Recently in Eulogy Category

Ronnie James Dio (born Ronald James Padavona) died today, at 7:45 am, after a tough battle with stomach cancer.

Ronnie was one of the best heavy music singers, ever, and for my money, he was the best. He was best known for singing in the bands Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell, and in his own band, Dio.

I was just talking about Ronnie with some friends, on Friday, because one of his tunes was playing at the gym when we were working out. I had mentioned that I was lucky enough to meet him once at the NAMM show four or five years ago.

He definitely had the golden pipes, and I always enjoyed his singing.

It's not widely known, but he actually lived in the central NY area, in Cortland NY, at one time in his life.

He will be missed.

When I started playing guitar years ago, I always dreamt of the day when I would finally be able to own a Gibson Les Paul guitar.  I loved the look, and the symmetry of the design, long before I had ever even plugged one in and heard their amazing tone.  Then after I had been playing for only a few years, a fortuitous thing happened.  A friend who needed money badly to pay his rent, offered to sell me his Les Paul.  He had done some customizing work to it, and really, had messed it up a bit, but I offered him all of the money I had been saving for the day when I would finally be able to buy a Les Paul, and he accepted.  Three hundred dollars later I was the proud owner of a 1977 Gibson Les Paul Standard (pictured), and I started the difficult task of trying to undo the work he had done, and bring it back as close to stock as possible.  I had a friend who was a Gibson dealer, and he sold me the needed hardware at cost, and after a short period of time, I had it the way I wanted it, and own the guitar to this very day.

Why am I talking about my silly guitar, you ask?  Well, it's because on Thursday, August 13th, Les Paul died at the age of 94 years.

Many of you might not realize this, but Les Paul is responsible for so many of the things that musicians take for granted on a daily basis.  He gave us the first solid body electric guitar.  Before that, the guitars that people played on stage were likely likely to be hollow with arched tops, and if they had a pickup, and were plugged in, they were much more likely to feed back.  Solid body guitars have a completely different sound, but allow you to play with your amp set really loudly, and they won't feed back.

Les also gave us multi-track recording.  The idea that an instrument can have its own separate track which gives you ultimate control over how that instrument/track sounds, and how it sits in the final mix.

Les also pioneered the technique of close-miking sound sources.  Prior to Les, microphones would typically be placed far away from the sound source that they were recording, which would result in a more distant, less present sound.  Les decided that it might be cool to put the microphone more like six inches away from the singer, or instrument, which resulted in a more present sound, and to this day is the way most things are recorded.

The guy was also one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived.

Quite a legacy, eh?

So the next time you pick up your solid body electric guitar, stick a microphone in front of your amp, and record it to its own track on some sort of multi-track recording device, think of Les.

I have been sad for a few days now, and here's why:

I have been following @lancearmstrong on Twitter from the day I signed up for my Twitter account.  Lance is always Tweeting about things in his life, and showing his followers cool photos, and more.  Well one day a few weeks ago, he Tweeted about a guy with a blog that he thought others might like to read.  The blog is called fatcyclist.com.

From what I've read on his site, fatcyclist.com was originally put up by a guy named Elden Nelson to blog about cycling, and his efforts using cycling to lose weight.  At some point, his wife Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the mission of the blog then became telling his, and his wife's cancer story, and helping to raise money for Susan's medical expenses, and for Lance Armstrong's Livestrong Foundation.  He told their story with great passion, stoicism, and yes.... humour.  Occasionally he even found time to go for a bike ride, and talk about that, as well.

By the time I had discovered the site, Susan's cancer was very advanced, and on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009, Susan died.  I didn't know these people at all, but because I have a great passion for cycling as well, and through reading many of Elden's blog posts, I feel like I have come to know them a little.  I can also relate because a few people near and dear to me have had to fight cancer.  I'm sure that's something we can ALL relate to.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out Elden's blog, and encourage you to read some of his posts, and if so moved, to consider donating to his children's education fund, and to his Livestrong Fund Raising Team.