The Intergalactic Cowboy

Recently, I have been working with harmonica virtuoso, Jerry Gordon, who formerly played in The Strange Hours with me. We have been working up some classic rock tunes which feature harmonica in his workshop, which is un-airconditioned. The temperatures here in Upson County have been in the 90+ F. range. I do not know how hot it gets in his workshop but the heat is rather intense. This past Thursday, my guitar sounded the worst (sp?) that it ever has. In my bedroom, I adjusted the string length so that the intonation was reasonably good, up and down the neck, but in Jerry’s workshop, the intonation went drastically flat on the upper part of the neck. It was embarrassing ! When I got home, I checked the intonation with the tuner and it was good at 75 degrees. It is as if when you put this hollowbody guitar in a hot environment, not only does the neck warp, but the entire body of the guitar warps. Sometimes, musicians have to perform in hot stage conditions. Although Jerry and I will probably only be performing to drunken bums who will not even be listening to the music, I bet that even they would be offended by the sound of my guitar at a high room temperature. The dilemma is that I love the sound of hollow body guitars… I am hooked on them. Perhaps a semi-solid body guitar would behave better at high temperature. If I were to ever have a large audience, I could never play the hollow bodies that I currently love to play.
And speaking of other difficult situations… the stock market sold off by approximately 450 points on Thursday and Friday. This was the result of crude oil going up to 140 dollars a barrel, over a two day period. A Saudi oil minister publically announced that he expects oil to rise to 170 dollars a barrel in the near future. The media keeps repeating stories of housing price collapses, mortgage company insolvencies, employee four day work weeks and higher food prices as the result of higher energy costs. If the fund managers pull their money out of the stock market, a stock market panic will result. Monday is the last day of the second quarter. Mutual funds are judged by whatever profit or loss the incur on that particular date. It is illegal for a fund to artificially inflate its gains by buying a huge quantity of stock on the last day of the quarter. I don’t know if it is illegal for them to sell a huge quantity stock to prevent further losses on that date or not. Tuesday is the first day of the third quarter and funds are free to buy and sell as much stock as they like. Both mutual fund managers and hedge fund managers have the power to create a financial catastrophe if they want to. The European Central Bank has the power to raise interest rates this week, which would devalue the U.S. dollar and raise the price of crude oil, which is priced in U.S. dollars. This coming week has the potential to be a dramatic week in the financial markets.
Hold on to your financial seats,
I.C.