I didn't want to hijack Brandon's awesome martial arts thread, so I made a new one. There was a video posted in one of the comments there of a dude cracking whips and playing harmonica. The idea of whips in harmonicas is nothing new. In fact, the very earliest American harmonica-related patent I've been able to find is of a whip with a harmonica in it from 1877 - which is the time period when I place the emergence of the harmonica in regular American popular culture. I actually just added it to the Web site a couple of days ago when I was adding some stuff to the history of the harmonica in america section. The idea apparently was you could always play a harmonica while driving your buggy and whipping horses or whatnot. Might have been some S&M thing. I dunno, the patent doesn't say you can't use it for that. ;) Probably for driving horses, though. 1877 Harmonica Whip
I know the whip guy you are talking about. He was even featured on the Discovery channel a year or two ago.
I've told the story of my birthday where I went to see a band (had been playing about two years) and was asked to sit-in. I accepted although I was not sober. It was the only time I ever played intoxicated in public. I wasn't smashed or anything, but it was buzzed enough for it to have been a bad decision.
Well, this guy was there and we chatted for a long while. He also sat-in. He could play back a ton of cool stuff note for note off the recording. He had a hard time transposing that to playing with the band, though. That was my light bulb moment about improvising and the importance of not trying to copy/paste everything. ---------- Mike VHT Special 6 Mods Quicksilver Custom Harmonicas - When it needs to come from the soul...
Also interesting to note that the whip handle's harmonica is a single reedplate - of the design that predates the Richter construction. "Richter" actually refers to that two-reedplate construction and you hear that and think, "how else would you make one?" Well, imagine the whip isn't there and you have a pre-Richter harmonica. ---------- David Elk River Harmonicas
You know, there have been a couple attempts to turn smart phones into harmonicas. The parts of smart phones keep getting smaller and smaller. I wonder if you could go the other direction and turn a harmonica into a cell phone. Even if it was non-functional, just for show, it would be a pretty cool piece of bling. Even taking some harmonica covers and turning them into cell phone covers would be pretty cool. Some of those double sided tremolos look like they might be about the right size. ---------- Nate Facebook Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
***As cool as this is, any idiot foolish enough to wreck a Tecmo Bowl, let alone SUPER Tecmo Bowl cartridge is, well, an idiot. ---------- Mike VHT Special 6 Mods Quicksilver Custom Harmonicas - When it needs to come from the soul...
I remember watching "Cannon" with William Conrad when I was a kid. The show was from the early 70s and he had this mobile phone in his car. I was a kid watching in the early 1980s and was still like "Holy crap, he's got a phone in his car!" I was like that until the mid 90s probably. Conrad would be all kicking back in that 71 Lincoln pimpmobile of his, then make a call just to show everybody how awesome he was. Whenever he made a phone call in that show, it was a big deal. They'd show the phone itself, then he'd call the operator, then they'd let the primitive ape-men's phones ring three or four times on the other end. It was a big deal, though, that he was awesome enough to get it. The technology could handle only so many subscribers, so to get your phone, you had to go on a waiting list. You'd wait three or four years for somebody to die or something before you could get a phone.
I do love these little bubbles of random stuff in the intro. Hey, there's his revolver! Hey, there's his double chin! Hey there's the back of his head! Hey, there's his ear!... one of the bubbles that streak across the screen just has his ear in it. This clip doesn't have the full intro... it was the only thing I could find on short notice of Cannon's 1970s cell phone.
HarpNinja, on almost any other day of my life (or at least since I discovered harmonica) I would have thought that was the coolest thing ever, but right now it makes me a little sick to my stomach...
I've never really had many of the big vices, but I have my vices, and this weekend I kind of went on a bender. Oreos, Pop-Tarts, Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream with cool whip and chocolate syrup... (lol, cool whip is funny in this thread even without over pronouncing the W!)
Right now I can't even think about ice cream, let alone mint chocolate chip (usually my favorite), without getting a little woozy! (Even if it is just provided for scale.) :[ I even skipped on getting a scoop at my favorite ice cream shop when I went to pay my car insurance (my car insurance office is right next to a place that makes homemade ice cream.)
Wow, I'm surprised that Dave hasn't mentioned Indiana Jones even once in this whole thread! ;) I suppose I ought to buy one of these "harmonica whips" then, eh?
BTW, I remember Chris M. once telling me that he had a harmonica walking stick, with one reed plate built into the handle. And that some film-maker or music-video guy or something had once filmed him playing it for some reason... ---------- == I S A A C ==
Isaac, I seem to remember he was called in to play the cane harp for Discovery Channel (or one of the educational channels). I think it was being auctioned off. I seem to remember something threw him off and he ended up playing something he was embarrassed by, like Oh Susanna.
Isaac, I never mention Indiana Jones unless it is somehow tied to you personally... Because, you know, you, your and fedora, whip, leather jacket and revolver go all these places trying to beat the Nazis to relics, because that is what you do for a living (originally that's what I was going to do for a living had I been able to finish grad school- my major in grad was Medieval English)... But, I should have said "this would be PERFECT for Isaac!!!!" I was really off today. I am sorry. I thank you for calling me to task in this matter.
