So the latest effort into wah-wah pedals (and we've found some pretty awesome stuff to share!) revealed some other interesting tangents that we thought we'd share first. Yes, yes, we're going to do more wah-wah pedal stuff, but we think it's better to break up the content with other interesting information that has more to do with great heavy music, the development of great heavy music, and the presentation of great heavy music.

So how did wah-wah pedals lead to this? There is no wah-wah pedal research without any mention of Jimi Hendrix who many many claim to be the greatest and most important musician who has employed the device. Personally, I don't know that I hold this view, but there is no denying that Jimi did a tremendous amount of innovative and creative work and musical expression with it.

So where is this post going? Part of what we're working at building here at Thermionic Studios isn't just a blog of interesting factoids and news, but building a community of great musicians who are creating inspired music, and putting on festivals to share that work. Frankly the blog effort has been under way because:

1. we have day jobs, and
2. we have been working on building interesting and germane content so that search engines can start to send people our way without us being the kind of assholes who spam chat boards and abuse blog comments.

The point of this is:

We found a link to a really interesting journal describing festivals that were set up in the San Jose area in the wake of the 60's San Francisco Haight-Ashbury music scene. Hendrix played there. Janis Joplin played there. Led Zeppelin played there. Carlos Santana played there. A whole bunch of local bands were on the playbills as well, and this happened over the course of a few years. I think the best way to think of it is that it's like local versions of Lollapalooza - and there were no professional PA (public address) systems set up to put the bands through. This is exactly the sort of thing that we're looking to create. Loud local shows and festivals. Great musicians. Great musicians actually getting paid... Great musicians (because they are getting paid) agreeing to participate in Free Concerts. This is exactly in the vein of what we're looking to make happen.

Here's the article: Rock Prosopography 101. Check it out.