FROM CHRISTMAS IS PAGAN PART II:

In fact, the Puritans who came to America strictly forbid anyone from celebrating Christmas. According to the book "Man, Myth, & Magic," volume 4, page 480": "The Puritans came to power in the 17th century. Christmas was attacked as the old heathens' feasting day of Saturn their god."
These are the same Puritans who started the first Thanksgiving. It was not until 1836, in Alabama, that Christmas was declared a legal holiday in America. Since that time, nearly all Protestant Churches have gone back to the Catholic traditions of Christmas borrowed from the pagan Roman Saturnalia and the "feast of fools."
Santa Claus however, has more history then the folklore that he was derived from an unproven priest named Nicholas. According to the previous source, on the same page, it is said of Christmas:
"Even then on the continent the festival continued to show many features inherited from the Saturnalia. In particular, the Feast of Fools was a wild debauch reminiscent of the pagan past. The Normans when they invaded England in 1066, introduced a Master of Ceremonies into the English Christmas. Known as the Lord of Misrule, his counterpart in Scotland was called the Abbot (saint) of Unreason. A mock king, he ensured that Christmas was conducted along traditionally pagan lines."
This "lord of misrule" dressed in a red or purple robe and led the village in singing, dancing, drinking, and sexual orgies. As the make believe king, he would reward the people with gifts. Husbands and fathers would also dress up and follow this Santa (saint) of unreason, in a grand parade through the town streets. At evening, some would dress up in costumes and a grand time of filthy and lewd conduct was enjoyed by all. Because adultery was allowed at this festival, everyone was disorderly. Today the same Christmas "spirit" invades the land and there is more adultery at this time of the year than at all others. The question here is why Churches and Christians would want such a symbol to be associated with the birth of Messiah? This test of love for Truth is not new. The Jews were faced with the same decisions in the Old Testament. The festivals and feasts of Baal were almost an exact copy of our modern Christmas. God strictly forbid the Jews from having anything to do with these pagan and heathen customs (Jer. 10:1-5), and mixing them with holy days of the Law. The Jews were not to learn the ways of the heathen and turn from their salvation and join the pagans on their holidays. Christians should take this as a lesson that God will reject the same paganism being brought into the Church in the disguise of commemorating the birth of Messiah.

From other websites:

"In 1836 Alabama became the first state to make Christmas a legal holiday. It would be another 50 years before Christmas would be officially celebrated in New England, however. The strong Puritan influence viewed the holiday celebration as sinful and sacrilegious and pagan foolishness."

"Before the Civil War, the North and South were divided on the issue of Christmas, as well as on the question of slavery. Many Northerners saw sin in the celebration of Christmas; to these people the celebration of Thanksgiving was more appropriate. But in the South, Christmas was an important part of the social season. Not surprisingly, the first three states to make Christmas a legal holiday were in the South: Alabama in 1836, Louisiana and Arkansas in 1838."


"Governments recognized the growing importance of Christmas by dealing with it as they knew best: by passing a law. The first state to make Christmas a legal holiday was Alabama in 1836. Between 1850 and 1861, fifteen states (including Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota) followed suit. A significant result of this "legislation" was the states' recognition of December 25th as Christmas Day. This helped standardize the date for celebration. Previously, celebrations took place at varying times during the month (particularly December 6th, St. Nicholas's day), or on January 6th, Epiphany. Thus, events during the period helped cement the date used today.
The original impetus for legal recognition seems to have come from the business community. The initial legislation forbade the collection of promissory notes on Christmas day and some judicial activities were suspended. Provisions for the closing of schools, banks, and government offices generally did not appear until after the Civil War."

WHAZZZZZZZZZZZZZ UP, YA'LL:
Pulled a bunch of stuff off of Barbara Orbison's website and thought it might jog some memories out there in WEB-land.
Take a few moments and let me hear from ya- especially you CANDYMEN!
BEST,
ROBO

http://www.orbison.com/
















Wesley Rose rapidly got Roy another contract with the new independent Monument Records when his RCA deal ran out in Mid-1959.

Back in Texas, Roy had been writing with Joe Melson, and after a false start they came up with “Uptown” which was recorded and released in late 1959. “Uptown” sold better than any other Orbison record since “Ooby Dooby”, peaking half way up the Hot 100. The sound was something different. It had strings as opposed to fiddles, which were not very common in Nashville.

