Allman Brothers!

No further introduction needed I'm sure. Sorry for the sucky picture, but we didn't have front row seats by any stretch. It was a cool concert last night at the Rosemont Theater near O'Hare. It was really a very jam oriented set, I guess Greg's voice got tired. They sell recordings of the concert that you can pick up after the show if you want to wait it line. For an extra 3 bucks you can just have them send it to you, which is what I did. You can see the set list here The main surprise for me was Into the Mystic by Van Morrison. I would never have guessed that was on tap.

National Guitar Style O

What most people think about is the Style O that Mark Knopfler had on the album cover of "Brothers in Arms". Mark says "it's like an old movie, cheesy but cool". As far as playing it is concerned he says "since you can't bend the strings you have to think of other things to do, so the beauty actually comes from the guitars limitations". Well, that and the engraving of Hawaii sand blasted onto it.

These instruments were resonator guitars with a metal alloy amplifier inside that looks like a tin pie dish. They and were not cheap when they were new. $65 was a lot of money in 1930, equivalent to about $775! Production standards were quite loose in the factory, so quality varied extremely widely between individuals. Here especially you have to play it before buying it to know what it's worth. They were originally used in the Hawaian music craze (and I'm not just trying to justify the engraving) but they were loud enough for Jazz guys to fight off those crazy horn players. Standard acoustic guitars were not audible in a big band concert and of course electric guitars hadn't been invented yet, so these gave them a fighting chance. Sounds great with acoustic blues, though. They were played by some successful Blues guys like Son House and Tampa Red, but were just too expensive to be a realistic alternative for most musicians living in the Delta.

They're back in Production here at National. I don't know anything about how the new guitars sound. Here are more details on the old ones.

Pushing on the String

Professor DeLong thinks that the Fed is doing the right thing by cutting interest rates. I think that it's a good idea to provide a little liquidity in a tight time and it will certainly help out the financial markets. But this is just more of the same and it's why some people accuse the Fed of creating bubbles in the first place.

After the dot com bubble burst interest rates remained at all time lows. This helped push up the price of housing because what people care about is the size of their payment, not the price they're paying for the house. With long term rates all the way down at 5.0% you can afford a lot more house than you can at 8.1%. Everyone started making money hand over fist - brokers, owners, bankers, furniture salesmen - everyone. Some people started to speculate and flip and others built more houses to sell to people. These people borrowed money for the house and all the stuff in it.

2/3 of the economy is consumer spending. But if consumer debt is at an all time high (as the article states "Household spending grew considerably faster than incomes from the early 1990s to 2006" ) and people's housing ATM has run dry, how are we going to continue spending? If we all already had to borrow to spend previously, where will the money come from now? Sooner or later the party is over and the credit card bills have to get paid, and we all know that Monday morning is not fun. If we're lucky we will escape recession, but the Fed might be powerless to stop it.

I believe the Keynesian solution to a lack of sufficient spending by consumers and businesses is to run deficits. But we've already got huge deficits and we're borrowing the money from foreign central banks. Will we run deficits even bigger?

iPhone vs. gPhone

It seems that the iPhone isn't the world beater that people thought it would be. Though it did change the paradigm, the sales have been underwhelming. The interface is cutting edge, but it doesn't have a lot of the functionality that my 7 year old phone had like auto-answer or voice dialing. For use in the car it really needs an auto-answer capability. The coverage from AT&T is spotty; it will tell you that you've got a good signal - but you can't make a call. Worse your calls go to voice mail with no warning. The email interface is pretty bare bones, and emails sent from the iPhone show up as new emails. It's a hassle getting all the stuff you don't want out of your way.

So now the rumors have started about the gPhone. I love GMail because tagging emails is a great idea because you can get them out of your way and then save them forever. All Google's applications like Maps are already networked. Frankly they can probably give the iPhone a real run for their money if they concentrate on phone functionality. If the gPhone can use a faster network than AT&T is using it would be that much better. Could they be using VOIP? gPhone with Skype would be awesome.

Gibson ES-335

Here is another great Gibson guitar. This is a classic that has been in continuous production since 1958, when it was introduced. Everyone has played it, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Warren Haynes, Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown. Hendrix had one, and so did Duane Allman.

But it's not just jazz and blues guys; the great thing about this guitar is the versatility. People have used it for all kinds of styles because they can make it sound like what they want. the secret of this guitar is the fact that while it has tone like a hollow body, the sustain lasts like a solid body because there is a chunk of wood underneath the strings and that keeps the energy from dissipating into the body. It's distinguished by its smooth sound no matter what style you're playing. You can listen to samples on the Gibson web site. You can go from a jazzy sound to something a little rougher.

What's more surprising is that they can be had for less than $2,000.

Exercise Helps More Than You Think

Everyone knows that exercise is crucial for physical health. The benefits that can accrue after only 30 minutes, 3 times a week are so large that there is no excuse not to do something - anything. Except, of course, for my favorite excuse of laziness. In this New York Times article It seems that the evidence is mounting that exercise contributes directly to beneficial physical changes in our brains.

This theory emerged from those mouse studies at the Salk Institute. After conducting maze tests, the neuroscientist Fred H. Gage and his colleagues examined brain samples from the mice. Conventional wisdom had long held that animal (and human) brains weren’t malleable: after a brief window early in life, the brain could no longer grow or renew itself. The supply of neurons — the brain cells that enable us to think — was believed to be fixed almost from birth. As the cells died through aging, mental function declined. The damage couldn’t be staved off or repaired.

