Classic old blues song. Kind’a sad, simple, tells a story. A twist at the end that a lot of modern rappers could learn from. Enjoy, or at least have a listen.
Lightnin’ came in at #71 of all time great guitarists on Rolling Stone’s list. Blues are not normally not my favorite genre of music, but there are some gems out there.
Someone I’d never heard of, sort of the other end of the spectrum from the Beatles or Ernie Ford. Interesting style. Decent acoustic guitar.
If you want to know more about him and his music, http://seandeburca.wordpress.com/ would seem to be the place to start. As always, all honest thoughts welcome.
Master guitarist. Another song I wasn’t familiar with until I found it. Thanks for the recommendation, John V.
Mark Knopfler has been playing the six-string for a while, and is generally considered one of the greats of the instrument.
Speaking of serious guitar stuff, a news story just came out that makes the Gibson guitar make raid make sense, in a “Chicago Thug Methods” sort of way.
Boomershoot 2014 entry is now open for staff. If you were staff for 2013 and use the same exact spelling for your name as before the entry software will allow you to enter now.
If you were a participant in Boomershoot 2013 then the software will allow you to enter tomorrow, Wednesday May 22, after 6:00 PM PDT.
Anyone is allowed to enter after Friday May 24 6:00 PM PDT.
There may be some web service interruptions. My web hosting provider is updating my server and it will involve a change in IP address. If you get a page not found type error wait an hour or so and try again.
I’m finding all sorts of interesting things in a quest to find a gun-song per week. Here is Marty Robbins song “Big Iron” (on his hip). Simple tune, clear vocals, good story. It sounds like the background guitar player is having fun trying to slip a little fast-n-fancier stuff into the short spaces left in the vocals. What’s not to like? Sort of an antidote to a Beatles take on guns.
Marty Robbins is sort of in the same genre as “Tennessee” Ernie Ford, singing gospel, country, early rock, etc. Good stuff.
If any of you have suggestions, I’d be happy to consider them. Got another seven queued up, keep us in Friday tunes until the 4th of July.
For some reason I put together another AR. I’ve had a pretty nice Colt’s Match HBAR for years, but I thought a light carbine would be good to have around for kids, new shooters and such. My daughter might want it at some stage.
This new one is cobbled together from nearly as disparate a set of parts as is possible. I think every parts group is made by a different company. The aluminum, railed gas block, for example, was knocked out on an old Bridgeport mill by Some Dude in Moscow, Idaho– I had to mount it on the lathe and trim it down a bit to make it clear the floating handguard, which is a used piece off of Some Other Dude’s AR. It’s all assembled as a mock-up right now. Mostly new parts, some of the metal being in the white. I wanted to proof test it before taking it all apart again, bead blasting it and giving it a finish of some kind.
Since none of the working parts had ever fired a cartrige before, I cranked off four rounds with the carbine held at arm’s length, one-handed, into a hillside (the thought had come to mind that the thing could blow up, and if it was going to do that I wanted it to happen far away from my face). Perfect function. All ejected cases ended up in a nice tight group off to my right, too.
After putting a few shots on paper at 25 yards, I took it out to 100 to get a good zero on the TX30 reflex sight. Here’s the 100 yard target. I fire two-shot groups for initial sight-in. One-shot “groups” would probably be OK for starters, but I like to get some sense of how I and the rifle are working together. The first 100 yard group is the one holer at the top of the paper, on the “1L” line. I’d thought that the TX30 had 1/3 MOA clicks like an ACOG telescope, so I over-compensated, putting the second group near the bottom of the paper. The TX30 has 1/2 MOA clicks, and the fact that the target was stapled to a log and was slanting back quite a bit accounts for the larger apparent error. Splitting the difference with a few “up” clicks, and a couple clicks left, the third group was pretty well dead on;
I have a padded steel rifle rest and some shooting bags, but I’m using them less and less. If you can’t use your vehicle, a stump, a tree branch, a rock, the ground or your knee, what kind of shooting are you practicing? In this case I was mono-podding, holding the 30 round magazine in my hand and resting the hand on the hood of the pickup. It works well enough. The truck bumper is OK too, or the tail gate, or a front tire steered over to one side. The tip of a longish snowshoe can make a decent place to rest your knee in a kneeling position… There are lots of options, so you can haul around less stuff.
Three consecutive two-shot groups of around 1 MOA and less. I be happy for now. Don’t ask me to repeat it. It was getting dark so I called it a day and let the dog out to romp around for a bit and get wet and smelly before the ride home. Ultimately I think I’ll want a solid 200 yard zero for this reflex-sighted carbine.
Dealing with “issues” while shooting is a good thing. In this case it was failing light, mosquitoes, my dog which hates gunfire (he ended up inside the pickup, and his moving around made the pickup, which I was using as a shooting rest, move just a little bit while aiming) and the fact that I’d ended up out there with no spotting optic so I had to trot the 100 yards back and forth to determine shot placement. That and there were people driving up and down the road, which was close enough I didn’t want to fire while people were so close and make them nervous. So I’m looking around, listening, swatting bugs, dealing with the dog, hurrying, and huffing and puffing a little. It’s an exercise in being very still while immersed in little stresses and distractions. That’s part of why I like rifle shooting so much. It’s wonderful. Sometimes it works out great and other times you chalk it up to learning. This time was like a dream, but I’ll have to figure out what happened to my 20×60 binocs.
This new light carbine is pounds lighter than my scoped HBAR rifle. I think it’s going to be one of my favorite shooters. I’d never “built” an AR before, and even though I’d had my Colt, and a Rock River, apart many times it was surprising to me how easy it was to cobble one together from parts. A fairly small child could do it, with a little bit of instruction.
I came across a Beatles song I’d never even HEARD of before. A gun song from The BEATLES?! Happiness is a Warm Gun, from the White Album. Hmmm… Looking at the lyrics, it’s clear they were pretty clueless about what they were singing about. Of course, being as it was released in 1968, perhaps not so surprising. There were a LOT of things done then in popular culture that made people say a all kinds of seriously weird and disjointed stuff. Can’t say they are not musically talented, and on a technical basis interesting. Also can’t say it’s a very good song as a song, IMHO, but here it is to you to make your own opinion of.
Hopefully, no-one needs much of an intro to the Beatles, but for the younger crowd, that was who Paul McCartney played with before Wings. For the whipper-snappers who don’t get that joke, never mind, just look them up.
Ry stopped by my office this afternoon and shared this bit of knowledge with me:
When you are shooting into a fire a red dot sight is totally worthless.
It’s obvious in hindsight but neither he nor I thought of it ahead of time.
No “gun” in the title, but anything that is actually performed with real cannons certainly qualifies as a gun song. The exciting part is near the end, for those not familiar with it. It’s a famously rousing piece, at least the ending. The rest has a narrower appeal.
Tchaikovsky is one of the big names in classical music. He was Russian, born in 1840. If you like classical music, you likely know about him, or at least OF him, and if you don’t, nothing I say will change your mind, most likely. But an interesting factoid was that he made an appearance at the inauguration of Carnegie Hall.
Double action, pre Civil War design percussion revolver. It has a fully enclosed cylinder, i.e. a top strap. What I don’t get at the moment is why there are twice as many cylinder notches as there are chambers.
This is the sort of thing I’d like to own, and yet I can give no practical reason for it whatsoever.
ETA; I think I figured out the cylinder notch thing. It must be a safety system. Colt’s, Remington and others had similar features, pins or notches in the back of the cylinder to engage the hammer, that more or less locked the cylinder half way between chambers, so the hammer could rest safely between chambers, allowing the carrier to have all chambers loaded rather than resting the hammer on an empty chamber. This revolver is simply using the existing bolt (cylinder lock) for that purpose, methinks, hence the “in between” cylinder notches.
It was totally worth it.
Max L.
April 26, 2013
After completing the Boomershoot High Intensity Event.
[Max had spent the day working in a crowded hot shipping container helping to make reactive targets. A few minutes of Boomershoot therapy was apparently compensation enough.
Video and pictures in a day or three.—Joe]
What can I say. A classic. With animations.
Hope to see some of you at Boomershoot.
Via email from Will:
It was taken at the Norpoint range in Arlington WA.
And that is part of why we win.
Seems like a good day for a march, even if it’s April.
