HOLLYWOOD is DEAD, & It's NOT COMING BACK. Here's why.

 The famous Hollywood Sign, a US national landmark.

(photo courtesy Wikipedia)

When I was growing up, the influence of Hollywood, and Los Angeles, was everywhere. Every movie was made in Hollywood. Most of the music -- more than half of it, probably -- was recorded in Los Angeles, with some of the recording studios in Hollywood. The Rolling Stones 60's albums that weren't recorded in London (at Olympic Studios), for example, were recorded in Hollywood studios like Sunset Sound and Goldstar, where the famous, sunshiny, 60's music from Jan & Dean and the Beach Boys to nearly every folk rock pop hit from that era -- were all recorded.

Van Halen's albums were recorded there, at Sunset Sound. Kiss recorded in or near Hollywood. Guns 'N' Roses recorded their first album near Hollywood, and were part of the Hollywood metal scene in the 80's. Tons of vital rock and pop songs were recorded in the Hollywood studios.

From the 1960's through the 2000's most of the popular Rock music was recorded in LA. Even Nirvana's breakthrough album, Nevermind, was recorded in or near Hollywood. A lot of Nu-Metal acts I loved in the 2000's -- from Korn to Coal Chamber to Engines of Aggression to Buckcherry to Limp Bizkit -- were either part of the Los Angeles scene, or recorded there.

Most, if not all, of the movies I enjoyed were Hollywood productions. As a child of the 70's and 80's, TV was all Hollywood. In the 1980's and early 90's, I was an aspiring musician. To me -- as it was to most musicians in Seattle during those times -- Los Angeles was where you made it big. That was because Los Angeles (Hollywood) was THE center of Rock and pop music.

A view of Los Angeles from behind the Hollywood sign. Looks like paradise, doesn't it. Balmy weather all year long, and look at all those nice houses. Way off in the distance is downtown LA, and off the picture, to the right, are the beaches. But the mainstay industry of the Los Angeles region -- the entertainment industry -- is taking a big, big hit. Will it recover, or will AI do it all in?

(Photo courtesy Wikipedia)

But now there is a big problem. Hollywood is DEAD.

There have been some videos on YouTube, put there by podcasters who know the industry, who are talking about the fact that Hollywood is dying -- the famous movie and TV production studios have vacant lots and empty soundstages. Actors and all the other people who were part of the industry are unemployed, or only working part time, having to travel to other places to do their job. They're hurting for money.

There have been reports that box office revenues are at record lows. New 'blockbuster' movies aren't busting the block anymore. Something is awry here.

This chart, obtained from The-Numbers dot com, is pretty informative. On the left column, you'll see that in 2025 the Movie Industry sold roughly half the box office tickets it sold in 2005. In the third column, where the numbers account for inflation, you can see that in 2025 the Movie Industry made roughly half the box office receipts it made in 2005.

If the chart is hard to read, it can be right clicked and displayed in a new tab or window.
(chart courtesy The-Numbers.com)

Looking at ticket sales stats and box office revenues over the past 20 years, the US movie industry is not only seeing nearly half the theatre audience it had in 2005, it is also making roughly half of what it made in 2005, when accounting for inflation. Now, it's not easy to find complete reports, which include streaming movie revenues, which might make the two figures more even, but a 50% cut at the box office from 2001 to 2025 is fairly telling.

Think about it. In just twenty years, the movie theatres have half the viewers and half the revenues they had in 2005.

This chart shows the Movie Industry's box office receipts, year by year (red line) and number of tickets sold per year (blue line) since 1995, which was 30 years ago. As you can see, the number of tickets sold started declining in 2004, took a deep dive during Covid, and is lower than it probably was in the 1980's (off the chart).

Correspondingly, the amount of revenue per ticket increased, starting in 2005. But if you account for inflation (see previous chart), the Industry's ticket revenues started flatlining in 2013, and making less money after that.

(chart courtesy The-Numbers.com)

The numbers indicated that the monster of entertainment we used to call Hollywood -- and Los Angeles -- is fading.

This leaves the question: What went wrong?

It turns out that a combination of factors killed Hollywood. Poor governance by California and LA politicians -- high taxes, prohibitively high permit fees for location shoots. The fires did not help any. The strikes did not help any. California's tax policies moving parts of the industry to places like Texas and Georgia did not help any. Covid definitely did not help any.

On the other hand, the movies coming out of Hollywood haven't exactly been earthshaking. The trend of constant sequels, comic-book remakes, bland plots or non-stop superhero drivel hasn't exactly made people want to go to the theatre to pay $20 for tickets and another $20 for popcorn and a drink. They stay home and stream -- which makes Hollywood less money.

Most of these factors leading to Hollywood's decline are mentioned by the movers and shakers in the videos I have linked here.

Brian Entin's interesting vid on Hollywood turning into a Ghost Town, which includes an interview with Mel Gibson about Hollywood dying.

Mel Gibson, who made his first big movie in Melbourne in 1979 ('Mad Max'), and came to the US after The Road Warrior hit in 1981, has been either starring in movies, or making his own movies, for over 40 years. He knows a bit about Hollywood. 

In his view, bad government, Covid, strikes, fires, the incredibly high cost of living in California, the incredibly high cost of doing business in California -- and other factors -- all have combined to turn Hollywood into a ghost town, which is how he describes it.

In an interview with podcaster Brian Entin, Mel Gibson said it was cheaper to fly an entire movie production to Bulgaria for three days, film some scenes there -- and the cost, including housing and transportation -- was less than it would be for shooting the same scene for one day in Los Angeles.

Everything is so expensive in LA, Gibson says. Even the cost of an apple in LA is so much higher than it is in Rome or Bulgaria.

Looking at the footage in Brian Entin's excellent video on the death of Hollywood drives Mel's point home -- Hollywood is indeed becoming a ghost town. Entin shows scenes of empty parking lots. Empty buildings. Soundstages with no activity -- no people. 

It's all DEAD.

For those who work in Hollywood, it's a personal disaster. For those of us who grew up on Hollywood movies and music, it's heartbreaking.

But it's the new reality.

And this leads to the question: will it ever come back? My conclusion is that it never will. I now will tell you why.

This is a video by the Film Threat podcast on Hollywood dying. It concentrates on LA's Hollywood job losses. Over 20% job loss in just a year... a year that was supposed to be make-or-break for Hollywood.

The video I discuss below, which was a roundtable of FilmThreat industry experts, did not show up in the Blogger search function. Here is a link that that video.:

MEL GIBSON ON THE DEATH OF HOLLYWOOD | Film Threat Versus

THEY ALL TALKED ABOUT EVERYTHING EXCEPT the INTERNET and A.I.

In both of the videos I have linked above, there are two things that none of these movers and shakers have mentioned -- two factors that are systemic, and are killing the audio and video entertainment industry -- and one of those factors will kill it off: the death of physical entertainment media (DVD's, CD's), and AI.

First off, the death of physical media sales -- i.e. VHS tapes, DVD's, cassettes and CD sales -- is an important factor affecting Hollywood, because the death of DVD sales removed a massive revenue stream that propped up the movie and recording industries, and gave music and movie producers more money to work with -- more money to take chances on new artists, new scripts, new song and movie ideas. The billions of dollars that came in from CD sales allowed record companies to invest in new artists. DVD sales did the same for movie companies.

The movie industry, like the music industry, openly embraced streaming, without ensuring that DVD or video download SALES would be included in the contracts for licensing. Instead of ensuring that the video-file equivalent of the DVD would be a vital part of movie consumption, the movie industry agreed to the online streaming model, where there is no sale, and the revenues are based on declining box office receipts and abysmally low streaming revenues.

From what I've read, some movie companies rush their products to the streaming services, which undercuts any theatre revenues or whatever remaining DVD sales there may be -- killing off, or choking off two revenue streams.

