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Roy Brooks

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  1. I reckon the last time I posted here was several years ago. Today somebody mentioned Harmony Central. So I decided to see if it was still here.
  2. I like my early to mid 1970s Aria model 5502 copy of an ES-335 and mid 1970s SG copy.
  3. I have always called them records. I have been buying records since the mid-1970s, around the same time I started playing guitar and getting really into music. Although I bought cassettes for a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s and started buying CDs in 1999 I have always preferred records and never stopped buying records. I buy records in thrift stores, flea markets, and record stores. Right now there are three record stores near me that I visit. CDepot is about three miles away. When I first moved to the DC suburbs in 2007 they mostly sold CDs and DVDs. But for the past three or four years they have been selling mostly records. I mostly buy 1970s jazz and funk records and the occasional hip hop or electronic music record from them. These are mostly used records. Though I occasionally buy new records- usually reissues of 1970s jazz records. But most of my hip hop "albums" are on CDs that I bought from CDepot. Hip hop "albums", especially the "golden era" stuff, seems harder to find around here on record than on CD. When I find the records I buy the records. I have a bunch of hip hop 12" singles and EPs on record and a few hip hop full lengths on records. Joe's Record Paradise is about ten miles or so away. I mostly buy records from them, from their jazz, electronic, hip hop, jazz, and R&B sections. These are mostly used records. In Baltimore is True Vine Records where I go to buy avant garde music, African music, and underground hip hop records. Their stuff is mostly new, though they have a decent selection of used stuff. I only visit True Vine when I have a hundred or more dollars to spend on records. On vacation to Michigan I visit Stormy Records in Dearborn and Flat Black & Circular in Lansing. I specifically look for records on the Underground Resistance and Metroplex labels but also pick up other stuff too like a record by Death that a previous poster mentioned. Right now I am mostly looking for 1970s jazz, funky smooth jazz by cats like Grover Washington Jr and Eric Gale among others, and "golden age" and underground hip hop. I may go to CDepot today to get a couple David Sanborn records. Most of my "classic rock" and psychedelic rock records are on vinyl because I bought them in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some of my new wave and punk stuff is on records. I don't buy many rock records at all now. But I am always on the lookout for Norwegian death metal whenever I can find it. But what I do have of that kind of music is on CD. Most of my blues is on CD. But I have a few dozen blues records on vinyl. At the present time I reckon I have in the neighborhood of 3000 records and maybe 1500 CDs. Most of the records are in the room I am in now, the big room in our finished basement that is basically a den. They are in book cases arranged by genre and sub-genre though I have one book case that is nothing but guitar records I like that cover a bunch of different kinds of music. I have a jazz section, a rock section, a new wave/no wave/punk section, a soundtrack section, an avant garde/weird music section, and a twangy guitar section. In my music room where I keep my guitars, amplifiers, synthesizers, and recording equipment I have most of my CDs and a few hundred of my most important records that I use for study and inspiration. This is where I keep my electronic, hip hop, funk, funky smooth jazz, and free jazz. I have collecting and accumulating tendencies. I am not a neat freak and I can sometimes be somewhat messy. But my records are organized. I am not a hoarder. Occasionally I will sell a bunch of records to avoid a hoarding situation. Though I keep my favorite stuff and essential parts of my "collection". But my record collection is always growing and evolving. Right now hip hop and 1970s jazz and funk is highest on my list of stuff I look for when I go to the record store.
  4. I have the record. I bought it in Detroit. It rules.
  5. You could take a namby pamby approach and pass on it because somebody on the internet said it is "crap" or "junk". Or you could go try it out and see how much you like it. The Harmony H72 is actually one of Harmony's nicer guitars. It is also fairly rare. If you happen to really like it and can't imagine not owning it just buy it. It might be awhile before another one in the same condition comes up for sale.
  6. Here is my dog Hobson chilling on the floor of my music room next to my ValveTrain 205.
  7. GAS for a 1970s Stratocaster is a different thing from GAS for a reissue of a 1970s Stratocaster. If what you really want is an actual 1970s Stratocaster you won't be satisfied with a reissue. A reissue merely just looks like the real thing. You might as well start saving your money. But if you look around hard enough you might be able to find a late 1970s Stratocaster for $1500 or so. A mid-1970s Stratocaster is going to be $2500 or more, especially an all original one. Find one you really like and it will be worth the time to look.
