It's Cryin' Time
I really did cry when I heard Buck had died. He was always one of my heroes. I saw him live in 1966 in Seattle. That same summer I also saw the Beatles live, but Buck's performance was much better. The Beatles were tired of performing, and someone in the audience hit John Lennon with some thrown object, which very obviously pissed him off. The Beatles were professional and polished, but also mechanical and irritable. Buck was bursting with enthusiasm and so was the audience. There was 10 times more energy in the room with the Buckaroos than the Beatles had.
The LP pictured is from 1965; my copy is very clean and I'm still proud to own it. It used to be a scarce treasure, but now that it is out on CD it is just another old record. A lot of people don't know that Buck played guitar solos. He wasn't as good as his guitar player Don Rich, but he wasn't bad either. His Raz-Ma-Taz Polka is here, as I recorded it directly from the vinyl:
Click to Listen
Honk Honk
This is a picture of the label from a Decca 78 recorded on July 5, 1941 by the Merry Macs. It is one of several I've hunted with this title, and it is the one that plays the best.
The sound effects, the "honks", are provided by session drummer Spike Jones, who later formed The City Slickers thanks to the idea he got from making this recording.
Listen to it
A Yellow Onion
This is a yellow onion, very much like the ones I eat every day. I like the sound they make when you pick them up and crackle their skin. This is one of the good things in life that you can always find.
Getsemani Olive Oil
I stopped using Canola oil last week after reading on the Internet that it can be harmful to one's health. I looked around for other kinds of oil I might have and found this very expensive bottle of Getsemani extra virgin olive oil. I remember buying it a long time ago despite the high cost, thinking I would just like to find out what was so special about it. I ended up not being able to tell by the taste that there is anything special about it. I don't know what "extra virgin" means either, but I expect I could find out if I cared. This costly oil is sitting by my stove waiting to be unceremoniously used up, with no regard for its fancy pedigree. Then I will throw out the bottle.
Kitchen Window View
This is a view looking into my backyard from the kitchen window. We have a bit of snow on the ground today. Most of the bottles came from garage sales and estate auctions, except the tall red one. I bought that one new at Ann Arbor's Middle Earth.
My Living Room
This living room area looks too cluttered, but it isn't. The particle board tabletop in the foreground (sitting on top of a smaller retro kitchen table with a red formica top) gets cleared off over and over again to make room for projects. There is always plenty of room, and lots of tools to use.
My Home Office
I spend many, many happy hours each day sitting in front of these three flat-panel monitors and that antiquated Panasonic TV on the right with its built-in VCR player. That's the picture window of my living room in the background, with cardboard barriers to block the late afternoon sun. I plan to replace those curtains with heavier ones so I won't have to use the cardboard. The desktop is a door, held up on the two ends with file cabinets.
Polish Pickles
These are really Polish pickles. For a long time the label said "Polski Wyrobi", but then the company just started calling them midget dill pickles. I love the taste, but don't eat them much anymore because of high sodium content (11 percent). That's why I've got this full unopened bottle of them. I do ocassionally chop one up to mix in a salad.
Pepper Grinder
I found this pepper grinder at Target. I like the fact that it is clear and you can see how much pepper is left. I also like the fact that it is about the size of an ordinary pepper shaker. I don't like those tall wooden ones.
My Blog Camera
This is a camera very similar to the one I used to take these blog pictures. It is a Sony DSC T-1. The onle I actually used is newer, a Sony DSC T-7. They take nice little videos too!
My Epiphone Texan Guitar
I've had this guitar since 1968. I bought it after I got out of the Army, as a replacement for another one just like it that I had traded for a camera before going into the army. I got it for $80 at a place in Norman Oklahoma called Norman Music. My friend Adam Granger knew I was looking for one of these and told me about it. Adam's friend Pop Wagner in Minneapolis Minnesota also uses one in his cowboy music act.
In the 38 years since I got it a lot of things have happened to it. It has a burn scar on the back it got when it was leaning against a wall and an outlet behind it short-circuited. I replaced its original white plastic tuning pegs with gold Schallers very early. The Silver "E" on the pickguard fell off before I got it. The original adjustable bridge with its metal bolts has been replaced with a non-adjustable rosewood-and-bone bridge. Jeffrey Elliot, a luthier in Portland Oregon, shaved the struts under the top to give it a better sound, but after a few years these weakened struts collapsed and I couldn't play it anymore. Then I sent it to the Taylor Factory in Lemon Grove California, where one of luthiers had agreed to work on it in his spare time. He corrected the structural problems.
It has never been refinished and still has lots and lots of scratches and dings on the surface, but I love to play it. This is a guitar associated with the Beatles. Paul McCartney used one of these when he performed "Yesterday" for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965.
I've seen him using one in lots of other situations too. He probably owns a dozen of them. The model was reproduced in a special Japanese edition in 2004. They are very popular now, but when I bought this one (and its predecessor) people always told me it would have been better to get a Gibson. They believed this even though this Epiphone guitar was also made by Gibson in the same Kalamazoo factory.
Click here to listen to it
Egyptian Tea Pot
I bought this teapot in Egypt for less than $2 in early 2006. It is of Egyptian manufacture and design and made of aluminum. The handles on the side and top are plastic. I think the design is beautiful. When I had it in Egypt I made tea in it every day, but here in the USA I never use it at all, because I'm really a coffee drinker most of the time except when I'm in Egypt. I've recently decided not to use aluminum cookware anymore, so it is now just something nice to look at. This makes me a little sad. I have two of these. I bought both of them at a little neighborhood shop in 6 October City, about 50 kilometers outside of Cairo. I looked in a lot of places in Cairo but couldn't find any other teapots that had this kind of elegant simplicity.
