Total Pageviews

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Hammond M3 repair and connect to Leslie 130 project






I have been working on this for a few months now. I wanted to share some of what I have been up to at home. I purchased this Hammond M3 many years ago at the Stanwood Lincoln Hill Senior Center thrift store. I used it for several years but when we moved into our current house I put it away and didn't use it. A few years went by and when I pulled it back out it had stopped working. Recently I decided it was time to get it going again. I studied up on the tone-wheel feature of this organ and realized the problem was probably one of lubrication to the tone wheel. Lucky for me the original owner kept a can of Hammond oil inside the organ. This didn't do the trick to I resorted to good old WD40 and after several hours of work she started back up again.


I then turned my attention to an old Leslie 130 speaker I ran across at a yard sale. The guy was a bass player and had hauled the thing all the way from across the Sound only to get it home and not be able to get the thing going. He gave it to me for free along with the control center and cords. I started doing online research and realized it has a built in amp (50 watt). This would make it much easier to hook up to the M3. I joined an organ enthusiast board online and was guided by some old timers on there. After 3 weeks of frustration I finally had a break through tonight. I forced my family and dogs to come out and check it out. They were not as excited as I was to hear that thing finally working after who knows how many years. Video to come....

Hello December 2010!


I have decided to start blogging again. December 2010 and I am about to start an online record label called "Strange World Records". The first release will be in January 2011. I have not firmed up all of the bands to be featured yet but stay tuned to this blog for information.


Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Blog is back

Hello,

This is my first posting in about 6 months.

Got some new pics.....

IMG_0086Boat and House

nw trek 032Elk at NW Trek

Looking forward to getting out in the boat this spring. Getting sick of the rain. I might have to move to Arizona or somthing. Can't take the dark and rain anymore. Maybe next year I will do some seasonal work down south to get away from it all.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

VALIS LIVE NOVEMBER 29th 2006

Sucking the 70's vol. 2 compilation out now on small stone!!!



Sucking the 70's vol. 2 compilation out now on small stone!!!


sucking the seventies vol. 2 is out now on small stone records. it features some kick ass heavy rock bands doing songs from the seventies. we do an obscure RUSH song. check it out!!!!

Sucking The 70's, Back In The Saddle Again is AVAILABLE NOW. This is a very limited edition. Don't expect it to be on the shelves of a store near you. Get one now or regret it later. Just click the AVAILABLE NOW link above to go to the SECURE Small Stone Records online store, tell us you came from MySpace!



Disc 1:

1. Sasquatch "Are You Ready"
2. Puny Human "Crazy Horses"
3. Clutch & Five Horse Johnson "Red Hot Mama"
4. Dixie Witch "Rock Candy"
5. The Brought Low "Don't Lie To Me"
6. Novadriver "Sin City"
7. Colour Haze "One Way Or Another"
8. Alabama Thunderpussy "Man On The Silver Mountain"
9. Dozer "Mongoloid"
10. Acid King "The Stake"
11. Halfway To Gone "Honky Cat"
12. Antler "Those Shoes"
13. Brad Davis "Outlaw Man"
14. Gideon Smith & The Dixie Damned "Season Of The Witch"
15. Whitey Morgan and The Waycross Georgia Farmboys "Running With The Devil"

Disc 2:

1. Throttlerod "I Just Wanna Make Love To You"
2. Red Giant "Saturday Night Special"
3. A Thousand Knives Of Fire "Bonie Maronie"
4. The Glasspack "Rock n Roll Singer"
5. Roadsaw "When The Levee Breaks"
6. Greatdayforup "Super Stupid"
7. Fireball Ministry "Turn to Stone"
8. Los Natas "Born To Be Wild"
9. Scott Reeder "Two Of Us"
10. Orange Goblin "New Rose"
11. Mos Generator "Garden Road"
12. Honky "Snortin' Whiskey"
13. The Muggs "I Don't Need No Doctor"
14. Amplified Heat "Neighbor, Neighbor"
15. RPG "Parchment Farm"
16. Valis "Dreamweaver"


7:00 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Friday, August 04, 2006

Arthur Lee Dead

One of the all time rock heros..........

Arthur Lee, the talented and oft-troubled singer and guitarist for the influential '60s-era band Love, died in a Memphis hospital after a lengthy battle with leukemia, according to his manager. He was 61.

"It was a complete surprise to me.


He's had leukemia for the past few months, but he was coming along until this past weekend, when he just crashed," Mark Linn, Lee's manager, told MTV News. "He passed away at around 4 p.m. [on Thursday], with his wife Diane by his side. Arthur had the uncanny ability to bounce back from everything, and leukemia was no exception. He was confident that he would be back onstage by the fall."

