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

Happy Holidays!... and other news. :)

First things first, team... MERRY CHRISTMAS and all that neat stuff! Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I hope it's a good one for you with lots of love, health and happiness.

Next thing... WOW! I finally got my midnight blue Rickenbacker 4003 bass!!!! No thanks to the guys from KISS, however, who had every opportunity (see earlier rambling blog posts) to do the honorable thing and give me one (grin). Let's just say that a local dealer here in the RDU Triangle area happened to have one in stock, and I happened to call him at just the right time to inquire about inventory. So congratulations, ME! It sounds glorious. I'm pretty sure I'm now a devoted Ric guy, although I still occasionally like the thump of the Fender as I historically have.

Next thing-- saw Trans-Siberian Orchestra on 12/20 here in Raleigh at the RBC Center. Quick review: good as always and worth the ticket price, though Alex and Chris were the highlights of the show. After seeing more or less the same show (with different opticals, to be sure) three years running, it's getting a little stale. Their new bassist is OK, but I really preferred Dave Zablowski ("Dave Z") from the last couple of years. Otherwise, not a particularly remarkable show, though Jennifer Cella touched my hand as she ran back up the aisle from her "back-of-house solo" which was a special treat since I always melt at the sight of her in a tight black dress. :)

Last but not least-- if you haven't read the website completely yet, please be advised that PLANET ZEB! is changing its "free listener" capacity on 1/1/08, substantially curtailing it from pre-08 levels. An explanation is on the website itself which I won't repeat here, but suffice to say that too little financial support over the years and too much personal spending toting the note for all those free listeners, combined with some life changes that have me busier these days, have finally gotten us to the point where I think it's wise to bring PZ back to what it started life as-- a li'l ole hobbyist station that I can mess with to my heart's content, and with a few extra "free listener" slots open for anyone anywhere in the world who may want to tune in just for the fun of it. If you really, really LOVE the station and just can't live without it, please be advised of a few things:

* it will probably be de-listed from iTunes directories soon, which is Live365's way of punishing successful stations that don't toe their line year after year;

* it will probably fill up quickly (free listener slots) in the morning, so the earlier you log in, the better... then, just leave it streaming to save your spot;

* if you have a Live365 VIP listener account (see "listen AD-FREE" button on the planetzeb.net website), you will STILL have 'round-the-clock UNLIMITED ACCESS to PLANET ZEB!... completely ad-free, as always! Sign up today if you'd like this service-- it's cheap, good and I've loved my own VIP listener account for the last couple of years. :)

If you're one of the many who believes that PLANET ZEB! is just another station and you can easily tune to another station playing sort of the same music in sort of the same mix, and you'd rather do that FREE than pay a minimal amount for a VIP account... well, I understand. Free is an awfully good price most of the time. I would just add that you usually get what you pay for, as my gran'pappy used to say, and that's the reason I think we're better off, looking forward, back as a little, innocuous 80s rock station lurking in the corners of the Live365 community.

Thanks for the ride, though-- it's been a GREAT eight years, and thanks to YOU, PLANET ZEB! became one of the earliest and biggest "station phenoms" in the early history of internet radio!!!

Cheers, and again, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Zeb

Success!

Haaaaaa! Guess who went to a certain online auction/shopping site and got his own bad se'f a (sort of) brand new pair of Stanton Dynaphase Sixty headphones recently?!! (see earlier post re: the Stanton Dynaphase Sixties and why they are God's own Almighty Headphone)

Well, i say "brand new" because you won't actually GET a pair that're BRAND new given that Stanton stopped making them some time ago. But this pair was in an at-home-audio-engineer's personal collection and had very light use for some time, and then I won an auction for them. Oh my GAWWWWWWD, I had forgotten how beautifully powerful these things were. Receiving them and plugging them in have made all of life's little (and not-so-little) miseries seem survivable of late. So Happy Birthday to Me (yeah, had one of those recently, as well...chuckle), and thank goodness I'm back in the "Stanton Pro User" category again with my favorite set of cans in the whole world.

