Jay – Page 24 – The Boring Old Man

Places that are gone. The first in a series.

I have lived my entire life in Santa Clara County. I spent about half a year bouncing around Santa Cruz County, but never had a permanent address, so I don’t really count that as a place I “lived”.

If you mention Santa Clara County to anyone NOT from around here, the general response is “where is that?”. But despite growing up in the shadow of world famous San Francisco, Santa Clara County is equally famous, it’s just better known by its nickname “Silicon Valley”.

We moved into what is still my parents’ house shortly before my 5th birthday, where I stayed until 19.

As you might imagine, the place was a LOT different back then.

I got my first taste of “growth” in 1st grade, when it was announced that my school was closing. It was the first school built in the district, and they tore it down to build condominiums. The beginning of the end…

Since 1972/73, we’ve lost so many orchards, vineyards, schools, local-legend restaurants, night clubs, shops, etc. Really, you can’t even recognize the place anymore.

So in this series, I plan to document some of the “places that are gone” from my youth.

It’ll probably only be interesting to me and any other “townies” that happen to still be around. (Which are few and far between – every single friend I had up until my 20’s has moved out of the area or out of the state completely.) Nonetheless, I thought it might be good for me to relive some fond memories of days gone by. That is the hope anyway.

Today, I’ll kick things off with one of my all time favorite haunts, Guitar Showcase in San Jose.

The first time I stepped into Guitar Showcase, Im guessing 1980, but I may be off by a year either way, I was immediately enamored of the place. It was a pretty funky, older building, and the drum “department” was incredibly small, stuffed into a corner on the ground floor.

My buddy Patrick and I used to haul ourselves down there on our 10-speed bikes, about a 5 mile jaunt. And we’d stay for hours, looking at EVERYTHING.

One of the things I always appreciated about GS, was the friendliness of the staff. I’m positive two 12-year-old boys hanging out in your store must have been annoying as can be, yet we were never hustled out of there, never treated poorly. I wish I could say the same about other music shops…

I saw my very first electronic drum in that store – the Syndrum. I got to check out all kinds of “futuristic” synthesizers upstairs in the keyboard dept… I learned how PA systems are set up. I saw my first paisley Telecaster and held my first left handed guitar, which I didn’t even know existed at the time! (It would be 40 years later that I bought my first lefty, after considerable time trying to overcome the difficulties of playing a “standard”, right handed guitar.)

Many years later they’d open an annex across the parking lot, with studios for lessons and a rental shop and a used-gear showroom. At that point, the place had an intractable magnetic pull on me, and I couldn’t seem to drive down the road without pulling in.

We don’t live too far from the shop, and I still pop in on occasion, so you can imagine my dismay, ney HORROR as I drove by last month and saw chain link fence surrounding the entire main building.

I literally felt sick to my stomach when I saw it, and involuntarily shouted “Oh NO, Look!!” to my wife… She tried to be reassuring, saying maybe they’re just going to remodel, bring things up to date… This calmed me down a little, as it COULD be the case. The building was old, and I sincerely doubt it met with current building and ADA and fire/life safety codes. There was a really narrow, creaky stair case to get upstairs, so that alone could get you shut down, should one prick lawyer get a wild hair up his azz and decide to sue.

So, I waited to see what might transpire. I decidedly chose NOT to look into it, as I didn’t want any bad news. Sadly, just a few weeks later I drove by and that funky, creaky, weird smelling but delightful old building was nothing more than a pile of rubble.

I nearly cried, I kid you not. Even writing about it now has me choked up a bit. I haven’t had the heart to tell Patrick, whom is still one of my best friends 40+ years later. He moved away for college and never came back to SJ to live, so he doesn’t have the deep connection to the place I do but you can bet he’s still got some fond recollections of the place.

After witnessing the tragedy (part of me wanted to stop and take a picture, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It would be like photographing the corpse of a loved one.) I decided to look into the story, which was a good news/bad news situation.

The “good news” is the shop says they will remain open in the old annex building. The bad news is the property was sold to an “affordable housing” contractor, and leased back to Guitar Showcase.

