I see the anti-vaxxers spouting “VAERS! VAERS!” like it was some kind of chant to keep the spectre of reality away from them. And they report that VAERS says more people have died from the vaccinations than have died from COVID-19 I’ll tell you what VAERS is – it’s the stupidest thing the CDC has ever done. In a misguided attempt to get some numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations, they created a database where anyone (yes, even you) can identify themselves as a MD (none of these identities are verified), and report adverse reactions or deaths from inoculations. (none of these … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – VAERS deferens edition
Ok – where were we? Oh yes – I was now an ex-cowboy. A friend of my family whose own family lived in Mexico City invited me up for a couple of weeks that turned into several months. Neither of my parents accompanied me, so I had a blast. When I finally returned home, I was ready to get out of the house for good, but had neither a place to live nor a job. My Mom had bought an enormous black Chrysler Imperial from a local funeral home (what they called a “family car”), and I finagled a job … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – the unliving dead edition
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.
Well, as you’ve probably heard by now, bassist for ZZ Top Dusty Hill left us this week. In early 1971, even journeyman musicians like me knew them well from reputation alone. They had just put their first album out. So on a cold day early that year, I saw them at a dive bar (R&B joint, actually) called the Mark III club in my hometown of Waco. Capacity was probably 60 people, and it was about half full. Mostly local musicians, unsurprisingly Guitarist Billy Gibbons was using two 100-watt Marshall stacks, and Dusty was using two 200-watt Marshall Major stacks. … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s random ruminations – shaking my tree edition
I know our beloved Athenae did TV reviews (mostly “Game Of Thrones” and “Battlestar Gallactica”), so please allow me just this one. *************************************************** Ok – for starters, I’m a “House, M.D.” addict, even though I started watching it after the series finished. In spite of the wonderful script-writing, and even better performances from Hugh Laurie, et. al, there was one thing that drove me nuts – the protagonists. The network executives insisted on a protagonist to battle House, because they thought the procedural nature of the series wasn’t engaging enough. They were imbeciles. The first one was the guy who … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – “In da HOUSE” 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
Headroom . I just added a second 1X12″ 120W subwoofer to The Home Theater From Hell. Why? One word. Headroom. Modern soundtracks make pretty heavy demands on home theater sound systems. If you have a crappy little soundbar, that’s going to get overloaded and possibly even push the amplifier into clipping (distortion) during the peaks that abound in today’s movie soundtracks. (movie soundtracks? these days even COMMERCIALS have low-end artifacts that sound like a tank coming down your street) Nothing sounds worse than a speaker / amplifier system approaching its limit. Amplifier manufacturers even put compressors in the amplifiers … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s obsession with random ruminations – headroom 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
The Stages Of Barbara’s Unemployment I wrote this some years ago, when Barbara was unceremoniously dumped from her long-time job at SEI. I believe that there are enough people looking for work again to make this relevant today. (Oh – and since the death of Brillo the Scottish Deerhound, the house is petless for the first time since we met 20 years ago) . Stage 1 – Elation. Sleeps late. Gets dressed Goes around the house singing “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead”. (her former boss was an asswipe) Plays a lot of computer Maj-Johng. . Stage 2 – Catching … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – “Five stages” edition
Something a little different on this week’s RR. They even got the “bell chord” effect right. Barbara laughed as hard as I’ve ever heard her laugh when she saw it. Best comment so far? “Well done! My wife and I both laughed. Then she yelled at me.” Dave Simmons Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – “Queen for a day” edition
Why I don’t go clubbing You see, I spent an incredible amount of my lifetime in live music clubs – almost always to play. I have inhaled enough cigarette smoke to kill a hundred healthy men (in case you never noticed, most club stages put the musicians’ heads pretty close to the ceiling, where the smoke pools up) – sometimes I’d have to bend down to be able to see. My Rickenbacker 4001 was snow white when I got it in 1977 – it’s nicotine ivory-coloured now. Sometimes I wonder if the inside of my lungs look like that. (it’s … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s obsession with Random Ruminations – No Clubbing, No Cry edition