Relating to another blog post from earlier, I still haven't heard from ANY member of KISS about whether and/or when ANY of them were going to get my new blue or turquoise Rickenbacker 4003 bass to me, and... well... I'm just a little disappointed in that. If the Clerk of the Fourth Circuit will hurry up and get my admission certificate to me instead, I suppose I can forgo worrying about the bass for now. But I'm growing impatient, boys. Bass or admission to practice. I want ONE of 'em here soon, or I'll sue. :)

As you can probably tell, life is a little slow around these parts for now. I suspect come the end of this year, PLANET ZEB! will be undergoing some rather dramatic changes, too.... but stay tuned... film at 11... for more details. Hope you're well out there in Planet Zeb-land in the meantime!

Peace.

Zebby

So Many Questions, So Little Time....

Wow, the ole email box has been BURNING with questions and comments lately about PLANET ZEB!, etc., and it's gratifying to hear even after all this time that a fair number of you out there in internet-radio-land are NEW listeners, joining our family of rock-and-pop aficianados from around the world. So I decided to turn the latest blog entry into Q 'n' A time to try to provide answers to questions that have been coming in... that I also thought would be of general interest. So here ya go!

Zebby: Paula Abdul followed by The Clash followed by Genesis... and five minutes later an 8-minute-long Zep track backed with a country-ish crossover from Kentucky Headhunters? I liked it... but isn't that insane?!

Answer: probably, yes, but I prefer to characterize it as "somewhat eclectic within the parameters of enjoying good music from our 80s-ish target time frame," which is what PZ has always been about. And besides, you DID use the words "I liked it," did you not? Your honor, the defense rests and demands a bench verdict. Or at least we pray for jury nullification. :)

Lots of cool old KISS on your station- where'd you get it?!

Answer: pretty much the same place everyone should get it-- I bought the CDs. It's not like KISS is some bizarre goat-herding music band from back Madagascar (laugh); their whole catalog is pretty much available. And I've been CD collecting for a loooong, loooong time (my very first ones were bought back when they were still something stupid like 25 bucks each and only found in the back corner of most music stores, past the LPs!). And I like cool old KISS. And pretty much the rest of KISS, for that matter (Gene, Ace... Paul.... Peter.... if you stumbled across this blog, how about a liner for the station?!). Funny (and quick) thing about discovering them-- they were pretty much all the rage at Southeast Jr. High School in Baton Rouge back in the late 70s when I was there (I think either Destroyer or Love Gun was the "new" album I remember most from 8th-grade homeroom). At that time, I didn't much see the point and didn't really listen to a lot of their stuff. Then, I had an orchestra teacher the next year at Baton Rouge High School who was also part of a fundamentalist "Born Again" denomination. That's fine... that's cool... everyone does what finds them the most inner peace. MY problem with her, though, was that I remember distinctly one class period she didn't have us playing and practicing, but rather assembled us all around and handed out a flyer that said "KISS- Kings In Satan's Service" at the top of it. It was followed by some very inflammatory (no pun intended) anti-KISS propaganda in the weeks before they were scheduled to play the Baton Rouge Centroplex (now the "River Center") on the 1979 Dynasty tour. Well, even at that tender age, I was aware of the significance of the church-state separation thing, PLUS I was kinda pissed that we weren't practicing as a student orchestra SHOULD be. So just to piss HER off, I went out and bought my first KISS album (Alive II) and a t-shirt later that week. My friend Tommy and I bought tickets to the Dynasty show and enjoyed the daylights out of it-- what a gig. I was forevermore thereafter hooked on KISS, and did a lot of "catching up" on their earlier catalogs in the wake of the concert. And I used to play the hell out of them on my personal cassette decks as well as program their better stuff in every rock/pop radio gig I ever had. Many thanks to my fundamentalist orchestra teacher for turning me on to KISS.... I will go to my grave thankful for the opportunity to groove on them. And for a reason to watch "Gene Simmons' Family Jewels," which is endlessly more entertaining than "The Osbournes" was after its first season. Well, except for the bits of GSFJ that I'm pretty sure are shamelessly staged, that is. :)

