The Rock Band Kansas & The Room In The Basement

By TOM BOWSER

My highschool friend Bob Mueller had invited Kevin Swanson and I over to his parents flat with a singular purpose in mind.

As I remember it the room in the basement had some comfortable old living room furniture in it. The single window was covered with a stained, ratty old shade. It was cool, dark, damp and a little musty smelling like most basements in older homes. A couple of posters were beginning to peel off the brick walls and a single "black light bulb" was the sole source of illumination. The room in the basement was a womb. There was no TV, no phone, it was quiet. An older home stereo system and a stack of Bob's favorite vinyl records were the only other thing in the room.

The room in the basement was where I discovered the American rock band Kansas. As a violinist in our highschool orchestra I was a bit shocked. Violin in a rock band? It sounded good, real good! Everything about it was right!

We went to see Kansas perform at the Coliseum in Madison, WI as they toured to support their album "Point of Know Return" in 1977 I believe. They were every bit as good live as on their albums.

I recently saw the movie Kansas: Miracles Out of Nowhere. It brought me back to the time my friends and I spent in the room in the basement sharing our common love of music.

Do you remember where you were when you first heard your favorite band or song?

At the time I wrote this post Kansas: Miracles Out of Nowhere was playing for FREE on tubi. If you are a fan of the band Kansas or a fan of American rock music you will probably enjoy the movie. I know I did!

Millions of FREE listenable, downloadable music files !

By TOM BOWSER

The "Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free texts, movies, software, music, websites, and more", so much more. It's all FREE, that's no charge to you my friend.

Lots of music, I mean, LOTS OF MUSIC! A wondrous variety. Digitized vinyl albums and other audio you probably won't find anywhere else at this time.

The sound quality of the music I've downloaded and streamed seems better than the free services of most BIG NAME online services. The sound quality of some of the digitized vinyl album collections is often surprisingly good.

CONS:

1. Searching and finding what you want can be an exercise in patience.
2. I wonder if the musicians, artists and other creatives are being appropriately compensated?

For those of you who have not "been", I suggest you haul your ass over to the Internet Archive and get you some before it's all gone.

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For your edification and a quick quality test I present David McCallum's song "The Edge" from his Vinyl LP Album entitled "Music: A Bit More of Me" which was released in 1967 by Capital Records. My wife and I dig the groovy 1960's era vibe.

Who knew that David McCallum, the guy who played the chief medical examiner, Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard on the American TV series NCIS, was also a talented musician?

I downloaded the song "The Edge" as an .MP3 file from the Internet Archive. What do you think about the sound quality? How does it compare to the sound quality of the same song available on other online services?

Add Plug-ins To The Favorites List

Pro Tools Quick Start for PC

By TOM BOWSER

I create a "favorites" list for the plug-ins I routinely use. I find it helps me work faster, more efficiently and with less distraction. It reduces the time spent looking for plug-ins.

Your favorite plug-ins will show at the top of the Plug-In selector pop-up menu. Favorites will appear bold and colored yellow when seen in plug-in menus.

To create a plug-in favorites list:

1. Press and hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard.
2. Left click on an insert of a track. An insert looks like a blank rectangular space with a black dot on the left hand side. I've drawn a red line around an insert in the image below.

3. Hover your mouse cursor over the word "plug-in" on the menu that appears.

4. Left click on a plug-in you want to add to your favorites list. Remember, you need to be holding down the CTRL key.

The "TENS (mono)" reverb plug-in was added as a favorite to the top of my plug-ins list. (see image below)