t easy

by

So I hope that everyone out there is having a great start to their summer!

As you may all ready have known, I have not been posting that much on this site. Well to tell you the truth, I’ve been working in the backyard gardening! Yes gardening! And let’s not forget the odd family adventure!

My wife and I have both been blessed with being bit by the gardening bug. We’ve had around 56 roses and about 1100 plants in there and loving every minute of it. We tend to be of the extreme variety.

Ever since I was quite young, I’ve had my fingers in the soil. It started off cutting the grass, de-weeding the flower beds and a bit of planting. Truth be told, I’m not that great at planting the greenery, my wife is strictly in charge of that area!

She is the one who does all the research into it and I must say that I do catch on eventually to her technique. There is so much to learn on gardening forums about this hobby that even to this day, it really blows my mind!

As for the family thing, I’ve been in Brantford more lately (sorry for not calling ya Dom, I will get around to it next time I’m there!) the biggest thing I had to do was putting up this massive fence at my parents.

Figuring out where exactly to start digging post holes, cementing them (I hope that they’re all relatively straight), placing the horizontal 2 x 4’s, making sure all is level … It was a hectic couple of days in the sun and rain, but it was all worth it. The multiple hangover days I could have done without.

So hopefully I get back to the task at hand that is to start to entertain you all with my less the grammatically correct writing/English!

Keep on Jammin’

The Cole Porter Movie called De-Lovely

by

Cole Porter was a genius composer. I’ve played some of his tunes as a kid and as I have grown as a musician, I now have a better feel for how great this man really was.

At work the other day, I got into a conversation with a patient. We were talking about different styles of playing guitar and it gravitated to Cole Porter. He brought up this movie called De-Lovely and said that it was a must to see.

Since then I’ve been searching our TV for it to no avail. I’ve also tried calling up some video stores to see if they have it in their collection, no luck there either.

My question to all of you out there is, has anyone seen it? Is it really worth buying it?

Keep on Jammin’

Was Jimi Hendrix murdered my his manager?

by

We all seem to, in today’s modern society, gravitate to the tabloid stories. I for one, try my best to ignore this form of journalism, but it does make one wonder about this particular story. I realize I’m adding to it’s buzz on-line, but this story caused me to react to this type hype that I am referring to above.

Was Jimi Hendrix murdered my his manager? Well I’m not sure because I wasn’t there when it happened.

James “Tappy” Wright a roadie for Jimi, claims that Michael Jeffrey, Jimi’s former manager “drunkenly confessed to killing” Hendrix. He reportedly says that he killed him “by stuffing pills into his mouth and washing them down with several bottles of red wine.”

The latest information is from a new book called Rock Roadie. Why did he wait so long to bring this to anybodies attention?

It’s definitely plausible: Michael Jeffrey “has always been a controversial figure,” and he’s “been accused by members of the Animals and Jimi Hendrix’s family of cheating them of earnings.”

If this is true, should there be a formal investigation to this tragedy? Should we just leave it along? Hasn’t the Hendrix family suffered enough? Which conspiracy formula do you subscribe to?

So my question to you, my great readership is, do we really care about this form of newz/entertainment if you can actually call it that?

Keep on Jammin’

Buffalo Auditorium’s last stand

by

The Buffalo Auditorium was just a beautiful building. They are demolishing it and making it into a parking lot! As in Joni Mitchel’s song, They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. The pictures says it all.

Some many unforgettable events were held there. I know you just have to ask Chris Noto about it and he’ll have tons of stories for you! Sorry about your loss there buddy!

Many sports teams called it their home.

Buffalo Bisons of the American Hockey League, the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League, the Buffalo Braves of the National Basketball Association, the Buffalo Stallions of the Major Soccer League, the Buffalo Bandits of the Major Indoor Lacrosse League, the Buffalo Blizzard of the second National Professional Soccer League, and the Buffalo Stampede of Roller Hockey International. It also held a number an NCAA basketball games, as well as numerous entertainment events, such as concerts, the Ringling Brothers circus, Disney on Ice, and other things of that nature.

