Back in the late 70s, Roger Linn created the Linn Drum, the world’s
first drum machine based on samples of actual drums. I wanted one
immediately. As a budding songwriter, I already owned a Fostex
multitracker, guitars, a mic and a bass, and the drum machine was the
missing bit of my virtual band. But the Linn Drum was nearly $3,000.
Then the Drumulator came out. At about $600, it wasn’t cheap either
but it was at least within reach and I bought one (or, more
accurately, my parents bought one for me). My clean living Drumulator
rocked hard for me for several years until a trust fund I had was
tapped to buy an actual Linn Drum, which, if I recall, I picked up at
the factory. But being a spoiled kid and forever dissatisfied with my
bounty in life, I later replaced the Linn Drum with the almighty
Alesis SR-16, hands down the best deal in drum machine history. The
Alesis sounded good, could hold a crap load of songs and let me
control dynamics in ways even the Linn Drum couldn’t touch. But, as
with all things technical, the Alesis was ultimately outdone.
Realizing that the hardware part of the classic drum machine had
become superfluous, developers created software drum machines, which
were cheaper (mostly) and WAY more capable. My first software drum
machine, called the Doggiebox, was super basic, a perfect way to get
my feet wet (or fingertips, in this case), but my second was a full on
technical tour de force called Strike. Capable of being programmed or
playing back stored beats performed by real drummers, Strike is about
as bad ass as a drum machine can get. So much so, in fact, that its
playing (those stored performances) has inspired me to write more than
a few songs, the way a real drummer can. But given the choice, would I
ever choose Strike -- or any other drum machine -- over a human? No.
Because as real as Strike sounds, it still can’t match the tremendous
nuance and feel of live DNA. Plus, Strike never throws a fit and what
the hell kind of drummer doesn’t pitch a fit every now and then?

So far, my top ten list includes Computer Graphics, the Internet, the
Apple Macintosh (specifically, the Powerbook 170), Federal Express and
the Gillette Mach3 razor. To fill out the number six slot, I'm going
to go with Jim Marshall’s glorious gift to rockdom, the Marshall amp.
If you’re within ten years of my age (47) and started playing electric
guitar in your teens, I will wager that at some point in your life you
have wanted a Marshall. Wait, no, you have NEEDED a Marshall, for it
would surely give you godlike abilities to enrapture a crowd with
crunching power chords and searing solos. I mean, think about it:
virtually every guitar god of the late sixties and all through the 70s
used a Marshall. Jimmy Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Eddie
Van Halen and so many more. But Marshall amps weren’t just about The
Sound. No, they were also about The Look. Nothing else said rawk like
a wall of Marshall stacks. And there was one more thing: Marshalls
were so loud that you practically had to be a stadium act to use them
(which added to their allure, I think). Thankfully, at some point
during the 70s, Marshall introduced amps with a master volume knob,
which let you get ear melting Marshall distortion without the
inconvenient ear melting part. For me, being a spoiled child, this was
the tipping point, the moment my desire for a Marshall became
possitively hormonal, and a full-court press was on to convince my
parents to buy me one. They did, but not a stack (too big, I thought);
instead I got them to spring for a newfangled combo thing that could
crank out the likes of Smoke on the Water and Godzilla with proper
punch, but not make everyone else in the band hate you as you buried
them in your sonic avalanche (although if the band started to annoy
you, look out, that thing had a shitload of Watts and new how to use
them). Over the years, my love for Marshalls (I also owned a 100 Watt
Super Lead at one point) gave way to Fenders then to Boogies and now
to Carrs, but back in the beginning, back in the glory days of rock’s
youth, there was only one amp that really, truly inspired me to “pick
up my guitar and play” and that was a Marshall. Thank you, Jim,
goodnight!

Before I write about the Mach3, a quick recap: so far, my list has
included Computer Graphics, the Internet, the Apple Macintosh
(specifically, the Powerbook 170) and
Federal Express. "Hmmm," you might muse aloud, "Pretty tech oriented,
so how does the Mach3 fit?" Well, the Mach3 is tech! Truly, I read a
piece in the New Yorker ages ago about the development of the Mach3
and it was mind-blowing. But before I describe the details of this
engineering marvel, let me describe the benefit: no nicks. Honestly,
before the Mach3 arrived on the scene, shaving for me was pure hell.
My skin would be so irritated and abraded afterward that I looked like
I had been in a fight with someone wearing sandpaper-covered gloves.
In a word, shaving sucked, and I always looked worse after than
before. And then along came the Gillette Sensor II. Big improvement,
but still, there were problems. So when the Mach3 arrived I was
skeptical. Really, three blades are going to be less troublesome than
two? Ah, but the magic of the Mach3 does not lie in the number of
blades, it lies in the way the blades are mounted and the material
they are made of. The mounting holds the blades at either end,
allowing them to flex, and the material lets them be seriously thin,
minimizing the surface area of the blade in contact with the skin. In
addition, the cool mounting method and thin blades let water flow
through the assembly, ensuring easy rinsability. Bad. Ass. I was so
impressed with my Mach3 that I told my girlfriend to get one for her
legs. She did and was an immediate convert. Bottom line: the Gillette
Mach3 has been one of the very few body care products, maybe the only
one, released during my lifetime that really, truly made life better
for me. (I just hope no animals were tortured in its development.)

I started this top ten list with computer graphics (which I am
reconsidering for I am not sure it is truly worthy), then moved onto
the Internet and the Apple Macintosh (specifically, the Powerbook
170). Today, I am going back to the year 1971, 8 years after I was
born, when Federal Express was founded. Obviously, I don't remember
this event at all, and at the time I could not have cared less, but
over the years, the notion that a package could be delivered from
anywhere in the US to anywhere else in the US overnight has been
fundamental to me in countless ways. In no particular order, it has
fed my innate impatience, it has reinforced my view that whatever the
government does (in the this case mail) could be done way faster and
way more efficiently by the private sector, it has given me 100%
comfort with dropping even the most valuable thing into a box and
knowing it would arrive safe and sound and on time. Another factor of
living FedEx has had to do with food. Ever wonder how raw fresh
arrives in SF fresh from Japan? Or how live Maine lobster shows up in
LA the day after it was caught? Or how a restaurant in the middle of
the country can offer salmon netted within 36 hours? FedEx. Today, of
course, FedEx is not behind all of these deliverees, but it showed
that they were possible. One other way FedEx has played a huge role in
my life is in my career. In advertising, every client wants everything
NOW and could give a shit about you, your life, your family, really
anything about you. "Fuck you," they wake up thinking, "Where the fuck
is my ad?" Thanks to FedEx, it's on their fucking doorstep. Harumph.

For this top ten list, I started with Computer Graphics and now I'm
kind of wishing I hadn't. In fact, since I'm my own editor, I might
just disallow that earlier entry. Mulling… Then I did the Internet, a
fairly obvious invention, to be sure, and today comes another obvious
one: The Apple Macintosh, but not just any Macintosh. The first Mac?
Nope. And not the mighty SE-30 or certainly any of the desktops that
appeared in the 1990s. No, for me Mac that will always be the most
magical ever was the Powerbook 170. I bought mine just around 1991-2,
right after I had moved to Europe and realized I needed a portable
computer of sorts. Today, my old 170, which I still have, looks very,
very primitive, but at the time it was more magical than anything I
had ever seen.

Right after I bought my Powerbook, I was in Munich and an issue of the
New Yorker came out with a feature on Barry Diller. I'm sure that the
New Yorker originally thought to write about him because he was moving
from prime time programming to running QVC, or something like that,
but what sticks in my mind about the article is how Barry Diller
thought about his Powerbook. I remember a scene in the article where
Diller was talking about it and the writer described how Diller gazed
at the machine with wonder. I totally understood. And I looked up from
the article and, with equal wonder, stared across the table at my own
Powerbook. These days, I have a Mac Book, and though it is far more
capable than my old 170, it is much less wondrous because it is more
about refinement than breakthrough. But that 170, it was breakthrough
pure and powerful, and it changed my life. It marked the point at
which the computer went from being a novelty for me to being
fundamental, to being a thing I cannot imagine being without, to being
the window through which I see my dreams and the canvas on which I
express myself.

