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Guestbook - Volume 23
January 2008 to December 2008
please add your comments by sending an email to: arnoldvb@islands.vi
To see what others have had to say, please read on . . . with one note of caution:
Date: Wed Oct 6, 2008 Hello: I was browsing the net looking for information about damage to St. Thomas and Water Isl. I lived there from 1977 thru 1982 . My wife worked at Bluebeards Castle and I ran the Motor Vessel SAINT that was owned by the Sugarbird Hotel on Water Island. We had a home on the North side of the island that over looked Inner and Outer Brass Islands. I have always wondered what happened to our home, The Saint , Sugarbird Hotel and Bluebeards from those Storms that hit in the 90's. From what I have gathered our old home which was also overlooked Dorthea Beach was either destroyed or badly damaged. I understand also that the Sugarbird Hotel was destroyed. I loved that old boat too and imagine it was damaged as well. Any information or pictures via the net would be appreciated.
Thank You P.S. I was also the team leader in charge of the Coast Guard Reserve Sub Unit there and our team was activated for 2 weeks to deal with the Angelina Lauro Cruise Ship fire that burned for 5 days. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Rioh, thanks for your email. The hurricanes in 1989 and 1995 really caused a lot of damage on the island, and thousands of homes were destroyed or seriously damaged, as were many boats. I really don't know about your former home in the Dorothea Beach area or the boat SAINT. I sure haven't seen any boats around with that name. The Sugarbird Hotel also is no longer around. However, at least the Blueard's Castle Hotel survived with only minor damage. It's still open and in operation.
Date: Tue Aug 19, 2008 Dear Mr. van Beverhoudt, I am trying to find some history of St. Thomas from the 1960's, and hoping that, as these are your home islands, you may be able to provide some insight. I'm trying to find out the names of the newspaper, hospitals, and air strips existing during that time. This relates to a personal search for me for relatives. I appreciate any information you can provide,
Sincerely, [EDITOR'S NOTE: Lori, during the 1960s, the hospital on St. Thomas was called the Knud Hansen Memorial Hospital. It was named after a prominent Danish doctor who lived and practiced on the island. That building is now used for health clinics and the local department of social services. The new, current hospital is the Roy Lester Schneider Hospital, also named after a prominent local doctor. The St. Thomas airport was originally named the Harry S. Truman Airport, after the U.S. president. During the late 1970s or early 1980s it was renamed to the Cyril E. King Airport, after a popular local governor. The Virgin Islands Daily News has been the main local newspaper since at least the 1950s. During the 1960s there was a smaller paper called the Home Journal, but that's out of business for a while. The Daily News has had different owners over the years. It has a website at www.virginislandsdailynews.com. There is also an online newspaper called St. Thomas Source at www.stthomassource.com. I hope this information helps.]
Date: Wed Aug 13, 2008 Dear Sir, I have just found your stunning website on The Ventures. I collect recordings of Ellington's "Caravan" and have two different ones by The Ventures: from "Walk Don't Run" and "Live in Japan". I have noticed on your spreadsheet 141 times "Caravan". I know that some of them are the same versions, simply reissued. Would you be so kind and share your knowledge with me, how many really different versions of "Caravan" The Ventures recorded?
Thank you in advance, [EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm glad you like my Ventures site. There are really only two completely different versions of Caravan by The Ventures. The first version was played on the "Walk Don't Run" album. The second version appeared for the first time on the "Bobby Vee Meets The Ventures" album. The second version is the one that The Ventures always play live and, of course, each time they play it live, there will be slight differences in the guitar playing and drum solos. I have 21 live albums where they play this version of Caravan, and none of them is exactly the same. The second version has also been re-recorded in the studio a few times, including for these albums:
"Greatest Hits" (Tridex) I hope this information helps.]
Date: Sun Jul 20, 2008 Hello There, On The Ventures' "Rocky" CD, I think you will notice that the majority of lead guitar parts are actually played not by Gerry McGee or Nokie Edwards, but by Bob Bogle. I just thought you would like to know. Jon Greenwood (lifelong Ventures fan) [EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks for the info, Jon. I have that CD and, indeed, most of the lead guitar is by Bob Bogle. Gerry and Nokie are featured on only one or two songs each.]
