Evan Valentine, Stay-at-Home Dad

Jaime had a good idea to just let the video camera run while she fed Stephen the other night, and I could just edit it down. I took it from seven minutes in length to just under three minutes in length. It's still a bit too long. Stephen is attempting to feed himself pureed carrots with a spoon. If you get tired of watching it, skip to 2:35 when jaime grabs the camera again.

February 26, 2010

From the outside, everything looked great for The Monkees in 1967. In one year they had leaped from semi--or total--obscurity to overnight superstardom. They had a hit TV series, two #1 singles ("Last Train to Clarksville," and "I'm A Believer"), and two #1 albums ("The Monkees," and "More of The Monkees"). The only problem was the Monkees weren't allowed to play on their own records. Why not? Because Don Kirshner, the musical supervisor of The Monkees, said so. It was... well... embarassing. Here they were, pretending to be a real group, when in fact they had almost nothing to do with "their" music. Critics made fun of them. Even worse, teenyboppers idolized them for something they weren't doing. And to add insult to injury, Kirshner made more money from their records than they did. They each got a 1.5% royalty, but Kirshner go 15%! They had their pride, after all.

Trouble had been brewing for some time between Kirshner and the group, particularly Mike Nesmith, who wasn't even allowed to play guitar on the songs he wrote. That was Kirshner's studio policy, The Monkees just sang vocals while studio musicians played on the tracks. But what the hell, Kirshner reasoned, he was getting results--hits--and that was his job. So what if Nesmith had to stand by and watch Glen Campbell put the guitar licks on his own song, "Mary Mary"? This was the only way management could be sure it was right. The bottom line was what counted, after all. Nesmith, a genuinely creative individual, just stewed.

"Essentially, the big collision I had with Don Kirshner was this," said Nesmith; "he kept saying, 'You can't make the music; it would be no good, it won't be a hit.' And I was saying, 'Hey, the music isn't a hit because somebody wonderful is making it, the music is a hit because of the television show. So, at least let us put out music that is closer to our personas, closer to who we are artistically, so that we don't have to walk around and have people throwing eggs at us,' which they were."

Eventually the feud came to a showdown in early '67 at Kirshner's suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Kirshner had just handed the four Monkees some new demos (including "Sugar, Sugar," a bubblegum hit later for Kirshner's Archies) that they would be putting vocals on. Nesmith stepped forward and demanded that musical control be given to The Monkees. When Kirshner refused, Nesmith angrily smashed his fist through the wall, declaring, "That could have been your face!" Then The Monkees went off to record some original material without Kirshner's approval.

What happened next is a little unclear. While The Monkees were working out their own songs, Kirshner appears to have approached Davy Jones, one of the members of the group, and talking him into going into the studio without the rest of The Monkees. Jones put the vocals on several tunes, one of which was "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You." But The Monkees weren't doing the backing vocals. Who was it? Eric Lefcowitz, author of The Monkees Tale, speculates "Kirshner was quoted once as saying that Neil Diamond and Carole King had sung back-up vocals on some Monkees songs, and I think that if you listen closely to 'A Little Bit Me,' you can hear them. It sounds like Neil Diamond to me." And why would Jones record without the rest of the group? "I don't know, of course," Lefcowitz says, "but Davy Jones hadn't ever had the chance to sing lead before. This was his session. Maybe that had something to do with it."

Maybe, maybe not. The important thing is that in a power play, Kirshner recorded and released "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" without even telling The Monkees he was doing it! That was the last straw. Monkees' producers Bob Rafelson and Bart Schneider wanted hits, but they weren't going to put up with that from anyone. They fired Kirshner, and yanked the single out of American record stores. Then they re-released it with a Monkees original--Nesmith's "The Girl I Knew Somewhere"--on the B side. Finally The Monkees could smile. They were out from under Kirshner... and a song they'd actually played on made the Top 40--"The Girl I Knew Somewhere" reached #39 on the charts.

