7/4

g_d what did you say when you heard larry coryell for the first time? It sounds like something that should be in a salt water reef tank.

Yeah, but I still have this crisis about the Koa top acoustic.

Kid needs a 12 step program...

I might do that too, but it would be a step into performance art.

I was watching some country music channel last night and they had some hot artist named Taylor Swift who was really beautiful, she had an acoustic guitar with this amazing grain to the top. But I never caught who made it. Really beautiful guitar, but she just kept going on about her self and they never really showed the headstock so I could find out who made the dam guitar. I'm guessing it was a Koa top by Taylor, but can't be sure. I mean...what the hell were they thinking?

All the best, hang in there.

review

Plainfield is just a few towns west of here. Sound career Man finds his groove in studio Friday, August 03, 2007 BY CANDICE LEIGH HELFAND Star-Ledger Staff When Robert T. Speiden first moved to Plainfield in 1969, he set up a meager recording studio in his backyard. "I was interested in recording for a long time," he said. "So I used a building out back (behind my house) the size of a two-car garage, made of cement block, to make a studio." Known then as Quality Sound, the facility is now called Netherwood Recording -- but that can't erase almost 40 years of history encased in its brick walls. The studio has seen some considerable acts, including Jersey-based band the Smithereens -- who recorded their first album under Speiden's watch -- the 1960s group The Velvet Underground, guitar legend Les Paul and drummer Max Weinberg, who rose to fame in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and who currently plays on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. But Speiden's recording experience is not limited to rock 'n' roll. Having worked with both the famous and the infamous, the studio helped produce a master copy of mass murderer Charles Manson's "Lie: The Love and Terror Cult," according to studio co-owner Frank McGlynn. The proceeds of the "Lie" album are donated to an organization in California that benefits families of the victims of violent crimes. Speiden has also done work for the Escorts, an R&B group from Rahway. And one of Speiden's favorite projects is one he gets to do annually -- he has recorded the Plainfield Symphony since 1984. "I like classical music, and recording it is a really satisfying job," he said. "And we use one of my microphones to do it." Speiden is referring to a microphone he invented, called the Royer SF-12, that records ensembles perfectly without any other microphones assisting. McGlynn said it's "as good as setting a pair of ears up in a concert hall." The microphones are manufactured to this day by Royer Labs, a company located in California that holds Speiden in the highest esteem. Rick Perrotta, owner and president of Royer Labs, said that Speiden has helped his company for nearly a decade. "We consider him to be not only great friend, but also someone we highly respect," he said. Speiden's relationship with Royer Labs began when David Royer, the chief engineer, began corresponding with him after being amazed with his own experiences using Speiden's self-made, earlier version of the SF-12. "He had developed that mic in the early 1980s," Royer said. "I saw one then, and thought it had been special delivered from another planet -- we were honored when we had the opportunity to continue production of it." Royer added that Speiden's personality is just as captivating as his recording and engineering prowess. "He's something of a free spirit, very much an old-fashioned experimenter," he said. "He's got quite a bit of whimsy about him, too." Now 84, Speiden shares control of the studio with McGlynn, a family friend who affectionately refers to Speiden as his uncle. "The technology has eluded me, and I haven't tried to keep up," Speiden said. "But Frank is very hip, and he knows what's going on." Though proficient in modern recording techniques, McGlynn remains respectful of the old methods, and sees the studio as a historic landmark. "I'm hoping to get the studio itself certified as a historical building, especially due to all of the different acts that have recorded albums here," he said. "Too many musical landmarks around here are disappearing -- these places left a history with the arts, and with music." He added that Speiden's workshop wonderland is home to vintage equipment, some with the ability to produce vinyl records. Speiden continues to work there with McGlynn and fellow employee Bernard Judd, regardless of his age. "I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to do this, but I'll keep trying," he said.

Honestly...Tal Farlow.

It must be something like somethinganother Simic. Shouldn't you capitalize the S? Or is that a trendy spelling? How's this: Somethinganother Simic.

It must be something like somethinganother Simic. Just guessing.

I just collect. Listen? Are you crazy?

I know someone from another board who drove over that bridge about 30 min before it fell down. Yikes!