The music industry did the same thing in 2001 when it embraced MP3 singles as being the only revenue model, and later on the music industry also embraced streaming, letting the revenues dwindle further in the process. They allowed the CD and the MP3 album to be killed off, replacing it with streamed 'album-equivalent-units', which bring in much less revenue.

This lack of sales of the movie or album has stifled creativity, because there is less revenue to invest in new artists or movie products.

Here is an example of how physical album sales helped propel a genre to dominance: Nirvana in 1991.

Nirvana only became massive because of the Nevermind album, which was an example of a record company taking a chance on a small-city (i.e. Seattle) alternative band, a band that as late as 1990 only alt rock and punk rock fans knew about. Once Geffen Records dumped money into recording and production, there was a sellable product, with all this money behind it to push it to radio and MTV.

The money that was used to front the recording, album cover, CD manufacturing; the video production costs, the merch, and the promotion posters and cardboard, record store promotion kiosks -- it all came from other artists' hit album sales.

Other albums that the recording company had in its roster had provided the revenues that were used to record, produce, and promote Nevermind to be the smash hit that it came to be.

Today there are no album sales. Streaming revenues are incredibly low. A million selling CD single in 2001 brought in over $5 million in revenue. A million plays of a single song on streaming platforms today will bring in $4000. 

In 2001, a million selling CD album brought in about $18 million. Today, an "Album-Equivalent-Unit' getting one million plays will bring in about $48,000.

Get the picture? There is a lot less money in streaming -- both in music streaming, and in movie streaming. The death of physical media sales killed off a LOT of revenue, not only for the music industry, but the movie industry also. Actor and filmmaker Matt Damon discussed this in an interview several years ago. He said that in the 2000's, a movie producer could take a chance, because if the movie stiffed in the movie theatres, they could always count on DVD sales, and DVD rentals (which brought in more than streaming).

Damon insisted that killing the DVD killed off a lot of revenue, and was one reason that movies are so cookie cutter today -- the studios have less money available to take chances.

So the death of physical media sales (DVD's, CD's) has drastically affected Hollywood. One of the media experts in the second video I linked does talk about how the internet, and Tik-Tok, has changed media consumption, and that is a similar problem for Hollywood, being that the more hours you're watching clips on Tik-Tok, that's less time you're watching Hollywood productions.

But amazingly, none of these experts mentioned the death of the DVD as being one major factor in Hollywood's decline.

A.I. -- THE FINAL NAIL IN HOLLYWOOD'S COFFIN

AI is the 900-pound gorilla in the room that neither Mel Gibson, nor the experts in the second video address when discussing what is happening to Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general. Only one of the experts in the second video alluded to AI being in the future, in passing, where he mentioned that people may soon be able to use prompts to order up their own AI movie, on their phone or laptop. 

The reality is that AI is not just going to be a trend. It is going to replace all other forms of audio and visual entertainment. Anyone who has seen the rapid improvement in AI video over the past two years can see that it's not going to go away. It's only going to get better in quality. Right now, the best AI out there can create high quality 10 minute clips. Soon enough -- maybe 5 years or so -- it will be able to create movie-length videos that you won't be able to tell from the movies Hollywood is producing now.

Right now AI is only starting to kill off other entertainment forms. In 20 years it will have finished the job. In the rest of this article I will tell you why.

First, let's look at how things used to be. Then we'll look at how they are now.

It used to be that actors, writers, and musicians would go to Los Angeles to try to make it big. When I still had my rock and roll dreams in the 80's and 90's, Los Angeles was always the place I figured I'd have to go to make it. 

Why Los Angeles? Because all of the movie studios, TV studios, and recording studios were there. After all, it's HOLLYWOOD, and all the entertainment industries interconnect there. 

And because of LA being so big, so diverse, and such a media center -- after all, it's the number two city in the United States -- it is a natural magnet for movie and music star wannabes. And with the great weather, and the beaches, and the sunshine -- it's naturally a place everyone wants to go.

Of course, music and movies often go hand in hand, as do music and TV. And all the entertainment forms converge together in Hollywood. Music stars used to make music videos -- often, those videos were made by people who were from the movie industry. As late as the 2010's, many music videos looked like full-on Hollywood productions.

This is because they actually were full-on Hollywood productions. Here is an example, which I've used in an earlier article 2 years ago -- Selena Gomez's video for her excellent pop song A Year Without Rain (2010), which looks like a Hollywood movie production. 

The video for Selena Gomez's 2010 Top 40 pop hit A Year Without Rain. Look at the direction; the widescreen, high resolution; the breathtaking cinematography; look at how perfect everything is. Not only is it a great song -- but there was a lot of money put into this video. ...Money that the music industry lacks today.

As you can tell, the cinematography is perfect. Selena's hair is perfect. Her makeup is perfect. Every movement of her dress is perfect. The sweeping vista shots in the widescreen video look like big-movie cinematography. It's all that way by design.

It has Hollywood written all over it. There was a LOT of money expended to make the video, and the pop track wasn't even a top ten hit. It was a great song, but didn't top the charts.

But look at all the money that went into that video!

Today, most of a video like that would be AI. In fact, in maybe ten years the entirety of such a video -- including the singer, music production and songwriting -- will all be AI.

This is how far we've progressed in just 15 years. From awesome pop hits, sung by real singers, written by real songwriters, and played by real musicians, to everything being done by a computer app.

What does this mean for Hollywood? It means 'it's dead, Jim.'

One reason that Hollywood was such an important place was because it was a LOCATION where everyone involved in music, movies, TV, and other audio-visual entertainment lived or travelled to get albums recorded, videos filmed, movies produced. To record an album, you could do it in Seattle, but the big production albums were finished and mastered in Los Angeles -- because that's where the big name producers were based. That was where the record companies were based. That's where the videos were made for most rock and pop hits.

With AI, none of that is needed. It all can be done via the internet, and in the future, it will all be done on your phone, on your AI app.

At the same time, we've seen the Tik-Tok effect, where there are no big singing stars anymore, and there are really no big movie stars anymore -- the internet has democratized and nichefied audio and video entertainment so much that the days of the mass media star are drawing to a close.

And AI will kill that off, too. Just give it time.

A.I. WILL ALSO REPLACE THE AUTHOR

I'll close this article off with a more personal take. As many of you may know, I've written books and published them on Amazon. Consequently, I frequent some forums for eBook authors, and a couple subreddits (on Reddit) where eBook authors hang out.

The vast majority of them are willingly blinded to the disaster that is coming down the pike. They really think that AI will have no effect whatsoever on the eBook publishing business.

"Readers will always want to read books by real human authors," they invariably say. "AI writing is trash, no one will read it," they invariably say. "Books are different from video and music," they invariably say.

They are blind, blind, blind. 

First off, I have read some of the AI produced fiction recently. Sure, some of it is trashy writing. AI is nothing like Melville, Dickens or Shelley in its ability to turn out literature -- not yet. It hasn't even reached Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Robert Ruark or George Orwell level of writing skills yet.

But at the same time, most modern fiction is pulp fiction, or a variety of it, and I can't see where AI fiction is much different from any drugstore pulp novel writing. Are there glitches and some issues with the stories? Sure. But any glitches will undoubtedly be smoothed out and fixed as the AI-writing models are streamlined. Another issue is that the average eBook fiction author today reads fiction differently from the way the average consumer reads it. I've seen a lot of top selling books that weren't anything close to what I'd call literary in nature.

But they sell. And so will AI fiction, eventually.

Also, these AI detractors aren't keeping track of the trend in book consumption. Younger demos do not read books the same way that GenXer's, older Millennials, and Boomers did. They read less books, and buy fewer books than their older counterparts did.

