The Stumble

Today as I was listening to A Hard Road by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers for the first time, the song that most caught my attention was their cover of Freddie King’s “The Stumble”. Since I had recently added The Very Best of Freddie King to my iTunes collection, I knew I probably had the original:

iTunes search for "The Stumble"

Sure enough I had the version by Freddie as well as another by Jeff Beck I immediately queued them to play next: Freddie followed by Beck. In the meantime, I pulled up the Wikipedia article to find out more about this rollicking electric guitar solo + what is the wah wah effect. There’s not much there but the article does have a list of artists that have covered it. My eyes immediately found Gary Moore who was more or less a disciple of Peter Green, Mayall’s guitar player on his version of “The Stumble”. Having just downloaded a chunk of Moore’s work the night before, I anxiously scanned the files for his version of “The Stumble”. I dropped it into iTunes just as Beck’s version faded out.

As Moore’s version blasted my ears, I went to YouTube for further insight. I wasn’t able to find the Freddie King version but I did find Green, Beck and Moore as well as a couple of interesting versions.
Continue reading “The Stumble”

Vital Statistics

Aches & pains: sciatica, temperature sensitivity, left hip
Current reading: Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Recent listening: The Chess Story, Eric Clapton, The Yardbirds, Beckology, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Steve Miller Band, Traffic, Boz Scaggs, The Rolling Stones
Recent viewing: CSI, God in America, Sin City, V is for Vendetta, Commando, Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, Secrets Beneath the Ice (Nova), Real Time with Bill Maher, Japan’s Killer Quake (Nova), BBS: The Documentary
Recent playing: DropZap, Words with Friends, WSOP Hold ‘Em Legend HD
Recently accomplished: Couch acquisition, Troop 820 collections, mowed lawn, new couch prep
Imperative To Do: Clean garage, clean gutters, new shelves for stereo, bank trip, bark dust, doctor appointments

Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll

If you were a teen in the 80s like me then you probably remember the short-lived sketch comedy series, Fridays, on ABC. Although it only lasted two seasons, it left an indelible impression on my young brain.

Sadly, a DVD release of those two seasons is reportedly held up by Michael Richards. Luckily, YouTube has most of their great sketches including the ones I’ve included below the fold:
Continue reading “Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll”

You with your angel face

On this historical day our little family is going through a little bit of personal history. As I write this, Tina is in the operating room undergoing a hysterectomy. As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago Tina had what I described then as a “severe gynecological episode” which resulted in great loss of blood and a trip to the emergency room. After spending a night in the hospital and consulting with a new set of doctors, we concluded that her old doctor would no longer be treating her. For over a year she’s been having problems with irregular and lengthy menstrual cycles and her doctor insisted on treating her with hormones in the form of birth control pills. That treatment was ineffective and the ongoing condition resulted in frequent migraines, anemia, worsening a of her restless leg syndrome and a myriad of lesser symptoms. This all culminated in the middle of December when Tina’s period started and hasn’t stopped since. And so she is in the operating room now.

They are going to attempt to perform the procedure vaginally in order to reduce recovery time. However, if there are complications (details of which were explained to us but I cannot remember), they will make an incision for a laparotomy. They are equally prepared for either.

Tina’s mom arrived last night and will be helping out over the next week or so as Tina recovers. Since I’m working from home, I’ll also be able to help more than if I weren’t. We are lucky.

Update (13:00 PST): Tina is out of recovery and resting in her room. Pain medication is making her drowsy but she’ll probably be up for calls and visitors this evening. She’s in room 2406 at Adventist.

Update (14:00 PST): The doctor reported that the surgery went well. She called it an “assisted laparotomy”, I think. As I understand it, they made two small incisions to assist in the removal via vagina. Also, that last sentence is all kinds of wrong.

History Test

Can you spot the problem with this Fox News segment? Hint: It doesn’t have anything to do with the stupid joke about getting video from the debate.

Food Fight

If you know your history and your ethnic cuisine, you should be able to follow this video from start to finish:

In case you don’t know ethnic foods that well, there is a cheat sheet to help you. You’re on your own for history.

Cool old photos from the LOC

The Library of Congress recently released some of their photos on Flickr. This particular picture is very compelling, but there are scores of others in the “1930s-1940s in Color” and “News in the 1910s” sets. Some other favorites:



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