Michelle....Happy birthday to your 'sis.... My wife's B-Day is actually on the 19th but we had to pck a day when everybody could be there...you know how it is ;)

SDDave, I was just gonna tell ya that it's Michelle Obama's birthday today. lol! Well, happy EARLY bday to the Mrs, and glad he bought his flask. lol!

T-Bones, I just had a chance to watch the Joe vid you posted the other day. I don't have a clue about theory and all that guitar stuff, but one thing I do know is Joe is a feckin guitar genius!

Metallica was in Philly tonight, and I missed it. *sniff*

Michelle--I pray you will stay on where you are or you happen upon a job with your name on it and yours only! You have a niche only you can fill regardless of what the heartless economy says to the contrary. I know this because of my experience. And we citizens of planet earth are resilient!

Need I say this again? We are all in this together!

"And the credo will rise---Rock on!!"

Time to pick up my guitar!

GOOD god mama M yer from clan Boyd!

Joe Satrini: Probably middle of the year, could be only a few months, I'm not putting pressure on anyone, good things come to those who wait. And the people involved are doing me a great favor.

Cheese101: got it thanks, now for the harder ones? What about Joe on Sitar or Lap Steel? Come on guys get behind it.

Anibur: Yes, looking at options to improve speed. It's mostly the crappy connection limit, don't know why cable here always has download heaps faster than upload... Weird.

OK, I disabled the slideshow to see if that improves load speed.

I have a feeling it will, it's a crappy bit of code that generates the slideshow before returning and giving the 100 or so items up front, then the javascript fades them in and out.

If that is the issue, I'll investigate an ajax version that only returns the first one, then asks for them one at a time or something, that would be way more efficient.

Let me know if performance is noticably better now.

Well now, let the feckin games begin. Today is the day I'm supposed to call unemployment. The phone number is constantly a busy signal, and the feckin website is "unavailable due to maintenance". Now my stomach is dropping and I feel like I'm about to get screwed.

Mills, thanks. At least as far as I know I'll still have a job after these two weeks home. I just hope I get to keep it :- /

Chadley, Metallica is always a good show. Couldn't find anybody to go with me. Nobody has any monies these days. WE got a bit of snow last night. Yesterday when I went to work it was 3f degrees. It's 24f now.

Slan, my hubs was told he's on the German side from his Grandpa, but ya just never know. I'm a Mc. My uncle (dad's bro) traced our roots, but I don't know what he found out. He has the papers packed away somewhere. I don't know enough names to go back to far, and ya have to pay to find out, so I'll just wait to get my uncle's info. lol! Me mum's side is German for sure. Thanks for the info. There's even a Dave at the end of that Good fam history, which gave me a chuckle.

Al, with weather like that, ya just might be stuck in Spain :-)

Now, let's get to the EAGLES - STEELERS SUPER BOWL!!

pretty good site here mama M

Slan, I always wonder if my surname was changed somewhere down the line, cause I can never find it anywhere. I do see that Mc Is commonly Catholic, and my grandparents were Catholic, so their parents prolly were too. Though truth be told, my dad got kicked out of Catholic school for BEING Irish back in the 40's! My mum is Lutheran, so it's what we are. I married a Catholic, but our kids are Lutheran. lol! Funny how that worked, huh? lol! Thanks for the links. Very interesting stuff. I bookmarked them.

Weeks ago I mentioned my favourite quote I'd seen about Satch (when the Coldplay thing kicked in) but don't think I actually posted it so here it is...

".... and if you're wondering who Joe Satriani is, he's a technical genius well known to professional guitarists even if not a star to everyone else — the sort of figure Fellini is to film directors"

The Wrong Trousers

Thanks for the info Michelle!

Phil...& I Like it too...ahhhhhhhhh

www.last.fm

not to wrory roy, sure ill hop on a train one of the times im here when ive more time here... nice weather, having some beers down the marina feeding some fish, its gale force winds at home, so im happy!

Joe has just completed a collaboration with Peavey Amplifiers on the release of a new 50w JSX amp. It would be a significant benefit to better understand what was Joe's "sonic objectives" with this new amp; what voicing was he trying to create? Clearly, the new amp is not a 2- channel 50w version of the current 120w JSX; preliminary information indicates the amp tones/voicing are quite different.

Perhaps there is a detailed interview on the subject or an "official statement" that has been developed. I did read Peavey's statement from Premier Guitar but more detail, notably from Joe's perspective, would be sincerely appreciated.

Thank you for your interest and assistance.

mama M:Y got Mac mail

OK, need some help. I have the Crystal Planet world premier CD, and it has some cool live tracks from a private concert in San Fran.

I cannot find any information on when it was. The info I have only says "recorded last week in front of about 60 fans"

I think it was an invitation or competition only event.

