Long overdue photographs

It's been a little more than 2 years since we made the tour of all the missions with the kids, and when I wrote that old post I just grabbed some photos that were available on the internet, at that time saying that when I got my own photos developed I could post some better pictures that showed the vastness of the inner grounds of Missions San José. Well, we finally got around to getting 5 rolls of film developed so I now have some photos. It will take me a while to upload these so I'm not going to do it all at once. This won't be new to locals--unless you're a local who has never visited the missions, and if you are, what are you waiting for? Seriously.

Click on all images to enlarge.

This is the only shot I took at Mission Concepción. It's just the cross overlooking the entrance.

Some of the photos look very yellow, and I don't know enough about photography to know why. I do recall the sky was very overcast that day, and it did rain a couple hours after I took these photos. This is along the east wall, I think, looking back toward the chapel.

This is from a path along the south wall looking back toward the chapel and other buildings. In the old post linked above I had mentioned how most people had a hard time grasping how big the Alamo grounds were during the famous battle because there's really almost nothing left of it now. This and the following photo might help you to get a better idea of how big the Alamo grounds were.

This is from the far southwest corner of the grounds looking back toward all the buildings. This is the same kind of wide open space the Alamo defenders on the walls had at their backs. They had nowhere at all to go once the battle began and the walls were overrun.

More later.

I am still here

This week was the week when I should have finished my usual hardest routes for the month and everything got much easier. It didn't happen. I have been hit with bad route after bad route and have just been exhausted every day when I finally made it home. I haven't been doing anything but checking my email--most days didn't even bother opening Firefox.

Oh yeah, and on Thursday we had our annual meeting where a bunch of beggars come and tell us all how great it would be if we had them automatically deduct charitable contributions from our paycheck. Screw that. It just means an hour and a half wasted in the morning and makes the day run all that much longer.

Street boarding

My mom, who lives in Port Aransas, sent in a couple of pix to KENS that she took yesterday during heavy rains there. Check it out.

Sunday in Port Aransas

My air horn goes BANG

LoHud.com:

"I don't think it's overkill," said Carrie Budke, who was picking up her 6-year-old daughter , Emma. "Right now screaming isn't helping. An air horn would scare any animal away — even a sick one."

Or in other words, if it doesn't work, do it LOUDER.

If a coyote is so sick--rabid--that the illness has overcome thousands of generations of instinct to avoid contact with humans...

I don't know which is more insane, a rabid coyote or a human who thinks an air horn will scare it away. Once again, I am stunned at the stupidity of these people. There is only one way to deal with a rabid animal. There is a loud noise involved, but it's only a side-effect.

Album promotional stickers, part 4

The Doors, Classics and Alive She Cried; The Sugarcubes, Life's Too Good (cassette); REO Speedwagon, Wheels are Turnin'; Kate Bush, Aspects of the Sensual World.

Strange on East Pyron

From my regular cycle 17. There's a part of E. Pyron that branches off S. Presa, crosses a train track, goes a couple hundred yards or so, curves and goes another couple hundred yards until it dead-ends up against the San Antonio River. This sign appeared last month after they had done some kind of "construction" work on the river bank.

I have no idea what they're talking about with the "boat ramp." I can't see anything that I would call a boat ramp anywhere near. I do have to actually go out onto the river bank off the end of the road to read one meter--I have no idea what it's supposed to go to and it doesn't get used anymore, it's just there (this is not unusual). This sign is in the first section of that road, before you get to the curve, and at least a good 200 yards from the river.

The first thing I noticed was that I'd never seen a sign prohibiting digging for fish bait before. The second thing I noticed were the cameras. WTF? Note: There is no way these cameras could see anyone using the alleged boat ramp or digging for fish bait on the river bank.

Possibly worthy of a strange designation? Perhaps.

Paper CD display boxes, part 3

REO Speedwagon, The Hits; Marillion, Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other; Kate Bush, Hounds of Love.

Ian Matthews - Valley Hi (1973, mp3 download)

So I finally finished downloading this album from Amazon today and I gotta say this is a really excellent Americana album, in spite of it being released some 20 years before that term came into use.

