They call it the Bo Diddley Beat. That’s Bo Diddley doing the Bo Diddley Beat. Bo didn’t want you to get confused about who was doing what, and let the audience know right off who was who. Hey Bo Diddley! If Bo ever had a publicist, I’ll bet he didn’t have to work overly hard. Bo was always a vertically oriented entertainment complex all by hisself.
That beat has a lot of names. Many people call it: shave and a haircut, two bits. If you’re playing in a band below the Gulf of Mexico, er, America, um, well, south or east of the Bay of Campeche, anyway, you might call it the clave rhythm. Some people call it The Hambone. It’s basically straight out of Africa. Others might have done something like it before him, but Bo made it his own thang, and rode it for all it was worth. He was the iPhone and the kleenex and the frigidaire of the beat.
Lots of other guys mined the same ore. There are too many to list. Here are some notable ones.
Buddy Holly
Johnny Otis:
The Miracles:
It’s even buried in the middle of these two, though you have to listen a little harder to hear it:
Bo had unusual tastes in guitars. He played cigar box guitars at first, and made them himself. When he got some notoriety, he started having others made for him, including a “twang machine,” built in the same square shape, but from a solid piece of wood with a neck bolted on, and a regular pickup configuration. I was in Gruhn Guitars in Nashville back in the day, and they had one of his twang machines for sale. If I’d have bought it, I could sell it and retire tomorrow. I think it’s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art nowadays. I bought a Stratocaster instead because I was a broke-ass loser.
The guitar Bo’s playing in the video is his own design as well. Eventually, he had a guy who was laid off or retired or quit or fired or something from Gretsch guitars build the guitars for him. They had custom bodies with Gretsch necks bolted on, and Gretsch hardware. He called them Jupiter Thunderbirds. Bo gave one to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, and you can often spot him playing one. Although I doubt he’s still playing the original much. In 2005, Billy convinced Gretsch to throw in the towel and started making Bo’s design in their factory. They call it the Billy-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird.
That’s Norma-Jean Wofford playing her own Jupiter Thunderbird, singing, and shimmying in the Bo Diddley video up top. Somehow I’m reminded of this quote: Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.
What’s that? You don’t know who Larry Mullen is? Can’t blame you. Drummers are mostly anonymous. They sit in the back behind a wall of maple cookpots with the lids on. Anyway, Larry drums for the band U2. Well, I’m certain he did, and I assume he still does. I’m not looking it up.
At any rate, I’m a better drummer than he is. This is not bragging. It’s a verifiable fact. It’s capital S Science. I’ve performed an inadvertent experiment to prove this hypothesis, even though I didn’t start out with a hypothesis like you’re supposed to. I firmly believe that, as Mark Twain says, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”
It’s a little weird, because I’m not a drummer. I never was one, really. I played other instruments, and badly at that. But I had always wanted to play the drums. Just like Little Larry, I’ll bet. Anyway, I was thwarted in this ambition by my circumstances, as was often the case in my life. Way back in the 1980s, I’d never owned drums, or played them or anything. But I was still a better drummer than Larry Mullen. This is known.
So let’s get out the beakers. Turn on the Bunsen burners. Gaze at stuff in Petri dishes. No, wait. Science will just let us down, I know it. Science ain’t very reliable lately. What we need is case law. I need to crowd in some expert witnesses, and Perry Mason the shit out of the jury. I need to make the judge scold the other attorney to be quiet while I’m speaking. Even though, you know, besides not being a drummer, I’m not a lawyer, either. I never could pass a bar, if you know what I mean. But put twelve good men and true in the box, sorta like a hockey game that’s gotten out of control, and I’ll convince ’em.
The authentic feel of The Dusty Road has not escaped the attention of Nashville’s film and video community, and the bar has been the setting for several music videos, most notably Ray Charles’ “3/4 Time” and Alan Jackson’s “www.memories.” A sign painted on the old Woodland Street location advertised “Coldest Beer in Town – Jam Sessions Nightly – Instruments Provided – Truckers Welcome,” and over the years many of the music industry’s grittier personalities have found themselves drawn to the tavern’s tiny stage. Country outlaw David Allan Coe played his first Nashville gigs there, Norma remembers, “although he probably wouldn’t admit it now…. He slept out back in an old car, and he owed just about everybody in the place.”
There was the night U2 dropped in a few years back. The Irish band had been in town working with producer “Cowboy” Jack Clement, and McLaughlin, who’d been hanging out in the studio, said, “Let’s go to The Dusty Road!” “Yeah, Pat came in here with a bunch of ’em,” Norma recalls, “and that drummer [Larry Mullen Jr.] got behind the drums and was beatin’ the hell out of ’em…. I couldn’t hear nothin’ else, so I went up there and threw him off the stage. My kids like to kill me when I told ’em about it the next day. ‘U2 who?’ I said. I’m still not sure who they are.”