Younger people are also much more open to new technology, and especially more open to new entertainment technology. That includes AI fiction writing, as well as AI videos, AI produced music, and the like.

If you are an eBook author and you think AI isn't going to eventually replace you, you are being willfully ignorant, friend. It's going to take over everything, and it's just a matter of time.

There will always be human written books, just as there will always be real music made by real people on real instruments. There will always be real people taking real photos on real cameras. 

They just won't be making much, if any, money doing it.

BREAKING RUST: THE FUTURE IS NOW

Just recently, a new wrinkle in the AI factor has surfaced: a mysterious AI country singer named Breaking Rust topped the Country Digital Song Sales chart on Billboard. It's had 4 million streams on Spotify and 11 million streams on YouTube (according to CBS News).

Sounds like Gospel tinged Country to me. Not too different in tone from Lil Nas X's 'Old Town Road', which was a smash just before Corona hit. 'Walk My Walk' has had 4 million streams on Spotify. That means it's made the creators (whoever they are) somewhere around $16,000.

If you listen to Breaking Rust, it sounds just like modern day country -- the words, of course are cliche. So are the words in most modern country songs -- I hear a lot of country while scanning the AM band at night, and the lyrics are almost non-stop cliches. The Breaking Rust singer sounds like a soulful white guy, or a black American gospel singer with a country-tinged accent.

Now, the fact that this track topped the MP3 Download Sales chart isn't necessarily a harbinger for the end of all musicians. But it shows exactly what AI is capable of doing. And if you listen to the track, it's not much different from what you might hear on the radio today, production and content-wise.

This is the future folks. We're already in it.

MY ONLY VISIT TO HOLLYWOOD

After viewing the first two videos I linked above, and writing this article, I have to admit that it's very saddening what has happened to Hollywood, and the entertainment industry in general.

I only have been to Hollywood once. It was during a road trip I took, by car, with a former girlfriend. We drove from Seattle to New Orleans and back. The furthest east we made it was Pass Christian, Mississippi, where my ex and I waded in the warmth of the Gulf of Mexico for the first time. I clearly recall the heat of the sun, the calming feel of the warm water, and hearing and seeing the flying fishes flip away in front of us as we were nearly waist deep in the water. It is one of my fondest memories. I was truly happy.

On the way back home from New Orleans, we went through Los Angeles. That night, we stopped in Hollywood. Sunset and Vine. I got out of the car, and walked up and down the block, and we both got a can of soda at a corner market. 

So this is Hollywood, I thought to myself. On one hand, Sunset Boulevard reminded me of First Avenue in Seattle, a key thoroughfare that used to be a combination of Skid Row and culture central -- it ran from the touristy Pioneer Square district, pass several adult video arcades and pawn shops and music stores, to the famous Pike Place Market. Sunset reminded me slightly of this combination of run down and upscale.

On the other hand, my heart was pounding, because I was there -- at the center of the universe -- Sunset and Vine!

We drove west on Sunset, before heading north, and back to Interstate 5, so we could make our way back home.

Looking south from Sunset as we were driving towards the hills, you could see this vast panorama of lights to the south of us -- Beverly Hills, and the western part of LA that is the 'Los Angeles' that always makes it in the movies. In fact, the view reminded me of the sweeping vista one can see in the 2000's movie Crash, which features LA, with all of its diversity, glamour, and its hope, and also its underbelly. There is a sweeping vista in that movie that looked identical to the grand view I saw driving west on Sunset.

It was my only foray into Hollywood, but one I'll never forget.

Hollywood is that magical place that now is facing a declining future. Hollywood the neighborhood will always exist. I'm sure that there will always be entertainment in some form happening there, and being produced there. 

But the glamour days are over. AI is going to kill it all off.

I'll be glad if that doesn't happen that way, but I don't think I'm wrong. AI is changing everything, folks, and we're in for a wild ride.

My last thoughts are a bit historical, I suppose. Hollywood as we still know it is only about 100 years old. The movie industry, which had been previously based out of New Jersey, moved west to Los Angeles in the 1920's -- just 100 years ago. 100 years is a long time for a single location like Hollywood to be the center of the entertainment universe.

It was a good run.

IN OTHER LIFE....

In other life, it's been going normally. I'm still sorting out some finances left over from my mother's passing, and I'm still riding my bike at night, playing guitar and working on my bagpipes, so I can play them for the family at Thanksgiving. The temperatures have been moderate for November, which is refreshing. When I ride my bike at night, it feels like Spring.

I just got some new, plastic/synthetic Surefire brand chanter reeds for my bagpipes, and they work really well. There are four different strengths, and I ordered one of each, to figure out which strength reed works the best.

I also have a new cat. She's a grey tabby, 8-9 years old. I'm the third owner. The former owner couldn't keep her anymore. She was almost headed to be euthanized. She is now in my upstairs bathroom, which is heated -- and it's her own space.

She still isn't sure of me. Hisses a lot -- it's because she's scared. Cats don't like change. I'm using food as a weapon -- getting her to get to know me, because I'm the human putting the food in the dish. She still hisses a bit, but is meowing more and hissing less.

I don't have any pics because both my phone and camera's memories are full and I need to clear them to take more pics. She looks a bit like my Fluffamuffins did, my little grey cat that died just over a year and a half ago. Here is a pic of Fluffy as a reminder of what she looked like.:

Fluffy, a.k.a. Fluffamuffins, when a kitten, in 2011. My new cat looks incredibly like her.

As you can tell, I was working on my Superadio some time before or after I took this pic. Fluffy just made herself at home on the table.

I think I'll call the new cat Princess, because she's a shelter cat that's on her third (or fourth?) owner since she was at a Lompoc, California animal shelter in 2017.

She needs a chance to be a 'princess'.

Peace.

C.C., November 21st, 2025.

TRICK-OR-TREAT 2025, and SWLing without Up-to-Date SW Schedules

 

A blast from the past -- a pumpkin I carved for Halloween, 2010!

This was the first or second time I used a stencil I had bought with some pumpkin carving tools at a local box store. A moon and stars -- and if you look at the Jack O' Lantern at an angle, it's also a face.

Today, as I start this article, it is All Soul's Day, November 2nd, and it's rainy out. Not too cold, but dreary weather, which matches the month, being that November is the shittiest month of the year. 

Two nights ago it was Halloween. I had 15 Jack O' Lanterns out, so the front of my house and drive looked fairly cheery. I got about 11-12 trick-or-treaters -- three groups of them -- who braved the light rain and I gave them all extra candy, being that I had a couple bags of it.

I also played my bagpipes outside after the first group of trick-or-treaters left. The new reed I had in my pipe chanter held up really well, and I'm finally getting used to the easier air pressure needed to play the instrument. I played the closest thing I know that sounds 'spooky', a tune called The Dark Island. I don't know if anyone heard it, being that there were few trick-or-treaters out on the streets of my neighborhood, and it was drizzling.

Here is a piper who calls herself the Dark Isle Bagpiper, playing The Dark Island. She adds some Irish trills and plays the tune slightly differently from the way I learned it, but the basic tune is the same. She is playing this tune in Greenland, although she is based out of LA. The Dark Isle Bagpiper has played pipes on several TV shows. If you check out her vids on YT, she plays a lot of really good slow airs, and other tunes, too.

I also was fighting off a cold, so when the night was done I took some extra zinc and echinacea, and spent some time clearing files off my laptop computer before I went to bed. I've found that extra sleep helps kill colds. The zinc tabs help, too.

WRESTLING WITH CONSTANT UPDATES

My computer is over 8 years old, and it needs a lot of older files removed, because the hard drive is getting full -- not just full from my files over the years, but the endless plethora of mostly useless, bloatware updates all have been gradually filling my hard drive with their code.