It’s great that they’ll keep the doors open, for a while anyway, but I see the writing on the wall. I foresee one of two things transpiring in the near future. One, even though they say they’ll remain open “during construction”, it’s going to wreck their customer base. It’s a small plot of land, barely half an acre, so when the heavy equipment rolls in and the tradesmens’ trucks take up every available parking space for half a mile, the customers will stop dropping in, revenues will drop and BOOM!, outta business. Or two, they manage to keep the doors open until the lease expires, and the owners will NOT renew, so they can tear down the annex and cram more stuff onto the lot. The firm building the new housing isn’t a local outfit, so I can all but guarantee they do not care one iota about the history of this place. Goddamn vultures.

Either way, I’m afraid their days are numbered.

To be perfectly candid, I feel at least somewhat responsible for the shop doing poorly. As a “starving musician” in my earlier years, you had to find the very best deals you could and GS, being a small, independent shop couldn’t put out the heavy discounts some of their competitors could, due to sheer volume.

Then came along eBay and Craigslist, and then Reverb.com, so the online used gear market just exploded! Great for poor musicians, terrible for retail establishments. Nonetheless, I did buy from them, and often, but usually the smaller stuff like drum sticks and heads, cables and mic stands, stuff like that.

There is certainly no way the remaining staff at GS knows how much they’ve meant to me these last 4 decades or so, but I will miss them when that final note carries into the wind and the doors close forever.

If, by some tiny chance, should someone from the shop actually see this, I want to say thank you. This shop was at least partially responsible for a dorky, awkward kid finding his true passion in life and getting to have adventures that he never would have dreamed of without music.

From the bottom of my heart, a GIANT THANK YOU to the Guitar Showcase staff, past and present!

Thanks for reading!

SOTU? STFU…

I tried, I really tried. I simply couldn’t get all the way through Biden’s “state of the union” speech.

Sloganeering, passing the buck, avoidance…it was all there, front and center.

I try to stay out of the political fray, as there are many others much more devoted to the subject but I do try to stay “informed”… Even that is painful these days.

Listening to Biden is excruciating. I try to avoid him speaking as much as possible because frankly it’s demoralizing, but this annual event is supposed to be a big deal. And they pushed it back immensely, from January to March, so I figured they must really want him to come out swinging. Uh, no. It was blather, and self congratulations and honestly just an embarrassment.

I’m no longer a religious man, but God help us… I can’t imagine how we’re going to make it to ’24 with this administration. And for what it’s worth, I WAS a registered Dem for 20+ years… My disgust isn’t partisan, it’s simply based on competency and what I’m seeing all around me with my own “lying eyes”.

I should have known, with the media slathering praise upon him all week prior, the mask mandates “suddenly” coming down and the disingenuous push that our economic problems here at home are because of Russia. Lolz! When every media lap dog is on your side and you STILL come off as a lying buffoon? Not exactly inspiring.

Well, if nothing else we can now put that clown show behind us. A little more worried, a little less confident (which I didn’t think was possible!) and less hopeful, but life marches on!

I’m going to try to make”my world” a little better, and ignore the “rulers”. They haven’t done diddly for us in a long time anyway. I think I’ll just do my best to ignore them for the next 3 years. Not like they are telling the truth about anything anyway.

Tomorrow is a new day. Let’s all try to make it a better one, even when “they” tell us it’s all going to hell in a handbasket.

Thanks for reading!

Black/Gray/White

There is an awful lot of fuss about “hate” these days, as if you didn’t know. I don’t really understand it to be honest.

Personally I LOVE a lot of things, I dislike a lot of things. I’m indifferent to MOST things. But I HATE very little in the grand scheme of things.

If you listen to the “mainstream” you’d be led to believe that it’s an either/or world. Black or white. That is to say, if you don’t love then automatically you must HATE. I call bullshit on that one.

The truth of the matter, for me at least, is that unless we’re talking about something that directly affects me and mine I don’t really pay much attention or care about it. Sorry to disappoint.

I’m very much a live and let live kind of person. I’m weird and I know I’m weird, so I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. By the same token, I’m not going to agree with everyone or the mainstream in general. But that doesn’t mean I HATE the mainstream. I believe everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if I personally think their opinions are moronic. That doesn’t mean I hate them. Feel free to think I’m moronic. You won’t be the first or last in that regard. But you shouldn’t hate me for my opinions. Life is full of grey areas.

