If Trump Makes Elections Impossible, the Only Alternative is Violet Overgrow...

A Dance to Revolution...

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1349131079945610

https://www.facebook.com/toninagycomedy/reels/

Go Into the Light

Keywords for More Research: FBI, CIA, NSA, DOW, DOD, DOE, DOJ, DARPA, NRO, DIA, EIEIO, THE FARM, Fort Meade, Weather Underground, Mount Weather, SDS, LSD, JFK, LBJ, G. Gordon Liddy, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Ken Kesey, Grateful Dead, MKULTRA, Project Blue Book, The State of Jefferson, Jefferson Airplane, Stealth Bomber, TEMPEST, Mil-D-1000, Mil-TFD-41, Pentagon, Pentagram, Armies of the Night, Yippie, Hippy, Haight Ashbury, San Francisco, Mateel District of Humbldt County, DMT, STP, DIY, Freedom, Liberty, #Think4Yourself, #QuestionAuthority, Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow, EFF, Owsley, Brotherhood of Love, Laguna Beach, Rainbow Gathering, Burning Man, Ezekiel's Wheel, UFO, Roswell, Flying Saucer, Monty Python, Holy Grail, #RUNAWAY, Mystic Crystal Revalations, Mind's True Liberation, Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Harmonic Convergence, Firesign Theater, Temporary Humboldt County, HSU, CCAT, NO NUKES!, ELF, ALF, Earth First! ----> and It Goes On and On and On...

Well… that was exactly what we were promised—another serving of absolutely nothing.

Last night’s speech produced no credible evidence, no bombshell revelations, and no surprises. Just another performance designed to keep the conspiracy machine humming and the most devoted members of his base convinced that this time the proof is right around the corner.

Looks like it’s nothing burgers again, kids.

LINK: #France1789 bumper sticker...

(you may change the words)

https://www.zazzle.com/store/gregvan

(LINK to MY Giftshop)

Click Here to buy a Violet Overgrow Bumper Sticker (you may change the words)

Click Here to See All my Bumper Stickers!

FREE Pentagon Art!

Pirate and Share Worldwide!

"Your Name Here" button 4 Sale -  

You can change the words if you want to... 

Or just wear it as is ---> absurdist art! <---

Click Here to Buy a "Your Name Here" button!

 

https://www.zazzle.com/store/gregvan

Link to all my merchandise!

FREE PSYCHEDELIC ART - Go Ahead and Pirate Any of My Images - Useful to Spice Up a Webpage or Blog - Handy to Make Decorated Gifts on Zazzle... Have FUN!

Link to buy This Spinner Rainbow 

Christmas Ornament

Link to ALL My Christmas Ornaments

On FaceBorg I Read:

This is your reminder to record your mama. Record her around the kitchen, ask her why she used chicken broth instead of water, or why she does or doesn’t use velveeta and record that. Record her fussing about the same old stuff like she always does, prank her and record that. Record her funny sayings and her bits of advice. Ask her to tell you about the day you were born and record her face as she lights up remembering. Record her telling you to put some socks on that baby and when she tells y’all don’t go in her pots without washing your hands. Ask her questions, both serious and silly ones, and record her answers. Play her favorite song and when she starts dancing/singing, yep, you guessed it… record it. Make her laugh…I mean REALLY laugh and for the love of God, record that, too. And take lots of pictures of and WITH her, even when she tells you she’s not dressed for pictures. Take them anyway. Record it anyway. And when you get the chance, tell her you know she did her best with what she had and her best was always enough. And if you want, record that, too.

I hope this hits you in just the right spot and you take heed, because the day will come when there is a longing so deep to just hear her voice, her laugh, see her as she was…and when that day comes, you’ll pull out your recordings and feel just a little bit of her again

*Copied & Pasted*

and I replied:
I saved all my father's emails... during his last years we bought him an Apple and he used it daily to chat with the family... precious... he got to see movies of his great grandchildren... etc etc etc

My Father and I had a Couple of Adventures during his last years... I drove him around and we explored many interesting places... including... Apollo Heights in Saratoga, California. A Subdivision that he Created... He bought the Bare Land, had water, electricity and a road built... and then he sold plots for people to build houses overlooking the Santa Clara Valley... Quite an Achievement...

