Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Passing Through Crazy by Vici Howard My Kind of Country. Classic Rewind: Ray Price and Van Howard – ‘It’s All Your Fault’ Classic Rewind: Van Howard – ‘I Found A New Love’ Ray Price Remembered. With the recent passing of legendary singer Ray Price, the chapter closes on the last of the great male honky-tonk singers of the 1950s. At times overshadowed by contemporaries such as Webb Pierce, Carl Smith, Faron Young, Ferlin Husky and Hank Locklin, Ray Price adapted and persevered, outlasting all of his contemporaries and continuing as an active performer until the end of 2012. His singles and albums encompassed a wide array of styles from shuffles, western swing and pure honky-tonk through to “Nashville Sound”, countrypolitan and pure classic pop standards. Willie Nelson calls him the greatest country singer ever and he certainly is in the top two or three for many of his fellow country artists. Along the way he left a catalog brimming full of great music, charting 109 singles along the way, with 80 of them reaching the top forty and 46 reaching the top ten. Born in 1926, and labeled as the “Cherokee Cowboy” because he hailed from Cherokee County Texas, Ray Price was part of what Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation, serving in the US Marines from 1944-1946 before starting his musical career in Dallas in 1948, recording a few singles for the small Bullet label. Price’s big break came when he moved to Nashville, signing in late 1951 with Columbia Records and becoming the roommate and only real protégé of Hank Williams. When Hank died on New Years Day 1953, Ray inherited Hank’s band, the “Drifting Cowboys”, which was renamed and expanded to become the “Cherokee Cowboys”. The hits started coming shortly after Price after signing with Columbia starting with 1953’s “Talk To Your Heart” which reached #3 on Billboard’s DJ charts. From that point through 1989 at least one of Rays singles would appear on the country charts every year. Always a bit of a contrarian, when Rock ‘n Roll was beginning to hurt country music, Ray hit it really big with the retro sounds of “Crazy Arms” which featured a heavy bass, twin fiddles and introduced the world to the ‘Ray Price 4/4 beat’. “Crazy Arms” topped the charts for 20 weeks in 1956, staying on the charts for 45 weeks. For the next few years Ray scored big with such hard-core honky-tonk classics as “You Done Me Wrong”, I’ve Got A New Heartache”, “Heartaches By The Number”, “City Lights” and “Heart Over Mind”. In 1963, having proved to the world that it was indeed possible to sell hard-core country in the age of rock ‘n roll and the “Nashville Sound”, Ray changed directions and started softening his sound with “You Took Her Off My Hands (Now Please Take Her Off My Mind)” followed by “Make The World Go Away” and a bluesy number written by a fellow who had been in his band, Willie Nelson. That song “Night Life” kicked off a new direction of more heavily orchestrated sounds for Ray culminating in his huge 1970 record “Grazing In Greener Pastures” b/w “For The Good Times”. This record sold close to a million copies and the B-side “For The Good Times” reached #11 on Billboard all genres chart. The top ten records ended for Ray in 1975 by which time he was forty-nine years old, but Ray kept recording and experimenting giving exposure to new songwriters and following his own muse. Eventually Ray returned to his honky-tonk roots in his live performances. Ray Price was an innovator and collector/developer of new talent recording songs from new songwriters and giving valuable stage experience to new talent during his earlier days. Ray was among the first to record songs by Bill Anderson, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Conway Twitty. Among the future stars of country music to pass through his band were singers Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, Darrell McCall, Van Howard, Johnny Paycheck and Johnny Bush,and instrumentalists Buddy Emmons, Pete Wade, Jan Kurtis, Shorty Lavender and Buddy Spicher. I could rattle on about the albums of Ray Price but will simply say that each album contains its share of treasures, although I am especially fond of his 1980 album with Willie Nelson, San Antonio Rose which contains one of my all-time favorite tracks the exquisite “Faded Love” with Ray and Willie joined by Crystal Gayle as part of a trio on the choruses. In 2007 Ray and fellow legends Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard recorded an album, Last of The Breed and toured in support of the album. On Beauty. I have no idea how you’re going to take this one! But we’re in love! The Kipps girl and me! I’m going to ask her to marry me, Dad! And I think she’ll say yes. Are you digging on these exclamation marks. Her name’s Victoria but everyone calls her Vee. She’s amazing, gorgeous, brilliant. I’m asking her ‘officially’ this evening, but I wanted to tell you first. It’s come over us like the Song of Solomon, and there’s no way to explain it apart from as a kind of mutual revelation. She just arrived here last week – sounds crazy but it true. Seriously: I’m happy. Please take two Valium and ask Mom to mail me ASAP. I’ve got no credit left on this phone and don’t like to use theirs. Jxx. ‘What, Howard? What am I looking at, exactly?’ Howard Belsey directed his American wife, Kiki Simmonds, to the relevant section of the e-mail he had printed out. She put her elbows either side of the piece of paper and lowered her head as she always did when concentrating on small type. Howard moved away to the other side of their kitchen-diner to attend to a singing kettle. There was only this one high note – the rest was silence. Their only daughter, Zora, sat on a stool with her back to the room, her earphones on, looking up reverentially at the television. Levi, the youngest boy, stood beside his father in front of the kitchen cabinets. And now the two of them began to choreograph a breakfast in speechless harmony: passing the box of cereal from one to the other, exchanging implements, filling their bowls and sharing milk from a pink china jug with a sun-yellow rim. The house was south facing. Light struck the double glass doors that led to the garden, filtering through the arch that split the kitchen. It rested softly upon the still life of Kiki at the breakfast table, motionless, reading. A dark red Portuguese earthenware bowl faced her, piled high with apples. At this hour the light extended itself even further, beyond the breakfast table, through the hall, to the lesser of their two living rooms. Here a bookshelf filled with their oldest paperbacks kept company with a suede beanbag and an ottoman upon which Murdoch, their dachshund, lay collapsed in a sunbeam. ‘Is this for real?’ asked Kiki, but got no reply. Levi was slicing strawberries, rinsing them and plopping them into two cereal bowls. It was Howard’s job to catch their frowzy heads for the trash. Just as they were finishing up this operation, Kiki turned the papers face down on the table, removed her hands from her temples and laughed quietly. ‘Is something funny?’ asked Howard, moving to the breakfast bar and resting his elbows on its top. In response, Kiki’s face resolved itself into impassive blackness. It was this sphinx-like expression that sometimes induced their American friends to imagine a more exotic provenance for her than she actually possessed. In fact she was from simple Florida country stock. ‘Baby – try being less facetious,’ she suggested. She reached for an apple and began to cut it up with one of their small knives with the translucent handles, dividing it into irregular chunks. She ate these slowly, one piece after another. Howard pulled his hair back from his face with both hands. ‘Sorry – I just – you laughed, so I thought maybe something was funny.’ ‘How am I meant to react?’ said Kiki, sighing. She laid down her knife and reached out for Levi, who was just passing with his bowl. Grabbing her robust fifteen-year-old by his denim waistband, she pulled him to her easily, forcing him down half a foot to her sitting level so that she could tuck the label of his basketball top back inside the collar. She put her thumbs on each side of his boxer shorts for another adjustment, but he tugged away from her. ‘ Mom , man . ’ Excerpted from On Beauty , (c) 2005 Zadie Smith. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Press. All rights reserved. 15 Best Things to Do in Tameside (Greater Manchester, England) Manchester’s eastern borough of Tameside has a story that is echoed across the region. From the late-18th century a group of farming communities grew into mill towns for the textile industry, interlinked by canals. Travelling west to east, the first hills of the Pennines hove into view, and settlements are built with the dark local sandstone. Tameside has a top-notch local museum in Ashton-under-Lyne in a canal house by the junction of three waterways, while you can make trips to high points at Werneth Low and Hartshead Pike for views for miles across Greater Manchester. The Peak District National Park is a bit further east, while in Tameside you can track down Medieval churches, charming Victorian parks and a whole preserved 18th-century settlement for Central European refugees from the Moravian Church. 