(The title of this post refers to the bottom section of the post. I'm sure you'll agree that it is stupidity in action)

There are rumors of another big snowstorm on the horizon. No one is saying how big or what portion of it is hysteria, but the current Wolfram|Alpha prediction for Manassas is snow all day Monday and Tuesday (Feb. 22nd and 23rd). I still haven't dug my car out of the snow from Feb. 6th and 9th.

We got another fish for our one-fish bowl this weekend. He is a red Betta named Monte. I took several pictures, but none are any good. I'll get one eventually. Aquarium photography is nearly impossible.

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Steve (my friend) and I were watching this video last night, and it made Stephen (my son) so happy for some reason. He had a big huge smile while he rocked his head and pulled on some guitar strings. It was quite adorable.

The Morning Benders - Excuses

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I have already showed the following link to most everyone I know, but I'm posting it here anyway so I can lay it to rest.

Q: Who polices the police?

A: Police police police police.

The first two words mean "those who police the police." It's like "fashion police" or "fun police" but it's police for the police. The third word is the verb. The last word is the initial "police" that need policing. It could also be

A: The police police are the ones who police the police

But that's not as cool (I don't know if "cool" is the right word here, heh).

Another more extreme example is this:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

The above is a grammatically correct sentence because the word "buffalo" is a) a city b) a transitive verb meaning to bully or intimidate, and c) an animal (both singular and plural). One translation is "[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo."

Or "Bison from Buffalo, New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community."

Steve and I were trying to think of another one last night. If "orange" was a verb (meaning "to color something orange" maybe?) you could do something interesting.

Orange's orange oranges orange Orange's oranges.

Or "Orange-colored oranges from Orange county paint Orange county's [other] oranges an orange color."

Oh well, that's a fake one, but that's the best we could do. The wikipedia article says the same type of construction can be made with the words dice, fish, right and smelt.

My site is getting a lot of Valentine's Day-related hits recently. I'm not complaining. Here are some google searches that have brought people to my site:

• valentine sippy cups
• valentine blog
• valentine widget for wordpress
• valentine's gift ideas
• music for valentine's day
• useless valentine facts
• valentine font

I have also found out about other people with my name. Other Evan Valentines in this world include:

• A highschool athlete who plays tennis and football
• A [female] pornstar (I use the term "star" very loosely lightly here)
• A standup comedian

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Who would have ever thought that someone crying at the end of a movie could be so funny and adorable? Parker Stech thought so, and he went where no man has gone before. His wife cries at the end of virtually every movie they watch, and he records interviews with her while she's crying and posts it on YouTube. Just go to cryingwife.com and click "videos" to see for yourself. Some of the movies are sad and deserving of crying, but some of them are not in that realm at all, such as Back to the Future. Hilarious.

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I have been discussing with a friend of mine about SEO optimization (at great length). There are different ways to essentially 'game the system' and increase your page rank on google. The fact of the matter is that my URL has no keywords at all and that makes it difficult for me. I have taken some steps towards trying to create backlinks and I have renamed my blog. At first I thought about trying to corner the market on "professional photographers in the DC area," but upon further research it seemed that those were hard keywords to advance my page, so I settled on something to do with "stay at home dads." I renamed my blog "Evan Valentine, The Stay-at-Home Dad" to try to get some more search results. It has worked a few times so far. I am doing research into hosting the same blog via multiple URLs. More on that later.

I have made a few recent posts in a shameless attempt to figure out search engines. First I made my "Kurt Warner Retires" post. I made this post 2 hours before the news was officially announced in an attempt to get a jump on the competition. It did not work. Then I made my "WordPress Plugins Used On This Blog" post in an attempt to get some visits from nerds trying to do research on how to gain an advantage on their blog. That also has proved unfruitful. Running a blog seems like a full time job, and it is a constant learning experience.

The funny thing is that my recent post with pictures of the snow behind my house has gotten way more hits than any of my other posts, because of people searching "snow" and my city.