For the life of me, with all the gigabytes of updates that slam my computer a few times a month, nothing seems to run better. All those 'improvements' never really improve anything. Some of the updates were AI-related programs I didn't ask for, and don't want on my computer because they just take up resources and I never use them.

They always say the updates are for security, but do you really need to slam someone's computer with multiple gigabytes of updates over a period of several months, just for security? How many gigabytes does it take to make a program, app, or OS 'secure'?

Oftentimes, when the updates are kicking in, my computer slows down. I'll hear my hard drive being slammed. In fact, I just heard my hard drive being slammed as I was typing this sentence, and -- looking at Task Manager -- it was another bunch of bloatware updates trying to cram into my laptop.

I'll spend several hours removing files onto a USB drive, and soon enough, the various, bloatware updates will fill it right back up. So far over the past several days, I've cleared off over 2-3 gigabytes of space, only to see it quickly filled by update bullshit.

It's maddening. And it isn't just the company that made the OS. Both browsers push their updates, and a PDF reader's updates slow my computer to a crawl when they kick in. I'm figuring out how to stop all updating, because frankly I don't think they make the computer any more secure, and they definitely don't improve anything.

So it's been an ongoing fight with the software companies, whose 'business model' seems to be to piss off as many people as possible.

NO REAL PLANS, EXCEPT GET THROUGH NOVEMBER

As for the rest of this month, I really don't plan on doing much aside from continuing to straighten out finances and get through November, which is a cold, rainy, dreary month. And, frankly, Novembers are months where people in my family, extended family, and several of my cats have died. Not good overall.

CQ Magazine's DX 'Zones', which ham radio operators use during the big radio contests.

DX HAS BEEN TOUCH AND GO...

On the radio and DX side of things, the ionosphere has been touch and go lately. The past couple days have been mediocre, and the week or two before that, there were a few good mornings and nights to switch on the radio and tune around.

A couple weekends ago, there was a ham radio contest, the biggest contest of the year, the CQWW contest, where ham radio operators all over the world try to contact as many other hams as possible, in as many ham radio 'zones' as possible. 

I tuned in during the morning after it started, and the HF ham bands were quite lively. Even 15 Meters had a considerable amount of activity, which was a pleasant surprise. 15 Meters used to be a popular ham band. I recall hearing LOTS of activity on 15 Meters during the summer afternoons in the early 1980's. That's when I heard A7XB out of Qatar. But ever since the last Solar Cycle died off in late 2017, 15 Meters has never been the same. Most afternoons I'd tune it in during the peak year last year, 15 Meters was like 12 Meters -- mostly a ghost town.

Even 20 Meters is not what it used to be. Every Saturday afternoon 20 Meters used to be wall to wall CW and SSB signals, invariably, with most of them splattering on each other. This recent CQWW contest was the first time I've heard 20 Meters so packed in ages. It reminded me of how the band used to be on a typical weekend afternoon.

It was refreshing.

WHEN SW SCHEDULES CHANGE OVER, YOU GET CREATIVE

This is also the time of the year when SW DXers have to be creative when figuring out what they are hearing. Most SW broadcasts anymore are in non-English languages, so even if you can ID the language, it doesn't necessarily follow that you can understand what's being said. So you have to listen to the TYPE of broadcasts, and tone of it. Does it sound like news? A feature? An interview? Does the programming match the BBC, or CNR-1, or NHK?

And the online SW schedules are a bit off, because it takes some time for their creators to compile the new broadcast information, because the end of October is when SW stations all change their schedules.

So, you get creative. The other morning, I heard Japanese on 7380 kHz (at 0522 UTC), that sounded like NHK. But neither EiBi or Short-wave.info had ANY Japanese programming listed that frequency and hour. I was sure it was NHK in Japanese, but had no schedule info to back up my suspicion.

So I went to Short-wave.info and used the 'Any Station' dropdown and 'Japanese language' dropdown, and I found out that NHK had a regular broadcast in Japanese to SE Asia during that hour. They had moved their frequency lower to the 41 Meter Band from the 25 and 21 Meter Bands because the 41 Meter band is more of a Winter SW band.

Remember, SW listeners -- there are ways to find out what you're hearing, even if the SW lists online are getting out of date. ID the language. LISTEN to the programming, even if you do not know the language! Does it sound like CNR-!? Does it sound like the BBC? Does it sound like NHK? 

A lot of American SWL's bitch and gripe about most SW being in non-English languages. But griping about most SW being non-English is backwards thinking. A lot of the non-English programming is pretty cool to listen to -- and even if you don't understand the language, it doesn't mean you can't ID the station or the program.

I've learned to ID non-English languages, and find it challenging. I also have learned that a lot of the non-English stations play really cool music -- music I'd never hear on US radio. Japan has some really cool soft pop-rock hits from the 70's that NHK plays. I've heard some great K-pop on KBS World Radio. CRI plays some great music, too. And a lot of SWL's poke fun at Radio North Korea, but the music they play is interesting, and very well made -- their musicians are excellent.

I've heard really cool stuff on CNR-1. They have kids' programming over the weekend mornings (evenings, China time). Imagine that: a radio company that cares enough about kids to program a radio show for them. Doesn't happen here in the US or Canada. The last radio company that catered to kids -- Radio Disney -- pulled the plug completely in 2019.

But CNR-1, China's national broadcaster, that has numerous transmitters on SW, has a radio play or storytelling episode for kids that you can hear during the mornings, US time, every weekend.

American DXers and SWLs, open your ears!

MORE MYSTERIOUS SIGNALS NEAR THE 40 METER BAND

The only other radio 'catches' of note have been mystery carriers -- dead signals that have appeared over several nights just below the 40 Meter Ham band.

I've logged a dead carrier at 7000 kHz over several nights and mornings, and others have shown up on 6988 kHz, 6938 kHz, and more recently, 6979 kHz.

What the purpose of these dead carriers -- if any -- happens to be is a good question. No one in the SWL community seems to know. The dead carriers don't get mentioned much online, but there have been some SWL's on HFU (HFUnderground) who have logged them.

I also heard a single letter beacon on 7057 kHz, a continuous 'F' being sent, and it was very weak in strength. I haven't heard it since. Most 'single letter beacons', which are continuous repetitions of the same letter in Morse Code, are associated with the Russian military, particularly the Russian Navy, and their frequencies are well known, and appear in many SW lists. But this 'F' beacon on 7057 is a mystery.

There are a lot of such strange oddities in the SW bands. You just have to tune around and listen to catch them.

MYSTERY RANCHERO MUSIC ON 1560 kHz

One other 'mystery' signal wasn't as bizarre as a Morse Code blipping away in the ether, or a dead signal, but I heard a mystery ranchero music station on 1560 kHz last night (the night of the 3rd) beaming mostly North-South.

Usually on 1560 I hear a mix of just two stations -- KNZR Bakersfield, which is a news-talk station that comes in with varying strengths, and KVAN, Tri-Cities WA, which is a Spanish language religious station. This station was neither.

The only ranchero station on 1560 is a daytimer, KIQS, Willow, California -- but when I checked their stream, it was not the same music as what I was hearing on the radio. And KVAN does NOT play ranchero, nor do they have rapidfire announcements and advertisements.

A view from Interstate 5 not too far from Montague, California. Much of the far north of California looks like this -- green and golden ranch country.

pic courtesy Dreamstime

MONTAGUE, CALIFORNIA CHECKS IN ON LONGWAVE

Last but not least, the past few evenings I've gotten really decent catches of a Longwave beacon out of Northern California -- MOG, out of Montague, a small town not too far from Yreka, which is the first city you hit on I-5 after crossing the Oregon/California border.

