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Friday Night Music

Music

I have always loved the guitar playing of Hank Marvin (The Shadows), not just because if the nostalgia it brings me, but because it’s absolutely brilliant in its precision and clarity.  I forget who said it (Clapton or Jimmy Page, maybe?), but the advice given to any would-be guitar god was always:  “Unless you can play Hank Marvin’s lead guitar from the 1950s and 60s perfectly, note-for-note, you haven’t really done anything yet.”  It was, and remains to this day, the best foundation for any young lead guitarist.

Of course, the Shadows fell out of favor towards the end of the 1960s, as did all the old guitar instrumental bands, so Hank and rhythm guitarist Bruce Welch took a hiatus from the Shadows and formed a group called Marvin, Welch & Farrar with Australian songster John Farrar, and they made some wonderful music — this time as a vocal group — which featured close-knit harmonies which are, in my opinion, the equal of more well-known vocal groups like the Hollies or even (gasp) Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Listen to their eponymous album, especially Silvery Rain  (track #5).

Time, well-spent.

Quote Of The Year

Heroism, Law and Order, QOTD

…never mind the day.  From Sheriff Darryl Daniels of Clay County FL, in an open message to the BLM/anarchists:

“If we can’t handle you, you know what I’ll do?  I will exercise the power and authority as the sheriff, and I will make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county.  And I’ll deputize them for this one purpose:  to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility.  That’s what we’re sworn to do, and that’s what we’re going to do.  You’ve been warned.”

If I lived in Clay Co FL, I’d be volunteering my services as we speak.  I bet their phone lines are jammed.

Big Box Shotguns

The Gun Thing

I confess to being conflicted on the topic of mag-fed shotguns like this one:

As any fule kno, when it comes to MOAR FIREPOWER I am generally on the side of the angels, i.e.  the MOAR, the BETTAH.

But having handled several shotguns of this type in the past, I have to say that I’m not sure they’re for me, simply because they are unbelievably cumbersome and unwieldy.  Shotgun ammo is heavy, Bubba, and unless you are of the Ahnuld / Stallone type, these guns are a bitch to be around.  (More so for anything on the naughty end, of course, but we can discuss that topic another time.)

My thought is that if you’re going to need ten or twelve shots of 00-Buck, that would be what we Old ‘Uns used to call a sticky situation, and I for one would rather employ an AK (or even an AR-15) which would give me all the follow-up shots I’d need, and more (20-, 30- or higher-capacity magazines, none of that 10-round stuff).

Remember, I’m not saying “Don’t get one”, but be aware that these are not movie guns to be waved around — at least, not for long.

I remember a friend once showing me his Franchi-SPAS shotgun, which could switch from pump to semi-auto by clicking a toggle and jiggling the slide:  I could barely lift it, unloaded.  It weighed nearly ten lbs, and the prospect of actually running around with the thing made me tired just thinking about it.  (Unloaded, a decent over-and-under weighs about seven lbs, a side-by-side about six, and a Mossberg 500 about five.)

I can’t help but think that mag-fed shotguns fall into the same category:  excellent concept, but unrealistic in practice.  It’s like those sexy 50-round drum mags one sees for Tommy guns, AKs and so on:  wonderful, until you have to work with them.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings, The Gun Thing

Haven’t done one of these for a while, so:

A 72-year-old homeowner shot and killed an alleged intruder he discovered in his Nashville, Tennessee, home Wednesday morning.
WSMV reports the incident occurred around 5:30 a.m., when the homeowner, Henry Schuster, returned to his house after eating breakfast.
Schuster told police he noticed the screen from his kitchen window had been removed, making him suspect someone had made entry into the home through it. Schuster then pulled his gun and conducted a room-to-room check through the house.
When he entered the bathroom 27-year-old Taylor Lowery was allegedly there and “lunged at him grabbing for the gun.”
Schuster responded by shooting Lowery, fatally wounding him.

[pause to let the raucous cheers and rude catcalls die down]

You know it’s going to end well for people like Our Hero when the cops come into the room, take one look at the corpus delicti  and say, “Yep.  Thought it might be him.”

Note that the news report doesn’t say if The Late Choirboy was Black or White, which doesn’t matter, of course:  scum is scum, and people who need killing need killing, regardless of race, creed or color.

All violent criminals’ lives don’t matter.