Music Before the Money

Randy Revell, a student of both Alexander Everett and William Penn Patrick, took what he learned from Mindspring Dynamics and started Context Trainings, one of the most dynamic self-empowerment series ever created. Context Training, now Context Associated, was and is based on a lifetime of learning, teaching, and practice shared by Randy with over a hundred thousand people from all parts of the world.

Randy is known worldwide as one of the premier leaders and innovators in the field of professional and personal effectiveness enhancement. Unlike Werner Erhard, a co-student in Mindspring Dynamics, Revell rejected the punishing path of est wanting to, instead, build up a complete, self-assurred human being.

Randy held a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wyoming and did post-graduate work in mathematics and communications at American University in Washington, DC. His eleven years with the U.S. Government included duty as an instructor of electronics, an educational television program producer, a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, five years of which was with the National Security Agency in communications.

With his wife Judy he founded Context Trainings in 1978 but I never took the course until 1987. My wife talked me into to taking the first course, “The Pursuit of Excellence” and I said, “There’s nothing wrong with me but I’ll do it for you!”

Remember the rakes in a previous blog? Well, throughout this course I was smacked with a dozen or so. Then we went to the second part, “The Wall,” named after the “runner’s wall” and, finally, “The Advancement.”

I can’t say that I learned everything in those three courses but Revell sure let the Genie out of the bottle and my life has been getting better ever since. Randy Revell passed away on July 10, 2004 but left the world around him so much better.

Okay, now that I am happily blogging on four sites I can suspend my verbal diarrhea for a few moments to announce that my ebook, Brian Jones’ Diary, is only weeks away from release. Not having used cyber-publishing before I feel I am missing out on a lot of steps (and I am) because the physical print part is missing.

I have been intrigued by Brian Jones from my first Rolling Stones album, Got Live If You Want It, a very raw stage production where the tuning is bad and the songs are fast but the energy is amazing. Following his career I saw that he was, in fact, the stereotypical Anti-Christ that church leaders were expecting but never thought would show up during their lifetimes. He was the first rock star, adored by women, harranged by police and drinking and drugging himself into oblivion for long periods of time. His dressing habits influenced a generation of clothiers and set the style for the late 1960’s.

And he never disappointed his public in his death: sudden and shrouded by mystery. He was the first rock fixture to die and it was at the beginning of a summer of the first moon landing, Woodstock and the bloodletting by Charles Manson’s “family.”

Brian Jones’ Diary is part biography, part mystery and a lot of fantasy. But I had fun with it and had to research a lot of material to see if his death was natural causes or murder. My friend, Babs Walker, is doing the cover for me.

Mid-way through my list of “Guitars-That-I-Should-Have-Kept” is the 1959 Les Paul “TV Special” one that I got in a trade for a 1976 Wurlitzer electronic piano (I should have kept that piano but you still see them on on Ebay). This guitar was a step up from the least expensive Gibson electric, the Les Paul Junior.

Guitar virtuoso Les Paul brought a solid body to his friends at Gibson in 1941 but they rebuffed the famed player until Leo Fender designed and marketed such an instrument with the introduction of the “Broadcaster” in 1948. Renamed the Telecaster two years later, Fender’s creation remains a mainstay of country and rock musicians who like its clean, biting sound.In 1951, this initial rejection became a design collaboration between the Gibson Guitar Corporation and Les Paul.

It was agreed that the new Les Paul guitar was to be an expensive, well-made instrument in Gibson’s tradition. However, there was a large student population to think about, a group who were happily buying the inexpensive “Telecaster.” So Gibson countered with the “Les Paul Junior,” a one-pickup, single cutaway, mahogany-slab guitar.

(Picture from the Gibson Catalgue)

In 1959, Les Paul appeared on his TV show with a double-cuaway, 2-pickup version of the Junior and it became known as the “TV Special.” Unfortunately, this version was discontinued because there were other products that were becoming popular like the SG’s and upper-echelon Les Paul’s.

The twin P-90 “black bitches” are astounding pickups. The use of the Alnico 5 magnet makesthe P-90 a powerful pickup with a high, mid-range output making it more than suitable for rock. Pete Townsend used these pickups on the Who Live at Leads album and Leslie West played a Les Paul Junior to get the long, sustaining leads on Mississippi Queen with Mountain.

During my “acoustic phase,” in 1990, I sold it for $800. Like my other old guitars it was refinished so the price was good for the time.