Chuck Schumer's Words after the Government Funding Bill was Passed were Memorable.

Madam President, it has been a day full of twists and turns, but the American people can breathe a sigh of relief. There will be no government shutdown. Democrats have said from the start that the only solution for avoiding a shutdown is bipartisanship, and we are glad that Speaker MCCARTHY has finally heeded our message. In the end, more Democrats supported this bill in the House than Republicans, proving bipartisanship was the best answer all along. I want to thank my colleagues here in the Senate, especially our appropriators, the Presiding Officer and SUSAN COLLINS and Leader MCCONNELL. Our bipartisan work in the Senate set the tone for the bill we are about to pass. Our bipartisanship made this possible and showed the House that they had to act. We will keep the government open for 45 days with a clean CR at current funding levels, and we avoided all of the extreme, nasty, and harmful cuts MAGA Republicans wanted. No 30 percent cuts across the board; no 30 percent cuts to things like healthcare, to the Social Security Administration, to the nutrition programs for kids; full reauthorization of the FAA until December 31; and the poison pill amendments, of which there were scores—MAGA-inspired riders—were all removed from the bill. After trying to take our government hostage, MAGA Republicans won nothing. So one more time, it is good Speaker MCCARTHY finally—finally—heeded our message that bipartisanship was and is and remains the only way. He could have made this decision weeks ago. Now, I have said from day one, this is a bridge CR, a temporary solution, not the final destination. We will not stop fighting for more economic and security assistance for Ukraine. Majorities in both parties support Ukraine aid, and doing more is vital for America’s security and for democracy around the world. But this CR is still very good news for the American people. Today, MAGA extremists have failed, bipartisanship has prevailed, and both parties have come together to avert a shutdown. Once again, thank you to Leader MCCONNELL, Appropriations Chair PATTY MURRAY, Vice Chair SUSAN COLLINS, and Members on both sides of the aisle who came together. Today’s CR would not have been possible without the Senate’s good work. The Senate showed that bipartisanship was the only way, and the same will be true again in 45 days.

Sun RA Jazz Bandleader - Afro-Futurist Piano Synthesizer Player, Composer, Poet and the Leader of His Own Religion. PBS Documentary. "Do The Impossible"

During the 1950s and 1960s he was playing a style of jazz that no one else was. He owned his own record label - owned his own record press - and lived in the music studio he built with all of his band members. Somehow he made enough money touring and selling records to pay for everything he did and he did a lot. Over 200 records... and the Movie: "Space is the Place" 

He influenced George Clinton Parliament/Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone. I also see his Concepts in Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

The music sounds like soundtrack movie music from science fiction films... Forbidden Planet... Doctor Who... 2001... 

PBS documentary video:
"Sun Ra: Do The Impossible" 
https://www.pbs.org/video/sun-ra-do-the-impossible-pvumkf/
Discover the extraordinary life of poet, philosopher and music visionary Sun Ra. With his ever-evolving collective, the Sun Ra Arkestra, he self-produced more than 200 albums, stretching the boundaries of jazz.

Movie: "Space is the Place" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072195/

Psychedelic art animation by gvan42 - useful for causing a trance - Cosmic Freakout!

"My Alien Friend" FREE ART! Feel free to Pirate these Images and Use Them Anytime You Need to Contact Outer Space Aliens.... Or Just for Pretty Decoration on a Web Page or Blog...

 

"My Alien Friend"

"Christmas Tree" 

"Classic Mandala" 

"Go Into the Light"

"8 Pointed Star"

LINK: Cosmic Awareness Business Card for Sale

LINK: ALL MY BUSINESS CARDS!

