This Week's Meaningless Topic (#193)(May 15)

[Rodger Pettichord]

Hi all. I was working on my novel yesterday when a plot thingy made me suddenly realize how creative we human beings are. Over the centuries, we have developed so many ways of expressing our thoughts and feelings and dreams. I started making a list of those ways: painting, drawing, music, dance, poetry, prose, sculpture, carving, film, photography, sewing, needlework, and on and on. It's wonderful! And that leads to this week's topic.

 

THIS WEEK'S MEANINGLESS TOPIC:  What creative outlet(s) do you use to sing your personal song?

[adambar]

Great to see a new post Rodger. I'm not going to post anything new until it clears out some.

The Memorial Lounge of course and the loo. When I sing inside I'm told to zip it I can't hear the tv and I dare not go outside the neighbors probably think I'm half nuts now. 😄

[W2DR]

For me it's music. I was keyboard player in a rock band back in the late 50's (piano in those days - just me and Jerry Lee🙂. Everything we did was original. No covers. We cut a couple of '45's (Fostoria Records). One sold well. The other was a bomb.  Both were pressed by Monarch Records in Los Angeles. My copies have been long lost so I contacted Monarch to get something I could post here. But, sadly, they destroy the original masters after 50 years.

But it's not all that bad. Several years ago I heard "our sound". I couldn't sleep for a couple of nights. If I didn't know better I'd swear it was 1959 again. All I could hear and think about were Gerry (lead guitar), Tom (bass guitar), Big Arthur Howard (tenor sax) Gary Todd on the alto sax, and Vince on the drums.

So, here it is. This is as close to "our sound" as anything will ever be. And now it's my "personal song".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJYK9PbqGM0
 

[Rodger Pettichord]

17 minutes ago, W2DR said:

For me it's music. I was keyboard player in a rock band back in the late 50's (piano in those days - just me and Jerry Lee🙂. Everything we did was original. No covers. We cut a couple of '45's (Fostoria Records). One sold well. The other was a bomb.  Both were pressed by Monarch Records in Los Angeles. My copies have been long lost so I contacted Monarch to get something I could post here. But, sadly, they destroy the original masters after 50 years.

But it's not all that bad. Several years ago I heard "our sound". I couldn't sleep for a couple of nights. If I didn't know better I'd swear it was 1959 again. All I could hear and think about were Gerry (lead guitar), Tom (bass guitar), Big Arthur Howard (tenor sax) Gary Todd on the alto sax, and Vince on the drums.

So, here it is. This is as close to "our sound" as anything will ever be. And now it's my "personal song".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJYK9PbqGM0
 

Great memories for you, Doug. And good music for us. Thanks!

[Stillwater]

Search for the game „Hossa international“. Great fun for family and friends!

[gumbypickett]

I just sing 24 bottles of beer on the wall.

After my 23rd I start to lose track a little.

cheers

Gumby

[Stillwater]

8 hours ago, Stillwater said:

Search for the game „Hossa international“. Great fun for family and friends!

Difficult to find, here it is: https://www.milan-spiele.de/hossa-international-p-28619.html?language=en 

[Rodger Pettichord]

17 minutes ago, Stillwater said:

Difficult to find, here it is: https://www.milan-spiele.de/hossa-international-p-28619.html?language=en 

Gerold, I went to the site but couldn't see what the game does. Could you give a brief description? I have a new great granddaughter (6 mo) who may be ready for it in a year or two.

[Rob Abernathy]

Thanks Doug for that link, love it.

For me I play the piano but my real passion is gardening/landscape design.  I can hardly draw a stick figure as an artist, but on the ground I make a special kind of music.

[wain71]

great video Doug.....I don't really have any artistic talents, was always given the triangle at school, certainly can't sing.....envious of people who can do talented stuff, remember @John Heaton posting some of his pictures a while back I think....and I also remember seeing pictures or @Rob Abernathy garden at some point, which was very nice....I can cut the grass okay though at mums house....

