My sister, who was visiting yesterday, showed me Simon Tofield's "Cat Man Do" video, and told me it's the video of the moment making the rounds on the Web. I love it! I think it's hilarious. Anyone who has ever lived with a cat can relate to this!

See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S4hNMqDhoo

See more about Tandem Films animation studio here: http://www.tandemfilms.com/

Or read about how The Cat's Gone Viral! :
http://tandemfilms.blogspot.com/2007/10/cats-gone-viral.html

Of all of the concerts I've been to over the years, I've always considered the one time I saw Queen to be the best show I've ever seen. "The Game" Tour. Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. Other Ontario locals might remember Exhibition Stadium, which is gone now. I always loved concerts there, the atmosphere was great. The concert going on, and off to the left you could see the CNE midway lit up and buzzing with all the rides and game booths, etc. And at Exhibition Stadium concerts, lots of the people there would have spent their whole day at the Ex, because your concert ticket got you onto the Ex grounds for free. So we'd usually make a day of it, take the GO train into Toronto, spend the day at the CNE, go to a concert, then head back on the GO train again.

I remember that at one point in that concert Brian May referred to Exhibition Stadium as an "unusual" stadium. It had never occurred to me before that, but it is kind of true. If you look at an overview or seating plan of that stadium, it did have a bit of an unusual shape. Or maybe he was referring to how they set up for CNE Grandstand Shows, with a stage in the middle of the field that faced one side of the stadium, and they filled only that half of the stadium.

Anyhow, Queen did a lot of amazing tunes that night...including this one: 

QUEEN - "Keep Yourself Alive"          (B. May)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/varriffs.txt

Hear it here:

http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view1950812.html

Mood:  cheeky

Faster than a speeding credit card transaction! More powerful than the New York Stock Exchange! Able to leap U.S. greenbacks in a single bound! Look! Up in the North! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's....

SUUUUUUPERLOONIE!!!

With the recent very strong showing of the Canadian dollar, there's been a lot of talk about car prices (and prices in general) and whether or not they're changing (or will change soon) to reflect the increased value of the dollar. But I say, in my most poetic manner:

"Cars, schmars
What about guitars?"

It really only occurred to me for the first time last night that other traditionally expensive big ticket items like guitars should be seeing an adjustment in price too. So I'm wondering if now is a good time to buy. Can I pick up a really nice Ovation or Takamine for mere pocket change right now because the loonie is currently so uber-mighty?  No, I didn't think so. Nice thought though, isn't it?

I've read a couple of articles recently about a new coffee table book that's coming out soon that lists the Top 100 Canadian Pop/Rock albums. The author polled various people to come up with his results, asking them to list their ten favourite albums by a Canadian artist/band.

What surprised me the most about the list was how few of these records I have in my own collection. I've bought lots (lots!) of Canadian music over the years, but I only have a grand total of eleven albums of the 100 that made the cut. Here are the eleven I have and where they appeared on the list:

5. Fully Completely - The Tragically Hip (1992)
9. Moving Pictures - Rush (1981)
15. Up To Here - The Tragically Hip (1989)
21. Day For Night - The Tragically Hip (1994)
26. Road Apples - The Tragically Hip (1991)
37. Ingenue - k.d. lang (1992)
42. The Best Of The Guess Who - The Guess Who (1971)
60. Hot Shots - Trooper (1979)
67. Outskirts - Blue Rodeo (1987)
87. Living Under June - Jann Arden (1994)
100. A Farewell To Kings - Rush (1977)

If not for The Hip, I would have barely made a dent in that list. Of course, lists like this are always very subjective. But they make for great debate, because everybody thinks they're wrong! You can see the full Top 100 list, and read a bit about how it was compiled, here:

http://www.canada.com/globaltv/globalshows/et_story.html?id=981a7cd4-4a31-4c0a-a024-0ffd50445df4

