We’re running errands and trying not to overheat in the hot summer (finally!) weather.

Jen is starting a new job this week so we are about to get her some new threads. It should be nice and frosty cool in the mall. Sweet!

I’m feeling pretty sad about Les Paul. He was 94 years old and had many many illnesses and injuries that must have made his last years difficult, but he was an extraordinary person.

He was an excellent guitar player. He played country early in his career and then mostly jazz. His most recognizable recordings are with his former wife, Mary Ford, as well as his own band, The Les Paul Trio.

All that aside though, he literally invented modern music from the recording point of view. The story goes that he was always a tinkerer. He built an electric guitar for himself out of a railroad tie. It was the world’s first solid body guitar. That in itself revolutionized everything as, when he teamed up with Gibson to manufacture their Les Paul series of guitars, it eliminated much of the extraneous noise produced by the early electric guitars, it allowed guitarists a seemingly endless amount of sustain (that is the duration of a note. Early electric guitars couldn’t hold onto a note for very long), and it eliminated a lot of the horrible feedback early electrics produced. It’s not hard to extend those innovations to their logical conclusion: Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton all destroying the ear drums of legions of Rock and Roll fans while playing Les Pauls in The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Jeff Beck Group, and Cream. Jimi Hendrix stands as the missing link in that chain. He mostly used Fender guitars, Gibson’s primary competition in the market. He was rarely seen playing a Les Paul (pictures do exist though) but those Stratocasters were still solid bodies. Even the Strat and the Tele owe a debt to Les Paul.

Again, the invention of the solid body electric guitar alone could make Les Paul a legend in the music industry… but he topped that in a major way.

The story continues that Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. A single track, mono, reel to reel tape deck. He took that machine and started messing with it. He developed new techniques and invented new hardware that turned the music industry on it’s head.

Les Paul and Mary Ford released records where Ford can be heard singing harmony… with herself. Paul could be heard playing two separate guitar parts at the same time. That was revolutionary. It was, frankly, impossible. How could one voice be heard singing along with itself? Magic? Nope. Multi-tracking. I think he initially used two machines. He would record a take of the song on one machine, then he would record the playback along with another take onto the second machine. Eventually this lead to having more than one record head on the tape machine. That way they could record one take onto a strip of the magnetic tape, then rewind and record another take onto a separate strip of the tape while listening to the first strip.

He did other things with a tape recorder that may seem simple now, but at the time were stunning. How did he play so fast? How did he play notes that were higher than the guitar’s pitch range? Simple, he changed the speed of the tape. High end tape recorders offered two tape speeds. 15 inches per second and 7.5 inches per second. (Or was it 32 ips and 15 ips. I am going to look like a total buffoon if those numbers are inaccurate. It’s been a loooong time, but I am pretty sure I have them right. Let’s just say for the sake of this post that it was 15 and 7.5) The faster the tape moves across the record head, the higher the quality of the recording. Professional recording engineers used 15 ips. However, music is math. If you divide the speed of the recording in half (15/2=7.5) you also divide the tempo of the recorded music in half. You also cut the frequency of the music in half. It’s not common knowledge, but if you divide the frequency of a note in half you lower the pitch by one octave. So Les would record his band at 15 ips and then record himself playing at 7.5 ips. The tempo of the music would be half of the original recording, but the music would be in the same key, one octave lower. When his 7.5 ips recording was played at the normal 15 ips it would sound as if he were playing twice as fast as he actually did and the picthes would be one octave higher than they actually were. In real terms, he was able to play notes that were higher than his guitar could physically reach, and at a blinding speed.

There is one other innovation that can’t be left unmentioned. Les Paul figured out a way to separate the record head and the playback head on the tape machine. He put them in different places. He then would take the playback from one track and record it onto a second track. Because the two heads were in different places there was a delay between the playing and the recording. The result? Tape echo. Hugely ground breaking. It was an electronic way to produce an echo. Brilliant. It opened the door for a seemingly infinite number of electronic effects, none of witch sound any better than Les’s tape echo.

Put it simply: The recording industry we have today would not exist without Les Paul. He is a giant. He is a legend. Rest in Peace Les Paul.

Now for my stupid pictures of Gibson Les Paul guitars.

This is the second Les Paul I’ve owned. The first was a Les Paul Deluxe that was stolen from my car in 1990. Even though this one is a custom and much higher quality, I am still crushed over the loss of my Deluxe. It was awesome.