…we happened upon Irma’s Dusty Road Cafe hiding behind a banner that told wild tales of jam sessions being held with instruments provided, and it didn’t have even a passing resemblance to the place we were looking for, but we went on in because it was getting so late that OPEN seemed right on time to us, but there was next to no one in there and they only served Pabst in cans, that’s all they had, don’t you fellows even think of asking for anything else, you just hold up the requisite fingers for the amount you require and you’ll find Blue Ribbon succor in just that amount; and there was a blind man sitting at a table playing guitar, but in the back, nowhere near the stage, and my brother didn’t pick up on the fact he was blind and insulted him by accident in his innocence, and all of a sudden that man had enough friends of his to form an entourage or a military detachment or a lynch mob gathered in a circle around him, and us –mostly us– and there was a faraway look of PBR and anger in their eyes, the ones that weren’t glass, anyway, and I thought I’d better smooth things over so I identified my brother as a bass player and told the assembled posse that he was dying to play bass with the blind fellow, who was pretty good as I recall, and my brother looked at me daggers because he didn’t want to play bass in Irma’s Dusty Road cafe instruments provided because the instruments provided were all broken, and a very particular kind of broken they were, too; they were broken in a right-hand way, like insult to injury to my brother, who didn’t yet realize what he had done to poor us in his innocence, and one way or the other he was about to experience insult and injury, so I figured he might as well get it metaphorically, playing a broken bass upside down in an ad hoc country band instead of in the alley outside via the shod foot; so he figures he’ll fix my little red wagon, and tells them his little brother would love to play the drums, knowing full well that I have never met a drummer, never mind a drum teacher, and I’d be in a bit of a bother to play the things, but he didn’t care and I didn’t care and the audience didn’t care because they were so full of Pabst Blue Ribbon that they could barely hold up their fingers in the correct number to get the additional amount they required to stay lit, and we set to making country and music noise, my brother upside-down, and me, more or less sideways, I think, and it was jolly, I guess — or at least the audience thought the noise we were making was jollier than beating us like carpets in the spring, and then they started going up to the bar and holding up two fingers for every one Pabst that they desired at the time, and put the extra on the bandstand for us to drink, free-like, and soon I lost any idea of striking the floor tom because it was crowded with cans of beer I was just getting to, and so was every other horizontal surface on the band stand, and the application of so much PBR to my nervous system made me play the drums with a wild abandon commensurate with great ability, despite the fact I had no ability, and it was then that a fellow told me that it would be considered a great insult if we didn’t finish a beer that the audience had purchased for us, and the fact there was a dozen and one in my bullpen and it was only the second inning wouldn’t cut any ice with anybody in that place, and then that same fellow, who was obviously having more fun than me and my brother put together, went up to the bar and told the assembled throng gathered there that that carpetbagging yankee drummer and his confused brother that don’t know which way to hold a bass, never mind which end to blow in, well, those fellows claim they can drink more Pabst Blue Ribbon beer than we can buy them.
I didn’t get thrown out of Irma’s Dusty Road, and I didn’t even have to pay for my beer. I rest my case.
A few months ago, we had to move house. I put the arm on my sons. Show up or mom won’t make you any more lasagna. They both did come, and toted and carried without a whimper. It’s a wonderful thing to have grown sons. You all should try it some time. You can buy a dog instead, but be warned, it’ll never grow up and shovel the driveway for you.
My older son Milo brought a friend with him. This was a bit of a surprise. People who volunteer to move furniture they’ve never sat on for people they’ve never met aren’t common in this quadrant of the galaxy. But friend Sam grabbed one end of most everything. The three of us rode in the rental truck to the storage units a couple of times. Milo told me Sam was a musician, too. He was a lively guy, and full of good humor. He found out I was a musician in eons past, and teased a lot of war stories out of me. All in all, we had a ball.
I learned that Milo’s been playing duos around central Maine with Sam. They’re good friends. They and their friends all seem to play in ad hoc combos on the spur of the moment. The size of the stage and the paycheck generally decides how many guys are doing what. They have about fifty names for themselves, further confusing the issue
So Sam and Milo and my Spare Heir moved furniture and a couple thousand hardcover books across town, and ate lunch and dinner together, and had lots of laughs. Milo mentioned to me that Sam was a great guitarist, and a great singer, too. And his performance name, sometimes, is Hambone. This was him in the video, playing the guitar and singing. Holy cow, he’s terrific, even when he’s recorded half frozen on a camera phone. I have no idea why he’s not famous.