That love of KISS also turned into an appreciation for the Ibanez Iceman guitar, by the way, since they were giving Paul those mirrored jobbies to use in concert. I loved the sound of 'em. Went on to play a beautiful purple Ibanez bass m'self in a couple of bands before I kinda sobered up and realized that the thunder of the Fender P-bass and the gorgeous trebly rumble of the Rickenbacker 4003 were more my speed after all. But my Iby was sweet, I gotta admit-- strong bass for the price. I still have her, and long ago named her for a radio salesperson I stupidly had a crush on in my last Baton Rouge radio gig. :)

Gene, Paul, Ace, Peter... if you ARE reading this, I'd also love a turquoise or midnight blue Ric 4003 bass. No harm in asking. And I love you guys. :)

Do you have employment applications on your website?

Answer: ohhhh, amigo. If it would do any good, I'd have 'em for places like Trader Joe's or something, but in all honesty, we're definitely a one-man-and-multiple-cat operation around here. PLANET ZEB! is a limited partnership with no employees, so to speak. I do all of the manual work with the playlist changeouts and stuff, and my cats program, find new music, sit on the keyboard while I'm scheduling the rotations, etc. And since the cats are rescues from local animal shelters, that's pretty much the only place I look for new partners or "employees." Until the day Clear Channel wants to buy me out for a gazillion dollars. Or Gene, Paul, Ace and/or Peter, for that matter. You could throw in the Ric as lagniappe.

Where are you from originally?

Answer: proudly, he says, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And he may return there one day once the statute of limitations on ALL of the warrants has expired. :)

PLANET ZEB! started in Charleston, SC in April, 2000. Charleston's very cool, and it reminded me a lot of Baton Rouge during my youth when I was there in the late 90s. You have no idea how heartbroken I was to have to leave Charleston. Or Baton Rouge, for that matter! But according to "The Secret," that nouveau-faux-pop-new age Oprah-show-fodder thing, all I apparently have to do is stand on my front lawn in my underwear at midnight on a full moon and WISH to be back in Baton Rouge or Charleston. Dunno if I have to click red slippers together or something to make it work, since I didn't waste my money on the book OR the movie.

Hey, all you starving kids in Appalachia and Darfur and such-- don't you know all you have to do is DREAM you're Donald Trump? Then you become him. And hopefully soon thereafter, you and Rosie O'Donnell kill each other in a massively bloody knife fight and leave society the hell alone.

Does PLANET ZEB! make a lot of money?

Answer: ha. ha ha. hahaha. hahaha. HAHAHAHAHA! Oh, wait, let me put it this way:

yes, PLANET ZEB! makes a lot of money. For somebody, probably Live365 and, via royalties, the record labels. Sure as hell not for me; that nice sliver of expendable income that COULD go to a new car or fixing the heat exchanger on my HVAC unit or something is thrown into station ops month after month. And while occasionally, really cool and nice people leave small donations via the PayPal links on the PZ homepage, I still cough up the personal dough in droves. This is a labor of love. And I hope you continue to love it as much as I do. :)

The alternative, of course, is that independent internet radio shuts down, and the public is left with the same thing they have on contemporary broadcast radio-- corporate-owned "drone drivel" from market to market that can only play what the RIAA's member-major-labels WANT them to play in order to sell music and push yet another hip-hop-boy-band on an unsuspecting and fearful populace.

'Til next time!

Z

Well OK, now that I'm here....

A quick comment after being asked my opinion in a recent music forum, since I logged in to check messages, there were none, and I didn't want to waste the login without at least posting something (chuckle)....

Single most influential and/or important album in all of recorded rock and roll history:

Never Mind the Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols, Sex Pistols (October, 1977: US release on Warner Brothers Records)

Discuss. :)

reminiscences....

Well, this is the danger of occasionally lapsing into one of those periods when I think about all the great people I knew and all the fun I had in commercial broadcast radio back in the eighties... I start to miss it all. Strangely enough, at the moment, what I seem to miss the most (although they're actually still around these parts packed in a box in the attic or something) is... well... don't laugh... my HEADPHONES.