[stiletto2]

I am yet another keyboard player who was in a 60s rock band in high school and college.  We played music done by groups like the Animals, Young Rascals, Doors, Spencer Davis Group as well as some rhythm and blues - think Otis Redding, Sam & Dave or T-Bone Walker.  Our focus was just to entertain fellow students at pizza parties and coffee houses.... no originals and no records.  Later on, I was an Adult Choir director at a few churches for a bit as well as co-directed a 40 person adult chorus singing pop music for close to 10 years.  So it would seem that music was my long term passion.  Of course, flying sims and doing scenery development was another passion that developed in the late 80s.  I still tinker with some MSFS freeware small airfield scenes by adding a person or two, a sign or a couple of static GA aircraft here and there.  However, like Rob, I can barely draw a stick figure freehand.

 

Rod     

[Rodger Pettichord]

John York used to be a regular on the forum but age and ailments have pulled him away. He and I stay in correspondence. He has written several quite good novels and is an accomplished painter. He sent photos of some of his paintings and I printed them out. Beautiful!

[flyingleaf]

I like to sing. Pretty much the same songs gumby likes. And my lovely wife tells me I should sing solo. Yeah right, not, she means "solo" that she can't hear me  

[boetie]

I don't know if it counts, but I'm told I have a very dry/sarcastic sense of humor. This is a creative talent in my opinion. If I can't keep someone guessing with my "whit" I've failed. Quite a lame meaningless topic Rodger, lift your game mate.

[wain71]

4 hours ago, boetie said:

I don't know if it counts, but I'm told I have a very dry/sarcastic sense of humor. This is a creative talent in my opinion. If I can't keep someone guessing with my "whit" I've failed. Quite a lame meaningless topic Rodger, lift your game mate.

I regularly get told of for sarcasm...one of my daughters bought me a t-shirt that said 'fluent in sarcasm'..... I am good with the old dad jokes though, makes a lot of people groan, some do laugh, might just be a bit of wind though I suppose...

[W2DR]

On 5/16/2024 at 10:55 AM, stiletto2 said:

I am yet another keyboard player who was in a 60s rock band in high school and college. 

Thanks Rod. Remember when we were younger and our fingers would let us do something like this:

 

 

[Rodger Pettichord]

29 minutes ago, W2DR said:

Thanks Rod. Remember when we were younger and our fingers would let us do something like this:

 

 

 

Doug, you mean you could do this back then? Yowsa!  When I see someone play the piano like this, I stand in absolute awe. How in the world can this be done!!? Thanks for sharing this.

[W2DR]

Well, I could do it back then but I was never as good as she is - or even close. I started piano lessons 69 years ago when I was 12. My teacher was a guy named Howard. He was a bar room piano player who couldn't read music. But what he taught me was priceless. When we first met he told me that he wasn't there to teach me how to read the music. Rather, he was there to teach me how to feel the music. We started with boogie woogie and how right he was. You can't play boogie by reading the music. You can only play it by feeling the music. I haven't  played a lot of piano for almost 20 years now because of an arthritic left hand. About the only thing I do now is Cole Porter  songs, but he's always been my favorite anyway. My all-time favorite song (and movie)is "Misty". But that's another story for another time. I think I posted it somewhere but if you're interested Rodger I'll post it again.

 

[Rodger Pettichord]

5 minutes ago, W2DR said:

Well, I could do it back then but I was never as good as she is - or even close. I started piano lessons 69 years ago when I was 12. My teacher was a guy named Howard. He was a bar room piano player who couldn't read music. But what he taught me was priceless. When we first met he told me that he wasn't there to teach me how to read the music. Rather, he was there to teach me how to feel the music. We started with boogie woogie and how right he was. You can't play boogie by reading the music. You can only play it by feeling the music. I haven't  played a lot of piano for almost 20 years now because of an arthritic left hand. About the only thing I do now is Cole Porter  songs, but he's always been my favorite anyway. My all-time favorite song (and movie)is "Misty". But that's another story for another time. I think I posted it somewhere but if you're interested Rodger I'll post it again.

 

You bet! Please post it again.

[W2DR]

I'm sitting here watching my favorite movie. Play Misty For Me. It's my favorite for two reasons. It was filmed where I grew up, and it's a movie starring Clint Eastwood. This may ramble a bit but let me try to explain (maybe another glass of wine will help).

