Changes

Jim Gentemann is no longer with the band. His last show was at Dano's in Wright City on Saturday July 19th. I wont go into detail but we had some personel and creative differences and decided it was in the best interests of everyone to part ways. Speaking for the entire band I wish him all the best in both his personal life and him musical career. Mark and Chris will be handling all the lead vocal duties for the time being.

New Cardinal Ballpark

My wife and I went to the ballgame last Friday to watch the Cardinals play the Devil Rays in what was a really booring Cardinal loss. My daughter bought us the tickets, bless her little heart, for my birthday. We had never been to the new park before so I was pretty excited to see it for the first time. The seats were along the 1st base side but about 5 rows from the very top of the stadium. To me, from that vantage point the stadium seemed cramped and cheap. The people around us were more interested in drinking and screwing around than watching the game. Many were just plain drunk and obscene. We were constantly getting up to let people in and out that were just coming over to visit other drunk people. One girl dumped her 8.75 dollar beer all over a 6 year old boy and his grandmother who were actually trying to watch the game. She quickly disapeared and never returned. One young girl said to a guy sitting a row below her, quite loudly and within 10 feet of the aforementione 6 year old boy, "Hey Brian, if you go with me to get another beer you might get some pussy tonight". Thats just great. Hey, dont get me wrong; I'm not a prude, but that was real trailer-park-trash. I had serious doubts as to how many of them actually even knew the score. Maybe the experience is better if you have better seats but the 26 dollars it cost me for 2 hotdogs 2 fries and 1 coke is stealing where I come from.
I guess my real beef is that this is a cheap stadium that is hyped by the Cardinal media machine as being 'Baseball Heaven" and that is bullcrap plain and simple. The St Louis Cardinals are the greatest team in National League history and are near the top in attendance year after year. Only the Yankees have won more World Series than the Cardinals so in my mind this city and this team deserved one of the best stadiums in baseball and instead got a minor-leaguer. It even feels like a minor league stadium with all the noise and advertisements bombarding you and every chance. And the seats are fantastic if you weigh 120 pounds and are missing at least one arm.
The only way I will return to this place is if I get free tickets and they are field boxs. Personally im not expecting those would be a lot better. Shame on all Cardinal fans for letting them get away with building this second-rate park for our first rate team.

Benifit for Regina

Not a lot happening really. The band has been off a lot and the weather has been rain and more rain for two months with more rain today.
We played a benifit yesterday for a young lady who had Colon cancer and I was deeply saddened to learn that she had passed last Tuesday before the benifit. I didnt know her and to my knowledge had never met her but I feel bad for her family and for her as well. They told me her name was Regina and that she was 41. The sad lesson here is that you are never too young to get a colon exam and that you must treasure every moment you have with your friends and family. I truley hope both she and her friends and family can find some peace.

Danny Prosser Benefit

I have had the flu for 2 days and it couldn't have come at a worse time for me. Today was the gig for Danny Prosser at the Westport Trainwreck and we were scheduled to play a set, which we did. But I had/have a real nice little fever and got out of bed at the last minute just to do the show and then hustled back home to bed so I missed several of the bands that followed us. The fever made me pretty weak so my playing left a little to be desired but i guess i wasnt horrible but I wanted to be at my best and I wasnt.

Guitar Amps

A few months ago I bought a new Peavey Joe Satriani model JSX half-stack guitar amp and I really like it a lot but I have found that sometimes I question the purchase and have had to defend it to others once in a while. The amp was a special build version with some cosmetic differences from the original stock amps but no real tonal differences that im aware of. After many years of playing in bands using cheap amps (because i was raising a family and school clothes are a higher priority than guitar amps) I found myself in the position of finally being able to get a good amp. I had decided to buy a Marshall even before i started trying out any amps because thats the standard and it is what all the great ones play or have played. Funny thing though,; I tried out several different models and none of them appealed to me. The JVM-410 has a decent clean channel but I didnt like the distortion at all. The Vintage modern was just plain aweful. i tried an old JCM-800 and it was pretty good but you need to use a fuzz pedal to get any kind of real sustain and gain for a real rock sound. I then tried other upscale brands like the Diesil Einstein, which I loved by the way, but the head was 3300! I tried a couple of Soldanos and they too were pretty pricey and the only one I liked had only one channel. I tried the JSX peavey and liked it right off but dismissed it because it was a Peavey but I found myself going back to it after each time i tried out another amp to reference the two and every freaking time I liked the JSX more! Finally, I had to face the fact that It was really what I wanted even though it wasnt a marshall. I know a real fine guitar player named Jeff Bartholic who used a JSX for a while so I contacted him and asked his opinion about it and Jeff said he loved it. He dont have a JSX anymore and normally that would make me wonder if he really did like it, but Jeff has used a ton of different amps since I first met him so that's not an issue here and I respect his opinion on amps a lot. My good friend and guitar player Dan Ralston, a huge Joe Satriani fan, advised me to buy the JSX and this suprised me because Dan is a bonified Marshall Man but he loves the JSX sound and his advice was the deciding factor for me. Even though I didnt want price to be an issue in buying this amp it was somewhat.
The Marshall JVM-410 Head only was 1700 dollars.
The Marshall Vintage Modern head only was 1700 dollars.
The new Jcm-800 reissue head is 2083 dollars.
The Soldano heads were well over 2000 dollars.
The Diesil Einstein head only was 3300 dollars.
All these prices did not include a speaker cabinet.

In the end the "special Namm Show" version of the Peavey JSX was 1999 dollars and that included the speaker cabinet. Joe Satriani is known throughout the guitar world as one of the best guitar players in history with legions of devoted followers. There were only two of these "special" JSX models built according to Peaveys artist relations people. Joe Satriani has one and I have the other.
When I add it all up it was the best choice available for me at the time and with the money I had to work with. And I want to note that my devoted beautiful wife Crystal was the one person that made it possible by alloting me the monies and not making me feel like a schmuck for spending it on myself.
Beside, Im going to buy a Marshall cabinet soon and try out the head with that so i can have the great JSX sound and the great Marshall look all at the same time!!