to the metal voice. Yes, once again, the man, David Elveson. What is going on, Dave? Man, it's all going on. Having a good time. Tons of stuff going on. All right. That's, that's what we're going to ask you. It seems like, man, there's, how many bands now that have the Ellison brand on it? I don't know, five or six that I know of. Well, the good news is, the good news, Dave, it's October the 7th. It was released, I guess, two, three weeks ago, vacation in the underworld, right? On rat, rat pack records. And I got to say, before I put it on, I was saying, oh, here comes again, another project. Here we go again. But I was really seriously blown away how good it was. And I'm sure you're getting a lot of feedback like that. Yeah, it seems to be that. And I think we felt that way before it left, you know, and meeting before it left the studio, before it left our hands, and went out into the public to hear it. I think it's a really good record. And, you know, honestly, it's, we've been sitting on it for about a year, waiting for it to come out. You know, we finished it last year, by the time we contacted Joe, got the deal in place, which is pretty easy, that part of it.  You know, so, you know, that's just the reality of it. And, you know, the way RADPAC did it, they wanted to, you know, and they advertised a bundle, they wanted the bundle to ship all at once, not just the pieces of it. So I respected that for them as a fan. That's how I would like it, you know. So, you know, and look, everything that I'm doing, I'm trying to make sure that it's quality work. You know, I mean, I think your last year, 21 started with the Lucid. And I think that was a, you know, a strong record, you know, really good quality, great material throughout. I tipped my hand a little bit to show everybody what we're up to with DIATH. Now that's signed to Napalm Records. So again, same thing, that's sort of bubbling away in the background.  And I think, you know, the whole idea of those four shows was to prop that up, show the world what it is. I think people were excited, interested, inquisitive. Now they know. So there's more to come with that. And then, you know, the Ellison Soto record, which, you know, again, is very near and dear to me as a creative work and something that I'm super proud of. And that's why we went to Italy about a month ago. And we did the three shows because Jeff had caught him in a moment before he got busy in Trans-Siberian Orchestra World and everything that he's got coming up here. And I was like, Hey, you know, if we can't do a gig in our own zip code, we'll go halfway around the world and see how that works. So, you know, and that's what we do, bad musicians make music. So, you know, and honestly, guys, I don't look at any of these things as projects, you know, I don't, I'm not just like, Yeah, sure, put a bullet in the gun that's fired. All right, another bullet, another gun. You know, I don't I don't do any of this stuff like this. You know, I, when I get in the room with someone or, you know, in this case, the virtual room, because it was during quarantine that we did this record, you know, this, this record is as important as anything I've ever done. And once it comes out, you see how it's received schedules provided if we can go do more with it. Or if we want to go do another one, another make another record one day. You know, there's a lot of variables that go in into that. You know, we're not 18 fresh out of high school, ready to take on the world, we're going to dedicate our lives to this because, you know, it's us against the world. And, you know, we're at a different point in our lives. And so to make music is just as much of a passion for all of us. There's just other logistics and things that come into play. And that's the reality of it. So to me, every one of these is its own standalone thing. And the successes and the Republic response kind of determines the future of where they go from here.  Yeah, is it a tire? What is it? Is it a fish? Is it a tire? Yeah, exactly. What is it? It's a tire iron. Oh, what the hell, you know.    So it's like, if I want to take another car out for a drive around the block, I'm entitled to it. You know what I mean? And I'm not just doing it because I'm bored and I'm not just doing it just to say the hell with it. I'm, you know, again, I'm passionate about these things. Do you miss that aspect though? Do you miss it though?  Me and Mike Portnoy talk about that, the big gig fix, right? Having the big gig and he got the twisted sister gig, you know, which kind of fell in his lap.  You know, it's funny for me, because I had some people, a couple of things have come my way and people go, Oh man, you'll be back on the big stages, you'll be playing the big gig, it's like, but since when was that the benchmark, right? The benchmark is, do you like what you're doing? Are you invested in it?  I've done it and I probably will do it again. You know, I'm not opposed to that at all. I tend to be a guy. I guess it's just kind of maybe my more entrepreneurial mindset. I've never, I really haven't been much the side guy, like I play bass for money. You know, that's just not, it just hasn't been how it's come to me in my lifetime.  My dad was very entrepreneurial, farming is very entrepreneurial. It has seasons just like the music business does. So I think to me, maybe I sort of applied that same thing to music is I'd rather live in a house that I built, you know, than living in a house someone else built, because I know where the bathroom is. I know where the bedroom is. You know, I know where the coffee maker is. You know, I built the house and it's kind of done to my specs. And I'm like that with bands, you know, that I like building houses with my friends, so to speak, the musical fortress that we're putting together. Look, some of them work, some of them don't, you know, some of them could have worked. That's the fishing analogy that Alan said. Again, we're making music, man. I mean, it's, is it good or not? Do people like it or not? I mean, it really, and just as importantly, do I like it? Do I enjoy doing it?  Like what is this my future?  Maybe I'm been a fan of it. And then once I'm in the room, I go, Oh my God, I didn't sign up for this at all. Like what the hell, how do I get out of this? You know, and that's no different than any buddy taking a job at any fricking accounting firm or a law firm. That's what I was just about to say.  No, just kidding. Yeah, please. Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. Yeah.  I always go back to the word play music. So it should be fun play music. But when music becomes a, you know, a job, a business, an industry, well, you got to approach it like that as well. So it's always finding this balance of going, that's a great example of that, right? Like, you know, he's got WET, he's got trying to Siberian, he's got a solo career. So, you know, yeah, okay, there's nothing stopping you guys from not coming back and revisiting this, although you might go and do other things in the meantime, right? 100%. I mean, look, Andy, my guitar player, you know, with the group, we have a whole album already written. You know what I mean? It's like, we just, you know, when I was in Europe, we've already been sentenced to do each other. We got together at his place and down in Verona went through, you know, it's funny with the Italians, the picture of the hotel is like, okay, first we eat. Like, all right, so we go eat. You know, in America, it's like, we must start now, right? Because we're very disciplined and regimented and everything's about productivity because it's the American way, right? You get over Italy, it's like, ah, let's eat. All right, we have some coffee. Now let's go get some desserts. Oh, these beautiful rolls with this, you know, so I'm like, God, now I'm stuffed. And it's like, Andy, are we going to go to the studio? Yes, we will get there soon, you know, and then we get there. And the funny thing is, by the time we got to the studio, we basically went through six songs in like an hour and a half. I'm like, maybe there is something to the Italian way, you know what I mean? You make music last and you make it quicker and better. I don't know, maybe this is the right way to do it. So, I have fun working in these other cultures outside of America. You know, Dieth is based in, you know, in Europe. Our singer, Galerme, he's Brazilian, lives in Portugal. We base the band out of Poland. And I love working, you know, with these different cultural attitudes and mindsets. Obviously, I'm born and raised American. Bands I've been in have been American. And I got a little taste of it when I worked with Max Cavallera, you know, because he being Brazilian, you know, that there's, sometimes there's different flows and tempos to these things that I appreciate when you get into different situations, excuse me, different situations to work with different people like that. I just want to know what the writing process, you know, we're talking Elyson, Soto, Vacation and Underworld. How did, you know, how did the writing come about? And your involvement in the writing? Yeah, no, for sure. Well, so Andy Martin-Jelly, you know, I brought him in when I was over in Europe doing some bass story, some solo shows that I was doing, probably 2018. And he put the band together for me to just kind of walk in and plug and play. And that basically essentially is this band that would then play on the Elyson Sleeping Giants record on some stuff played on, and then we toured that a bit in 2019. And then 2020, we did the Elyson No Cover record. And so this band, you know, very much was the kind of a house band for that. And so Andy, in a large way, became really my musical director. You know, I could sort of send things to him, send ideas to him. He could sort of, he's got the patience to sit at, you know, it's funny, over here in America, we were largely Pro Tools dominant. Over there, it's Cubase. It's a different platform, but it's all, you know, digital audio workstation. Yeah. So Cubase is very dominant over there in Europe. And so he just throws everything in Cubase and he kind of organizes it, keeps track of my ideas and kind of outlines things. And I always invite him to collaborate.  