 

Way back almost 70 years ago I started to learn to play the piano. My teacher was a guy named Howard. He was a bar-room piano player who couldn't read music. He was married to a woman who was a trained concert pianist. What a pair. My mother would take me for lessons to their house in the Carmel Highlands - that's where many of the scenes in Play Misty For Me were filmed. What a place. They had added a music room onto the original house. 12 foot high windows overlooking the ocean below and two back-to-back Steinway 9-foot grand pianos.

 

Howard always told me it's not important to learn to read the music. What's important is to learn to feel the music. And how right he was. After a couple of years of learning to feel the music I found a song I really liked. Something by Erroll Garner called "Misty". I loved that song and played it almost every day. Fast forward 11 years.

 

I was going to college a couple of hours north and came home most weekends. Mainly to see the girls from "the old days". Sometime in 1962 I took my date (I still remember the night Debbie) to a place called the Mission Ranch. A great restaurant with an even better piano bar.

 

After that first night there I returned on many Friday nights to sit at the piano bar and listen to an incredible piano player. Her name was Jackie. And I really envied how she improvised almost any song requested. After many nights there she knew that what I wanted to hear most was Misty. And she played it every time I walked into the bar.  Over the months we got to talking quite between sets. She knew I played. And one night she stood up to take a break, pointed to keyboard and said "Play Misty For Me". And I did.

 

Who could have imagined then that Clint Eastwood would not only make a movie called Play Misty For Me but would also own the Mission Ranch. And the piano bar where I played the title song from the film.

 

[Rodger Pettichord]

On 5/16/2024 at 6:55 AM, Rob Abernathy said:

Thanks Doug for that link, love it.

For me I play the piano but my real passion is gardening/landscape design.  I can hardly draw a stick figure as an artist, but on the ground I make a special kind of music.

When I was living in Japan, I fell in love with the Japanese ability to shape nature into a perfect expression of itself. I remember a Shinto temple set on a steep hill in an evergreen forest, with a long stone-step ascension bordered by shaped bushes, carefully placed moss, flowering bushes, and trickles of water under trees that themselves had been shaped for centuries. It's the most beautiful place I've ever been. Do you have any pictures of your own art?

[Rodger Pettichord]

4 minutes ago, W2DR said:

I'm sitting here watching my favorite movie. Play Misty For Me. It's my favorite for two reasons. It was filmed where I grew up, and it's a movie starring Clint Eastwood. This may ramble a bit but let me try to explain (maybe another glass of wine will help).

 

Way back almost 70 years ago I started to learn to play the piano. My teacher was a guy named Howard. He was a bar-room piano player who couldn't read music. He was married to a woman who was a trained concert pianist. What a pair. My mother would take me for lessons to their house in the Carmel Highlands - that's where many of the scenes in Play Misty For Me were filmed. What a place. They had added a music room onto the original house. 12 foot high windows overlooking the ocean below and two back-to-back Steinway 9-foot grand pianos.

 

Howard always told me it's not important to learn to read the music. What's important is to learn to feel the music. And how right he was. After a couple of years of learning to feel the music I found a song I really liked. Something by Erroll Garner called "Misty". I loved that song and played it almost every day. Fast forward 11 years.

 

I was going to college a couple of hours north and came home most weekends. Mainly to see the girls from "the old days". Sometime in 1962 I took my date (I still remember the night Debbie) to a place called the Mission Ranch. A great restaurant with an even better piano bar.

 

After that first night there I returned on many Friday nights to sit at the piano bar and listen to an incredible piano player. Her name was Jackie. And I really envied how she improvised almost any song requested. After many nights there she knew that what I wanted to hear most was Misty. And she played it every time I walked into the bar.  Over the months we got to talking quite between sets. She knew I played. And one night she stood up to take a break, pointed to keyboard and said "Play Misty For Me". And I did.

 

Who could have imagined then that Clint Eastwood would not only make a movie called Play Misty For Me but would also own the Mission Ranch. And the piano bar where I played the title song from the film.

 

What a memory, Doug.  Talk about the good old days!

