Synchronicity and The Night Shift... The below was written by me, Dan Martin, on 08/01/1999 to document a series of strangely interconnected events that that I experienced during the last days of July that same year. Some tenuously related historical facts are also included along the way for the sake of posterity. ============================================================ Earlier in July 1999 I had encountered the website of my original rock-guitar idol, Lonnie Mack http://www.lonniemack.com/ Lonnie's 1963 album THE WHAM OF THAT MEMPHIS MAN had been the one from which I had learned most of my lead guitar licks for the [then] Blue Velvets. Ed Rode (who primarily played Chet Atkins finger style) and I had been contending for some time as to which one of us was "lead" guitar and which, backup (chords). My nearly identical knockoff of Lonnie's "Memphis" track from that same album really gave me a boost in my quest for prominence. The first Blue Velvets 45 rpm demo record, an aluminum/acetate sandwich individually cut on a Scully lathe, was produced in 1964 by Ms Betty Blasco (author of "My Happiness") in the underground catacombs of the long-defunct Damon Recording Studios of Kansas City, Missouri. Side A was "Summertime" and the flip was "Baby What's Wrong" - a pretty good cover of that same track as found on Lonnie's '63 WHAM LP album. Back in the present (August 1999), I noticed that Lonnie's website offered direct sales of his CDs. Of course, none of his work is to be found at any commercial music house, so I bought two of Lonnie's CDs: STRIKE LIKE LIGHTNING and a 2-CD set: LIVE AT COCO'S. The "STRIKE..." CD appealed to me because it was co-produced by none other than the late Stevie Ray Vaughan (my latter-day guitar idol) and also featured several song duets and guitar duals between Stevie and Lonnie - some sweet stuff! In 1992 I had purchased Stevie's THE SKY IS FALLING (compiled in 1991) to memorialize his loss both to me and to the world. One of the tracks on "SKY..." is WHAM, the very same one written by Lonnie and among the cuts on his 1963 LP mentioned further above. In fact Stevie's liner notes say that Lonnie's 1963 LP was the first record that he (Stevie) ever bought. The notes go on to say that Stevie and Lonnie met in the early 1970's when Lonnie walked into one of Stevie's first club shows - Stevie was playing Lonnie's WHAM as Lonnie came through the door. My sons Brian and Steven had shared a very special evening with me on 08/01/1989 when the three of us saw Stevie Ray performing live at the Starlight Theater in Kansas City, MO. That evening was ten years to the day before this account of curious happenings was originally written. The main reason I chose Lonnie's "COCO" CD was because it contained newer versions of several of the songs (Down In The Dumps, Baby What's Wrong, Memphis, and Why) that were on my prized WHAM LP from 1963. This WHAM album had suffered the ravages of many moves (and less than reverent handling) over the ensuing years. One day it would become unplayable and for some time I had wished there was some way to "play" the tracks into my computer so that the magic would never die. Meanwhile three anxious weeks passed and at last a hand-addressed package arrived with a return address in Smithville, Tennessee. This was it! Each CD was autographed by Lonnie himself, and he even included his own favorite type of guitar pick as a souvenir (a Gibson XH). While listening to my prized new CDs, I reviewed their liner notes ---and then the surreal part began: The COCO CD was cut at a live performance on 10/08/1983. Lonnie and his band had to be playing the last tune of the evening, or perhaps packing up after the show, during the horrible moments of the auto accident that took my son Scott's life and gravely injured his younger brother Brian. How strange to ponder that those two unrelated events were now converging in my mind nearly 16 years in the future. The songs that the COCO CD shares with the 1963 WHAM LP were versions made some 20 years later, the same age Scott was when he lost his life. I remember on the very day of Stevie's death (chopper crash on 08/27/1990) I bought his IN STEP CD. I also remember "introducing" Scott and Stevie to each other in my mind that day and and imagining that they would be doing some serious jammin' in God's Blues Band - also known by many as The Night Shift. All of this made my determination to digitally capture all these sonic memories too great to ignore any longer. I hooked up my old BSR turntable to my computer's sound input and gave it a try. As feared, output of the BSR's magnetic cartridge was too weak to produce any results. I spent the next several hours on the internet trying to find an inexpensive preamp to give the needed boost. No luck, but all the while there was a nagging memory in my head of an item of musical surplus that had been mouldering away in my garage for lo these many years. So I dug around and recovered an ancient Realistic mini-mixer (two mic, two phono, one tape inputs). It was covered with the dust of many, many years - Scott had given it to me long ago and I had never had a use for it - until now. Whatever battery-pack that powered it had long since been lost, but it did have a 6-volt power input port and - lo and behold - I also found an old Panasonic power cube that had a 6vdc output. The plug even matched the Realistic's port... but would the polarity be compatible? By Providence itself, the Realistic's analog VU meters lit up invitingly when I plugged it all up. Inserting the Realistic between the turntable and computer provided the power boost and, apparently (judging by the excellent sound) the RIAA frequency compensation needed for LP records. So, thanks to Scott's 1980 gift, I began to record 1963 Lonnie and 1991 Stevie in a compressed digital MP3 format into my 1997-era computer (later the same rig helped me record the old Blue Velvets 45s for the website). And as I complete this document, Lonnie is wailing through my computer speakers "Why, why oh why, did you leave me this way; It's been so lonesome since you went away." Be seeing you, Scott and Stevie, on the other side... Dan Martin 08/01/1999