1. Portland Basin Museum. There’s a knot of waterways to the south of Ashton-under-Lyne, where the Peak Forest Canal, the Ashton Canal and the Huddersfield Narrow Canal all meet at Dukinfield Junction. Right in this very picturesque location, is the Portland Basin Museum at the restored 19th-century Ashton Canal Warehouse. In these galleries you can get to grips with Tameside’s industrial history, finding out just what it was like to work in a mine, cotton mill or on a farm, and browsing a line-up of preserved machines. There’s a recreated 1920s street where you can experience the sights and sounds of a town centre in the interwar years. Children under five can get creative at the “Nuts and Bolts” play area, while you can unwind with a restorative cup of tea at the Bridge View Cafe, looking over to the Tame Aqueduct. To continue your journey back in time you can book a narrowboat trip with the Tameside Canal Boat Trust. 2. Stamford Park. Among the finest Victorian parks in Greater Manchester, Stamford Park in Stalybridge is the result of a community fundraising effort in the mid- 1800s to provide a place for cotton mill workers to relax and enjoy some fresh air on their day off. The park opened in 1873 on land that was once a deer park for the Earl of Stamford. Stamford Park is loved for its ornamental gardens growing evergreen shrubs in the winter, tulips and other bulbs in spring, and with a colourful herbaceous border in summer. The Pavilion Cafe in the park is open seven days a week, while for youngsters there’s a play area complemented in summer by a boat lake, land train, bouncy castle/trampolines and a large water feature with jets to play in. Elsewhere you can amble into the Dingle, a steep wooded valley, and admire the bird collection. Stamford Park also has a Grade II-listed curiosity, a set of stone stocks dating to 1730, once belonging to the Ashton-under-Lyne workhouse. 3. Peak District. Tameside borders the UK’s oldest national park, founded in 1951 and encompassing the upland region at the southern end of the Pennines. The Peak District is in two discernible parts: To the south is the limestone White Peak, while bending around the top end like an inverted horseshoe are the forbidding millstone grit moors of the Dark Peak. In Tameside you can pick up the Trans Pennine Trail, for a trek into the Dark Peak. The trail spans the North of England from Southport in Merseyside to Hornsea in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Completed in 2004, the 207-mile course is remarkably light as it is plotted on entirely paved paths with a shallow gradient, at a cost of £60m. The consistent surface makes the path suitable for wheelchair users and people with pushchairs. 4. Werneth Low Country Park. After the First World War these 200 acres on the northern and western slopes of the Werneth Low Hill (279m) in Hyde were purchased as a memorial for the 710 local men and boys killed in the First World War. The memorial was unveiled at a spectacular vantage point in 1921, and sixty years later the surrounding land, a former farm, was declared a country park. The cute former farmhouse here, dating back to the 17th century, hosts the park’s visitor centre, while around this building you’ll come across a picnic area, orchard and herb gardens. Werneth Low is intersected by the 40-mile Tameside Trail and the epic Trans Pennine Trail, while the exposed hillside makes this one of the best places in Greater Manchester to fly a kite. Surveying the landscape on a clear sunny day you should see Beetham Tower in Manchester and the Jodrell Bank Observatory. 5. Park Bridge. In the restful Medlock Valley, the Park Bridge Ironworks was founded in 1786 and was in business for almost 200 years. At its zenith in the 19th and early 20th century this factory employed hundreds of people and forged the rivets for icons of the age like the Eiffel Tower and the Titanic. The ironworks closed in 1963 and were demolished shortly after, but the beautiful landscaped ruins and greenery make for a cherished picnic location. You can use Park Bridge as a stepping stone for walks, the Park-Bridge and Daisy Nook trail following the old railway line that served the works, and paths to hills like Hartshead Pike and Knot Hill. There’s a heritage centre (open by appointment) and a tearoom in the old stables open Thursday to Sunday. 