So I asked myself which ten Canadian albums would I have chosen? What would my ten Canuck "Desert Island" picks be? I could change my mind by tomorrow, or ten minutes from now, but at the moment this list looks pretty good to me:

1. A Farewell To Kings - Rush (1977)
2. Greatest Hits - The Guess Who (1999)
3. Stand Back - April Wine (1975)
4. Lookin' For Trouble - Toronto (1980)
5. Best Of Max Webster - Max Webster (1989)
6. Triptych - The Tea Party (1999)
7. Images At Twilight - Saga (1979)
8. Line Of Fire - Headpins (1983)
9. Road Apples - The Tragically Hip (1991)
10. Living Under June - Jann Arden (1994)

I've loved the song "Phasors On Stun" by FM for ages, and I did a tab of it for guitar earlier this year, (although there actually aren't any guitars in the song.) That tab is posted on the website, of course. So I thought this was pretty cool when I came across it on YouTube a few days ago. It's a guy (a professional musician, I would say, judging by one of his comments on the page) demonstrating his Godin electric mandolin with an excerpt from "Phasors". It's in two parts.

Pt. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfImUwxbBUw

Pt. 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcrW_LVi-t4

I've gotten a pretty good start on the first of the two tabs I mentioned a couple of days ago. I'm about halfway through. There's some good footage on YouTube to compare it to, as well, to make sure I'm placing certain parts in the right fretboard positions. The videos don't show me everything I'd like to see, but you can't have everything. The parts they do show have definitely helped.

I don't know if I'll manage to finish this one off (on paper, that is) tomorrow or not. I think a fair amount of what's left is repeating parts of what I've already tabbed, but there is one more short solo and an Outro part to work out. 

Starting the blog has had one beneficial side effect that I didn't expect. Google finds the site regularly now. The Googlebot crawls the blog several times a day, and also pages from the website, often including several individual tabs. This doesn't make them immediately searchable, but maybe over time it will.

One interesting thing has turned up in my stats. Since the beginning of this month, eight different people have found the site by doing a Google search. Seven of those eight people found their way here by searching for Headpins tabs.

They were probably surprised to find one, too, because they're just not out there. I hope they like the one they found here.

Maybe all that searching for Headpins tabs is an indication I should do some more of them? I was kind of planning to, anyhow.

(A tip of the cap to Rick, who asked me awhile back if I had any Headpins tabs, which resulted in me finishing the one I had had sitting around half finished for ages. And that resulted in drawing some traffic to the site. ) 

It seems like I'm not getting too much done so far in October. I posted a tab on October 1st and nothing since. I actually did a tab about a week ago, all in one night, but there were some issues with it, so I've shelved it for now. After I did the tab I went to 911Tabs.com, looked it up, and found pretty much what I expected. There were 82 listings for that tab! In reality, that breaks down to about 7 different versions, just all posted on multiple websites. Still, it means the world won't miss my version too much. I might post it sometime if I'm ever more satisfied with it.

I'm hoping to get started on a new tab tonight. The one after that is lined up already, too. That second one is a request. Both of those tabs will be in the Canadian section. And that should take care of the better part of the rest of October.

Have a good weekend!

There's certainly no shortage of cover tunes in Girlschool's back catalogue. Gun's "Race With the Devil". ZZ Top's "Tush". The Rolling Stones' "Live With Me". "20th Century Boy" by T Rex. "Burning In the Heat" by Slade. "Do You Love Me" by Kiss. Gary Glitter's "Leader Of the Gang". The Sweet's "Fox On the Run". As a matter of fact, seven of the band's ten studio albums include a cover song. Only the three most recent studio albums don't have one.

Today's riff is from their cover of Mud's "Tiger Feet". It's not a riff, actually, it's a ten bar instrumental section that's played twice during the song.

GIRLSCHOOL - "Tiger Feet"          (Chapman/Chin)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/gsriffs.txt

You can hear that guitar part in the sound clip on this page:

http://www.girlschool.de/

(Scroll down the page to the Nightmare At Maple Cross album.)