Good evening, EBD here filling in tonight for Vitruvius for the Thurday installment of Late Nite Radio.
Musician and innovator Les Paul passed away today at the age of 94. His influence as a guitarist is often overstated, but he deserves credit for essentially inventing the multi-tracking technique used today on virtually every studio recording, and his popular, eponymous solid-body guitar made by Gibson remains one of the most popular guitars in the world. The Les Paul wasn’t the first solid-body electric — Fender’s Telecaster, (originally called Broadcaster) predated it — but where the slight play of the Telecaster’s bolted-on neck somewhat deadened the strings after the moment of attack, making it a suitable rhythm instrument, the Les Paul’s weight and glued-on neck gave it a hitherto unprecedented amount of sustain, making it the quintessential soloist’s guitar.
How High The Moon featuring vocalist and musical partner Mary Ford is probably Les Paul’s signature song, but in light of his passing it’s probably appropriate here to feature his 1953 recording of Vaya Con Dios
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
“Browning: One Man’s Impact
On a particular fall day in 1889, the members of the Ogden Rifle Club of Ogden, Utah, were out in force. The men were target shooting, but doubtless found the brilliant fall colors of aspens and oaks on the high peaks of the Wasatch Range a distraction.
Enticing too were the flocks of migratory waterfowl wheeling overhead and grouse calling in the brush. But all rifles that day were trained on paper targets, although one of the competitors, an unusually tall man with stern but handsome features, was having trouble concentrating on hitting the mark. As his good friend Will Wright took a shot with his rifle, the taller man noticed how a clump of desert weeds in front of the rifle was knocked back by the blast from the gun.
It was not the first time the tall man or any of the spectators had seen such an event; the big bore rifles fashionable on the Western frontier always produced a formidable muzzle blast. But the tall man, who was, at age 34, already an accomplished gunsmith and firearms manufacturer, found himself for the first time taking notice of the muzzle blast and pondering what it meant. Every discharge of a gun released a tremendous amount of energy, much of which was dissipated in the blast out of the muzzle. Now the tall man found himself wondering whether that burst of energy could somehow be put to use.
Unable to concentrate any longer on the competitive shoot, the man called his two brothers and left the shoot. Asked for an explanation, he said only, “An idea hit me — biggest one I ever had.”
On the way back to town, the tall man began thinking aloud, explaining to his two brothers his belief that the energy from the muzzle blast might be harnessed somehow. “It might even be possible to make a fully automatic gun,” he surmised, “one that would keep firing as long as you had ammunition.”
To a casual listener in the late 19th century, such an idea would probably have seemed preposterous, even though rapid-fire weapons were no novelty; the French and Belgians had deployed the first mitrailleuse in the 1850s, and the American Civil War saw the deployment of the famous Gatling gun. These guns, along with the Gardener gun developed in the 1870s, were all operated by hand cranks, and were not capable of true automatic fire. The Maxim gun, the first true automatic weapon, which used recoil force to cycle the gun, was developed in 1884, and could fire roughly 600 rounds per minute. The gun was deployed to devastating effect by British forces in colonial Africa.
But the idea of a gas-operated automatic weapon was an altogether revolutionary idea and its originator, unassuming Utah gun-maker John Moses Browning, the most creative inventive genius ever to apply his talents to the creation of firearms.
Pedigree Browning had a gun-maker’s pedigree.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2316029/posts
Pelosi FOR demonstrations/disruptions BEFORE she was against it. WAS American BEFORE it was un-American.
Breitbart.tv
LOL, Black Mamba!
I figure if I got one of these T-shirts, the message would be lost in the peaks and valleys — nice thought, though: Jennifer Lynch getting lost.
Poll that _needs_ to go horribly wrong:
Should Ottawa bring Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr home to face charges in Canada?
htp://sympatico.msn.ca
re: “[Federal] Court to force gov’t hand in Khadr case?”
Ottawas must seek Khadr’s repatriation, Court rules.
Ctv.ca aug 14/09
*a federal appeals court has upheld a ruling ordering Ottawa to take steps to bring home Omar Khadr……
*Pm Harper & Foreign Affairs Cannon are expected to hold a news conference later friday.
Comments on this article at ctv are a must read.
We live in a world gone mad
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8322658&page=1
Video link – new grade being introduced in University when plagiarism is suspected – “FD” – standing for “Failure with Dishonesty”
http://tinyurl.com/mqa7jf
They should maybe modify it to “FD UP DOODE”
Boy qualifies in major league: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Boy_gets_prize_for_catching_a_bus&in_article_id=720027&in_page_id=34
Pontiac to die, but Firebird to live.
Really. In fact, you’ll soon be able to get a new one…
http://thecanadiansentinel.blogspot.com/2009/08/pontiac-to-die-but-firebird-to-live.html
“Found Blasphamy – Dear Leader in Ottawa
So there I was, on my way to the grocery store this morning to pick up a nice one and three quarter inch thick T-bone for a BBQ this weekend.
The store is on the corner of Bank and Somerset – pretty much the nexus of all things left wing in Ottawa. With construction shutting down car traffic on Bank Street all summer, various stores are offering up promos to help with business.
Just as I turned to enter the store, the attached Quiznos sign caught my eye – or rather, something *on* the Quiznos sign. Dear Leader! Blasphemed!”
“I know where I’m picking up supper on the way home tonight.
As an aside – now that this meme has gone viral, it’s interesting to note the mutation that’s made it to Canada. “Socialism” has become “Fascism”. Words mean things?”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2316125/posts
Khadr poll is at —http://sympatico.msn.ca—,right now it is sitting at 52% saying let his terrorist ass rot in Cuba, 40% want him to collect welfare from the Canadian taxpayer.The other 8% are still in their first year of ESL lessons.
Thomas_L et al:
I wrote that a Telecaster, because of its pluck/attack (relative to the more sustaining Les Paul) is “a suitable rhythm instrument.”
You wrote: “saying that a Fender Telecaster is only good for rhythm is close to the dumbest thing I’ve read…”
*Didn’t* read, in this case.