[FFL]

Happy 25th Anniversary to the Macintosh - and Happy 31st Anniversary to The Radiators!

It's really nice to be able to celebrate the anniversary of my two favorite things at the same time!


Tonight and tomorrow night, the Radiators (wiki) celebrate 31 years together as a band with shows at their home base, Tipitina's in New Orleans. The shows will be audio & video streamed (link) both nights between 12:15-ish and 3 AM EST (VLC works best for me). There is also an audio-only link - oh, and there will be excellent opening bands both nights starting about 11 EST.

According to a fan's masterful bit of PHP work known as The BouillaBase, they have played 1668 different songs in 4360 shows in 1133 different venues in 439 different cities. I've been to about 300 of them, in a dozen or so cities.

It's too bad the Guinness Book folks no longer track records such as this (they focus on single events such as the longest submarine sandwich or the longest time on a pogo stick), or The Rads would, I believe, hold several World Records in the "touring rock n roll band" category.

In celebration, I'm going to share a couple of interesting items from the band's history, that I have never posted here before (if you are not familiar with my previous in-depth posts on The Radiators, you might want to take a look at this one - or you can click on their wiki link above).

Firstly - bass player Reggie Scanlon declined some interesting offers from other bands in order to stay with The Radiators. He turned down The Allman Brothers Band offer to audition for the spot that eventually went to Allen Woody when they reunited in 1989. He also turned down TWO different offers to join The Neville Brothers - once in the 1980s, and once in the 1990s.

Secondly - the Radiators narrowly missed being a much more famous band several times. The first was when they were signed in the mid-1980s to Epic Records - a relationship that was never very satisfying to either party (although it did greatly expand the band's dedicated fan base).

More interesting was their business manager's advice to decline the offer to co-headline the H.O.R.D.E. Tour with Blues Traveler in 1992.

Prior to that tour, bands which are now much more famous than The Radiators (such as Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, the Spin Doctors, and Phish) had served as opening acts for the Rads (including at the ArrowHead Ranch, where John Popper first conceived the idea for the tour). Had their business manager (at the time, he's no longer with them) not rejected Popper's offer, the Rads would most likely be at least as well-known as Panic and Phish today, and would certainly be much better off financially.

However, the band members look upon their working-class lifestyles as The Price They Pay for doing what they do better than anyone else, which is to present a very intense and intimate show for hundreds of fans at a time - a show that I and a few thousand other dedicated fans believe is the best live rock-n-roll show available at any price.

I could easily go on for pages about how great the band is, etc. - but I'll end by reminding everyone of my money-back guarantee for a Rads show - details on the thread I linked to above.

[psmith2.0]

Pretty cool...25 years of Mac. CNN had a little blurb about that earlier today, with people submitting stories and photos of their "Mac memories" over the years.

Okay, I called it...25th anniversary anodized tangerine Mac minis tomorrow! First Saturday rollout ever (screw Tuesdays).









j/k

Happy Anniversary baby, got you on my miiiiiiiiiiiiiind.

[FFL]

Speaking of Tipitina's (which also, by some strange coincidence, celebrates its 31st Anniversary this month).... this is a great article about The Center Of The Live Music Universe:

http://www.jambase.com/Articles/1637...niversary-NOLA

[FFL]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Happy Anniversary baby, got you on my miiiiiiiiiiiiiind.

Thanks!

It's too bad The Little River Band didn't rock a little bit harder... if they did, I probably would have heard the Rads cover that song by now.

[thegeriatric]

Happy 25th Apple. Where would we be without you.

[scratt]

Nice article from Ars..
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...-macintosh.ars

So what are people's favorite machines here?

Nostalgically mine are the Newton and the PBG412".

But realistically I guess I have to say the 17" portables. I have had one of each throughout their various incarnations.

My favorite legacy machine is still the FX.

[FFL]

LOL - the Rads started at exactly 11:11 central time, as is their long-standing tradition.

The webcast video works for video but has no audio... but the audio streaming works fine on its own, so I'm using VLC for the video and QT for the audio and all is well.... thank you Macintosh, for helping me enjoy The Radiators!

[FFL]

The Rads are hot, as expected.... and my favorite percussion player is sitting in....

Come on, you lurkers..... check out the audio... it's great background music for a late Saturday night.... and it's VERY high-quality audio, directly from the soundboard
http://www.tipitinas.com/media1/ut56.asx

[FFL]

Set break right now, y'all (smoke 'em if you got 'em).

Second set starts any minute now.

[FFL]

They're doing Feelin' All Right now - don't miss it if you can....

[GOLDFRAPP]

Vivat SJ!











Vivat !

[curiousuburb]

My first Apple was a ][e or + about '79 or 80.

Knew some folks with original Mac or 128. At least one who turned it into a fishtank after logic board failure.

I remember the Macintosh Se30, SI and CI (and I still know folks who've got running CI machines... damn near bulletproof).
I recall working with an FX (and the constant need to reseat the chips which worked loose as it heated up).

Have used a PB 100, 140, 165, 170, 180c... some use of 1400, 5300, Lombard, Wallstreet, Pismo,

Worked with Quadras, early generations of PowerMac 6100 through 9600... iBooks, iMacs, PowerMacs, xServes...

Have owned G4 mini and MacBookPro17(LED HiRes) in the last 5 years.

But if I had to pick a old school Mac for pure sex appeal, it would probably be a Spartacus (TAM).

Happy Anniversary!

[curiousuburb]

Knew I'd seen it somewhere, but finally found the link to one of the few surviving videos of the original Macintosh launch in 1984.

A cool ad or two, Sculley, Markkula, and stockholder meeting stuff take up the first part of the video... but about half way through Steve demos the Mac for the first time publicly.

Some of the quality (and lighting) in the video is poor, but for old school keynote contrast, it's worth watching.

Steve talks garage history, walks us through the assembly of a Mac, shows slideshows of the design team, and more. Still developing his RDF, but early clues are there.

Black turtleneck > Bowtie.

[Moogs]

Lovin' the promo video with Flash Dance music. The height of cheezyness.