I recently got an XHDATA D808, and it's great on Longwave. It's possibly my best Longwave radio. That said, there isn't much on Longwave anymore -- the few aeronautical beacons are disappearing. The maritime Longwave beacons disappeared years ago.

But it's great to hear MOG, beeping away.

Well, that's about it for now. I'll close this article with another old Halloween pic. I couldn't take any on my phone or camera because their memories are also full and need to be cleared.

A pumpkin I put in my tree, on Halloween 2023.

Peace.

C.C., November 4th, 2025

FORUMS ARE DYING; Here's One Reason Why

When the internet hit in a big way in the mid 2000's (yes, I know the World Wide Web existed before then, and there was an 'internet' of sorts before that), we were told that the nature of mass media, and communication would all change forever.

In a sense, those predictions came true. My former career field, Radio, is now turning into a shell of what it once was, thanks to internet streaming. The Music industry, of which I never was an active participant, but -- being a musician -- I always wanted to be a part of, is also turning into a shell of what it once was, thanks to streaming.

But within the internet itself there have been many changes, and not all of them have been good or awesome ones. Forums and eGroups were a very big thing 15 years ago, and now they are in decline. Blogs were also very popular in the 2000's and early 2010's. Now they are also in decline. Blogger still has many active blogs, but I have also found blogs on Blogger that haven't been updated since the early 2010's.

It's a fact that in 2012 there were literally thousands more active blogs than there are today. 

BLOGS: THERE ONCE WERE THOUSANDS, NOW MOSTLY 404

Some bloggers I met online who were active and popular in 2012-2015 no longer have a blog, because of varying reasons, but it's an example of the decline in blogging overall. In Scandinavia, for example -- where Blogging was a really big deal -- there used to be the equivalent of a 'Hot 100' for blogs, called 'Blogglisten' ('the Blog List'). I found this 'Blogglisten' by accident in 2012 or 2013, while looking for online articles to read in Norwegian and Swedish, two languages I had learned at the University but needed to brush up on.

The Blogglisten looked like a view into a high class, glamour world, mostly populated by young female influencers, and influencer wannabes, with a few 'real' people sprinkled in here and there, too. Of course, blogging in general was still popular worldwide, but the Scandinavians took to it like skis on snow. There were bloggers from the other EU countries that had fancy looking, well formatted blogs, but the Scandinavians seemed to outdo them all. The photography was usually top notch, as were the formatting and fonts used. Each blog literally resembled pages out of a fashion magazine.

On some blogs, everything looked so perfect -- the clothing, the setting, the insides of the homes often looked more spotless than IKEA displays. The food was always pristine, and looked as if everything was cooked, in artisan fashion, by a French chef, with all the food placed strategically to look like artwork. Bookshelves had books placed as if they were assembled by an interior home designer. The photography was SLR quality, some of it professionally done.

Nothing in any picture was out of place. Nothing. 

But the writing, or course, was in the Scandinavian languages, not just the literate forms, but also in the vernacular. Consequently, I relearnt my Norsk and Svenska rather quickly.

Nearly every blog had -- like this one -- room for comments beneath the blog articles. It made the blogs a combination of magazine and social media. It was a clever idea, and worked well for 10-15 years. There was a lot of interaction between the bloggers through the comment sections.

The Blogglisten itself, which resembled a Top 100 list, listed the blogs by popularity, from #1 to #100 or more, and had links to them included, and the list changed daily. I think there were several such 'top blog lists', which were sometimes referenced in the Scandinavian media the same way hit songs and hit musical artists are referenced.

Some of the top Bloggers on the 'top list' became superstars, even being mentioned as such in the national news and infotainment media in Scandinavia, with a couple of them going on to have music or video careers. One of the biggest such Bloggers, a young woman from Norway named Sophie Elise, became quite the European celebrity -- all from Blogging. Her blog nearly always topped the 'Blogglisten'. 

Starting out in Northern Norway, she ended up having professionally done photoshoots in Barcelona and other tourist spots, and she became a combination fashion model, video talent and musical artist.... All just a couple years out of high school -- thanks to the popularity of blogging.

The Blogglisten changed drastically about 7 years ago, where it looked as if most the blogs on the list disappeared. I don't know why. It might be due to a decline in blogging, or maybe the Blogglisten wasn't making enough money. What used to be a page with a few hundred glamourous 'top' blogs listed, became a shell of what it had been. Blogg.no, the largest Norwegian blogging site, still has a 'Toplist' but the blogs don't receive anywhere near the number of visits they received in 2013.

Some of the biggest blogging sites from other Scandinavian countries are either 404 or they look close to it. One popular site out of Sweden, called Dayviews (the Swedish hard rock/ punk band Sator even had a blog there) is more or less a shell. There are no photos anymore -- just 'missing pic' icons in their place. Their photoserver must have crashed and took the pics with it. No one seems to use it anymore, either.

Sophie Elise, the blogging superstar, herself quit blogging in 2020. In her last post, she says that one reason was the negative comments she'd often find under her blog posts. It also seems she just lost enthusiasm for blogging.

You can see what her blog looked like here. It still exists, with no updates in 5 years.:

https://sophieelise.blogg.no/

Other such top blogs -- like one that used to be called 'Fotballfrue' (a pro soccer player's GF or wife at the time) haven't been updated in 3 years. What's left of her blog is here.:

https://www.carolinebergeriksen.no/blogg/

Top-blogging isn't what it used to be. I guess there's only so much you can write about fashion, training, and what you ate that day.

Most of the blogs that used to be on the former 'Blogglisten' give you a 404.

404 is a popular number these days.

In fact, nearly every blog I used to visit on a regular basis in 2015 has either not been updated in 10 years, or is a 404.

It just shows how the internet itself is changing. Media comes and goes out of fashion. Remember Myspace? Or MP3.com? Excite? Webshots?

FORUMS ARE ON THE WAY OUT, ALSO

But not just Blogs are in decline. Forums are also in decline. I used to go to maybe 8-10 Forums every day or evening. There were two separate, general Radio forums, a couple ham radio forums, a couple guitar forums, and at least 4-5 separate Yahoo eGroups I went to in 2012 and thereabouts -- eGroups for the GE Superadio, Yaesu FRG-7, MW DXing, UltralightDX, DX-398, DX-160, Sangean SW radios, Panasonic, and a Realistic Radio Shack radios Yahoo forum. 

The Yahoo eGroups went south when everything 'went purple' and became hard to navigate, and the eGroups that migrated over to GroupsIO aren't as popular as the same ones were in the early 2010's. Many, if not most, of the eGroups did NOT migrate over to GroupsIO, and they just died.

There were at least three rock group forums I went to daily in the 2000's that died before that decade was over (the Screaming Jets forum, the New American Shame forum, and the Type O Negative forum). I miss the people I met on those forums. With the forums gone, there is no way to know anything of what happened to them.

The plug got pulled, and Poof! A community now completely gone.

On top of that, there was an Ibanez guitar forum I went to (which no longer exists), another Ibanez guitar forum I used to go to that has little activity anymore, a Bagpipe Forum I went to that has little activity when compared to 10 years ago, and a writing forum I used to go to daily that is definitely in decline as well. Another writing forum that was set up maybe 8 years ago, that I've only visited a handful of times, has nearly no activity.

I probably have at least 25-30 separate Forums, band and other websites, and Blogs I used to look at weekly or daily that either don't exist, have little, if any activity, or are otherwise 404.

Some forums I go to which are still active, have threads or sections that get maybe a couple posts a month. In 2012 they would have had 20.

Some say that the forums have all been replaced by social media groups, like FB groups, and the like. And they may have a point. But participating in a forum, and dealing with the sometimes difficult process of interacting on a FB group (where some posts are not easily seen because of the default 'most relevant' setting), or even a Reddit 'subreddit', where comment threads can have numerous discussions in just one thread, are different experiences, and something gets lost when you are on social media. Responses to responses to responses -- after a while you can lose track of who is arguing with who.