So I like that. And so, you know, as we rolled into 2021, we were starting to write this material that would become vacationing underworld. And he encouraged me to reach out to Jeff for the vocals and to, you know, have a new collaboration with somebody. And by the time we, you know, Andy and I were essentially sending our stuff to Jeff first, he was kind of just singing our stuff on it. And he said, he goes, you know, look, I really don't want to, I said, this is going so well that I, he said, I'd rather this be more of a collaborative idea than sort of you sort of hiring me to sing. I said, great, it's music to my ears because I think, I think we'll get more done and it'll be more of our record if it's not just sort of me paying a singer, you know. So I'm glad he had that kind of all for one one for all mindset with it. And and we just, you know, we joked about we love on the back like the Van Halen records, all songs written by Van Halen, you know, like it's we're all in, right. And and that that was the mindset. So then Jeff, you know, really started to collaborate more on the I mean, certainly he was always there with vocal melody stuff, but even on lyrical and just saying, you know, Jeff, I want to hear your, I want you to be part of the story, not just me and Andy writing lyrics. So that that really turned the corner and it became our record. And are you guys going to tour? I mean, is this a tourable record? It's certainly tourable. That's why we started in Italy, because the band, our band essentially that recorded this is in Italy. So it's the real band, you know. But knowing Jeff's got TSO coming up and and I, you know, my schedule is a little bit more flexible. I've got things than I'm doing, but I could find little windows in there. You know, the realities of touring are very different, you know, America. It's a very different world to tour in.  And, you know, it's you're going to be first of three, are you willing to sort of accept that what that is? Obviously playing the large crowds and that kind of cool thing. And I'm just using them as an example. It was never a tour that was that we discussed, but using it as an example to go out with friends or, you know, do you go out on your own and play a little 500 seat rooms on your own and kind of be your own, you know, kind of start from scratch. So, you know, those are kind of the realities of this.   So to me, I love doing it. It's just a matter of, you know, kind of finding this moment in the schedule to do it. So we'll see what 2023 has in store. And like I said, you know, Andy and I are always working on new material and, you know, getting some things kind of teed up.  So that's kind of the, you know, the thumbs up to say maybe we should maybe we should swing for another one. So we'll see what how it turns in the new year. I would definitely hope there'd be a second. I mean, what I like about this sound, you know, you listen to stuff like vacation in the underworld, which is very, very heavy. And then you got something like out of the blue, which is literally out of the blue. I mean, something that really stands out on the album. Where does this come from? Well, then the reason and you're thinking, wait a second, now we're getting into like super melodic metal ish sound, right? It's really it's got a and then there's thrash, right, right at the end. So yeah, thrash or some bass like rise to rise to win, right? That's like some serious bass tuning that there's some bass line there. Yeah, it's it. I kind of thought maybe Jeff Scott soda would have been a perfect fit for this, you know, new group you have, you know, the kings of thrash, he seems to fit well in the thrash mold, too. Well, he does it. It's funny with him that, you know, as we were touring Italy, he said, he goes, you know, I'm kind of the most unmetal metal guy there is, as he's referring to Queen and Sam Cook and Motown and, which, you know, was great for me to, you know, be working with a singer who's so known to us rockers and metalheads as his metal guy.  He's done so much other stuff that has not been metal.  And like Andy, that's why Andy hit me.     Yet in his mind, I don't think he views it like that.  So to me, I'm kind of proud that we kind of put him, placed him back as the crown jewel in the middle of our genre for us. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with all that, man. Whatever happened to a KK's priest?  I just said him an email because it's his birthday today. So happy birthday, KK. I don't know what this is coming out, but you know, KK's steel mill, right? There was you were there, right? You're playing along with them. And then suddenly it had momentum. He comes out with an album. Did you ever get that call saying, Hey, Dave, you know, we need a bassist here? Or if you have nothing else to do. Well, it's funny, you know, KK and I were friends on the painkiller rest in peace tour back in 1990. That was where we connected. Of course, I'm a huge fan of him.  So and I just love the guy. We got along well. And so it's funny because I hit him. It was 2019. I was coming through on the Ellison solo tour and we're promoting the More Life with Death book. And I just we've been talking on the phone and emailing and I hit him. I said, dude, can I do a signing at your venue? And he said, sure. And he said, would you want to join me? Because his book had come out not maybe in the same year, I think, right? And I said, hey, you want to come up and jam a tune? Like you want to play live enough for midnight or something? And it just very, it goes right. Well, I'll see, you know, I'll consider it, you know. And and then next thing, you know, I have a friend here in Phoenix that was working with KK on some building project stuff. And that's kind of how we got reconnected. And his name is Todd. And he goes, man, he goes, come on, we got to make this happen.   And we do a phone call, me and Ken and Ripper and Todd. And I think Ripper brought up, he goes, dude, why don't we get Les Binks to play drums? I'm like, dude, Les Binks, are you kidding me? Is he still around?  He does great. I'm like, come on.   Now, this is going to be the best, you know. And as it turns out, I guess Les and Ken had been friends, but they had not played together since the Unleashed in the East album. And I got the backstory from Les, we were having a curry down the street from the steel mill. And he told me the whole story about how he was this Sideman musician and him and Simon Phillips were kind of the guys in London getting most of the calls. Simon had played on, sadly, as a destiny. They're sin after sin, right? So Les is in the band, they did staying class, they're doing a hellment for leather tour, which is the Unleashed in the East live album. And I guess they walked in and saw a remote truck and microphones and, you know, like, well, calls management says, hey, new album, I got to get paid more. You know, it turned into one of these things. And I can talk about it in his book, that's where they had the falling out over it. And it wasn't really so much the band, I think it was kind of more management. And that was the end. He played on the record. And, you know, that was, that was the part of the plays. We interviewed him about a year ago and he told us the story. Yes, you know. Yeah, he told the story. Yeah.    So I'm just sitting here getting this history and, and I'm just going, what a, what a moment that between, you know, me, just knucklehead wanting to do a book signing. Suddenly we were putting the band back together and we're getting ready to go on stage the next night. And I'm just, we're in the room and we do a little huddle and kind of, you know, the dude huddle before we go on stage and football huddle. I'm just going, man, this is the first time Ken and Les have played together since Unleashed in East, my favorite album ever, right? And, and it's happening tonight because of this, we're all bringing it back together. And it was just such a great moment of reconnecting friends, musicians, you know, I'm just the fan in the room, rippers there. We know rippers story of course, the priest and, and, and it's just, it was just magic, man. I mean, it was literally fricking capturing lightning in a bottle, man. I mean, it was just unbelievable at the moment. So obviously we wanted it, if you wanted it to keep happening, you know. Yeah, yeah.  Of course.  I literally ran upstairs, changed the t-shirt, did the huddle, went right back down stage and then played it all night and tuned his great songs. I mean, a little, I played two concerts that night, my Ellison solo, band, and then, then with, with KK and the guys. And, and as we came off stage, we walked upstairs and, and, you know, I was going, God, I said to Kenny, go, I would pack your suitcase, dude. I think there's going to be calls for this. I think we're going to get more of this. And then, as I continued through South America, my solo tour, man, I mean, every city I landed in, they were like, welcome to Peru, David. When can we book you and KK? I mean, just like, it was like, when? Photos ringing in Japan. And so, and, and, you know, I think, I think I would, I was so happy. I would assume like you didn't take that gig when you did the album and because of Megadeth, right? Now that you're free of that commitment. Sure. Yeah. Well, and KK knew that KK is like, look, David's busy in Megadeth, and I said, listen, well, yeah, of course we've, we've got stuff going, of course.  