Date: Sun Jul 6, 2008 Dear Mr. van Beverhoudt, I found your website googling some information on early Soyuz flights. I really like your short and to-the point lists of human space flights. While there are other, more comprehensive websites out there, one always has to search through a lot of too-much-information just to find a certain date. Tour site provided the information I needed all on one page and I want to thank you for that! Furthermore, as far as I could tell, all your information was absolutely accurate! Well, I wouldn't be the know-it-all that I am if I hadn't found at least one minor flaw :-) The patch you on top of the Soyuz Mission Summary is the patch of the Intercosmos missions (it reads INTERKOSMOS in cyrillic letters). That was the patch used for the international missions in the 1970s and 1980s when cosmonauts of communist block countries joined Soviet cosmonauts on missions to Salyut 6 and Salyut 7. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a patch covering all Soyuz missions, I think the closest would be the Salyut patch you use for the Salyut/Mir section. Maybe, the very first Soyuz patch (Soyuz 1) would be a better choice than the Intercosmos patch: http://www.spacefacts.de/mission/patches/soyuz-1.gif Anyway, I didn't write to complain but to express my gratitude for a website well done!
Thank you very much, [EDITOR'S NOTE: Volker, thank you very much for your kind comments and the suggestion for the Soyuz mission patch. I used the Intercosmos patch because many of the Soyuz missions in that time period were part of the Intercosmos series. It wasn't a perfect solution for the lack of authentic mission patches, but it was the best I could do at the time. Thanks also for the link to the SpaceFacts site. That's a wonderful source of spaceflight information.]
Date: Tue Jul 1, 2008 Your Ventures discography information is beyond thorough!! It is really a great resource. I have all of the two-fer CDs that were released on the One Way label and the British versions on See for Miles. I bought the See for Miles editions primarily because of the liner notes and the One Way editions because of the bonus tracks. With all of the releases now available on the Ace In the Vaults series, I have wondered if the “bonus tracks” on the One Way series still have anything unique or if that entire series has become superfluous. Is there an easy way to use your discography spreadsheets to determine what a collector needs to own in order to have all of the Ventures material in the smallest and most efficient collection? My house is being overrun with CDs and I need to eliminate the unnecessary ones.
Thanks for your help. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Carl, thanks for the comment about the discography. I'm glad it came in useful. My suggestion for tracking down the "essential" Ventures recordings is to use the third file in the discography "zip" file. That's the one with an alphabetical list of all songs recorded by The Ventures. You can delete my entry in the "Have" column and print out the list, then use it as a checklist for you to see which tracks you have already. Then you'll know which other CDs or LPs in your collection are duplicates. {Note: You can ignore the columns with the LP/CD references, since those entries do not necessarily correspond with the first time each song appeared.)]
Date: Sat Jun 28, 2008 Hello. I surfed onto your site while poking around for Ventures information. There is a question I have had for many years, and perhaps you can steer me in the right direction. I don't have it in front of me, but on the cover of The Ventures On Stage, there are amplifiers that look like the Fender Showman line but aren't. Do you know where I can find out about these amps?
Thanks in advance, [EDITOR'S NOTE: Jeff, I posted your question to an online Ventures fan club and got the following response from one of the members: "These are Guyatone amps. The Ventures used these locally-made amps during one of their Japanese tours. Del's book (pgs 118-119) has an interesting anecdote about them - a few kicks would fix some problems. These are the GA-100 series amps - very, very hard to locate. In my 9+ years on ebay, I have seen only one go on being offered - on ebay.co.jp (when they did not have the worldwide search option). -Kanad" In case you might be interested in joining, the online Ventures fan club can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com and searching for "undergroundfire2". It's an email discussion group with 225 members. The "Del's book" that Kanad refers to is a complete biography of The Ventures that was published in March. You can purchase a copy at http://www.lulu.com/content/725111.]
Date: Wed Jun 25, 2008 Arnold, You have a wonderful site. But I am confused about the 1969 Ron Kaplan entry. You show three cars (drivers) for Ron Grable, John Martin and Lothar Moschenbacher.
My research shows four cars (one never ran). These were: Can you enlighten me further? Wayne Ellwood [EDITOR'S NOTE: Wayne and thanks for the comments on my racing site. I don't have direct access to all of the reference material I used in putting the AMC Javelins section together, but it included two books on the history of AMC's racing efforts and Trans-Am race results from the SCCA. I found that the SCCA Trans-Am archives are still online here: http://www.trans-amseries.com/results.htm. To the best of my recollection, in 1969, Kaplan routinely raced only two Javelins, #3 and #4, with Ron Grable and John Martin as the team drivers. However, in the previous year (1968), the Kaplan cars, #3 and #4, were regularly driven by George Follmer and Peter Revson. I believe that Mothschenbacher drove one of the Kaplan Javelins at the 1968 Kent race and a privately-owned Javelin at St. Jovite in 1969. It appears that Jerry Grant also drove a privately-owned Javelin in the last four races of the 1969 season (Laguna Seca, Kent, Sears Point, and Riverside). The SCCA records linked above show that George Follmer drove a Mustang in 1969, not a Javelin. That being said, I did have a few errors in the 1969 race results on my website, and I've made those corrections. Like I noted before, I don't have access to the AMC racing histories, which had more detailed information on the Trans-Am racing efforts. The above is to the best of my recollection and based on the SCCA race results archives. Hope this info helps.