Free Coloring Book Art by gvan42
UFO and Alien Hieroglyphics - make as many prints as you like! Color with felt pens, pencils, crayons, potatoshop... go wild!
https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2021/07/ufo-and-alien-hieroglyphics-free.html



Feel Free to Copy and Paste these Images into Your Own Blog, Webpage or Social Media Post... OR... Use this art to Manufacture Decorated Gifts... Like Coffee Cups, T-Shirts or Buttons! I DID:
MORE ART:


American Indian with Headdress



Flower Power Bus

Music Video: The Ballad of Stormy D... a Protest Song about Trump's "Hush Money" Trial. Lyrics by Anonymous...

LINK: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo3ioiCGSxM

He sits in a room of broken lives, (Chords: E, A)

Haunted by schemes and cheated wives.

Old and cold and mad as hell

He can sit and glare but cannot yell.

He folds himself into a shrunken pose

Too old and feeble to stop the doze.

He hates the judge and he hates the case

And he hates the rules that keep him in his place.

The fat, frumpy golfer is a weak old man

With weird fake hair and a deep fake tan.

He's desperate and angry and doesn't sleep well.

So he rants in the hall like a clanging bell.

He just wants love and approval and power,

But his style is dishonest and toxic and sour.

The despots and strongmen play him the fool.

They laugh and point at the Helsinki tool.

He lusts for his daughter, his wife's not a fan

Of the dishonest and repugnant bully, baby man.

So he sits alone in the cold as they repeat his lies,

In his baggy blue suit and his long long ties.

Smaller and smaller the old man appears,

Powerless and silent, steeped in fears.

His money and title and self made fame

Are now a poison, a poison with his name.

INTRO: I Played an "E" Chord and then Slid my Fingers UP one Fret to Play an "F" chord with the three untouched strings remaining E,B & E... This Causes Anxiety in the Listener... then a brief NO CHORD and They are Relieved when I Play the "E" Chord Again... Resolved!

Note the Lighting: 

It Makes my Face Difficult for a Computer to 

Process in a Facial Recognition Program...

~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~

FREE Guitar Chart Shows Where the Notes are on the Piano and Guitar... Very Handy for Composition and Learning How to Play Songs. Plus: SOLARIND our Band

Print as Many Copies as You Like!

For Sale as a Postcard - Click Here

or...

16" X 12" POSTER!

SOLARWIND: Our Musical Group 

Analog Synthesizer Tips and Tricks. 

SOLARWIND… 
I was fascinated with playing electronic music and played with my friends (Ken, Mark and Leon) in Ken’s basement for 5 years on the weekends During the 1980's. I also had a setup in my living room and would invite guests. This was at the time of analog synths and the beginning of midi. My favorite instrument was the Korg Polysix… It had the ability to make those really astonishing outer space sounds… Modulated resonant filter sweeping… like Steve Miller, Edgar Winter or Doctor Who… The pitch of the note could be defined by the control voltage input on the rear panel… well, I had a Radio Shack “100 in One experimenters kit” and a bag of capacitors, resistors and light emitting diodes that I hooked up to generate an oscillating circuit… Absolutely no one else on the planet was making the noises that I made… similar, true, but my noises were unique… Since it was created using wires and SPRING CLIPS to connect the components, the resistance of each connection varied according to stress on the wires… for example: if I blew at the circuit, the music would change due to the pressure of the wind…

Much of the time when I played with my friends in the basement in Manassas, Virginia we had a home made laser lightshow going… My friend built this using an extremely slowly rotating mirror that had a little “house” built on it out of transparent “walls” and clear glue… The “house” was about 3/4 of an inch tall and caused interference patterns to be displayed on the ceiling… these took the appearance of galaxies or clouds that slowly changed. The speed was about One RPM. He had guests come over and bring their instruments… A trumpet player from the Redskins Football Team band was a memorable evening. In general, we played music that you would hear as a soundtrack for a motion picture… Incidental music or abstract jazz or “outer space whoosh whoosh”…..

