Greetings From Paradise - Pt. 4

This is day 5 of mine and Jackie's vacation up in Paradise. We really haven't done very much. Jackie has read 500,000 books and I have spent 500,000 thousand hours playing with the shortwave radio.

I have heard pirate broadcasts on the shortwave everynight since we have been up here with the exception of Friday night. Pirate broadcasts are broadcasts that are transmitted illegally by unlicensed broadcasters. Below is a list of the pirate stations Jackie and I have heard.

Saturday Night
MAC Shortwave

Sunday Night
Pirate Radio Boston
The Crystal Ship (playing 60's songs)
Mystery Radio

Monday Night
WMPR (playing dance music)
The Crystal Ship (playing 80's songs this time)
Mystery Radio

Tuesday Night
Unidentified station
MAC Shortwave (playing 50's and early 60's songs, then TV themes from the 60's)

Also yesterday afternoon I heard my first "numbers" station on the shortwave. No one quite knows what the "numbers" stations are but the general assumption among shortwave people is that the "numbers" stations are stations that are broadcasting coded messages to low level spies in foreign countries. These stations feature a man or woman (or occasionally a computer voice) repeating a series of numbers over and over again. The transmissions can be in any language. The "numbers" station I heard yesterday had a woman reading the numbers in spanish. I recorded a portion of the "numbers" broadcast on my microcassette recorder. I will probably post the recording up on one of my webpages when I get home. I have been wanting to hear a "numbers" station for so long. It was great to finally hear one.

I also brought my Martin acoustic guitar up here with the intention of recording some demos for my Country/Bluegrass side project "Spooky Garcia". "Spooky Garcia" is a collaboration between Rob Scheys and myself. So far I have not done much in the way of songwriting up here.

Last but not least I have e-mailed Allen Weiner who is the general manager of the shortwave station WBCQ about buying airtime from the station so I can produce my own radio show. If I did produce a radio show I have three ideas for the type of show it would be.

Idea #1 - A radio show in which I feature the original music that I write and record along with the music that I have created with other bands such as Tonto Savalas, The Buddha All-Stars, House Music, Spooky Garcia, Ect.

Idea #2 - A radio show in which I feature the 1920's and 30's country, bluegrass, blues, and folk music that I have been collecting over the last 15 years.

Idea #3 - A talk radio show in which I talk about anything and I have Jackie's cousin Joe Miller on as my co-host with cameos from a lot of other people.

The air time on WBCQ is probably going to be too expensive to afford right now with Baby Nicholas on the way but the thought of having my own radio show is very exciting.

I will write more later.

Greetings From Paradise - Pt. 3

Jackie, Harvey (our cat), the still developing Nicholas, and I are up at Jackie's parents beautiful home in Paradise.

I drove up with Jackie's dad Norm this past Friday morning. Jackie and Harvey came up Yesterday morning.

The weather up here has been beautiful. If you are standing in the sun it's about 75 degrees. If you are sitting in the back room with the windows open it's about 60 degrees. It's kinda funny to be covering up with afghans in late June.

After Norm and I got up here we brought all of out stuff in. We relaxed for a couple of minutes then we went by Jackie's Aunt Barb and Uncle Dennis's house down the road. Their house is beautiful as well. We filled the bird feeders and checked out her phone line to see if it worked because her web cam has not been updating. Their phone line was dead. Yesterday was also Dennis's last day of work for GM. Today he starts his retirement. Congratulations Dennis!

When Norm and I got back we set up the Yaesu FRG-8800 shortwave receiver that my friend Ed graciously lent to me a couple of months ago. It is an awesome shortwave receiver and it has always worked great at home so I knew it would work even better up here. After we put the antenna wire out of window and tie wrapped it to the metal antenna tower on the side of the house the Yaesu was working excellent.

One of the interests that I have inherited from Norm is a passion for shortwave radio so we had a lot of fun listening to the Yaesu for the rest of Friday night. We heard the regulars like Radio China International, Radio Japan, Radio Sweden, and Radio Taiwan International (a personal favorite of mine). We also heard harder to receive stations like Radio Ukraine International, Radio Prague, Radio Bulgaria, Radio Budapest, Radio Cairo Egypt, KBS South Korea, Radio Romania International, and All India Radio.

