Jerry’s Blog–Because Wit Happens

Boys and girls, use the Interwebitubes to find a good quality version of this song–the original version by Count V, of course. Takes me back to my high school days. Love the drummer standing up in this video (and cute gogo girls!):

Fun with electrodes:

Back in the early 70’s, I played keyboards for this band.

From left to right are our bass player, John Gibson (”Gibby”); rhythm guitar and organ player Al Smith (who died in his 30’s during heart surgery); our drummer Ted Kisgen; lead guitar player Jim Hutson, Ph.D.; and yours truly.  I am, like, 20 years old in this picture, which was taken with a “fish eye” lens, thus explaining why we all look like, well, fish.

Believe it or not, we were one of the more successful bands in the Omaha and surrounding Southeast Nebraska/Southwest Iowa area.  Gibby, Jim, and Ted were formerly of a rather long-lived band called the Green Giants, that I had grown up listening to, and Al had been a founding member of The Fortes, which played at the first dance I ever went to (back in 8th grade).

I was teaching high school back when the band was forming and happened to know Ted’s soon-to-be-wife, who had asked me to sing at their wedding.  I met the guys at the wedding, they were looking for a keyboard player, and the rest is rock and roll history.

Our Omaha contemporaries back in the day were groups like Circus, Trojan Horse (later, just Horse, as I recall), Bittersweet, and Froggie Beaver.  Previous local rock gods The Rumbles weren’t playing at the time.  We were all cover bands.

Disco came along in the mid-70’s and was pretty much the death of live music for a few years.  We were only together for a year and a half.  Good times…

Gibby is the only one still playing, and when I was invited to join a band earlier this year I gave it some serious thought and then…passed.  I decided it would involve too much of an investment of time.  (And not a day goes by that I don’t second-guess that decision…)

So anyway–I had breakfast the other day with Gibby, who informed me that Ted had come up with some old reel-to-reel tapes we had made of our live performances back in the day and he had been able to convert them to CD.  I should have a copy very soon, and I will then “remaster” my own copy to see if I can improve the quality (Gibby says they already sound great), convert to mp3, and then post some of our “greatest hits” here.

Stay tuned.

Alright, now that I’ve warmed you up with the Techno Ahnold video mashup, here is a sampling of the work of Israeli GENIUS “Kutiman”, who has a number of videos of his mashups on YouTube. If you like this piece of work half as much I do, you’ll follow the links on YouTube to listen to everything he has done. This is more than just mere sampling and mashing up of other musicians–this guy takes the snippets of other YouTube videos (generally “nobodies”) and mashes them up to make wonderful pieces of music. This would take an amazing amount of work, but I love the results. PLEASE love them as much as I do (and, God Bless Him, at YouTube he links to each of the original videos that he has used–I want to be him when I grow up):

Ok, so we’re down to the Lucky 13 and my favorite source, the Bodog site, has posted “the action” for who is to ultimately win AMERICAN IDOL this season.

I do think they probably have the Top Three pretty close–although I don’t think Lambert should be the favorite, and, indeed, although possibly the most talented of the bunch, there’s something a little off-putting about him that I believe will trouble middle America.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with this).

I think it’s a tossup between Gokey and Rounds, and I pick them to be in the final two–although my personal favorite this year is Anoop Desai; I just don’t think he’ll end up winning.

Anyway, here’s your preliminary odds:

Adam Lambert 2/1
Danny Gokey 5/2
Lil Rounds 5/1
Allison Iraheta 15/2
Scott MacIntyre 10/1
Matt Giraud 12/1
Alexis Grace 12/1
Anoop Desai 15/1
Megan Corkrey 15/1
Jorge Nunez 25/1
Kris Allen 30/1
Jasmine Murray 30/1
Michael Sarver 50/1

For the most current odds use the Search box in the sidebar for “American Idol”

I posted one of these before. I think they are pretty funny:

Love the hair…:

Hadn’t seen this one, so thanks, Brett. I like the song a lot, too:

Tags: Music

The RPM Challenge–Week One

Tags: Music