The third single for Fred Foster’s Monument label was “Only the Lonely”, which became the first song that truly probed the frightening potential of Orbison’s voice, and established his uniqueness. The song peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Charts and became number 1 in the UK.

The challenge to consolidate “Only the Lonely” was a difficult one. The follow-ups, “Blue Angel” and “I’m Hurtin”, were cloned too closely from “Only the Lonely”, and it took another few tries for Orbison and Melson to come up with something special.

That next magical success was “Running Scared”, and it climbed all the way up to number 1 in the USA.

A few things contributed to Roy’s success. The songs, the production, and the performance were key factors. The songs were completely original in structure, sound and style. Totally innovative compositions, that didn’t exist until then. It became a style. Fred Foster really went for quality instead of quantity. He was willing to splash money on a session without any guarantee of payback. He was also willing to take a chance on a sound that did not conform to accepted market norms.

After that came “Crying”, “Candy Man”, “Dream Baby”, “Working for the Man”, “Leah”, “In Dreams”, “Pretty Paper”, “Blue Bayou”, “Mean Woman Blues “, “It’s Over”. This became a string of Top 40 hits for Roy that lasted for four years. Roy became the top selling American artist and one of the world’s biggest names in the business.

In May 1963, and with the success of “In Dreams”, Wesley Rose eventually accepted an invitation for Roy to tour England on a bill with The Beatles, who meant nothing in the United States at that time. The tour was sold-out in one afternoon. On the first night, Roy did fourteen encores before The Beatles could get on stage.

Roy Orbison was one of the few hit-makers to hold his ground, and even to increase his popularity in the wake of the so-called British Invasion. He did it by maintaining a matchless quality of releases, with an original variety of content, structure, tempo and rhythm. He was also an extremely subtle song craftsman, making changes during the course of a session, or between sessions, adding the final commercial gloss to a song.

“Oh Pretty Woman” was recorded on August 1st, 1964. It was written by Roy together with his new writing partner Bill Dees and it became Roy’s biggest hit, and in fact one of Rock’s most well-known songs of all time. Released in August in the US and in September in the UK, it went to number one in every country of the World. By most estimates, the song sold about seven million copies that same year.

He toured Australia with the Beach Boys in 1964 and with the Rolling Stones 1965. Roy also toured extensively in Europe.

Several major record companies showed interest in Roy after his tenure with Monument. MGM made and offer of 1,000,000 dollars. The first single, “Ride Away”, was a modest success, but it would be the biggest single in the US that Roy would have for over the next twenty years. What seemed to be just a change of record labels became a huge turn in Roy’s career. MGM was very successful at that time, but also that was about to change. Monument was Roy’s label, but at MGM he was just one more act. Quantity was chosen over quality and Roy was required to release certain amount of singles and albums per year and that took its toll.

A dark period ensued as Roy’s private life began to unravel as well. In 1966, his wife Claudette, who he married in 1957, was killed in a motorcycle accident. Matters turned worse two years later when two of his three children died when his Hendersonville house burned down. Roy found himself unable to write songs for a while, but maintained a positive outlook and continued touring. In late 1966 Roy started filming “The Fastest Guitar Alive”, which was his only leading role. His last Top 100 entry in the US for the rest of 1960s and 1970s was “Cry Softly Lonely One” in July 1967.

Roy had met a German girl by the name of Barbara Anne Marie Wilhonnen Jacobs in August 1968, in Leeds, England. She moved to the USA in late 1968 and they were married in Nashville on May 25, 1969, and start building a brand new house just one block away from where Roy’s old house used to stand on Old Hickory Lake in Hendesonville, Tennessee

Five Killed in Shooting Rampage at Club
By CARRIE SPENCER



COLUMBUS, Ohio - It looked like something out of a macabre heavy-metal video: The lights dimmed in the smoke-filled nightclub, the rock band Damageplan launched into its first thunderous riffs, and then a man in a hooded sweatshirt ran the length of the stage and opened fire, shooting the lead guitarist at least five times in the head.

In just minutes, the gunman had killed three others with his silver pistol before being shot to death by a police officer.