I really got into samplers when I got a midi controlled 4 second monophonic machine. It could be controlled by the drum machine. My favorite sound was a pan pipe. I set up the sound so that the sampler could play it back very slowly giving a low pitch. It sounded as if a giant was blowing on a pan pipe 20 feet tall… I made a tape and gave it to my friend “Major” Tom (a Bowie fan). He was very happy with it because when it was played on the car stereo, it put his children to sleep… Unfortunately, also on that tape were some doppler effect noises and he panicked because he thought it was a police car siren. A moment of fear but it was quickly resolved by erasing that part from the tape…

Leon had a black box that allowed me to sing or talk into the synthesizer and the volume of my voice determined the sound of the synth… You can hear this particular technique on THE DOORS- STRANGE DAYS… Listen carefully and when Jim Morrison sings the words “Strange Days have found us…etc” there are squiggly noises that follow along with the vocals… (amplitude to control voltage converter, also pitch to control voltage)

One of my favorite synthesizer performances was when I took a battery powered analog synthesizer [SH-101] to the banks of the Potomac River in Alexandria, VA in the middle of the night and made "spaceship taking off" sounds...  I was right across the river from DARPA and my goal was to FREAK THEM OUT. DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and they are most famous for inventing The Internet. They also invented Agent Orange and that was pure EVIL but... you can't win them all. I had battery powered speakers and I made a really loud noise... might have been audible at the Lincoln Memorial... The basic idea behind "Spaceship" sounds is to turn the resonance of a band pass filter all the way up. That causes a sine wave with the frequency determined by the center point of the filter. Analog synthesizers have a Modulator that changes that center point. The note selected on the keyboard also determines the pitch... You have probably heard this sound on the Beach Boys song "Good Vibrations" oooh ooohhh oooh oh oh... Or Emerson, Lake and Palmer [the ending to "Lucky Man"]. Steve Miller... "Fly Like an Eagle"...

I also had a display of 18 strands of Christmas tree lights that would blink on and off… they were hung in the corner of the room with a mylar mirror on each wall… That provided enough light to be able to see the controls and keys on the keyboards… Each strand of lights would be either on or off and they all had different timing cycles… this made the whole display appear to experience waves of rainbow colors… The keyboards were all interconnected to allow waves of sound to evolve over time as the modulated filters ebbed with tidal forces…

Fun, but all those analog synths are hard to find anymore… they were replaced with digital ones that were cheaper to produce and more reliable… somehow there was a move towards realistic instrument sounds instead of outer space whoosh whoosh… too bad…

I remember Emerson, Lake and Palmer in concert at the Winterland in San Francisco… Keith jumped off the stage and wandered around the dance floor “zapping” people with a ribbon controller that was making “ray-gun” sounds… A good example of the ribbon controller was on “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys… the part that goes oooWWWWEEEwooowooo… ooooWWWWEEEwooowooo…

Another beautiful synth was bought used at a yard sale for 75 dollars. It was a minikorg and had been thru severe abuse on the road. This marvel is most famous as the lead voice on Kitaro records… the breathy flute sound that he uses to play melody parts… The theme to Silk Road, etc… This was a monophonic synth that had ring modulator effects and white noise… this also had a switch for setting the pitch to an extremely low tone… as if you were playing notes on a piano that were way off the end of the left hand… this machine allowed me to create what I called the “Dawn of Time” sound… A growling bass note that needed about 10 seconds to play… A ring modulator lets each key have its own vibrato rate… for example” “C” might have a wow wow wow sound that shanged every half a second while “C#” would have a wow wow wow that changed 42 times a second… “D would be 6 times a second etc… this tonal quality creates many of the more avant garde (or teeth gratingly irritating) sounds of extremely early synth recordings…

I also became fascinated by the possibilities of echo and computer controlled music. Lucky for me, instruments started being built with a MIDI interface… this caused older instruments to go on sale at extremely cheap prices…