Ian Matthews--or as he has returned to the original spelling of his name, Iain--was a member of the 60s group Fairport Convention. This album shows heavy influence from American folk-rock and country, although Matthews himself was born and raised in England. Three of the songs were written by him, with other songs written by such as Jackson Browne ("These Days"), Steve Young ("Seven Bridges Road"), Randy Newman, Michael Nesmith and Don Gibson. One of the most country-sounding songs is "Shady Lies," which is interesting because it was written by Richard Thompson, another Brit.

This album is from 1973, and it may seem pointless to even bother mentioning such an old album, but hey, it's new to me and that what counts. Favorite tracks are "Old Man at the Mill," "These Days" (better than Jackson Browne's original, in my opinion), "Seven Bridges Road" (vastly superior to the Eagles' version), and "Propinquity" (by Michael Nesmith). Nesmith also produced and played guitar on this album.

I've already burned this one to audio CD for listening in the truck. Amazon doesn't have any hardcopy versions of this for sale new, although there are used and collectible versions. They do, however, have it as a digital download for a reasonable price.

Album promotional stickers, part 3

Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Brain Salad Surgery; Deep Purple, Perfect Strangers; Clannad, Macalla; Boston, Boston; Alan Parsons Project, Vulture Culture.

Propaganda - A Secret Wish (1985, LP)

NOTE: Not to be confused with a Serbian band of the same name.

This is another one I've mentioned before, but I list it again now because I've finished ripping it from the vinyl instead of just my old dupe tape of it.

As I said before, a single copy of this record turned up at the Hastings in Seguin and it sat there on the rack tantalizing me for a while before I broke down and bought it. After I bought it, it never showed up again. So apparently I bought the only one they had in the store. They never had the CD version there, either.

This is another one that I will put on my list of favorite albums if I ever get around to making one. It's German synth-pop, so YMMV. It has a great rendition of Poe's "A Dream Within a Dream" and the whole album is just great.

Interesting reading about them at Wikipedia. It's a real shame that their fame was possibly eclipsed by Frankie Goes to Hollywood--what a waste. "They" later made one other album but it really had only one original member on it, and without Claudia Brücken singing it just wouldn't be the same, so I'm not interested in it. I would be interested in hearing some of her stuff after she left this group.

Disgusting

Idoits. Complete &^%$#@! idiots.

An Alachua County sheriff’s deputy who wanted to put a deer that had been hit by a car out of its misery Wednesday morning fired 17 shots into its stomach before the animal finally died, the Sheriff’s Office reported.

As a result of the incident, patrol staff now will receive training on how to quickly kill an animal that is critically injured, Lt. Steve Maynard said.

“The deputy didn’t know where to shoot it. He calls the sergeant, and the sergeant says to shoot it right behind the shoulder, which is the location of the heart,” Maynard said. Instead, the deputy shot the deer in the stomach.

The deer eventually died, Maynard said, adding that the deputy was “horrified” by the incident.

This kind of crap just sickens me. And these are the "only ones" who are supposed to be (cough) "experts" with their firearms. I knew before I was 10 years old how to kill an animal with one shot--especially one that was immobilized. But then I guess our heroic deputy had never helped his dad butcher a pig when he was a kid, or learned how to take out a coyote with a .22 and a single shot to the head.

Worthless punk.

via The War On Guns

Paper CD display boxes, part 2

Marillion, Seasons End; Fish, Internal Exile.

Stuff

The heat has really been beating me down. Man, I can't wait for cooler weather.

So...the Cub Scouts now trust my son with a pocket knife. But do I? I need to find him a halfway-decent multi-function pocket knife that works but won't be a tragedy if he loses it. He spent a couple of hours last weekend trying to whittle a point onto a broken-off tree limb about the size of a thick pencil. I finally gave up and let him use one of my knives because I just couldn't get a decent edge on any of those Chinese knives I have laying around. U.S. knives and Japanese knives are good; Chinese knives...pfft. He also spent a couple of hours disassembling an old laptop that I bought cheap at a ham radio meet back in the early 90s. Not good for anything anymore, so I let him have at it. We put all the parts in a box so he can continue tearing it apart until he gets it down to discrete components. "You know you have to put all that back together," I told him. The look on his face was priceless. And then we both laughed. Another good question was, "But Daddy, where's the hard drive?" "When they made that computer, they didn't put hard drives in them. They were too big and too expensive." The wonders of obsolete technology. During the knife process, I found both of my old butterfly knives. Been a long time since I played with them, but the muscle memory is still there.

