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I'd be right down there in Israel with Jesus and I'd check out what it is all about him and what he did. I'd enjoy the Sermon on the Mount and I'd be right there in Golgotha. I'd try to become a disciple.
Alternatively, I'd travel with apostle Paul.
NO THIS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS THREAD NOR SHOULD THIS MOTIVATE YOU TO DISCUSS MY CHOICE IN ANY RELIGIOUS WAY.
I think I'd just wait until the Powerball Lottery was worth about 200 million, go forward just enough to see the winning numbers, then come back play those numbers for that week...
Hey, you gotta have some source of income if you're going to be a leisurely time traveler...
I posted 18th century but only if I could take my skills that I currently possess. Otherwise I thought going back before Christ would be cool too but it would be probably 1500 years before...and I'd like to have my current skills.
I chose other. I'd either want to go to somewhere around 500 BC to learn directly from the Buddha, or I'd be happy to visit some parts of last century from slightly before my time to see Miles and Coltrane and George Harrison.
I posted 18th century but only if I could take my skills that I currently possess. Otherwise I thought going back before Christ would be cool too but it would be probably 1500 years before...and I'd like to have my current skills.
Hmmm... Spud, what skills are you referring to? They didn't have guitars back then, but you mention your skills twice so I'm curious...
And Robert, what on earth made you put the 9th and 10th centuries among the few options?! A frightening time to be about, I should think...
There's no time like the present; from my knowledge of history, we're pretty fortunate to live where and when we do - if we're just talking a VISIT, any time period has its fascinations for me and amazing personalities to meet - hard to choose! I wouldn't mind going with Tot to the 24th; it's always nice to go somewhere where you know someone you can visit...
I say either the 19th century, beginning with the trapper era before Lewis and Clark, or the first half of the 20th century. I am fascinated by American history, and both those periods interest me very much. Jimi's answer is also very compelling though.
I'd be right down there in Israel with Jesus and I'd check out what it is all about him and what he did. I'd enjoy the Sermon on the Mount and I'd be right there in Golgotha. I'd try to become a disciple.
Alternatively, I'd travel with apostle Paul.
NO THIS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS THREAD NOR SHOULD THIS MOTIVATE YOU TO DISCUSS MY CHOICE IN ANY RELIGIOUS WAY.
I wouldn't go that far back. For me, it would be a great pleasure to be part of the hippie subculture around 1967-69. Ok, I was born in 1967 so I'm allready a children of that culture But beeing around 20-25 that time would be great.
That reminds me............ if I had a time machine, I'd try and find out who first said..........
"An optimist says 'The glass is half full'
A pessimist says 'The glass is half empty'
A realist says 'That glass is twice as large as it needs to be'. "
That reminds me............ if I had a time machine, I'd try and find out who first said..........
"An optimist says 'The glass is half full'
A pessimist says 'The glass is half empty'
A realist says 'That glass is twice as large as it needs to be'. "
I wouldn't go that far back. For me, it would be a great pleasure to be part of the hippie subculture around 1967-69. Ok, I was born in 1967 so I'm allready a children of that culture But beeing around 20-25 that time would be great.
Well, '67 may have had the Summer Of Love and been a great year in music, filling young heads like mine with optimism and idealism, but 1968 wasn't quite as much fun.
In 1968, my generation lost all semblance of the innocence that had spawned that subculture.
If you've got about an hour or so, watch the series of 6 vids here and imagine yourself witnessing these things at the age of 18, as your generation passes from an age of innocence to one of fear and confusion.
If you DON'T have that kind of time, then please skip past 1968 to 1970, to the last video posted here:
I don't want to go back there.
Still think you'd want to?
Maybe if I could just cut everything off at August 1969, with Woodstock.
But if you were a college student on May 4, 1970, gathering around the TV in the dorm with your classmates to watch the evening news that night was the penultimate nightmare:
That evening, I smoked pot for the first time in my life. I couldn't see the point of a future anymore.
The only good thing, I guess, was I also picked up a guitar again that night for the first time in 3 years, having sold all my stuff to 'get serious with life'.
Within the next week or so, the National Guard set up shop on or around campuses throughout the nation in anticipation. My college closed and sent us all home, giving everybody a "Pass" grade for all courses instead of a specific grade. Before they could though, we all tasted tear gas and pepper gas; the Guard shot that stuff off to keep us in our dorms so we wouldn't come out to hurt them with our words.
When I got home, my parents were relieved. I went out and bought my Guild D-40. I still have it, and all the emotions of those times locked into the grain of its wood.
Wingsdad, I have to admit that I didn't have these pictures in mind. But there are well know. There was a long documentation about the demonstration in Ohio in the german television some weeks ago.
That's the problem of this imagination-thread. Some want to go 2000 years back, but of course the don't want to have all the deseases of that time. I would like to be in Woodstock, but would not change with other things.
Look, when I was a child, my family was not rich, not really poor at all, but life was more simple. But, sometimes, you are thinking of the past, and you get a warm feeling about all the happiness when beeing a child.
Sometimes it's a good thing, not to remember the bad things.
But - also looking at the younger german history - sometimes it is good not to forget the bad things.
Look, when I was a child, my family was not rich, not really poor at all, but life was more simple. But, sometimes, you are thinking of the past, and you get a warm feeling about all the happiness when beeing a child.
Wingsdad, I have to admit that I didn't have these pictures in mind. But there are well know. There was a long documentation about the demonstration in Ohio in the german television some weeks ago.
We live 12 miles from that college and my son is a full-time student there. I can remember when it happened and the mood and the divide that was present. I was a junior in high school, just started wearing long hair and against the establishment. My step fathers brother was a career soldier, several tours in Vietnam, and he was home on leave when a local news station approached him to ask him about Kent State, his response "they should have killed more of them".
Look, when I was a child, my family was not rich, not really poor at all, but life was more simple. But, sometimes, you are thinking of the past, and you get a warm feeling about all the happiness when beeing a child.
If I look further back I initially think of it as "easier times" or a "simpler life", but that would be for me, not my parents. It's easy to think of those days as "simpler times" when you don't have to work, dinner is waiting for you, someone is washing your clothes, a warm bed to sleep in..."
Saying that, if I was to go forward or backwards, I would want to go into the future to see how it turns out.
However, my real answer is - I would stay where I am at right now. I know the problems, I've learned to deal with them, and despite all of today's challenges, I am enjoying the trip.
+1.........
I was still in high school when the first local boy's body came home from 'Nam.
In a small community, a war half a world away somehow became less a noble cause and more a heartbreaking reality.
I'd take two people as crew to make the most influential documentary of all history.
"So Jesus. Having read this translation of the Bible and having spent the last couple of weeks going over a summarized version of everything thats been done in your name over the last couple of thousand years, could you give us your thoughts?"
"Stay tuned for part two where we put similar questions to Mohamed..."
Hey Jimi, you don't happen to speak ancient Aramaic do you? Maybe we could go together
Guitar-Chris raises an interesting point about disease though.
My gut feel is that a 21'st century guy would actually be resistant to a lot of ancient diseases. I figured it would be MUCH worse for a 2000 year old man to be brought into the present disease wise. Of course the difference is, a 2000 year old man in the 21st century could be treated for anything they caught, not so in the other direction. I mean a small med kit would stave off things that would have killed people only a few hundred years ago. Got some scurvy? Have a vitamin C tablet. Got some Plague? Here pop some amoxycillin. For my money I'd be more concerned about ancient culture than ancient disease. The chances of being killed just for looking different would be pretty high I'd think, and to that effect, I'd be going well armed "Burn the witch you say? Say hello to my little friend....."
If I had access to the Way-Back machine, I'd go right back to my old neighborhood in South/East LA and check out the happening scene just after WW2 and into the early 60s, in towns like Maywood, Bell, South Gate, Huntington Park, Compton, Bell Gardens, and Downey. These were the hot beds and birth places of West Coast swing and rock-a-billy, with guitarists - Merle Travis, Joe Maphis, Jimmy Bryant, Eddie Cochran, steelers - Joaquin Murphey, Noel Boggs, Marian Hall, Speedy West. Also the home/shop of Paul Bigsby (more than just his famed vibrato), and where The Town Hall Party and it's type of shin-digs were held, plus too much more to explain.
I was lucky in my own childhood to be around icons of other sorts, but those I mentioned are many of my musical hero's of today as well.
And, I'd make sure I didn't blow every chance I had to see Jimi Hendrix!
Aramaic? Well, working on it as well as on tapped arpeggios
The disease thing was a good point, but there are so many diseases that we suffer from today....
I understood the time machine thread with an option to stay for a certain time and to be able to go "back" to the future again.
I think we have to define this.
What is meant here?
1. Time Machine that you can travel once and never come back?
2. Time Machine that you can travel back with again?
3. Are you taking part in the time period you travel to.
4. Are you just able to observe?
I think I would be more interested in the future than the past. The past has already happened, been written about, debated, rehashed, revised, and is gone..
I'd like to know first of all, if we survive as the dominant species on the planet. Assuming that we do, I'd then like to see how far we advance in medicine & science. I especially like to see if we ever master warp travel and explore the vastness of the universe.
But, I fear that just as in H.G. Wells The Time Machine, the not too distant future will be one of global ruin before a new age slowly emerges. Will it finally be the post Apocalyptic period of the 1000 year reign of Christ on earth? Or, will it be just the latest in the series of war, death, destruction, and ruin followed by yet another cycle of rebuilding after having learned nothing from the exercise yet again?
There is still plenty greats yet to be given proper print and face time.
One prime example is The Maddox Brothers And Rose, a family that not only lived Steinbeck's stirring novel 'The Grapes Of Wrath' which Henry Fonda starred superbly in the movie version of, but they then went on to post WW2 stardom as 'The Most Colorful Hillbilly Band In The Land' and produced some of the very best in country and Western swing music, and almost always included steel guitar by Bud Duncan and hot pickin' by the likes of Roy Nichols.
I'd love to get in 'the time machine' to witness their stage act.
Another sorrily unsung great in the steel and guitar world is Paul Bigsby (yes that Bigsby!), who just got some fine focus in the new and quite excellant book by Andy Babuik - The Story Of Paul Bigsby; The Father Of The Modern Electric Solid Body Guitar. www.bigsbyguitars.com/news12.html The book comes with a rare CD of Mr. Bigsby talking about his stuff.
There is also a good listen on www.npr.org about Bigsby, just type in bigsby in the searcher.
ancake:
