August 2008


Hoosierville22 Aug 2008 09:00 pm

Fish-on-a-Stick was one of my favorite Hoosierville things ever. It was so random, but very fitting. I was really disappointed when it disappeared.

But the other day I was coming home from work and saw Fish-on-a-Stick version 2! And it was only 1 mile south of the original Fish-on-a-Stick.

Is that what I think it is?

How strange.

There’s no way this could have happened by accident.


Some high-society lady in Hoosierville is walking around lopsided.

Music14 Aug 2008 11:20 pm

I just discovered something tonight that I can hardly believe. How on earth did I never know this before?! I’m a student of barbershop quartets and southern gospel like few others, but somehow I missed this one.

My favorite old time barbershop quartet is far and away the Suntones, 1961 barbershop quartet champions. They were flat-out awesome, and their stuff still is many years later. I have their Complete Works CDs 4 and 5, and sure wish I had the other three.

Back in ’03, the Suntones were doing some reunion stuff, and some of their sons got together and sang a few songs as “Sons of the Tones.” I heard it was on Youtube, so I checked it out.

Pretty sweet! They sound really good. Todd Wilson, son of baritone Harlan Wilson, sings the baritone, and the lead and tenor’s sons also sing the lead and tenor respectively. Joel T. Rutherford (not a Suntone son) fills in on bass. Todd and Joel sing with the Acoustix.

So let’s switch to Southern Gospel. It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of the Gaither Vocal Band. I’ve always liked Terry Franklin, he was tenor for a few years back in the 90’s, between Jim Murray and Jonathan Pierce.

This was way back, but they did some great stuff. And Terry was really quite a good tenor. I used to have a video of GVB at a Praise Gathering from that era, it had some great stuff on it. Somehow it disappeared on me, I sure wish I knew what happened to it.

Anyway, so I was watching these Sons of the Tones vids, and I was thinking, man that lead looks like Terry Franklin. Then I noticed that it said his name WAS Terry Franklin! I thought that was too massive a coincidence to be the same Terry, so I started Googling.

I found an interview of Bill Gaither done by Todd Wilson in ’06, and sure enough, it’s one and the same. Terry Franklin is the son of Bob Franklin, lead of the Suntones! How awesome is that.

Then I found this from Joel T. Rutherford (he posted the videos on Youtube) explaining them.

Anyway, here are some of the songs from Youtube. This first one features Terry a good bit on lead (with some great high notes!), Without a Song.

Here they are doing one of my favorite Suntones tunes, Show Me Where the Good Times Are:

Here’s a couple from the GVB when Terry was with them, these were from the video I used to have. Back when they were all mullet boys, check out the hair.  And Michael English in flowing pants and Mark Lowry in his prisoner suit!

This is Little is Much, with Terry doing the tenor lead.

Here’s a great one, Satisfied. In spite of a brief trademark howl from Mike English, it’s still great.

Hoosierville13 Aug 2008 11:39 am

Trying to imply that Bill Gaither was somewhat of a hick: “You can take the boy out of Indiana, but you can’t take Indiana out of the boy!”

Audio&Music11 Aug 2008 08:02 am

Here’s a great song from way back.

Download

They just don’t put songs like this on kid’s albums anymore. At some point in my music career I believe I’ll do a children’s project, and I’ll have to consider this tune.

Tech09 Aug 2008 07:45 am

A few months ago I finally broke down and decided to get the widescreen LCD monitor that I’ve wanted for so long.

But my current graphics card couldn’t handle the native resolution of the new monitor (1680×1050). So I had to buy a new one.

A nice feature of this new card is that it will handle dual monitors.

That’s the old 19″ beast of a CRT. It weighs, oh, maybe around 300 pounds and takes up about 14 square feet of desktop space.

I got an Acer AL2216 22″ widescreen. Now I have a lot more room for a mess on my desk.

But then as I alluded to, I recently had major computer problems.

That’s not good. My motherboard fried. I ordered a motherboard, processor, RAM, and a cheap DVD burner from Newegg and had them overnighted. I needed a SATA optical drive because the new motherboard had only one IDE channel! And I had a couple of non-SATA hard drives, so I couldn’t piggyback my old IDE DVD burner on there. Here I’ve removed the old stuff and am ready to install all the new parts in my Antec Sonata case.

Notice there in the background, I’m also babysitting times 2. Talk about multi-tasking.

There’s everything in place, ready to go. So far it’s been working well.

Misc07 Aug 2008 11:46 pm
Music04 Aug 2008 03:05 pm

I came across this video on Youtube, and I love this quartet. They’re fantastic.

Here’s a link to just the audio, Hey, What’s Your Name? (different performance). Disneydiva7 (Laura Workman McMurtrey) is the soprano. She has several songs of various styles and genre posted online here. She’s a fantastic vocalist. I want to hear more from this quartet.

Edit: I forgot to say, this is a family quartet, they’re brothers and sisters.