Dave's I-Pod Top 'O The Charts

1. "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" - Tomoyasu Hotei
2. "Hard Way to Fall" - Ryan Adams
3. "A Kiss Before I Go" - Ryan Adams
4. "Jolene" - Dolly Parton
5. "The End of Everything" - Chris Isaak
6. "Interstate Love Song" - Stone Temple Pilots
7. "Thirteen" - Johnny Cash
8. "Codine Blues" - The Charlatans
9. "There She Goes" - Chris Isaak
10. "Take Me Out" - Franz Ferdinand
11. "He Don't Care About Me" - Kelly Willis
12. "Revelator" - Gillian Welch
13. "Creep" - Radiohead
14. "The End" - Ryan Adams
15. "I Fought the Law" - The Bobby Fuller Four
16. "The Dark End of the Street" - James Carr
17. "Dance All Night" - Ryan Adams
18. "Don't You (Forget About Me)" - Simple Minds
19. "How Soon is Now?" - The Smiths
20. "The Late Greats" - Wilco
21. "Last to Know" - Alejandro Escovedo
22. "One Hand Loose" - Charlie Feathers
23. "Yellow" - Coldplay
24. "Sonho Dourado" - Daniel Lanois
25. "I'll Hold You in My Heart" - Don Walser
26. "Life in a Northern Town" - The Dream Academy
27. "Rocket Man" - Elton John
28. "I'd Rather Go Blind" - Etta James
29. "Making Waves" - Golden Smog
30. "Weightless Again" - The Handsome Family
31. "Silver Wings" - The Knitters
32. "These Boots are Made for Walking" - Nancy Sinatra
33. "Trying to Live my Life Without You" - Otis Clay
34. "Sweet Illusions" - Ryan Adams
35. "For A Few Dollars More" - Terranova
36. "Make You Feel My Love" - Bob Dylan
37. "Dreaming With Tears in my Eyes" - Bono
38. "Pipeline" - The Chantays
39. "Hell is Chrome" - Wilco
40. "Dull Edge of the Blade" - The Derailers

GFI gets some press

Guy Knudsen (a.k.a. Guy From Idaho), one of my Moscow professor buddies that I play music with now and again, has his band, Bare Wires, featured in the U of I newspaper.

Check it out: The Argonaut

Can we like Ike?

On the long drive home from Lewiston last week, my mother and I ruminated on Ike Turner and his probable legacy. The discussion reminded me of the piece I wrote on Turner a couple years ago for the newspaper.

The big question is: Is it OK to like Ike?

TWANG!
The Lost Legacy of Ike Turner
By David Rey

I listened to Otis Rush’s “All Your Love (I Miss Loving)” about 12 times on Friday – mesmerized by the metal-shard sound coming out of a Stratocaster guitar wielded by the world’s most famous wife-beater, Ike Turner.

The solo part in that song is one of the many seminal musical moments in the 20th Century that Ike Turner has his fingerprints on. The sheer number of times that Ike turns up at critical junctures of popular music history in the past 60 years cannot be attributed to coincidence.

Though he’ll never completely live down the damage his abusive marriage to Tina Turner did to his reputation, Ike Turner is a true musical genius.

A musical prodigy, Turner began playing piano for Mississippi bluesmen Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Nighthawk at the tender age of 11. Never much of a singer, Turner preferred to play the role of the sideman – consequently, his impact on Rock and Roll history is somewhat obscure.

The wife-beating reputation pretty much guarantees it will remain that way.

It’s a shame that Turner isn’t a more savory character, because his contribution to music is enormous.

He’s responsible for what most music scholars consider the first Rock and Roll record, “Rocket 88,” recorded in 1951 at Sun Studios in Memphis. Jackie Brenston’s name went on the record, but he really was just the singer in Turner’s band.

Aside from his actual contributions with instrument in hand, Turner also played a pivotal role in talent discovery and development. As a talent scout for Modern Records in 1954, he “discovered” both B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf, bringing them to the Bihari brothers, who launched their recording careers.

He’s much better known for unveiling to the world the volcanic singing talents of Tina Turner. Though Tina’s comeback from her personal travails with Ike is one of the great stories in Rock and Roll history, her music is just a pale shade of what it was while she was performing in the Ike and Tina Revue.

There’s no question that Ike Turner is one of the greatest arrangers of music in Rock history, he’s up there with Phil Spector and George Martin – depending on the music you like, he may be the best.

His band, The Kings of Rhythm, played on so many great records that it’s almost absurd.

The Kings turned Howlin’ Wolf into a stomp machine on “How Many More Years,” taking him a bit away from the slow shuffling sound of his first recordings.