For example, I am a big admirer of art – painting for instance. I love the classics, Van Gough, et al and I love surrealism like Dali and Escher and even a lot of modern works. But if you paint a big square, monochromatic, on a canvas and try to pass it off as “Art”… well, not to me it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean I hate Art, or the artist of said monochromatic square. I just don’t like it or care about it. It’s not going to make me angry that it’s hanging in a gallery. I’m just going to ignore it and move on to what does interest me. Simple.

This is not to say you should accept or support ideas you don’t agree with. By the same ideal, you shouldn’t demand acceptance and support for all of yours either. A good idea can sell itself, you usually don’t need to force it upon others.

Reducing someone to one simple fact and then deciding to hate that person because of that one thing is beyond absurd. I’m sure there are exceptions to that, you know, for serial murderers, corrupt politicians, IRS agents, etc. but generally speaking most people are complex and don’t fit in to one little box.

For another example, you could say (vehemently) that I do in fact HATE the accordion. Its sound to my ears is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, combined with a cat who’s tail has been stepped on. But that’s just me. I don’t hate accordion players for their terrible life choices, but I sure hate the sound of their instrument on a primal level. By extension, you could say I hate Tejano music, as it features the accordion prominently. But that by no means equates to hating Latino peoples. It means I most likely won’t attend an event that features Tejano music. That’s about it… I’m not going to go around demanding Tejano music be banned because I hate the accordion. I’m not going to scream “cultural appropriation!” <gasp!> because Tejano uses western European styles (polka, etc) as their base. I’m just going to move on to something I DO appreciate.

It feels like the media is trying to whip up this frenzy of hate, but if you look below the surface, most of it is hogwash.

Sure, there are certainly some idiots out there that will lay their blanket of hate over an entire group, whether it be racial, economic, religious, gender/orientation, whatever. In my opinion anyone like that is stunted at best and certainly not playing with a full deck. No matter what club/clique/organization/lifestyle you identify with, chances are there are some major differences between you and the rest of the people in your group. That’s life. That’s humanity. We all need to learn to not take ourselves so seriously, and more importantly not let the media lead you around by the nose, looking for a boogeyman behind every utterance and action.

I’d love to see everyone just calm down a bit. It’s OK, not everyone is going to like you or what you’re doing. It doesn’t mean they hate you. But trying to force your will on them, might make them turn that corner. And besides, hate is exhausting. It takes effort and dedication to TRULY hate someone. Talk about wasted energy! To quote someone I can’t recall: “Holding onto hate is like taking poison everyday, in hopes that someone else will die from it.” Wise words…

Another thing, and I say this as delicately as possible… Over-use of the word “hate” will eventually render it meaningless. Much like what happened with “racist” over the last few years. Now, because “racist” lost its power, it morphed into “white supremecy”, which has caused yet more friction, division and anger. But that’s a story for another day…

While I don’t believe for a nano-second that “words = violence”, words DO have power. Using them incorrectly diminishes that power and inflames people. Not a great habit to get into.

Just something to think about. Thanks for reading!

Happy Monday(s)!

Do what you’re doin’… Say what you’re sayin’…. Go where you’re goin’…. Think what you think… It sounds good to me!

Keepin’ it loose today!

Back to the Pitch!

It’s been a long, long time but we FINALLY got to make it out to a San Jose Earthquakes game again!

I am not at all interested in team sports, EXCEPT for soccer. I haven’t watched an NBA game since Jordan was the dominant force in the sport, and the last NFL game I went to, Joe Namath was still QB for the 49ers… As for “America’s Passtime”, baseball? The first and ONLY major league game I attended was back in the 1970’s with the Oakland A’s. Generally speaking I find team sports to be a great cure for insomnia, but little else.

But soccer? That is a whole different story! I love the game, the pace, the non-stop action on the pitch. Luckily for me, both the Mrs. and our daughter love the game too, so we’ve been to many, many MLS games.

Today our Quakes took on the New York Red Bulls at their home field in San Jose for the season opener. The tickets were a Christmas gift from our daughter (Thanks again Kiddo!), so we’ve been sitting on the tickets for awhile and the anticipation was high, to put it mildly.

It’s our first time back to the stadium since before the Plague, and the excitement was palpable!

