Bob Villwock

Today would have been Glenn Seaborg’s 98th birthday.

While I was in graduate school at UC Berkeley, it turned that my lab in Gilman Hall was the Dr. Seaborg’s former lab space. If that name is not immediately obvious to you, then here are a few things he did:

• Co-discoverer of ten elements on the periodic table, including plutonium.
• You know those extra two rows at the bottom of the periodic table? That was pretty much his idea.
• He is an inventor on the only two patents ever issued for chemical elements.
• One of those elements, Americium, is probably in your house right now if you have a smoke detector.
• He and Edwin McMillan shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the lab in Gilman Hall is now a National Historic Landmark.
• He successfully transmuted bismuth into gold.
• An anagram for Seaborg is “Go Bears!”

That lab (307 Gilman) is now part of the Newman group. While I was there, occasionally we’d get a visit from Dr. Seaborg. On this particular day in March 1998, he visited with a PBS documentary crew to take some film of the lab. We got to say hello and talk a bit about our research. We also got this photo. Shown here are Jeremy Meyers, Rob Darling, Glenn Seaborg, and myself in front of 303 Gilman.

With  a little luck and good timing, and with many thanks to my friend Jeremy and his friend who works at NASA, I managed to get the whole family to Kennedy Space Center last week for the launch. I have wanted to do this for about 29 years. In fact, today is the 29th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch. The guys from Rush were there at that first launch in 1981, and it inspired their song “Countdown,” which they then performed live at the very first concert I went to. On November 4, 1984 at the Richfield Coliseum (which is now gone), Rush had a giant video screen behind them, and they synched their song live to a giant video of the launch of Columbia. After that, I desperately wanted to see a launch, but going to Florida and getting the timing right is difficult and there is always a decent risk of NASA changing the schedule for lots of reasons, not to mention the weather. Plus, there would always be some future launch that might work out better. Maybe I’d just happen to be in Florida some time when there was a launch. So, the years passed, and I never really did it.

There are only a few launches remaining before the end of the shuttle program, so it was time to make the effort, take the risk of traveling without knowing for sure if it would go, and hope for the best. We got the best. Thanks to Jeremy’s friend, we got a front row seat out on the causeway. Thanks to the timing, we got a night time launch that was so close to sunrise that it also featured a visible flyover of the International Space Station, and the sun shining on the shuttle and its plume once it was high enough. Sunrise on the vapor trail was a nice touch too as we made our way slowly back to Titusville in the traffic after the launch.

Here’s the launch video from our little camera. I didn’t expect to record much of the launch with this–mostly I wanted to record the looks on the kids faces–but I think it captures the whole vibe pretty well.

My kids were pretty puzzled by my apparent need to play “Countdown” over and over on the rental car’s cd player, but I think after the launch they understood a little better.

Here’s the official NASA video, which does not feature my kids at all.

New research from SFSU suggests that to maximize happiness for your money, you should definitely opt for the vacation, or the concert, or some other non-tangible experience rather than a new car or some other thing. Seems obvious if you think about it all, I suppose.

On the other hand, I’ve also been carrying around in my head this bit of snarky comment first made to me by a coworker at my first real job. “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” Other than as a joke, I don’t think that line of thinking has served me as well as, say, this Rush lyric, which is also carried around in my head constantly.

I’m not giving in to security under pressure
I’m not missing out on the promise of adventure
I’m not giving up on implausible dreams
Experience to extremes, experience to extremes.

I moved away last summer, but I left a bunch of stuff in Grass Valley, and now it’s up for sale down at Lake of the Pines Music at the corner of Wolfe (Combie) Rd. and Hwy. 49., (530) 268-2500

Go down there and talk to Mikel if you are interested in this stuff. You can email me with questions too…if it could talk, oh the stories some of this stuff could tell. It’s all in good shape.

Fender Concert (mid 80’s) all tube guitar amp combo 1×12″ $599 SOLD!

Rhodes Mark II electric piano $400 SOLD!

Ampeg 410 bass cabinet $599 $499

Crown XLS602 power amp $250

Peavey bass rig (head + cab) $399 SOLD!
I don’t have a picture, but let’s just say it’s loud, it’s broken in, and it has that Peavey sound.

PAS passive stage monitors (3 of them) $250 ea.
These are fantastic little 2-way wedge monitors. I don’t have any good pics of them. You don’t see these very often, but they are very good quality speakers.

Roland KC500 keyboard amp $200 SOLD!
Great for live performance. It has a 15″ speaker plus a horn tweeter, 150 watts of power, and 4 stereo inputs.

Mavis Staples and Joss Stone absolutely slaying “I’ll Take You There” at a Sound Stage performance. I love the bit at about 3:38 where it fails to end. They cannot be stopped!

Mavis Staples will take you there.

What a blast we had last weekend at the Center for the Arts in Grass Valley. Fourteen soulful musicians performing a bunch of groovy tunes, and a sold-out crowd of the finest funky party people you could ask for. Another Sierra Sirens production–is there anything those ladies can’t do? I don’t think so.

Lorraine catches a breath while Larry rips a guitar solo in Aretha Franklin's "Since You've Been Gone."

They’ve always got something in the works…tributes to Ella Fitzgerald and James Taylor are both in the works, plus a Broadway revue and a night of arias. Keep an eye on the calendar at the Center for the Arts.

TONIGHT! I’m playing with Project MOSS on 6th Street, Austin, TX at Darwin’s Pub Austin at 9 pm.

It’s Mardi Gras…Don’t forget your beads!!!

Project Moss at Darwin's Pub

I’m really looking forward to this next big show with Lorraine and company.  We packed the place solid last time for the Bonnie Raitt show, so this time there will be two shows, Saturday and Sunday.  Don’t miss it… it will be one of my last hurrahs before I move away this summer.

Saturday & Sunday, June 13 & 14

Sierra Sirens presents
Rhapsody in Blue
The Music of George & Ira Gershwin
Saturday at 8:00PM, Sunday at 7:00PM
$20 in advance, $25 at the door

Featuring:
Lorraine Gervais
Brielle Morgan
Jackie Landrum

With:
Bob Villwock & Kris Landrum – grand piano
Steve Wall – guitar
Joe Dolister – stand-up bass
Mike McMullen – sax
Lew Langworthy – drums

Following their The Great American Music Series, this will be another of the vintage themed shows that Lorraine & Brielle have produced featuring wonderfully talented local and regional performers. The Center for the Arts in Grass Valley will be turned into a 1930’s nightclub with martinis, twinkly lights and funky elegance!

I loved the irony of playing “Do It Again, ” a song about addictions, particularly to gambling, at a casino earlier this month.  It was on a Friday the thirteenth no less.  What a great show this was – lots of lights and sound and fog machines and a room full of Dan fans.  A few fan videos have surfaced on youtube.  Here’s one.

OK, who’s coming to the big show on Feb. 21?  I’m very excited about it.  The seven-piece band is smokin’, the singers are fabulous, and the material is just fun to hear and dance to.

Here’s some homework for you to get you even more psyched up for the show.  First of all, check out Bonnie Raitt’s bio on her web site, and explore the rest of her site from there.  Second, theres some more great stuff with a couple of videos at All About Jazz.  Third, I just watched this interview with her on Charlie Rose back in 1995.  Kinda bizarre that she was on the show with historian Robert Massie, and Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy.  She’s sort of the sweet filling between two much drier guests.  Her 20-minute segment starts at about 22 minutes into the show.