eye candy 1/25/17

Now that is a blue I have no trouble getting behind. 

If that's Oslo Blue that's the color I'd use on the Coupe.  In fact, that whole color combo is pretty much what I want.

Nice!

Love the color and the two tone. It just works!

Stan Galat, '05 IM, 2276, Nowhere, USA posted:

Now that is a blue I have no trouble getting behind. 

...knew it...

did you listen to Michael's song? He was my absolute guitar-hero in 1968, still is...

Will,

I did. I love the blues. I cut my teeth on "heavy metal". But for me, it's always been Mark Knopfler:

"Telegraph Road" was, is, and will always be the high-water mark for what is possible when songs were limited only by their ability to fit on an album side. 14 minutes and 18 seconds of glory to open Love over Gold in 1982.

Perfection.

...the red Strat, in deference to the British guitarist Cliff Richards (The Shadows) who owned the first Strat shipped to England, a red, ebony fretboard and who influenced Mark in his early days.

The thing about Mark is his musicality. There may be flashier players, but Mark plays each note to make the song better, not to draw attention to the guitar or himself. I have to say that every time I hear the arpeggios on Sultans of Swing, I get goosebumps and chills, it's a watermark moment in rock 'n roll without a doubt.

Stan, I like your taste in cars, engines and music...

Hard not to like Sultans of Swing, Dire Straits was my brother in law (a great lead guy himself)  favourite group   

That is a beauty

Will Hesch posted:

...the red Strat, in deference to the British guitarist Cliff Richards (The Shadows) who owned the first Strat shipped to England, a red, ebony fretboard and who influenced Mark in his early days.

The thing about Mark is his musicality. There may be flashier players, but Mark plays each note to make the song better, not to draw attention to the guitar or himself. I have to say that every time I hear the arpeggios on Sultans of Swing, I get goosebumps and chills, it's a watermark moment in rock 'n roll without a doubt.

Stan, I like your taste in cars, engines and music...

 

And an interesting thing I notice is that Mark picks the strings with his index finger rather than with a pick held between his thumb and index finger. Maybe others do too...just never noticed.  He has a refreshing and unique quality about his music. 

I've watched him do a few combos with Eric Clapton....nice to listen to for sure. 

Will Hesch posted:

.The thing about Mark is his musicality. There may be flashier players, but Mark plays each note to make the song better, not to draw attention to the guitar or himself. I have to say that every time I hear the arpeggios on Sultans of Swing, I get goosebumps and chills, it's a watermark moment in rock 'n roll without a doubt.

Will,

We're going to meet some day.

I couldn't agree with that more. You know, the crazy thing about Mark Nopfler is that in addition to being probably the best (and most underrated) guitar player of all time, he was also a poet speaking for my generation.

I still remember the first time I dropped the stylus on side 1 of Brothers in Arms, and let Telegraph Road unroll though my head and into my bones. It was 1982 and I was a recent high-school graduate with no plan or goal other than to drive a fast car and have a pretty girl. I was in the middle of a pretty troubled relationship (with a girl who thought she was a lot prettier than she was), and the project car ('75 Monza, 350 4 sp, N2O injected) which had consumed nearly a year of my life and every dime, was still in pieces in my dad's barn.

In my clan, "finishing school" meant stepping into manhood. We were a construction family in the middle of the building collapse brought on by 20% mortgage rates. Losing everything for the mini-estate my dad was building (at exactly the wrong time) was a real possibility. Caterpillar had recently laid off 10,000 union workers, and the stink of death was on the entire area. I was changing oil, tires, and exhausts at the local Mobil station-- $4/ hr for 56.5 hrs/ week (no O/T), 6 days a week (Wed. afternoons off). I felt lucky to have the job, and wondered how my future might ever look better.

I was laying on my bed thinking about all of this, when these lines were burrowing into my head:

I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
Yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed
And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles
They can always fly away from this rain and this cold
You can hear them singing out their telegraph code

All the way down the telegraph road

You know I'd sooner forget but I remember those nights
When life was just a bet on a race between the lights
You had your head on my shoulder you had your hand in my hair
Now you act a little colder like you don't seem to care
But believe in me baby and I'll take you away
From out of this darkness and into the day
From these rivers of headlights these rivers of rain
From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
'cos I've run every red light on memory lane
I've seen desperation explode into flames
And I don't want to see it again. . .

from all of these signs saying sorry but we're closed

All the way down the telegraph road

That was a long time ago. I finished the car, met a beautiful girl (who was somehow attracted to me as well), and was married within a couple of years. Life took a lot of twists and turns, but I could not have imagined how blessed I would end up being. I found my place in the world, and felt comfortable in it. 