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Growing up in a place that had no winter weather, there were a few things I had to get used to when I moved here. I had never shoveled snow or owned an ice scraper (a credit card/student ID always worked fine in the unlikely event that there was any ice in the morning). Another thing I didn't expect was that chap stick is a near-must when the weather is cold and dry for a prolonged period. I had never used chap stick, and now I have a near obsession with it four months out of the year. Luckily I have like five sticks in my drawer. Another weird thing that you don't think about: I never needed windshield washer fluid in Georgia. Wiping down your windows every other time you filled gas was quite enough. But when you get hit with splashback from a brown puddle of melted snow mixed with salt and sand, it's over. You absolutely need that instant windshield wash.

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Ever wanted to be an investigative reporter? Let Charlie Brooker show you how.

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A story about Nintendo from 1988. Part of the humor is seeing a very young Bill O'Reilly on Inside Edition from back in the day (back in the WE'LL DO IT LIVE! days). The other part that is interesting is how unbelievable it now seems that adults had never heard of Nintendo--and this is within my lifetime. Asking people if they had ever heard of Nintendo, they respond with "No, who is he?"

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Two songs that make me happy every time I hear them:

1. Bruddah Iz - Henehene Kou ' Aka
2. Gui Boratto - Beautiful Life - Great vocals come in just after the three minute mark.

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I have a strange view of myself (don't we all?). Unfortunately, I assume everyone doesn't understand me and automatically thinks I'm an asshole, and that sort of leads me to fulfill that role, even though it is self-imposed. I also assume everyone thinks the music I like/make is weird and I am being judged because of it, when in reality that's not true at all. I usually don't speak much when meeting new people. I never talk about my music with people (if you want to see someone in an extremely uncomfortable state, just play one of my songs in front of me. I can't even begin to describe how horrible it is). Some people immediately think I'm cool because of that (silence is often mistaken for wisdom) and some people immediately think I hate them because of that. I think my friend Adam said it best. Some people are focused on what they think of other people (that's me), and some people are focused on what others think of them. Neither is healthy, though I think someone like me is much less likely to get their feelings hurt.

In the end, I know that what I think doesn't really matter, but I am not good at relating that. I realize that it's just one person's opinion, but I can come across like my opinion is the only one that matters.

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Here is an article about a Japanese DVD that supposedly helps you maintain eye contact when talking to women. It has all different types/ages of women, some with lots of cleavage showing, and you are supposed to maintain eye contact with them for the duration of the video clips. So odd... Japanese people apparently think they can solve all problems, both big and small, with technology.

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Speaking of weird things in Asia, check this out. This fish is called a Human-faced Carp (warning, this video is a bit loud), and now you'll know why. Some of the YouTube comments say this video is a joke/hoax. Real or not, it freaked me out more than I'd like to admit.

Travelers Insurance chooses good music for their commercials. First it was Trouble by Ray LaMontagne, and now Worries by Langhorne Slim.

Another Travelers commercial, this one, also has a great song that was specifically composed for the commercial and consequently can not be heard anywhere else. It really sounds like the "hot jazz" playing of virtuoso violinist Stéphane Grappelli (though it is clearly not, because Grappelli has passed). More information about this style can be found in my article about Django Reinhardt.

The 40th anniversary of Sesame Street was so widely publicized that it was impossible to go anywhere without hearing about it. Google even changed their logo for a whole week leading up to the anniversary date. Apparently the staff celebrated the anniversary with a custom cake from Carlo's Bakery of Cake Boss fame. The episode featured no other cakes (they typically feature 2 or 3 custom cakes per episode) as it was an extremely large cake. For inspiration, the staff of Carlo's Bakery visited the Sesame Street set, complete with active puppets. Then they delivered the cake with the entire staff present: watch here.

I have watched a fair amount of Sesame Street in the past four months, and as an adult, I certainly have a different perspective. I can't help but notice how expertly the puppets are manipulated. They are extremely lifelike and I wonder every day how they do it. These are excellent puppeteers to say the least. Sometimes it seems that it would take more than two people to run one of these puppets, especially when there are facial expressions and arm movement involved (for instance, Elmo squishes up his face and goes cross-eyed when he is about to sneeze). Murray is a large orange puppet that goes out on the streets and performs human-like tasks, like playing a real drum set or breaking a board with a karate chop. When Buddy and his crew visited the set of Sesame Street, I was hoping for some "behind the scenes" footage of the puppets being operated, but there was none. Searching around on the internet did not reveal much, but here is a pretty good one:

I really couldn't find much more footage than that. There is some behind the scenes footage of the Kobe Bryant sketch, which I just recently saw, but it's of a different nature. More like getting a chance to interview Kobe Bryant, and they didn't care about the Sesame Street aspect of it.

Also, here is a funny parody called Preschool Musical.

I'm going to nerd out here for a second. Bear with me.

I built a new computer over an 18month period. That alone is a long story. It was meant to be a gift to my brother but I failed over and over to get this thing to boot. Anyhow, I instead bought my brother a camera and this is now my computer. I got it working maybe six months ago. It's a new computer. It's nice. I can actually use Lightroom as it was meant to be used. Blah blah. I've never been one for flashy new computers; I always just wish my old one would have kept working. Anyway, it took me way too long to realize that this new computer can't record audio worth a damn. Lots of noise.. it seems to add a frequency in all the recordings, like a low-to-mid hum. I believe everything that has been recorded onto this computer in the last six months is useless. It's all I can hear when I listen now.

As a workaround, I purchased a USB interface cable, which has audio hookups on one end (that go into my mixer) and a USB plug on the other end (which goes into my PC). Ain't USB grand? I can barely remember what we did without them.

So I had difficulty getting everything to work right, BUT... I think it's going to work. Not only that, I think it's going to work really well. While I was trying to get everything set up properly (pacing around, muttering curse words, running wires, reading related message boards--all in between feeding and changing the baby), I left my Dave Smith Evolver plugged into my computer. That way, if anything started to work while I was messing with settings, I would know instantly because I would be able to hear my synthesizer coming through.

Dave Smith is a pioneer. Among other things, he was the main engineer of the Prophet-5 (and its more recognizable brother, the Prophet-10... early Van Halen, anyone?) and the originator of the MIDI interface (maybe the most important music technology invention to date). He has worked for several companies, but eventually went on to form Dave Smith Instruments.

I have owned a desktop version of the Dave Smith Evolver (Serial 00694) for maybe six years and I am very happy with it. It certainly doesn't look like four hundred dollars (I paid that for a used one actually), but it sounds like it. It is an analog-digital hybrid, sort of the best of both worlds. You really can't make the analog filter on this thing sound bad even if you try. Of course it has its disadvantages: it is hard to program, it can only input monophonic MIDI signals, and only one setting can be altered at once. Basically it's not good for live performances. I think the layout of it is nice and I can cook up a sound/sequence pretty quickly on it. Here is about three minutes of what I recorded last night. It takes a little while to fade in, so don't turn up your speakers.

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It's time for Evan to pass the hat. Steve and I need money to get our album mastered. We get a surprisingly good response to this old album when we give it out, so we thought we'd set up a system for donations. If you click "download" on the link below, it will bring up a Paypal payment screen. If you have a Paypal account, it couldn't be easier to donate seven dollars. If you do not have a Paypal account, it is still easy to purchase/download the album with a secure credit card payment. We have it set up for a minimum of $7, in case our relatives wanted to give us more as a Christmas present or something. You can stream all the tracks for free below, or visit the actual site on which it is hosted. It is an easy, convenient system. Anyway, throw us a bone! $7 for the album means a) less than 34 cents per track and b) less than ten cents per minute of audio. Also, if you like it, you can click the "share" link below and post a link to it on your Facebook/Twitter/Livejournal/What have you. Thanks in advance.

This is a set of self-produced home recordings. All 21 songs run together seamlessly to create the feeling that the listener is hearing a jam session. This album will never be released as-is except through bandcamp.com. Proceeds from downloads of "innovation avenue" will go towards the mastering of our next album, for which we will be seeking representation from record labels.

CREDITS:
Released 19 July 2009
All songs composed, arranged, performed, recorded, and produced by Evan Valentine and Steve Bower
Cover art by J. Adam Morris
Hosted by bandcamp.com
©All rights reserved

I mentioned some time ago that a lot of my music is hosted on archive.org, and that I would get to the details later. Well, later is now. Or.. now is later. I'm confused.

