Better version of my cover of Help!

In the wee hours of this morning I recorded yet ANOTHER version of my cover of this famous song. It took ten takes before I was satisfied with the guitar track, then the second vocal take is what I added to that.

I have listened to this song a LOT and have played guitar and (sometimes) sang to it literally thousands of times the past few years. I really like the guitar playing of this version better than my earlier efforts, and while I most certainly ain't no Beatle, my singing has improved considerably compared to my R Band days of the early 1990s.

The earlier instrumental version of Help! I was so excited about in the previous post to this blog is still online, but it's place on the home page of my web site has been replaced by this version.

Here is a direct link to my latest cover version of Help!

been cold around here past few days

It's been way too cold here lately for me to ride the bicycle and play guitar. It's not good for the wood of the guitar when it's this cold, and not good for my fingers or hands either!

I charged the battery of my 1965 Ford Falcon Ranchero yesterday. Tomorrow I will get a couple gallons of gasoline into it and try to start the engine again. If it doesn't work, then I'll ask for help from people who know more about mechanics than I do.

A few days ago I recorded yet another version of my cover of the Beatles song Help! and posted it to my web site. I've been practicing this song literally thousands of times the past few years, and my playing is getting smoother and smoother. My latest insight about the song came about a week ago and involves the spiraling arpeggio riff played by George Harrison at the end of the intro, each chorus, and the outro.

There are many groups of three in this song, three evenly spaced bass notes between chord changes, three verses, etc. However, that spiraling arpeggio riff consists of sixteen evenly-spaced evenly-stressed notes. It is played by picking four strings of a hand position then moving that same hand position down three more times one fret at a time, in other words, four groups of four notes! Not only that, but that riff is played four times during the song. How much more "fourness" can you get? Well, okay, I see that a riff of four groups of four notes being played four times only references the number four three times! But then, that reinforces the "threeness" in this song.

Blustery Day

I was riding yesterday afternoon and found that the gusts of wind were pushing the front wheel of my Schwinn around so much it was not safe to play guitar as I rode on a busy street in town doing errands. I grew up next to Travis A.F.B. where the biggest cargo planes in the USAF are based because of the winds there, and I was used to riding in wind with the steel wheels, handlebar and stem my bike used to have. I live in Oregon now and just switched to aluminum wheels, handlebar and stem last month.

I definitely noticed a big difference yesterday from the wind pushing the front wheel around. I could see the wheel turn as a gust of wind hit it, necessitating my stopping playing guitar to grab the handlebars for safety. I guess the difference in weight of all those aluminum parts compared to steel is significant for the front wheel's stability in wind when riding with no hands. I hadn't really noticed much of a difference until yesterday. On the good side, there is also a noticable difference in how much easier it is now to go UP hills! My bike is about eight percent lighter than it was before the upgrades.

Upgrades to my Schwinn in 2009

On October 6, 2009 my Schwinn ten-speed was greatly improved by the replacement of its steel wheels, handlebar and stem with aluminum parts. It is now a "Super Sportabout" (read that page for an explanation of that name).

The new wheels deserved their own page, as did the better handlebar. These and other changes this year are summarized on Upgrades to my Schwinn in 2009.

I am sad that my 1965 Ford Falcon Ranchero is still sitting out of commission in the driveway. It hasn't moved since the summer of 2007. The improvements to my bicycle are nice, but I can't ride it in wet or cold conditions (not good for the guitar, the bicycle or ME!). Even when the weather permits bicycle riding, I can't carry very many groceries on it, especially heavy things like kitty litter or pet food.

The new bass player Rocky and I haven't rehearsed as much the past couple weeks, but last night's session was quite good. He learned some more of my Evolution song, and I learned more of what he calls his "G Boogie" song. So far we have neither recorded together nor performed any live shows for the public, but some of my guitar playing the past couple weeks has been the best I have ever played.

My bicycle will have a good home when I die

Since the early 1980s I have ridden the same Schwinn ten-speed bicycle many thousands of miles while simultaneously playing a Fender Stratocaster guitar, sometimes with a small battery-powered amplifier clamped to the seat post or carried on a rack over the rear wheel. I'm pushing fifty years old now, and thought to contact The Bicycle Museum of America yesterday to see if they would be interested in preserving or even displaying my bicycle after I die.

To quote the Wikipedia article about this place:

The Bicycle Museum of America is a small museum nested inside the village of New Bremen, Ohio, United States. The museum, one of the largest private collections of bicycles in the world, is located at 7 West Monroe Street.

I was delighted when Annette Thompson of the museum wrote me back within a couple of hours. She said:

This would make an interesting story for our museum. Yes, we would enjoy having the bike.