The Roland microcomposer was 8 1/2 by 11 inches and had a microcomputer in it. I stored sequences of pitches and durations of notes using the tiny keyboard… really, really tiny… It was designed to drive two SH101 Roland synths and could play two notes simultaneously… what a breakthrough… from ONE NOTE at a time to two… By typing in a series of bass notes each with a duration of 1/8 of a bar… and then running it thru an echo box that had a time set to 3/16th of a bar… and setting the voltage controlled filter so that some notes were silent, some notes were muted and some notes were loud… I was able to trick the system into composing by itself a never repeating bassline that was fun to improvise over… the computer selected which notes to play and when… cosmic…
This worked well for music that is called MODAL… In that style, there are no chord changes at all… the performers select a handfull of notes as the scale and just go to it… the most famous modal piece is “The Old Washer Woman” and The theme performed by Edith Bunker on the television show “All in the Family”… The music is played entirely on the BLACK NOTES of the piano… I think they called it “Those Were The Days”… “Didn’t need no welfare state, everybody pulled his weight, gee those old La Salles ran great… THOSE were the DAAAAAYYYYSSSS…. It is an extremely simple song. So simple that I was able to teach a computer to play in that style… Of course, my compositions were not at all like that whiny song… more robotoc and like German Technopop…

Music nonstop, technopop… Bleep, blonk… tchatchink…
I was fortunate to have read an article in the Washington Post about the upcoming Kraftwerk concert so I went out and bought the recommended album Autobahn and liked it… The basic style of music sounded interesting and so, I went to the beautiful Warner Theatre to see them. This was an elegant performance space that started out as an ART DECO theatre and then became a dance hall for rock music… oh how lucky we were… This was my first exposure to the technopop music and many of the people in the audience were Germans… I had no idea that such music was even possible. The tour was to promote their albums Computerworld and Man Machine… They had two fellows that beat with “knitting needles” on touch sensitive drum machines while the other two played keyboard synthesizers… The drummers were wild because every time a knitting needle contacted the machine, a loud percussive sound happened… not drum sounds but more like boink or ping or even pffffbtt… When they performed their song “pocket calculator” they walked to the front of the stage and had members of the audience play the notes… The lyrics state ” by pushing down a special key it plays a little melody” blink bonk…. katrronk…. Quite an effective piece of showmanship and audience participation… Then at the end of the show , all the people left the stage and let the computers play the song… for about ten minutes… wild dancing to actual robot performers… I was amazed… Their website has a toy on it that lets you play a drum machine… boing, boom, tchack, peng, zonk… http://www.kraftwerk.com/

Another performance was outside a Mickey Hart Concert at George Washington University. A few hours before the show a group of Deadheads formed a drum circle on the street. I brought a set of Chamber Chimes and made tinkley sounds in time to the beat. Usually a Chamber Chime player keeps the wooden bar horizontal but I held it vertical sometime to cause a more focused clank-clank... I did not have a ticket to the show so I walked over to the White House and Lafayette Park... amazing the tourists...

I took my acoustic guitar to Lafayette Park often. One song that got a good reaction from the crowd was "Deal" by the Grateful Dead. After I was finished singing a man complemented me on my song about a DEER. I also played outdoors at Wolf Trap and sang "Me an Bobby McGee" with all the La-di-ye-has sung correctly at the end of the song... At Merriweather Post Pavilion at the Grateful Dead Concerts. I had a 12 string and was sitting on top of my car strumming away when a passerby said that it was the most beautiful sound he had EVER HEARD... about 15 minutes earlier he had heard Jerry Garcia... I was honored. He was probably tripping on acid...

~~~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~~~


Lyrics to the song 'Global Economic Collapse' (bubble gum pop rock genre)

TEMPO=PEPPY. Chords: G, E, C

"The growth industry of the 90's...
will be subsistence farming...
when Reagan's rubber check bounces...
and global economic collapse...
rears its ugly head...
what will you do for food ?

OOOh, The winter gets cold...
when the arabs turn off the oil...
Your BMW will make a lovely planter...
growing beets in bucket seats...
open the sun roof wide...
scrounging in the city dump...
I seem to have lost my pride...

CHORUS:LET'S EAT RATS FOR LUNCH...
CHORUS: LETS EAT RATS FOR LUNCH...

