Rain

3 minutes ago, Sheens said:

and the winner is...

You've made this guy jealous...

10 hours ago, craigb said:

As a branch off from Xoo's comment in that other fred, who do you think are the ten most annoyingly pompous, self-important musicians and singers?  You know, the arrogant, pretentious kind where it's all about them, right?

Here's my starter list in no particular order (note that I don't listen to much pop, rap or country, so I'm sure I'm missing some there!):

• Kanye West
• Yoko Ono
• Bono
• Yngwie Malmsteen
• Madonna
• Gene Simmons
• Axle Rose
• Morrissey
• Barbra Streisand
• Lady Gaga

I guess I grew more tolerant with the passage of time, as most of these I don't really mind that much. On the other hand, maybe it's because I don't like musicians all that much (as people) - even those whom I genuinely admire. I suppose I've learned to tune them out, so when Gene Simmons or Bono say or do something stupid, I just roll my eyes and move on. 

The 3 exceptions would be the first one whose name I refuse to even type, Madonna, and Morrissey. I think I hate Morrissey the most because he's the one I'm constantly exposed to. 

Roger Waters would rank very near if not at the very top of my personal list. Can't stand that bloody antisemite. I'd sooner listen to Bono babble about politics for hours than having to endure a single minute of Waters' ravings.

Lars Ulrich. I've always felt that the snare sound on St. Anger was the most accurate musical representation of all that Lars Ulrich is - obnoxious, loud, always in your face begging for attention. Makes you want to give him a proper tuning.

I first checked out Pet Sounds because McCartney himself mentioned that it was an inspiration. I thought there were a few brilliant songs like Wouldn't It Be Nice and God Only Knows but other than the fact that both made abundant use of instruments that weren't typically associated with rock and roll, I don't think they have that much in common. 

3 hours ago, craigb said:

I've got 53 Beatles albums (includes alternate versions like the remastered ones), but it's been at least a decade since I've had a Beatles discography day!  I guess I need to have one again...  

Well, I'm apparently not that HUGE of a fan. lol 

I guess I have all the music they officially released, and then some. But I've learned pretty much all those songs on the guitar. That's when I started moving away form playing only root/5ths heavy metal sort of things and learned chords and stuff. I remember using this book which had über simplified arrangements for the guitar as a starting point. As simple as it was, it helped me understand how music works a little better, and that was good place to start from. Of course, I eventually learned to play those songs properly.

9 hours ago, John Templeton said:

That was a very interesting video. I watched it as soon as it was posted. If it's all true it explains a lot of things. The musical middle class has been eliminated. You've got people scrabbling around trying to get gigs, but in my town most of the venues have closed down. The concept of bands seems pretty much dead and replaced by various solo artists. 

Those that do rise to the top are doing big arena tours and many of those have just become their own tribute bands. Madonna is coming to Toronto this year . The cheapest seat at the venue is $200 and they range up to $7,500 for the best seats. Taylor Swift is another one. She actually affects the economy of towns she plays in. For example, she's coming to Vancouver this year. There's a hotel close to the venue that usually charges around $150 a night for the basic budget room. To get a room when she's in town they're charging $3,500 a night.

I can remember being able to see the biggest acts, buy a T-shirt and have dinner for $100 and have change in my pocket. 

I remember seeing Metallica, Metal Church and Sword (Canadian band) for $11 in 1986. Got the t-shirt for $25, and a burger, cola and fries for dinner at A&W for probably $6 or $7. That was on the Master of Puppets tour, so they weren't that big yet, but still... Bigger bands that I liked with more extravagant productions like Iron Maiden charged $15 - $18. 

Even if you were a kid working a minimum wage part-time job on weekends, attending shows was possible. 

Personally I can't imagine spending more than $50 to see a band. I think that was roughly the price to see Accept at Vamp'd here in Vegas, the last show I considered attending, early last year. It's a small venue, with a capacity of 280, and I've played there a few of times myself. I would have enjoyed that kind of intimate show a whole lot more than a big arena rock show. 

John 5 is playing there in a few weeks. $25 on pre-sale, $30 at the door.

Paying hundreds of dollars to watch displays behind the stage because you're too far to see anything makes no sense to me. If I'm to stare at a screen, I'd rather buy the blu-ray. But that's just me.

11 out of 12. Didn't recognize Now and Then, but I heard it only a couple of times.

1 or 2 of them were a little trickier but most I recognized instantly. That being said, I play guitar and I'm a HUGE fan, so that helps.

6 hours ago, jude77 said:

Good Lord!  I'm impressed.  And to think I was proud of myself for reading the Cliff notes to Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

I have 4 editions/translations of that one. The Nietzsche collection is the only part of my library that I brought with me when we moved down here. I usually take good care of my books but a few of them like this one have followed me everywhere for over 30 years, so they're in a very bad shape. It's great to be able to get inexpensive new copies from Amazon.