You know, that was not, that gig was not formed to create KK's priest. KK's priest formed out of that once, once, I think, you know, and I'm proud to have been a brother and a friend to KK to go, come on, dude, you're not done.    You know, and I think he wants to just see him on stage. He was just lit up. I was like, yeah, man, that's, that's my rock star right there, you know, and, and that's why we'll forever be friends, you know, just from that alone is just knowing that, you know, as that's what we do. We get on stage, we rock and people are happy. The fans are stoked.  I think you needed to do that. He needed a record that said, hey, you know, I'm not done. I'm Judas Priest too. As we all know that, but I think for him, he needed to just state that. And, and so good for him. He did it and it's cool and there'll probably be more.  The answer, of course, I'll play with KK anytime. I love the guy, you know, and I love playing with him anytime we can. I just finished the Rob Halford second book, Biblical, and he was saying how that album cover for Unleashed East, they all just went down to local theater, set up the lights. That's why there's no drums in there. Because they just forgot to take pictures. Because less quit before, I don't even know what we're supposed to say anything. Yeah, no, he did. He walked away. He quit. Yeah. Yeah.  And it was sad, you know, it was bummer. Spoiler alert, Dave, Rob reveals everything about recording that album in his new book. Spoiler alert. All these other biographies, I mean, as a fan, I do. But, you know, like some people say, I live it. I don't need to read about it. Well, you know, when I read them, and I read all, in fact, I just finished Eddie Van Halen Eruption, the one that Brad Tolinsky and Chris Gill wrote. And Brad gave me a copy of it at NAMM last year. And I mean, I fricking savored every word of that.  So there they are. And I mean, I didn't want the book to end. I was just literally savoring every word of it. And, you know, what I realized is, on some level, we're all in the same band. We've all been in the same band, the dynamics of the personalities, the crash and burn, the drugs, the this, the that, the, you know, the money, the whatever the story is, on some level, we're all in the same band. And it's kind of the same personality types that make up these groups.   And so we call each other to work on stuff. So when I read these books from, you know, Rob is a friend, a neighbor lives here, at least part time in Arizona, in Phoenix. So, and, you know, it's so when you read these books, you're just kind of like, oh my God, they did that too.  Oh my God, I can't believe. Then the drummer did this.  It's just like, it's just, we live a parallel universe in most of our bands. Is the Kings of Thrash, you know, how serious is that band? I mean, Chris Poland, I guess, kind of Chris Poland, well, Jeff Young, especially, right? How serious are you guys to make, I guess you're writing music now, right? You're going to record a record? Is that it? Yeah. I mean, actually, we're mixing the tracks that we recorded at the whiskey. I got the shirt even too, well, but no, but we, our last show that we did, you know, the idea was to just do four shows, which started out of San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas and the whiskey in LA. And it really built to a crescendo because people were excited. They wanted to see what it was and then now they know. And so we recorded and filmed the whiskey show and there's a ton of great fan footage out there. So we're mixing that and editing that and considering what the next step is with that. At the same time, Jeff and I have written and demoed up four songs. And we did that earlier this year, actually. So we've got both existing content and new songs that that we have.  You know, this guy's incredible. And I hit the workload that he did, man. I mean, he was learning guitar parts from freaking three guitar players, you know, and, and his, his skill level is incredible, of course. And, you know, I just invited Chris and it's, you know, funny thing when I had the idea to do something like this, which was about a year ago after I appeared at the Chiller autograph, Chiller Theater Autograph Show October 21. And I always knew the killing is my business record needed to be played live. And I presented it when I was in the band. It kind of got half saluted. And then it sort of got dismissed.   And so to me, that was kind of like a life mission. And the other record is so far so good. So what, because those two, you know, they especially so far kind of fell between P cells and rest in peace, which are the obviously big celebrated records. So I actually called Chris, I said, dude, we should run out and play killing in P cells. And we had a good laugh. And he called me back an hour later, he goes, Oh my God, I don't think I have the energy to do it.  I've got an home record. I got this. I said, listen, we'll see how it comes. If it ever swings our way, we'll do it. So as Jeff and I got reconnected through the Nick Mensa documentary back in January. And then went to the studio and started writing, put these tracks down. Then in May, got the call to appear at the ultimate jam night, but distribute to the big four that they did. He and I got on stage and played. What do we play? Darkest Hour, Mary Jane and P cells, I think. That's really what confirmed my idea last year that yeah, this needs to happen. And Jeff was so excited because, you know, he got he got he got a raw deal, man. You know what I mean? He did a lot. He did a lot. Like I've watched interviews with Jeff and we've Chris Polans has been on this show and he's kind of given his explanation of, you know, how it all went down. But what were your recollections of Jeff Young in and out of the band? So he came in brought in by Jay Reynolds, who was my dear friend. And I had recommended him to, you know, as the guitar player for the band, because we were close and we were hanging and me and Dave and we all got along. But we realized pretty quickly that this was a gig of a of a nature that Jay was not. That's not where his skill set lies, right? He's just a different kind of guitar player and it became pretty apparent as we got into it. So he knew Jeff and he called Jeff for assistance. Well, eventually we just called Jay or Jeff to come in and lay down. What initially was these four solos for was it Mary Jane, Dark Stour, Liar, and Hook and Mouth? Well, now that I've been part of this Kings of Thrash process and and now see how much work Jeff did. I mean, he played he played guitar and I think pretty much every song as well as all the acoustic guitar work you hear on the record, he did all that. He did an incredible amount of work and I told him, I said, dude, I gotta be honest with you, dude, I kind of I did not know how much work you did. I thought you came in and just sort of blew four solos and that was it. I think at the time, I don't know, the drug use maybe this seems like time flies a lot faster, right? Well, and plus the record was moving along and we're on a schedule like this. We got to get this thing done. I mean Penelope Spirits is in there filming Dark Stour. It's part of a documentary. There's a film coming out. There's a tour coming up. We got our deadline with Capitol Records.  We got to get to work. And Jeff's, I mean, Jeff's skill was great. You know, he was not on drugs as rest of us were and he worked very efficiently. He was very aware. And Jeff was not a drug.  He was not a druggy. And it just came to pass that, you know, that lineup wound down. I mean, look, I was the first guy to go to rehab back in back. We played Donington in 88. And he left, from my understanding is because he was a druggy, right? Because he didn't want to be around that environment, at least my understanding. Yeah, it was pretty toxic. I mean, it was, it was, it was dark and and honestly, I don't remember who left, fired, whatever. And it doesn't even matter. Who cares? It doesn't matter, you know, that, that whole era had to end, right? The drugs, the dope, just the MO of all of it. And it got rebooted and reconfigured by mid 1989, when our, when Ron the feet came in to manage us, we brought Nick Menza in. And that was the reset, you know, that eventually became Rust in peace. And, you know, then the rest is history. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm really happy that you reunited with Jeff Young because he is a huge talent. That's what I'm trying to say. He's an incredible talent. And you know what he, look, first of all, he's doing the work, you know, he's not phoning this in, he's not just showing up saying, Hey man, I deserve, he's not any of that.  He's so into the process. You know, he's, he's all about analog. He's like, dude, we're analog creatures. That's why digital music sucks. It's why it doesn't resonate with people because we're analog, you know, and I mean, he's like way deep into just kind of the mechanics of music, you know, and, and he spares no time or expense getting the best quality results.   I knew parts of songs in a way that it's, I would fine tune details of riffs and stuff. And I mean, he was, he whipped everybody into shape and ran a tight ship and got that thing tightened up and sounding as good as it does. So, you know, he's, he's deserving of all the credit. And we were joking with you earlier about all the bands and, and you know, I'm listening to this album and I come across on YouTube a video of a cover with you and, and, and Jeff with our good friend, Rick Hughes, doing a cover riots sort of meticulous. I mean, what's up with that? So funny. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. And we got introduced to sword Rick Hughes's band back on the P cell store. We had a Canadian sound man will introduce us to him. So we'd listen to that song stoned again all the time. That was, it was like the theme song of the P cell store. And I think so. Yeah.  