You rang? I was staying with a (platonic) girlfriend overnight and head the doorbell ring. Thought “who could it be this early in the morning?” Heard a conversation at the front door, so I got up from the couch, dressed, and went to see. My very nice host had opened the door to a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and she was trying to be nice and still get them to leave. Wasn’t happening. I came up beside her and slipped my arm around her shoulders, saying “Who are these fine people, sweetheart?”. She looked at me and advised me that … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s obsession with Random Ruminations –
Context. I see a lot of embarrassment and attempts to hide (NOT “cancel”) movies, shows, even music from the past – just because it doesn’t jibe with modern sensibilities. When I watched “Birth Of A Nation” for the first time, I didn’t think “Wow – I want to go out and join the KKK!”. I thought “That approach was obviously acceptable back in 1915.” It was a window into the past. Not the past of 1865, but the past of 1915. After I read “Snow White”, I got the original version (I don’t think Mom and Dad knew exactly what … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s obsession with Random Ruminations – Context is everything
This week’s Random Rumination comes from Harlan Ellison : ********************************** From Harlan Ellison, responding to a discouraged police officer : I know damned well there are (good) cops like you. I’ve met a few; and they always wind up like Serpico,brokenhearted or bust-headed. Because police these days aren’t like police when I was a kid in Painesville, Ohio in the Forties. Friend of mine, a lieutenant of homicide, got a trifle bombed one night, sitting around rapping with me, and he let slip one of the most scary things I’ve ever heard. He said : “Harlan, it used to be,when … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – Ellison Wonderland 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
Homemade fireworks Every year (when I was in high school) I used to make industrial-grade crackerballs (the fireworks available back then that exploded with a pop when you threw them down on pavement) out of Potassium Perchlorate and one other ingredient. The report was cherry-bomb sized, but not as fierce as an M80, and everyone I sold them to knew to either throw them against a wall or hit them with something like a spade. I was busily making them in study hall, wrapping the finished products in tinfoil and putting them in my satchel, when a classmate came over … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – Big Bang edition
Tape doesn’t lie. Back in my studio engineer days I had a guy come in with a karaoke tape he wanted to sing along to (first one I’d ever seen). Horrible little low-fi cassette, with his vocals on our good U47 mike laid over it? Okay. It’s his money. Then this guy, who is loaded up with bling, proceeds to dance around in the vocal booth while he’s singing. Really. Big moves and all. He’s clinking, he’s clanking, his polyester outfit’s whooshing and zzziping like a bedsheet in a whirlwind every time he moves his arms up to frame his … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – “Tape doesn’t lie” 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.
Ambivalent about ambidexterity When I was very young, the conventional wisdom (thank you so much, Dr. Spock) was to take your lefty child and turn them into a rightie, so that they would fit into a right-handed majority’s world. This was accomplished by things like “If your baby reaches for something with their left hand, withhold it. If they reach for it with their right, let them have it”, and similar aversion training. My Mom did this with me. Unfortunately, what this really did was to screw up my manual dexterity, and make me equally clumsy with BOTH hands. I … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s obsession with Random Ruminations – Ambivalent about ambidexterity edition
Insufficient bone spurs When I was in Allen Military academy, our MST (military science and technology) instructors were active-duty Army, assigned to Allen after rotating out of Vietnam. It was 1968, and things were getting a lot worse over there. The ethos of Allen Academy (one of the 10 “honor academies” in the country) was that you attended through high school levels, to two years of junior college levels, then were enlisted as a First Lieutenant. A lot of the gung-ho cadet officers bombarded the Nam vets with questions about what it was like over there. To a man, they … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s obsession with Random Ruminations – “Insufficient Bone Spurs” edition
Pain issues preclude me doing a regular “Obsession” post this Monday, so here’s a little piece I wrote some years ago :
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On libertarianism – a creeping cancer
I’ve noticed that so-called “libertarians” (I say “so-called” because no two libertarians can agree on what it is) are really just sociopaths in training.
