Thus starts the BIG ending of our gang’s California Road Trip. All the loose ends will get wrapped up in one tidy story arc that starts today. Drawing the damn car about wore me out… I’m not a technical artist by any stretch of the imagination. Love the fourth panel with Robyn and Lorraine clinging to each other!
By the way, I will NOT post a comic this Friday… it is Christmas and this artist is taking it off!
Late in 1976 the Eagles released “Hotel California” which I eagerly awaited as it was the first with Joe Walsh on board as a guitarist. I have followed Joe’s career since1971’s James Gang “Thirds” album and the single “Walk Away”. Joe’s talent knows few limits and he’s truly as laid back as he appears. He is a fan of local (Chicago) talk show host Steve Dahl and Joe will drop in from time to time and just crack everyone up in the studio. Classic stuff. So, Robyn and Lorraine are in the “fast lane” for sure and we’ll see where it takes them on Monday the 28th. A little 1977 trivia… “Hotel California” was slated to be released in “Quadraphonic”… a FOUR channel audio format that failed miserably. Hey, you only have two ears, how you suppose to listen to the other tracks on headphones? Quad would die in 1977 and later come back as… Surround Sound. Hey, how about that.
Enjoy your holidays and try not to burn down any trees. Have a little eggnog for me…
🙂
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Discussion (29) ¬
heh. the poor consumers…quad was so confusing. four (quad!! HA!) different systems! and the early quad recordings were kind of lackluster because, like early stereo, the engineers had no idea just what in the hell to do with it in the first place and had limited bandwidth/frequency spectrum to do it (whatever IT happened to be with the mix) in.
great idea, but way ahead of its time…
quad discs are pretty hard to find nowadays, and even harder to play back as they were intended to be heard. the people that have the hardware hoard it, but at least they’re enjoying the recordings… 🙂
–dee!
well, ok, i guess there were actually 10 (!!) quad formats, but only four of them were discrete (true quad). the rest were ‘matrix’ quad, which was basically a lossy version of quad.
that’s insane tho. 10 formats! 10! no wonder it didn’t catch on and died the way it did…
the only ones i’ve seen actual media of are SQ and CD-4 (quadradisc) …
–dee!
Not only did Quad have all those formats, but it required ALL new equipment, plus TWICE the speakers. As a struggling audio guy, I barely had enough for TWO speakers, let alone FOUR. I was never impressed with Quad. I could hook up a pair of speakers out of phase to the “B” setting on my amp (remember A/B speaker settings?!!), and get a really cool “quasi-Quad” effect. It was essentially making a tiny, tiny delay and you’d get a cool “live” sound to certain tracks (like the Moody Blues… DOH!)
And yes, no one knew what to do with Quad. I remember going to a Lafayette Electronics store for a Quad radio broadcast demo, and it seemed some engineer just went nuts on the pan control sending the solo from “Black Magic Woman” back and forth on the rear speakers at Warp 9. It was nuts and sounded terrible.
Ah, the good ol’ days… 🙂
Either the girls are a lot more petite than I imagined, or that Gremlin is supersized! 🙂
LOL! Let’s say I’m using a REALLY wide angle lens to show the interior of the car so it looks bigger. No, Gremlins had no room in them at all.
🙂
Funny I figured a big sex romp would have raised his testosterone enough to change him back. What does it take????
Nope, only getting angry and then told to “chill out” will make Bud mad enough to make the switch back!
I’ve got a real twist coming next week! Stay tooned!
😉
Not enough girl-on-girl grabbing and hugging in panel 4. Harrumph.
Nice job all round, Byron.
I once had the throttle stick open on my fuel-injected TR6. I’m saving that story for The Occasional Stevie though. maybe over Christmas, if I have time.
When Virgin released a quad version of “Tubular Bells” it has an iconic “QUAD” sticker on the sleeve that included the small-print rider: “for people with four ears”. It was *always* worth reading the small print on Virgin albums.
Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you’ve been good and Santa does well by you. Watch the drinking and driving thing and see you all next week.
Steve.
Yeah, my friends with four ears always bought Virgin records…
I love your stories… do share!