I’ll be honest, I don’t exactly “follow” the league… We don’t have broadcast/cable TV at home, so we don’t actually watch games that we aren’t physically attending. I’m not even sure who is on the latest roster – sports, even soccer, has been the last thing on my mind over the last 2 years. I love the Quakes ‘cuz they’re my “home team”, and have been going to their matches since the “old days” when they played their games at San Jose State University in the red uniforms back in 1975/76! But I don’t care about statistics, rivalries or any of that stuff, I just genuinely LOVE the game. In fact, one of the key drivers in my quest for a place to relocate is a town within a couple hours of a MLS team’s home field. Don’t really care who. Well, except for Real Salt Lake, I loathe that team as they have a habit of playing dirty, in my experience.

The crowd was a little thin at first, but things filled out once the teams took the field.

The Quakes won the toss and got the first kick off and it was GAME ON! The teams were pretty evenly matched and there was a good back and forth throughout the first half, but much to our dismay New York managed to put ine in the net at the 45th minute, right before the whistle. Bummer.

In the second half, the Quakes tied things up in the 69th minute, but it didn’t last long. New York popped in another just a few short minutes later. To ad insult to injury, they grabbed at 3rd goal in extra time.

Sadly, a victory for our home team wasn’t in the cards tonight.

But all things considered, we had a really fun time. It was great to get to out to a game again after such a long absence. Besides, we’ve got a long season ahead of us and some impressive players on the field, I think its gonna be a good year!

Thanks for reading!

Hitting the nail on the head.

A quote from Tulsi Gabbard from the CPAC (?!?! a bold and shocking move for a Democrat) yesterday in Orlando. “Those in power see themselves as the high priests in a secular theocracy. This explains why they see those who disagree with them as heretics. So it’s not surprising that those who reject their leadership, these are the people who were targeted by Biden’s attorney general as domestic terrorists simply for holding anti-authority views,” she said.

RTWT/ https://www.yahoo.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-slams-fellow-dems-125257903.html

I’ve never understood the “frothing at the mouth” political movements in the Land of the Free. These latest “progressive” movements are every bit as Oppressive as the so-called “Moral Majority” back in the 80’s, which is obvious…but the loudest voices of this “movement” weren’t yet born or at least weren’t old enough to be aware. I just never connected the dots. Makes sense to me now that I see it explained in this way.

I walked away from religion in my late teens, and I certainly don’t need to replace it with worship of government.

Tolerance and inclusion goes both ways. Agreeing to disagree doesn’t mean you “lose”. EVERYONE is entitled to their own opinion, even if yours is divergent from the “norm”.

Just something to think about…

Thanks for reading!

Flashback Friday! The Twang edition

Back when I was a kid music was going through some serious growing pains. It was the early 1980’s, Disco was D.E.A.D., Top 40 music was horrendous and punk rock was being diluted by “New Wave”, and I mean no offense by that. With but a few exceptions, New Wave music has held up better over the decades than a lot of punk has, but I digress…

New Wave was a blanket term that covered a lot of sub-genres. You had the synthesizer pioneers like Depeche Mode and Eurythmics, the New Romantics like Adam and the Ants and ABC, the grittier guitar-based bands like R.E.M. and the Replacements and all sorts of combinations and mash-ups along the way. Rockabilly made a comeback in the EARLY 1980’s, due to the Stray Cats bursting onto the scene, and they somehow got embraced by the New Wave crowd as well. It seemed there was a band with “Cats” in their name popping up every 7 minutes, you couldn’t keep track of ’em all!

One of the smaller sub-genres of the day was sort of a rockabilly/New wave/southern rock & roll hybrid, called by some “Cow Punk”. Personally I never really cared for that moniker, it seemed derisive and frankly there wasn’t a whole lot of “punk” to their music, other than a high energy and a quick tempo. Nonetheless, for a good 5 years or so, these cow punks kept slippin’ out the barn and winding up on college radio, where I became enamored of the sound. Big shout out to KSJS, KFJC and KSCU, those crazy college kids opened my ears and my mind to SOOOOO much amazing music back in the day…

So without further adeue, I present some of my all-time favorite “cow punk” tunes, or as I refer to it – that Twang Sound! Slip on your boots, straighten up the Bolo Tie and Enjoy!

Perhaps my favorite of the genre!

This one is a close second!

Love, loss, wood & wire…

Dumb band name, great band!

Cow punk from Down Under?!?

Ah, Maria!

Art imitates life?

Thanks for reading! And listening…

Back to the Grind.

Starting the work week on a Wednesday this week. Feeling a little discombobulated.