5 hours ago, Old Joad said:

They didn't🤘

1995 Ballbreaker

2000 Stiff Upper Lip

2008 Black Ice

2012 Live At River Plate

2014 Rock or Bust

2020 Power Up

I'd never listened to these until last year, and I thought they were pretty decent overall - some of them actually very good. 

I'll always be more of a fan of the Bon Scott era, but it's hard to resist Back in Black and some of those Johnson era songs. Even some songs on Flick of the Switch I thought were great. Stuff like Rising Power - fricking great song if you ask me.

I'm a huge KISS fan, and I love all those old records, but I'm not sure how one would go about determining any significant difference between his style from album to album, or decade to decade. By comparison, you listen to Glen Tipton's solo on Victim of Changes and to what he played on Painkiller 14 years later - now that is a rather drastic change.

I bought Anomaly (2009), which I thought wasn't bad, and then the following one (Space Invaders) - even ordered the CD - but that time I just couldn't get past all the compression and the limiting and I figured that I have enough Ace's music to listen to in my library without putting myself through that kind of torture.

I still like to rock the old t-shirt on occasion and show my support, though. 

I'm a nap-a-holic.

I work from home and I have a one hour lunch break. For the first 18 months, I used to spend 20-30 minutes downstairs in the home gym and then have lunch. But then  I injured my back and I started napping instead. I've been trying to get back to the old routine but I'm addicted to that power nap now. It's a struggle to get back on track but I am trying very hard this year.

I also take another short one (10 minutes) after dinner, before hitting the gym. And I'll occasionally squeeze another 10 minute nap before the Japanese lesson.

I'm glad I am able to take short naps. Some people aren't that lucky. Many of my ex gf's would take a nap with me and end up sleeping 2, 3 hours, and wake up all tired and confused.

To me, in rock, the list always boils down to two names: Bonham and Peart. And I cannot really choose between them. 

If the list extends any further, then it's all debatable. Starr, Watts, Paice are among the first names to come to mind obviously. Phil Collins, too, although maybe not for this top 5 list.

I'm not a fan but I do get that Moon would be on the list - on the other hand, Phil Rudd of AC/DC would be on my list, which only testifies to personal preferences. Not sure I'd put him on the top 5 list, but still...

Wow. That stinks, Craig.

Makes me glad that I mostly use Amazon for books and blu-rays, and stuff like tea and cat food. 

I used to watch a lot of movies on Prime but it seems that almost everything requires a subscription to this or that now, and I received an email recently stating that there would now be ads during Prime movies. For movies,  imho, it's no longer worth it but I order enough stuff from them to make them membership worth it.

Interestingly enough, and on a more positive note, I found out a while a few years ago that they also print certain books on demand. I was looking for a French translation of a book by Nietzsche (mine was falling part) and I received it unexpectedly soon after I passed the order. I've received a few of those since, usually the day after I order because they get printed almost immediately after I order them. Like this one ordered June 15th.

I always look back with a lot of fondness on the year 1994.

This is just my feeling, but it seems to me that that was the last time that rock was relevant. Of course there were many personal factors as well, but it seems that there was a sense that something was happening on a collective level, lots of great music like Soundgarden's Superunknown, Nirvana Unplugged and NIN's Downward Spiral, movies like The Crow, Pulp Fiction, And Natural Born Killers (although I'm no fan of these last two and I can't stand Tarantino), all of these with great soundtracks, Woodstock '94 - things that were era-defining. Whether you were a fan of those bands and movies or not, rock was at the forefront, and it meant something to people, not just individually.

Heck, we even had Pink Floyd on tour and Page & Plant getting back together. Things were good.

And although it was actually a tragic event, Kurt Cobain's death did bring people together.

But things kind of died out over the next couple of years.

Interestingly enough, towards the second half of the 90's, it seems that many older bands got back together - KISS got back together with the make up and all, Ozzy and Sabbath, Vince Neil with Mötley Crüe, Dickinson and Smith rejoined Maiden. But at that point, they were the establishment. The subversive spirit of rock had been replaced by nostalgia.

And tribute bands became even more popular.

I wouldn't say rock is dead, but it's in a weird place.

Anyway, it's great to have another perspective on these things. I guess there's a lot of things that contributed to it.  Being Canadian, I'd never made the connection with the telecommunication act in 96, though.

I had zero interest in computers until I realized that you could use them to record and mix audio. Naively enough, I thought that I would be able to get away without having to learn anything more than how to use the music software I had chosen (I guess I really was a Mac user at heart).

A couple of years later, I was editing .ini files, chasing IRQ conflicts and whatnot. I've always been thankful though, because all that stuff turned out to be very useful in my next job and allowed me to climb a few steps up the ladder.

So thank you Cakewalk, I suppose.

Brings me back to one of my very first gigs writing music for short films. Back in the Cakewalk Pro Audio days.