All of the mice showed this vivid proof of what’s known as “neurogenesis,” or the creation of new neurons. But the brains of the athletic mice in particular showed many more. These mice, the ones that scampered on running wheels, were producing two to three times as many new neurons as the mice that didn’t exercise.

Gage’s discovery hit the world of neurological research like a thunderclap. Since then, scientists have been finding more evidence that the human brain is not only capable of renewing itself but that exercise speeds the process.

“We’ve always known that our brains control our behavior,” Gage says, “but not that our behavior could control and change the structure of our brains.”

It's interesting to read the whole article.

Blog Post of the Year So Far...

Over at the Huffington Post David Reese puts down the first rate snark on Cormac Ignatieff's "The Road". "bong-poster koans". Bwa ha ha.

Blogged with Flock

Mind Hacks Points to More Ways to Program Your Wetware

Excellent BBC Brain Story series available online:

I've just noticed that probably one of the best TV series on psychology and neuroscience ever produced, the BBC's Brain Story, is available on public bittorrent servers for download.

It is a six part series covering virtually every area of contemporary neuropsychology, including the major researchers, discoveries, techniques and even many of the patients who have been the subjects of classic case studies that have helped us understand the curious effects of brain injury.

You can click on the blog's links if you have Bit Torrent installed.

Mavis Staples Live in Chicago Sunday, Aug. 12

An icon of the Soul and R&B world has released a really good new album. She has a web site here: MavisStaples.com with a video of her song Eyes On The Prize. She has earned some serious cred over the years, and surprisingly enough we need her now more than ever. She will be playing for free in Millenium Park. I paid to see her at Ravinia last year, definitely a great show for free!

Blonde Redhead

I just wanted to recommend the new Blonde Redhead album 23. It's so rare that you hit upon an album where you like almost every single song and of the 10 songs on this CD I really like the first 9. Think about how convenient that is when in the CD Player! I don't know if these are the kinds of song that you find yourself singing in the shower the next day, but when you play them and then do something else you find yourself stopping and saying, 'hey, that's pretty good'. It slowly pulls you in to its web, and then you're hooked. You can see Videos by Mike Mills online. Check it out!

Gibson Custom Shop 57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue

Ah yes, here it is, the first thing that I buy with my lottery winnings. For $3,500 it is really only for lottery winners since I can't believe that anyone is going to use this thing to play out in a bar. The great thing about the reissues is that you know that the 50 idiots who owned it before you didn't trash it. You can, of course, buy them pre-aged, but why you would pay extra to have someone grind down your frets I have no idea. Some people swear by guitars that have been aged but that is because they think the pickups sound better, not because the frets are shot. The one thing that I am not sure about in these reissues is the neck profile. The neck seems to be a lot thicker than modern Gibsons and I'm not sure if I like that or not. I will have to play one for a few hours straight to find out. Once that happens I'll tell you just as soon as I get the silly grin off my face. Here is the marketing blurb. Anyone who buys an instrument without actually playing it deserves what they get. As usual, any use of a web site does not constitute an endorsement of that site.

Custom Shop quality in a classic reissue!

The '57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue Electric Guitar is the quintessential Les Paul at its finest. It's Custom Shop crafted to be accurate to '57 specifications in every detail including the CTS pots and bumblebee capacitors. It was the first Paul to feature humbucking pickups, and this one comes equipped with BurstBuckers. Carved maple top, mahogany back, and one-piece mahogany neck with the '57 profile and the original extended tenon joint. It features binding on body and neck, nickel hardware, an original ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge, and the trademark antique gold finish. Includes Gibson Custom Shop hardshell case.

Gibson Custom Shop 57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue Electric Guitar Features:

• Accurate to '57 specifications in every detail
• CTS pots and bumblebee capacitors
• BurstBucker humbuckers
• Carved maple top
• Mahogany back
• One-piece mahogany neck with the '57 profile and the original extended tenon joint
• Binding on body and neck
• Nickel hardware
• Original ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge
• Trademark antique gold finish
• Includes Gibson Custom Shop hardshell case

Gibson Custom Shop 57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue Electric Guitar Includes:

• Gibson hardshell case

First Post!

Hi, thanks for reading my blog. I just wanted to get this started by explaining what I'm doing this for and a few of the things that I am planning to write about. Who I am will become evident through the posts, so I will spare you any exposition. I am writing for my own pleasure about things that interest me and maybe interest you, too. I want to use overall tags for the topic and add more specific tags for the subject. I like Wine, Women, and Song. I want to alert people to any good wines that I encounter, especially red wines since that's what I drink most of tagged Wine. There are other places on the web you can look at women, so I don't think I'll spend a lot of time on that. I plan a feature of Guitar of the Week, where I will write about something that catches my guitar lust and will be tagged Guitars. I also plan to post on Music I like, tagged Music with a sub-genre like concerts, Rock, Blues, and so forth. We live in interesting times, partly I think because as the falcon cannot hear the falconer he spins more out of control. I will try to keep discussion of larger problems to a minimum, and I will tag those Politics. Mostly, though, I will stick with lighter fare. Please let give me feedback in comments, but all obscene or abusive comments will be deleted. Any use of a web site does not constitute an endorsement of that site. Caveat emptor! No Spam!