It's such a great record. So then became friends with Rick in, in recent years. And, and as we were recording and writing the Alison Soto records, I came up with the idea. I love riot. I love that song. I said, why don't we do this? I think it's a good fit for us. We did it. I said, let me call Rick kind of do a duet.  So we did. Yeah. Yeah. So we did. And, and we pushed it out. And, and like Jeff said, he goes, I think this is a good way to kind of tip our hands that we're working on something. And again, people seem to really like it. And it was a cool song. And, you know, that just that it kind of kind of tip the handle. Like, this is pretty cool. And there's probably more where this comes from. Well, stay tuned, Dave, because we're going to meet with Rick and the whole band. And they're coming with their third album after X amount of years. And we're going to be interviewing them soon enough on the show. And excited to hear their third album, though. Totally. Dude, those guys are quality work, man. They look great. They sound great. They've taken care of themselves, you know, and in fact, actually, you know, they'd be probably the best band to play with. You know what, actually, I was going to say that you guys together as a sort of package. Yeah. Wow. Would that be phenomenal? Because you're like, you're like metalized.  The second one where maybe it was even hard to find back in the day. What makes that first album so special? Because it is like a cult classic. You're referring to metalized, right? Yeah. It had a great sound. It's funny. It sounded big, almost like a hair metal record, right? And Rick, the way he's saying, had kind of this malice, wasp. It was big. It had a big sound to it, right? And I referenced those singers because they had big vocal sounds, right? And the production quality was really good. I mean, you Canadians, let's face it, I'll just kind of, as a broad stroke, the quality of what you do is always a cut above in my opinion, you know? It really is. The quality of the recordings. I mean, everything from Rush to Loverboy to April Wine, more recently, Nickelback. I mean, the quality of stuff is at this point, you know? And Nickelback has made great records.  I'm not down with anybody who makes fun of them.  Those guys, SilverSideUp was a great record. I loved it. I thought it was a super cool album. Say what you will about the rest of it. But, you know, they're quality product, you know what I mean? So, but again, I was a Big April Wine fan. Harder, faster. The one before that with Roller and all that stuff. I mean, I love that. First glance. Yeah. You're talking about my top four now. It was used to be Iron Maiden, April Wine, Van Halen. I can't forget. Triumph. Triumph. And triumph, you know? I mean, exactly. Like, and of course, look, for me, it all started with Randy Bachman with not Brad Joe Bachman, turn it over. I mean, that's the downbeat for me. We wouldn't even be having this conversation if it weren't for your fellow Canadian Randy. So, which is, you know, which is, which is great. So, and his son Tal, you know, it's when he and Tal became buddies and I love that first record that, or I guess that one record that he did. But the song, She's So High, super, super great record. Okay. Back to sword. Yes. That's right. That's what we started. So, sword, sword three is coming out. I'm going to plug sword, sword three. You've heard sword three. I'm sure you've heard it. Please plug it. Please, by all means. Yeah. It's coming out and we've heard it. I know Alan's heard it. We're going to go meet Rick and the boys in Montreal at their jam room this weekend. We're going to go do a whole big metal voice plug. The original band. The original band, right? I mean, yeah. Well, please tell them hello. And by the way, let's not skip Exciter since it's on your t-shirt because that was the killing of my business tour was Exciter on God. What was the record? It was Long Live the Loud or? No, no. It was Before Long Live the Loud. It was a violence. Sorry. Heavy Metal Maniacs. Was it or violence and force? Heavy Metal Maniacs was the first one. Yeah. Yeah. This was 1985. So I think it might have been violence and force. Yeah. Yeah. Violence and force. Yeah. I just remember they had that great song they'd play every night, Pouting Metal.  Off the set. I've got, I'd literally, no matter how drunk I was after the killing is my business show, I'd go outside and I'd always watch them and play Pouting Metal, man. It was such a great, great. And they were, you know, look, they were, they were the headliners and, you know, they were, they were a step or two above Megadeth and they kind of showed us the ropes a little bit. It was, it was a great tour. And this being the metal voice, we have, of course, we have to mention like we try to get in every show Anvil. That's right. Love Anvil. Just because you have to. Right. Love Anvil. It's in our contracts. It's in our contracts. Lips is great. The band's great. What I want to say, I just forgot my train of thought. We're talking about swords so much. I couldn't remember. I know. Okay. Let me switch to Exciter. So that's right. Kings of Thrash. Lost my train of thought. Well, I'll say this, I'll say this, you know, so the two guitar players, and really three because Chaz, our singer, is a fantastic guitar player.  He is a member and he's performing whenever we can have him. And I say that because he does have a day job at home. He's got his family and he was very clear. He just said, look, to go out and kill it for six months on the road, I'm not going to be able to do it. I've got some other responsibilities. But I love this. I think it's super fun.  He's been very happy with home and doing that. You know, as we all know, he's really a terrific fusion guitar player. And his fusion playing inside of a metal context, like I'm killing and P cells is what really made him shine, made the group shine, right? And I tell you what, man, when you're even at the sound check or at the shows, man, when Chris plugs in, he plays one note and all heads turn, you go, what, who is that? I mean, he still hasn't man. I mean, he's, Chris is one of the greats in the level of Eddie and Jeff Beck and fucking, I mean, the greats, you know, Randy Rhodes, he's, he's that guy, one note.  And it, and it really, it, it just is a really great chemistry. You know, at the metal Hall of Fame, when Chris Pollan played alongside with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, you know, you just hear, he's at that level. He is. He is at that level. And like you're, he's, and we're talking about like just a few years ago now, he is, that's how good he is. And people need to know more about that. Right. I think he's gotten better over the years. And, and I don't know what it is. Look, he's obviously taken care of himself. He's healthy. But his touch on the guitar, there is something about the way he touches the instrument. And, and I've worked with other great artists like this myself, but if there is something about, it's almost like the person fades back and some entity channels through them and the notes come out. I mean, it is such a blessing to be, to stand next to that and watch that happen because it's truly magic, man. And it's beyond human. You know what he said on the metal voice? He goes, what a great line he goes, I was busting tables and, you know, while peace sells was out there and so popular, but I was still busting tables at Denny's. And it's kind of like, it shows you that no matter how much success you have, you know, you just couldn't, you know, get over that hump of quitting the day job kind of thing, right? Because it's tough, the music industry. That's what, that's what the message is.  And he always joked, he goes, here I am playing bass for the circle jerks traveling in a van and being more money than being on Capitol Records and mega depth. That's the point. There you go. That's it. The point, right. And so Chris has had a very diverse career.  I mean, man, that guy, he would pick up a bass, any bass in the room and, and again, Jaco pastores would just channel through this guy. You're like, what is with this guy, man? I mean, he has just plugged into a freaking aura outside of our universe. It's incredible. All right. I think, is there anything else you want to plug while we're at it? I mean, have you heard the new mega death album? Like, what are your thoughts? Of course, I played on it. I played on it. Did it miss that, that Ellison touch? You know, I heard bits and pieces of it as it was being put together. Obviously, you know, vocals and lyrics and things like that. You know, I do not own a copy of the new one, nor will I. And, you know, honestly, once I was let go, I moved on and I didn't look back. I, you know, again, I'd already performed on the record. I was pretty upset. I was pretty upset. Well, I think a lot of people were, you know, and, you know, but for me, it's like, all right, well, move on. I've been here before.   This time, you know, I was prepared for it, you know, and the transition, I mean, look, we didn't work very much in the last five years. I was in the band anyway, you know, that out and took almost five years to get it together and get it out.  I'd been doing Ella's Solar Records, playing on other records that worked with Al Jordan's industry, I wrote books. So my creative thing was really up and running in motion. So it's kind of like, well, one gig went away. Oh, well, next move on, you know, and I didn't, you know, didn't, I don't have time to sit around and get all buttered about it.  And, you know, I think what we're doing with Kings of Thrash is, you know, we're honoring the legacy in a way I'm kind of trying to keep my arms around the legacy and keep it kind of pulled together because it's all of ours to share. It belongs to everybody. It's not just anyone person's legacy. We were all there. We all created it. We're all part of it. And, and you can hear it, especially with Kings of Thrash, you go, my God, there it is. Like, that's the sound. And especially to bring in a couple of new guys like Fred Aiken on drums and chas and guitars, you know, they're young. They appreciate it. They support it.  