Right before bedtime Norm, Jackie, and I heard "MAC Shortwave" which is a pirate shortwave station coming in with a great signal.

I will write more later in the week.

Miranda Miller

Here is a picture of the beautiful newly born Miranda Miller. Congratulations to Joe and Alida.

"Paris Hilton Plans Reggae, Hip-Hop Album"

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Pain and Baby Nicholas

Hey all, I just thought I would give all of you an update on what's been happening.

Since this past Sunday morning I have been in the worst pain of my life. I am not kidding, nor am I exaggerating. I re-aggravated my back cleaning the garage Saturday morning. I bent down and picked up a box of books and when I went to stand up with it pain shot through my lower back and I collapsed. The pain was horrible for the remainder of the day Saturday but the next day is when the wishing that I was dead started.

I have never been a supporter of assisted suicide but I now have a new understanding of it. I am not trying to be funny by writing that either. Sunday morning was the worst morning of my entire life. I have never, ever been in that much pain. I was praying and praying that I would just pass out but I didn't. As my luck would have it Jack and I had an open house that day so that meant I had to go up and down our stairs and go over to Norm's house while two people who weren't even interested in buying our condo came over.

Luckily my mother came over and cleaned up the condo for us Sunday morning since Jackie can't really lift anything and I was dying. Thank You again Mom for helping us. I Love You.

Today has been the first day when the pain has even been "tolerable". I actually took a short drive today since I have been going insane staying in the house watching TV. In hindsight I should've stayed in today as I am feeling worse tonight then I was this afternoon.

Anyway I have to get this fixed. I NEVER, EVER want to feel like I did Sunday morning again. I don't care if I don't have the full range of movement that I had before. I simply cannot exist like this.

This has been a really cheerful blog post so far ehh?

In other news I am so so so so so so so so excited about Baby Nicholas. At times the fact that I am going to be a father still doesn't seem real to me. Jackie and I tried for years to have a baby and it never happened. We tried and tried and tried until I was really starting to lose faith in our ability to have children and I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that our "family" was going to consist of Jack and myself.

Jackie and I were just about home after the long trip from Paradise and I was driving the Torrent. She said something about her not being happy with the way that I was driving and I immediately went into "asshole" mode. Normally in that situation the chances of me going into "asshole" mode are about 50/50 but after a 6 hour trip in a car when neither of you want to be coming home at all the chances of me going into "asshole" mode are pretty good.

We got home and unpacked the car all while not speaking to each other. After we had unpacked I was on the computer and Jackie came up to me. She just said "You need to see this" and led me into the bathroom. When I saw the pregnancy test on the counter I pretty much went into shock. I'd love to be able to write that my heart immediately filled with joy and happiness but it didn't. Even though Jack and I had been hoping and wishing for that day for years, to actually be standing over a positive pregnancy test was absolutely the most surreal moment of my life. It really screwed me up for about an hour because I had gotten to the point where I just didn't think it would ever happen. After the initial shock wore off I was really happy but at first it was just so out of left field that it didn't seem real.

But real it is and I have photos to prove it. I am really excited about Nicholas. Jackie is going to be a great mother. She has so much love in her heart and she's kind and intelligent and Nicholas is really lucky in that respect. She loves Nicholas so much.

I am really interested to see how much of Jackie Nicholas becomes and which of my characteristics Nicholas inherits. I'm guessing that he will like reading as both Jack and I love to read. I hope he likes music but it's cool if he doesn't. I won't be one of those fathers who force their kids into doing things they don't want to do. I am fairly certain that Nicholas will be a sarcastic smart ass just like his parents.

I also can't wait to see my parents and grandparents and Jackie's parents interact with young Nicholas. Nicholas will be Norm and Sass's 4th grandson but my parents first. I think my mom and dad will be great grandparents. My grandparents are also very excited about Nicholas and I can't wait to see my grandmother hold him for the first time.

