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Any day with World War I anniversaries is a good day! Not only is this Battle of the Somme week, but it also marked the beginning of the (often sadly underrated) U.S. role in The Great War. Check it out.

"In 1917, the first troops of the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France during World War I. "

Today in History:

Does anyone have an answer to this question? I was just thinking about this the last few days because I dug out my cassette copy of "5150" from the passenger-side door of my truck and have been playing that bad boy on auto reverse the past week. It just reminds me of how awesome a band Van Halen is/was, and that feeling is magnified in the summertime. They're just a summertime, feel-good party band, especially when you listen to songs like "Beautiful Girls" and "Summer Nights."=)

Anyway, is this band still around or what? My brother and I caught them on their reunion tour in the summer of '04 with Sammy singing, but we haven't heard a thing since. Their official website doesn't have any updates since Feb. of '05, and it all just seems like it is in limbo. But there is a cool VH news website that has video clips from the Sammy vs. Dave tour back in '02. The clips are fairly amusing and serve as a potent reminder as what it takes to be a lead singer--LSD (Lead Singer's Disease, of course!)

I'll try to type up some general update later, but I think I need some rock'n'roll right now.

My mom frequently employs an always handy phrase, "You never know what you're going to be doing at the end of the day." Yup, that is the truth, and yesterday served as perfect testimony to that plain fact. You see, yesterday I was expecting to just go to the office for a few hours in the afternoon, layout a few pages, go home and make a few business calls, watch a good dose of reality TV, play bass and listen to some loud rock'n'roll. Well, it didn't quite happen that way.

To make a long story more manageable, my brother got home from work at about 6:30 and decided that he needs to take the head for his Peavy amp head in to a repair shop because one of the tubes was acting up on it. I figured I'd come along because I was bored and not in the mood to do any work. So we made the trip downtown to this dumpy hood of a neighborhood by the railroad tracks. Actually, it is literally right next to my college campus at GVSU, which was weird. This dude in an SUV played chicken with a train that was crossing right when we got there, and the insane individual made it across less than five seconds before the train arrived. Ha, we just witnessed a potential "TV's Most Shocking Moments" moment right there!

We walked in this out of the way warehouse adjacent to the railroad tracks and it was a really cool electronics repair shop, with tons of amps, keyboards, mixers, drums etc. sitting around everywhere. A couple guys from another band were in there having their bass amp head checked out, and these dudes seemed pretty cool. They said they were getting ready to go on tour and their amp started making some crackling sounds or something, so this Al guy that works there was talking up a storm with these guys and trying to figure out the root of the problem. Eventually the bass player started talking to me, and I ended up talking a bit about our band inspirations and we exchanged band names (or band name ideas, in our case) and so we made an impromptu networking contact, which is always a nice feeling. You need all the help you can get in the music biz, as they say.

Okay: here's the gist of the story. The electronics repairman, Al, is a TRIP! A REAL trip ya'll. I mean this in the nicest possible way, of course. He is not only one of the friendlist, most charming and talkative people I've met, but he also knew absolutely everything about electronics, amps, sound waves etc. etc. etc. Those other two dudes left after about an hour, and Al kept chatting with us for over an hour about everything under the sound related to electronics. I mean, he was talking about technical stuff that we were mostly absolutely clueless about. I felt like a real idiot listening to this guy; it was if he was speaking a different language, using almost indecipherable technical jargon the entire time and discussing complicated sound theories and scientific concepts. It got pretty amusing after awhile, and Jeff and I exchanged a couple sideward "wink" type of glances when Al was trying to explain the science of mic. placement and the difference between the innards of old 3-watt Gibson combo amps and the modern Mesa-Boogie monsters. This guy knows it all about this stuff, and I know I must have been standing there with my jaw dropped open for a good hour-and-a-half or so.

Needless to say, Jeff's amp is in good hands with this guy. And this guy knew tons about music too, talking about how he did sound for bands like David Johansen, Billy Idol, Modern English etc. Al also showed us a CD of a local project he did the recording for, and it was pretty impressive indeed. I like how he hung out there smoking cigarette after cigarette with this big giddy grin on his face talking aobut his life's work--and love. He's not somebody we're likely to forget anytime soon, and he's one of those characters that Hollywood screenwriters OCCASIONALLY are able to approximate, but never come quite close to capturing. I don't agree with all of Al's philosphies on recording and musical aesthetics, per se, but he's a cool and interesting character nonetheless. Cheers to Al and all the unique characters out there. Now it's time to do something else.