I listen to them. I hear what the fans are asking for, you know, and, and I, and I, I tried to get a bunch of those songs in the set for the last five years and it just didn't happen. And I'm like, well, I know the fans want to hear these songs, you know, fucking, I'll go out and play them with my friends, you know, and we'll have a great time doing it and we'll have fun and we'll make fans happy. And at the end of the night, that's the ultimate high five. Well, I think the idea of sword and David Ellison or Kings of Thrash or Ellison and Soto, I think that's the package. That, my friend, is the package. Your mission, my friend, is to put that together at the rehearsal. So this weekend, I'm going to tell, we're going to talk to Rick. We're going to get him on the horn. It's going to get you on the horn. And I think something magic. Make it happen. Dude, you're, you're, you're the, you're the, you're the man maker. Let's do it. Yeah. The dreamer. Alan, we're dreams. The dreams are made of. Oh, actually, I wanted to ask you this since we have you. What do you remember from the time of the early stage of Megadeth when John from Agent Steel was in the band? Do you remember that, that period? And then of course, Juan Garcia, who's now in body count in a band called Abattoir, who he took up north with us in San Francisco when we debuted the band. Uh, yeah, John, John was, you know, we were trying to find singers. So 1983, we were looking for guys and the other guitar player, you know, we had played a little bit with Jim from Dark Angel. Once Carrie King came in, that kind of sealed that. Carrie really understood the music, you know, he felt it. He knew it. And then, you know, I remember it was New Year's Eve. We were downtowners. I drive by it now all the time on the I-5. It's called the Brewery. It's, if you're driving south on this side is the Brewery. On that side is General Hospital. Like, you know, the TV show like L.A. County Hospital. It's the Brewery in the County Hospital. And we used to rehearse in there. There was a guy, Curly Joe, he was in a band on Scotty Brothers Records. He had this rehearsal place. It's where we rehearsed. We'd wrote a lot of, a lot of tunes there. And we were waiting for yet another singer to show up. And he flaked out. And I remember Dave took a sheet of music and he taped it up to like the mic stand or something. I think there's a picture of us, actually, if he was singing, right? And it was like chosen ones or something, right? And he sang and we ripped through the tune and, you know, he almost passed out because he was trying to breathe and sing and do this whole sort of gymnastic thing that you would do playing that, singing that.    You're crazy, right?  I said, you're writing the stuff. I said, no one's going to understand this, because I watched Dave try to explain it to other singers.  And it's like, man, you're just, you're not going to get this at all. This is, this is not a pure alley. And so, you know, for Dave to sing his own story and to tell his own story and sing his own words, it was the only way forward once, once he sang it was obvious, at least to me. And so, you know, he, he, he bit the bullet in the singer. And, you know, and I learned a lot from that because, you know, the truth of it is, is one thing I learned from Dave singing is it doesn't matter about the vocal gymnastics and how wonderful of a singer you are, it's about can you convey the story and can you deliver it with conviction. And that is one thing Dave could always do, you know. So, you know, now as I work with other singers to be it, be amazing, Jeff Scott Soto, Vin from Sponge and Lucid.  They're kind of like voice actors, you know, it's, it's, they really deliver the goods. All right. Coming at you like a bullet, we've got Ellison Soto vacation in the underworld. I highly recommend checking it out. It's a great album and we're anxious to see a second one somewhere down the road. That's for sure. And we should say the day before tomorrow, right when you thought it was going metal, it kind of went a little proggy there with the violins and the vocalists and it's just going off in all directions, but it's still maintaining that metal sort of root. It is. And you know, thank you for mentioning that song. That's one that's kind of near and dear to me. We do our homework here, David. We do our homework. I know. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. We don't just say we listen to it a few minutes.  That's right. And we're in our fifties. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Well, and it's funny because with that song is that I even now I listen back to it because I just kind of listened to the record as a fan now, myself. I just put it on and go, all right, do I still like it? And I do. And that's a track that I always get. I'm kind of astounded at how developed the arrangement is and all of the layering of the instrumentation. And yeah, I hit up my friend Giada who sings with a great power metal band called Frozen Crown over in Northern Italy. And because it just needed, it needed the male-female counterpart. Kind of like a Broadway thing. It's sort of a story. They need almost like an opera. It needs to be told through the story of the male-female vocal things. So yeah, it was nice to just take all the limits off. Because sometimes you need a lot of the thrash record and it can only be this and it's got a sound. It's got to be within this box. This record was not any box at all. And I think that's why it came out so well. Like I saw the name Hercules and I go, wait a second. Are these guys going all sabbaton on us here? But it's just sort of like a bass, sort of like, it's a little instrumental, right? It is. It's just a little instrumental. In fact, I was just playing it in the studio. I was recording bass to one of these songs. I forgot which one. And I just started playing it. And I, John Acolino from Icon, who you guys probably are aware of, he has a killer studio here in town. So I record there all the time. And I said, John, give me a click track. Right there.  I just want to record this. And it was just an idea. And I didn't know what to do with it. I sent it to Andy and then he added all the guitar swells and these things, a little keyboard thing on it. And I'm done. Andy's a great guitarist too. I got to say, right, Alan? Andy, that's some very, a nice tone to his guitar as well as some nice memorable solos. He's a real ferocious guitar player, but he's also a textured guy. He's an educated musician. So he can, he can pretty much do anything, you know? And yeah, no, he's, he's great. I mean, he sits up there in the, in the category of the league of guitar players I've been blessed to work with in my career for sure. And I think we kind of gone through everything here. We talked about the Kings of Thrash. We talked about KK's Breeze. We talked about Sword. We talked about Ken. We went all over the place. Our favorite Canadian bands. Came all the way back to Italy. Yeah, Italy. That was awesome. It's like a geographical musical, historical showcase right there. That's right. All right. Dave, it's always a pleasure to have you. Always welcome at any time to be on the show. And again, we're just spoiled to have you again on the show. Cool. Thanks, Alan. Thanks, Jimmy. Say hello to Sword. Yep. See you each other soon. We'll do. All right. Bye. Have a good holiday. Thanks. See ya. Have a good one.


I'd like to start out by saying I respectfully acknowledge that I'm standing on the unceded traditional territory of the Comanx First Nation. And now let's take a look at how we can access information on J. You might be faced with a line like this and you're not sure what's going on. Well, that's entirely natural when you're starting out. So you can go up to Help, Help menu, I'll blow that up a little bit, and F1 will take you to Vocabulary, NuVoc is Shift F1, Context Sensitive is Command F1, NuVoc Context Sensitive is Shift Command F1. This is in the J901 version, but let's just try a few things. So F1, that takes me to the Vocabulary, and this is the Old School Vocabulary. It's what a lot of people are used to, but it's also no longer being updated. So if you want the new vocabulary, which is NuVoc, this is where you find it. And it's updated, it's got all the information you could need. If you notice things that are wrong, you can make mention of them, they'll get fixed, and it's part of the wiki. So it's really the one that you want to be using. In fact, when you go to J902, NuVoc is the only one that you can access directly through the menus. Of course, you can always get back to the old ones through these links here. They're available here for people who really want the old stuff, because that is what people are used to. Oh yes, and then Context Sensitive. So if I highlight this and Command F1, there's the old vocabulary describing the sparse verb, and if I Command Shift F1, there's NuVoc. And so I've got all that information there that's available to me as I'm trying to learn my way through this, including I might say learning J down here is linked by Roger Stokes, which is actually a pretty good introduction to sparse arrays if you are interested in that. Anyway, those are some ways that you can quickly get resources online. Now, of course, you have to be online. You have to have a browser, and you have to be able to access the internet to do this. And if you can do those things, then you've got a really quick hands-on keystroke way of accessing the vocabulary. And if you forget, it's all under the Help menu. I hope that helps you out.