🙂
Ha! My father had a Quad system. I never figured out what the big deal was supposed to be, but Dad really loves his gadgets! He’s still that way today… and I still get the cast-offs when his interest in them ends (as I did when he got tired of the Quad system… not that I ever had the room to set it up as it was intended).
Wowwwww… was Hotel California really released in ’76? I guess it was. I recall now how I had recorded the title track off the radio, with me doing “spooooooky” vocals over the bridges. Yeah, a 10-year-old kid whispering “Never leave… never leave… never leave…” No wonder I still can’t hear that song with a straight face! That, and the gwadawful overplaying the song receives even today! It’s almost as bad as “Free Bird” and “Stairway to Heaven” – and, in my estimation, “Hotel California” isn’t nearly as good a song as those other two Monsters Of Overairtime(*). I always did enjoy “Life in the Fast Lane,” however, even though I was in high school before I truly understood what the song was about! In retrospect, it’s amazing what they were able to get away with saying in that song, especially since I recall it being a big Top 40 radio hit, too. Kinda like “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” “Lola” or “Aqualung.”
Love the vintage “Peanuts” sound effect! 🙂
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* – Inside joke: I’m also a huge fan of Gothic Rock, and have spent lots of time in Goth-Industrial clubs. There, as anywhere that popular music is played, certain songs always wind up in the mix. With the snarky attitude of that subculture, I’ve often referred to “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (Bauhaus) as the Gothic “Free Bird,” “Temple of Love ’92” (The Sisters of Mercy) as the Gothic “Stairway to Heaven,” and “Bloodletting” (Concrete Blonde) as the Gothic “Hotel California.” All six songs are as inevitable as death, taxes, and government fuck-ups!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
And thank you. I love this strip and all the work you give to it… and to us. Thanks!
I’ll have to come hang out at these bars with you sometime… I like to say I’ve done certain things “once” in my life. This would be one of those. Me? In an goth club? I’ll wear my NASCAR jacket and see what happens.
You’re welcome and I love that so many of you have gotten to love the strip as much as I do. We’re one big happy family around here… which is odd as family is usually the ones that piss you off the most!
Have a heavy metal Christmas, man!
🙂
As I am often reminded this time of year, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.”
Take this following thing you have here for the wonderful gift it is, and be careful with the labels.
To you and everyone else, what ever you call your holiday this time of year, may it be everything you hope it to be.
And the same to you! I appreciate each and every reader of the comic. The comic brings me so much joy that, apart from my three sons, it has been the bright spot in my life these past two years. Given the ugly economy, I’m glad it was here to help me though these tough times
🙂
Man, I’ve been where Robyn and Lorraine are. Jab that bad boy into Neutral and hit the brakes.
I had a 1971 Chevy Nova, 4 Door, Canary Yellow that had some really, really bad issues at first. I bought it for $250 cold hard cash at 17 years old, to say the least I was living high on the hog. That was until I found out it had some issues.
1. The throttle would stick (seemed like it found that ability when you jumped on it, especially at traffic lights) found jabbing it into Neutral very handy.
2. The brakes for the first 4 weeks of having it would suddenly fail, and I mean completely fail. You’d be throttling down the road, and then all of a sudden they were gone. You’d slam the pedal over and over to no avail, which typically meant jabbing it in neutral again, and applying the emergency brake once you got to a sensible speed (unless you were approaching an intersection) then you just slammed on the Emergency Brake and held on for a good skid. I had some instances where the Emergency Brake would even fail and I’d be forced to slam it into Park. Bad on the transmission, but a lot better than getting T-Boned. Though other times during that 4 week stint they worked like a champ. Issue ended up being air in the brake lines, they were dry rotted and continued to suck air in.
3. Radio was an AM Radio, original, I never replaced it. Man I loved those old AM rock stations, they had some great songs and no commercials.
4. Heater was busted and the first winter I actually built a small fire in a metal trash bin I kept in the passenger floor board. I couldn’t get the smoke to go out the window fast enough and hacked my way to the house one night and decided that what I was doing was probably a pretty bad and stupid idea. I would kill my boys if they did something that idiotic.
