Stephanie Bri

Here are a few photos and samples of sports stories I wrote while at the Whitesboro News-Record.

These links are clips of newspapers I have worked on.

8-18-17 Beto-Bond election10 09 15 Gun law-Hank andRita11-17-17 Citizens address councilOne Act Play WNR-3-9-18

Folk singer Spike Coggins performs his own style of folk music he calls his brand of ‘front porch blues.’

Coggins is a one-man-band who uses his banjo, harmonica and other traditional folk tools of the trade to craft a story of the history of Idaho. He often focuses on tales of the mining towns with ties to the railroad and riverboats.

“I got my first banjo coming back from a river trip. I was surprised they paid me, it was such a great time I thought I would have to pay them.” he said.

He said after the trip he went into a music shop with a particular sound in mind. At first he picked up the ukulele, then the mandolin. He said it took three trips going back to the store before he picked up the banjo. He knew instantly it was the sound he was looking for.

Coggins picked up his nickname from his grandparents. His grandpa called him “spike” after a railroad spike and his grandmother called him cog. One night his wife put the two together into one word, he said it just stuck from there. He said suggested it was fitting of their Scottish ancestry so Coggins was pleased.

He described himself not as a musician but an entertainer. The music is his vehicle for telling stories. Those stories are the center piece of his show. He said he stays fairly busy doing multiple shows a week. His show in Buhl is already his third for the week. He was in Idaho Falls and Boise earlier in the week.

Scoggins doesn’t just look the part, he lives it. The man travels across the state playing in bars and other venues driving his RV he affectionately calls the ‘Wind Dragon’.

Long beard, coveralls and his own personal brand of beard grease in hand, Coggins wants to bring to life the folk tales of those he writes about by being in character all the time.

Coggins grew up in northern California. He came to Idaho in 1989 when his family relocated following an earthquake. He said his family had ties already to the state and he fell in love with the history of the state. That history not only forms the basis of his act, he said it drives everything he does.

When he wasn’t performing he was spotted sitting on wood stool in an old antique shop in Shoshone. He said he loves the history of Shoshone.

“Shoshone has a great old west history going all the back to the days when railroad was king.” he said.

“Back then, it was known as one of the roughest places to get along.” he added.

He travels with his belongings in his truck. He carries a few personal items, everything he needs to do his show and a few souvenirs he can sell to his fans.

Coggins likes to keep his act as original as he can.

“Sure I cover a few personal favorites, but if you really want to hear Willie Nelson songs you want to hear Willie perform them.” he said.

Coggins gets his songs from all over. He told a story how he met the cell mate to Claude Dallas, a man convicted of killing two Idaho game wardens. He typically shoots for doing 2 sets of music mixed with stories he picked up.

Coggins also has 3, 5-track albums he sells at his shows. His latest one was recorded at a studio in Twin Falls recently. He said he does all the music in layers, then it gets mixed into a complete track in the studio. He likes for his records to capture the authenticity of his live shows, which he said he enjoys doing as often as he can.

Clad in overalls, a bear down to his chest, and leather cowboy boots, Coggins performance includes a banjo he plays as the center piece. He also has a harmonica attached to his microphone stand he blows on during certain songs. One aspect that added a sense of authenticity to his act was the chain he had around his boot, he would tap his foot on the board using the spurs on his boot to play the wash board, keeping things as close to traditional porch music as possible. To add to the authenticity he even sells his own personal brand of beard grease.

The act itself is well worth checking out, especially anyone with a love of interest in Idaho folk-lore. The venue where this was recorded itself was a perfect example of the local culture one can expect to find in Southern Idaho. The grilled cheese sandwich is served with bacon rather than traditional boring old ham. The decor is all old west mountain style wooden counter tops with sheet metal grating along the walls. Even the stools legs are fashioned out of the types of scrap piping any rural resident of Idaho would have used as it was likely something they had lying around. Our family was known for their own take on this brand of homemade furniture.

The good was authentic for the area for sure. However, the real draw is the local brew. The pub serves all their own concoctions, offering a wide variety of beer types and flavors. For the individual wishing to get a non-alcoholic beverage they offer their own locally brewed ginger ale, root beer or cream soda. The atmosphere is about as representative of the people of the Magic Valley as you can get.

Coggins made his first ever podcast appearance on The Dark Web podcast on May 4, 2018 where he invited The Spiders Lair to record his live show. The entire show, complete with pre-show interview, will be available on The Dark Web podcast Saturday, May 5, 2018. This very special on site show is a first for The Spiders Lair.

The music is a mixture of banjo, harmonica and traditional folk sounds including a washboard and chains. Coggins has a Facebook @spikecogginsmusic and a YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/spikecogginsmusic.

Coggins himself is a gentle man, quite with a touch of down to earth realism that is right at home with The Spiders Lair. Our purpose is to find the meaning of life, or as our slogan suggests To Organize Chaos. A man whose career is spent telling  the history of the State of Idaho through music, the state of my birth, is as good a place as any to start looking for those answers.

Find The Dark Web podcast on iTunes by searching The Spiders Lair or visit www.thespiderslair.podbean.com for current and past episodes. Be sure to check out our YouTube channel where you can find full episodes of the podcast if you prefer that distribution method.