They'd given me an idea of what they wanted over the phone, so I started working immediately. When I received the VHS, I was super glad to find out that a lot of what I'd written seemed to align with the images - although I had no way to really sync anything. But I remember a high note on the guitar gently fading in as a locomotive appeared on screen and thinking - wow, it's like a train whistle, it totally fits! 

There was one piece which I wasn't really happy with or proud of - something I'd put together in Acid to match footage of an assembly line, using mostly chunks of loops and then adding a few notes of a recurring theme on top so that it would connect to the rest of the music I had written. I thought it wasn't really good but it worked and it didn't really draw attention to itself.

The deadline was Friday, and I had to factor in HOURS to upload the mixes to a storage platform on dial up. By 6 pm Thursday I was done uploading. I had been up for over 24 hours to finish in time. At 8 pm I got a call - of course, they like that crappy bit the most and were asking if I could re-do the rest just like it. And have it uploaded by noon.  So I spent the night in Acid, putting together some of the most uninspired "music" I have ever written, and managed to meet the deadline. 

Every time I hear or read or pronounce dial up, that's the first thing that comes to mind. 

13 hours ago, craigb said:

Now I'm curious!  I just looked and, apparently, I joined the old forum in January of 2009.  But, I helped Greg Hendershot debug a problem waaaay back in 1987 when Cakewalk v1.0 came out (and paid way too much for a Turtle Beach audio card that had General MIDI during that time!).

I can't recall, was there a bulletin board or anything similar that predated the old forum?

Ah, the old Cakewalk newsgroup. Joined that one in 1999. Man, I've been around forever! It's surprising how many of the guys names I remember. I think the whole ProRec staff was on there too - Rip, Jim, Joel, Bruce, Ted, Ethan...

EDIT - Pete Leoni, if you're still around, sorry I forgot you.

Oh what fun it was to launch Outlook Express in the morning on a dial up connection and to wait for it to load all the posts. And to only have access to internet from 6 pm to 6 am, because it was the only package we could afford... 🤣

Welcome back, John! Good to see you.

Absolutely!

My hometown was small (11 000 souls, if you count all the little villages around) so we never had a real music store. THE music store actually occupied a corner in the back of a furniture + appliances store. Until the early/mid 90’s they mostly carried cheap knockoffs and brands like Samick and Vantage, or the occasional Epiphone. Unsurprisingly, musicians usually travelled a 100 miles to get to a better store.

But my family was poor so even that local store was too fancy for me. There was this place downtown owned by an old lady who sold all kinds of wicker furniture, mirrors, vases, artificial flowers and stuff like that. And in a corner, behind a small counter, there was the music instruments section, which consisted of 5 or 6 acoustic guitars and an electric bass - that I really wanted - and a few harmonicas. I think that stuff was mostly leftovers from the days when her deceased husband ran the place with her.

The cool thing is that she would sell strings individually - and being flat broke despite my paper route, I became a very loyal customer. Sometimes I’d finally get money for a new string after 2 weeks playing with only 4 or 5 strings. She only sold Gibsons.  Every now and then she’d drop a few black Gibson picks in the small bag. I hated the strings and the picks, but they were all I could afford. 

I’m guessing I probably was the only kid my age ever going there, as her clientele consisted mostly people in their late 50's and older, but I was sure thankful for her, and I always remember her fondly. I eventually made a big purchase, too - a Hohner blues band harmonica. Must have cost me at least $8. 🤣

I'm not sure why people worry about lights in the sky. Seems it's rather common occurence.

I'd be a lot more worried if I saw something like say, a door, or even just a nose.

22 minutes ago, craigb said:

I went looking for the blind tests, but I didn't see them...

Blindness is in the eye of the beholder, just as beauty is in the face of the beautiful (and other parts of their anatomy).

2 hours ago, craigb said:

The solution is obvious!

(You need a new guitar! 😁)

Guitars aren't too bad but I'm having a really tough time resisting the urge to buy an amp these days. 

I have Kontakt libraries authorized on the old iMac which I've been tried to de-authorize in order to be able to use them on the new studio computer to no avail. They're all on my external HD but for some reason I need to log into the old computer and use the NI manager there to deauthorize them and the whole process is a PITA,  made worse by the fact that the old computer is on its last leg and it takes an eternity to load anything.

Seems to be buggy too - it worked for some, but others just won't load for some reason. I kind of gave up. 

You say you want a resolution?

55 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

No.

I tried to email Cableguys this issue as they requested that I do, but not word for word they said "no comment for feature requests" as a reply to my email.

I requested they create a way to hit the enter key on the keyboard, then be able to directly edit the numerical numbers.  I was shutdown fairly quickly at that request and told to never email questions again.

I'm sorry Diablo. That was not an actual suggestion - just me piggybacking on Craig's comment about the frequency and using it as a platform to make a stupid joke.

We do this a lot around here but that's no excuse.