John Phillip Sousa wrote a LOT of military / march music, and like them or not, he had quite an influence on the popular music at that time. He and his band actually toured and played for large crowds. He also didn’t write ALL his music down – that is to say, his music as published and sold was often not how he had his band played it. The performance that people paid to come and listen to had some subtle details changed to make them better – people always said that they never sounded the same when he played them than when other bands of similar size and skill played his purchased sheet-music. He knew how to protect his franchise. This particular march isn’t a lot better or worse than any of his other works, but was selected because of the title. Enjoy
John Philip Sousa, 1852 – 1932
He was a US Marine, one of the all-time best trap shooters, a writer, opposed the mechanical recording of music, and overall was an interesting guy. If you liked military / march music, he’s an icon. If you don’t, and claim he only wrote two marches in a hundred variations each, you still cannot deny his popularity and influence in his day.
I ordered a few of the E-Lander 30 round AR mags (they say they’re made for the Tavor). It took several weeks but here they are. They look really nice. They’re made with the same fold and spot-weld technique we see on most Aluminum mags, but these are steel. They have a protective coating that supposedly exceeds the salt spray requirements in U.S. military specs. The followers are true anti-tilt, meaning you can press down at the very front or the back, and they go down fine, without up-ending like the standard green mil spec followers. The bendy tabs that hold the floor plate are reinforced. Nice touch.
All very nice, but I won’t be keeping them in my main line-up, at least not with a full 30 rounds in them.
This seems pretty bizarre to me– you can not lock the mag into an AR with a full 30 round load when the bolt is forward, i.e. no tactical reloads. I’ve noticed this with some of my other mags too.
I suppose one could tweak the follower/floorplate interface to allow another millimeter or so of follower travel and solve this problem pretty easily. The mag bodies appear to be identical in length to my standard aluminum mags. On the other hand, the box of Brownell’s mags I just got all have that extra millimeter of follower travel and snap right in with a full 30 round load. They aren’t quite as pretty though.
I’ve been on a kick for the last couple of weeks, pointing out, it seems to me, at least once per day how this or that must have been designed or built by people who don’t actually use the product. I suppose I should pay more attention to my own designs, but as a user of products, it comes naturally to be a critic.
I’ve created the Boomershoot 2013 Cafepress store.
The image (via Barron Barnett, see also his post) on the products is:
You don’t have to be a participant to buy from the store. And there is still time to enter the event if you do want to participate.
We used 14 pounds of explosives and 13 gallons of gasoline for the fireball in the image above.
I got a really good deal on 150 gallons of fuel this year. Ry was a little evasive in his answers but I’m pretty sure he promised not to use it all up this year. You should attend to find out what he has planned. Nomex clothing is optional.
Remember last January when I helped out a new author with some gun and explosives stuff for her story?
Here is the rest of the story.
I haven’t had time to read it all but I’m hooked and making good progress.
Elton John has always been kind of hit or miss for me. He’s got some songs I really like, some I can’t stand, and like a lot of long-timer writers / performers, a fair body of work I’ve never heard before. This is one of the latter. I was looking for something else, and I came across this. Not sure just what I think of it. Classic Elton John style, but I’m not sure exactly what he’s trying to say. The words are clear enough, but the meaning? Not so much. I can think of a couple of reasonable interpretations, but nothing for certain. Seemed like a good Friday Gun-song choice to kick around a bit.
Elton John, of course, is one of the big names in popular music, who should need no introduction except to those on the “whipper-snapper” end of the age-range. Politically controversial and outspoken, he’s been doing his thing and having people listen to him for a long time, now. Love his work or hate it, he’s talented, accomplished, well-known, and rich.
It doesn’t have the word “gun” in the title, but it’s definitely in the gun genre. I first heard it when I was in grade school, and I loved it. Loved the whole album. It is one of my son’s favorite today, along with Sink the Bismark. Clear words and singing, good story, with clean music and a rousing beat. We fired our guns and the British kept a’comming / wasn’t not as many as there was a while ago / fired once more and they begin to run’n / down the Mississip to the Gulf of Mexico.
Johnny Horton – Battle of New Orleans
Horton sung a lot of historical stuff, about battles, wars, mountain men, gold miners and various turning points and interesting points in history. His style is called rockabilly, and would have likely produce a lore more stuff and been an even bigger name if he’d not been killed at age 35 by a drunk driver in a head-on crash while crossing a bridge in 1960.
The editor at Western Shooting Journal gave me permission to publish the article I wrote for them the history of Boomershoot here are my blog. The .pdf files for the various pages in the March 2013 issue are: