Music Before the Money

I don’t think any other piece of electronic music gear has stood the test of time like the Shure SM58. We replaced our Fenders with these guys that”came in a bag.” And they weren’t cheap. In 1976 we paid $150 a pop with the extra-long cords

The “58″ is a cardoid dynamic microphone with a reputation among musicians for its road-worthiness and technical performance. We always said that, if no one had a hammer, “we could pound nails with it.”

Introduced in 1967, the SM58 remains one of the best selling microphones in the world today. It has a mid-bass frequency boost common to all cardioid microphone designs when used close to the source. The cardiod response reduces pickup from the side and rear, helping to avoid feedback onstage. It uses the balanced XLR 3-pin connection which was really foreign to us and our phono-jack PA’s so we had to use high-impedance phono adapters.

SM57’s were similar and better for miking instruments, drums and amplifiers. I still have my old one although it’s really long in the tooth. However, it’s a great keepsake.

“You will not leave this place with more than you arrived with,

so tell me what value are material things?

You cling so tightly to your imagined self,

yet, who are you, really?

You have nothing to fear, Dear,

but your fear of loss.”

- Littlebear

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

– Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.