The rampage Wednesday night stunned the heavy metal world and left police searching for answers about what set the gunman off.

The slain guitarist, "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, 38, was a driving force behind the rock band Pantera, and police are looking into reports from witnesses that the gunman was a fan irate that the hugely influential group broke up.

Some of the 500 people packed into the club to see Abbott's new band initially thought that the gunman was an excited fan or that the shootings were part of the show.


"I figured it was another fan wanting to jump off the stage and crowd surf," said Brian Kozicki, the club's lighting designer. "I think he knew he wasn't going to get out and he was going to take down as many people as he could."

Police identified the gunman as Nathan Gale, 25, who listened to Pantera music to psyche himself up before football games and would often hang out at a tattoo parlor and make a pest of himself by talking to customers about music, the manager of the tattoo shop said.

"We may never know a motive for this, unless he left a note," Sgt. Brent Mull said.

A tattoo artist at the studio, Bo Toler, said Gale was there before the show and asked about having the studio order tattoo equipment for him. Toler told him no, and Gale got angry and started yelling.

"Last night was actually the first time I noticed his temper," Toler said. "After the argument we had he kind of walked out with an attitude. He didn't even say goodbye."



Also killed in the shootings were Erin Halk, 29, a club employee who loaded band equipment; fan Nathan Bray, 23; and Jeff Thompson, 40, who was affiliated with the band.

Two others were hospitalized. The nature of their injuries was not disclosed.

The guitarist's brother, Vinnie Paul Abbott, the drummer for Damageplan, was rushed to safety offstage and tearfully tried to learn his brother's fate from officers who couldn't even tell him which hospital he was taken to.

With his frenetic, ear-splitting guitar riffs, Dimebag Abbott created an aggressive sound for Pantera and attracted a cult following in the early 1990s. The band was nominated for Grammys in 1995 and 2001. The Abbott brothers left Pantera last year and released Damageplan's debut album, "New Found Power," in February.

"I'm absolutely beside myself with grief. I can't for the life of me understand why someone would do this," said heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne, who often toured with Pantera.

Lines were deep Wednesday night at the Alrosa Villa club _ a popular venue for heavy metal for 30 years _ to buy T-shirts for Damageplan.

As the lights dimmed, club security was trying to catch up to a man in a Columbus Blue Jackets hockey jersey over his sweatshirt, who some witness said was seen jumping the 8-foot wooden fence to enter the club. Others said he must have come from an open door behind the stage. The club has no metal detectors and employs unarmed security guards.

The tall, heavyset man eventually climbed onstage, as many Alrosa headbangers do.

"At first we thought it was a hoax, and then when he fired again we knew it was real," said Jeremy Spencer, 16.

Kozicki, the lighting director, brought up the house lights and ducked under his control table, where he called 911 on his cell phone. Several calls followed, with one male caller saying: "He's on stage right now. He's got a gun. ... He just shot again." Fans surged toward the doors in fear.



Kozicki peeked from his table to see the gunman holding a man in a headlock. Police said the gunman appeared ready to shoot the hostage, who managed to duck just enough for Officer James D. Niggemeyer to take aim and kill Gale with his shotgun.

All day Thursday, fans left flowers and containers of beer by a boulder at the parking lot entrance, including a six-pack of Heineken with a marijuana bud tucked into the cardboard case.

Gale has a minor police record in Marysville, near Columbus, including driving with a suspended license last month, said Police Chief Floyd Golden. He also was an offensive lineman for a semi-pro football team in Ohio.

At the Bears Den Tattoo Studio in Marysville, Gale made people feel uncomfortable by staring at them and forcing them into a conversation, manager Lucas Bender said.

"He comes in here and likes to hang out when he's not wanted," Bender said. "The most pointless conversations."

The shootings came on the 24th anniversary of perhaps the most well-known assassination of a rock star _ that of former Beatle John Lennon outside his New York City apartment in 1980.

Associated Press writers John Seewer in Toledo, Andy Resnik in Marysville, Anita Chang in Columbus, Chelsea Carter in New York and Lisa Falkenberg in Dallas contributed to this report.

On the Net:

http://www.damageplan.com


http://www.pantera.com

HEY YA'LL:
Found a Lester Chambers' interview where he really gnawed the music industry a new one so I thought I' d put some stuff out and see what pops up!
best,
KA$H [a.k.a. MONEY]

http://www.rockabilly.nl/references/messages/morris_levy.htm



http://www.lesterchambers.com/

http://www.soul-patrol.com/funk/chambers.htm

Music for Goniffs http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bkrev/hitmen-nyt.php
HIT MEN
Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business
By Fredric Dannen
Times Books/Random House


MUSIC MAN
Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records, and the Triumph of Rock 'n' Roll
By Dorothy Wade and Justine Picardie
W.W. Norton


Fredric Dannen's Hit Men focuses on Columbia's Walter Yetnikoff where Dorothy Wade and Justine Picardie's Music Man is a biography of Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegun. While Music Man isn't exactly a puff job, it's far less serious--reported rather than researched, often chatty, with no clear overriding theme. Yet both music-biz exposes traffic in the same narrative goods--the carryings on and derring-do of the rock and roll minimoguls, who over the years have gathered myths that rival those of the artists who made them rich and famous. And in the end, it isn't Dannen's vague anti-Mob thesis that renders Hit Men more satisfying, just the quality and quantity of his yarns.

Whatever else it wants to be, this is as entertaining a collection of anecdotes about an uproariously unsavory subculture of egomaniacs, sybarites, goniffs, and music-lovers as any greed fan could wish. Exploiting sources that range from trial records, confidential interviews, and other journalists' notes to People and the trades (all documented in a meticulous 40-page appendix), Dannen has a knack for the telling quote and a healthy appetite for the juicy story: supermanager Irving Azoff sending a rival with a strong-willed wife a boa constrictor and a note that says "Now you have two of them!," or industry toastmaster Joe Smith reading from Clive Davis's "official biography": "Clive was born in a manger in Bethlehem . . . " Dannen understands such crucial economic issues as corporate centralization and the extortionate "recoupable" expenses artists are stuck with. And while most of the crime reporting that justifies Hit Men's blatantly ambiguous title is public record, it's convenient to have it all in one place.

But Dannen could use some guys in white hats. He doesn't approve of the high-handed vulgarian Yetnikoff, Mob-linked biz legend Morris Levy, or the independent promotion men of "the Network," especially the now discredited (though not convicted) Joe Isgro. Like the devil with his tunes, however, these villains make good copy. So does Dannen's mythic hero, the elegantly acerbic oldtime CBS Records chief Goddard Lieberson. But the trouble Dannen has breathing life into his modern role model, Columbia and PolyGram executive Dick Asher, was by all reports a problem that also plagued Asher's mother--honest the man may be, but he's such a stick-in-the-mud that not even Dannen claims he's widely liked, and the failure of his virtues to signify cripples the book. Dannen establishes that the independent promotion Asher presciently combatted (though later he caved in) is a protection racket covering for payola, and half-convinces me that some of its proceeds end up with hoodlums. But he never comes out and says how it hurts the people who create and listen to rock and roll.

This is partly because Dannen, whose day job is with Institutional Investor, doesn't know much about rock and roll. Too much of his scant musical detail is erroneous: the so-called "old blues song" "Piece of My Heart" was written by biz music-lovers Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns; Wilson Pickett is of a later generation than Ray Charles and was never produced by Ahmet Ertegun; Barry Manilow's "Mandy" isn't based on Looking Glass's "Brandy"; like that. Though he's coy about his own tastes, you can see him pursing his lips as he writes the word "disco"--and, more to the point, genuflecting imperceptibly when he types the letters "M.B.A." He isn't so naive, philistine, or old as to claim that without payola this crap wouldn't get on the radio, but what interests him about today's music business isn't the music. It's the bottom line. In this he has much in common with Walter Yetnikoff--and even more with Dick Asher, whose great contribution to the pop weal was the Americanization of Julio Iglesias, and Clive Davis, who started out marketing '60s upheaval and evolved into the crassest of (musical) "hit men."