I forwarded her email to one of my sisters and I am posting this blog entry as well to make my wishes known. Of course, this assumes I don't die ON the bicycle. If I do, it might not be a pretty museum display! I am locally famous, but if my fame ever spreads my bicycle may end up in the Smithsonian or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Even if that doesn't happen though, I rest easier knowing my bicycle will be well taken care of after I am gone.

We're getting good!

The last two nights my new bass player Rocky and I sounded really good in our jam sessions. Several of his songs are coming together nicely, and he is getting better at playing bass to some of my songs too.

This reminds me of the time I was hanging out with Peter Griffin of the Family Guy cartoon television series:

Stll riding and playing

The weather has been great lately for Bicycle Guitaring. My bicycle just had some replacement parts installed by the Local Bike Shop so it is running smoother than before. Rocky (the bass player) and I practiced three or four nights this past week. We're sounding better than before.

The "Minstrel Cycle" of The Bicycling Guitarist

Yesterday I joined "velospace, the place for bikes" and posted some photographs of the Schwinn I have ridden for decades now while playing guitar. Details of my ride are online at The "Minstrel Cycle" of The Bicycling Guitarist. I edited the description on that page today, giving more information about the specifications of Schwinn Sportabouts compared to the better-known Varsity and Continental bicycles.

I don't actually call my bicycle "The Minstrel Cycle." If I refer to it at all by any name, I just call it Schwinn. I made this pun decades ago. It was a natural joke to make considering I have been called a traveling minstrel and the bicycle is red. Okay, I will make no more jokes about menstruation, period! The joke is even funnier since someone called Lijemtu added "only if you play ragtime" (May 21, 2009 at 11:01 a.m. in the Welcome Wagon thread of Tunesmith songwriting forums).

Plans for my Schwinn ten-speed bicycle

When I upgraded my 1977 Schwinn Sportabout to a "Sportinental" by converting to quick release wheels and centerpull brakes from the fancier Schwinn Continental model, I didn't change to the Continental's aluminum stem and handlebar but kept the steel stem and handlebar of the Sportabout. In the Suggestions to upgrade my Schwinn Sportabout page, Raleigh D. says that would have been the very first change he would have done to save pounds of weight. I hope to do this someday, but I don't have a Continental stem and handlebar yet. Raleigh D. also suggested I change from steel to aluminum wheel rims.



For several years 27" bicycle wheels were out of fashion, but apparently they are being made again. I hope someday to get a pair of Sun CR-18 27" rims and have this pair of vintage Schwinn-Approved Quick Release hubs from a Continental laced to them with brand-new spokes. These came from Craig Morrow who runs an online store on eBay specializing in vintage Schwinns.

Lots of practice

Earlier tonight I played guitar a couple of hours with a bass player who lives nearby. Yesterday we practiced three hours. We've been jamming for a couple of weeks now, more and more frequently, and already have nearly thirty songs we're working on together. About half of them are Rocky's and the other half are a mix of my originals and some cover tunes I know quite well.

It's been a long time since I've had another musician to jam with regularly. It's been even longer since I've met anyone who is willing to practice several times a week.

Rocky has several arranged songs with interesting original bass guitar riffs. I am having great success in playing rhythm chords and lead guitar riffs to his bass lines. I hope to have some new material to post on my web site soon, maybe even music videos for YouTube and such.

Local fans

With nice weather here, I am riding and playing more often. I have also found a couple of places to jam with other musicians and artists. A woman recently told me to keep doing what I do because I make a lot of people happy. The sight of a bicycling guitarist readily brings a smile to people's faces. Nearly all the responses I notice from other people are positive ones. Yesterday I was actually cheered by more than one group of people who saw me. One guy in a group of teenagers walking nearby raised his arms up high and yelled "The Bicycling Guitarist!"

I can handle fame in small doses like this. It's a nice feeling to be appreciated and to realize one is making the world a more fun place for others just by being who you are.

What's going on

It's been more than a month since my last posting. In mid-April I received a series of emails from a bicycle enthusiast who offered more information about the history of Schwinn lightweight bicycles and suggestions for how to improve my ride. With his permission, I edited and posted his content on my web site. The new pages are

Schwinn lightweight bicycles history

Suggestions to upgrade my Schwinn Sportabout

My 1965 Ford Falcon Ranchero is still sitting in the driveway with a bent driveshaft as it has since the summer of 2007, but last month I got a replacement tailgate skin for it (not yet installed) and this month I got a spare hood. Both parts were very reasonably priced from a local man who had them left over from his own ranchero restoration project.