... but 35 years on, I listen to that song and I'm 19 years old again. Alone. Future bleak. Path ahead uncertain. Such is the power of good music.

That kid is still in there, deep down at the core-- no matter how prosperous and confident and blessed I have been in the decades since. I don't want to forget how it felt to be 19 with no confidence in the future, because it makes me more aware of how blessed I've been since.

Ah, Mark Knopfler!  One of my favorites.  The clarity of his playing is unique.  In addition to Telegraph Road, I love That's What it is and Speedway at Nazareth.  I only recently found out Mark is a racing fan when I researched the lyrics to the latter song.

EDIT: The correct name of the first song is What it is - no "That's".

Yep!   Dire Straits (Knopfler) is easily in my top 3 favorites!

For me, it's their more obscure pieces that never got a lot of air time:

In the Gallery, Follow Me Home, Ride Across the River, Brothers in Arms, Telegraph Road, Romeo and Juliette, Private Investigations, Six Blade Knife, Wild West End, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Man's Too Strong, to name a few off the top of my head.

Knopfler can really make a guitar weep.

My top 3 are all because of the guitar style:

Dire Straits, Neil Young and Pink Floyd.   Each guitarist has an amazing, almost symbiotic relationship with their guitar... Each having a unique style.

Love the blue! I was SOOOO close to doing a red interior too...

*LongFella posted:

Love the blue! I was SOOOO close to doing a red interior too...

Your choice was better, IMHO. Your car is beautiful.

Stan:

Great insight. I've got you by about 20 years, and I think lots of us had a similar period in life as boyhood burgeoned into manhood, we re-formulated our dreams and sought inspiration and direction to realize them.

For me it was less music that brought me through, but the Marine Corps. I learned so much about who I was, what I could be, what I really believed in, and what it would take to get ahead. It was one of the seminal times in my life and I credit the Corps with focusing me and providing the discipline and direction I didn't have to that point.

By the way, Eric Clapton and David Gilmore all the way when it comes to guitar. Throw in Jeff Beck for making a guitar literally speak to you.

I don't know if any of them own a Speedster!

Also, a correction. It was clearly early. Telegraph Road was on Love over Gold, not Brothers in Arms. Love Over Gold came out in '82, and Brothers in Arms came out in '85.

Brothers in Arms had Money For Nothing (I want my MTV), and Walk of Life, which got a lot of airplay, but the title track (Brothers in Arms) was/is a masterwork. Maybe one of the 5 best ever written, IMHO.

These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Someday you'll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn to be
Brothers in arms

Spare, perfect leads. Lyrically adequate, but expressing a sentiment that echoed my "better angels". Awesome.

David Stroud posted:

Will Hesch posted:

...the red Strat, in deference to the British guitarist Cliff Richards (The Shadows) who owned the first Strat shipped to England, a red, ebony fretboard and who influenced Mark in his early days.

The thing about Mark is his musicality. There may be flashier players, but Mark plays each note to make the song better, not to draw attention to the guitar or himself. I have to say that every time I hear the arpeggios on Sultans of Swing, I get goosebumps and chills, it's a watermark moment in rock 'n roll without a doubt.

Stan, I like your taste in cars, engines and music...

And an interesting thing I notice is that Mark picks the strings with his index finger rather than with a pick held between his thumb and index finger. Maybe others do too...just never noticed.  He has a refreshing and unique quality about his music. 

I've watched him do a few combos with Eric Clapton....nice to listen to for sure. 

Thought you might enjoy this David:

I couldn't agree more, Stan.

There is nothing better than listening to Brothers in Arms while on a boat, in the middle of a lake, at night!

I have a CD I burnt that I always play when we go for a midnight cruise on our boat.  Here's the first three songs:

Brothers in Arms, Ride Across the River, Follow Me Home.

Ride Across the River ends with Crickets.   Follow me home starts with Crickets and the sound of waves washing up on a shore.

Jethro,

So, I'm 26 years old. I've just spent 3 of the longest/hardest years of my life in the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea with my wife and two kids (one born there in a clinic without electricity). Our house there was situated on a mountain-top miles from any electricity or running water. My wife is pregnant again, and I'm on my way back to central Illinois. I have no idea what we were going to do, I just know we need to do something else.