Though they're too polite to harp on it, Wade and Picardie sincerely regret the similar evolution of Ertegun, the onetime teenage jazz collector whose superb ears and fondness for night life seeded history's most musically and commercially significant independent label, and whose transformation into a corporate animal made Atlantic a citadel of bigtime schlock after he and his partners sold out to Warner Brothers in the late '60s. In frank pursuit of fabulous characters and hot gossip, but with a clear commitment to such simple values as racial justice and good a&r, they go over the same crime connections that preoccupy Dannen (and several that he misses)--less completely and conclusively, but to a more useful end. For it's Wade and Picardie who get the damning quote out of Morris Levy. Dying of cancer while awaiting his first prison term, he was apparently eager to go on the record, and he knew what he knew: "Artists are pains in the asses. Artists, a lot of them, are just imbeciles and they are ignorant."

Levy, who ended up owning as much great '50s rock and roll as Atlantic itself, emerges as each book's most fascinating character, far richer than was suggested by a reputation more dreadful than either could unactionably detail. Yet Dannen seems insensible to the friendly record he's helped Levy create, while Wade and Picardie, whose sympathy for artists is more convincing than Dannen's, know he isn't altogether damned. Sure their tendency to romanticize rogues--starting with Ertegun, whose greatest gift they pinpoint as "his ability to make people believe he likes them"--is a familiar rock and roll fallacy. But at some level they recognize what Dannen will not--historically, crime and pop music go way back. All the formally renegade urban styles--jazz up through at least the '30s, and also Argentine tango and Greek rebetika and Portugese fado and many others--thrived in the underworld, and the ad hoc unpredictability of the work has always favored tough guys who know how to collect what's owed them.

There's no reason to be complacent about this--over the years it's ruined a lot of talented men and women's livelihoods and sometimes cost them their lives. But there's also no reason to be offended--or to expect that excising criminal corruption from record industry debit sheets would reduce the retail price of a compact disc by one penny. Even today, goniffs and vulgarians rise in the music business because it's not quite respectable. They usually have better musical instincts than your average M.B.A., thank God. But they've never showed the slightest inclination to take less than everything they could get. And of course, this doesn't distinguish them all that sharply from your average M.B.A. Just like the Mob, they take the basic principles of capitalism somewhat more literally than business reporters think is good for business.


New York Times Book Review, 1992

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY YA'LL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here we are, trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe and,sad to say, people are making fun of us.[look like Sola Sound made the stompbox; not Magic Alex]
Check out our progress but examine how others use our enlightenment to promote their sarcastic agenda!
best,
reg http://robertoreg.blogspot.com


ROBERT,
IT APPEARS THAT I'M HITTING ON AT LEAST A COUPLE OF CYLINDERS!!
MAGIC ALEX HAD A WORKSHOP(GUITAR SCIENCE LAB) OFF PICCADILLY SOME PLACE. JIMMY PAGE TOOK US THERE AND PAGE ALSO GAVE ORBISON A BUNCH OF HOTROD PARTS FOR A VINTAGE STRATOCASTER HE HAD.
KEEP THE BABY FAITH,
RENEGADE ROBERT NIX



BABBS, KESEY & DA BUS! http://searchwarp.com/swa2005.htm

THAT MEAN OLD HATEFUL, ORNERY KEN BABBS [a.k.a. capn skyp] done made fun uv me!!!!!!
"Jimmy Page gave John Rainey his personal "Tone Bender" the precurser
to all of the Fuzz Boxes. "

thank god that's settled, now we can get a decent night's sleep.


http://www.skypilotclub.com


skypilotclub
81774 Lost Creek Road
Dexter OR 97431



The Sola Sound company was set-up by Lari and Joe Macari in 1965; the Tone Bender units were made in a Edgware factory, North London and sold from their Denmark street based Music store. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/s.castledine/greenfuz/solamk2.html

Electronics engineer Gary Hurst designed the Tone Bender range of effects beginning with the Tone Bender MKI. The MKI was a three transistor circuit based upon the Gibson built Maestro Fuzz-tone that was modified by Hurst to produce more sustain than its American counter part.The story goes that guitar legend Vic Flick, then man responsible for the James Bond Theme!! Brought a Fuzztone to Hurst and requested the sustain to be increasesd. The MKI was the first ever British made Fuzz box available to the public and sold for 14 guineas. It was housed in a gold and dark grey folded steel chassis with some of the early units housed in a wooden and steel enclosure.

