This week’s RR is another look into my past, and (I think), a look into part of what makes me tick.

My Dad finished his 28-year stint in the Navy, and settled in Waco to take the civil service job he was offered – as a fireman at the James Connally Air Force Base.

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But…

He had grown up on a farm tending cattle, and I guess he wanted some of that lifestyle back. He and I did some clean-up work for a retired Polish couple on their farm (clearing mesquite frees and such), and the next thing I knew, he had bought it from them.  Guess who became his unpaid farm hand?  Moi.

It was about 118 acres, and we kept around 30 / 60 head of Hereford cattle on it. My Dad bought me a horse – a roan mare who I named “Apache”. She was turned over to me so well-trained that I could throw the reins over her head, tell her “Go get the cows, girl!”, and she’d trot off and round them up like a border collie does sheep. She would always come when I called her, and she got lots of treats – usually raw carrots.  I spent a lot of time riding fence, looking for broken or loose strands of barbed wire, and fixing them. The rest of the time riding her was spent rounding up the herd, looking for newborn calves in the tall grass, etc.

My other duties included the stuff you don’t see in cowboy movies – inoculating, turning young bulls into steers (castrating them – having too many bulls in a herd start fights),

                          YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME, BUDDY??

shooting varmints (particularly armadillos, because they dig burrows that cattle can step into and break their legs). A cow that has broken a leg in an armadillo hole is truly tragic – because it was up to me to put the poor animal out of its misery, and then wait there until my Dad had gone to the closest phone to call the knacker.

Not the stuff you see cowboys doing in the movies, is it?

I also dispatched rattlesnakes and water moccasins (there were several water pools, which are called stock tanks), but never rat snakes, king snakes, corn snakes, or other harmless vermin-consumers.

More after the YE HA!

Continue reading “Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – “Home on the strange” edition”

“Big pharma doesn’t cure….” I’m sick of people saying that “Big Pharma doesn’t cure diseases”. Cures are few and far between (the most recent cure is the one for Hepatitis),because once the damage is done, it’s done. It’s a little like saying that regular oil changes don’t fix a cracked engine block – of course they won’t, but they might have PREVENTED the hung valve that broke the engine block. The Eliquis I take keeps me from having multiple AFIB-generated strokes like the ones that struck down my Mom and destroyed her brain, (and the ones that paralyzed her Mom … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with random ruminations – “Big Pharma” edition

Tech Support humour Years ago, at my first tech support job for GTE, there was a Supervisor who had that obnoxious “You’ve got mail” .wav file tagged to his Outlook incoming mail event. Fifty times a day. “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” “You’ve got mail!” I was pretty fed up after a week of this, and the next time there was a Supervisors meeting, I went to his machine, unlocked it with my Admin password, and replaced that event sound with one I had brought from home – the sound … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with random ruminations – tech support humour edition

Smell This House I wrote this while I was waiting for my 1/2 duplex to sell, and watching that stupid “Sell This House” show every day : ************************************************************ Tanya: “Well, on this episode of Sell This House, we’re looking at Tommy’s duplex. It’s been on the market for 8 months, and there are only 12 other comparable properties on his block, so why won’t it smell…err, sell?. Let’s look at the videotape, Tommy! Voice on videotape: “Christ! Did a cow shit in here??” . Tanya: “Ok,-  with two big dogs and three cats in a 1,190 square foot ½ duplex, … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – TV show mockery edition

Studio notes – thick guitars Re-listening to Boston lately, I was reminded of a trick (can’t remember who I nicked it from) to put down multiple guitar tracks without the sound (especially the high-mids) jumping out in a grating fashion. If you record several tracks using the same guitar, the prominent parts of the guitar’s sound add up and jump out of the mix in a way that’s not at all pleasing. To get those multiple tracks to nest together rather than blare certain frequencies out is a simple trick. 31-band equalizers were (and still are) the standard for graphic … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – “The trick to thick” edition

On recording demos (in case you missed last week’s RR post) In the mid-80s, I worked at Good Vibrations Recording Studio as intern, then engineer, and then as Manager. We were a 1” 16-track studio, originally founded by Dallas great Charlie Pride, that did almost exclusively demos and EP releases, with a few albums and commercials thrown in. Thanks to some very good mikes and even better engineers, we managed to siphon off some work from the big 2” 24-track studios in the area, and everyone (including the first MTV Basement Tapes winners 4 Reasons Unknown) was happy when they … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – Demo Hell edition

OK – when I was playing in various Dallas bands, I was working a day job – since I already had a commercial drivers license from back in Waco (where I was driving a 20-ton dump truck for the City,  hauling asphalt for the Streets Department).

I was working in North Dallas hauling forklifts with a 10-wheel rollback. My boss eventually decided to get out of the hauling business and sold the truck.

Suddenly I had a lot of time on my hands, so I went over to a recording studio that I had passed numerous times as it was close to my job. The name of the place was “Good Vibrations Recording Studio”, and I found out that it had been started by Charlie Pride’s band members.

I talked to the owner and his lead engineer, and they gave me a little test.  The studio had a very nice Neumann condenser mike, and the owner said “Go out there and put a pad on that mike.”

I went out and found a foam rubber mike protector (spit guard), and put it over the Neumann. I went back and they were both laughing. What I didn’t know was that condenser mikes have a switch to limit the output, so that an amp has the same dynamics as a vocal. It’s called a “pad”.

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They took me on anyway, as an intern. I learned a lot in a short time, and after a number of months, the owner called me into his office and asked me if I wanted to be manager. I said yes (of course).

Good Vibrations was a 1″ 16-track studio (Teac/Tascam), and as such, did mostly demos for local bands who didn’t want to spend $100 / hr to record in a 2″ 24-track place. We did a fair amount of business, largely because we had outstanding microphones, which are any studio’s most important asset. One day, a local group called “4 Reasons Unknown” came in to do a demo that would shortly be the track for a music video .

The group’s manager got them a slot on a new competition on MTV (you may remember MTV from back when they were just music videos) called “The MTV Basement Tapes”.  They won the competition.  Over hundreds of bands that submitted songs. For real.

Suddenly, the phone started ringing off the hook, and we were booked 24 / 7.  Everyone wanted to record at the little place were the first MTV Basement Tapes winners recorded. I didn’t get much sleep in the months that followed.

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So – we’re at the studio daze part of my random ruminations series.  Click on the “read more” for the first installment.

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Continue reading “Today on Tommy T’s obsession with Random Ruminations – “studio daze” edition”