We had a torrential downpour here last night around 7:30-8:00. I checked the radar and it was a single tiny but super-intense cell that just zipped across our corner of Wilson County and then evaporated.

Lots of hurricane-related activity in the Atlantic right now. The NHC has posted 105 updates since I last checked yesterday. Igor is going to cream Bermuda.

Changes

Since Bloglines is about to disappear, I'm going to have to reconstruct the blogrolls. It was really easy to create several different lists as long as Bloglines was operating, but now I guess I'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way. So...I'm not going to have all those different link lists anymore. I'll only be listing the blogs that I actually read regularly and that's it.

There are still numerous blogs that I read irregularly, and they are all in my Google Reader subscriptions, which I imported from Bloglines. Yes, I decided on using GR unless I can find something better; it works about the same as Bloglines.

So if your link disappears from this page, and by some miracle you actually notice it, it doesn't mean I've completely forsaken you. It just means I'm too lazy to create a bunch of different lists.

UPDATE: Okay, the list in the sidebar now is a temporary one until I get around to creating sets of more complete lists. I discovered that I can import Google Reader into Blogger so I don't have to enter everything manually, but...there are some that I don't wish to show up so I'm still going to have to check them off so they don't import. Yes, I still have some secrets.

Album promotional stickers, part 2

More "vintage" stickers.

From top:

Alan Parsons Project: Ammonia Avenue (the MTV sticker also came from this album) and The Turn of a Friendly Card; Petra, Beat the System; Propaganda, A Secret Wish; Psychedelic Furs, Midnight to Midnight.

So much for that

I saw a TV commercial (I think) about this website called savethewords.org by the Oxford English Dictionary. You "adopt" an obscure word and try to use it as often as possible. Sounded like a fun idea so I went to check out the website. It is an horrifically over-bloated flash site. I still thinks it's a cool idea, but their website is a total failure. I couldn't do anything with it.

Album promotional stickers

Another item of musical ephemera from the old box that holds the paper CD display boxes. I never read anywhere--or thought--they might become collectible. I just saved these on my own whim. These are promo stickers that were affixed to the shrinkwrap. All of these cames from LPs. Click to view larger versions; if your monitor is set to 1024x728 you will see them actual size.

I don't know why exactly I saved these things. If I recall correctly, I had a vague idea way back then of eventually creating a big collage of these things to hang on my wall over my stereo system. I never did that, but I still have a bunch of these promo stickers.

Paper CD display boxes

Yes, children, gather 'round the dull but steady glow of the LCD screen and I'll tell you about an ancient time when CDs...remember CDs? That's right, people used to record music on them. And when they were first made, they were sold inside funny-looking long, rectangular boxes made of...paper.

So one time back about 25 years or so ago I was reading in some music magazine and the guy who wrote this particular article said that you should save your CD boxes because technology was moving so fast that CDs themselves would be gone in a short time (he was probably a big fan of DAT) and the display boxes would become collector's items. Well the CD is still around. The boxes aren't, but if they ever became collector's items I must have missed the note. Anyway I still have some. I began keeping them as soon as I read that, and it wasn't very long after that that CDs began being sold in those plastic frames that the clerk at the store unlocked when you bought one. Here are a few to begin another series of irrelevant posts. Click on all images to enlarge.


The most basic box was only made to hold the CD and for nothing else: no artwork at all, not even anything to identify the CD that was in it except printed information on the end flap so the music company could use the same box design for multiple artists and albums. You can't see it in the picture, but this one was for Lionheart by Kate Bush. The "window" at the top of the box was for the CD, so all of the visuals of this box were provided by the CD jewel box itself. (These are not the best scans, but I didn't see much point in trying to get them perfect; also they've all been squished a little by being stacked in this box for years).


A slightly more ornate version of the paper CD display box, with reproductions of the front and back covers (CD-sized) on the front and back of the box. This one was for The Dreaming, also by Kate Bush.


Still more ornate is this one for Security by Peter Gabriel. The original album artwork has been adapted to the long rectangular form of the CD box, the back even including some liner notes and for some reason that now seems quite irrelevant, a picture of the actual CD itself.


For this box from Todd Rundgren's Nearly Human, released 1989--several years later than any of the former--we see something new. All the former albums were originally released on vinyl and required a re-thinking of how to display the original cover graphics on the very differently-shaped canvas of the CD box. This album was released both on CD and vinyl as a new release; the back of the box includes a photo of the working musicians that would have been so small as to be meaningless on the back of a CD jewel box.