6. Fairfield Moravian Settlement. Many people drive past this site in Droylesden unaware that there’s a captivating little village hiding behind a row of terraced houses. The Fairfield Moravian Settlement was founded by a community of Protestant refugees, fleeing what is modern day Czech Republic more than two centuries ago. At its inception in 1785 this completely self-sufficient settlement stood alone in open countryside, and had its own council, inspector of weights and measures, fire service, schools and hospital. This enclave around the long, cobblestone Fairfield Square is neatly preserved and is a go-to shooting location for period dramas like the BBC’s Peaky Blinders. Nos. 15, 28 and 30 are Grade II* listed buildings, and the centrepiece is the church, built in 1785 and refitted in 1908. 7. Hartshead Pike. A stiff walk in Tameside, this 267-metre hill rises over Ashton-under-Lyne, Lees, Saddleworth, Mossley and Oldham. When the skies are clear there are satisfying views west to the centre of Manchester. As a prominent hilltop, Hartshead Pike was most likely used as a signalling station, starting in Roman times. The current monument is a neo-Gothic tower built in 1863 and reusing elements from a previous 18th-century structure, also a reconstruction. Proof of this eventful past con be found on an inscription stone, reused from the predecessor, reading, “This Pike Was Rebuilt By Publick Contributions Anno Domini 1751”.The hilltop has always been popular with walkers, and the tower even had a shop selling refreshments in the interwar years, closing at the start of the Second World War. 8. St Michael and All Angels’ Church, Mottram. At the very eastern edge of Greater Manchester, this endearing Perpendicular Gothic church is from the end of the 15th century, although the first church on this spot was recorded in early 13th century. St Michael and All Angels’ is on high ground, commanding the landscape for miles around . This monument was restored in 1854-55, but has lots of riveting older details. See the barrel-shaped Norman font from the original church, as well as the two beautiful early-15th-century recumbent effigies in the Staveleigh Chapel to the south. Other must-sees are the painted reredos over the chancel arch, with panels evoking the Ten Commandments, the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, Moses and Aaron, as well as the splendid brass chandelier produced in 1755. 9. Astley Cheetham Art Gallery. The Tameside town of Stalybridge has the generosity of a mill-owner to thank for a couple of its amenities. In 1901 he and his wife Beatrice Astley built a handsome Jacobethan lecture theatre as a gift to the town, and this later became the venue for the Astley Cheetham Art Collection, which was bequeathed in 1932. One of the stand-out pieces in this collection is The Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints by the Primitive Florentine painter Master of the Straus Madonna, active at the turn of the 15th century. There’s also a great deal of 19th and early-20th-century art by the likes of the Symbolist George Frederic Watts, J. M. W. Turner and watercolourist George Price Boyce. The gallery is free to enter and open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday. 10. Cheetham Park. A minute or two from the shops in the centre of Stalybridge is a serene park in a residential area. As with the Astley Cheetham Art Gallery, Cheetham Park came about through a donation by John Frederick Cheetham and opened in 1932. Cheetham was ahead of his time on environmental matters, as he stipulated that the woodland flanking the stream on this parcel of parkland should become a nature reserve, one of the first in the country. Cheetham Park features a wooden sculpture trail with woodland wildlife, while the “Time Line” will tell you all about Stalybridge’s industrial heritage. In the last ten years a herbaceous border has popped up, and is a joy in mid-summer, while there’s also a community orchard growing pears, plums, apples and cherries. 11. St Lawrence’s Church, Denton. One of just 29 timber-framed churches still standing in England, and the only one in south-east Lancashire, St Lawrence’s Church originated as a chapel of ease in 1531. This was a place of worship for people who lived within the bounds of a parish but couldn’t easily get to the parish church. The church was enlarged in 1872 when the transepts and chancel were built in a Mock Tudor style to mirror the 16th-century nave. St Lawrence’s was originally dedicated to St James, until stained glass was discovered in the 19th century depicting the martyrdom of St Lawrence, and the name was changed. This 500-year-old glass was refitted in a window on the south side of the sanctuary. 