I'm just going to get this one out of the way. I mean, no one is going
to be surprised by this, right? Well, yes and no. Obviously, the
Internet is great for Facebook, Twitter, email, surfing and, ahem,
more, but I'm actually old enough to have been alive during its
earliest years, so, for me, the Internet may well have been behind the
undoing of the Soviet Union. Here's why: I was born in 1963, and the
first iteration of the Internet arrived around 1970, when the Defense
Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) fired up Arpanet. DARPA's goal was to
create a national communications system that could survive a nuclear
attack, and ARPANET succeeded (in theory!) by enabling a "headless"
communications beast, in that there was no central control of the
network. All of the intelligence was at the edge, so, if, say, Chicago
got nuked, as long as there was a wire from LA to DC, the prez could
still get the latest Hollywood gossip. The secret to ARPANET was the
Internet Protocol (IP), which defines communications over a
packet-switched network. Geeky, yes, but damn cool. Today, the
original protocol has been refined and expanded and now goes by the
lovely acronym of TCP/IP. Anyway, did the Russians have ARPANET? Hell
nyet! So, as they contemplated how best to kill a headless beast, all
we probably had to do to disable their communications system was blow
the shit out Moscow. Now, if you were a Russian military dude, this
situation no doubt sucked and probably drove you to reconsider your
loyalties. Anyway, aside from its possible contribution to ending the
cold war, the Internet has absolutely changed my life. I first played
with it in 1994, when Mozilla was still around and Netscape ruled the
roost, and I simply cannot image living without it. Oh, and one last
note: as I contemplated whether to cite ARPANET, IP, TCP/IP,
hyperlinks, the World Wide Web, or graphical browsers, I decided to
just go with the Internet. I mean, it's like asking what made earth
Earth, you know?

Computer graphics? Really? Yes. CG has played a profound role in my
life. Sadly, I don’t think the influence has been a very good one,
because for me, CG's starring role is not in the movies but in video
games. For an unhealthy portion of the late 1980s through to the early
2000's, the likes of Doom, Quake and many other games dominated my
thoughts. Truly, I would think about the games constantly, for in
between games I would think about what I had just done and what I was
going to do. During gameplay, I loved how I was transported to other
worlds, just loved it. I read all the game magazines. I even once
encouraged Quake at Five, an inter-office frag fest played primarily
between members of the Creative Department and IT. (My screen name was
The Shrike, taken from the Hyperion series of sci-fi books by Dan
Simmons and I was fearsome. In fact, it wasn't until about 2002 that I
started to even lose a game or two. Wait, I take that back, there was
some unknown dude in the IT department who played infrequently but
whenever he did he positively schooled everyone else. Aside from him,
though, I was The Man.) But after working my way through Doom I and
II, Unreal, Marathon, Quake I, II and III, Halo, Warcraft I and II,
Starcraft, Total Annihilation, F18 Hornet, Red Baron II, Caesar II,
Hell Cats over the Pacific, A-10 Attack!, and others, I switched to a
laptop computer because it just did not have the horsepower to play
the games I so loved. That was in 2004, I think, and to this day, I
remain weaned of CG-rich computer video games, although Starcraft II
just came out and my resolve is weakening. Fast.

"Surely you jest!" you are probably muttering, but I do not. I am very
serious and I will cut right to the chase: McDonald's is better. WHAT?
'Tis true. For me, the Mighty Micky D's is where I want to go if I am
in need of a junk food fix, not In 'n' Out or any other pretender to
the throne of The Greatest Fast Food on Planet Earth. I suppose if I
were only to focus on the pieces, In 'n' Out would win, after all,
their beef is never frozen, their fries are made right in front you
from fresh potatoes, and their shakes are real cream-based
concoctions. But a fast food meal is not parts, it's a whole and that
whole extends beyond even the food to encompass the place (assuming
you're getting it For Here). When I enter a McDonald's I enter
memories, so many memories, of when I was a kid, of when I went to
McDonald's in Paris, of when I used to sit in my favorite McDonald's
in Munich and read the International Herald Tribune, of too many
roadside stops here in the US to recall. And when I bite into my
Quarter Pounder with Cheese, the ultimate McDonald's experience, the
flavor is unique and great. A Quarter Pounder with Cheese is not
trying to be a backyard burger or a home-made burger or a gourmet
burger or even the best short-order burger. A Quarter Pounder is its
own thing. And the fries? Yup, 'nuff said. Coke is Coke, of course, so
no edge there. And what of the environment, the atmosphere, the feel
of the place? Micky D's wins here, too. Sure, In 'n' Out is cleaner,
but it's clinically clean, you feel like you're in a hospital or
something, which I don’t appreciate. Worst of all is the religion they
shove down your throat by putting Bible verses on every scrap of
packaging. Jesus H Fucking Christ, I'm eating a slaughtered animal and
ingesting enough fat and sugar to take a few minutes off of my life,
if there is a God there is no way he would approve. Anyway, I'm so
inspired by McDonald's, I wrote a song, which I will be posting soon
at www.jeffshattuck.com! Here are the lyrics:

THE MIGHTY MICKY D's

I've been to the French Laundry
I've been to Three Stars in Paree
I've been to some of the best in New York City

Of course, I've eaten caviar
I've sipped Sauternes with seared foie gras
I've had cracked quail egg over steak tartare

And it's all been served with grace and style
But sometimes it's just not for me
So when I want a place that loves to see me smile
I head straight to Micky D's

(CHORUS)
And get a Quarter Pounder with Cheese
And a Coke and fries with that please
And a lotta extra ketchup and a straw for free
There's nothing quite like the Mighty Micky D's

I've savored Montrachets
And vintage bubbly French rosés
They seem to go quite well with foams and gelees

But sometimes I have to find a jacket that fits
To get past the maitre'd
So when I want to just say "I'm lovin' it!"
I head straight to Micky D's
CHORUS

(BRIDGE)
You can take Thomas Keller / And all the fuss
Michael Chiarello / Colicchio if you must
And Jean Georges Vongerichten / And Gordon Ramsey
Have them all pack their knives and go / 'Cause they're not the Mighty Micky D

And I love grass fed steak
I love o-toro fresh from the sea
But on days when I deserve a break
I head straight to Micky D's

CHORUS

When you think of espresso do you think of bitterness, of
hardtoswallowness, of godthatshorriblebutIneedoneness? I do. Because
99 out of 100 epsressos I drink are awful, just dreck, pure shit,
really. And it's no different in Italy, save for the fact that they at
least have the decency to give you very little of the vile fluid. How
sad, because a great espresso is a marvel. The flavor is smooth and
rich, the crema is actually creamy, and there is no guilt, for a
proper espresso contains no fat or sugar, though people routinely add
these things. And why shouldn’t they? Espresso sucks a little less if
it's diluted by roughly 50% with sugar and cream. So, enough about how
bad espresso usually is, what about why? Why should a simply, fast
drink be so terrible? I think it's because making a proper espresso
actually takes practice and technique and maybe even a little pride. I
say this because very nearly the only places I have consistently had
good espresso are The French Laundry, Bouchon, The Slanted Door, and a
café in Milan, all places that train their staff and take considerable
pride in what they do. And what of Starbuck's? Surprisingly, it is the
only coffee chain that has served me a good espresso, not often, but
enough to tell me that maybe, just maybe, they are trying. I wish them
well and I support them, because the state of espresso needs help.

www.jeffshattuck.com

When I was in my teens, 20s and even 30s, the phrase "at least you
have your health" seemed a little absurd to me. I mean, I just could
not imagine NOT being healthy. It wasn't until I was in my early 40s
that this phrase truly sank in. For it was then, just after I had
crested the hill of life, that I suffered a severe traumatic brain
injury and now health is pretty much number one on my wish list. Since
the accident, there has not been one, single day when I felt Good, and
there have been many, yesterday being a prime example, when I felt
horrible. On a daily basis, my main sensations are coldness in my legs
(they feel like they have been misted with ice water), slight nausea,
lightheadedness and occasional spasms in my neck muscles that cause my
head to jerk around a bit. Everything is much better than it was in
the first years after the injury, but I am definitely not back to
normal and I would not say I have my health. Which sucks. Still — and
this is a phrase that despite its truth rankles the hell out of me —
"it could be worse." But it's true, it could have been much worse. My
particular kind of brain injury is what's known as a subdural
hematoma, which means bleeding on the brain, and it can be fatal. But
there's plenty short of death to be concerned about with brain
injuries. I mean, you've got cognitive problems, personality changes,
loss of movement in arms and/or legs, loss of sight, hearing issues
and on and on and on and on and on and, well, you get the idea. And
on. Luckily, I seem to have come out of my brain injury with my
limited cognitive skills fully intact and my morose personality in
full bloom. Even better, the accident seems to have helped me become a
better songwriter and I have just released my first album (give it a
sping at www.deepsalvagesongs.com). Best of all, since cracking my
skull I have reassessed a lot of my values and made life changes (got
married!) that have made me happier. Still, I can’t deny it, I wish I
had my health.