You may be wondering, what does copyright and fair use have to do with broccoli? Well, this week, on this week's Wednesday webinar, end of February 2016, I hope to make enough comparisons to convince you that even though it might not be the most enjoyable of topics, it's very good for us all to be informed about copyright and fair use in the realm of education and otherwise. In the next half hour, I hope to take you through a list of definitions, examples, and definitely resources so that we can all feel more safe, secure, and healthy in our use of digital media in education. In order to fully get the best benefits out of this webinar, jot down this one URL, goo.goal-6-h-e-p-e-q. That will give you access to all of the slides, as well as the links on them, and be a good reminder for On Beyond the recording today. First of all, why does copyright even matter? Well, this is definitely becoming more and more evident of a need for us at ESU 8 and Beyond. We've heard firsthand stories about real school districts and other ESUs that have had to deal with lawsuits and pay royalties and fines for things as simple as a teacher posting clip art on their class website. I've heard of another use of a jingle being used in the introduction to a series of math podcasts from a teacher. And when those podcasts were shared on the district's website, they had to deal with a lawsuit because the jingle was not copyright free. We've also heard of another case where a website embedded a presentation set of slides from a different presenter, and within those slides was material that infringed upon the rights of what they were able to do. All of these issues really are red flags and alerts to us that we need to be more conscientious of copyright in our daily practices. But how does it apply to me, you may be asking? Why do I need that healthy serving of vegetables and that reminder of copyright and acceptable use? Well, just take a few minutes and set back and ask yourself if you've ever done any of the following or known someone around you who has. Have you ever searched for an image on Google Image Search and without researching any further just took the first image that came up? Have you ever screen shot something? Have you ever used music in a slideshow or a video production? Even music you've purchased but any kind of music that you didn't create yourself. Have you ever downloaded a video from YouTube? Have you ever added clip art to a classroom newsletter? Have you ever printed and distributed an article maybe to your students, maybe to fellow colleagues? Have you ever shown a movie in class? Have you ever photocopied sheet music? Or has your school ever hosted a family movie night? Have you ever used things from teachers pay teachers or Pinterest? Just saying you've done any of the following things doesn't necessarily mean you violated copyright but they're all situations where it's very easy to do so. To understand your rights, your responsibilities can make you less susceptible to some of this happening. Now I'm trying to give you legal advice here but I do want you to all know that I'm not a lawyer but I do, I can draw from experiences of ESUs around me. We've heard a lot of great information from the Nebraska Department of Education and we want you to know that this is just the beginning. There's much more to come out of ESU 8 to support our educators and our schools in the issue of copyright and fair use. So whether you are a teacher or an administrator, you need to start being diligent about teaching copyright, about modeling it in your own use and about requiring it from your students or your teachers. These digital citizen practices are more than important, they are necessary. And it's not just in technology class or in a lesson dealing specifically with media literacy but this is important in all subject areas, all grade levels, all the time. We don't get a freebie exemption just because we're in education. Copyright still matters. So what is copyright? Well a couple of really prevalent myths are first of all, just because something's on the web, oh then I can use it. Well just because it's on the web does not mean that it's copyright free. And another common myth is I bought the rights to listen to that song or I paid for the price of that movie on DVD but just because you have the rights to view it does not mean that others do too. Clearing up those two misconceptions early on for our students and for ourselves can be a good first step into understanding copyright but really the definition is that it's the rights that any creator has to whatever they create it. By the act of creating it they have rights. If you think of an artist, a photographer, a musician, anyone who creates content they don't have to apply for a patent or apply for some kind of license that earns them the copyright label. It is just naturally there. I have a short animated video to give us the basics, the copyright and fair use 101 lowdown so we'll take a look at that now from YouTube. In today's digital world it's easier than ever to copy, paste, mash up, remix, download and publish content. People's writing, artwork, videos and images can be inspiring but they're also easy to take without thinking twice. When people treat the internet like a free-for-all legal and ethical situations can arise. That's why it's important to know about copyright and fair use. It would help you give and receive credit where credit is due. So what's a copyright? Copyright law protects your control over the creative work you make. It requires people to get your permission before they copy, rework or share what you make. Most things that you find, download and copy and paste from the internet are copyrighted. That doesn't mean that everything online is on lockdown and can't be used. It can. As long as you check who owns it, get permission to use it, give credit to the creator, buy it if necessary and use it responsibly then you're not stealing. Now there are times when you can use a small part of someone else's copyrighted work without permission or paying a fee. This is called fair use. Fair use only applies when using content in certain instances. Schoolwork and education, news reporting, criticizing or commenting, and comedy or parody. Specific guidelines, what we call the four points of fair use, must also be followed. First, you can only use a small amount of the work. Second, you have to add new meaning to the work to make it original. Third, you need to rework it and use it in a totally different way. Finally, you have to use it for non-profit purposes. In other words, you can't make money off of your new creation. No matter what, it's a good idea to give credit to the creator of the work you use. It's just a sign of respect. So what should you do if you find something online that you want to use? As a rule of thumb, check who owns it, get permission to use it, give credit to the creator, buy it if necessary, and use it responsibly which means judging for fair use.  Think twice about your rights and responsibilities in our online culture and then pay it forward. So I want to go a little deeper into two important concepts out of that video. The first is that there are items of creation that are in what is known as the public domain. The public domain is something that's designated as being copyright free. There's no reason that attribution is necessary and intellectual property rights have expired or have been forfeited or don't apply. For example, Shakespeare, Beethoven, early silent films, they've entered the public domain because the copyright term has expired. You can label things as public domain and utilize them without a lot of fear at all, without any fear. Unfortunately, that doesn't apply to a lot of the things that we want to use in our classrooms. Another term that you'll hear a lot about is creative comments. And you may have noticed that even the video we just watched was Creative Commons license. That means that the artist or the creator specifically licensed it to be used in a certain way. So you have different rights and responsibilities in order to share it forward. All of the licensing in the Creative Commons licensing system, all six of them include attribution, giving credit to the creator. That's the buy. Different levels of Creative Commons licensing include additional things that you can or can't do with them. For example, if you can or can't sell it, if you need to share it exactly the way that you got it, if there are no derivatives or no changes to the original form allowed. You can read more about Creative Commons licensing on their website, creativecommons.org. They explain the licensees, the different symbols. They help you put your media on the web with Creative Commons licensing. And later on, we'll find out how to search things that are Creative Commons licensed as well. So knowing those two terms will really help us when we're trying to eliminate the fear factor when we're creating things and using things online. Because I know, it kind of sounds like I'm scaring everyone into not using digital media at all. And that couldn't be farther from the truth. I firmly believe that we can use it and use it well and use it responsibly and not have to worry. So what should we do in order to do that? Well, first and foremost, if you or your students are creating a digital project, make your own media.  We have the potential to create media at our fingertips at most moments in time. We don't need to always go search for it online. Another way that we can be less worrisome in the licensing and the realm of copyright is finding the media that is in the public domain, that is license-free. Again, even though harder to find and locate, once you do, you can rest assured that you're safe. If you're not able to find it there or make your own, then definitely look for that Creative Commons licensed material. If it's not licensed, then you can still consider using it, but you need to directly find permission from the artist or the creator. Might just take a simple email or a phone call or a little bit of research in order to get that permission. And finally, if it's in the matter of a YouTube video or something that's online already and you cannot figure out if you have permission on how to give that credit for the object, just link to it. If it's already on the web, you can provide a hyperlink to it without taking it from their site and putting it on your project. Linking is perfectly legal. When I'm talking with students and teachers, I just ask them to remember two things. Whenever you're using digital media from someone else, give permission and attribution. And it's not one or the other. In other words, just because I have permission doesn't mean that I don't have to give credit or attribution. And vice versa. Just because I gave credit doesn't guarantee that I had that original permission in the first place. So how do I see if an image has the permission granted for me to use it or not? Let's go visit a popular photo sharing site Flickr. This is a great repository for finding images. When you visit Flickr, you can of course search for images in the search bar. I'll just search for photos of an iPad. And you can immediately click on any of those images, but we're not sure if we have the copyright permissions to reuse it or not. So if you do select an image, you'll notice in the bottom right hand corner that it says some rights reserved. If you click on that, then you can see what the artist designated as being the criteria for sharing this image or using this image. If you click on it, it'll give you more details. In this particular image, you're free to share and adapt it. You can transform it, build upon it to your heart's desire. You just have to give attribution. You just have to provide appropriate credit. That is one image of an iPad. You'll notice another here. Just look at another image here and just take a look at, again, all rights are reserved on this one. So the artist posted this photo on Flickr, but we have no right to use it. Not even giving credit. This is saying that they're reserving all rights and we don't have any permission. So Flickr does a nice job of sharing those licenses on every image. Other websites, you may have to dig a little deeper. It's not uncommon for licenses to be located near the photos, specifically on photo sharing sites. But if you can't find it at first glance, then that's where some deeper research is required. If you do have permission, we also have to fulfill the second criteria or attribution. So how do we give credit? Here's an image of an iPad on Flickr that I happened to take. This is one way to give attribution or credit. It's just to put the URL of the photo underneath of the image itself. Maybe on the slide or on the frame of the video that you're producing. I feel that this is fine for elementary age students. There's no formal citation, really necessary or required. It's just the matter that you are giving credit. So putting a link directly below the image, even in small, small type, is at least a good first step. If we want to do the gold medal standard of giving attribution, consider the acronym TASL. If you include in your attribution the title of the piece of media, the author of the creator, the source where it was found, on what website it was found on, and then of course the specific license, you will definitely cover everything necessary for this attribution. Here's an example for the image we saw on the last slide. The title is Writing Tools. The author is Katie Morrow. It was found on Flickr and it's licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives License. You can choose. Giving credit, these attributions, can be placed directly with the images or media, but they can also be collected and put at the end of the presentation or the end of the movie. And that's fine as well. What's most important is that you have the attribution somewhere. So we know that we have to have permission and