The Petra Zone

Personally, I have a great fondness for Greg Bailey. He's one of "us": a guy that was a huge fan of Petra, got the opportunity of a lifetime, and has taken it and ran with it. I think his contributions to modern Petra are indispensable.

Greg is a great guy, fast worker, and he likes to play more aggressively (musically and tonally) than he is allowed to play in the context of Petra. Plus, he is inexpensive to feed. He was happy to get McDonald's when I picked him up from the airport.

brent wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:02 am

Greg is a great guy, fast worker, and he likes to play more aggressively (musically and tonally) than he is allowed to play in the context of Petra. Plus, he is inexpensive to feed. He was happy to get McDonald's when I picked him up from the airport.

Brent, you're a cool guy

pmal wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 7:06 am

Personally, I have a great fondness for Greg Bailey. He's one of "us": a guy that was a huge fan of Petra, got the opportunity of a lifetime, and has taken it and ran with it. I think his contributions to modern Petra are indispensable.

Yes, I agree. My comment was not intended as a sleight.

Diehardpetrafan:) wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 2:38 pm

brent wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:02 am

Greg is a great guy, fast worker, and he likes to play more aggressively (musically and tonally) than he is allowed to play in the context of Petra. Plus, he is inexpensive to feed. He was happy to get McDonald's when I picked him up from the airport.

Brent, you're a cool guy

Millions would say otherwise.

brent wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:09 pm

Diehardpetrafan:) wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 2:38 pm

brent wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 9:02 am

Greg is a great guy, fast worker, and he likes to play more aggressively (musically and tonally) than he is allowed to play in the context of Petra. Plus, he is inexpensive to feed. He was happy to get McDonald's when I picked him up from the airport.

Brent, you're a cool guy

Millions would say otherwise.

Hahahaha!

Mountain Man wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 8:23 pm

pmal wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 23, 2020 7:06 am

Personally, I have a great fondness for Greg Bailey. He's one of "us": a guy that was a huge fan of Petra, got the opportunity of a lifetime, and has taken it and ran with it. I think his contributions to modern Petra are indispensable.

Yes, I agree. My comment was not intended as a sleight.

Never thought that, just thought I'd chime in while he was on the subject

John Boy wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 05, 2020 10:34 am

I know what I would love to see. I'm fairly certain bringing John Slick back would be out of the equation, so I won't include him.

It's not out of any of my equations, but I never was particularly good with math.

Only once has anyone inquired whether I'd like to play with any Petra reincarnation. That occurred around the time of Classic Petra. Ironically, CP played the show at TBN, which is only two miles from my house. I remember noticing "Classic Petra" on the TBN marquee while passing by one night, but forgot about it before I got home. Had I not forgotten, I might have attended the show.

Anyway, the phone call was from someone who was involved with managing or promoting CP. He asked whether I'd be interested in playing a few shows. I liked the idea, and even told him that I had a current stage keyboard rig (because, being a dirty rotten backslider, I'd been the occasional keyboard sub at a local redneck nightclub, playing for the hillbilly heathen). Chick singer had been a huge Petra fan during her teens.

I never heard any more about CP.

It is challenging to play a house B3 which has four broken keys (picture), but I only have 10 fingers, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

I play my "Living Room Queen" B3 daily, and consider myself a much better and more well-rounded player than I ever was.

Hi John. We would love to see you behind the keys with Petra again! Would be a great treat.

fcollazo wrote: ↑

Tue May 19, 2020 9:20 am

Hi John. We would love to see you behind the keys with Petra again! Would be a great treat.

Ditto here!

Hi John

Did you ever attend a Petra concert after you left the band and if so what did you think and how did it feel?

curt wrote: ↑

Tue May 19, 2020 1:33 pm

Hi John
Did you ever attend a Petra concert after you left the band and if so what did you think and how did it feel?

After I left, other than noticing CP on the TBN sign, I never heard of any Petra concerts. Nor did I ever hear from anyone in the band, but I figured they were quite busy. I concur with what Mark Kelly said elsewhere about giving up the birthright. However, had I stayed on longer it would not have lasted indefinitely for me. It was a good five years, a great life experience, we probably brought a lot of inspiration to some, and I am humbled by the gracious comments on Youtube.

Regarding feelings for music but not playing, I got out of the Trashville music scene on 02 January 1988, when I went to work for New England Digital. I helped do in-studio Synclavier demos and also trained new owners, but sometimes I wanted to be the creative one, not the lowly "product specialist". However, it felt good to finally have a steady income, and I was WAY over the music business... which I had barely even been.

Hope ya don't mind me posting old pictures. They add a little context to the trivia.

John, it seems like I had heard somewhere but temporarily forgot that you were a part of New England Digital. I absolutely love the sound of the Synclavier. Can you believe those sounds can now be contained in your iPhone? Not exactly the same as the original unit I’m sure, but how far technology has come is amazing. Do you have an all-time favorite synth?

I have no idea how close it is, but there was this years ago. Cameron Jones is on a video doing the intro. Ha. $149.00. Things have come a long way.

https://www.arturia.com/synclavier-v/overview

It's good to see John Slick posting again. I enjoyed conversing with him. I would love to have him play on a PDC3.

brent wrote: ↑

Sat May 23, 2020 6:44 pm

I have no idea how close it is, but there was this years ago. Cameron Jones is on a video doing the intro. Ha. $149.00. Things have come a long way.

$149.00 back in the Synclavier and Fairlight days would probably have bought a relabled box of ten eight-inch floppy discs to store all those dirty 8-bit samples! What killed those companies was not lack of innovation, but inability to shrink the product, drop the price and grow the customer base. They were no match for the likes of Roland.

Hey Brent, I checked out the Arturia video and grabbed some tech trivia for your edification: in the picture, the Synclav operator is tweaking a mysterious black box with LED's, buttons and toggle switches. That was the "HOP": the hand-operated processor. The hardware tech used the HOP to stuff values into registers on the CPU for various test purposes.

Since I'd also become a Synclav hardware tech and had all the kit and spares, I wish I'd kept the HOP when the company folded. I think they owed me about $450 for expenses so I did make off with my small tool kit (still have), a cheap multimeter, my business card, some floppies,and one of the enormous early 12-inch writable optical discs, which I long ago threw out. Shudda kept it and put on the wall with a clock motor.