Why use all that paper to make such a large box for such a small item? I have a theory but I must admit it is only a theory. Now, I don't know all the technical background that went into making the CD itself the size that it is, but if you lay two CDs side by side on top of a record jacket you will see that they take up about the same width as a record. The depth of the CD enclosure is mostly irrelevant; it meant that you could cram only about half as many albums into a pre-existing retail rack, but being able to put two albums side by side in the same space that once could hold only one canceled out that limitation on storage space. The paper CD display box is the same height as a record jacket, which meant that thousands of record stores filled with millions of record racks would still be able to use their old racks for the new medium.

More to come.

NNNOOOOOO!!!

Bloglines is shutting down. I'm really going to miss it--I think it's the most useful web service I have ever used. I've been reading blogs with it since before I began blogging--like 7 or 8 years.

Can anyone recommend another RSS aggregator, preferably one that's similar to Bloglines?

Enigma

I finally figured out where I had stashed this. It's a sticker about 4 inches square that I never stuck to anything, and which had come inside the jacket of some record I bought back in the 80s. This was the logo I kept an eye out for back then because I generally liked everything I heard from it. Such as: Cirith Ungol, Stryper (first album), early Mojo Nixon, Agent Orange, and I'm sure several others I can't remember right now. The actual logo on the records was just the funny-looking graphic thing without the word "ENIGMA." On every record I have from them, side "A" has the track list for both sides, listed as "this side" and "the other side." Side "B" was just the Enigma logo.

It reminds me of other stickers I wish I had kept and not stuck to something, like all those Pink Floyd stickers that were in the Dark Side of the Moon album. I don't know how I managed not to lose or destroy this one for so many years.

But then, the box it was in holds another 30-40 items of musical memorabilia which are no longer seen in stores and which I intentionally stored away because I suspected that someday they wouldn't be around anymore. Long ago I thought they might actually become collectible. I don't think that anymore, but I still have them. Try and guess what they are if you like and I'll start posting some scans pretty soon.

So: there are two hints. They have to do with music but they aren't actual recordings, and they're scanable (scannable?).

Just added...

Jimmy Smith, Organ Grinder Swing. Just received today from yourmusic.com. I haven't listened to it yet, but I love the Hammond organ and Jimmy Smith was the master. This one has a very pared-down combo: Smith on organ, Kenny Burrell on guitar and Grady Tate on drums. I think that's the smallest group so far out of all my Jimmy Smith albums. Burrell, of course, also played guitar on the legendary Back at the Chicken Shack, the album that turned me on to jazz in general and Jimmy Smith in particular.

Hermine

As I said a few hours ago on FB, that's the closest I ever want to come to reading meters in a hurricane. I had an unfamiliar route today that I think I may have done once before, but if I have it's been a while. It would have been a ridiculously easy route if it hadn't been for the weather. I was in the Knoll Creek/O'Connor area inside 1604.

The first thing I did was go to the Wal-Mart at 281 & 1604 and buy a poncho, which worked well as long as it was only raining. For the first couple of hours, all it did was rain and it wasn't too bad. Then my handheld started getting too wet because--I suddenly noticed--something had fallen off and exposed the innards and they were getting wet. I called in and told my supervisor, "Uh...you know that little infrared window on the top of the Roadrunner?" And he said, "Oh yeah, yours was missing this morning, wasn't it?" Sheesh. They knowingly sent me out into a freakin' tropical storm with a Roadrunner with a hole in it. So anyway, the display had gone blank so they started loading up a new one to bring out to me. I sat in my truck with the heater running so I could try to blow hot air into the thing to dry it out, and eventually I sort of got the display back okay enough that I could work with it.

About that time the wind really started, and even though the poncho couldn't keep me dry anymore, it did cut the wind, which helped. I lost about 30 minutes trying to get the handheld working again, but I guess it could have been worse. Eventually they got the new one to me and by that time the wind was really howling--the raindrops were slamming sideways so hard they stung even through the poncho and my thoroughly soaked shirt. By the time I got down to the last 30 meters or so I was able to read only about 1 out of 5 because it was raining so hard, everything was flooded and I couldn't dry off my glasses.

