The Broken Promises Amount

8/7/2025

I've been on a bit of a [Jethro] Tull kick lately and with MAGA awaking from their fever dream over Trump's birthday love letter to Jeffrey Epstein ("..may every day be another wonderful secret"), wondered if the lyrics to the song "A Song For Jeffrey" from "This Was Jethro Tull" (their first album in 1968) were at all relevant to his latest scandal. I was not disappointed. "Gonna lose my way tomorrow, gonna give away my car, I'll take you along with me but you would not go very far. I don't see what I do not want to see, you don't hear what I don't say. Won't be what I don't wan to be, I continue in my way. Don't see, see, see where I'm going, don't see, see, see where I'm going.. I don't want to.". Holy shit! How on-the-money is that? The band Jethro Tull, by the way, just released their 24th album "Curious Ruminant" (visit jethrotull.com ).

I first heard Jethro Tull when, as a pre-teen, my oldest brother got drafted into the Vietnam war and left behind several 8-track tapes (cartridges) including the Jethro Tull album "Benefit" which I adored and still love to this day (the new Steven Wilson mixes are great). Though familiar with all of their material except the last few (which I shall soon remedy), they've put out so much good material it's impossible to call one out as a "the favorite" but I do go back to Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, Passion Play, Songs From The Wood, "A" (good golly Miss Molly), Minstrel in the Gallery (I forgot how much I loved this till I heard Stuart Wood's THE DAILY SPORRAN version of Baker St. Muse), Crest of a Knave and of course, Benefit. That is not to say there is anything wrong with the other albums; they are just something I'll get to enjoy later on:) Stuart also did a great version of the closing section of Pt. II of the Passion Play album which reminded me of how amazing that piece of music it was/is: A Passion Play (Pt.II) (and, of course, Pt.I )
Pt. II starts with the complete "Hare who lost his spectacles" section which was broken up between side one and side two on the original album (yes, I'm that old). Stuart has a ton of great voice-and-guitar versions of Tull tunes that must be explored if you are a Tull fan and even more so if you are a Tull fan who is also a musician as the timing changes and song structures are usually discussed. Great job Stuart. Thank you. (visit www.youtube.com/@DailySporran/featured )

So I finally broke down and purchased a guitar with built-in sustainer technology and have been loving it. I had been thinking about somehow mounting a speaker or speaker coil on a guitar to generate physical feedback without making a lot of noise back in the 90s and discovered that the guitar maker Fernandes made several models with active feedback systems and loved how it felt when I got to try one at a NAMM show. At the time, they were price-prohibitive but almost 30 years later with prices poised to skyrocket as what's-his-name's tariffs kick in, I scooped up a Schecter guitar (from Sweetwater.com ) that included their sustainer technology but also a wonderful Floyd Rose bridge. New recordings using the guitar will be coming soon but I'm happy to report that the technology does indeed work and is actually pretty amazing; once you pluck a note, it just keeps ringing. Wonderful. It's like having a giant speaker in front of your guitar without having a giant speaker in front of your guitar. Or in proximity to your ears. It also includes a switch that lets you blend in overtones which swell out of the primary notes in a very musical way and a switch to disable the sustainer which saves the battery a bit (two 9V batteries) but also lets you see how the guitar is going to sound when the sustainer [battery] inevitably dies in the middle of a performance. I found it to be fairly transparent: the sustainer just makes the notes keep ringing without coloring the tone. And, of course, combined with the Floyd Rose bridge..lets just say it's been helping me find a happy place in these unusual times.

I hope your summer is going well. The summer heat is keeping us indoors more than usual here in New England, which would normally be a good opportunity to do some recording but the noise of fans here is relentless. We live in an old building. Headphones help since a lot of the post-production work I do doesn't involve microphones but the vibrations of the fans permeate through the building and are hard to escape so I have to brave the heat at times when doing audio work. Speaking of which, a couple of new song ideas in the works, working titles "You'd Look Good In Peach" and "Oh Shit, I've Been Conned" I'm constructing from some improvised drum tracks I did a few weeks ago. The titles have nothing to do with the songs but you have to give these things names to get them started so I used a couple of song title ideas I had kicking around. There were certainly other variations on the "in peach" theme that shall be explored. Now if we can just get the Senate to con-vict the convict. And, yes, we will be gerrymandering your love very soon.

Be well and, as always, stay the hell away from the vile Alex Jones/Infowars and the disease that calls itself Fox News, whatever you do. - Bob

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