“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
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
There’s a lot of jibber-jabber from the right-wing about Tim (Look! We have a black friend, so we can’t be racist) Scott’s responding to President Biden’s first address to congress. Most of it centers around the “Uncle Tom” thing currently bouncing around in hashtag land. I’m a musician. And an engineer/producer. I’ve had (and still have) a number of black friends and associates. And yes, I’ve heard the “Uncle Tom” thing used. By them. I’ve never heard one white person call a black person an “Uncle Tom”. Not one. It’s a term exclusively used by black Americans to describe someone … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Random Ruminations – Ants and Uncles edition
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
Nuclear fearmongering, and a modest proposal I’ve seen a lot of hysterical gobspatter over the Iran Nuclear Treaty. ZOMGtheIraniansAreGoingToBeIncludedInMonitoringOneOfTheSites!!! You know what? GIVE the Iranians some of OUR nukes. Go ahead. They’ll come to the same realization that every nuclear power has – that the things are fucking worthless. Why? You can’t use them. They’re hideously expensive tinkertoys that serve no offensive military purpose, other than to try to keep someone (like Israel in this case) from nuking YOU. I’m about as worried about Iran launching an ICBM they don’t have (with a nuclear warhead they don’t have on it) … Continue reading Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with Random Ruminations – “A modest proposal” 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
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