~~~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~~~

We made a demo recording and had an agent in New York try to sell it to people making corporate videos… No sale, but it was fun trying… When we recorded the demo, I loaned a huge pile of my equipment to Leon and he set up a special studio in the basement of his grandpas home. His grandpa was a Retired General in the Army and had a mansion in McLean and another in Arizona. I never met the grandpa because were were not allowed to visit when he was in town nor were we allowed in many parts of the mansion due to breakable oriental antiques. These people live in a truly different world than us peasants.

~~~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~~~

In the 1990sI learned how to make rainbow spiral tie dye tshirts. I sold them out of my pizza driving car while I was working at Domino's. A person that ordered pizza was dying shirts in their garage and they explained how to twist up the shirt to create a spiral pattern. My finest creation was a bedsheet that had a rock band's logo on it. A local unknown band called "CandleOpera" had a logo formed out of three interlocking hearts. Two side by side with the pointy end down and one nestled between them pointing up. I used orange and red acrylic paint and dye to make a giant banner to be hung behind the band during performance. Then I dyed some unbleached muslin fabric and one of the girls cut it up to make dresses for the backup singers. The leader of the band wanted me to play keyboards but I declined... I guess I was too shy to be a rock star. They had one performance at a home in rural Maryland on the back porch. About a hundred people showed up and we got high in the backyard while the band played... then the police showed up and the party ended. While they played, they looked great! Years later I made a shirt for Victoria and It's one of her favorites.

~~~~~~~~ (~);-} ~~~~~~~~

and then SE Said:

It really pisses me off that every time anyone posts something about San Francisco, like a beautiful photo of the Golden Gate Bridge or the Painted Ladies Victorian houses, there are always a bunch of comments from people saying that San Francisco has been "ruined" by the Democrats. It is so untrue, and it infuriates me that so many ignorant people buy into this false narrative being pushed by the right-wing media. I'm sure that the majority of people making those comments have never even BEEN to San Francisco. They're always in some other state, and they clearly have no idea what they're talking about, but they spew these lies over and over again as if they're some expert on the subject.
ALL large cities in the USA have homeless issues right now. It makes no difference if the city is run by Democrats or Republicans. The issue has to do with skyrocketing rent and housing prices, and it's happening EVERYWHERE. It is RIDICULOUS for people to act like San Francisco is some third-world war zone while a city run by Republicans is all shiny and perfect. Even if that were true, I'd still choose a city where the leaders care about protecting people's individual rights. I wouldn't want to live in a city where politicians are trying to control women's bodies,or trying to restrict people's access to healthcare. I want to live in a place where women have bodily autonomy and poor people have a safety net.
But back to San Francisco, this constant blather about it being "ruined" is the biggest load of crap. I grew up 40 miles from San Francisco, so San Francisco has been a huge part of my life even though I've never actually lived in SF. I've spent a huge amount of time there ever since I was a child, and I have a lifetime of memories in San Francisco, and I still go there every chance I get. As far as I've seen, nothing about it has changed other than the homeless community has grown in recent years...but this is true of EVERY large city in the country! The homeless community in San Jose has grown, too. If you live in a big city somewhere else in the USA, I'm sure the homeless community in your city has grown as well. It's NOT unique to San Francisco. San Francisco has NOT been "ruined." If you ever get a chance to visit San Francisco, I promise you will be awed by the beauty of the City and the views of the bay and the ocean. I also love the energy of the City. It has an energy that San Jose has always lacked, which is one of the main reasons I've spent so much time in SF over the years. I'm drawn to its energy.
People see what they want to see. If all you want to see in SF is the homeless issue, that's too bad for you that you've chosen not to see the beauty or feel the energy. But if people are going to focus on the negatives, I really wish they would quit singling out San Francisco as if it's the only place with anything negative about it. Maybe talk about the homeless problem as a whole, like, talk about how we AS A COUNTRY can fix the homeless situation IN EVERY BIG CITY, rather than sitting there going "Ha ha ha, San Francisco has been ruined by the Democrats" while ignoring the fact that it's a problem EVERYWHERE, not just in one city.