give attribution. So how can we find things that are safer for us to use in education? I have some favorites, sites for finding music and images and videos that I want to share with you that I use in my classroom and recommend to teachers. These are by no means an exhaustive list. They're just a good starting place. And hopefully just using one or two of these will lead to better copyright practices for all of us. So let's start with images. Usually the first place people go to to find images is just doing a simple Google image search. If you're willing to take two more seconds and do two more clicks, we can be a lot more conscientious of copyright. So here I'm going to again search for an iPad, an image of an iPad on Google images. And it comes up with all kinds of results. And if I were to just take an image from these results right now, I would be negligent. But if I click on search tools and expand that dropdown menu, you'll see that there is an option here for usage rights. If I change this to any of the usage rights other than the not filtered by license, then we're going to get a more representative sample. Because Google now is actually looking for those CC licenses, those licensing on the images to know that to alert us that it's okay to reuse them. So I do have a smaller subset of images now, but I still have a great amount of choices to choose from. When I do choose the image that I want to use from the search results here, then I would need to go ahead and view that image on the page where it was hosted, unless I can see the creator right from this metadata right here. So depending on the site that the photo is coming from, it might also take another click to go visit the page and find the image there in order to give the attribution that is necessary. So definitely encourage your students that at the bare minimum they need to click on that search tools and click on that dropdown menu for labeled for reuse or the different ways to sort or filter the list, the usage rights in order to get more safe use of media, at least as far as images. Another website that you cannot go wrong on is photosforclass.com. I believe they also have another version called photosforwork.com. Both of them are searching only Creative Commons licensed photos specifically to be able to use and reuse in an educational setting. Now the reason why I really like this site is that it automatically puts the attribution on any photo or image that people download. So once again we're going to search for an image of an iPad and you might find that the number of photos in the photos for class on library are fewer than doing a Google image search. But I do believe that they're safer and this is a great site for elementary age students because the citations are already on the photos. So now if I choose this image here, I can say download and when I open that image up and get ready to put it into my project, you'll notice that right along the bottom edge is a footer giving that tassel all that information for the attribution. Very complete, very automatic and it's across the board 100% of the images there. So again it doesn't take a lot just to recommend to our students and ourselves that we use photos for class the next time we're looking for an image for something we're sharing on beyond our own private learning environment. Another great site for images is called Pixabay. This is free images and videos you can use anywhere over 570,000 free photos, vectors and illustrations. I'm going to click on this site and give you one word of warning that makes this somewhat scary. And then when you search for an image, iPad for example, again, the first row comes up as sponsored images. Now if you are smart enough and train your students to do so as well to ignore that first row, anything beyond that you're good to go. You can definitely tell that these are not the free images. If you just look a little bit on them, you'll notice they have the watermark on them, meaning this is something you need to pay for to use. You do not have the rights to use it. It also labels everything else down below it as free images. But other than that, if you just learn to ignore that first row, this is a great site. Another strong resource for obtaining copyright free images and clip art is OpenClipArt.org. Specifically built for clip art, you can get icons, any kind of an image here, and use it completely free of worry. So here are my results for iPad and you can see they're more cartoonish, more icon-like, but lots of images and choices to work with, and a great resource for images. So let's switch gears into the area of audio and music. Now to create our own music, all we need is access to GarageBand, a free app for an iPad or built into the Mac, and even a non-musically trained person can easily crank out a jingle or a little bit of background music for any media project with GarageBand. If we don't have access to that though, however, then we can still find music to use to enhance our projects and without too much worry. Probably my favorite website for music is Incompetek.com. These are royalty free music selections posted by Kevin MacLeod, and if you can do it through full search or view collections in order to find different kinds of genres of music or feels or tempo. So there's different ways to search the site. They also have some suggested pieces of music down below. Now it does take some time, and I'll be honest with you, to find music on any of these sites because you have to listen to all of them to see if they're going to fit the mood of your project. But on Incompetek, and then directly above it when you find the one you want, there's the download button. You can download it immediately without any kind of login. It's an MP3 so that you can add it to most projects. That's Incompetek, a great place source for a lot of music without words, without a lot of lyrics in it. So it works great for background music for your videos and other productions. Another one is called CC Mixster. Now this site, you can go to dig.ccmixster or just start at theccmixster.org homepage, and they're telling you that you already have permission to use it because basically artists upload their music to this website in the hopes of getting exposed. There's some other sites kind of like this too, but they are definitely labeled as free music even for a commercial project, which usually isn't the case in our schools, but definitely is background music for film and video. Let's go ahead and just see what the search results look like here. Here again, the play button is very visible and easy to preview the sound, and then the download button is right next to it, giving us that music file that we can put into any PowerPoint, Keynote, presentation, an iMovie, whatever it might be. Archive.org is a website that hosts free books, movies, software music, and more. I'm recommending this one as a place to locate video clips. It definitely is more like a museum and it hosts old files, old videos, maybe historical video clips, or definitely non-profit things. I am not for sure that you're going to find everything you need here, and I also am not for sure that it won't be filtered at school. A lot of times Archive.org is blocked by our local filters. However, most students and ourselves can go home and locate some media that we need for a project and then have access to it when we get back underneath of our school's filters, and that's fine too. Here's your search bar and your access to media from within Archive.org is pretty self-explanatory. If that doesn't work for you, there's a good one-stop shop site in search.creativecommons.org. Now, here if I search for iPad, I do have to choose kind of a subset or basically a site to search on, but it gives me a lot of choices, so I can try more than one, two. It does have Flickr as one of its first sources of images. It's got Google, of course, too, and Google Images. Jemendo's another music sharing site that I've used successfully in the past that has some copyright-free music on it, and then there is, or copyright-friendly, I should say. Another one that's highly recommended is called Wikimedia Commons, and it's also kind of like Archive.org. It has photos, music, and video, and on the homepage here, you can see what kinds of hits it came up with. I mean, you can do some additional search results there, too. But starting with search.creativecommons.org is a great starting place, and trying several of those sublinks out, and then, of course, remembering everything beyond that. But I have collected even more than what I've been able to share today into a URL, or a Google Doc that I hope everyone can use, and shorten the URL so it's easy to remember. So if you're feeling limited by these few options for finding copyright-friendly media, try tinyurl.com slash copy-friendly, and it's just an ongoing, easily-updatable list of different sites that have definitely copyright-friendly music, animation, and images. Be careful because you might link from one or click on one and exit it and find stuff on them that isn't, at first glance, entirely unappropriate or acceptable for everyone to use, but for the most part, should give you lots of options for finding good stuff. And if that isn't enough, I've got some really high-quality resources that I would recommend you take a few minutes to explore. There's a couple of blog posts from the Book Creator blog that specifically address using copyright licensing in your projects. This one is on finding good quality images, and it's just understanding the terminology. It's real straightforward and nice to give good definitions of all those terms. And this one is top five sources, according to the blog authors, finding images and photos. So they definitely mentioned the Flickr Creative Commons. They mentioned Pixabay that we looked at. And their number three choice was Photos for Class. And they also have a number four and a number five. And you can see, well, we looked at OpenClipArt as well, but you can see it does give each one a rating and an explanation for why they chose it and why they ranked it the way they ranked it. So this is helpful too. Five sites for finding good images. Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook has a good blog post on how to get and use free images the right way in class. A lot of this will be repeating, but it's a good review. There's free digital citizenship instructional resources from Common Sense Media, always available at this link. Now these are great materials for teaching copyright and acceptable use to our students for actually letting them practice the concepts and the important lessons learned. I particularly like the iBooks lessons. They have them for all the grade levels. So they have them for grades K through 2, grades 3 through 5, grades 6 through 8. They're all free. And then grades 9 through 12, they're all free. You do have to have access to the iBooks app in order to read them. If you don't have the ability to utilize iBooks, your students don't, then you could use near pod lessons from the same organization. However, these do cost. They do have interactives as well, which are pieces that they built into these lessons. And you don't have to do the entire book, for example, or the entire near pod lesson. You can just find the chapter or the section on copyright, which is in almost every grade level of material. And it's just great high quality teaching resources. And finally, I did locate a YouTube video series from Discovery Learning that might be worth taking a look at too, with a series of videos discussing copyright for educators. So I tried to practice what I preach and give my credits here at the end. This is just an example, but it is important. And something that I know I need to be extremely conscientious of in all the work that I do. The first is that the slide presentation template I actually got. It was labeled for reuse by anybody, and it was offered for free by Slides Carnival. So I left that link here, giving credits to them for the design of the slides. The photographs on the slides that came with them, and I only used a couple of them, but they came with the template, and there is the attribution there. And then additional images that I added on slide one. I found the image of the broccoli on Pixabay, and it was public domain. CC0 license, so no attribution necessary. Now I just went so far as to be over-conscious about it by listing that. And the screenshots on slides 19 through 27, they came directly from each of those web tools's website. So I made the screenshots, and obviously by going to their website you would see the same thing. On slide 12 there was also an image that came from Pixabay. Another thing that's great if you want to really reinforce the concept of providing credit and attribution to creators of media and content online, is leaving the artist or the photographer a note or a comment when you do use something. So back to my own personal Flickr photos for example.  It validates wanting artists putting things out there with Creative Commons licenses, and it also shows that people are responsibly practicing digital citizenship things. So it's a win-win for everybody. So that's all I have today. I hope that gets you at least a taste of what's important with copyright and acceptable use. It's definitely not meant to scare anyone away from using media found online in an educational setting. It just means we need to use a little more caution, and definitely remember that it is good for us. It's good for intellectual property rights of all. It's good for our students to see us modeling that and expecting it from them so that we don't arrive in any hot water down the road. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at katie.esu8.org. And like I said earlier, we definitely hope to share more resources and support for digital citizenship practices specifically on copyright and acceptable use in the very near future. Thanks so much.