12. Huddersfield Narrow Canal. About five of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal’s 20 miles fall within Tameside. This waterway opened in 1811, crossing the Pennines and beginning at what is now the campus for the University of Huddersfield and ending at the Whitelands Basin in Ashton-under-Lyne. The towpath through Tameside will guide you through or close to a chain of green spaces, like Cheetham Park, Eastwood RSPB and Stalybridge Country Park. As you approach the Pennine moors after Stalybridge it’s interesting to see how dark Pennine sandstone becomes the dominant building material. On your way along the Tame Valley, look for the vestiges of the 15th-century Stayley Hall high on the hillside. Mossley is a picturesque former industrial town, full of former mills. Just before you get there you’ll pass through the Scout Tunnel, wreathed in lush broadleaf woodland and a treasured place to take picnics. 13. Museum of the Manchester Regiment. When this post was written in March 2019 the Museum of the Manchester Regiment was temporarily closed while Ashton Town Hall was being redeveloped. When open, these galleries tell the story of the Manchester Regiment and its predecessors over two centuries from 1758 to 1958. You’ll find out about some of the people who served in the regiment, and discover all the places that the regiment was deployed, from Southern Africa in the Boer War to the Middle East in the First World War. You’ll get to peruse thousands of objects, including weapons, field equipment, uniforms, medals and all sorts of mementos picked up around the world on tours. 14. Cockfields Farm. Best visited in spring and summer, Cockfields Farm is a family attraction where the animals are the stars. Together with typical farmyard animals like donkeys, sheep, goats and pigs, there’s a collection of lizards, tortoises and snakes, as well as cuddly pets like guinea pigs and rabbits. Every half an hour or so there’s a new scheduled activity at the farm, whether it’s coming face-to-face with snakes, grooming the rabbits, meeting the resident barn owl or bathing the tortoise. Come in spring and there’s an Easter Wonderland, where little ones can bottle-feed lambs and kid goats. Cockfields Farm also has a range of play areas, including an indoor role-play village, a beach area, a jumping pillow and a track for pedal tractors. 15. Longdendale Trail. Coinciding with some of the Trans Pennine Trail is the Longdendale Trail, which is just 6.5 miles long, on the route of the old Woodhead Rail Line. The walk is sensational leading you through a majestic valley, beside a row of five reservoirs. These were dug in 1877 and are flanked by high moorland. When they were completed the reservoirs were the largest man-made expanses of water in the world. As with the rest of the Trans Pennine Trail, this route has gentle gradients and paved surfaces to suit all walkers. Directions. From the North: Travel south on US#19 to Ulmerton Rd (State Route # 688) in Largo. Turn right/west on Ulmerton Rd. Pass through the light at 101 st Street. Take the next right (Block Blvd) to Sugar Creek entrance. From the East: From Tampa, take I-275 west across the Howard Frankland Bridge. Take the exit for Ulmerton Rd (State Route #688) and continue west. Pass through the light at 101 st Street. Take the next right (Block Blvd) to Sugar Creek entrance. From the South: Going north on I-75 take the exit for the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. After crossing the bridge, continue north on I-275. Take exit #30 for Roosevelt Blvd/St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport and follow the signs to Route #686 west which then becomes State Route #688 Ulmerton Rd. Continue west and pass through the light at 101 st Street. Take the next right (Block Blvd) to Sugar Creek entrance. The Frankfurt Major's most next-level play so far is Dota at its best. Tonight’s upper bracket series between Vici Gaming and Team Secret was crazy. These are two of the world’s best teams with some of the very best individual players, and even so the standard was extraordinary. After a close first game that Vici ultimately took command over, Secret brute- forced a 2-1 result in their