Here’s Johnny Winter playing bottleneck guitar. Pretty old here but he could still play.

Another version when he was younger recorded live. Faster. He starts on slide but finishes up on regular.

Karl U. sent me this one. This is one of my favorite pieces. It was written for piano, but it is most recognizable as an orchestral piece that was orchestrated by Ravel. I used to be able to play the Promenade on the piano. Without further ado here is Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky.

All I can say is, “Wow! Frickin’ wow!” I don’t normal post really long stuff but this is just so good I had to post the entire thing. One Saturday I posted a Japanese guy (I think) playing the Promenade but he was nowhere as good as this dude.

Emerson, Lake, and Palmer did a version of this as well altho’ they took some liberties with it.

Peggy sent me this one for a blonde uninformed voter.

This one is from Jon. Monster alert!

(more…)

I was gonna give it to Eric Holder for once again playing the race card and saying that some Republicans oppose Obungler because he’s black. As I said back in 2008 any opposition to or criticism of Obumbler would be deemed racist. Actually, I don’t care what color he is. I oppose him for what he is doing to this country from Fast and Furious to the IRS scandal and every thing else, like deciding what laws to enforce, his arrogance, and his disregard for the Constitution. He’s made Nixon look amiable, BJ look honest, and Jimmah Carter look competent. Quite a feat!

Did you see him today? He said a few words about the Malaysian Airline tragedy and then started yukking it up. What a fucking disgrace! Thanks Oboner voters! Yep! Obeauzeau wins another one. No one is ever gonna win as many awards as he has.

Johnny Winter just died in Zurich Switzerland on July 16. He was 70. He was not just an awesome blues guitarist, but an awesome rock guitarist as well. Here’s his cover of Jumping Jack Flash

On one of his albums that I own his rhythm guitarist is Rick Derringer. Prolly not an apt term since he did his share of lead guitar work. He was in the band when it was called, Johnny Winter And. Johnny and Rick traded lead riffs on It’s My Own Fault and on all of the other songs on the album. I’m not sure but I think that’s Rick Derringer in this video.

I saw Johnny live once at SIU Edwardsville which was an outdoor venue across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. I remember seeing the Grateful Dead (who played for about five hours) and Yes, where they played the entire Close to the Edge album there as well.

So I was sitting in my apartment with my friend Tom and we had just finished eating some spareribs I had just BBQ’ed. We were smoking a joint, quaffing some brews, and listening to KSHE (the best rock station in the world!) when he said, “Yannow, we oughta go see Johnny.” So we hopped in my car and drove to Edwardsville. Back then, you could take coolers on to the grounds. We had a few beers with us but we ran out. There were some people behind us with a keg, so I pulled out my P-38 and took the tops off our beer cans. Tom turned around and drew some beer from the keg. No one noticed. It wasn’t until the third round that he got caught. They were pissed! He offered them some weed as compensation but they turned him down. It was a great night! As I said in an earlier post, I loved the 70’s!

All of the recent stuff I’ve seen of him he’s been sitting down while playing. Heroin and hard living take their toll. RIP Johnny! A musical giant has left the earth.

It’s My Own Fault Johnny Winter and Rick Derringer.

I had a disagreement with my friend Michael the other night. I commented that his iphone was more powerful than IBM’s first mainframe computer. He said his iphone wasn’t a computer. I said it was. He asked me to take a poll of my readers. I won’t even use his argument or source to say it wasn’t or my argument to say it was. Have at it.

Update: Michael wants more responses so I’ll keep this post at the top of the page until Friday.