I redid the car from the ground up and kept it until I was 19 years old, then I wiped it out after crashing into a deer, then a concrete culvert. Due to the structural integrity of a 1970’s model automobile I came out unscathed, but the body of the car was pretty mangled. I did what I could to get her fixed and back on the road, but she was never the same. I sold her right before my 20th Birthday for $700. I sure miss that car. I still have one of her Baby Moons on the wall of my garage.
Man, we had a 1970 Chevy Nova, dark blue. I think it even had a V8 in it. I drove it for a bit, but my Mom wrapped the thing around a telephone pole one day when an idiot turned into her at a major intersection (my Mom had a lead foot, so she was booking it for sure). She hit the pole at around 40MPH and literally wrapped the dash around her. If there had been a passenger, they would have been crushed (but then Mom would not have been going that fast with other people in the car). So here’s this Nova now shaped like a “U” being hauled up on a tow truck. The funny thing: the phone company CHARGED my Dad for the telephone pole she hit! He wanted the damaged pole but they said no. This was when the phone company was a monopoly, so they did what they wanted!
But Novas were fun cars. All engine. Some great dragsters were made out of those old Novas.
Um, a fire in the car? Man, I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s done “stupid” things in their youth. It’s amazing we lived, isn’t it? I did some CRAZY things and luckily my boys have learned well from me NOT to do those things…
Thanks for sharing!
lol, excellent. my brother is OBSESSED with the Gremlin. btw, he’s much younger than me, so he wouldn’t know any better, haha.
Well, at first they looked like cool cars, but AMC couldn’t build a good car if it tried. They had several cars that could have been contenders but the quality of the builds were just awful. Then the Pacer… holy crap, what a POS!
haha, yeah the pacer. my dad had a rambler. remember that? i actually saw a cherry looking one that rides around this way once in a while. my favorite amc was the javelin. that car was sweet to look at. I was a big fan of the challenger, but the javelin was my 2nd favorite from that era. obviously the camaro, charger, gto, chevelle and mustang were more popular, but those 2 cars i loved. part of that may be that they were my first 2 matchbox cars, too, lol.
Don’t feed the Gremlin after midnight!
LOL! Yes, they’ll transform into really nasty drag racers and will destroy the city! Nice reference!
🙂
Happy christmas Dude, hope you have a great one!
And to you too, man! Rock…
🙂
Not in the same “old school” league as you guys, but we had a Fiat Multipla a couple of years ago in which the “fly by wire” throttle used to suddenly go full on! Very scary and quite dangerous when you were queueing in traffic in 1st gear (manual drive) at 2 mph, 3 feet from the car in front, and suddenly the revs go up to 5000+!! Absolutely no time to hit neutral, just jump on the brake and hope it stalled! Crazy!
Hit a few curbstones trying to avoid the car in front I can tell you!
An aside on the music, I am typing this listening to “Mother’s Finest” Greatest Hits. Arrived today in the post and it’s brilliant! I heard them first in ’76/’77 at a music pub in Kingston, London, called The Bridge or The Castle or something similar (IIRC) , played all the good rock and pop a really loud volumes, so loud you could hardly order at the bar (way in advance of the loud clubs of recent years!)
Great stuff! Almost any music sounds great when played at full volume in an atmosphere of beer, scantily clad rock-chicks and wacky-baccy! 😉
Anyway, enough reminiscing, have a Great Festive Holiday all! (And Merry Xmas to those that do that sort of thing! ;))
Keep up the good work Byron (I will get round to paying for that book eventually! Sorry I’m so slow!)
Bob
Happy Holidays and all to you too, Bob…
My Dad had this old Ford Falcon that would slip into neutral (an automatic) when you turned righ… not left, just right. Then as you straightened out, it would kick into gear again. Really embarrassing at first if you applied too much brake on an incline and the car didn’t have enough motion to carry it through the curve. Straighten the wheel, floor it and turn sharply at the last second to avoid hitting on coming traffic. Nuts.
And we survived all of this somehow… we’re all lucky bastards for sure!
🙂
I once had a Sears stereo that had quadraphonic in it. It had a switch on the front to switch between quad or stereo. Unfortunately, since it was a hand me down, only three of the speakers actually worked.
But does the engine pound like a disco on the way to Sausalito all they need is an exploding fuel tank. Any way Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
Happy holidays to you too!