[Harp-L] was Joe Cocker, now great time to be alive

[David Payne <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 BiscuitBoy714@xxxxxxx wrote:                Come on Dave let it out. For harp content I'm 'fixin' to adjust the reeds in some of my front line harps. I hope that I can handle it as well as 'yall' do. I'm going to look at your learning site a bunch as I do it.
   
           Thanx a bunch for having it there. You are most definitely one of the good 'ole' boys from down home.
   
               Randy
            BiscuitBoy Blues

  

  Thanks for reining me in before I get into too much trouble, Randy! 
I don't know how far you are along Randy, so this is aimed at general folks:
  When you learn to adjust reeds, etc., the first thing you lose is this feeling you have to bend over and take it if something is wrong, or that you have to take the time to send it back. You just take care of it yourself. That's a good feeling. Plus, there are so many things you can do, so many things you can experiment with, there's more than one way to do a harp and I'm sure there are many that haven't been discovered yet. 
  So, I'm thankful for Harp-L as both a place I can learn things from people who know far more than I and mention what things I've learned. I'm also thankful for the guys who made this do-it-yourself movement possible, guys like Lee Oskar and Dick Farrell and others for their roles in making parts available to the masses, guys like Rupert Oysler and others giving them the know-how to do it and we have so much more available than the guys back in the 1930s and the following decades. The stories of creativity and ingenuity of those guys who repaired harps before parts were readily available are often astounding. Smokey Joe Leone is one of those guys, but there are others here on Harp L. You can learn a lot from those guys. Before the Internet, there wasn't quite so much information available. Now there is, you can go to Youtube and Jason Ricci will tell you how to overblow, you could study Pat Missin's site for months and that's the tip of the iceberg. 
  You get your most rapid advancement in a field when people can build on what others have done before and the evolution of ideas increases speed. I might have gone my whole life without thinking about another way to construct a chromatic slide, yet Vern Smith shows up with this Hands-Free Chromatic that makes me sit back and say ?well done? and then I think, ?is there yet another way to construct a better slide? ? 
  There are so many avenues, you can go down one and be as eccentric about it as you want to. I have a lot of fun with my wood-comb eccentricity. There is a lot of eccentricity in the harmonica community, because the non-eccentrics devote their lives to other instruments, I presume. We can't help it, we are interesting.
  You say ?hey, wood combs rule? to Vern and it's like you've poked Achilles with a fork, my feelings on wood are the polar opposite of Vern's, but I LOVE it when talks about wood. It's interesting, but also offers something totally contradictory to what I probably said and gives folks something else to consider. I really enjoy that interaction, which has, many times, given me pause. 
  

  I don't know if the newbies realize it, but there are a lot of movers and shakers and innovators on this list and they are so helpful and accessible. I remember when I first posted in a harmonica forum, I had never even met another player, had no clue what was going on in the world, I saw Douglas Tate's name, wrote him and said, ?hey, you're the dude that wrote that book that's in the town library? (it was ?Playing the Harmonica? well. Who wrote the ?Harmonica for Dummies? book? Good ol' Winslow Yerxa, one of the most helpful guys here.
  

  The harmonica isn't a one-company game anymore. There is so much happening. I see all these all these developments going on now and all these interesting people around me and I really do believe that this is one of the most exciting times to be alive, if you're a harmonica player that is.