wow! it's been a while!

Howdy y'all-- been a while (about 10 months, I see!) since the last blog post, and there are a couple of reasons for that. Chief among them are a few entries I posted over the last few months and then deleted because at the end of the day, I didn't like what I had just written. So I TRIED to post updates... I just did a better job of destroying them after they had been posted, that's all (grin).

MANY THANKS to a few friends and relatives who have dropped notes about the blog recently, including Diane, Charles, Karen and Frank! I also recently got a note from Rob, who said about my exposition re: Stanton Dynaphase Sixty headphones the following:

"They are not like todays ultra bright and exaggerated bass headphones. I forever will love there milky sweet sound with unlimited sound pressure capability."

The gist of Rob's larger comments was that, like me, he's a big fan of the Dynaphase Sixties... and together, we apparently just don't give two whits about some reviews of them out there that have been more critical. I pointed out in my reply that you MIGHT be able to find an engineering geek out there that's desperate to hook 'phones up to an oscilliscope and demonstrate that other cans have a slightly better high-end curve or something-- but I don't listen to music through an oscillioscope... I listen to them through my EARS, which are still convinced that "Big Blue" is all I'll ever need for a perfect headphone experience (chuckle). My favorite use for them these days, by the way, is through my Behringer practice amp for bass-playing, when I want the sound of thunder in my head-- but don't want to wake up half the neighborhood getting there. :)

Speaking of bass-playing, and again, no thanks to large numbers of mega-famous rock artists who spurned my pleas for assistance (laugh), this year was indeed a good one for strategic bass acquisitions in the ole Zebby family. I think I reported last December that my Christmas present to myself was an '07 Midnight Blue Rickenbacker 4003; since then, I kinda went nuts and added two other highly-prized Rics to the collection (a '76 Mapleglo 4001 with skunk-striped body and an '05 rare TURQUOISE 4003, which is truly one of the most gorgeous basses on the planet!); I also fell in love with the Gibson Explorer basses and thought it'd be fun to simulate the "Rick Savage of Def Leppard" experience at home long, long before I realized that Rick actually played a Hamer Blitz-- Hamer's knockoff version of the Explorer body style-- and therefore I was buying the wrong basses! I subsequently played a Hamer and a couple of other Explorer-style instruments (Including the Gibson family's Epiphone Explorer bass), but immediately fell in love with the heavy, thunderous sound of a black '84 Gibson Explorer bass I purchased early in '08, followed by a couple of Craig's List acquisitions of an '85 red one and an '87 (last year of production) ivory one. The GOOD news is that the Explorer basses are incredibly tough to find and their collectability value looks like it's rising with impressive regularity as these instruments enter the 25-plus year "vintage" category. I also like the fact that, in addition to being the best-sounding of the Explorer genre of bass, these are the REAL McCoys-- the sister instrument to the REAL Gibson Explorer guitar, itself a rock 'n' roll classic. But as one friend-aficianado said on a message board once, "don't expect me to play this thing on Sundays in the church band." :)

Otherwise, things have, as noted above, been busy for the ole Zebmeister around here, and I'm having no major regrets about scaling back PLANET ZEB! into the realm of "small hobbyist stream" from its former glory days at or near the top of the Live365 directory ratings. Sure, I'd still like John Stimson's head on a platter and I think it's funny that SoundExchange continues to screw artists out of due royalties and get in trouble (occasionally) for it-- reenforces my opinion that the American music and broadcast communications industries, once the paradigm and pinnacle of excitement, innovation and entertainment value around the world, have made some horrible decisions, walked the path of some horrible political decisions made in Washington for them by the legislators they bought and paid for in the 1980s and 90s, and still don't have MUCH of a clue about how to face the new millennium in a way that protects their once sterling reputation. I'm glad I got out of "the biz" in the early 90s, just as the hyper-corporatized boredom was setting in.

But all other things considered, that's why I still enjoy running PLANET ZEB! as a smaller-scale operation, and I hope you enjoy listening to it. Today, I have been able to get it back to where I needed it to be on the date of its founding in April, 2000-- something that was run to share with friends and like-minded music fans around the world, without the worry of adhering to some "magical formula" that would appeal to a lowest common denominator of musical tastes in the heavily RIAA-and-major-label-influenced crack market of modern music.

Please... continue to enjoy the show, and continue to touch base! Always a pleasure to hear from you.

And I promise-- I'll try to be a little more frequent with the mindless blog ramblings in '09. :)

Zeb