The poncho wasn't quite long enough--it should have been about a foot longer--and my knees were exposed. So my pants got so soaked at the knees that the water started running inside my rubber boots and I tried reducing the runoff by pulling the pants out of the boots. Later when I finished I was actually pouring water out of the boots.

It had been trash day in that area, and I got to see those big garbage containers, still upright, shooting down the street to the bottom of the hill. Between a steep hill, the wind and about three inches of water coursing down the street, those garbage cans were really picking up some speed.

I had taken a complete change of clothes with me--plus a towel--because I knew I was going to get soaked. When I finished I headed back up to the Valero at 1604 & Bulverde Road, dried off and changed clothes and bought a coffee. By the way, it takes a long time to drive from up there back to Mission Road when you can only do 40 mph.

Sabra has a radar picture. I was somewhere under the first "n" in "Antonio."

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to add this. On the way home, there were power lines down in China Grove. One was snapped right off about 12 feet off the ground, about a half dozen more were toppled over and/or broken. Apparently all of China Grove was without power. No working traffic lights from Rigsby/410 out to the Adkins Post Office.

Brian Setzer - The Knife Feels Like Justice (1986, LP)

I've mentioned this one before, but that was before I got the turntable and had ripped it from my old dupe cassette. This time I ripped it from vinyl.

If I ever get around to making a list of favorite albums, this will be on it. As I said before, I never liked Stray Cats enough to buy any of their albums, although now I think I might do it sometime just for kicks. This one hit me one night when I was cleaning up after closing time at the Mr. Gatti's in Seguin and the video for the title track came on MTV. It was both haunting and defiantly joyous. I bought the album at Hastings within the next few days, and it immediately became a favorite.*

This was his first solo album after leaving the Cats. After this album he went "orchestra" and I never bought any of those albums, but I should. I have heard this & that from his orchestra era and I've liked everything I've heard. Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

The Knife Feels Like Justice is modern rockabilly with a hard edge and a philosophical twist. A very strong album, and most of the tracks are favorites: the title track, "Haunted River," "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," "Bobby's Back," "Chains Around Your Heart," "Maria" and "Aztec."

Not a totally perfect rip, but close enough that I don't think I'll notice. Already burned this one to audio CD.





*I almost grew a mullet after seeing this video.

blah blah blah

Spent the weekend doing much of nothing. Today I changed the oil in my truck, installed new battery terminals and finally refilled the washer reservoir. I'm not looking forward to getting rained on tomorrow. I think I'm going to stop by a Wal-Mart early in the morning and buy one of their cheap plastic ponchos. Maybe it will be cool enough to get away with wearing it.

I still haven't finished another album yet, but I've been working on it. Recorded two more today, so now I have about a half dozen going at once.

A song just popped up on Winamp that reminded me of the very few groups I have actually seen in concert. As I said before, I'm not a big fan of the concert experience, and I have never gone out of my way to see groups in concert even when I'm a big fan of them. I'm not a big fan of going to movie theaters either. So, just for the record, here is the (very short) list.

Air Supply: Seen at ACU when I was going to school there. This was during a "comeback" tour in the early 80s. There wasn't a whole lot to do there and during the rare occasions that they found someone cheap enough to hold a concert on campus, it was something different to break the tedium. Their opener was some guy who sang and played a guitar--I don't remember his name but I remember him as being pretty bad. During one song--I don't remember which, the Air Supply guy who plays guitar (the tall one) cut loose with some pretty decent hard-rocking guitar jams. Even my room-mate admitted afterward that he was surprised to hear that kind of guitar coming from Air Supply.*

Firefall: Also seen at ACU, during another "comeback" tour in the early 80s. Oddly, they didn't perform "You Are the Woman," which was probably their best-known hit. The opener for them was a group called The Side of the Road Gang, which was sort of a poor man's Asleep at the Wheel. I remember they performed their cover of "Desperados Waiting for a Train," which I liked. Spent most of the time watching Firefall's keyboardist, surrounded by racks of keyboards and occasionally switching over to flute.

The Bulgarian Women's Vocal Choir: Seen at the Scottish Rite Temple in downtown San Antonio in the mid 80s. No opening act. A fantastic performance that I'm glad I saw. Took along my good friend Brer that time.

Groups I wish I had seen at least once: Styx, Paradise Theater era. Rush, A Farewell to Kings/Hemispheres era. Marillion, Fish era. The Doors, anytime, but I was only 7 years old when their last album came out.