We land in Portland, OR for a debrief and then climb in the back of my father-in-law (a man who never cared for me)'s minivan for a decompression trip across the US... heading east towards my parent's basement and an uncertain employment situation. In hindsight, it wasn't only the employment that was uncertain-- my life was really at a tipping point, and could've gone in either direction.

We dropped down the eastern slope out of Wyoming and into Nebraska when the smell hit me. The corn was pollinating, and the very essence of "home" filled my nostrils, as I listened to Brothers in Arms on a generic walkman. 

These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Someday you'll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn to be
Brothers in arms

It would've been pretty hard to have put together something that summed up my entire existence at that point better. For that, I'm forever in Mr. Nopfler's debt.

Great story, Stan!

They say the sense of smell has the greatest ability to bring up memories.

For me, at least, songs are the next best.   Like every time I hear Year of the Cat, I think of my first teenage sweetheart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23KHLW2dw_o

What great thread drift! Thanks for sharing this stuff.

Michael, I have to agree, this is one of the nicest drifts I've participated in while here on the SOC

and as usual, Stan takes it to a deeper level which allows us to go there as well

 True that

Will Hesch posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23KHLW2dw_o

WAY better version, Will. As an older man, his voice is not what it was-- but somehow his playing is even more soulful than ever.

Excellent.

"We dropped down the eastern slope out of Wyoming and into Nebraska when the smell hit me. The corn was pollinating, and the very essence of "home" filled my nostrils, as I listened to Brothers in Arms on a generic walkman." 

About once a month I drop down the Northern slope of the grapevine and into the central valley then on into Bakersfield. Yup... at different times of the year the corn is pollinating, onions, tomatoes, cotton, and a huge host of other things planted in one of the largest agricultural valleys in the world. It's always a familiar smell as well as the sight of Bear Mountain to my right as I drive North on the 5 to the 99. Then when I get into town I see the brutal reminder of the once decadent neighborhood that I grew up in going into a full retreat of anything good that I can remember. Gang graffiti demarking their territorial significance is everywhere. Broken automotive glass lay along side a car at curbside as I go down my street. Kids glaring at me as I pass by with the, "what are you doing in our neighborhood" look on their faces. My mom's house is there. The last stand of remembrance of what used to be for me. I suppose it's time to let it go and sink into the dark abyss of getto land.

I recently asked a friend who moved out of the Fresno area and went East if she would ever come back. "The central valley is a $hithole that I will never go back to". I thought to myself, "But it is our home". It's what used to be my home but is now a war zone the likes of which most of you don't know or could possibly understand. Maybe a rockstar of my generation can write a song about that place because I could never convey my thoughts accurately or with any acceptable amount of political correctness.

Here's a vision as best I could describe it. I jotted this down a few years ago after my mom passed and I started going up there more frequently...

Driving along the 58 East in Bakersfield, Cottonwood area to my right. I see the neighborhood below. It's 9:30PM a black velvet Aretha Franklin poster hanging above a dirty red-velvet sofa with dark greasy arm rests. Swamp cooler blowing filthy linen rags hanging from a rusty metal curtain rod. In the corner of the living room an older television atop of a rickety old tv dinner stand - picture rolling occasionally as the horizontal hold is worn out. Parked outside on the lawn 24 inch wheels christen a late 70's Eldorado or possibly Fleetwood - the leakage of motor and transmission oil causing brown spots in the unkempt grass. No sidewalks only dirt leading up to a sickly dog barking from behind a low gated chain-link fence - several years of over grown crabgrass at the bottom. A pair of strategically placed greasy chrome plated yellow vinyl covered kitchen chairs surrounded by menthol cigarette butts sit just out of reach of a cobweb encroached yellow porch light. Thrown into a weed filled flower bed a collection of Colt 45 Malt Liquor cans with the stench of stale beer and urine filling the air. Sounds of cars on the freeway and sirens in the distance now echo across a desperate landscape of a dimly lit dirt lined street of which there is no escape.

Rusty,

I've got no idea what that would feel like-- but your words can help me imagine it. That's rough. It's one thing to leave home, it's another altogether to have home leave you.

Good way to put it Stan

Nice read Rusty. I know the neighborhood of which you speak. I've been in hundreds of them arresting the low-lifes that infest and infect these neighborhoods.