It was great to get away and I certainly have no regrets taking a couple days to help celebrate the kid’s birthday. Surprisingly, I feel like my batteries did get a little recharge, in spite of all the driving and poor sleep in the hotel. Today is actually the best I’ve felt since catching the Plague a month ago, so I’ve got that going for me!

Nothing terribly exciting to share today. I’m going through my backlogged stack of books to decide what to read next and I have a few shows coming up in March, so there will be more reviews forthcoming over the next few weeks.

Trying to get “caught up” is a never-ending task when more comes down the line daily, regardless of what is already on the docket. It ain’t dull, I’ll tell you that!

Until next time, it’s back to the grind!

Thanks for reading!

Road Trip!

Today is our daughter’s birthday and to celebrate with her we’ve taken a trip up to Napa CA, the *world famous California Wine Country.

Personally, I don’t drink wine with the occasional exception of sparkling wines, so Napa comes in at about #437 on my Top 10 places to visist. But it is pretty, I’ll give ’em that.

The Mrs. and I are thrilled that at this age she still wants to hang out with her parents on her birthday and are happy to be here with her, we just can’t help but wonder how our kid ended up liking such sedate, boring stuff!

Nonetheless, it’s been a really nice trip. This town has one thing down to a science, customer service. Everybody we’ve encountered has been extremely helpful and nice. If we were more into wine we’d probably make more of an effort to come here, but it is a pretty nice (and quiet) place to spend a couple days.

Good food, good drink (from what I’m told) and a friendly atmosphere, what’s not to like? Nine thumbs up for Cole’s Chop House. The best pork chop I’ve ever had, hands down.

Happy Birthday kiddo! Hope you enjoyed your time up north!

Concert Review: Magic City Hippies at The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA

Ah, the historic Fillmore in San Francisco! What a place! One of those “…if these walls could speak!” kind of places.

Countless legendary performers have graced the stage there since the equally legendary Bill Graham started booking acts there back in 1965. The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Who, even Frank Zappa! The list goes on and on of the pioneers, the all-out musical legends that have played there. To say it is a special venue doesn’t even come close. That being said, it’s been a LONG time since we’ve had an excuse to visit the Fillmore. As memory serves, our last show there was Dogstar back in 1997 or so (which was an epic show actually) Regardless, we were excited to get back there and share the place with our daughter who’s never had the pleasure.

I was surprised to learn there was a opener for the opening band, a Jake Pinto, who also happens to be “the new guy” I mentioned in my review from last night’s show. He started the night off with a half hour solo set, just him and a vintage Wurlitzer electric piano. He was quite good. I liked his songs, some more than others of course. But as I said to the Mrs.; I like his sound, but it really isn’t conducive to a live music setting. Just a little too mellow. I’m absolutely going to check out his recordings, as he’s a fine musician with a nice voice, but in a live setting his music was more appropriate to a dark lounge, where you’d be dropping in for the drinks, not the show. But, new discovery for listening AND solved the mystery of who the new guy with MCH is, so I give it a thumbs up!

Bay Ledges was up next and Wow! What a difference from the night before! They looked better, they played better and their energy level was off the charts. I was pretty impressed this time around. They definitely won me over and now they too are on my follow-up listening list to check out their recorded work.

Magic City Hippies came out with essentially the same set as last night. But with the bigger stage to roam and a bigger crowd to vibe with (and the vibe of the room was ELECTRIC!), the boys just let it RIP!

The Hippies’ guitarist John Coughlin was in rare form, I think the best I’ve ever seen him. In my opinion this guy is the best guitarist nobody knows about. Seriously. The way he so effortlessly blends so many styles together- rock, funk, jazz, reggae – is impressive and his slide work is spectacular. But then, he’ll go and play a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even seem like sounds POSSIBLE from a guitar! The only other guitarist I can think to compare him to is Adrian Belew, who is a living legend.

And this is not to diminish Robby Hunter’s guitar playing. He’s such a compelling vocalist and front man that I always forget what stellar guitarist he is until I see him on stage. He takes the first lead section in the song Modern Animal and its a scorcher! And when he and John solo in harmony? Nothing finer on a stage, let me tell you.

The rest of the band was on point, solid as a rock as always. It was another great night of outstanding music, played by outstanding musicians, leaving everything they had on stage. And further reinforcement of Magic City Hippies being our favorite live band, ever.

Thank you gentlemen, it was a night to remember!

Thanks for reading!