  8. If it were shaped like an electric 12 string I might actually consider getting one. But I have spent most of my guitar-playing life playing everything but Les Pauls and Stratocasters.
  9. Any musician who plays his cards right can get laid as long as he can recognize his victims.
  10. Originally posted by edbud First of all, let me say thanks to Terry for the wonderful story of life on the road. Luckily, I found it just recently and was able to read it in it's entirety without the wait for installments that some had to endure. Great story! Well, some asked earlier for a perspective from an "older rocker" on life on the road, i.e. "life with the groupies", so here goes. Growing up in rural Tennessee during the '60's I have to say that playing in local bands did not fully prepare me for what was to be my first real encounter with groupies on the "road". While I had been playing for many years around the bars in the middle TN area, my first oportunity to join a real functional "road band" didn't come until '74 and that came as a total accident. I had been playing with a group of local musicians who all had asperations of "making it big in the music industry". But then again, who didn't in those days of free love and the hippie(that's me) movement. Woodstock made us all believe that all it took was that one break and we would be as famous as Jimi, Janis, and all the rest. When an old band mate of theirs showed up at one of our shows, unannounced, my radar said "Beware, something's up with this!", but being the impetuous youth that I was, I just chalked it up to the fact that he was wearing an unzipped satin jacket with no t-shirt underneath, showing off his "Florida Road Tan" in November. Should have paid more attention to that radar... To make a long story short, he was there to recruit several of my band mates to start a new band with the intent of touring the south east and making a {censored}-pot full of money while doinking every groupie in 7 southeren states. It seems that he had already been touring with another band who wouldn't let him be the front man, so he quit to form HIS band so that he could run the show so to speak. He had an agent lined up in Atlanta, and the cash to procure a huge PA system. All he needed were the players to back him(He also played guitar) The dreaded meeting took place the next week where our drummer and keyboard player announced that they were leaving to pursue their dreams of living the "road" life. Needless to say, our current band for all intents and purposes was dead and burried. After a few weeks, I got a call from the drummer wanting to know if I would help them put together a PA and help get the sound system dialed in as I had some expertise in this area. They had a sound man, but he was not ready for prime time just yet and would greatly appeciate the help. They had only a short time to get ready for the first "tour" and had sceduled a couple of gigs locally to test the waters and get the act down. Reluctantly, I agreed to help them as much as I could. They really were good guys and why should I be put off by their wanting to leave to go on the road. I guess I was just somewhat envious. I had been going to a tech school to learn about a new thing called microprocessors which had just been getting started by a little company called "Intel"(who knew) and was scheduled to make a trip to Houston the next month to look for work in this field, as Houston was a hotbed for the industry at the time. I agreed to do what I could in the meantime. There really is a groupie story in here somewhere and I'll get to it eventually. Since you played around that part of Tennessee did you ever run into a group of characters called Maggie Lee & The Percussions? Several folks that played in that band back in the late sixties eventually moved to Ft Walton Beach, Florida to play with Nyman Furr in the Little Juice Band. I played with the Little Juice Band in the early eighties. As far as I know Nyman Furr is currently living in Camden, Tennessee.
  11. Originally posted by MrKnobs Never heard of it. Terry D. You ought to look it up.
  12. I wonder if Mr Knobs has gotten around to seeing the movie Creature.
  13. Originally posted by brikus Roy, these seem like cool stories...but they all have an unfinished flavour...like missing details about the action you got, how some things ended up. I'm left with an unfulfilled curiosity... The time I was in Louisiana I simply went back to Ft Walton Beach, Florida, where I was living at the time, when the gig at the Ramada Inn ended. I did not hear from the older lady again. The 17 year old sister of the 13 year old girl wrote to me two or three times and told me her younger sister was married by 14. With the woman in Kentucky, Teretha, I hitchhiked back to the place I was staying and got back to work not much longer after that. Teretha came to other gigs but I didn't go home with her again. Eventually I moved somewhere else and ended up in Charleston, South Carolina. The action I got from the biker chick was just action, nothing spectacular. I got my thing on and went home. One interesting thing I suppose is that later Darlene the biker chick went home a few times with my roommate as I got more involved with my girlfriend Phyllis. I eventually scored with Phyllis multiple times. But it was just sex. I did it with her. Later on I broke up with her. She did not stimulate me intellectually. Lots of encounters with women on the road kind of end unresolved. That is just part of the life. Most knew that when the gig was up I was going somewhere else, probably or most likely another state. And it might be forever if ever before I ever got back to visit. I am married now to a very beautiful chemistry professor. I still gig regularly. But I am no longer concerned with groupies. Every now and then I might see one in the audience who looks pretty good to me but I don't go there. I get what I need at home.