Netlabels release material under Creative Commons licenses. This means that the author can determine how his music (or video, or book) is licensed. Typically it is released as "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative" which means you are free to share the music--spread it far and wide as long as you give the author credit and do not use it for commercial purposes. This means that people can take my songs and burn 100 copies to CD if they like, as long as they do not sell the CDs for profit or use them for commercial gain (use them as the soundtrack to a film, for instance). In the unlikely event that someone 'stole' my songs for commercial use, I could sue and it would be upheld in court, even though I have not pursued an actual copyright. Not to mention, I have the source material for all my songs and could prove that I composed them.

I followed the custom of releasing material as albums, though they are not actual albums. I will list them here in chronological order, with a bit of explanation. All the following music is non-dance electronic music. The whole genre is really esoteric and not for everyone. Although I started making music in 1996, all of this "released" material is from 2001 and beyond (there's good reason for that).

Ekiv EP - several short, intense tracks from my first year living with Jaime in Athens. Most of the percussion sounds on here were sampled by me (smash two things together and call it a snare drum)

Fish Food EP - more laid back, more lush sounds

Safety Glass EP - back to rough, harsh sounds. I think this is my best release

Sinister Device LP - full-length (about 50minute) release that has over 15,000 downloads. "The public's" favorite release of mine. Lots of help from friends on this one.

Millions Never Tried EP (with e-sin) - cooperative album with a friend of mine. The latest (and most mature) of my releases. I love the first two tracks, along with "Seren." (The link below plays the songs out of order, so scratch that previous statement)

Plus there are several more songs (of different types) on my personal music page, and several "leaked" tracks on different file-sharing networks.

Just heard an interview of Ralph Stanley conducted by some pretentious NPR host. He's now 82 years old and has been making music for 63 years. He got a lot of attention when the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack was doing well. He had the only good songs on an otherwise not-so-good soundtrack.

He characterizes his style as Old-Time Mountain Music as opposed to Bluegrass. I think he falls somewhere between the two.

Bluegrass, which can be enjoyed in small doses by most people in the US, is a pop version of many forms of American Roots Music. Bluegrass mostly came about because banjo players all around the country started to copy the stylings of Earl Scruggs, and a uniform style of playing the banjo was born. Before recorded music was widely spread, American Roots Music was regional.

Although American Roots Music had a different sound all over the country, the style most commonly associated is that of Appalachian Music. Musicians out of the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Roscoe Holcomb (example 1|example 2|example 3) is a good example of Old-Time Mountain Music, as well as Clarence 'Tom' Ashley (example 1|example 2|example 3)

One of my favorite sites for a while now is archive.org (about). They focus on hosting public domain or creative commons media. A certain percentage of the archives is old material that has seen its copyright expire, while the other part of the collection was intended for public use from its conception (stock video, home videos). Among other things, this means that you can use this material in your own works without fear of being sued for copyright infringement. This is one of the reasons why classical and baroque music is used so much in television, movies and advertising: the composers are long dead and gone so there is no hassle with contacting the owner of the copyright, paying royalties, paying lawyer fees, etc.

Examples:

• If you click this, you can download (or just stream) 298 individual episodes of the old-time radio detective series Dragnet (1949-1955)
• This is a hilarious video (everything from 1990 is hilarious) about the release of Windows 3.0 and how it related to competing products at the time.
• 1949: Care of the Skin by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. This ten-minute video covers the basics for teen cleanliness such as "the proper way to wash" and "the correct use of soap."
• Thomas Edison's oldest known voice recording is on this page, a recording of the inventor himself from 1888.
• Here is an opensource .pdf file of all the Beatles songs in sheet music format. 292 pages worth, free for download.
• On this page, you can watch someone beat Super Metroid for the SNES in 1:05 while collecting 100% of all items. I'm not sure why you would do that, but you could. You could even download high quality DivX versions of the videos and burn them to DVD.
• Searching my birthday, I found "Secret White House Recordings" of Lyndon B. Johnson from May 4, 1966

All of the material is downloadable, and all of it contains copyright information right there on the page. Some of it is free for use (no rights reserved), some of it is posted under "some rights reserved." Theoretically, all of our current entertainment will someday lose its copyright (although the lawmakers keep extending it, as much as 100 years now). One day, someone could use clips from E.T. in a film and not have to pay royalties.

