The weirdness of Space Age Pop
This predates surf rock, and it's one of those in-between music genres that's tough to define.
There's this specific genre of music called Space Age Pop, which is sometimes called Bachelor Pad Music. It's difficult to pin down how long this genre lasted before fading into obscurity, but from what I can tell it was from around 1951 to 1961.
What makes Space Age Pop weird is that its sonic palate is wide while still having a very specific flavor to it. It can be anything from orchestral based like Ritual of the Savage by Les Baxter to synthesizer-based like Telstar by the Tornados.
Space Age Pop is absolutely not hard-edged like surf rock is, but at the same time just has such an oddball character to it.
One of the best examples is Skin Diver Suite by Leo Diamond.
This is not your typical pop style music. Not at all. It's not rock-and-roll, but it's definitely daring. And oddly enough it's a style you can listen to for hours. It teeters right on the edge of being annoying but stays just musical enough to be pleasing. This is the only genre of music I know of that's like this.
Skin Diver Suite in particular jumps all over the place with its pieces. It's not something you tap your feet or nod your head to. It's music that fills a lot of space very purposely. Some parts can even bring you to tears in a good way.
Is this "elevator music"? No. It has too much attitude to be that. Space Age Pop is just one of those oddball daring styles that came and went. Very experimental, very cool.
I think the best word to describe Space Age Pop is cinematic. While listening to this, I guarantee you'll hear things that sound like old Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons from the '50s and early '60s, which is of course right when this music was most popular.
I don't even know why this genre is called pop, because it follows no pop formula I've ever heard. But that's what makes it so great.
Rock's dead era of 1959-1964
This is one of rock's stranger eras, and for a time one I dove headfirst into.
If you've ever heard the song American Pie by Don McLean (which is off the album of the same name), that references to The Day The Music Died. And that specific day is February 3, 1959.
What happened on that day? A plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson).
For whatever reason, many considered that tragic crash as a sign that rock'n'roll was dead. Shortly after that, music on the airwaves changed. A lot. Things got softer, calmer, more processed, and sometimes outright campy... at least on the pop side of music. The music industry sincerely believed this whole thing called rock'n'roll was a fad, and that the plane crash was the incident saying loud and clear that the fad was over and it's time to move on.
All this led to this five-year limbo period in rock music from 1959 to 1964. In '64, The Beatles happened and that changed everything. But within the limbo period, things got weird.
Where things got weirdest was surf rock, and this is the style of rock music I got into when I bought a Jazzmaster guitar. Because rock music was so unbelievably dead as far as the music industry was concerned, this made the field wide open for others to step in. In 1961, Let's Go Trippin' by Dick Dale happened. Arguably, the main reason why the song got popular in the first place was because rock was dead.
The gentle touch of rock's dead era
Surf rock is what some believe to be the first heavy metal music because of its sound and attitude. I suppose there is some truth to that with its rebellious nature... sort of.
But then there's the soft stuff like El Paso by Marty Robbins.
Country, Western and Tex-Mex always had a place on the charts in rock's early days. But after February 3, 1959 you saw a lot more of it. El Paso was released October 1959, and it's probably true that had the plane crash not happened, this song would have never gone to the top on the Billboard 100. Yes, this actually was a #1 hit song.
It's songs like this and others similar to it that were soft around the edges dominating the charts from the '59 to '64 dead era.
Yes, there was surf rock and other rock songs that snuck into the charts periodically. But for the most part, the lion's share of music chart space was occupied by soft, "safe" songs.
Truth be told, I do like some of that soft stuff. Surf, not to be confused with beach music, was hard-edged while the Westerns and ballads were on the calm side. And sometimes it's nice to put on a song to relax to.
The middle ground music of rock's dead era is stuff I'm not into at all. Swing dance songs with loud saxophones were somewhat popular. An example of that is Running Bear by Johnny Preston. Can't stand songs like that.
Did rock truly die from '59 to '64?
The best answer to this is yes and no.
As far as the music industry was concerned, yes it was dead. Totally, absolutely, without-a-doubt dead.
As far as music listeners were concerned, no it wasn't, and not by a long shot. Rock was exciting, "dangerous" and fun.
And where musicians were concerned, of course there was this thing called the electric guitar that had become popular just a few years ago. They seemed to be selling very well... and maybe it would stick around for a while?
Oh yes, it would.
Digital modeling vintage '60s Clapton guitar tone
This was an attempt at getting that 1968 Eric Clapton sound which he calls Woman Tone...