Also, there is so much competition for your screen time as soon as you hit a social media like FB, Reddit, TikTok, X, or the like.

So -- like everything else that could be called 'media', internet forums and blogs have had a tough time of it. My blog sees anywhere between 20-50 readers every day, and I'm thankful for that. But I saw a very large dropoff when Google got rid of Google+ (Google 'plus'). When that social media was shut down, visits to this blog plummetted. The blog just received that much less visibility.

NICHE SEEMS TO BE THE WAY TO SURVIVE

The people who come here generally find it through internet searches about Radio and Radios. Some find it searching for guitar info. I'm thankful for that. I think the fact that my Blog is mostly Radio-oriented (with some guitar articles included) keeps it percolating. It's niche, and niche seems to be the only way to keep a Blog going. It is probably the same thing with forums.

OK. slight exaggeration, but still....

This leads to the question, begged by the headline: If internet forums are dying, why would any forum decide to make it more difficult to access the forum? 

I've noticed this trend recently, where forums that are already declining in visits and posts have this placard that shows up, claiming to be verifying that you are a human -- and it sometimes takes 2-3 minutes to 'verify' you.

It's like telling you to 'go away -- get lost, we don't want you here'.

If forum owners are having issues with spambots and the like, there's got to be a better way than to make every single forum member wait 5 minutes for the bot that is running the verifier to do its thing.

All it does anymore is make me want to leave. 

And if more guys are like me, and tired of having to wait for the stupid little circle of dots to go around and around and around and around -- all it will do is decrease traffic to the forum.

Forum owners out there: News flash: your verifier is pushing people away from your site.

Find another method to stop spambots. Your present method isn't working. You're pushing forum people away. You're shooting yourselves in the foot.

Rant over.

A Halloween pic from times past -- 5-6 years ago. Two real pumpkins and an electric one.

IN OTHER LIFE: BAGPIPES and JACK O' LANTERNS

In other life, I'm slowly getting ready for Halloween. I got a new, battery powered Jack O' Lantern which will go in one of my windows, and got the Halloween candy ready for how ever many trick-or-treaters I may have.

I also got some Surefire brand, synthetic bagpipe chanter reeds in the mail a few days ago. They work great, but are a little too easy to blow. If I'm not careful, they gurgle on the lowest two notes, and want to squeal a little on the highest ones.

I'm going to keep the reeds, though, because they do work, and I found a way to make them a little bit harder to blow (so they don't squeal or gurgle), and I'm going to order some 'Hard' ones of the same brand.

It seems that synthetic chanter reeds generally are easier to blow than cane ones.

The positive is that they are more consistent and more dependable. That's been my experience with them, anyway.

Hopefully, I'll be able to play dependably for my Aunt and family during the holidays, and also for a college buddy to record so he can post a bagpipe lament in honor of his late father and mother for his extended family.

That's all for now.

Peace.

C.C. October 27th, 2025.

The World of BAGPIPES: Why Do Pipers Put Up With Such Mediocrity?

My 1981 RG Lawrie bagpipes, with 'catalin' (fake ivory) mounts. RG Hardie 1982 band chanter (the pipe you play the tune on), which is my favorite chanter to use. The bag cover is 'Dress Campbell', a lightened version of the Clan Campbell tartan. From what I understand, the 'Dress Campbell' tartan isn't recognised by the clan. 

As I've mentioned at least a couple times here in this blog, I play the bagpipes. I don't play them especially well, but I do play them decently -- that is, if I've been practicing, if my lips don't give out (which only happens if there has been a LONG time I haven't been playing), and if the reeds are working right.

It's one of the musical pursuits I enjoy, especially when the pipes are in tune and all is working right. You sort of get into this 'zone', because the music is surrounding you, and it's a great feeling. Bagpipe music has always been an interest of mine -- it was the first music that I really wanted to play -- even before I discovered rock 'n' roll.

I've been playing the same, full set of pipes since January 1982. I got my set of pipes -- RG Lawries -- on Christmas 1981. I played in a pipe band for just over three years, from early 1982 until I quit the band in the Fall of 1985. 

The reason I quit was because my father had died in '84, and my mother wasn't taking it too well. Also, the attitudes in the band weren't really conducive to my enjoying being a part of it anymore. Looking back, I regret the decision of leaving, but there are no time machines.

All that said, I've played the pipes for the better part of 44 years now. I play for my extended family on Thanksgivings, Easter, and Christmases. I've played at cousins' weddings, and at least one wedding for a college buddy of mine. I played at the birthday of a veteran neighbor down the street. I played a lot for my mom when she was ill and staying at my house.

Of course, during Covid, I didn't play at family get-togethers, because there were none. And in 2024, because my Aunt and Uncle had some medical procedures, they didn't hold get-togethers, so there was over a year that I didn't play my pipes.

I just forgot about playing them.

When I decided to get back into playing, earlier this year (around September, 2025), I discovered that the synthetic, plastic chanter reeds that had served me well since 2016 were now worn out. Two of them had developed hairline cracks -- I don't know what from. They were in storage. The other two wouldn't hold tune at all. Maybe they got too cold in a cold room in the winter. Maybe it was just from use. Maybe the hairline cracks were there for a long time and I just didn't notice them previously.

Either way, for the moment, the synthetic reeds that I had depended on for 9 years were now no longer working correctly.

So I returned to cane chanter reeds. The 'chanter', by the way, is the pipe with the holes in it, that is used to play the tune. Chanter reeds, by their nature, are a bit finicky. Even seasoned pipers will tell you they sometimes have to buy 3 or 4 reeds to get one that works right. And this is when reeds are made by skilled artisans. The problem is that there are -- for all intents and purposes -- no real standards for bagpipes anymore.

The reed makers are making reeds for chanters that really DO NOT ADHERE TO A PITCH STANDARD. The piping world, amazingly, does not see this as a problem.

MORE ON THIS LATER.

Me playing for the birthday party of a Vietnam veteran who lives down the street. This was 2005 or 2006, I think. I was still using cane reeds. They were a bear to use, especially if you didn't play daily. A lot of times, they're a bear to use even if you do play daily.

BACK TO CANE...

Anyway, my synthetic reeds were worn out. So I tried cane reeds, being that I had a stash of them I had bought over the years -- unused, 'new' reeds. I found one that was marked 'EASY', and started 'blowing it in'. It worked OK for maybe two weeks. Then it started squealing every third or fourth time I hit a High G grace note -- a grace note that is almost used in every part of every pipe tune in existence.

No matter what I did -- higher air pressure or lower, more arm pressure against the bag or less -- and no matter how deep I sunk the reed into the chanter, it would squeal on the High G, 3 or 4 times during a song.

It was maddening. My other cane reeds (I also had in a box of reeds) did the same thing on both of my chanters (I have one chanter that came with the pipes, and another one I bought when the band insisted we all use matched RG Hardie chanters). Suddenly, I remembered why I HATE CANE. 

It's cantankerous, and unreliable.

A LUCKY 'FIX' FOR A WORN OUT, PLASTIC CHANTER REED

Luckily, I was able to 'fix' one of the worn out synthetic chanter reeds by putting a small elastic band around the blades, about 5 millimeters below the top of the 'lips', and then shore it up with some snug windings of waxed, yellow hemp string, wound from the dental elastic down to the bottom of the blades, where I tied it off snugly.

I've since ordered some new synthetic chanter reeds, hoping they will work out OK, because the only time I really had zero issues with chanter reeds was when I used the plastic, synthetic ones. I like having extra reeds handy. Without reeds, pipes are useless. Spare reeds are always a good thing -- just like having spare strings for your guitar.