(Another reason I like archive.org is they host a bunch of my music, but I'll get to that later)

I installed a lot of WordPress plugins this weekend, and am sorting through several more. For starters, if I link to a Wikipedia Article or a YouTube Video, the information can be brought up simply by hovering over the icon next to the links. Sleek. Modern.

Jaime and I have both been sick all weekend, but we did at least sell her old Honda. Back down to two cars. Mine needs some work, but not nearly the $2000 we got for the Honda. It doesn't seem like Stephen is sick, although he has a runny nose twice a day.

Just playing around with links and stuff, I was trying to find a picture of my guitar, but I can't find one that looks exactly right. Maybe mine is just more beat up than most of the pictures I found. The sunburst is far more subtle on mine.

Also, let's see what happens when I link to a picture off of Jaime's Flickr.

Okay, I'll stop now.

ps--Started a new song yesterday morning. A clip:

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John Hurt was born in Avalon, Mississippi in 1892 or 1893 (depending on what source is cited). He had 8 brothers and 2 sisters, and never finished the fourth grade. He never learned to drive a car and lived without electricity most of his life. He learned to play guitar at age 9, during the height of ragtime. The syncopation in ragtime forced him to learn a picking style different than the blues players that were born after him.

A race label, Okeh Records, agreed to record John Hurt in 1928 (they recorded and promoted him under the name Mississippi John Hurt). Starting his music career in his mid-30's, he traveled to Memphis and recorded a few songs. During his last session in late 1928, John recorded a song he had just written called "Avalon Blues," which was a tribute to his home town. Okeh would end up only releasing a few 78s of Mississippi John Hurt. They did not sell well at all, and Okeh went out of business entirely. John continued to play guitar for parties and dances until he sold his last guitar sometime around 1950. He continued farming as he had done all his life.

By the mid 50's, the study of guitar and guitar techniques was becoming more mainstream. At the time, the university of California, Berkeley, had a collection of some of the best young guitarists in the world, many of whom were trading old 78rpm records with each other, trying to learn old blues techniques. Several of the students were enamored with Mississippi John Hurt's complex fingering style and timid voice. A few of them showed one of Mississippi John Hurt's old 78rpm sides to the head of the classical guitar department at Berkeley. Listening for a minute, the professor sort of shrugged and said something to the effect of "eh, pretty good, I guess. Who's the second guitarist?" There was, of course, no second guitarist.

This story (more than likely based in legend and not in fact) made Mississippi John Hurt an instant legend among young guitarists, who assumed he was long dead and gone. Years later, a couple of young fans decided to go to Avalon, Mississippi on a gamble. John Hurt had released a song about Avalon being his hometown in 1928. Maybe he had returned there after his failed music career.

After arriving in Avalon and asking around town, they located John Hurt--on a tractor, plowing a field. It was 1962. John was in his late 60's and said he had not played guitar in many years. One of the young men pulled out a guitar, tuned it, and handed it to John Hurt. Within a minute, it was proven that his musical skills were still intact.

Mississippi John Hurt lived out the last three years of his life making up for the music career he never had. 1962 was the beginning of the folk revival (the year of Bob Dylan's first album, for example), and things could not have come at a better time for John Hurt. The Lovin' Spoonful got their band name from a song of his called "Coffee Blues." People who knew him in the 60's said he was as gentle as his music--a perfect example for all.

Many people have tried to master John Hurt's seemingly effortless fingerpicking style, but no one has even come close, in my opinion. To the novice, all of his songs sound like simple little diddies. I admit, I didn't think much of his playing when I first heard him six years ago. It all sounds simple but then you pick up the guitar and you can't even play the intro. His ability to play a syncopated melody on top of picking chords is unparalleled (not to mention that he sings on top of it. I can't even begin to imagine.)