...and I got it somewhat. It probably would have been better to try this with my Thinline Tele since it has a pair of humbuckers in it. But I felt like playing my Bullet Tele at the time, so that's what I used.
The sound I was specifically going after is the one Eric Clapton spoke about in a 1968 interview.
The "trick," if you will, to getting the sound aside from technique is also including the stage reverb.
I'll admit I went a little overboard with the reverb I used, but I think it works... sort of.
I'm not trying to be Eric Clapton. I just really dig the sound. Sounds great to my ear.
How to get this sound
This is the effects chain order. It's very simple.
Compressor > Amp Sim > Reverb
The specifics on the Line 6 Spider V 60 amp I use:
- Red Comp (meaning MXR Dyna Comp)
- Brit J-2000 #2 (I don't know what amp this is supposed to emulate)
- Chamber reverb with 48% decay, 69% mix
The other part to getting Woman Tone is purposely turning down the tone control on the guitar as Eric shows in the '68 interview.
This is incidentally why most guitarists can't get Woman Tone out of a Strat, because in a standard wiring setup there is no tone control wired to the bridge-only pickup selection. It's easy enough to wire that in, but without it, no Woman Tone.
Embracing the electric eye
After driving around with a dashcam for a few days, yeah I'm totally hooked on it.
As mentioned recently, I acquired a Garmin DriveAssist 50LMT refurb, which has a built-in dashcam.
To those want the know the main differences between the DriveAssist 50LMT and the DriveAssist 51 LMT-S, there are two. First, the 51 can be updated completely on its own wirelessly whereas the 50 requires a USB connection for updates. Second, the 51 records audio with its dashcam video whereas the 50 is just video only with no audio. I may go ahead and get a 51 model in the future to get that audio feature.
There have already been two instances while driving where I almost got into a bad situation. And the reason I didn't is because I'm an alert driver. But had something bad happened, the dashcam footage would have been invaluable. Even though I've not had this tech for a week, I already consider dashcam something I won't drive without.
Will a front-facing camera be a standard feature in every car at some point?
Maybe, but they probably won't record accidents.
As of May 2018, it's law in America that every new car under 10,000 pounds must have a rearview backup camera. But it's not required by carmakers to have a front-facing camera, such as having one installed in front of the rearview mirror.
Part of what my DriveAssist 50LMT does is driver alerts. If you stray outside your lane, traffic in front of you starts to move from a stop and you don't, you follow too close and so on, you get on-screen and audible alerts for that. And those are legitimate safety features a front-facing camera can provide.
If the NHTSA does say at some point that all cars also must have front-facing cameras, it will only be for safety features. Whether that camera will actually record accidents or not will be totally up to the carmakers themselves.
This pretty much means if you want the best benefit of a dashcam, it will still be required to actually buy one for years to come. It's a good thing they're cheap.
I personally really like the GPS + dashcam combo the Garmin provides. But for those on a budget, there are dashcams for under 25 bucks now. It's totally worth having.
Old music tech that sucks
Certain older music tech is just plain awful. Let's talk about that.
There's the argument that no technology ever truly dies, and yeah I do agree with that sentiment. Everything I'm going to talk about below is being used by someone somewhere right now, but that doesn't mean the tech is good.
And now, on to the suck.
Wah-wah pedal
First up is the Dunlop Crybaby, a.k.a. the wah-wah. It has a factory "installed" glop of lubricant directly under the expression pedal. That's normal. Every new Crybaby and other pedal of this type is made like this, and that's what makes it suck. Not only will that lubricant get worn out quickly, but it will attract all sorts of dirt since it's obviously used on the floor.
If there were an award for most-high-maintenance pedal, the Crybaby would be it. I've owned two of these pedal types in the past. The Crybaby and the VOX V847A. Both were great at first... but then as the lubricant wore out, dirt started collecting on the inside and so on, they just completely wore out in record time.
These types of wah effects use 1960s tech that has barely changed over the years. When they start breaking down (and they will), all you get is a crackly, noisy, nasty and totally unusable effect. Oh, you can try to maintain one, but that's a fool's errand. Re-lube and use dust removal spray all you want, but it will be a total waste of time. All you'll be doing is delaying the inevitable.
Never buy one of these. It sucks.
If you want a wah effect, go digital or get an optical wah such as the Morley CLW. No lubricant to worry about on that one. Simple, very rugged, easy-to-maintain. That's how a pedal effect should be. Whether it's used at home or stage, that thing is built to be used.
