Jim Alfredson

It's been there...

The good thing is that this hiatus corresponds with that new Leslie purchase I mentioned above. That speaker is inspring to say the least. It makes my Hammond C2 sound so beautiful!!!!!! Anyway....

I think my buying spree began when I started learning the Hammond. I bought every example I could of someone using it so I could hear and absorb all the styles. Now that I've gotten to a place where I feel comfortable with my technique and my own voice, I've let the buying dwindle. I'd rather save the money and buy a new Leslie for my Hammond (like I just did!) or some other piece of gear to actually make music with. In fact, as of last Monday I am on a 2-week music listening hiatus. I am not listening to any music as long as I have control over it (can't help it in grocery stores, the doctor's office, etc). No music in the car, while doing dishes, folding laundry, working in the garage, reading, anything. I just need a break... I'm finding that my original voiced is being masked by too many influences. I can't start writing a tune without thinking of other tunes I've heard that day or week or month or whatever. I need to purge those old things from my head. Of course, no sooner than I started this hiatus, the second Blindfold Test arrived at my door! But I've resisted all temptations to listen to it. So... I would say at one point I was a SUPER FAN of anything Hammond organ related. Now that I've heard 99.9% of it, I don't need to listen to it anymore. That's not to say I don't enjoy the hell out of Jimmy Smith!!!

I used to play that tune when I first started out. I had a trio with my dad on guitar and my best friend's girlfriend's father on drums (you get that?) That's a nice tune. I'll see if I can pull it out of my collection and relearn it. Paul, I'll also check on the age thing at the BOP.

I KNOW! I showed your original post to my wife and she said, "That's so sweet!!!" I hope my children love music and art like she and I do. Kids and music go hand in hand from what I've experienced. We had my wife's cousin and her husband and child over for dinner recently. Jonah is about 18 months old and is the cutest little guy I think I've ever seen. While dinner was cooking Alison, my wife, put on one of her favorite CDs, the Buena Vista Social Club. Little Jonah stood right in the middle of my speakers and danced and danced and danced, completely oblivious to anything else going on. His little head was bobbin' and swayin', his eyes were closed tight, and he was just diggin' it!!! It made me so joyful just watching his utter delight! I can't wait!

The two-chord ballbuster!

Are we padding our post count again, Jim?

Whomever you think would be the best person to send it to. Or we can send one to a programs director and one to a DJ. It's all about promotion!

Scored a two as well. Oh well. Musicians are supposed to be scrubby!

jacman, If you can get a contact name at the station, we'll send them one.

Mike, I've been thinking about your problem with the action on your B3. I recently cleaned a friend's B3 and fixed some minor problems. As part of the cleaning, I actually took off every key on both manuals, cleaned them, cleaned the tray beneath, and put them back in. I instantly noticed a change in the action of the keyboard. Each key is held on by a 1/4" hex screw and over the years these loosen and the keys shift. The keys can also lose some of their bounce, since the screw is what holds the spring (the back of the key) to the chassis. If you adjust these screws it might help the action of your manuals. On another note, I just changed out all the caps in that Leslie 21H amp. Man, I thought it sounded good before... holy moly!!! That things just sings now. FANTASTIC bass response... way better than my 122. And the highs, with that original Jensen V-21 in there, are so sweet and punchy without being shrill. I love this Leslie! Tomorrow I'm going to replace the caps in the vibrato line on my C2, which is what I have hooked up to the 21H. I should do the tone generator too, but the notes are actually very even across the keyboard. When I first got my B3, each note was different... one was darker, another brighter, one softer, another louder, etc. Changing the tone generator caps solved that. The C2 is fairly even, so I might hold off on that for awhile. Anyway, think about that tension screw on the back of the keys.

Word to the wise: Microsoft NEVER attaches an update in an email. They always tell you to go to Windows Update to obtain the patch/update/file etc. I get tons of junk emails with files attached claiming to be Windows patches.

Yes, the PMs are going through. With all the hacker activity, my service provider hasn't had the time to find a solution to this problem yet.

Well they must've found another hole because they got us again. Ken is busy finding the hole and patching it but his cable modem is still out so he's doing it via dial-up. That stinks. Anyway... we're still here!

Reminds me of the role playing computer game Arcanum. Anyone hip to that?

As bluenoter posted in a thread over on AAJ, the fellows who left their mark here called themselves Securinfos. They hail from Brazil and are not anti-jazz but anti-American. The attack on this site was part of a much larger attack on my host's numerous sites. I talked to the server admin tonight and he said several of his sites got hit. They probably hit us because we get so much traffic around here. Thank God they were not as malicious as the ones that attacked AAJ. But like I said, I do weekly backups.

I agree. Creative Labs are junk. I would go with either Plextor (the best drives made), Sony (middle-ground) or Lite-On (cheap, but dependable).

We don't know who did it, but we're not completely sure it was a direct attack on this site personally. According to Ken, our server guru, a couple of sites he hosts got attacked. We're looking into where it came from (ie, through us or through another site on thechain's roster). In any case, we're here!

I think they make special doggy shampoo that helps cover the smell. Go to your local pet store and ask.

You can get a CD burner for your computer for around $50 these days and discs are so cheap it's laughable.

That's a real bummer about Mike's site. Who would want to hack a jazz website? Seems rather silly. I back this board up every week manually, just for the record.

In fact, here's a website discussing the game. I played this game for months on end. It was FUN! I never had the manual, though since it was a "pirated" version (how ironic, eh?) YARGH! A game about Pirates n' Shit! Screenshot, in all it's 8-bit glory!!!

Guess nobody but brother Joe knows the ELP song. Consider yourselves lucky. On another tangent, there was this neat game I used to play when I was kid on the Commodore 64 called "Pirates!" by MicroProse. You basically started out as an apprentice and then moved up the ranks by sailing the seas, plundering towns, buying off the local governor and finding ships at sea to rob. It was great fun.

Some light listening, eh John?

Wish I did. All I know from CDBaby (who has yet to fully implement getting it's catalog on there) is that we get 90% of whatever CDBaby gets per song. What that actually amounts to is anyone's guess.