The redeeming facet of the local library is the research section. I have it all to myself, and not one of the books has ever been touched until I arrived. Kind of like that set of encyclopedias back home. Trivia: 66 women fought disguised as men in the Civil War. Big deal, they got twice that many over at the DMV. Speaking of useless, even though the last military draft was 1972, the registration of 2 million 18 year olds continues every year. I wonder why’s that.Then, I get a call from some guy with a broken Karaoke machine and a gig in five hours. His music and software are copies, a fact of life in this industry. That explains why he called, and also reminds us of the value of networking—he got my number from Big Jim. Fortunately, it was the CAVS system which inside the case is nothing more than a Win XP computer. He was so grateful to find somebody who knew this information that he has offered me a complete Karaoke setup and a location to go with it. I have to supply the speakers and PA, but you know, I just happen to have them handy.
Ah, now I recall the guy. He is a top Karaoke show in town, with all the remaining $250 a night gigs sewn up. They run these month long contests with big prizes. We had a further discussion about various aspects of the way things are done. He has promised to set me up with a few shows that he can no longer fit into his schedule, just don’t hold your breath. Shall we say he is very curious about the CDG copying process and says I am the first person he’s ever met who can do it. That’s probably spot on.
Finishing early, I was over to Dave-O’s place for another computer session. He is improving daily and has the correct motivation. But he is woefully behind on computer knowledge and experience, and I cannot stress how absolutely necessary these things are in music today. It turns out all those years he told me he worked “live” with big bands was as a cameraman, not a musician. I even had to show him how to count song beats and count measures (yes, they are different things).
Afterward, who do we bump into but Professor Howard? Click, I just remembered the name of his most famous book: “In Search of the Perfect Whore”. The title is misleading, it’s a humorous tale of the Caribbean. Howard, a.k.a. “The Oz”, informs me of three books called “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, written by a Swedish author who died before publication. Oddly, publishers love getting such manuscripts, so it isn’t always coincidence many works are published posthumously. The books describe the computer techniques used to attack entire countries and no, he doesn’t mean the ordinary denial of service that shut down Lithuania. (Funny, how the entire country loses service and nobody can tell.)
Guitar Eddie says the Vocoder vocal-correcting device costs less than $300, so I’m surprised he hasn’t bought it by now. Today he informs he it is because it won’t do harmonies. Golly, Ed, at what point is the machine doing the singing for you? Anyway, he also reports a new mini-PA system from Peavey that I’ll need to scope. He calls it the “Escort”, which seems to me not correct, but I could be thinking of the car. The Peavey has fold-out speakers that, claims Eddie, can fill an entire room with sound. I’ll definitely have to hear this.
By chance, I read a lengthy article about computer radio. This is not Internet radio, which requires a service connection, but rather a system of connecting radio equipment to your sound card and picking up short wave transmissions. The article was not clear whether this was an ordinary radio with an interface box, a separate computer-controlled radio, or a PCI card. But the capabilities of the system were awesome. Imagine a truly programmable scanner, and that is only one thing.
As a lad, I used to spend countless hours with an old wave radio listening late into the night. Graham Smith and I would to turn the dial over the entire spectrum, and I recall the time we heard the same music playing on some twenty stations at the same time. The song was Steppenwolf’s “Sky Pilot”. Of course, as soon as my father found out I was using the radio, he gave it away (free) to a Ukrainian farmer south of town. My father was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very kind to strangers.
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