Namaste TBG

Don McLeroy betrays America and Christ

Mr. McLeroy is the chair of the Texas State Board of Education. There was a vote yesterday about the standards for students in that state. Since Texas is such a big customer of textbook publishers, the standards for Texas affect the quality of textbooks for the rest of America.

I just read that in Friday's testimony, Mr. McLeroy said: "I disagree with these experts. Someone has got to stand up to experts." This is right up there on the stupid scale with the quote by Ray Mummert, a pastor from Dover PA who said in 2005: "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."

So Mr. McLeroy figures that, as a dentist, he is as much of an authority on scientific matters as the experts... I also read that even though the main weasel words were voted down some amendments were passed with weasel words in them so expect some lawsuits folks!

Thank Mr. McLeroy for adding to the financial hardships of Texans in these hard times, as well as for succeeding in at least part of his evil plot to DUMB DOWN our schoolchildren. Does this clown have ANY integrity? He should resign if he isn't fired. Some people are PROUD of being stupid and insist their stupidity is just as valid as someone else's smarts. I don't mind that normally, unless they insist their stupidity is MORE valid and insist that everyone be just as stupid as they are.

so-called "Intelligent Design" is NOT science

In online forums wherever evolution is being debated, some people still claim that intelligent design is a scientific alternative to evolution. I have one word in reply: BULLSHIT!

Okay, I'll say a few more words. The Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005 made it clear beyond any doubt that ID is not science. It was also established beyond any doubt that intelligent design IS religion, although those who advocate it emphatically deny this is the case.

So-called intelligent design is so-called scientific creationism renamed to try to slip past the courts into public school science classrooms, and so-called scientific creationism is nothing more than a literal fundamentalist interpretation of the Book of Genesis of the Christian Bible.

People can believe whatever they want, but a fundamentalist interpretation is not supported by the evidence of the world God created. There have been at least a dozen court cases challenging the teaching of evolution the past forty years, and the creationists lost EVERY TIME. It isn't a conspiracy; it's not the devil. It is simply that the evidence supports evolution and falsifies a literal reading of Genesis.

Some people who used to believe the earth is flat (maybe some still do) would use a fundamentalist interpretation of Bible verses to "prove" it. Churches and people who are in denial of the fact of evolution are modern-day flat-earthers.

Like I said, believe what you want, but don't try to legislate ignorance in the teaching of American children in public schools. Home school your kids or send them to a private school that doesn't conflict with your beliefs if you want them to think the earth is flat.

Bicycling Guitarist jokes thread on BikeForums.net

Hi all.
Last night I saw a headline on MSNBC that said "After pullout, some will stay." To my disappointment, it was about Iraq.

Oh, and the other day I was posting to a science news group and neglected to give a reference link to the source (they get really annoyed at that). So I posted another with the link and said "A Cite for Sore I's."

These and more jokes by me and by other people can be found in the Bicycling Guitarist jokes thread at Bike Forums.

Polishing a brick

No matter how much you polish a brick, it won't become shiny enough to be a mirror. I sometimes think of that when working on my web site. Lately I have been promoting my site and making slight improvements to the HTML code. I don't know exactly how much time I have spent on my web site the past ten years, but it is probably many thousands of hours by now.

For what it's worth, I publish my original songs and essays to share with the world.

Baaaa..d Jokes

Okay, I was being sheepish with the title of this post.

Anyway...

The late actor Patrick McGoohan (see my previous post in this blog) at the Pearly Gates, refusing to conform:
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My afterlife is my own...I am not a number; I am a dead man!"

Years ago I had a great marketing idea for a movie merchandising connection with the Harry Potter series: Chia pets! They could have a line of chia pets as the characters in the books and movies and call them "Hairy Pottery."

Yesterday I added to that thought. See the chia pets sprout growth (or grow sprouts) in new places as the characters enter puberty!

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Be Seeing You?

I just learned on MSNBC.com that the star of my all-time favorite television series died yesterday. Patrick McGoohan starred in "The Prisoner," a surreal sci-fi spy story that has impressed me from the first time I watched it more than thirty years ago.

KTEH Channel 54 in San Jose, California, a PBS station of that time (if I recall the name and number correctly) would broadcast an episode every week, followed by a discussion of the episode and the series by some philosophers and theologians.

The series raises questions of the relationship of the individual to society, of the individual to God, and the individual to his or herself. This is much like the question asked by Ramana Maharshi, "Who Am I?"

R.I.P. Patrick, you touched my heart and my mind.

What is REALLY weird is that last night I had a craving to watch the last two episodes of "The Prisoner" (a two-parter finale). I watched the next to last episode last night and the final one this afternoon, just before learning of McGoohan's death. It had been a long time since I had watched any episodes of the series. Cue the music from The Twilight Zone please.