One important thing we can do with a set of basis vectors is what's called Gram-Schmidt reduction. And that's centered around the following problem. Find an orthogonal basis for some vector space. So suppose we have a basis for our vector space. We can take any vector v1 in our set v as the first vector in our new basis. But what about the rest? And so we might think about the problem a little bit. And the solution we might come to is the following. We'll go through our set v vector by vector, and replace any vector vi with vi perpendicular, which is perpendicular or orthogonal to all of the preceding vectors, but still part of a basis for our vector space. So suppose I have a basis for our vector space v. Let vk tilde be some linear combination of the basis vectors where ak is not equal to zero. And we want to prove, or potentially disprove, v prime. The set of vectors formed when we replace vk with v tilde k is still a basis for our vector space v. So we want to show that v prime, which is v where vk has been replaced by v tilde k, is still a basis for our original vector space. And so that means we need to show that the vectors in v prime are independent and that they span v. So let's prove independence first. So we can prove, or disprove, that a set of vectors is independent by determining whether any linear combination equal to zero must have all zero coefficients. So suppose I have a solution to linear combination of the v prime vectors equal to zero. And remember, that's going to be our original set of vectors, except instead of vk, we use v tilde k. Now, I don't know what to do next, but we do know that v tilde k is equal to something. So why not? Let's substitute that into our equation and collect our coefficients and simplify our expression. So one useful observation here is that we went from a linear combination of the v prime vectors to a linear combination of the v vectors. And so what do we know about the v vectors? Well, we know that they form an independent set of vectors, and that means the only solution to linear combination equal to zero is to have every one of the coefficients equal to zero. And so x1 plus xk a1 is zero, x2 plus xk a2 is zero, and so on, including xk, ak has to be zero, and so on. Now remember, our underlying assumption is that ak is not equal to zero, and so that tells us that xk is equal to zero. But if xk is equal to zero, then x1 is equal to zero, x2 is equal to zero, and xi is equal to zero for all i. And that means if x1, x2, and so on is a solution to linear combination equal to zero, then all of the xi's have to be zero, and so our only solution to linear combination equal to zero is the trivial solution, and so v prime is a set of independent vectors. How about showing that they span the same space? Well first, the easy direction, if x is in the span of v prime, then I know that x is a linear combination of the vectors in v prime, including that v tilde k vector. But because I know what v tilde k is in terms of our vectors v1 through vn, I can replace it and collect the like terms, and that tells me that x is a linear combination of the vectors in v. And so x will be in the span of v. On the other hand, because our v tilde k vector is a linear combination of the vectors in v, where ak is not equal to zero, we can solve this for vector vk, and if x is in the span of v, then x is a linear combination of the vectors in v, and I can substitute my vk, and so x is a linear combination of the vectors in v prime, and so x will be an element of the span of v prime.  This problem leads to an important result. So what we had was we had some basis for v, and we replaced one of the vectors with a linear combination of itself and the other vectors, and we proved that the new set of vectors is still a basis. And so let v be a set of vectors where the span of v is equal to some vector space. If v prime is formed by replacing some vector vk with any non-trivial linear combination of the other vectors where ak is not equal to zero, v prime is also a basis for our vector space. And this means that we can replace any vector with any linear combination of that vector and the others. So let's proceed as follows. Suppose our set of vectors is v1, v2, and so on. Let's keep vector v1, and we'll designate v1 perpendicular to be our v1 vector. We'll replace v2 with a linear combination of v2 and the others. And the coefficient of v2 should be one. We'll loosen that requirement a little bit later on, but for right now we need to make sure that it's at least non-zero. And the coefficients of the other vectors could be anything, but since the only vector we know we're keeping is v1 perpendicular, which is our first vector, we'll make the coefficient of v1 perpendicular the unknown, and we'll set all the other coefficients equal to zero. And so I have this equation v2 perpendicular is x1 v1 perpendicular plus v2. If we can solve this equation so that v2 perpendicular is orthogonal to v1 perpendicular, we have a second vector that we can keep. So let's set up this equation. By assumption, v1 perpendicular will be orthogonal to v2 perpendicular, so the dot product will be zero. So I'll form the dot product, and on the left, that dot product is zero, and on the right I have a sequence of dot products that we can solve for x1. And now we have two vectors we want to keep, v1 perpendicular and v2 perpendicular. So we lather, rinse, repeat. We'll replace the original v3 with v3 perpendicular, a linear combination of the two vectors we want to keep, v1 perpendicular and v2 perpendicular, and the vector we want to replace, v3. Since there are two unknowns, we'll need two equations. So first we'll find the dot product with v1 perpendicular. But remember, v1 perpendicular and v2 perpendicular are assumed to be orthogonal, so this dot product will be zero. And so this gives us an equation we can use. And if v3 perpendicular is orthogonal to v2 perpendicular, then we also know this dot product. And that'll give us a second equation, and we can solve our system of equations for x1 and x2. And this leads to the process known as Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization. Given a set of basis vectors for a vector space, we can form an orthogonal basis as follows. We'll take our first vector in the orthogonal basis to be our first vector in our original basis. We'll let our next vector be a linear combination of the vector we're going to replace and the other vectors. We'll solve, and we'll lather, rinse, repeat, successively replacing every vector in our original basis with a new vector. And we can express this result as a formula, but we won't. Because it's important to keep in mind, don't memorize formulas, understand ideas.


You know, there's an opportunity to build back a community that's pretty phenomenal, but it's going to take a lot of effort. As the director of the governor's office of emergency services, Mark Gilarducci sees the task that lies ahead. Really for all intents and purposes, paradise is basically closed until further notice. And that makes it challenging because we're having to find other locations and people want to be in our effort is to try to get people in where they go to school and go to church and they work, but in this case, all of that has been destroyed. And so really we're having to build from the ground up. Now that the campfire is fully contained, every available resource is focused on response and recovery and housing is at the top of the to-do list. As we move through the different areas where Cal OES is supporting the county in these communities, obviously response is first taking care of the survivors in a shelter environment. Hopefully now or soon moving into something a little more stable, such as hotels in the area. We're in a really good spot right now. We already have direct housing approved. We have temporary shelter agreement approved so people can go live in New York state and hotels. We're in the process now of looking for locations for travel trailers and manufactured homes. With so many homes destroyed and so few rentals available, a housing task force made up of local, state and federal partners are all working and looking at every option. What we're doing Cal OES in partnership with FEMA is working towards leveraging the programs that have been made available for this disaster, moving towards those interim housing solutions, whether that is travel trailers, mobile home units, rentals, you know, all the different things that we can muster with the available stock. It's not going to be a federal decision. We do it as a team working with the federal government, working with the state, working with the counties, working with those local officials, working with the tribes as necessary to make the right decisions the first time.