Lee, a native of Memphis, moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to work as a session musician and songwriter: One of his earliest compositions, "My Diary," was recorded by R&B chanteuse Rosa Lee Brooks, and the sessions featured a young Jimi Hendrix on electric guitar (Lee and Hendrix would later collaborate again, with one song called "The Everlasting First" appearing on Love's 1970 album False Start, and another called "Girl on Fire" emerging on a 1994 single). Lee formed a surf-tinged instrumental outfit called the LAGS, but in 1965, influenced by bands on the burgeoning L.A. rock scene, such as the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas and Buffalo Springfield, he decided to form Love, which was originally called the Grass Roots but the name was already taken.

Love would begin playing in hip L.A. clubs, and their heady mix of folk, psychedelia and proto-punk earned them a cult following and a contract with Elektra Records (which until that point was primarily a folk label). They released their self-titled debut in 1966, scoring a minor radio hit with their punked-up cover of Burt Bacharach's "My Little Red Book." The following year brought the more ambitious Da Capo, which includes a 19-minute jam called "Revelation" that spans the album's entire second side.

By the time Love released their third album, Forever Changes, in 1968, they were one of the most popular and influential acts in Los Angeles (they used their clout to get their friends the Doors inked to Elektra), but that album would, well, forever change everything.

Lee had earned a reputation as being both an incredibly talented — and increasingly troubled — songwriter and musician, and Forever Changes showed him both at the top of his craft and the bottom of his despair. The album perfectly fuses folk-rock with subtle psychedelic touches, adding horns and strings to the mix to form a sound that's truly Baroque in scope and execution, while Lee's warbly vocals and head-scratching lyrics only hinted at the mental anguish he felt inside (it has since been widely reported that when he was making the record, Lee was sure he was going to die, so he wanted it to serve as his final statement).

Though the album was never a huge commercial hit in the States (the band's odd refusal to tour outside California unquestionably played a role in its limited success), it has since earned its rightful place alongside other psychedelic touchstones of the day, including Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn and the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle. And in the decades following its release, Forever Changes has only grown in stature and influence: Everyone from Robert Plant to Siouxie Sioux to Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Magnum has touted the album's sonic grandeur and psychic frailty, and a Rolling Stone poll cited it as the 40th greatest album of all time.

But Forever Changes would also spell the end of Love as fans knew them. Increasingly paranoid and erratic (and reportedly fueled by drugs), Lee fired all the original members of the band, hired a new group of musicians and continued to release records under the Love name until the early '70s. In 1972, he would release his proper solo debut, Vindicator, and gradually fade from the public's eye.

He performed sporadically over the years, but it wasn't until 1995 that he would surface again, though under much more unfortunate circumstances. He was arrested after breaking into an ex-girlfriend's apartment and trying to burn it to the ground. Soon after, he was arrested again, this time for firing a gun into the air during an argument with a neighbor. These two convictions, coupled with a drug-possession charge he had picked up in the 1980s, ran him afoul of California's "Three Strikes" law, and Lee was sentenced to 8-12 years in a state prison.

The mantra "Free Arthur Lee!" became a staple on message boards and in record stores, and on December 12, 2001, Lee was indeed freed after serving six years of his sentence. Soon after his release, he gathered a new group of musicians and began touring Europe and North America, on one tour playing Forever Changes in its entirety.

Lee was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia this year, and in May, after three rounds of chemotherapy failed, several benefit concerts were held in Britain and the U.S. to help him cover his medical bills. In June, longtime fan Plant headlined a benefit in New York.

Lee released many albums over the years, but there is little question that his greatest work lies on Love's first three albums, songs from which make up the bulk of the 1995 retrospective Love Story.

— James Montgomery, with additional reporting by Jem Aswad

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Art Bell gets Hitched again




As some of you may have heard Art Bell headed to the Philippines and got himself a nice new wife.

We would like to congratulate Mr. Bell.

-Van

Art Bell gets Hitched again

As some of you may have heard Art Bell headed to the Philippines and got himself a nice new wife.

We would like to congratulate Mr. Bell.

-Van

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Hello Everyone

Well folks, I am back to the blog.

I am now working in downtown Seattle at Walt Disney in the Smith Tower. Pretty wacked out. Good job though. The square is crazed.

VALIS show coming up September 22 at the Comet Tavern in Seattle. We are playing with the Ones and another cool band tba. Our first show in about a year. We are working on songs for our next cd. Working title is "Who wants to live forever" Of corse I have not told the rest of the band that is the working title. Oh well. They will find out when they read this.

Adrian has a very cool new band called All Time High. Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/alltimehighrock

I have a new myspace site with music on it. Check it out at http://www.myspace.com/vanconnermusic

Email me with any questions or comments you crazy mutha fers.