Posted on 10/15/2018 11:09:11 AM PDT by billorites
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter has earned eight platinum records in a music career that started in the 1960s, and he has received numerous security clearances and contracting jobs since the 1980s as a self-taught expert on missile-defense and counterterrorism.
Baxter was one of many luminaries at the White House on Thursday to watch President Donald Trump sign the Music Modernization Act, which reforms copyright laws.
Unlike every other musician in the room, including Kid Rock, Baxter has built a successful second career as a defense consultant.
Baxter dropped out of college in Boston in 1969 to join a short-lived psychedelic-rock band. After that, he moved to California and become one of the original six members of Steely Dan, which he left in 1974 to join the Doobie Brothers, which he left in 1979.
Baxter has said he "fell into his second profession almost by accident."
While living in California in the 1970s, Baxter helped a neighbor dig out their house after a mudslide.
"Afterward, he invited me into his study and I saw all these pictures of airplanes and missiles on the wall — it turned out he was one of the guys who had invented the Sidewinder missile," Baxter said in a 2013 interview. "As a gift for helping him clean out his house he gave me a subscription to Aviation Week and to Jane's Defense. It was amazing."
Baxter found the technical aspects of music and of defense, particularly missile defense, coincided.
"Technology is really neutral. It's just a question of application," he told MTV in 2001. "For instance, if TRW came up with a new data compression algorithms for their spy satellites, I could use that same information and apply it for a musical instrument or a hard disc recording unit. So it was just a natural progression."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
.... OOps ... Sorry ... Wrong post ....
Huey Lewis scored an 800 on his Math SAT’s.
Mike Nesmeth’s invented Liquid Paper?
“Baxter found the technical aspects of music and of defense, particularly missile defense, coincided.”
- ain`t nuthin` new
= Music of the Spheres
Also to those that followed: Several sources confirmed White-out and that it was Michael Nesmith’s mother . . . at least I had the Monkee connection right in the deep recesses of my aging brain . . . I’m not a total loss . . . yet. Thanks to all.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_9814796
Took me a minute to find this piece I read on the relationship between musicians and mathematics. Interesting.
Cool!
One of the guys who I work with was a famous musician and he too is a genius of unimaginable intellect.
He sleeps for about an hour a night, and is working the rest of the time. One of the most brilliant men I’ve met.
“Rikki don’t lose that launch code.”
And if I'm not mistaken, he also holds a Patent for a part, process or assembly on the Polaroid Instant Developing Camera, from the mid 1970's
Chief said we needed 6’ of the toughest “hook and loop” I could find. Mil-spec velcro sticks GOOD! Once! Then you have to destroy it to get it apart. It even had the 3M mystery adhesive on the other side. WHAT A MESS !!!
Oh yeah. With the military grade stuff, whatever you mounted was mounted. You could knock it off with a baseball bat, but that was it.
Bet he's pulling in the hectobucks on that one right now.
The other dud’s mother, liquid paper correction fluid.
Frank Zappa became a dental floss tycoon ...
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Made my day... All the other wranglers will think I’m mighty grand...
Only after he moved to Montana.......
Almost up there with Hedy Lamar!
Yep. He taught me to love hearing pedal steel.
Not a Rocket Scientist, well, depending on how you define the term, but Eddie Van Halen exercised unbelievable intelligence in his management of both guitars and amps.
Good one.
I have been in the small studio office in Campbell where the Doobie Brothers’ Gold Records from Baxter’s era hang.
My father was not officially part of the Skunk Works, but his immediate boss was, and worked with Kelly Johnson. For that reason, my father happened to be at the first flight (short hop) of the XF-104 on February 28th, 1954, at Burbank (then a Lockheed strip, as I recall). The official maiden flight was March 4th.
This is one tbe few stories he ever told me, since he mostly did classified work:
He and another junior engineer were there testing a related scale model craft testing the T-Tail because of stability problems. The 104 prototype was running up the J-65 nearby. An “air jockey” (my father’s term) sidled up alongside, stared at the new jet, turned to my dad, and asked, “Where’s the rest of the wing?” My father said, “I’m sorry, that’s all there is”; whereupon tbe 104 took off on its first short flight.
My father had his own 15 Minutes later - Today Show, front page - for a solo project, not connected to the Skunk Works.
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