Anything that uses a floppy disk
This mainly concentrates on synthesizers of the past be they full keyboards or the rackmount units like the Ensoniq ASR-10 rack configuration.
Floppies, whether 8", 5.25" or 3.5", are all bad. Every one of them. A floppy is the worst possible way to store data. Out of every media format you could possibly use, this is the one where you have the most chance of your data going corrupt and never being able to read it again.
And let's not forget about proprietary data formats. Many of these things wrote data that can only be read on that unit. Standard PC readable files? Ha! Not happening.
Three means of storing data existed with synths for the longest time. Compact cassette a.k.a. tape, floppies and flash memory. The compact cassette was first. For example, a Roland Juno-60 from the '70s could have patches stored and sent back via a tape deck. Floppies came after that, and then finally memory cards.
Tape was too slow and didn't hold that much data. Flash memory cards could barely hold any data, were ridiculously expensive and proprietary. The floppy was, at the time, the best of the 3 formats. It held a good amount of data, it was affordable and it had decent loading speed.
But that doesn't take away the fact that floppies are the worst.
Thankfully, there are those out there making retrofit options to junk the floppy disk drive and replace with a USB interface, many of which are drop-in solutions - if it's 3.5". For the 5.25" and decidedly ancient 8", sorry Charlie, you're out of luck.
Any used electronic drum kit
Take the Alesis Surge kit. Buying one of these new is totally okay.
But never get an electronic drum kit used.
The reason electronic kits used suck is because whether the sensors are still working properly or not is a total crapshoot.
In the way these things are made, each drum is obviously not made "all-or-nothing" style where you could easily detect a bad one if a sensor is failing. If a part of a drum is failing, you won't know that until you actually set the whole thing up first. That's a lot of wasted time and effort just to save a few bucks on something you'll ultimately have to immediately send back - if you can send it back.
If you get a kit like this, buy new. Yes, it will cost more. It's worth it.
Solid-state guitar combo amps from the '90s
I don't like tubes and I do champion modern digital modeling guitar amplifiers. But I also totally admit that solid-state guitar combo amps of the '90s really sucked.
During the '90s, I owned guitar solid-state combo amps by Fender, Marshall, Crate and Peavey. None of them were good. They couldn't project good volume and the speakers were terrible.
The bigger guitar amp heads that connected to cabinets were decent (particularly from Randall,) but where guitar combo amps were concerned, it was sad times for solid-state in the '90s.
If talking about bass and keyboard solid-state amps of the '90s, many of those were actually pretty good. They could project and had great clarity to them. But on the guitar side of things, '90s combo amps are definitely one to skip.
The only good thing I can say about '90s solid-state guitar combo amps is that they could take a good amount of punishment. They may not have been very loud for stage use, but they could take a drop and/or get knocked over and still work fine.
Were there any truly good solid-state guitar combo amps in the '90s? Yes. One of them is the Roland Jazz Chorus 120. It is often said that Roland is "the sound of solid-state" in the best possible way. The JC 120 is definitely a good amp. And very loud.
Multitrack recorders of the '90s
I'll round out this list by also going to the '90s again, this time concentrating on multitrack recorders.
The interesting this about this is that in the '90s, analog and digital multitrack recorders were sold side-by-side. Analog units used compact cassette and digital units used hard disks or Hi8 tapes.
Take the Fostex DMT-8, which had an original starting price of $1,995. And that was considered a great deal for what it offered at the time.
I personally used the Tascam 424 in the '90s. Two of them actually, as I wore the first one out.
Here are the problems with all multitrack recorders of the '90s:
If it's analog, the belts over time get stretched out or dried out and need replacing. The drive mechanisms themselves also simply wear out. Belts can be replaced fairly easily. Drive mech however... not-so easy.
If it's digital, the #1 issue is usually data storage. Specifically, running out of available memory to store recorded data and what to do about it.
The DMT-8 above is a classic example of this. It has an internal 540MB hard disk drive. Can you expand this? No. You must back up your data once that's filled up. How? S/PDIF connection to a DAT recorder. And how long did a full disk backup take? Over 45 minutes.
Another issue with digital recorders of the '90s was the learning curve. The Roland VS-880 is an example of this. RIDICULOUSLY difficult to use, with an interface so complicated it's enough to drive anyone to drink. There are video tutorials posted to YouTube from back in the '90s on how to use this thing, and they're between 90 minutes to TWO HOURS LONG just to show you how to use the VS-880.
Oftentimes, modern is better
I'm not saying everything we have today is perfect. But it's a lot better - and cheaper - compared to what we used to have.