[Rob Abernathy]

2 hours ago, Rodger Pettichord said:

When I was living in Japan, I fell in love with the Japanese ability to shape nature into a perfect expression of itself. I remember a Shinto temple set on a steep hill in an evergreen forest, with a long stone-step ascension bordered by shaped bushes, carefully placed moss, flowering bushes, and trickles of water under trees that themselves had been shaped for centuries. It's the most beautiful place I've ever been. Do you have any pictures of your own art?

 

I do have a few good ones Rodger.  I'd also love to see what others have done to their own places to express natures beauty.  Maybe I'll find a few good pictures and start a new thread.

[stiletto2]

9 hours ago, W2DR said:

I'm sitting here watching my favorite movie. Play Misty For Me. It's my favorite for two reasons. It was filmed where I grew up, and it's a movie starring Clint Eastwood. This may ramble a bit but let me try to explain (maybe another glass of wine will help).

 

Way back almost 70 years ago I started to learn to play the piano. My teacher was a guy named Howard. He was a bar-room piano player who couldn't read music. He was married to a woman who was a trained concert pianist. What a pair. My mother would take me for lessons to their house in the Carmel Highlands - that's where many of the scenes in Play Misty For Me were filmed. What a place. They had added a music room onto the original house. 12 foot high windows overlooking the ocean below and two back-to-back Steinway 9-foot grand pianos.

 

Howard always told me it's not important to learn to read the music. What's important is to learn to feel the music. And how right he was. After a couple of years of learning to feel the music I found a song I really liked. Something by Erroll Garner called "Misty". I loved that song and played it almost every day. Fast forward 11 years.

 

I was going to college a couple of hours north and came home most weekends. Mainly to see the girls from "the old days". Sometime in 1962 I took my date (I still remember the night Debbie) to a place called the Mission Ranch. A great restaurant with an even better piano bar.

 

After that first night there I returned on many Friday nights to sit at the piano bar and listen to an incredible piano player. Her name was Jackie. And I really envied how she improvised almost any song requested. After many nights there she knew that what I wanted to hear most was Misty. And she played it every time I walked into the bar.  Over the months we got to talking quite between sets. She knew I played. And one night she stood up to take a break, pointed to keyboard and said "Play Misty For Me". And I did.

 

Who could have imagined then that Clint Eastwood would not only make a movie called Play Misty For Me but would also own the Mission Ranch. And the piano bar where I played the title song from the film.

 

 

Here is an interesting coincidence.  For the longest time, I had a copy of the Misty sheet music (I like to read music and learn different styles of arrangements though I can play by ear) which is also a favorite of mine.  I am wondering if your playing style of Misty is more upbeat and heavily embellished like Erroll Garner's version or slower and more haunting like Johhny Matthis or Ella Fitzgerald sang it. Personally, I played the slower and more haunting version but admire Erroll's style and performance.  

 

Rod

 

 

[Stillwater]

On 5/16/2024 at 7:27 AM, Rodger Pettichord said:

Gerold, I went to the site but couldn't see what the game does. Could you give a brief description? I have a new great granddaughter (6 mo) who may be ready for it in a year or two.

Sure I can help you, Rodger. Thought it took me some days...

The starting person takes 2 cards from the stock, cards all contain one keyword and a category name. Examples could be "Mama / mother" or "name a famous road". He/she decides between the two, returns one under the stock and  puts the other open on the table. Then, clockwise, the players have to find a song either containing the keyword or the category. You´d get points for naming a matching song, more for knowing some part of the text with the respective word, even more for singing the song and the most if others of the group are also able to sing it.

It could be any song, Schlager, childs songs, Christmas songs, sports hymns, rap, rock, metal.

We´ve played it years ago with a visiting girl from Spokane, so she was limited to English, while we could also use German. And for nearly every question she was wasked she could come up with John Denver - just try it with the two examples above... (and reply here!) What a great fun that evening was!

[Stillwater]

22 hours ago, wain71 said:

I regularly get told of for sarcasm...one of my daughters bought me a t-shirt that said 'fluent in sarcasm'..... I am good with the old dad jokes though, makes a lot of people groan, some do laugh, might just be a bit of wind though I suppose...

Me too. If this is allowed to write.

[adambar]

On 5/15/2024 at 6:27 PM, gumbypickett said:

I just sing 24 bottles of beer on the wall.