UPDATE: Oops, forgot one. As mentioned before, I saw Stryper in the mid-80s at the Majestic Theater. Opening act was Heaven, who totally sucked.

*At one point, the Student Association ran a poll to find out if there were enough students who would pay $16 to see Chicago perform on campus. There weren't.

I don't think so...

io9:

In H.P. Lovecraft's mythos, the Mi-go are tentacled crustacean aliens who dwell deep in our planetary history - and deep in the oceans. Looks like some Japanese divers may have found the real-life inspiration for the creature.

Yes, there certainly are some odd-looking creatures in the ocean depths, but just for the record, the Mi-Go had nothing to do with the oceans. Unless I've forgotten my The Whisperer in Darkness.

Some work pix

I finally got around to re-installing my phone software and transferred these pix that I've taken during the last month. Above is from August 10, my regular cycle 5 in the area of Callaghan and Inspiration. It's from the alley section of the route. This is a really bad route. I've done it once again since taking this picture, and it just wipes me out. I think this is the end of the alley right at Callaghan and Manitou.

From August 12, I was doing an unfamiliar route (meter reader parlance: a "stranger") and came out some street onto Harry Wurzbach to find this airbrush art stenciled onto one of those big metal box thingies that has something to do with the phones, I think. It looks like Richard Pryor to me, but I could be wrong.

I was doing the alley section of my regular cycle 7, in the area of West Ave. and Basse Rd., yesterday and found this guy inside the box. There were actually two of them in there, but the other one was lower down and to the rear and keeping his head down. I've found possums in meter boxes a few times before--it's not a surprise or anything. But this is the first time I've had two in one box. Oh yeah, although it looks pert' near impossible to read this meter in this photo, I did read it.

Hello there

Welcome Liberty Sphere readers. You probably won't find a lot to interest you here, but thanks for coming and thanks to the Welshman for the mention. It's not that I've lost interest in matter concerning the lack of our liberty--it's just that I've turned my focus to areas more personal and pointed than blogging, which seems to me to be about as useful as slinging dirt clods at the side of a barn. This blog is my temporary escape and something I do for fun, so if you find something useful or interesting, that's great.

The Doors - Other Voices (1971, LP)

When I was younger and more cynical (cough), I used to refer to this version of The Doors as "the remaining 3/8 of the group." This was the first album they released after Morrison's death (or disappearance to some of you). Listening to the instrumentation, it is very clearly The Doors. But without Morrison's voice and unique...energy, it just isn't the same. I ran across this by accident one day at Sundance Records in San Marcos back in the 80s and bought it as a curiosity. They did one more album after this, called Full Circle, but I never chanced across it and never wanted it bad enough to ask for a special order. I'm not terribly interested in hearing it, but I wouldn't cross buying it off my list of possibilities.

UPDATE: A word on the singing. Robby Krieger can carry a tune in roughly the same way that Bob Dylan carries a tune. Ray Manzarek can also sing, but his vocal style leans heavily toward the blues shouter. According to some of the comments at Amazon, these songs were already in the working-up stages before Morrison died, and were all intended to be sung by him. So it might be interesting trying to re-imagine what Morrison would have sounded like with these songs. Anyway, that didn't happen and it's pure speculation as to where they may have headed if he had lived longer. I read that Full Circle has a jazzier sound to it, which interests me a little more, and seems a logical direction for them to have headed next.

This is another of those records that I didn't get a totally perfect rip of, but it's close enough that I doubt I'll notice the very minor flaws during casual listening. It will go into the archives but I don't plan on burning it to audio CD. Favorite song from it I guess is "Ships w/ Sails." I think I'll add that one to my general favorites playlist just for kicks.

What the?!

Well I've been working on converting a few albums and have finally finished one. I thought I'd go ahead and start recording something else from the stack, so I flipped through it and came across Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gold and Platinum. I figured that would be a good one--a few songs I haven't heard in a long time and an album that got played no more than twice--possibly only once--when I recorded it to cassette. I put it on and was horrified to hear a lot of crackle in the silence before the first track started. And then I noticed on one of the inner sleeves someone had signed her name: Lyn Smith.

Who?

So apparently I somehow managed to get two of these albums: one used with someone else's name on it, and one that I bought new myself, the latter of which must still be somewhere on the shelves in the other room. It's hard to believe my mother-in-law ever owned a Skynyrd album, even a used one.