Author Archives: jimgilvin

Tools of Freedom

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A big part of my youth was filled with live music. There wasn’t alot to do in Macon, GA in the 1980’s so many of my friends and I spent way too much time drinking beer and going to see bands.

One of my favorite bands back then was called The Tools of Freedom. The Tools were a hard rocking southern band, much like Drive By Truckers but with a little more edge. The band consisted of Mike Gossett on drums, Judd Shirley on bass, Danny Esposito on lead guitar and Bryant Mickler singing lead. The guys were talented, loud, hilarious and the best damn “party ” band I ever had the privilege of hearing.

Of course, in the eighties we didn’t walk around with cell phones that had video recorders on them so there is very little record of this band that I loved going to see. But today a friend from Macon, John Meyer, has posted some videos on youtube and I will include it here as a tribute.

The video doesn’t come close to doing them justice but if you want a little better idea of what made them fun go check out this link at thepegband.com:   http://thepegband.com/musicvideo/musicvideo.html 

The video at the bottom is just a teaser of what would come. By the way, check out the peg band if you get a chance because it is the latest incarnation of a great band and talented musicians.

And if that’s just not enough here is a link to the only CD I have from a show at the Yellow Rose in Macon, Georgia. http://www.humyo.com/6408709-336599935

too much things to do

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I haven’t been blogging much lately. Free time has been coming in snippets and I have spent much of that time on Facebook and Twitter.

I have made several quick posts on other media with the full intention of coming back and fleshing the ideas out here on my blog. After all, the entire purpose of this blog is to give me a forum in which I can write at length about anything I choose. But I am still a neophyte at this and have yet to work out a schedule which allows me the time to do all of the things that I would like to do. 

But I am determined to have more music and more writing in my life so there will be more of both on this blog.

Spreadin’ the wealth (as promised)

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Saw this article in the AJC this morning: http://tinyurl.com/d32y4y

To summarize, the article says that Georgia might get back $5 billion from the $800 billion stimulus package that President Obama is pushing right now. Seemed bad to me so I ran the numbers and you can judge for yourself.

$800 billion dollars divided by 50 states is $16 billion per state. This number won’t apply to every state but I live in Georgia and as the ninth most populous state I think it is a conservative estimate. So the stimulus package will cost Georgians $16 billion and we might get $5 billion back. Doesn’t sound very stimulating to me!

As a matter of fact it works out to a cost of about $1200 for every man, woman and child in the state of Georgia. So the next time a family in Georgia sits around the dinner table they can add up $1200 dollars a head to see how much our new president expects them to kick in for his stimulus package. Guess that’s what Obama meant by “spread the wealth”.