Can someone please give me a date? It was recorded at Coast Studios (San Fran) just prior to March 1998.

Long post

Hi all just a quick post before I make the tough decision of which beach to swim at :) - aaah I love being on holiday!

Last night I caught up with my bro-in-law who is a flamenco guitarist and he gave me a lesson for about 2 hrs - OMG I learnt more in that space than I had in the last 3 weeks reading the Dummies Guide.

He graciously let me play his beautiful $8000 Conde Hermanos guitar - it was so light, soft and lovely, with a short neck (about 3-4 less frets than my guitar) smaller body and steel-covered nylon strings. Man it was heaven compared to my monster Canora - he played mine whilst he gave me some tips and he said mine was incredibly hard (explains why my fingers were numb this last 3 weeks) and I should see if the strings could be lowered.

He showed me barre chords, and also how you can be playing a major chord but pick out 2-3 strings in the chord to keep playing the other notes in the song - sounded so much nicer than strumming all chords in sequence, you just hold down C or something and pick out the next notes in the song as single strings. Of course, I have to memorise the notes that each string is producing in a chord to do it.

He also showed me that you can alot of the time anchor your pinky on the 1st string 3rd fret and switch between some chords more easily because you have the pinky oriented. It doesn't change the note because it is only doubling an existing note in the chord. Brilliant.

He showed me how to hold the plectrum and strum so that on the down stroke you use one side of the plectrum and on the up stroke you use the other side, all the time your hand doesn't move other than vertically, and to strum all 6 strings evenly. Have to practice that.

Now I finally know how the syncopated rhythm works - he showed me the missing strums and now it makes sense.

I also learnt about hand, forearm and elbow position so I started to get a clean C and F.

Needless to say every song in the Dummies Guide he just looked at and immediately read the music and played - but not how the book had it notated, he did it all different ways.

Got to go, lots to learn and 9 days of free time to practice guitar...........

Slans--Moritz is me married name. My hubby's family is from Germany, Prussia, Lithuania and England. Quite a history! My family came from Fidler outside of Manchester (Hazel Grove) and Farrar a subclan in Scotland (location unknown). I would love to come to England and Scotland and find out a thing or two about the names. My curiousity is boundless!!

Michelle--My heart goes out to you. I hope the "games" end soon and you know where you stand. On another note--February 2 is comin' up and I think it's Groundhog Day isn't it? It's funny that people would ask a ground dwelling, fat herbivore when Spring will begin!! The animal just wants to be left alone in its warm burrow as any self-respecting oversized squirrel in that part of the country does. People are so funny and will make up any excuse to come together in the middle of winter to find out, if they can get closer to warmer weather. All I can say is come out to Cali and you will find warmer, fair weather. The trees don't know what time of year it is and are starting to bud!! This is not good for Cali or its neighbors!

Al McKenna--Hope you are having a blast in Spain. Gale force winds in Eire or anywhere are brutal. It's just an eastern Atlantic and North Sea thing, I guess. Ya know, old man winter and all that. I hope you took yer guitar with you to keep ya company.

roo--You are amazing taking all that time to set up a page for reviews and stuff about Joe.

Igneousiceman--Ry has a great teaching style. He's very patient. Expects me to follow his demonstrations of fingering and repeat what I see. He gives a fair amount of homework. I think Joe passed along his teaching style and generousity to Ry. It sure shows! ;b

My Steve is on fire about stereo components, speakers, cables and the like. He has always been a stereophile. He also can't get enough of goings on for Martin Luther King Day and the up-coming swearing in of the next President of the USA! He thinks Michelle Obama is a foxy lady! Yeah, she is good looking. I think the whole Obama family is attractive! It's going to be an interesting year---hopefully a brighter more prosperous one.

Good night T2J people.

GG2: Thanks! I wouldn't say amazing, but it is taking a stupid amount of time. Literally (and I mean literaly) hours a day almost every day of the week (lot's of late nights).

I still have heaps to put in. I'm a little disappointed in reaction of the global community. Its a great resource to look things up, but it could be sooooo much better if more people helped fill in the missing gaps with gig venue locations that I cannot find, more of Joe's sketches, some harder to find photos (joe on drums or sitar)... etc....

I think my main motivation is to help spread the word for Joe. He is a great person who is an incredible composer with fantastic artistic and technical ability. He is shaping and influencing guitar today and well into the future. If I can spend some time to contribute like this, and it helps in some way to keep Joe in the public eye, or generate more sales for him, then I'm just glad to be able to help.

Like I said also, with the breadth of information I'm posting on the site, searches for beethoven, san francisco, the warfield, Greg Kihn, and heaps of other things will end up possibly directing people to this site. So more will know about Joe.

Roo

Bloody service provider has crashed now. Even their home page has disappeared from the net.