favour through a mixture of bravado, cheese, and whatever the opposite of tilting is. I'd strongly recommend watching the whole series: the VOD isn't available at the time of writing, but here's the Twitch link anyway. I don’t want to talk about the whole series, though. I want to talk about this: Gfycat from this thread by redditor /u/handofskadi. This is one of the most next-level things I have ever seen a Dota player do. It is also, I appreciate, almost completely impenetrable to somebody who hasn’t invested time into this strange, brilliant game. For me, it’s a reminder of why Dota is so extraordinary and why—despite looking like other games in its ostensible genre—it remains completely unique. The player you’re watching in the gif above is w33 from Team Secret. He’s controlling that blue archer lady with the green trail, running back and forth at the top of the stairs. That isn’t actually his hero—who is elsewhere—but an illusion of his hero, a duplicate that looks exactly like him but can be controlled separately and has next to no health or damage potential. The semi-transparent dragons and sea monsters and swordsmen running past amount to the entirety of Vici Gaming. Got it? Okay. At the very highest level of play, the ‘probability space’ of a given Dota game begins to narrow out. There are very rarely ‘optimal’ decisions that a player or team can make, but there are certainly logical ones—strategies that teams might be expected to deploy, anticipate from their opponent, and so on. One example of this revolves around the use of Smoke of Deceit. Every team has a limited (but regenerating) supply of Smoke of Deceit that they can purchase for gold. Using it grants every ally in an AoE a limited period of invisibility, and unlike regular invisibility Smoke of Deceit can’t be detected by Sentry Wards or Gems of True Sight. Instead, Smoke invisibility breaks when the user enters a certain radius from an enemy hero—the hero themselves, mind, not any of that hero’s pets or illusions or allied creeps. Good players learn to anticipate a Smoke of Deceit and avoid it. If the enemy is behind or there’s an important objective they need to take and they’re all suddenly not on the map any more, it’s a good time to play safe. Very good players learn to anticipate the direction that a likely Smoke of Deceit attack will come from and avoid that specific area—again, it’s a matter of understanding the probability of certain decisions. The best players can anticipate both the timing and direction of a Smoke and actively play against it. w33 did all of that and then some. He not only anticipated the timing and direction of Vici Gaming’s Smoke of Deceit use, he derived a way to do the impossible: to prove without doubt that it was happening long before Secret were in any danger, to reduce the chance that his judgement was wrong to zero. See, Smoke of Deceit isn’t broken by running past enemy units, but the heroes it renders invisible are still physical objects in the world. They still block unit pathing. When w33 found an Illusion rune and spawned two copies of his hero, he used one of them in a completely unique way: he sent it into the enemy jungle, to the top of a flight of stairs that Vici were likely to pass through if they attempted a Smoke of Deceit attack. He then gave the illusion multiple queued movement commands, forcing it to run back and forth at the top of those stairs multiple times. Then he kept an eye on it. The moment Vici Gaming pass, covered by Smoke of Deceit—that’s the transparency effect—they’re not revealed by the illusion. But they do cause the illusion’s pathing to momentarily fail. It hitches as it hits first iceiceice’s Tidehunter and then Fenrir’s Winter Wyvern, proving that something has obstructed it even if that something is invisible. You see w33’s green map pings come out shortly after: Vici Gaming are here, and they’ve used Smoke. It’s genuinely brilliant, and it’s only possible because Dota 2 is fundamentally a game about systems rather than fixed rules. You might come up with rules to help you learn, and rules help you understand the metagame, but the moment somebody decides to break them—when they reach back past the rules to the systems that support them and twist them to their benefit—that’s when you get real Dota. And that’s why all of the Dota people you know are freaking out about a transparent blue archer momentarily hesitating when it bumps into a half-invisible watermelon man. Esports! PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!