Damn. Just Damn.
Take 6 doing the Star Spangled Banner. Now to be honest the Star Spangled Banner is not my favorite piece of music. Patriotism aside it's a dog. I can only think that the composers were really pissed at some vocalist &/or audience when they wrote down this piece & things got out of hand with it (then again what do you expect from a musical effort by a lawyer & a judge?). It just doesn't move & the only reason anyone gets choked up by it is the memories they've associated with it. What I mean is the ideas of country & heroism & such gets pinned on the Star Spangled Banner, whereas with a decent piece of music they'd flow from it. That being said listen to what Take 6 does with the tune.
If you're not familiar with Take 6 they're a predominantly gospel a cappella group. & they bad. The only gig I was ever purposely/negligently late for was on a Sunday back in 1995. See, the Grammy's were on & the band I was in was about to walk out of our condo (we were playing a long weekend down at Myrtle Beach) when Take 6 came on stage with Stevie Wonder. We were literally transfixed to the damn TV with our cases in our hands, door half open, standing there slack jawed trying to process what we were hearing.
Anyway here they are at the Apollo doing a cross over hit of theirs called Spread Love. Here's the studio version of that tune. Here they are doing an old Bill Withers song called Grandmas Hands. (Here's Bill Withers doing the tune.) & yes; the beginning of Withers' tune is where Blackstreet got the groove for No Diggity from (Blackstreet vid here). Anyway here's Take 6 doing a medley of some of their tunes.
Just damn.
To keep this kinda gun related I'll post a pic of my six shooter in the extended entry.
Ayup; she's a 6 shooter. That's a 1917 Enfield that was sporterized when I bought it. See in 1913 England was looking to replace the SMLE with a Mauser-like design in a .276 caliber cartridge. Well WW1 kinda got in the way so they just went with the new design chambered in .303 British. They were a bit short on time & capability so they contracted with Winchester & Remington to increase production of the Pattern 14 Enfield (as the .303 chambered design from 1913 was called). Around 1917 Remington & Winchester had finished their production run of Pattern 14 Enfields & were approached by the u.S. government to tool up to make 1903 Springfields since we had just gotten into WW1 ourselves. A fellow at Remington had an idea. He figured that instead of tooling up to make the 1903 Springfield it'd be easier & quicker to just rechamber the Pattern 14 Enfield for the .30-06 Springfield cartridge. The government went with the idea & Remington (& a subsidiary called Eddystone) & Winchester started making the rifles again. They changed the barrel & the bolt to accommodate the .30-06 Springfield but didn't alter the magazine. Now the .303 British is a rimmed round & just a bit fatter than the '06 Springfield so it was discovered that a Model of 1917 Enfield (the rechambered Pattern 14) could hold 6 rounds of '06 instead of just 5 rounds of '06 that the 1903 Springfield could handle. Sadly though no 6 round stripper clips were made to my knowledge.
That's why the bolt gun pictured is an actual 6 shooter.
Here's another pic. Just cause.
& yes; I have thought about making some money by betting someone that my 6 shooter was more accurate than theirs 6 shooter at 100 yards, but so far I've resisted the temptation. :)
Posted by Publicola at May 14, 2007 04:59 AM | TrackBack