h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And Mark called up Billy Gibbons and asked for the amp settings and the eq.....Billy said,"Nuthin' Doin'. I like you, but not that much."

Actually, most of the fuzz on "Money for Nothin" was post-prod.
ZZ, on the other hand, surrounded some helpless mikes with a propped-up pyramid of tube amps pumped to eleven. They would plug and unplug the amps until they got the right combination and leave it at that.
So it is possible that Billy really didn't know...

Oh, don't get me wrong, I wasn't saying it was plagiarism in that way. Merely refuting the idea that Knopfler is in some way stunningly original-he's as guilty of obvious chord progressions as the next man...
And that's no insult to Billy Gibbons either, one of the finest guitarists either side of the Rio Grande.
Of course, the good ol' BBC gave him his finest hour, so we must be kind to ol' Bill...

Ah, Kraftwerk, the despoilers of my youth and my attitude toward tonality...I used to own all their early albums, starting with "Rolf & Florian" and one of the first websites I looked up when I got online was their's...

Hmm? Whereof you speak? Billy and the Beeb?

This must be the most spectacular topic drift ever...
I'll let you in on a little secret-I'm working on a piece about them for the guide, as an addition to the rather odd piece that is already there.
As they have steadfastly refused (or more accurately not bothered) to re-release any of the early albums, it starts with Autobahn. From what I've read this may be a blessing... Although Von Himmel Hoch sounds like an interesting piece.

How can it be a drift if I started the thread?

Besides, many threads drift on the goofy weekend.

And some never come back.

As I said, I had the early albums once upon a time and I think the experience was enhanced by the fact that I was staring at the record on the turntable, watching the tonearm ride it, while I was listening to them. They weren't bad. Just primitive.
Of course, I was also listening to early DEVO and Residents at the same time and some odd thing called 8-eyed Spy and it's spin-offs with James Chance and...
and Lene Lovich...

I'm gonna go play with my kid's trombone. She just got through practicing.

Yes, I was enjoying the sheer driftiness of this particular drift... I have the Kraftwerk CD with Das Model which I bought a year or so ago with a gift voucher from Amazon.de, but I don't play it much. I missed them the first time round, and find I tend to prefer guitars to synths.

ZZ-Top were once asked why they always seemed to have blonde girls and red sports cars in their videos, and their reply was along the lines of 'because we can, and wouldn't you?' I used to do a great imitation of ZZ - but my hair is shorter and curlier now, and I don't wear checked shirts and baseball caps any more.

I've enjoyed this, guys, but the servers are slowing, and it is time I went to get some kip. So I shall blow you both a and go to bed.

B

G'night.
Billy and the Beeb. Ho ho ho.
When appearing in the UK to promote (I think) Tejas, ZZ Top put in an appearance on a venarable show called The Old Grey Whistle Test (don't ask). Billy plugged in and promptly got switched off by the techs who said he was too loud for the Beeb's policy. He couldn't get his amps low enough to get past the restriction. Frustrated he went out for a walk and while out bought a small British made radio, which he took back to the studio and played through.
He has intended it as an up yours to the Beeb, but he was so pleased with the sound, he dubbed it the Bizark-tone and promptly used it for the basis of most of Deguello, which was the album which really broke them on the international circuit...

Actually, I've heard about the "Old Grey Whistle Test" in various interviews with people like Jeff Beck...
I can believe that story....Stevie Ray Vaughn had a plexiglas panel in front of his albums for years...and he almost blew everybody at Austin City Limits out of the building!
Billy and Frank Zappa and Jeff Baxter and Todd Rundgren and Joe Walsh are all proponents of the overdriven small amp, like the Pignose...for recording.

I use a small solid state practice amp with a bottomless tom backed up to it. In the tom is a coffee can with it's bottom facing the speaker. In the coffee can is an old Norelco maraca stereo mike which is pugged into the Radio Shack dual deck.
Between the guitar (electric or acoustic) and the amp is an Ibanez digital delay.

This thread has gone *way* off

Odd how all them blues boys suddenly got loud out of what was basically an acoustic tradition.
One day i shall have to work out why it was-and I don't think it's just because they could-Hooker, Walker et al were quite happy with moderate amping-tho' I suspect that Muddy Waters may have had a hand in it somewhere.