I'll write more about Nicholas later but my back is killing me right now so I am done for tonight.

Baby Nicholas's first music.

Tonight Jackie and I spent a half an hour or so playing Nicholas his first music. We played him the music from my new Ipod by placing the headphones on Jack's belly. The first song we played him was "Deep Blue Day" by Brian Eno. Nicholas then enjoyed an excerpt from Eno's "Discreet Music".

After that we played him "Astral Weeks" and "Ballerina" by Van Morrison and "Little Wing" by Jimi Hendrix.

I am really curious as to how the music sounds to Nick. I wanted to play Nicholas some Melt-Banana or Fantomas but Jackie said no. Maybe next time.

Norm's Place

My brother in-law Norm has made a blog page. You can check it out by clicking here.

The Mighty Oilers 

Congratulations Edmonton Oilers

The Edmonton Oilers just wrapped up their first round series against the Red Wings winning by a score of 4-3 in Game 6. I felt kind of bad for the Red Wings after the Oilers won but the fact was that Manny Legace played horribly.

I like the Red Wings but they aren't really one of my favorite NHL teams. The Oilers however have always been amongst my favorites along with Toronto and Montreal. Now I just hope that Montreal beats Carolina tomorrow to force a Game 7 in their series.

Keith Richards Hospitalized

I just saw that Keith Richards was hospitalized in New Zealand after suffering a mild concussion. You can read the article here.

The article said that Richards suffered the concussion after falling out of a palm tree while on vacation in Fiji. I guess my only thought about this is WHAT THE HELL IS KEITH RICHARDS DOING UP IN A PALM TREE?

275 year old people should not climb palm trees for any reason.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Jackie, I love you.

Saturday Morning

It is a lovely Saturday morning. Yesterday was awesome as well. It was the first day that felt like Summer to me and despite my crippling back pain it felt great.

I had a good session with "House Music" last night. The music was pretty twisted and loud and I was able to play without too much difficulty.

I am glad to be getting the websites back up and running. Jackie has added some video of Harvey to her website. It's nice to finally be able to incorporate video into our websites which is something that we have wanted to do for awhile.

I am still trying to decide what I want to do with my website. I want the layout to be different than what it was but I'm not sure how I am going to go about it.

My good friend A.C. came over to the house last Sunday and we spent a couple of hours transferring a bunch of my CD's into his laptop so he could upload the music into his Ipod. We must have loaded at least 20 CD's of mine into Anthony's laptop. I burned 6 CD's from Anthony as well. The CD's I burned from him were

Metallica - Master Of Puppets
The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request
The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles - Let It Be
The Beatles - The Beatles (Discs 1 & 2)

As most of you probably know The Beatles self titled album is commonly referred to as "The White Album". I burned Anthony's copy of "The White Album" because he had the American Stereo version of the album whereas I have the British Mono version. When "The White Album" was first released in Britain in 1968 it was available in both Mono and Stereo versions whereas it was only available in stereo in the U.S.

When I was a child I had the Stereo version on cassette but when I started collecting CD's I found a bootleg version of "The White Album" which contained the British Mono version plus a lot of demo's of the albums songs recorded by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison at Harrison's house. So for years the only version of the album that I heard was the Mono version.

Listening to the Stereo version that I burned from Anthony was awesome. It was the first time that I had heard the Stereo mixes of those songs in probably 20 years and they sounded wonderful. I guess the best way to describe it would be to imagine yourself reading a book with regular black text on white paper and then someone hands you that same book in a glossy, full color, "pop up" version. "The White Album" has always been my favorite Beatles album but it was like I was hearing again for the very first time. When I was a child The Beatles were always my favorite group (at least until I discoved The Who).

