The Crickets, led by Buddy Holly, had their first hit with “That’ll Be The Day” in 1957. Many more hits would follow for Buddy Holly and the Crickets until his tragic death on February 3, 1959. He had just left a gig at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, when his plane crashed in the middle of a frozen cornfield. All three passengers – Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson – and the pilot were killed instantly.
Last summer I visited the site of the crash which is only 45 minutes from where I grew up. There are no signs on the gravel roads leading to the cornfield and there is no dedicated parking. Once you get near, though, the presence of other visitors is soon evident.
The site lies at the end of a half mile walk along a dirt road with weeds and grass growing in the center. There is a small entrance at the start of the road that is festooned with horn rimmed glasses, flowers and other mementos.
As I walked past the entrance and down the half mile path to the crash site, I couldn’t help but notice something remarkable – crickets! Every person I encountered on the path I asked, “Can you believe it? Crickets!” The younger ones looked puzzled but the people my age nodded politely and kept walking back towards their car. Eventually, I stopped telling people about the crickets.
As I walked out of the cornfield and approached the entrance, a man about my age walked towards me in the opposite direction. I said to him, “I can’t believe the crickets!” He looked at me puzzled at first and then realized what I meant. He pointed at his ears and said, “I can’t hear high frequencies any more.”
As he walked by me, I stopped for a moment, pulled the hearing aids out of my ears and I could no longer hear the crickets. I put them back in and the crickets were audible again.
On that day, I was extra grateful for my hearing aids because they helped me hear the crickets singing for Buddy Holly.
[table]
Time[attr style=”width:50px”],Action
07:00,Wake
08:30,Get out of bed
,Clean bite guard
,Blood sugar
,Make coffee
,Kitchen chores while waiting
,Make/eat peanut butter toast (15g carbs)
09:00,Apply for jobs/career development
,Medications with second cup of coffee
11:00,iOS developer training
13:00,Bike ride (10 miles minimum)
14:00,Lunch (60g carbs)
14:30,Meditation
15:00,iOS developer training
16:30,Chores
19:00,Dinner (60g carbs)
19:30,Free time for…
,…Music
,…Chores
,…Reading books
,…TV
22:15,Brush teeth
,Bite guard
,Bed
[/table]
Bill (can I call you Bill?), I want you to know that Has Been is one of my favorite albums of all time. I try to get people to listen to it but nobody takes me seriously. I recently had a “win” as a parent when my oldest son (17) asked me about Has Been.
I love how you poured yourself out for everyone to see and I use it as inspiration in my own (meager and infrequent) attempts to be an artist.
I bow to you and thank you, sir. 😀
PS: How do I get invited to one of your legendary parties?
Here’s the original thread which was brought to my attention by an r/bestof posting. I submitted my comment twice but Reddit didn’t accept it. I suspect that Bill has temporarily disabled comments.Â
Comments Off on A comment I wrote to William Shatner in a Reddit thread
After a few hints from the family, I have concluded that is time to end my blues exploration – at least for the time being. I had a revelation while eating dinner with the family the other night: The Summer Playlist. I’ll describe it in detail below but first a little context about the music listening situation in our house.
During the work day I spend most of my time in my office, the kitchen or the bathroom (in that order). On the left side of my desk my MacBook Pro (MBP) runs iTunes all the time. The MBP is connected to my awesome PMIX-100 personal audio mixer (seen on the right of the photo). The mixer is connected to my Cambridge Soundworks desktop speakers which are located 18 inches in front of my head in the classic stereo position. This is where I do almost all of my listening these days. Continue reading →
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 →
Two iTunes gift certificates worth $45 (not pictured) – redeeming for various apps and songs
Amazon gift certificate for $50 (not pictured) – redeemed for iLife ’11
Thanks to Buddy, Leroy, Tom, Jan, Michelle & Ric, Tina, Thomas, Graham and the Kittens. I know I’m hard to shop for and appreciate when people do so anyway.
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 →
Here’s a fun little exercise you can do in iTunes:
In iTunes, click on your music library in the sidebar.
Turn on shuffle, ensure that you have “By Songs” selected in the Shuffle menu (which is in Controls in the main menu)
Type the first word that comes to mind in the search box
Play one of the songs that is displayed
Pick a new word or name from the currently playing song, type that word into the search box
Listen
When song changes, repeat 5
Note that in step 5 that you must pick a word that will include the currently playing song or iTunes will get confused and stop playing after the song is over. Obviously, having a large music library (23847 songs for me) and lots of metadata helps make the game interesting.