They weren't just ANY headphones... from the time I found them at WLCS in Baton Rouge in the Summer of 1984 right up through MOST of my work at KAJUN 103 FM in the early 1990s, I faithfully and lovingly used the same bloody set of cans.... a big, beautiful blue pair of Stanton Dynaphase Sixty headphones... that were TRULY to die for.

Largely, the "dying for" part consisted of the fact that they felt like they weighed a few metric tons on your head (laugh again). But the Dynaphase Sixties were beautiful-- basically, small home speakers with separate high/low frequency cones that were strapped together over the top of your head with a reenforced metal strap that felt like it could hold a strafed battleship afloat. Now those were the days when someone knew how to make headphones for the professional radio market. Often, I discovered at WLCS (where the jock had his/her back to the entry door to the studio) that people were afraid to try to sneak in behind me when I wore them because if I was startled and flung my head too quickly around, the Stantons-- always my friends and protectors, as they drove thousands of decibels of beautiful, pristine, crystal-clear sound into my music-addled brain-- would FLY off my ears and attack them with the ferocity and damage that only a good 20-pound-or-so pair of headphones or a pit bull could accomplish.

I just finished visiting the Stanton website for old times' sake, and they, like every other headphone company in the world, have decided that lighter is better. And I suppose these days, you really can get a better speaker in a lighter 'phone that most really wimpy-weenie girlie man DJs appreciate. But as for me... well... I am decidedly old-school on this point, friend. Put me in front of a board that has round pots as opposed to sliders and analog vU meters instead of the digital kind. Give me carts... or at the most, CDs... so that I can HOLD the music and the spots I'm playing instead of telling a very impersonal computer what digital file I wish to play next.

Then, watch as I put the Dynaphase Sixties on my head, feeling as if I have just been crowned King of England and Defender of the Faith because of the friggin' weight of the damned things. And it doesn't matter HOW loudly I turn them up to make my ears bleed, because their ear insulation WILL NOT feed back over the mic. Guaranteed. And then give me a few tracks from Billy Idol, Dio, Scorpions or one of the other staples of my foolish and decadent DJ days... and stand back. I'll take it from there. :)

"Give me a wheel of oaken wood... a rein of polished leather.... a heavy horse and a tumbling sky.... brewing heavy weather."

(bonus points if you can identify the lyric) :)

'Til next time!

Zeb

OK, quick check-in time....

Just a quick message, as July 15th looms ever-closer and with it the potential drastic alteration and/or death of internet radio propogated by SoundExtortio...er, SoundExchange and its poodles on the Copyright Royalty Board, long since bought and paid for. We're just kind of sitting by, watching the clouds, waiting to see what happens now... and for those of you who got active and contacted your elected member(s) of Congress about the Internet Radio Equality Act, THANK YOU! I'm going to be voting a very, very interesting split-party ticket THIS election season, using candidate support (or lack thereof) of IREA as my primary voting cue. :)

OK, so here's the NON-IREA message I have for you today: OHMIGOD! Like, if you DON'T have good multimedia speakers and/or a dedicated sound card in your computer to listen to PLANET ZEB!... .you have no friggin' idea what you're missing! After my old set of Sonigistix 2.1 speakers bought the proverbial farm some few months ago, I went without a particularly neat set of speakers for that period of time, gradually getting used to the different sound coming out of my computer and thinking, "ah, well at least it's listenable."

So LAST week, Zeb treated himself.... a new set of Logitech Z-2300 2.1 multimedia speakers (read the online reviews of them-- they're everything every review glows about and MORE!) and a SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty Xtreme Gamer Sound Card, set to "Entertainment Mode" (since I don't really play computer games... it maximizes the processor for music audio sources). WOW! No, no, no one paid me for this announcement... and I'm not even saying you have to get the same products *I* did. But if you're looking for really super-wonderful sound quality in your internet radio experience (for the few days that it may be left on the internet!), GET A DEDICATED SOUND CARD and for pity's sake, DON'T CHINTZ YOURSELF on a cheap pair of computer speakers (or overpay for the "fancy brand label" of certain to-remain-unnamed "snob factor" systems). You'll love the difference in sound quality, and perhaps, as did I, fall in love with your favorite 'netradio outlet all over again. :)

Peace.

Z