  14. Around the fall of 1998 I was playing with a road band from Kentucky. Before we left on the last trip I played with them we played at a bar in Morehead, Kentucky to raise some gas money to get us to Milwaukee. That night I exchanged addresses and phone numbers with a woman I met there, Teretha. While on the road- we were gone maybe three months or so- I wrote to her once. When we got back to Wayland, Kentucky, where the band was staying at the time, there was a stack of letters from her to me, maybe seven or eight of them. A week or so later she showed up at a honky tonk in Paintsville where we were playing. It was the last night at that club and we didn't have another gig for a few more days. Teretha wanted to take me home with her and said she would bring me home the next day. This was Saturday night. So I rode with her and a few of her friends to her trailer in West Liberty. They let us out. Up until that point I assumed the car was Teretha's since she drove to her trailer. But when we got out of the car one of her friends got behind the wheel and left. It turned out that Teretha did not have a car. She told me that her brother would give me a ride home. I did not have a change of clothes or toiletries. I did not get back to Wayland, a good hour away, until Thursday when I woke up that morning and started hitchhiking. On another road trip we were playing two weeks six nights a week at the Ramada Inn in Hammond, Louisiana. During the course of one of the nights there an older lady, maybe 65 or so, was buying the band drinks all night. At the end of the night she offered to take me out for a steak dinner. I assumed that was all it was, a meal. So we went to a diner and we ate. At this point it was a rather pleasant experience. I was digging the fact that this much older lady was being so nice to me. But then instead of taking me back to the motel she took me to her house where we were met by another older lady with a much younger man. We had a drink. Then the other two people went off to a bedroom. The older lady who took me to her house wanted me to go to bed with her. I had to decline and had her take me back to my room. Also, it was our last night at the Ramada Inn. That night there was a table of six to eight women sitting right next to the side of the stage. They ranged in age from what I assumed was about 21 to maybe 60. At the end of the night all of them came up to the stage to tell us how much they enjoyed us playing. One in particular, a rather cute woman, was talking to me. Since it was two in the morning I suggested that she join me for breakfast. She said that she would rather I join her in the pool. So I went back up to my room and met her in the pool maybe fifteen minutes later. As we were talking there in the pool one of the older ladies who had been sitting at the table came down and sat in a lounge chair right by the pool and kept watching us. It turned out that the woman was this girl's mother. A few minutes later this girl's sister came down and got in the pool. The sister came over to me and told me that her sister, the one I met at the pool, was 13. I then asked her how old she was. She was 17 or 18. I was 23 at the time. So we got out of the pool to go somewhere else to talk. But as we were walking away her 13 year old sister followed us. Another cat in the band, around 30, was right behind us and began trying to make time with the younger sister. I got kind of creeped out and went back to my room. Back in 1983 I was 20 sharing a trailer with the pedal steel player in the country band I was playing with at the time around Ft Walton Beach, Florida. The trailer was in Wynn Haven Beach, maybe fifteen miles away. We were renting the trailer from the owner of the club we were playing at. And I was "seeing" the club owner's daughter, about 19. Though we hadn't had sex yet. She wanted to "wait". Anyway, the band got another gig at the Bowery in Destin. And one of those nights I took my girlfriend Phyllis with me. At the end of a set this biker chick, I'll call her Darlene, came up and gave me directions to her house. Phyllis asked me a little while later who that woman was. I told her that Darlene was somebody I went to school with who was down on vacation. At the end of the night I took Phyllis home, right around the corner from where I lived. In fact I could see Phyllis's bedroom window from my living room. So I waited until I saw Phyllis's light go out. I then got in my car and drove down the street to another trailer park, found the trailer with the motorcycle parked in front of it, and went inside to engage in relations with Darlene. I got back to my trailer around ten in the morning. Within minutes Phyllis was walking through my front door wanting to know where I was when she came by around nine. I told her that I had to get out of the house for awhile and went to sit on the beach and think about her.
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