When my parents moved to Fresno from Germany it was 1967 and I was just a toddler. My dad decided Fresno was the place to be even though he had a few years left in the Air Force and he was stationed at Riverside. He'd drive to the base late Sunday night and come home late Friday night. He repeated that process for several years then finished his career teaching ROTC at Fresno State. The neighborhood we moved to was brand new, I think we were the third family to buy a house on the block. The tract was bordered by farmland to the north and the south. Two miles to the west was a budding warehouse complex. To the east was another neighborhood, a ponding basin, and the elementary school I'd go to when I became of age. When he retired from the AF in 1971 he went back to Fresno State and got his Master's Degree while working for Angel's Hardware and helping raise a family with 6 kids. Then he got a job in the private industry.

I guess around 1977 my dad decided he wanted to move further out to the west of town on a 2 acre parcel surrounded by similar sized parcels and larger farms where he built a custom home. After I got my license I used to drive through the old neighborhood to visit the friends I'd left behind. Even after they all moved away I'd drive through just to check it out and as the years went by the old neighborhood became just that, old. Homes were in disrepair, cars parked on lawns, broken windows, etc. 

Just how bad the neighborhood became was all to apparent the other day. Our task force helped the local police department serve about 10 search warrants in one day. The warrants were related to gang violence and a series of armed robberies. The houses we searched were all places associated to the criminals we were after. Much to my surprise one of the houses in the packet was my childhood home. It broke my heart to know what a cesspool that neighborhood and more specifically my previous home had become. Very sad. 

And Mark Knopfler, what a genius.

Robert I knew that you would read this and understand exactly what I was talking about. My mom's house is not in the Cottonwood area but in the lower Bakersfield Country Club area which has degraded a lot but is still manageable. In making the drive to my moms house I go right past that area that I wrote about above, exit Oswell and drive through ghetto land and up to CC Drive. My mom has a big-ass gate at the top of the drive which, when I am there is locked at night.

When my mom was dying and I was going there every weekend I was woken in the very early morning hours to the sound of a car alarm in the driveway but in the back part of the house. I pulled on my sweats and headed to the back door and in the dark I found my mother already there. Scared the crap right out of me. "Shhh damnit. There's somebody out there" she hissed. Being the rebellious kid in my old age I thought but didn't day, "No $hit mom!"

Early on we had a hospice bed delivered and put in the front room. She didn't want to be in her back room. She wanted to be where she could comfortably talk to friends that would come by and visit. Like many nights during that time she couldn't sleep. She heard someone open the side gate and saw the shadows of a couple of hoodlums coming up the side of the house heading for the parked cars. She went to the back door and used her key fob to set off her car alarm. "Smart" I thought. I'm the dipstick that would have ran out there and probably gotten myself shot or stabbed.

There were other times that I visited that weird things happened late at night there. One time I woke to the sound of someone pounding on the front door and my mother yelling, "You get the hell away I have called the police and I have a F-ing gun god damnit!" I recall standing in the hall and watching as the event unfolded. She was standing directly in front of the door, both hands on it in an aggressive forward stance. If that door was going to get kicked in it was going to have to go right over her! I am a capable man in defending myself but I have to admit that scared me. When I am there I still have moments of recall around bedtime of that night.

She was from Germany too Robert. She came here with her mother in 1948. Their home was bombed out in Bresslau and after a couple of years in a refugee camp they made it here. She was one tough woman as was my grandmother. She feared no one! She lived in that place alone since 1976 and nobody, criminals or whathaveyou was going to mess with her, her family, or what she had bought with her hard earned money! Also, she was bluffing. She never owned a gun.

Would you be surprised to know that I sleep with a 45 under my pillow when I'm there?!

She's sounds like a tough but lovable lady.

Since I know a lot more about guitar playing than cars I will offer this comment. I saw Butterfield a couple of times in 66/67. Mike Bloomfield was several years ahead of his contemporaries in that era because of his Chicago Blues background. He played with many of the Black blues players that found an audience in Chicago in the early 60's off the Chitlin Circuit. Most of the SF Sound players came out of the folk world and were not very accomplished players at that point in time. John Cipolinni was a notable exception. 

What really exemplified Bloomfield's  playing from everyone else was a lot of what we all want, SPEED. 

American Flag was a seminal band. one of the first with a horn section. 

Mike Bloomfield was the one that convinced Bill Graham to book BB King at the Fillmore. BB was nearing the end of his career then and of course charted an entirely new career. Thus began the introduction of white kids to the Blues. Amazingly enough they had already been listening to Black Blues in the form of the British Invasion and did not know it.