Music Before the Money

Of all the items that you could lose while on a gig picks ranked near the top. You would always lose one on a darkened stage just before the lead solo and have to use your thumb to finish the song. Sound familiar?

Now, if you had extra picks you could grab one between songs or borrow one off the other guitar player. And usually the stores were closed at midnight so you couldn’t buy any. If you were the only guitar player, or were doing a solo act, various strategies could be worked out:

1. Matchbook: This would last approximately two to three songs. Rip off the matches part and fold the cardboard into a square. You now had four corners. For the solo switch to a fresh corner. Cigarette packages were also popular.
2. Bread tie: This could be quickly retrieved from the kitchen of there was a restaurant attached to the gig. These were clunky and you had to keep from getting the string caught in the pincer part but, like the matchbook cover, chording worked okay.
3. Borrowing one from another band: If there was another entertainment bar attached you could always borrow, get or buy picks off one of the other guys. Usually the rock bands used skateboard-thick ones but beggars could not be choosers.
4. Business card: This works as well as the matchbook.
5. Good old fingers: This was painful after a while but I have finished many songs this way. Then I grabbed a matchbook.

Whatever you used I never met a guitar player yet who never finished the night because he lacked a pick.

In my novel The Millennium Man my protagonist, Harley Melanson, flew many aircraft but he racked up the most kills in a Sopwith Camel, the same aircraft as his hero and commander, Bill Barker.

Germans ruled the air in 1916 

In 1916, the Germans controlled the skies over the trenches, and the English developed three fighters to regain control of the air war. The best and most famous of these three designs was the Sopwith Camel. Small and lightweight, the Camel represented the state-of the-art in fighter design at the time.

 Big shooter but hard to handle

The Sopwith Camel shot down 1,294 enemy aircraft during World War I, more than any other Allied fighter. However, it was so difficult to fly that more men lost their lives while learning to fly it than using it in combat. The torque of the huge 110 hp Clerget 9Z engine which caused it to wrench to the left and stall in inexperienced hands. The Sopwith company rolled out the first Camel in December 1916. Although it owed much of its design to earlier Sopwith aircraft like the Tabloid, Pup and Triplane, the Camel was a revolutionary machine in two main areas.

1. The plane’s twin Vickers machine guns were mounted side by side in front of the cockpit — a first for British fighters and a design feature that became standard on British fighters for nearly 20 years.
2. The pilot, engine, armament and controls were all crammed into a seven foot space at the front of the airplane. This helped give the plane its phenomenal performance, but it also made the plane very tricky to fly.

In the novel, Harley flies in Barker’s raids in Italy against the Austrian-Hungarian coalition before coming to France. Major Barker’s Sopwith Camel (serial no. B6313, the aircraft in which all his victories were scored became the most successful fighter aircraft in the history of the RAF, shooting down 46 aircraft & balloons from September 1917 to September 1918 in 404 operational hours flying. It was dismantled in October 1918. Barker kept the clock as a memento, although he was asked to return it the following day.