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2008 Arnold, You are too self-effacing - I couldn't find your name except at the footer of the page. Nice compendium of the golden era [of auto racing]! What some of my friends are now doing is re-scanning in their pix to make them larger and higher resolution now that browsers are faster loading. You may know now that in the last year there have been newly made Chaparrals, fully equivalent to the originals, and also Scarabs, and the same goes for GT40s and (slightly watered down) Daytona Cobras. I have just bought one each of the Scarab and the Daytona. If you make it to the Monterey Historics, look me up... In spite of the almost daily loss of the original people of the era, and the reversals of western society and economies and loss of resources, there are still great reasons to be around!
Thanks for your site. [EDITOR'S NOTE: George, thanks for your comments. It's good to know that the memory of those great race cars and drivers is being kept alive. As for the small pics on my site, I intend to upscale them too, but it's a big job that will take some time. I'm using slightly larger size pics for new pages, though.]
Date: Sun May 18, 2008 Hi, Great lists you have here: http://www.sandcastlevi.com/movies/sf-1900s.htm But you really missed this amazing sf classic: The Day of the Triffids, so I guess I send you an e-mail. I myself have a collection of almost 1100 movies and now my quest is to obtain all sf-classic movies to begin with :) Well anyway, Greetings from Holland! Eric Mol [EDITOR'S NOTE: Eric, thanks for your email. I don't think I ever saw "The Day of the Triffids", although I have heard about it. That's quite a collection you have. The science fiction movies I have are only the ones in my list, although I have a lot of non-SF movies too. But you have a much larger collection than me.]
Date: Tue May 13, 2008 Hello: I am Charles Moore, in Houston, and I have a couple of questions about Ventures LPs: - I was wondering why "Running Strong" and "Guitar Genius" are not in "Photo Album" or "Album Ratings". I did find both in "Discography". - I also have a reference to "All About The Ventures" but I did not find it on your website. Lonely Karen, on Running Strong, is my favorite Ventures song. I have only recently been getting back into my music collection and I have been digitizing my wall of analog music. This includes 24 Ventures vinyl lps from "Walk Don't Run" to "Hawaii Five-O". Some of them are not in very good shape but I have a piece of software that does a great job of removing the pops-cracks.
Best regards, [EDITOR'S NOTE: Charles, I didn't include "Running Strong" and "Guitar Genius" in the photo album or rating pages because they were budget reissues of tracks already included in other Dolton label albums. As you may know, when "Running Strong" was issued on the Sunset label, the record company changed all of the song names to create the impression that these were new songs. In reality, they were all reissues of previous Dolton tracks. For example, "Lonely Karen" is really "Lonely Girl" from the "Knock Me Out" album. "All About The Ventures" was a 2-disc LP set issued in Japan. That's where you'll find it, in the Japanese section of the discography. It was reissued on CD by EMI back in the late 1990s under the name "Live in Japan '65". I highly recommend the CD if you can find it. I haven't checked lately, but I know amazon.com had it. I've also seen it in music stores (like FYE and Borders) in the alphabetical pop music section.
Date: Sun May 11. 2008
Hi, I have just purchased a Ventures EP & wanted some information about it. When I checked your website I noticed you did not have the track listing. The EP is simply called Sloopy Dance. The tracks are side 1: Hang on Sloopy/Little Bit of Action. side 2: Stop Action/Action Plus. There is no label name or number. The label is blue. X364-1 and X365-1 are machine stamped in the deadwax. The sleeve is blue with simple art design & track titles. No picture of the group or any notes. Hope this helps.
Best Wishes [EDITOR'S NOTE: Nick, that EP (extended play 45) is from Thailand and is listed in the "international" section of the discography. However, I didn't have the names of the songs included on the EP. Thanks for providing that information.]
Date: Tue Mar 11, 2008 Arnold, I don't know if this will make it to you, but thought I would try anyway. I was just reading some info about The Ventures FINALLY being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and found your work that was done on their behalf. I wanted to thank you for all that you did. It was such a pleasure to read all the letters written, testimonials, etc. I wish I had known....because I would have liked to add my own part. Although it seems a little "after the fact now," I too cut my teeth on their music and heard Walk Don't Run when I was 12 yrs old (1963) living in the Panama Canal Zone when my father was in the military. To make a long story short, I credit them with my learning the guitar. I still have every album they ever made, plus lots of CDs now. I still love to get the music out and play. In 1974, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Ventures model Mosrite guitar (circa 1966). I just wanted to be a part of the celebration of induction. Thanks for listening....... Tom Villaflor [EDITOR'S NOTE: Tom, thanks for your email - it's never too late to express your thoughts on how the music of The Ventures affected your life. I am so happy to have been able to play a small part on their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.]
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