It held some fabulous other shows as well. The Aud. held shows by major acts such as The Grateful Dead. Some say the grand old lady helped produce the bands greatest shows ever! The Who, The Stones, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Neil Young and David Bowie are just a few of the greatest bands to play within it’s walls.

So here is a final salute to the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium “The Aud” and let us keep her in out hearts!

Has anyone here been lucky enough to have graced her hallowed walls? If so, what did you see there and do you have some stories about her?!

Keep on Jammin’

Keith Emerson cancels remaining tour dates

by

It just came to my attention that the Keith Emerson Band has had to cancel their remaining tour, due to the physical deterioration of Keith Emerson’s right hand.

My good friend Chris Noto, bassist with CounterPoint, put this notice up on his facebook account. This really is a tragic musical loss to all the dedicated Progressive rock lovers out there. This may have been the last time to see them.

The real kicker here, is that Keith’s other band, Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP) was to have a possible late year reunion tour that was going to dovetail his recent tour! NOW that SUCKS!!!

Dear Friends,

It is with much regret that I have to announce that due to past right hand injuries the resulting nerve damage and dystonic factor has made it unable for me to play the keyboards to the high standard I have always set myself and have to cancel my forthcoming Keith Emerson Band featuring Marc Bonilla USA and European tours.

I am also going to have to cancel the proposed Emerson, Lake and Palmer tour which we were going to do at the end of this year.

I will of course continue with my physical/chiropractic/acupuncture therapy etc. in the hope that this will eventually get me back on form.

This is absolutely devastating to me as music will always be my main key to communicating with a world-wide audience. I know how much my fans and fellow band members were looking forward to these shows and it saddens me greatly to have to come to this decision and make this announcement.

Thank you for your understanding.

Keith Emerson

I recall playing in an band a fabulous tune called Benny the Bouncer. It was one of my earliest exposure to this great band. Hey, maybe the boys in CounterPoint will play this one next time they play, maybe?!

It, as well as countless ELP classic tunes, made me look forward to practicing their complex style of this new genre called Prog. (Progressive) Rock. Now, due to Keith and his band aborting their remaining shows, the general public will be sadly stripped of it’s chance to see one of the last great Prog. rockers of all time!

Our prayers will be with Keith so that he will nurse his ailing right hand back to good health, thus giving some people a glimpse into a musical world, almost forgotten! To add insult to injury, his mother had just passed away as well.

Keep on Jammin’ ELP

Some origins of the electric keyboard

by

I love anything keyboard related. I love the history or origins of all things musical. The history of the keyboard is something that I know very little about, so this next article is really for me … oh and for you guys too.

In the beer store the other day, I was in line and noticed the latest CHILL magazine. After picking it up and leafing through some of the pages, there was an article titled Voltage-Controlled Synthesizer.

The first thing that caught my eye was a picture of this vintage MOOG synth. It was made popular by the likes of Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson. Way back in day, this thing looked like you could run a space ship with it!

The article was about a man named Hugh Le Caine, from Port Arthur. He was a physicist for the Canadian National Research Council in WW1. He then went off to Chalk River to work in the Nuclear reactor that was just starting up. It was the first one in Canada at the time.

So during the War he was working on this futuristic, weird thing called the Electronic Sackbut. Where he got the name for this thing initially only God knows. Where in the world do scientists come up with these names?! Anyways, his invention is now recognized to have been the very first voltage-controlled synthesizer.

In 1945, when the first Sackbut was built inside a desk, Le Caine visualized an instrument in which the operator would control three aspects of sound through operations on the keyboard in three co-ordinates of space: vertical pressure was to correspond to volume; lateral pressure to pitch change; and pressure away from the performer to timbre.

Being a man who was known to have tickled the old ivories more then once in a while, you can see where this new thingy-mabober was going!

Keep on Jammin’

Meta

Archives

Pages

Tags

Acoustic amp band bands Brantford Bruce Cockburn Canada Canadian concert Entertainment fender funny General guitar Guitar Equipment guitarist guitar player guitars Home house Humor humour instrument jammin jazz John Mayer keyboard Live Music musician Musicians play playing Progressive Rock Pylis rock RUSH Songs to play sound strings Technology Toronto tour Video YES