Greed enters into it, of course, but the real hallmark is loss of empathy. It starts with groups of people they don’t have any contact with (people in other countries, people who have been born into situations they couldn’t imagine, and things that would make them cry like a child if they happened to them) and then expands.
As it grows, their loss of empathy extends to people who occupy the same world but are somehow (usually through lack of hustle) inferior to them, and undeserving of help.
Their circle of give-a-fuck gets smaller and smaller and smaller over time until – guess what? It only extends to them and their immediate families.
And then, in the end, it only extends to them.
And that, my friends, is the textbook definition of sociopathy.
When I was a pre-teen / teenager, I only had one dream. Go to Hollywood and become a cinematographer – failing that, a sound recordist. I was smart enough to know that I would need a mentor to take me on as an intern, and smart enough to know what happened to the large majority of people who ran off to Hollywood to make it big. Did I know anyone in the ASC? No. Did I think it was a good idea to hitchhike to Hollywood without much more than the clothes on my back? No. Then I got married … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – “Why I didn’t run away from home” edition
My greatest concert experience, and my band Grendel Emerson, Lake and Palmer in Dallas – Oct 20, 1977 I saw ELP on their Brain Salad Surgery tour. Entered Dallas Memorial Auditorium with anticipation. As I topped the balcony steps the audio geek in me fixated on the P.A. system, reportedly (pre-internet info age) quite a big deal. I looked at the stacks on either side of the stage (nobody was flying PA systems at that time) and saw a PA that was the equal if not better than any I had ever seen. – impressive, but not THAT big … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with random Ruminations – I ELPeed myself edition
On playin’ da blooz… For a bassist, it’s not much fun. I grew up in Texas, where playin’ da blooz is a rite of musical passage. “Nobody gets out of here without playing the blues!” isn’t just a line from a movie, it’s a way of life. It’s why Stevie Ray Vaughn, Lightnin’ Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, and Johnny Winter existed. Having said that, it’s one of the most boring and soul-crushing things a bass guitarist can do on stage. You’re basically (see what I did there?) playing I-IV-V-IV over and over and over, and every 16 … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with random Ruminations – Adventures in Babysitting edition
The Invisible Man Being a bass guitarist is like being the invisible man of the band. The guitarists get all the attention, the drummers get all the women, and you get the bar tab. Bassists seem to compensate for this in several ways. Some jump all around in an attempt to be noticed (see Flea), some retreat even further into the shadows (see Entwistle), and some overplay (see me). . . But do you know something? Without the bass line, the song falls apart. The rhythm stops. The guitar noodling with no sub-strata to hold it up just sounds … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with random Ruminations – The Invisible Man edition
Here we go with my first non-Freeperati post, people. The first reader to reply on what my first non-political post on First Draft should be, said this: “I’ve always enjoyed the reminiscences of the days as an itinerant musician and recording engineer, having some tangential connection to folks in those professions.” gratuitous ********************************** Well, I’m going to start out with my bass guitar stuff, and expand from there – so – it’s The bass guitar and me : Ok – surprisingly enough, other bassists actually ask me how I started and how I developed my style/sound (some people are easily … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – bass guitar edition
Hi, people. One of our readers advised me to take a short mental health break from Freeperville, so I decided to post about something marginally less sad – pets who have passed on. So – let tribute time begin! I’d like to start with Sunny and Kingsford, who were fast friends from the day they met. Sunny was one of those kittehs who thinks they’re a dog (and everyone who comes in the front door obviously did so just to pet him). He loved rubbing against your legs, especially when you were on the can. Kingsford was the charcoal-coloured polar … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s obsession with the Furrperati – “saying goodbye” edition
Taking a short mental health break, people. Have to. Saw this while cruising Freeperville for reaction to Kamala Harris’s VP pick: I got nothing. ***************************************** Actually, that’s not true – I do have one little observation to make : A few weeks ago, I opined that Trump’s attack on the USPS would backfire on him, and in spectacular fashion. I’d like to take this opportunity to say “I told you so”. But why? It’s not Pelosi’s actions in recalling the House from recess to address this transparent rat-fuckery. It’s not the Veterans who get almost all of their medications … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – shortest post ever edition