Users of the MKI unit included Pete Townshend of the Who, Jeff Beck of the Yardbirds and also the Beatles used the MKI Tone Bender unit on the album Rubber Soul. Paul McCartney actually used a MKI on the second bass track on the recording Think for Yourself


[made in your damn backyard BABBS!!!!]
YARDBOX - A faithful sonic copy of the original Sola Sound Tonebender, purportedly the only distortion pedal used on Led Zeppelin's first two albums. The pedal has no similarity to Jumbo, Supa, or the Vox Tonebender. Wide variation in tone and smooth dynamics at all volumes.
http://www.fuzzbox.com/index.htm


From what I can tell, in terms of con men, Magic Alex is right up there with Shorty Price and Richard Scrushy!
roberto

MAGIC ALEX http://itsadoozy.com/hostees/beatles/merdas.htm

Divorce: granted a decree nisi on November 8, 1969 (John admitted adultery with Yoko Ono after threatening to sue for divorce on grounds that Cynthia had been adulterous with Alex Mardas, Magic Alex) http://www.jibboo.com/beatles/wives/cynthia.htm

•Since Magic Alex said his father was a highly placed government official in Greece, he had managed to persuade John and Paul that they could establish a little Greek paradise and then pull up the drawbridge after them. Paul and John had both tried to persuade Brian to get the British government to relax the stringent laws regulating money flow out of the country. Paul said he wanted to go somewhere no one can get at us. John said, "It will be amazing". We'll be able to just lie in the sun". It was some indication of the power the Beatles actually possessed that they were able to get a special tax dispensation from Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan. They bought a little cluster of six islands in the Aegean Sea for one hundred thousand pounds. They visited it once, tired of it immediately, and the Beatle paradise was later sold (Flippo, p. 242). http://www.beatlemoney.com/beatles6870business.htm

Magic Alex http://www.fact-index.com/m/ma/magic_alex.html
Alexis Mardas, also known as Magic Alex, was the head of The Beatles' Apple Electronics.
Mardas was introduced to John Lennon by Brian Jones. He was then temporarily hired in 1968 by the Beatles to build them a studio. Mardas promised them the world's first 72-track studio but the results were pathetic and unusable, having no soundproofing, no mixing desk, and no way to run the wiring between the control room and the studio. When he failed to deliver, The Beatles' Let It Be project had to be recorded with two 4-track recorders, borrowed from EMI.

Mardas was fired by Allen Klein in 1969. It later came out that his main electronic experience had been as a television repairman.

Magic Alex had Christies auction off his Beatles and other rock memorabilia on May 5,2004. The stuff was estimated to go for 650, 000 pounds.[$$$$$] Click below for details of the auction:
http://www.christies.com/presscenter/pdf/03262004/pop_may04.pdf

1969--The Beatles are scheduled to begin recording sessions for the Get Back album at their new Apple Studios on this day. They had entrusted the construction of the studio to their resident electronics wizard, Alex Mardas, better known as "Magic Alex." Alex had promised that The Beatles wouldn't have to work with puny 8-track recording equipment--he would provide 72-track equipment. And they would no longer have to hide Ringo away behind sound baffles to isolate his drums, for Alex was going to install an invisible sonic force-field that would do a much better job. Problem was, "Magic Alex" was a flake. The mixing console was constructed from odd bits of wood and an old oscilloscope, "and [it] looked not unlike the control panel of a B-52 bomber." The Beatles tried a sample recording and the results were dismal; the tape was useless. The Beatles had to bring in rented equipment, and they lost two days getting the studio in shape for proper recording. http://history.absoluteelsewhere.net/January/january20.html

Magic Alex, who we were led to believe he had the genius of both Marconi and Edison combined, he told us so himself. George had once confided that Alex was designing a solar powered electric guitar, which, I assumed would be groovy for afternoon concerts. He had been summoned to India by John And George and was to build an electronic device that he promised to be not much bigger than a trash can lid. It was to be made out of humdrum electronic parts available at the local equivalent to Radio Shack and he modestly claimed that when assembled the device would not only supply the power for the gigantic radio station, that was to beam out to the far corners of the world, Maharishi's message of Meditation,Peace and Love but would have enough of a surplus to light up the entire region. Amazingly all that had to be done was for the device to be assembled and then placed at a strategic point in the Ganges. A little far fetched, maybe but whether it was the long meditations or the mind bending hallucinates we had all only recently given up I'm only a little embarrassed to say that it seemed like a great idea at the time .
http://www.trancenet.org/personal/dolan/midnight.shtml