The time Turner and the Kings spent with Otis Rush in the Cobra Records recording studio in the 1950s completely changed the electric blues – making the West Chicago one of the predominate blues styles. The sounds out of those sessions spawned Buddy Guy.

A true innovator with the Stratocaster guitar, his six-string work is easily identifiable by the prolific use of the “whammy bar” during his solo leads.

Going back a few years before, Turner helped Junior Parker work out “Mystery Train,” a tune that Elvis turned into a Rock and Roll landmark.

Recently, Turner’s work provided the beat to the female rap group Salt-n-Pepa’s hit single, “The Shoop Song,” netting turner a much-needed $750,000 royalty check. He had been living hand to mouth before that since his release from prison on cocaine possession charges a few years earlier.

So, what you have is an artist who has created, played upon and coaxed from others, huge hits and influential songs for a 50-year period from the late 1940s to the 1990s. His 2002 solo effort, “Here and Now,” earned him a Grammy nomination in the traditional blues category and earned him a W.C. Handy Blues Award for Comeback of the Year.

Though he’s not a saint, there is lot more to Ike Turner than what you’ve seen at the movies.

The secret society of the six-string

I came across this TWANG! piece I wrote a couple years ago and giggled a bit, so I thought I'd post it here...

TWANG!
6-String cryptology
By DAVID REY

Ahh, the world of the guitar freak.

It’s a place populated by words such as PAF, Bigsby, tube rectifier, alnico, flatwounds, f-holes, Klusons, tune-o-matic, Telefunken and my favorite – humbucker.

In this world, everybody knows that point-to-point wiring is far superior to printed circuit boards – when it’s in your amp, not your televison.

While the rest of the world looks at technology as progress, guitar freaks lament the passage of 1959 – the magic year for Gibson guitars. They want everything to go back to the way it was in 1965, when the Fender Deluxe Reverb blackface configuration reached perfection.

Forget buying gadgets that use little computer chips to simulate rockabilly slap-back delay, the guitar freak wants a clunky tape delay machine – that actually uses tape to create slap-back delay.

While the rest of the world likes their new items shiny and new, there is an element of guitar freaks that actually like their new guitars to be beat up when they buy them. It’s called relic-ing. I call it madness -- though I secretly harbor a desire for one some day...

Whether I intended it or not, I’ve worked my way into this semi-secret society. The guitar player has always been a mysterious, mystical creature, coaxing the sound of the gods out of an 8-pound, stringed contraption.

It’s hard to be accepted into the brotherhood (I’ve found there aren’t many sisters). You have to pay your dues by showing you know what everybody is talking about and then, eventually, showing that you can actually play a bit.

It’s that second part that I’ve found a bit challenging. After spending the last two years immersing myself in the electric guitar sub-culture, I’m now fluent in guitar-speak. It would’ve never been possible without the Internet.

The Internet has enabled guitar freaks to organize and communicate. Everything I know about guitars – except how to play them – I learned from places like the Telecaster Discussion Page Re-Issue, The Gretsch Pages and The Clarence White Guitar Forum.

If you’re thinking you’ll just surf on over to one of these sites and get some guitar learnin’ on the cheap, better be ready to put in the work to decipher messages like this, from Stan at TDPRI.com.

“what about your filter caps?? also does this happen at load volumes only? if so you may have parasitic oscillation. a good tech could fix that by changing lead dress/routing of wires.”

To the thousands of TDPRI board members, that seems like a perfectly good explanation and fix for early breakup and cutting out on a Fender Deluxe amplifier. If that puzzles you, then you don’t even want to accidentally drop into a thread on the Gretsch Pages about the tonal differences between a FilterTron and a HiLoTron.

And you thought it was all about swinging your arm around like Pete Townshend and magically, Rock and Roll pours forth from the guitar. If only it was that easy.

Really, it can be, it’s just that being a guitar player wouldn’t be nearly as fun if all us freaks would just admit that, when it comes right down to it, compensated saddles, Sperzels and blade pickups aren’t nearly as important as exuberance, creativity and patience, when it comes to making music.

So join us freaks, learn some lingo, get a guitar – and plug in.

Are you ready for that great atomic power?

Terrifying and fascinating at the same time -- video of multiple nuclear and thermonuclear weapons tests done by the U.S. between 1945 and 1976. Check out the video series of the Project Sedan and the Christmas Island tests... Also, see the effects of an atomic weapon from the deck and below decks of a ship parked less than a kilometer from an atomic blast in the Starfish Prime Test Interim video.

National Nuclear Security Administration

Joan is so badass.

Cancer, schmancer she says after finishing the Lewiston Triathlon... Look at that big wuss Tom hunkered down in his rain gear.