With Wi-Fi everywhere now from the public library to the corner coffee shop, there are more opportunities for cyber punks to hack into your laptop tablet or mobile phone.

Here are some tips to keep your information safe when using public Wi-Fi:

1.) Don’t set your devices to automatically connect to pubic Wi-Fi

2.) Never access your bank accounts, credit card accounts or even your email while on public Wi-Fi

3.) Stick to your cell phone’s providers Wi-Fi network if you’re accessing an online shopping website or any other site that requires personal information

4.) Check website addresses carefully and completely. Scam artists will create bogus sites that closely mimic real ones

Getting bugged? As in, those creepy, crawly things you don’t want around you or the house. Here’s the cheapskate’s way to combat them.

For ants in the home, just spray vinegar along your baseboards.

For mosquitoes when you barbecuing outside, put a little rosemary or sage over the coals. The mosquitoes don’t like that and will stay away.

You, however, may feel an overwhelming urge to go to Scarborough Fair.

1969: Happy 56th Anniversary to Woodstock!

What is alternately billed as “an Aquarian Exposition” and “3 Days of Peace and Music,” the Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens on Max Yasgur’s farm outside Bethel, New York (close, but not really in Woodstock). Richie Havens opens the show. The Who, Sly & the Family Stone, Joe Cocker, and the Jefferson Airplane are among the two dozen acts that will perform.

The event eventually draws nearly 500,000 people. Days of rain, inadequate food, water, and restroom facilities make the actual event far more harrowing than the subsequent film and record album convey.

Three deaths, two births, and one marriage will take place before Jimi Hendrix closes the festival. Yasgur’s relationship with his neighbors will never recover.

1962: At the urging of EMI record producer George Martin, the Beatles decide to sack drummer Pete Best. Unfortunately, John, Paul and George don’t mention their decision, performing with Best at Liverpool’s Cavern Club three days later.

Brian Epstein informs Pete of the firing the next day with none of the other three band members ever talking to Best personally.

The invitation then goes out to the drummer from Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, Ringo Starr.

1965: The Jefferson Airplane makes its live debut at the Matrix Club in San Francisco. Before the year ends, they will become the first Bay Area band to be signed to a major label. (No, that’s not Grace Slick in the photo. That’s Signe Toly Anderson, who sang with the group until her first child was born. Slick was then named as her replacement.)

1968: In a record store in the Westminster district of London, the New Yardbirds with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant begin their first rehearsal.

The Who’s drummer Keith Moon attends another rehearsal and suggests the band will “go over like a lead zeppelin.”

The band likes the idea and immediately changes its name.

1962: After 8 previous attempts, Neil Sedaka finally has his first #1 record when “Breakin’ Up Is Hard to Do” reaches the top of the Billboard charts.

1959: The four male members of the Platters are arrested in Cincinnati. They are found in a hotel room with four 19-year old girls. Three of the girls were white and so the men were charged with “lewdness” among other charges.

The band is acquitted on all charges the following December, nonetheless the publicity damages the Platters’ career.

1965: On this day, a British quartet records a cover version of a song from the Beatles’ “Help!” soundtrack. The Silkie’s version of “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” becomes the first cover of a Beatles song to reach the Top 10 in America.

What you might not know is that John Lennon was the producer for the session, Paul McCartney played guitar and George Harrison played the tambourine!

Are You Experienced (1967)

This is the album that changed everything. Music was never the same after Jimi Hendrix’s debut album, Are You Experienced, hit record stores like a proverbial bombshell.

Nobody had sounded like this before. The first time you heard, it sounded loud, ugly, and discordant.  By the third or fourth listening, you were hooked.

If your parents thought the Beatles and Rolling Stones were “noise,” here was an album that would really piss them off! What a great reason to buy it and play it loud.

The band’s line-up was unique, too. Two Brits and one American. Two white guys and one black guy.

But the album you were listening to was not the same album listeners in other countries were hearing.

Two versions of Are You Experienced were released. One for the U.S. And another version for the U.K. and international markets. The two versions shared 8 of 11 tracks, but even those were placed in different order.

Here’s the American version of Are You Experienced:

SIDE ONE

1. Purple Haze
2. Manic Depression
3. Hey Joe
4. Love or Confusion
5. May This Be Love
6. I Don’t Live Today

SIDE TWO

7. The Wind Cries Mary
8. Fire
9. Third Stone from the Sun
10. Foxy Lady
11. Are You Experienced?

Here’s the version the rest of the world heard:

SIDE ONE

1. Foxy Lady
2. Manic Depression
3. Red House
4. Can You See Me
5. Love or Confusion
6. I Don’t Live Today

SIDE TWO

7. May This Be Love
8. Fire
9. Third Stone from the Sun
10. Remember
11. Are You Experienced?

The reason for the difference is that “Purple Haze,” “Hey Joe,” and “The Wind Cries Mary” had already been released in the U.K. as singles (and had done very well). At that time, singles were often omitted from albums in consideration for fans who had already purchased he 45’s.

Hard to believe but in 1966, Jimi Hendrix was struggling to find work as an R&B guitarist. Chas Chandler had just left the Animals and was looking to manage rock stars. He convinced Hendrix to come to London with the promise of assembling a group that would showcase Jimi’s unique blend of blues, R&B and hard rock. Once Hendrix arrived, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell were quickly recruited to play bass and drums respectively. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was born!

The band failed their audition with Decca Records (the label infamous for also passing on the Beatles). But the group was picked up by a new label, Track Records, that was being launched by the Who’s management team, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp.

Are You Experienced was recorded over a five month period at three different studios in London.

While the Jimi Hendrix Experience had solid success on the British Top 40, their early single releases in the states went nowhere. Nevertheless, when their debut album was released in August of 1967, it shot into the top 10 on Billboard’s Album charts, forcefully demonstrating the emerging power of FM “underground” radio stations. For several months, many of the country’s FM stations, previously the home of small audience classical and “elevator” music, had begun taking a chance of album rocks in an effort to attract larger audiences. Hendrix was one of the first artists to get wide exposure in this new format.

The success of Hendrix’s debut album ended the idea that you had to have a hit single on Top 40 to sell records to American kids. His style forever changed to the sound of rock and influenced a legion of young guitar players.

When Hendrix said, “never to hear surf music again” on “Third Stone from the Sun,” the Beach Boys didn’t realize they were about to enter 5 years of very tough going in America.

Are You Experienced has been ranked #15 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and it has been selected by the Library of Congress to be included on its National Recording Registry as one of the most significant contributions to our cultural history.

BTW if you buy the CD now, you’ll get all the songs included in both the U.S. and the U.K. versions.

It’s never too late to get experienced!