After my 23rd I start to lose track a little.

cheers

Gumby

Hey Gumby check this out a beer bottle home. That's the ticket, eh. 😄

 

[Rodger Pettichord]

3 hours ago, Stillwater said:

Sure I can help you, Rodger. Thought it took me some days...

The starting person takes 2 cards from the stock, cards all contain one keyword and a category name. Examples could be "Mama / mother" or "name a famous road". He/she decides between the two, returns one under the stock and  puts the other open on the table. Then, clockwise, the players have to find a song either containing the keyword or the category. You´d get points for naming a matching song, more for knowing some part of the text with the respective word, even more for singing the song and the most if others of the group are also able to sing it.

It could be any song, Schlager, childs songs, Christmas songs, sports hymns, rap, rock, metal.

We´ve played it years ago with a visiting girl from Spokane, so she was limited to English, while we could also use German. And for nearly every question she was wasked she could come up with John Denver - just try it with the two examples above... (and reply here!) What a great fun that evening was!

Thanks, Gerold. Sounds like (pun intended) a lot of fun. Right now, our great-granddaughter is limited to "goo, gah, burble, and shriek," but pretty soon she will be ready for the game. A grateful la, la, la to you.

[Stillwater]

2 hours ago, adambar said:

2 hours ago, adambar said:

Hey Gumby check this out a beer bottle home. That's the ticket, eh. 😄

 

Plus, when you run out of cash, you can simply return the bottles back to the supplier!

[Stillwater]

1 hour ago, Rodger Pettichord said:

Thanks, Gerold. Sounds like (pun intended) a lot of fun. Right now, our great-granddaughter is limited to "goo, gah, burble, and shriek," but pretty soon she will be ready for the game. A grateful la, la, la to you.

And, did you get the song matching the keywords? Mustn´t be too hard, if you only have John Denver to choose from...

[W2DR]

"  I am wondering if your playing style of Misty is more upbeat and heavily embellished like Erroll Garner's version or slower and more haunting like Johhny Matthis or Ella Fitzgerald sang it."

 

Like me, Errol couldn't read or write music. So I just played it the way he did.   I tried to match his style note-for-note. Could I play it his way now? Not a chance. But it was fun "back in the day".  And thank you Clint for asking me to do it again .

Edited May 18 by W2DR

[gumbypickett]

7 hours ago, adambar said:

Hey Gumby check this out a beer bottle home. That's the ticket, eh. 😄

 

This guy is a genius.

If he ever wanted to extend his house

into a mansion, I think I could help him out.

cheers

Gumby

[Ken Q]

I don't have any talent in making music. I took piano lessons as a boy, but after badly breaking my arm in 8th grade, I never took it up again.

 

I do enjoy building models.  When younger I built them by the dozen; in recent years I do far fewer and devote a lot of time on the details.  Two recent ones have a family connection.

 

1.  My Grandfather, a merchant seaman in Southampton, England, almost sailed on this ship:  This is the Minicraft 1:350 scale model of RMS TITANIC

 

My Father served on this one during WW2, here shown during a cooperative program with another museum, the Museum of American Armor.  Upset that the Armor guys talked all about their tanks in the battle zones, I insisted on doing a display on how those tanks GOT To the battle zone.  I titled it "Getting Them There - LST Operations."  This was set up on the porch of our 1866 General Store.  Museums make strange bed fellows.  This is the Lindberg Model of the LST.  But although supposedly LST 1 class, this model depicts a ship with a ramp from the main deck to the tank deck and ramp, which did not show up until the 493 class.  I built this showing the elevator instead.

Speaking of the museum though, this is where I get paid to actually work a craft, and a rather unusual one at that:

I make mens felt hats in an early 19th century shop.

 

Finally there is flight simming;  I have enjoyed building my sim cockpit.  At this point I have rebuilt if four times.  I've shown pictures of the complete project here before.  Here's on "in progress."  Sorry it's a bit fuzzy.

Ken

Edited May 19 by Ken Q
Spelling

[Rob Abernathy]

The hat looks awesome Ken!  Also reminds me of reading the book "Once they were Hats" you suggested.  Enjoyed that book and passed it on to my granddaughter that just graduated from U of Washington in Environmental Sciences.  She liked it as well.