Anthony also gave me two DVD's to watch. The first was a collection of fishing shows called "Fishing With John". "Fishing With John" is some of the funniest stuff me and Jackie have ever seen. There are only 6 episodes but they are absolutely hysterical. The host John goes fishing in various locations with different celebrities. The celebrities on the six shows were Tom Waits, Jim Jaramusch, Matt Dillon, Willem Defoe, and Dennis Hopper (2 episodes). The half hour where Jack and I watched the episode where John and Willem Defoe go ice fishing in Maine was one of the most rewarding of my life.

The second DVD is a movie called "Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus". This film was playing down at the Detroit Institute Of Arts a couple of months ago. I have not seen much of it yet but it is a documentary of a musician who lives in the south (Texas I believe) and it seems very interesting.

Websites Are Back

I received the copy of Microsoft Front Page 2003 that I ordered yesterday. After doing some re-configuring I have gotten mine and Jack's websites back up and running. Jackie will probably be updating her site tonight. I am contemplating a re-design of my website as I was kind of tired of the old format. I'm not sure what kind of website I will be creating but I hope to have something up soon. In the meantime on my site you can see a picture of my wonderful nephews.

Black Helicopters Aren't Just For The Sky Anymore

Just when I was secure in the thought that cattle mutilations were caused by extraterrestrials I read this.

Websites Back Soon

I ordered a copy of Front Page from Microsoft yesterday so mine and Jack's websites should be back up and running within the month. I am hoping that we will be able to start work on our webpages right where we left off at since I saved the files before I wiped our computer. As the copy of Front Page I bought yesterday is a newer version that what we were using previously I'm hoping the files will transfer without problem. If they don't then we will have to redo our webpages which is ok with me but I don't think Jack would be very happy. I have been thinking about redoing mine anyway.

I re-aggravated my back getting into my Jeep to get the second steroid injection Wednesday morning so I have been in agony ever since then. I took it pretty easy yesterday and watched some DVD's and took my beloved painkillers. I also recorded a new piece for the "Northville" project.

Steroid Injections Pt.2 and other nice things

I received my second steroid injection this morning. Because the herniated disc that I have is the lowest disc on my spine the doctor must administer these injections in the top of my ass crack. In case you weren't sure that injections in the top of your ass crack are a bad thing let me reassure you, injections in the top of your ass crack ARE a bad thing. However I did learn that I have lost 9 pounds since last Monday.

The building of the modular synth is progressing slowly but surely. I have included a few pictures below of the completed oscillator section.

The guitar effects manufacturer "Effector 13" is going to feature some of the music from the "A Beautiful Morning" album on their website. "A Beautiful Morning" was recorded using a Effector 13 pedal called the "Truly Beautiful Disaster". I sent a copy of the album to the owner of the company yesterday so it will probably be a little while before its up on the website. I will let everyone know when they can check it out. Anyway I'm pretty excited about it.

That's all I have for now.

The front of the circuit board of the oscillator section. 

The front panel of the completed oscillator section of my modular synthesizer. 

Joshua Vincent Gazley

I forgot to post this in my last blog post. Jackie and I have a new nephew. Joshua Vincent Gazley was born on March 18th to Theresa and Ryan Gazley, Jackie's Sister and Brother In-Law.

1rst Audioblogger Post / New "House Music" / Steroid Injections Anyone?

Right now I am going through my regular routine of cleaning the tape heads on my various tape recorders here at the lovely Breezeway Studios so I thought I would make a quick post.

Below is the first of what will be many Audioblogger posts. Jackie recorded this first post. You call a phone number and then you record a "message" that you want to be posted up on your blog page. Then you hang up and it automatically posts your "message" up on the page. We recorded this one and then immediately went to the computer and it was already up on the blog here.

I start getting steroid injections into my spine tommorrow morning in an effort to fix my back. That should be fun.

"House Music" has a brand new album out called "Effortless". I will probably be posting it up on my download page soon. It features Tom Saari on vocals, Joe Lafata on Keyboards and myself on guitars.

I am making progress on the building of my modular synthesizer. I have completed the two voltage controlled oscillators. Next I am going to start the filters. Sadly I did not take any pictures while I was building the oscillators but I am going to start taking some pics as I build the rest of the synth system.

Mine and Jack's website's will be back in business eventually.