This picture is from the recent Break Even reunion. There were three guitar players playing that day. All three were playing Les Pauls. I had my custom, Steve had his standard, and Tim played an Epiphone copy. Epiphone used to be a high end guitar maker but at some point in the past Gibson bought them and turned them into low end Gibson product line. “Low end” in this case being relative, as an Epiphone still kicks the ass out of just about any other guitar.

Finally, a shot of me playing my Les Paul… probably poorly, but it can’t be any worse than my singing.

Les Paul has died at the age of 94.

What to say? No idea.

Check out this USA Today story on former Red Sox and current Reds pitcher Bronson Arroyo. In it he talks very openly about taking supplements, blurring the line between supplements and steroids, and the general issue of drugs in baseball. It’s an interesting read. It might be the first time I’ve heard a player be completely open about the situation. He says he expects that he’s on the list of 104 players from the 2003 drug tests. He also says that he takes many items that are not on baseball’s banned list, but also aren’t on the approved list. The story hints that a 50 game suspension might be in his future. Is he being reckless? Yes. Is he being smart? Absolutely. When his inevitable 50 game vacation comes down the pike he can look at this story and say, I didn’t take steroids and I told you all about it. Nice move.

The Red Sox play at 1:35 today. After getting annihilated by the Yankees they have a chance to annihilate the 1st place Tigers in return. It’s not exactly payback, but if feels good. We get Texas over the weekend. Hopefully we’ll be able to open up some breathing room in the wild card race.

We need to go on a weekend getaway. We won’t because we’re using our money for other more important things, but I would love to go hide some where for an overnight. The mountains beckon. The Ocean beckons. The Pawtucket Red Sox beckon. (and by that I mean everything beckons) Leave a comment and suggest something.

There is a game night this weekend. We might have to miss it. There will be kids there and there will be others with recently compromised immune systems. Jen and I have been hanging around with a kid who has pneumonia that was caused by a contagious bacterial infection. I am 99% sure no one would get anything from us. I am 100% sure that the other 1% makes staying away a smart move. If we don’t go we’ll volunteer to host the next one, and if someone already claimed September we’ll do October. Maybe we’ll do that even if we do go.

I’ve got nothing else on my mind right now. I guess I’ll leave it there for now. Have a good one, everybody.

Spinal Tap tried to include this video on a DVD release. Lego refused to allow it.

This is brilliant. Watch it. Live it. Love it.

Have you been thinking about buying Microsoft Word?

You might be out of luck.

Looks like Word includes a patented piece of software related somehow to handling XML. The patent belongs to a Canadian company called i4i Inc. They took Microsoft to court for patent infringement and won.

As the article states, there is no way this is going to end with Word disappearing from the U.S. market. MS will shell out money to keep i4i quiet and all of the MS Office products will go merrily on their way.

But, if you want an alternative you could try Open Office. It’s a Sun Microsystems product, it’s free, it’s open source, and it can handle anything Microsoft Office can handle.

Or you could always try Google Docs. It is Google’s entry into the Office software fray, it’s free, and it’s all web based. If you like it you can impress people by telling them you’re into Cloud Computing.

Enjoy!

A few minutes ago I was struck with an unstoppable need to know the lyrics to the song the plague rat sings on the show The Misadventures of Flapjack.

Found it

Ohhhhh! Tryin’ to make friends, but people are jerks!

So I’m gunna’ put some fleas on you!

And the fleas will have the plague and they’ll make you cough a lot!

Then you’ll be too sick to hurt my feelings anymore!

I’ve talked here a few times about how much I hate house centipedes. They are evil and vile and I want them to be extinct. (at least from our house)

On Saturday we were at an auto shop getting one of the cars inspected and I saw this van…

Perfect, thinks me, if we see more than the occasional centipede (we’ve only seen a couple this summer) we can call those folks to brutally murder the rest of them.

At that moment I happened to look across the street and I saw this…

You can’t make it out on this iPhone photo, but the little white building with the red shutters is an exterminator’s office. Was some one trying to tell us something?

As for the car, it flunked the Mass state inspection due to bad tires. The tires looked fine to me, but I’m clueless. They told us the back tires needed to be replaced. So, we went up to Sullivan Tire in Salem and got them replaced. Perfect! Not really. They told us that the struts were leaking and the CV Boot was ripped. I had never heard of a CV Boot. Jen’s mother had. She had because one of hers went bad and she lost the ability to steer the car. So… the car is in the shop, hopefully getting a new CV Boot today.

Oh, and after getting tires we went back to the station across the street from the exterminator and got reinspected. The little blue car is now legal. It’s in the shop, but it’s legal.