Magic Alex Mardas,The Greek TV repairman, set up in Apple Electronics by the Beatles, who promised to build an artificial sun, a telephone you told who to call, wallpaper loudspeakers, a house which hovered supported by an invisible beam, and even a flying saucer. Not one invention was made, and the recording studio he built proved unusable and was demolished. Allen Klein fired him, and he has since disappeared. http://www.injustice.org/nemo/newsfile/im951028.html

http://www.angel.dk/yardbirds/Yardb_6566.html
It appears that Nix does actually have some memory cells left.
He's right.
Jimmy Page gave John Rainey his personal "Tone Bender" the precurser to all of the Fuzz Boxes.
In an article about the Candymen in the New York Times the writer mentioned how we used no special equipment other than the aforementioned ToneBender.

Now let's see how I'm holdin' up.

I believe that it was invented/conceived by the guy that The Beatles invested in who was going to make all of this new electrical equipment
Magic Alex?
We did in fact also have the first Marshall Amps in the US, given to us when Jim Marshall was still making them in his garage.
If we were so cool,why weren't we more successful?
BTW you're too funny Al, and the book was a masterpiece.
I'd like to write one as well ,but it wouldn't be as interesting, and I'd hate for my kids to read it.
RODNEY

HEY YA'LL!!!!
Click on the address below to get the details on Kooper's latest work.
best,
robo

http://www.alkooper.com/index.html#latestupdate

ROBERT,
YOU KNOW THAT AL KOOPER IS ONE OF MY MENTORS( BESIDES
ROY ORBISON) AND IDOLS!

DID YOU KNOW THAT HE IS ONE OF THE BEST GUITAR PLAYERS IN ROCK HISTORY?!!!!

EVERYONE THINKS OF KOOPER AS A B-3 GUY ( BOB DYLAN'S 'LIKE A ROLLING STONE), BUT HE REALLY PLAYS THE SHIT OUT OF GUITAR!! HE EVEN PLAYED SESSION SOLOS ON RECORDS LIKE CONNIE FRANCIS' 'STUPID CUPID', WHICH SOUNDS A LOT LIKE JAMES BURTON AND JOHN RAINEY ADKINS!!(BEFORE EITHER ONE OF THEM).

I BELIEVE WITH ALL MY HEART, THAT THIS IS WHY LYNYRD SKYNYRD IS SO BIG TO THIS DAY! AL KOOPER RELATED TO THEM AS A GUITAR ARMY TYPE OF BAND!! YOU CAN ASK ED 'GUITAR' KING, AND I THINK HE WOULD AGREE THAT RONNIE VAN ZANT AND AL KOOPER WERE BOTH VERY MUCH THE REASON FOR SKYNYRD'S HUGE SUCCESS!!

I WAS VERY LUCKY TO HAVE BEEN ASKED TO PLAY DRUMS ON SUCH A GREAT SONG AS 'TUESDAY'S GONE' BY BOTH OF THESE INCREDIBLY TALENTED PEOPLE!!!!

KEEP THE BABY FAITH!!!
GOOD EVENING!
RENEGADE ROBERT NIX!!!!......... om



DON'T MISS THE DYLAN INTERVIEW WITH ED BRADLEY TONIGHT ON "60 MINUTES"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/02/60minutes/main658799.shtml

"Al Kooper, by rights, should be regarded as one of the giants of '60s rock, not far behind the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon in importance. "
Bruce Eder, All Music Guide http://www.mp3.com/Al-Kooper/artists/4018/biography.html

A comment from Muscle Shoals guitar slinger, PETE CARR:

I as a guitar player have to say that we all were influenced from riffs

off of records and other musicians. It was part of the learning process and

influences from many, many other musicians and records that we incorporated

in our playing. Many, many of them I now consider generic.

I mean really think about it. Listen to all the guitar riffs over the years.

Many of them are generic as a simple country back and forth 1 to 5 bass riff.



Best Wishes

Pete Carr
www.PlayThatGuitar.com