August 2, 2007 Charles Simic, Surrealist With Dark View, Is Named Poet Laureate By MOTOKO RICH Charles Simic, a writer who juxtaposes dark imagery with ironic humor, is to be named the country’s 15th poet laureate by the Librarian of Congress today. Mr. Simic, 69, was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and immigrated to the United States at 16. He started writing poetry in English only a few years after learning the language and has published more than 20 volumes of poetry, as well as essay collections, translations and a memoir. A retired professor of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire, he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990 and held a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant from 1984 to 1989. He succeeds Donald Hall, a fellow New Englander, who has been poet laureate for the past year. James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, will announce Mr. Simic’s appointment. Mr. Billington said he chose Mr. Simic from a short list of 15 poets because of “the rather stunning and original quality of his poetry,” adding: “He’s very hard to describe, and that’s a great tribute to him. His poems have a sequence that you encounter in dreams, and therefore they have a reality that does not correspond to the reality that we perceive with our eyes and ears.” Mr. Simic, speaking by telephone from his home in Strafford, N.H., described himself as a “city poet” because he has “lived in cities all of my life, except for the last 35 years.” Before settling into academia, he held a number of jobs in New York, including bookkeeping, bookselling and shirt sales. He originally wanted to be a painter, he said, until “I realized that I had no talent.” He started writing poems while in high school in Chicago, in part, he said, to impress girls. He published his first poems in The Chicago Review when he was 21. Mr. Simic said his chief poetic preoccupation has been history. “I’m sort of the product of history; Hitler and Stalin were my travel agents,” he said. “If they weren’t around, I probably would have stayed on the same street where I was born. My family, like millions of others, had to pack up and go, so that has always interested me tremendously: human tragedy and human vileness and stupidity.” Yet he balks at questions about the role of poetry in culture. “That reminds me so much of the way the young Communists in the days of Stalin at big party congresses would ask, ‘What is the role of the writer?’ ” he said. Mr. Simic said he preferred to think of the point of poetry in the way a student at a school in El Paso put it when he visited in 1972: “to remind people of their own humanity.” Reviewing his collection “The Voice at 3:00 A.M.” (Harcourt) for The New York Times Book Review in 2003, David Orr said Mr. Simic was “a surrealist with a purpose: the disconcerting shifts and sinister imagery that characterize his work are always intended to suggest — however obliquely — the existential questions that trouble our day-to-day lives.” Mr. Billington said he admired Mr. Simic’s work because it was “both accessible and deep,” adding that “the lines are memorable.” He referred to a stanza from “My Turn to Confess,” a poem from Mr. Simic’s 2005 collection, “My Noiseless Entourage,” also published by Harcourt: A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks, That’s me, dear reader! They were about to kick me out of the library But I warned them, My master is invisible and all-powerful. Still, they kept dragging me out by my tail. The post of poet laureate has existed since 1987, although there were 27 consultants in poetry to the Library of Congress before that. Laureates receive a $35,000 award and a $5,000 travel allowance. The position does not come with any specific responsibilities, although previous laureates have used the platform in different ways. Robert Pinsky, who held the post from 1997 to 2000, initiated a Favorite Poem Project, inviting poetry fans to share their favorites in readings captured on tape and video. Billy Collins, laureate from 2001 to 2003, began Poetry 180 (loc.gov/poetry/180), a Web site where high school classes can access a poem of the day. Mr. Hall joined Andrew Motion, the British poet laureate, for a trans-Atlantic reading program sponsored by the Poetry Foundation. Mr. Simic said he had not yet figured out what he would do. In the meantime he continues to write for The New York Review of Books and is a poetry editor of The Paris Review. He has a new collection, “That Little Something,” due from Harcourt in February 2008.

I wouldn't mind seeing that too.

Happy Birthday Herb! :rsmile:

I've thought about it on the Pulaski Skyway....

Enjoying the story, the photos...

I hope they're safe.

I'm watching this unfold on TV...

That's the weird part, my story happened during the day time. I just didn't know the laws...

She drove me over the edge too.

sounds so good, you gotta say it twice.