Not really. It's kind of hard to shoot someone with an intrument in your hand... Though, I understand that the impulse to dispatch a musician has cropped up a time or two...but with a few exceptions, if people are dancing, they are not immediately thinking about killing each other...
Guitars for deprived children!
The AK-47 only plays one tune. The guitar can play many. Or the clarinet...

Too bad the Sharia seems to have something against pop music...

'The Sharia don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah'
Sorry, copuldn't resist that one...

Well, when you consider how loud 30's and 40's bands were and the fact that Charlie Christian had to use an amp to play above the rest of the Goodman Sextet...
Folk blues always had to turn up in the bigger venues...and when you turn up, you get distortion and sustain...
and if you listen to the Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson recordings and try to reproduce that sound live, you have to turn up.
They were recording in small rooms with early compression and overdriving the almost direct to disc carbon mikes.
Plus, there was the trend toward trying to match the power and sound of clarinets and trumpets in solos...which is difficult to do on an acoustic...without electronics...unless you are Segovia...and I ain't.

What you say makes a deal of sense.
Having seen Dave 'Honeyboy' Edwards play live, certainly I can see that how he plays 'now' (or five years ago in any event') is still pretty much the same way he played then, just a little louder.
I guess RL Burnside is just the natural end product of a couple of decades over driving amps...

I must apologize. RL Burnside is who or what?

Tut tut.

RL is the possibly the last of the great delta blues singers. Catapulted to semi-stardom by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion with their collaborative album A Ass Pocket Full of Whisky.
He can not only do the full delta boogie with over driven amps but has used people like Beck's producer to try and broaden his appeal. A bit forward thinking, you might say.

Sorry about that. Got caught up in something else.

I think it is unfair to characterize the US and the Israelis as "rogue nations" and "terrorist governments", both quotes I have found in the news today, when the people they are fighting believe that the suicide of their own people is a viable option.
If making refugees out of people is an excuse for the people to trash their oppressors, then there a lot of peoples who are due some back revenge...
and being the descendant of some Scottish Crofters who woke up one morning with their bed in the road and sheep in their yard and their roof on fire...I know just where to start....

I don't dispute for one second that Israel has every right to crack down hard on the Palestinian terrorists. Problem is, they're targetting civilian areas and buildings in their attacks too. When Yugoslavia behaved like that we bombed them. I think Israel needs to be taught a lesson in common decency.

I thought about what you said. I haven't responded for most of a day.
I have read about the events that have happened since my comment and yours.
I have read what the Saudi and Israeli and other sites have said.

The Arabs want Israel gone as a state. If they can get the Jews to die or go, so be it. If they can marginalize them within a new state with an Arab majority, they will be just as happy.

Historically speaking, I believe the decency you are talking about is a rather interesting concept, particularly if we were talking about any other country in the past that found itself in a similar situation. But I don't think we could.

If it comes down to it, the Arabs won't send tanks and men this time.
They will send missiles and planes.
The farce of expecting the Israelis to give up the Golan Heights just so the Syrians(if I remember correctly) can put artillery up there again and shell them at will is ridiculous.
Under the current circumstances there are only two military strategic options for Sharon's IDF: fight or surrender.
The Arabs are hoping that Bush will play footsy with them so he can have his bases and support against Iraq. As if! Iraq and Quwait have just kissed and made up. So, in some eyes, that is enough.
Israel kissed the Bush ring during the Gulf War. They sat almost still while the Scuds flew.
I think they are tired of straining at the leash. They've issued an almost complete call-up of reserves.
Arafat was given his little government, his police force, his TV cameras and his summits. If he can't control the suicide bombers now, he never could. Even after he was 'isolated', more attacks occurred. Two people in their seventies knifed to death in a synagogue by a man who was hiding there.
A radio report made for Minnesota Public Radio and Radio, um, 4, said that Saudi schoolbooks blamed the Jewish conspiracy for everything from WWI to WTC. A rumor going around the Arab world is that the 4000 Jews who worked in the World Trade Center stayed home on Sept. 11 and the whole thing was a Mossad plot...
You want decency to be taught...that would sound like a joke to both the Arab League and the Israelis.
With all due respect,
Tonsil Revenge,
in mourning.