and I Replied: 

San Francisco is a Gem. It has delights That are Simply Not Available in the Red Neck South... For Example: State of the Art Techno Dance Halls... The Exploratorium Museum, Golden Gate Park, Gay Rights, High Tech Jobs... Boat rides on the bay... French Bread (while walking around Fisherman's wharf) - and my brother's house...

The Climate is mild... Not so bad as to be in danger from wild fires, floods, tornadoes or hail... IMPORTANT! Being safe is Essential during Climate Change...

and one time at a Grateful Dead Concert the French Bread had LSD in the Center Square... I didn't find out until an Hour Later when I realized that I was Tripping... and I had not eaten any Acid... Some Guy I met asked "Do You Want to Break Bread, Brother?" and...

San Francisco French Bread

Our Church is in San Francico. UUSF. and It is so excellent that Ram Dass Chose to have his Funeral There... With Wavy Gravy as the Master of Ceremonies and Bob Weir & Joan Baez Singing a Song... They Broadcast the Service Every Sunday online... and My Brother often Goes in Person... It's interesting to see him in the crowd shot of the Congregation... https://www.uusf.org/

Meetings with Remarkable Men. A Friend Passed Away this Week and Now is a Good Time to remember Good Times We Had Together.

Ken III & Ken IV in a horse-drawn carriage

In the late 1970s I met Ken Coghill III when we both worked at Analytics Communication Systems, a defense contractor, in McLean, Virginia.

He had a hobby of building his own laser light show and inviting people over to his house to watch it while he played the record China by Vangelis...

He also owned a personal computer called an IMSAI 8080 with sound cards that he programmed to play classical music... This was a very early personal computer long before the TRS-80, Apple or IBM PC. The sound cards produced square waves at the same frequency as piano notes... Sadly, square waves are very horrible sounding and an irritating noise that made me want to just turn the damn thing off... However that was the state of the art of synthesizers at that time... And he seemed to like it because he spent thousands of hours programming that machine... 

I met him right about the time I got divorced from my first wife and I decided that I wanted a guitar... So I learned to play the guitar... And I wrote down the lyrics to my favorite songs in a notebook and would go sing them in public... Including at his house... Then I got an electric guitar... And I talked to Ken into buying a synthesizer so we could play music together... That turned out to be an amazing journey... Soon I bought a synthesizer and together we would play music in his basement for hours and hours and hours... These were analog synthesizers that could make many bizarre sounds... Mostly sounding like the soundtrack from science fiction movies like Forbidden Planet... But Ken was a big fan of synthesizer music... And now we were making it! While the laser light show projected swirling galaxies or clouds or whatever on the ceiling... 

He invited friends of his over to play music (or just listen) Most often Mark, Leon, Ford and Tom...

These Musical Jam sessions made his wife Charlotte happy because... "Here it is a Saturday night and I know where My husband and son are... Safe at home instead of out carousing with hookers!"

Charlotte was a daughter of the Confederacy and her grandfather carried the flag at the Battle of Bull Run. She's still owns the flag but it's on permanent loan to the museum in Manassas,  Virginia. One day she took me on a personalized tour of the battlefield... She was very knowledgeable... And pointed to important locations... Like... "Over there is where the Yankees ran away!" - The first battle of Manassas was quite an event because the people from Washington DC thought it would be amusing to go witness a battle... Then they found out that war is an astonishingly horrible event and went back to Washington DC very quickly... 

Charlotte also requested that we go to the Smithsonian Institute and see the Chippendale dollhouse... Not surprisingly, it was furnished with Chippendale furniture... 

We went to two rock concerts together... Blondie... Which was so damn loud that it ruined the concert... And Tangerine Dream at the beautiful Warner Theater in downtown DC... We were so close to the stage then when the smoke machine went off we were covered... And that kind of freaked me out because I was concerned about breathing... And carbon dioxide... That was especially excellent concert because I'd spent the whole day wandering around the National Art Gallery high on LSD... 

We also went to a fantastic movie theater called the Uptown which had a giant screen and a rock concert volume sound system... We saw The Wall, the Right Stuff and Koyaanisqatsi!

We traveled a couple of times... I like to drive and Ken would get us invitations to interesting places... We went to see a laserium show at a planetarium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania... And there were very few people in the audience... So after the show was over Ken introduced himself to the laserist and told him that Ken had built his own laser light show... And that interested The Professional so he let us play with the actual laserium machine... I found it too complex to operate because it had a bunch of knobs and none were labeled and none had any obvious purpose... But Ken was able to make it work... 

We also went to New York City to see the Museum of holography. This was a state-of-the-art show in the early 1980s when holography had just been invented... Ken was always good for Cutting Edge Technology...

We all went out to a very dark field in rural Virginia to look at a comet... Ken's friend Ford had a telescope that rotated 360 degrees once a day... Very handy to keep stars in focus... I've never been good at watching the stars because my vision is blurry... And it was especially blurry that night because I had smoked marijuana before driving... I was Safe for driving but bad for comet watching...

Ken worked as a purchasing agent when I first met him... And then later as a programmer at Tom's small computer company... And then finally he got a job with the County of Prince William as an Oracle SQL programmer... That is powerful but incomprehensible language... When I went to college for computer science that's the only class that I had to take twice... Because I just didn't get it!

One of Ken's friends owned a sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay. Four of us went sailing on a lovely sunny day... And then a storm came up... And it was actually dangerous... And the owner of the boat, while being rich enough to buy a boat, was incompetent as a captain... So the other guy who was sailing with us staged a mutiny and made the owner go below deck while he piloted the ship back to shore safely... This was all very exciting but I was scared... The boom swung wildly from one side to the other and it whacked Ken real hard and knocked his glasses into the water... No chance of recovery... 

After playing music in Ken's basement for years I bought a battery powered portable synthesizer and speaker system that I took to the banks of the Potomac in Virginia... Right across the water from the DARPA headquarters... So at night, I made crazy "spaceship taking off" type sounds... Just to freak out the government engineers... At DARPA... I imagine that they wondered "What is that? A UFO landing?"

Ken also introduced me to the book: Godel, Escher, Bach... A legendary manual exploring the possibilities of computer science and technology... Years later, when I worked at Radio Shack, I actually put together a system where a video camera filmed its output on a monitor... And that created Visual Echo tunnels... Because the camera was seeing what it was displaying... Zen Trippy!

Ken named our band Solar Wind

I did the painting in black light acrylics...

Ken III & Ken IV

The reason I'm sitting down while playing

is that I had two Morley Phasers

and I operated them with my feet... 

Mark mockingly asked me one time...

"Are you playing guitar

or driving a truck?"

and the reason my face is blurry

is the photo was taken in low light...

And I was nodding my head in time to the music...

Kids these names would call it head banging!

this has to be Mark's PAIA machine.

That he assembled from a kit

while he was stationed on the Aleutian Islands

with the United States Coast Guard.

IMSAI 8080 Computer

Ken playing the Synthesizers.

Amateur radio operator Ken

I had both of these KORG synthesizers... And the little one on top was used by Kitaro to do the Japanese flute sound on the the Silk Road theme... What's really cool is that my friend Ken had a Yamaha DX7 and a Roland Juno 60... So when we played together each of us sounded different... And I could tell who was playing What notes... When the other guy came over with a KORG Mono-Poly I couldn't tell what he was doing and what I was doing...