They all play great, not just Sam. Half the time, these guys (I don’t know the rest of them) play meandering jam band stuff. The rest of the time, they surprise and delight an old timer like me and tear off a heaping helping of Curtis Mayfield from 1970. Here’s the original:
Just move on up Toward your destination Though you may find, from time to time Complication
Baila Nova might not be the best Bossa Nova band in the world. How would I know? I don’t have any kidnap insurance, so I stay out of Porto Alegre, which makes it hard to keep up with the scene. But if Baila Nova isn’t the best Bossa band in the world, they’ll do until something better shows up. I won’t hold my breath.
Here’s a 45-minute mixtape for you to decide for yourself:
Well, it’s not late, because it’s still Tuesday. It’s later on Tuesday. Wednesday would make it late. English is damned fussy, sometimes. Anyway, let’s clean out our browser bookmarks together. Here’s a roundup of stuff I meant to read, but didn’t, but had to to make this list, so I guess I did after all. Man, procrastination is damned fussy sometimes.
While kids in most parts of Japan are obsessed with Pokémon cards — or perhaps the franchise’s latest smartphone game, Pokémon TCG Pocket — the children of Kawara are clutching to something a little closer to home. They are playing a trading card game (TCG) where the stars aren’t fantasy creatures, anime heroes or even famous baseball players, but ojisan (middle-aged or older men) from the local community of Saidosho.
Article is strangely reticent about whether you get a stick of that awful dusty gum in the package. Loved that stuff.
Have you ever wondered where the skinniest escalator is in NYC? An escalator that literally has no room to pass on either side? An escalator that is only able to accommodate a single-file line of passengers? Wouldn’t you love to see and ride one just like this?
The key to setting the record for Free was cutting down on wind resistance. So when the 47-year-old accelerated his Vincent HRD Black Shadow, he positioned his body to be as horizontal as it could. Also, he wore only swim trunks as he whipped across the hard pack of the Bonneville Salt Flats. His plan worked to perfection, setting a record of 150.313 miles per hour.
It’s a swell picture and all, but I have to respectfully disagree. As long as this snapshot is out there, there can be only one, and the motorcycle is barely in it:
“The quest was to build Frank Lloyd Wright’s final design true to his plan, its intent and spirit, while also ensuring that the home would meet current building regulations.”
It’s one or the other, honey. Frank never played nice with the building inspector.
“Since cremations were common in the European parts of the Roman Empire around 100 AD [CE], inhumations are an absolute exception. Finds of Roman skeletons from this period are therefore extremely rare,” said Kristina Adler-Wölfl, head of the Vienna City Archaeology Department.
Inhumations is a cool word. Other than that, I got nothing.
We need to talk about the data. Crap data. We’re destroying our environment to create and store trillions of blurred images, half-baked videos, rip-off AI ‘songs’, rip-off AI animations, videos and images, emails with mega attachments, never-to-be-watched-again presentations, never-to-be-read-again reports, files and drawings from cancelled projects, drafts of drafts of drafts, out of date, inaccurate and plain wrong information, and gigabytes and gigabytes of poorly written, meandering content.
“Boston Dynamics and robotics AI will play a crucial role in achieving the group’s goal,” stated Jaehoon Chang, vice chair of Hyundai Motor Group. “Physical AI and humanoid robots will transform our business landscape to the next level. Through our collaboration, we will expedite the process to achieve leadership in the robotics industry.”
I’m pretty sure Hyundai bought Boston Dynamics a few years ago. So they’re buying robots from themselves. Now if they use AI algorithms to buy robots from themselves, their Tech Buzzword Bingo Card will be complete.
The machine-tool industry is a small but vital sector of U.S. manufacturing. Machine tools—which cut and form metal—are essential for reproducing the technologies required in an industrial economy. Because machine-tool makers worldwide typically sell their newest products close to home, a weak domestic machine-tool industry means that U.S. manufacturers risk losing access to the latest manufacturing technologies. In addition, the industry helps foster innovation in manufacturing processes and plays a key role in defense production.
Uh, that article is a Rand think tank report from 1994. And they were worried that the US had fallen behind Japan, Germany, and Italy. You know, they say you can see the Great Wall from space. But apparently Rand can’t see China from 1994.
One of the main reasons that old Thinkpads stand out is their design philosophy. They are made with swappable components with the intention of user upgradeability. The battery, RAM, storage drive, keyboard, and even the CPU can be easily replaced. I can open the bottom of my T400 with a regular screwdriver and clean the fan. A battery swap is trivial thanks to a removable pack. No single failure is catastrophic because there’s a straightforward path to replacement or repair.
Well, young feller, I’m wearing clothes that are older than that.
Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg transcribe ebooks and make them available for the widest number of reading devices. Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
Neato, but I must protest. The “true book lover” doesn’t read ebooks. He asks you to help him move four thousand pounds of hardcovers every two years. BTW, does anyone have any extra boxes?
[Update: Many thanks to Bob D, and somebody named Somebody, for their generous contributions to our tip jar. It helps keep this place going]
Month: April 2025
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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