Update: I just heard from Michael and he still insists that an iphone is a computer and somehow I broke the rules of our bet. I guess it was because I stated that I said it was a computer and he said it wasn’t. That must have prejudiced all of you people who know about computers to agree with me rather than use your own knowledge to say an iphone is a computer. Weird logic I know, but he does know nothing about computers so he has to grasp at something. I knew he would weasel out of it. It’s amazing that someone who knows next to nothing about computers even started an argument with me since I have spent most of my adult life in the IT industry. I’ve known this man for 29 years and I never saw this side of him. Amazing! Either he misunderstood his IT guy or his IT guy is one of the dumbest IT guys in Atlanta. At this point in time his IT guy could tell him that his iphone is a computer and he wouldn’t even believe him and he was the guy he cited when he started this argument. His IT guy wasn’t even alive when I started in the field. Even his wife knows that an iphone is a computer. It must be nice to bask in one’s own ignorance and to be so stupid as to not realize it.

Update: C’mon people! More comments. Please! Won’t someone take pity on Michael and take his side? So far I’m pitching a no hitter.

I’m all for amnesty.

WTF? You are?

Yep! I am. Except I’m not talking about illegal immigrants. I’m talking about corporations. This morning, I read an article in the business section of the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation about inversions.

Inversions? What are they?

Inversions are corporations reorganizing overseas to minimize taxes. The Obungler administration doesn’t like this because, in the words of Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, they “hollow out the US corporate income tax base”. Too bad. The United States has the highest corporate income tax rate, 35%, in the industrialized world. Also, if a corporation brings money back into this country it is taxed. This is an incentive not to invest in the United States. Lew wants Congress to pass retroactive legislation to stop inversions. And of course, Lew uses the “fair share” argument as in, “We should not be providing support for corporations that seek to shift their profits overseas to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”

GFY! They’re gonna go to where they can make the most money.

What the gummint should be doing is lowering the corporate tax rate to entice corporations to relocate to the United States instead of leaving the country, and they should declare a one time amnesty for corporations to repatriate profits back here to reinvest in America, but as long as Obungler is president and the Dimocrats control the Senate that won’t happen. Instead we’ll get more anti-business crap from the rat bastard commie who has “a phone (which if it’s a smart phone is also a computer) and a pen” and is going to rule from the White House like a Third World dictator. Considering where he’s from, that makes perfect sense.

Somewhere in Kenya a village is missing an idiot.

My friend Pres sent me this one.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

No, it’s now who you think it is. I’s this booger eatin’ moh-ron.

SEATTLE (AP) — A man who used a can of spray paint and a lighter as a makeshift blowtorch to kill a spider in his laundry room started a blaze that caused $60,000 worth of damage, Seattle fire officials said Wednesday.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Seattle? Prolly an Obungler voter.

The man and his mother got out of the house, and no injuries were reported in the fire that broke out in the West Seattle home Tuesday night, said Kyle Moore, a spokesman for the Seattle Fire Department.

Not really eligible for a Darwin Award ’cause he lived and didn’t purify the gene pool.

Moore said the man used the spray paint and lighter as “a self-made blowtorch to kill a spider in the laundry room” of a rental house.

I find that a fly swatter or a rolled up magazine or newspaper does a pretty good job of killing bugs.

“I don’t want to encourage people to do this, but that’s what he did,”

I go along with that.

Moore said Wednesday. “The spider tried to get into the wall. He sprayed flames on the wall, lit the wall on fire, and that extended up to the ceiling.”

Reminds me of the dryer fire that occurred at a hotel in Etowah Tennessee one year where a bunch of us were staying to attend Eric’s birthday party. Actually, it was really a “driahr fahr” in the local vernacular. Dryer lint is very flammable.

Fire crews were called to the home in the home just south of Seattle just before 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Firefighters initially fought the fire from outside after someone reported hearing ammunition go off in the house. Crews eventually went inside the house after confirming from tenants that there was no ammunition inside.

The man initially tried to put water on the fire, but he wasn’t able to put it out and the blaze quickly spread into the attic.

On Wednesday, portions of the house were boarded up with plywood, and a blue tarp covered part of the roof. The owners of the house declined to comment.

“There are safer, more effective ways to kill a spider than using fire,” Moore said. “Fire is not the method to use to kill a spider.”

Most people who have the intelligence level above that of a third grade pissant know that.