While performing a quick scan on Amazon, I found the new Steve Vai album Real Illusions: Reflections available for preorder. The album is scheduled for release on February 22, 2005.
While you’re there, you might want to pick up Steve Vai – Live at the Astoria London, the last concert DVD he released. The upcoming Real Illusions tour will be featuring the same line-up.
The new Ibanez JEM model is available. This guitar is the newest model of the Steve Vai Signature Series of guitars.
I’m not sure whether the Ibanez Jem77BRMR “Bad Horsie” is actually available yet, but it is making it’s first appearance at the NAMM show this year, according to Vai.com.
Also, Dean Guitars is releasing a slew of Dimebag Tribute models in its 2005 product line.
Could it be time already to update my musiciansfriend.com wish list??? Why, it seems like only yesterday …
Last summer while on vacation I was looking for a book to read. I remembered that the movie Goodfellas was based on a book, but couldn’t remember the name of the book so we stopped at Barnes and Noble to look around.
After an online search in the store, I found it. The book is Wiseguy, by Nicholas Pileggi. It took me about 2 days of on and off reading to finish it and I really enjoyed it.
The book chronicles the life of Henry Hill from childhood and his introduction to the Lucchese crime family, to life as a young adult as part of the “crew”, through his turning Federal informant and his eventual enrollment in the Federal Witness Protection program.
To say that the movie was “based” on the book is stating it a little lightly. The movie basically was the book, with a few characters renamed and combined. It was remarkable to me how closely Scorcese and staff followed the book while making the movie. At certain points I had to look at the cover to make sure I wasn’t reading the script!
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the movie Goodfellas — its actually one of my favorite “mob” type movies. The book was really fun to read, especially as you start to realize that not much was changed, fact wise, in the making of the movie, aside from the usual collapsing of multiple characters and name changes and small embellishments (“Funny How??”).
Additionally, there is a ton of information on the web on the events and people that the book is based around. I’ve included a few here for those buffs who want to know a little something about the real events and people involved.
This book is really great for those of us who like a little reality dose with their mob movies.
The People of Wiseguy
Related Links
Matthew Scott read the first part of my SVK tutorial and decided to try it out for himself.
Apparently he got some good results, but found a limitation related to svn:externals.
Johnny Carson passed away this morning at the age of 79.
I can’t tell you how much I used to look forward to The Tonight Show back when he was the host. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve actually watched the show since May of 1992.
He was definitely a one of a kind and it was a sad day when he left television.
There is more information available at CNN.com, an article on E-Online and one more on msnbc.com.
Update:
CNN has Your Johnny Carson Memories, which is a pretty cool tribute. Some of the moments we all enjoyed are mentioned in this one.
The March issue of Guitar World Magazine is a tribute to “fallen guitar heroes”. People included in the issue are “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, Randy Rhoads, Steve Clark, and Jimi Hendrix among others.
This issue is full of articles, pictures, and even full page adds in tribute to Dimebag from companies that he worked with. It also contains a transcription of ‘Cemetery Gates’ from the ‘Cowboys from Hell’ album. According to the letter from the editor, the “Tribute To Fallen Guitar Heros” issue has been planned for quite some time, and a Dimebag feature was planned as one of the only stories in the issue about a “living” guitar hero. That all changed when he was killed on stage by some nut who managed to get through security, jump on stage, and shoot him at point blank range on December 8, 2004 in Ohio.
Oddly, I had never listened to Pantera until after the news of the shooting. A few days later, I bought their Greatest Hits album just to see what the “big deal” was. I found it odd that his death was being compared to the death of Randy Rhoads as far as the impact it had in the industry. Five weeks later and a lot of album purchases, I’ve been on a steady diet of Pantera and DamagePlan. He was a really incredible player. More than that though, it seems, from all of the things written about him over the last month or so was that as a person he really touched a lot of lives.
This magazine is a really great tribute to those who have touched our lives through their music. It was really fun to read and reflect on all of the people appearing in this issue.
Metallica’s Some Kind Of Monster documentary is coming out on DVD and will be available in stores on January 25. You can preorder it now at amazon.com.
I had been waiting for this to be released in local theaters so that I could see it on the big screen, but it didn’t happen, so you can bet I’ll probably be ordering it.
Zakk Wylde and Black Label Society have a new album and tour coming up early this year. The album is going to be released on March 8, 2005, with the tour starting soon thereafter. They hit the House of Blues in Chicago on March 24, 2005.
Boy this would be a great show to see, however I think we’ve spent our concert money for the first quarter budget on the Steve Vai Concert in April.
From what I have read thus far about the new album, the music is heavier than the last album, Hangover Music Volume VI, which was kind of a departure for the band, with a lot of acoustic work. The new album is said to be more in the vein of albums prior to Hangover Music.
I’ve been a Zakk fan since his first album with Ozzy. While I always liked Ozzy, I never really liked the albums with Jake E. Lee on them. These two albums, Bark at the Moon and Ultimate Sin, were weak compared to the first two albums with Randy Rhoads. While there were songs that I liked on each of them, the albums as a whole I never really liked.
Zakk brought a whole new sound to Ozzys band and got me back into Ozzy again. Black Label Society is a great band and features Zakk on both guitar and vocals. The guitar is heavy, and he actually has a great voice.
If you want to see Zakk live, he has a live DVD called Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society – Boozed Broozed & Broken-Boned that he recorded in Detroit, and he also appears on the Ozzy Osbourne – Live at Budokan DVD, both available on Amazon.
Browsing through Joel on Software I came across a very good article called The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code.
I have already rated the development environment that I work in according to the test, but am not going to share the results right now as I want to hear what other people in my organization think before publishing anything. In any event, its a good read as it really makes you think a little from a common sense perspective about the way you develop software as an organization.
I’m getting some positive feedback on the set of SVK tutorials that I wrote a few weeks back. Thanks to everyone sending comments and commenting on them on your blogs. It’s really encouraging to know that something you have worked through and written down has been helpful to other people in investigating a really useful tool.
Keep the feedback coming.
As an aside, there is a great article on perl.com about SVK that was written by the tools author. Well worth the read.
Bieber Labs 