Which takes us to the main subject of this article: Why do pipers put up with this sort of mediocrity -- where reeds are so cantankerous, and good reeds aren't as easy to find as good guitar strings, or good drum heads?

One issue that many pipers will tell you about, when it comes to reeds, is that not all reeds work in all chanters. You see -- chanters really have no actual standards anymore. They used to, maybe 40 years ago, when all pipe chanters were tuned to A=466, which means that the 'A' note on a bagpipe chanter was actually B Flat -- 466 Hz.

When I was in the pipe band, all chanters were tuned to A=466 Hz. That meant that all chanter reeds were crafted to play at A=466.

But then, some time in the late 1980's, and through the 1990's and thereafter, something stupid happened. Some of the top pipe bands in the world began to pitch their bagpipes to a higher pitch than A=466. Some of the bands that won the big championships in Scotland pitched their pipes to A=470, and then A=475, and today a lot of pipe chanters are tuned to A=480 and on a hot day they can pitch even higher -- closer to A=490.

So when a pipemaker comes out with a new chanter, they'll say things like "this new chanter likes reeds that will pitch it between 470 and 480 Hertz" or some such.

Which isn't really a standard, is it? 

Some in the piping world wonder where the increased pitch will stop. 490? 500?

And remember, because so many pipemakers are gearing their products to the competition circuit, that means that more and more new chanters are pitched higher and higher every couple of years.

And the chanter reedmakers, of course, are following suit. They are making reeds that simply won't work well, or work at all, in older chanters. If I wanted to get spanking new reeds for my 1982 RG Hardie chanter, which is pitched at A=466, I would have to buy special 'B Flat reeds', at $13 to $15 dollars a pop, and hope that they actually worked in my chanter. Because, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you have to buy 5 reeds to get one or two that work well.

Why is that? It is because reed material -- Cane -- being a plant, isn't always consistent in nature, and although a reedmaker can craft a reed that works in his or her chanter at the shop, it doesn't necessarily mean it will work in YOUR chanter, because not all chanters are made to the same standards, and -- as many veteran pipers will tell you -- they all "reed differently".

Even if you have a modern, A=480+ Hz chanter, and get reeds that are supposed to work in it, you may have to squeeze the reed, shave off some cane from the blades, 'poke' it with a 'reed mandrel', ALL SORTS OF CRAP TO GET IT TO WORK RIGHT.

Think about that. 

Can you imagine this sort of rigamarole being acceptable with any other instrument?

I've posted this pic before; it's me playing at my Aunt's house on Easter or Thanksgiving, probably 2004-2006 or so.

When I buy strings for my guitar or banjo, for example, I don't have to do anything but install them, and then tune them. I don't have to go through a bunch of hijinks to get them to work.

In fact, you can get a set of guitar strings, and the same exact strings will work on a 25.5 inch scale guitar (like a Stratocaster) or a 24.75 inch scale guitar (like a Les Paul), and the strings will work just fine.

Not so with bagpipe reeds, and chanters.

Being that over the past month I've had to go through so much needless bullshit just to try to get a decent, dependable cane reed to work in my chanters -- and these reeds were made in the 1990's, when A=466 was still basically the 'standard' -- it has made me wonder: why do pipers put up with this shit?

Why do they go along with a market that has NO STANDARDS? 

Why do they go along with a marketplace that expects you to buy a new, $200-$300 chanter every 5 or 6 years if you want no problems reeding it, or playing it in a band?

Why does the piping world tolerate this bullshit of the pitch being allowed to go up and up and up and up?

Orchestras and marching bands don't allow that. Neither do any other musical genres, really. Even in rock and jazz music, there are standards for the instruments. 

Me in my long hair days, late August, 1984, playing for the wedding of my best college buddy's sister. I was still in the pipe band at the time. The drones tuned closer to the bottom of the 'tuning pins', about an inch away. Today, they tune more like two inches out (i.e., they tune flatter to match the chanter's pitch). That means that cane drone reeds I used back then were pitched a bit lower than the plastic drone reeds I use now, and I had to sharpen the tuning to match the pitch to the chanter.

 They also were louder.

One afternoon I was playing my set -- same reeds, probably -- in my back yard, in the Summer of 1983. One of our neighbors three streets away said he could hear them even inside his house.

YOU CAN BLAME THE SCOTS :-)

Apparently, a lot of this trend towards higher pitches started when one of the premier Scottish pipe bands jacked up its pitch, to make the band's sound stand out from the rest of the bands, and the judges awarded them first place, because the tone sounded 'sweeter'.

Then every competition band in the higher grades started seeking higher pitches, not just for the chanters, but the drones had to accommodate higher pitches as well. This led to every band in the UK, Ireland, Canada, US, Oz, et. al. pitching their chanters higher too.

So a lot of the acceptance of movable, fickle and arbitrary pitch standards comes from the competition band scene.

And pipers everywhere put up with this shit. No sooner than the pitch goes up another 10 Hz, you suddenly have a redundant set of harder-to-reed bagpipes (mainly the chanters).

And pipes aren't cheap. A full set can cost $1200-$2000 US. A new chanter can cost $200-$300 easy. Some pipers have 5 or 6 chanters, largely because of the moving pitch standards. A set of drone reeds is anywhere between $55-$85 or so. Even the drones have changed in pitch over the years. If, for example, you have a modern set of pipes, and got a new, $250 B-flat chanter (so you can play with an organ or other standard pitched instrument), you'll need "Drone Extenders" so that your drone reeds will match the pitch of the B-flat (A=466) chanter. Drone extenders are these pieces of plastic tubing that you shove into the drone's tuning pins, that are an extra 'seat' that sits between drone reed and drone pipe. 

And then you hope they don't fall out. Sounds great, hey?

Pipers tolerate an activity where the top bands start trends that can not only cost you money, but they also cause you to have to deal with tons of bullshit just trying to see if reeds will work in your new chanter.

'Ain't broke, don't fix it' definitely doesn't apply to the piping world.

I have a 53 year old electric guitar. It's my Sakai, 1972 Japanese Jaguar copy. It will use the exact same new strings that will work on a brand new Gibson, Jackson, Fender, Ibanez, PRS, Suhr, or any other new brand of guitar. The same strings will work on ALL of them.

If you have a 50 year old set of bagpipes, good luck. You'll have to hunt down a B Flat reed and hope that it will work in your 1975 chanter. Even then, you may have to squeeze it, poke it, shave it, or otherwise manipulate it to get it to work right.

ARE WE STILL IN THE DARK AGES?

Which is another gripe of mine. Why, with all the space age materials available for instrument making today, are pipers still relying on Dark Age, Neanderthal tech like CANE to make the most important reeds in the bagpipes?

Why, in the in the 21st Century, are bagpipers still relying on the same reed materials that they were using in the 1600's? Violin strings are no longer made out of gut. Neither are banjo strings or guitar strings. Drum heads and banjo heads are no longer made out of animal skin. Many sax and clarinet reeds are synthetic, and they work well.

Why have none of the major pipe and reed makers brought pipes into the modern world, where there are all sorts of plastics available, and come up with chanter reeds that are plug and play, dependable, and still have the sound that the competition pipers want?

The synthetic reeds I used worked well. They were indeed plug and play. I had a slightly flat E note, that I lived with. I'm guessing it's because my chanters were 1981 and 1982 models, and the reeds were designed to work in A=470+, 2016 bagpipe chanters.

But the reeds actually worked. They sounded good enough. And there was no fidgeting. No 'poking' the reed to get it to work right. No spitting on it to try to soften the material to get the reed to keep sounding without choking out. No pinching or squeezing the blades together, no shaving, no trimming, no cutting the tips of the blades -- none of that crap.

