[Daryl Jones]

Welcome Bob, no such thing as being “too late” to this party!

[Daryl Jones]

C’ead mille failte James! It’s been years now since I visited my ancestral homeland. My Mum’s family hails from Crossgar just a wee bit southeast of Belfast. We toured the North and central Ireland in 2011 by motorcycle, an amazing adventure to be sure.
Enjoy the Club and all its offerings!

[Daryl Jones]

Mine was in the mail box this morning. Totally unexpected too I might add.🤣
Reckon my memory has more gaps than I realized…😉

[Daryl Jones]

Belated Birthday wishes Jacki! Hope you had a wonderful day!!!

[Daryl Jones]

Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like somebody superimposed over The Beatles track with Simon & Garfunkle. But it works.
Funny thing about music, it can be overlaid with major blended with minor scales and as long as you don’t throw the minor notes in the wrong place, it does work. Keep the root notes where they belong and it all falls into place. Not always seamlessly, but even a note that would otherwise be totally out of place can add depth and different feelings to a piece or movement. Blues does it all the time. Minor pentatonic scales can be played over the major chord structure/base of a song in a guitar solo and it works just fine. As long as you don’t stray too far from the root or in absolutely the wrong spot, like at the end of a movement where it turns sweet milk into sour cream. 😉

[Daryl Jones]

We’re way down on our normal snowfall this year, but we didn’t escape the deepfreeze. Even though we had a two month reprieve, it hit us in earnest last week. I think I saw the coldest temperature in the 43 years we’ve lived here at the lake. It actually gets much colder in town (25km away) due to the low river valley; typically it gets 10-15 degrees colder when these arctic fronts slide in. The ice fog gets so thick you can barely see across the streets. One of my friends’ thermometer registered -50*c right down by the river on Saturday. Who knows how accurate that is but suffice to say that is very cold.😱 I looooove my wood stove in the living room!😍
Normally by this time of year we have 2-3 feet of the white stuff on the ground, this year we have the ground covered, but that’s all. Snowmobilers aren’t happy at all. I don’t ride anymore so I appreciate only having had to plow the yard twice so far, and have only done the sidewalk and deck 2 times with the shovel. My hand-held blower has done most of the light snow removal.😃

[Daryl Jones]

Happy for all you long time members! Very nice memento.

[Daryl Jones]

While we will get winter blizzards of pretty horrendous magnitude, they aren’t all that common. Not at all of the lake effect dumps that’s for sure. A foot in a 24 hour period is about the worst we get, but it as been much more on rare occasions. when I was a teen in school, we had a storm that required heavy construction equipment (large cats, loaders and gravel trucks) to open roads to farm homes and clear the town streets. But there were brutal winds accompanying that too. I remember taking photos of us riding snowmobiles with the tops of power poles sticking out of the drifts and plow banks. Our open air skating rink where we recreated and played hockey drifted right full to the top of the boards. And a 30 foot high drift ran from the peak of the neighboring curling rink across the parking lot, across the road and into the school sports field. Roughly 150 yards yards away. And it was like concrete. Took the town about two weeks to dig out from it. Power was out for about two days in various sections of town, and then once the storm abated the bottom fell out of the thermometer into that lovely -30 to -40 range. But that is rare, thankfully. I often wonder what a storm like that here would do today?

[Daryl Jones]

I tried once to study Japanese calligraphy, but found it very involved. Without a mentor close by I got discouraged and gave up. Not something I am predisposed to do. I have learned to brush/scribe some names and some notable characters that have personal meaning, but that’s all.
I did a fair amount of writing when I was young, even had a couple shorts published in magazines some years back. I thought of joining an editor friend in a moto magazine endeavor, but the distances required and time away from home put the lid on that real quick. There is a “gypsy” in my soul, but there’s reality in life too so.
The musicians and “heroes” we have that write things down are in a different category I think. It goes hand in hand with what they do and feeds their creative efforts.

[Daryl Jones]

I really wish there was a “like” button for these posts…(hint)😉

[Daryl Jones]

“Art” is so personally introspective and taste oriented I think. I can appreciate the beauty of any painting by the great masters, just like a piece of music. The use of color and tone is pretty obvious mostly. But I get lost when it is what I consider abstract or “modern” if you will. Much of that is so out there that I can’t even comprehend the meaning or essence of the composition. Be it on canvas or sculpted, whatever. Some of the “pieces” that get gallery expositions or (gasp) auctions that sell for more than my house leave me wondering about some people’s sanity. But hey, I’m just a country bumpkin with a wannabe musician’s soul.🤣

[Daryl Jones]

Bob Marley is/was a very unique personality. I found his music hard to get to know at first. But like many things as I got older, I find much of his work so very insightful. Kind of a testament to the power of music in any form.

[Daryl Jones]

Jung, I love this version from well, you know who…
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=monalisa+twins+walking+in+air&mid=131B12D0151F0F62A441131B12D0151F0F62A441&FORM=VIRE

[Daryl Jones]

Jung, this song always brings tears to my eyes. So very deep with emotion and the aches of a broken heart for the loss of someone dear. Not necessarily just in death, but also in my case of a lost love. Like so many of David’s masterful works, he puts pain and sorrow into it with a rejuvenating hope and a promise of happiness somehow. When I was younger I could reach the high registers in the vocals, but those days are mostly gone now so I have to find other more suitable for me ways to sing most of his songs. I sometimes have trouble even playing his songs, they often make me swell with emotions so powerful I have to stop as the tears roll freely down my cheeks. Painfully sad, but also very beautiful.

[Daryl Jones]

Thanks Chris, I couldn’t find the actual documentary.
I have several of her albums/CDs. Her music can be a bit of an acquired taste I think. Her vocal style at first seems tad minor/diminished or like Neil Young a part tone down and off. But I like the inflection and feel in her work. She’s a very headstrong and determined individual, but I find her very honest and true to herself. Kind of a rare quality these days of sellouts and corporate puppets. She made mention of her one song to that subject, that her close friends and supporters thought she was going too ‘pop” with it, but I think she pulled it off very well and showed that she still marched to her own drum.