The music, food, drinks and decor all made for a show that was truly a home in the Gem State. The authenticity of the show is coupled with the pub being located on the very Highway 30 many of Coggins songs feature as a setting. By his own admission he has a strong interest in the folk lore and history of the iconic Highway 30.  The entire evening just filled me with a flood of memories growing up in this amazing state I had left behind so long ago.

In 2012 Nintendo launched the Wii U. This was Nintendo’s first full HD console, and while it was technically considered a flop it will be remembered fondly for some of the games that it brought and ideas that I brought to the market. Nintendo has been in a weird position where they’ve been releasing their game consoles out of sync with the rest of the industry. But actually if you consider the timeline the Wii U is not a half step or even a mid generation console, it’s Sony and Microsoft who are out of step with Nintendo timeline.

I didn’t want to turn this into a Wii U or Nintendo topic I want to talk about the 3DO. If you consider the three do a half step or a mid generation console it’s worth examining it as such but if you consider it as its own generation that failed to spark direct competition or fail to compete when said competition arrived, in many ways that changes the dynamic.

When it first came out or when I first learned about it I was excited for the 3DO. Not only was it going to be able to play nearly arcade perfect translations of Neo Geo arcade games, as well as other arcade games, but it was also going to bring higher-quality PC style CD-ROM games to the market then the low-grade Sega CD stuff that came before.

One of the problems that 3DO had, besides being extremely expensive, is the best games were only playable if you had an expensive upgrade. It wasn’t even something like the 32x which added more horsepower to the machine it was something as simple as just adding MPEG capabilities to play video CD movies and games that could use MPEG full motion video. You know the kinds of FMV crap that was flooding the Sega CD.

Even though most of its games looked like trash it did have a few games that drew customers to check it out. One of the games that I remember reading about in wanting heavily was Samurai shodown. Even though I had this game on the Sega Genesis I wanted a more faithful arcade Port which is what the 3DO promised. But there was a game that was original to the system, it didn’t stay exclusive, that I really wanted called Gex. I would eventually get to experience Gex on the superior Sony PlayStation, but I never stopped wanting a 3DO back then.

Now I will argue vehemently that the Sega CD is more than just a standalone console that should be judged as a failure. I always contended that the Sega CD was in fact a very successful accessory to the Sega Genesis, which itself was a very successful system. So for me when I look at the Sega CD software Library I see a lot of games a lot of people despise but I still think have some merits including the FMV games. Except the Sega CD games are grainy, low resolution and unplayable. The 3DO versions were supposed to be superior. Of course many of these games were also available on PC in the form of PC CD-ROM but that’s another story we’re talking home consoles here.

As far as the hardware goes things get complicated because the system was not manufactured by a single company it was licensed by the 3DO company to other manufacturers. As far as I can tell there were two models that were released in the United States one that was manufactured by Panasonic and one that was manufactured by Goldstar and then a revised Panasonic model later on. There was a third model by Sanyo released in Japan. Because the system was extremely expensive and had very few compelling games it is considered a commercial failure does it didn’t sell well and is to this day hard to find. In fact in my entire life I’ve only seen 3 different 3DO machines in person.

One of the biggest complaints is the controller port the system has a weird situation where it can only hook up one controller at a time and then you daisy chain the controllers together. This design flaw would be bad enough if it wasn’t complicated by the fact that it was a controller modeled after the Sega 3 button controller, the inferior pad that most Super Nintendo fanboys will diss the Sega for having. So it’s understandable that gamers would snub the system and even die-hard collectors ignore it.

The high price tag coupled with lack of compelling software and a terrible controller plus a high failure rate makes the 3DO an oddity that is more or less better to be forgotten.

When you take into consideration that all of the games on the system that are worth playing can be found elsewhere in superior forms, there’s little incentive for a collector to consider the machine a viable purchase even today.

The question I wanted to ask was does it deserve to be forgotten or should at least be remembered for what it did, good or bad. A part of me who enjoys collecting and studying the history of video games and computers thinks that the three do definitely deserves to be remembered but not as a games console more as a multimedia device whose ties to the failed video CD format make it more interesting than any of its video game ties.

For those of us who vaguely remember reading about the 3DO in our gaming magazines, it will forever be remembered as this great mystery that we only saw pictures of or read articles about. For me once I grew up and did the research I learned that the 3DO was way more hassle than it was worth it had little value outside of a footnote in gaming and multimedia home video history.

However, at the end of the day I still believe that the 3DO is more of a game system then the failed CD-I ever was. I guess at the end of the day the only thing that remembered is its ties to the VD-I and VCD. I’ll save the video CD format discussions for another topic another day.

I don’t generally like to discount somebody’s childhood memories so if you had a 3DO when you were a kid I’m sure you remember it more fondly than anyone else will. I still think that at the end of the day the system is really not worth remembering fondly. And I still maintain that only die-hard collectors and those who had one when they were a kid should bother collecting them today. I tried to give the system the benefit of the doubt. But the more I look at it, and the more I think about it, the more I realize I’ve probably given it way more thought than it deserves, so I guess there is that.