Angus Ironside, the guy who taught me to play the bagpipes. A Marine, a Vietnam vet, and the Pipe Major of the Clan Stewart Pipe Band, the band I was in. It was a fun time. We played a few parades -- Stanwood, Wenatchee, Westwood Mall -- and most of the local Highland Games (Bellingham, Everett, Tacoma, Portland) and the big games in Santa Rosa, California. Piping isn't just music, it's also a community, and unfortunately that community is getting smaller and smaller each decade.

A MUSICAL TRADITION IN SLOW DECLINE

The piping world needs to wake up. It's already in decline. The number of pipe bands in my area is almost half of what it was in the 1980's. It's even that way up in Canada, where piping seemed to be one of their religions, aside from hockey.

One of the reasons has to be the cost, as well as the fact that pipes aren't more plug and play, like a guitar or keyboard is.

I have a college buddy who I recently talked to who was in a band in the 80's and 90's, and he was a much better player than me. He used to teach students, and even started his own pipe band, made up of his students.

I asked him what he thought of the piping scene today -- because it seemed that there are less bands out there than there used to be, and less pipers.

He said there are less bands and less pipers because the young kids have other pastimes. They play video games, or are into other forms of music that are easier to get into.

I would bet that one more reason is that pipes are a pain in the neck to get working right, if you don't already know what you're doing. Why would any young person today want to pay out $1500 or more for a set of pipes when the reeds are inconsistent and such a pain to work with? Why would they want to expend all this energy to try to master an instrument where the instrument makers can't even adhere to a pitch standard -- which makes all the components variable to a degree not accepted in other musical genres?

Why would they want to spend money on an expensive, niche instrument that may be hard to reed up in 20 years, because of unnecessary and arbitrary pitch changes?

It's crazy.

I've come close to just throwing the pipes in a closet and forgetting about them, and sticking to just guitar. With my guitars I only have to touch up a string or two, and with 10 seconds I'm PLAYING GUITAR.

With the bagpipes it sometimes is half an hour of EXTRANEOUS BULLSHIT to get them to work perfectly.

It shouldn't be that way. WITH ANY INSTRUMENT.

I got close to instant, plug-and-play reliability with my first set of synthetic chanter reeds in 2016. They served me well until they wore out earlier this year. The one synthetic reed I fixed is holding up OK, but who knows how long the fix will last. Hopefully the new, synthetic plastic reeds I ordered will work out OK in my pipes.

All that said, the pastime that I once enjoyed, and the instrument that I used to play for my ailing mother daily is facing challenges. My pipes, chanter reeds aside, still amazingly have held up well. The bag is still airtight -- amazing for a 1981 L&M hide bag. The plastic drone reeds I bought in 2003 still work OK.  The bass drone is a little unsteady, from lots of play, but it still works. The tenor drones are steady as a rock.

But the bagpiping scene is nothing like it was in the 80's when I was in the band. The Seattle-Tacoma area has half the pipe bands it used to have. Even in Canada, there are less bands than there were when I was competing. Bands like Victoria, Triumph Street, Vancouver Ladies -- they were top notch competition bands. All gone.

It's almost like piping is aging out. Not good.

Just last week two top notch, Grade 1 pipe bands in the British Isles folded. Closkelt, a top band from Northern Ireland, and Johnstone, a band from Scotland, gave it up.

My Electra EB-3 bass. I've had this bass since 1986, when I bought it off my music buddy Dave Simpson for $100 -- the price he paid for it at the pawn shop where he got it. It's an awesome sounding bass. It sounds fairly similar to Jim Lea's EB-3 on the early Slade records. I played this bass on every rock recording I ever made, many of which you can hear on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/chriscampbellrock

Can you imagine not being able to find strings that would work on a 40 year old bass guitar? The idea of not being able to find strings that would work on a 40 year old bass is laughable.

But it's standard issue if you have a 40 or 50 year old bagpipe chanter, where some pipers who have old chanters just put them on the mantle and never play them, because reeds that will work in them are hard to find, or you have to mess with them and hope you get lucky and they will work.

It shouldn't be that way.

SOMETHING HAS GOT TO CHANGE

Naturally, there always have been changes in the piping scene, just as any other musical scene. But when top pipe bands decide to fold, it could be a warning sign that the pipe competition scene, and the bagpiping tradition has some serious issues. 

And as my college buddy noted -- the kids aren't as interested anymore. There are less pipers than there used to be. Less bands.

And this bullshit of the piping world putting up with ever-changing pitches and ZERO STANDARDS is not helping it any. There has GOT to be a way to make reeds and pipes that not only sound good, but are plug and play, and an instrument that's consistent enough in long-lasting playability that when you dish out $2500 for a set of pipes or $250 for a chanter this year, it won't be little more than a cool looking closet piece, wall-hanging, or doorstop in 20 years.

I've yet to hear a drummer tell me "you can't get heads for that set of drums anymore", or "that guitar is hard to get strings for", or "sometimes you have to take a hammer and vice to the mouthpiece of that trumpet" to get the instruments to play.

Trust me, even if pipes were plug-and-play, the music would still be good, the competitions would still be good, and the pipes would still take some time to learn, to play well. Most instruments take some time to learn, and each instrument has its particular care and maintenance issues -- the pipes are not different in that regard.

But there would probably be a lot more people interested in playing if the instrument itself wasn't so cantankerous to get playable, and sounding good.

And if pipes were more plug-and-play, it would be one less reason to try to hunt down a local piping expert to help you get that POS reed you bought to stop chirping, or get that chanter to reed more easily.

It's not 1980 anymore. In my city there used to be several Scottish shops, and at least two bagpipe repair and sales shops. Not anymore. Right now, the total is zero.

We're in a new age, where pipers are fewer and farther between, everything is bought via the internet (including pipe lessons) from retailers that may be ten states away, and the master piper with lots of hands-on experience is two states away instead of 15 miles away. For piping to keep from declining into oblivion the instrument has GOT to become more easy to play, maintain, and fix.

And that may depend on more and more pipers -- and pipe bands -- demanding more consistency and actual pitch standards in the instruments that are sold -- including chanters and reeds. 

It would be a start.

GOING HOME: A BAGPIPE JOURNEY -- my book

I actually wrote a fiction book on piping, back in 2016. I think it sold a handful of copies. It's an eBook, on Amazon, and budget priced. I used a pen name that I don't use anymore. I thought James Fenamore Blake would be a cool name -- sort of a take on William Blake and James Fenimore Cooper. The name, however, didn't exactly take off.

I based the book roughly on my own piping journey, and renewed enthusiasm for playing and listening to pipe music. In 2016 I'd just got my synthetic chanter reeds and playing was a joy again. I was enthused about playing again. I was learning new tunes, and rediscovered a bunch of old ones I'd forgotten. I was rediscovering my love for the instrument.

I also had recently lost a cousin who had a background in the drugs trade (he'd long cleaned up, but he died a year before my book was published). "Jack", in the book, is roughly based on him, and also based partly on my late stepfather. The rest was just pure fiction. The woman in the book was based on a real one I had a thing for, a blonde, Canadian piper. She never knew it, though....

Back in 2016, online publishing and independent publishing were still relatively new things, and the eBook market was still growing by leaps and bounds. There were still a lot of people, like myself -- and my mother also (I helped her write a book and publish it on Amazon) -- who thought that once you published a good fiction book online that you would sell a fair amount of books and perhaps make a bit of money. None of us understood the massive competition one has with online content.

I didn't sell a lot of books with Going Home, but I'm still glad I wrote it and published it.

Here is a link to the book.:

https://www.amazon.com/GOING-HOME-James-Fenamore-Blake-ebook/dp/B01MZ2GQ0C

The book rated four stars. I guess somebody liked it.

Peace.

C.C., October 19th, 2025.