Every guitarist looks to someone as the best of all time, and that mostly has to do with what style of music you like. My vote goes for John Hurt. This style is called Piedmont Blues (or Country Blues) and it hearkens back to the late 19th century/early 20th century, before the time of recorded music.

Here he is playing a traditional hymn on Rainbow Quest in the mid-60's. Look how gnarled and mangled his fingers are. You can tell he didn't lead a charmed life. At first it sounds like a nice simple tune, but then it starts to set in that it really sounds like two guitars going at once. Keep in mind this is less than a year before his death, and he doesn't miss a beat.

Mississippi John Hurt - You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley

Rev. Gary Davis - Oh Glory, How Happy I Am

This is from Pete Seeger's show Rainbow Quest in the mid-60's. Rev. Gary Davis (yes, he was actually ordained as a Baptist minister. Before he became a Reverend, he went by Blind Gary Davis) makes me feel good about the world. His performances have so much warmth and emotion that I can't help but be drawn to him. This is the old-world fingerpicking style where you only use two fingers on your picking hand. It is very versatile and can lead to multi-voice guitar, much like this video. This song has an incredibly difficult guitar part, especially at the five minute mark where he does the melody on top of it. Pete Seeger is the one playing banjo at the table... Donovan and Shawn Phillips are in the background looking awkward and uncomfortable.

When discussing the "most famous movie scene ever," several famous scenes come to mind: the opening scene of Alien, the last scene in Planet of the Apes, HAL disobeying Dave, the T-Rex chasing Jeff Goldblum and company, and Moses parting the Red Sea in 1956's The Ten Commandments. There is one scene, however, that has been remade hundreds of times on film: the brutal shower scene in Psycho. This scene is referenced in everything from mocking comedy films to children's cartoons. The music is instantly recognizable (and often imitated) and still makes me uncomfortable just hearing it. Here are some facts about the famous shower scene, lifted from the pages of my Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: 4Ply Edition (©1988, 1989, 1990, 1991).

• There are approximately 65 edits in this 45 second scene.
• Although there's practically no graphic violence in the scene, it has literally scared some people out of taking showers--including Janet Leigh (the actress portraying the protagonist who is stabbed to death in the scene), who says in her autobiography that she refuses to take them anymore.
• Alfred Hitchcock later claimed he made the film as a joke.
• It took seven days to shoot the 45 second scene.
• The blood washing down the drain was actually chocolate sauce.
• Only one shot in the entire shower scene montage shows a knife entering the body and no blood is seen in that shot.
• Some shots use as little as eight frames of film (at 24fps, that's only 1/3 of a second).
• Anthony Perkins (as Norman Bates) did not actually act in the scene. He was on Broadway at the time of the shooting, starring in a play; a stand-in filled in as "Mom."
• Mixed-up priorities: According to Hitchcock, studio executives were more concerned about having a toilet flushing onscreen than they were about the implicit violence.
• Janet Leigh refused to let her daughter (actress Jamie Lee Curtis) watch the movie as a child when it appeared on TV.
• Hitchcock got the movie past censors by first submitting a script with many more horrible scenes, knowing that by allowing them to be cut he would get more leverage on the others (a tactic often used today).

Janet Leigh on the Shower Scene:

"What I was to wear in the shower scene gave the wardrove supervisor migraines. I had to appear nude, without being nude. She and I pored over striptease magazines, hoping one of their costumes would be the answer.... There was an impressive display of pinwheels, feathers, sequins, etc., but nothing suitable for our needs. Finally, the supervisor came up with a simple solution: flesh-colored moleskin.... So each morning for seven shooting days and seventy-one setups, we covered my private parts, and we were in business.

"For sundry reasons, we had to do [the scene] over and over. At long last a take was near completion without a mishap. Abruptly I felt something strange happening around my breasts. The steam from the hot water had melted the adhesive on the moleskin, and I sensed the napped cotton fabric peeling away from my skin. What do to?...I opted for immodesty...and made the correct judgment. That was the printed take."

(By the way, I highly recommend the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series for articles and facts about anything and everything).