40 Years Later

I went to my first real concert on October 23, 1986. I went with my Uncle. It was Triumph at the Worcester Centrum in Worcester, MA. It had been rescheduled from an earlier date… I don’t remember what the original date was. I heard that guitarist/vocalist Rik Emmett fell down a flight of stairs while getting off of a plane and screwed up his knee so they had to postpone a couple of dates while he recovered. I don’t know if that’s true or not, it’s just what I heard.

I was 15 back then and early in my sophomore year of high school. I was a big Triumph fan, but maybe not that big a fan. Certainly not as big a fan as I was of the other three-piece band from Toronto, Rush. Still, Thunder Seven, Allied Forces, and Just a Game were A-List albums in my book. Never Surrender and The Sport of Kings were both really good too. They were touring to support Sport of Kings when I saw them that night, and a couple of years later my first real band would cover a song from that record, Tears in the Rain. It often went over surprisingly well when we played it, even though the guys in the band were probably the only people in the room who were familiar with it. I wonder if anyone thought we’d written it? Probably not. It was WAY better than our handful of original tunes. I mean, WAY better.

I didn’t know it at the time but Triumph was just about reaching the point where they were falling apart. I recently read Rik Emmett’s memoir and he mentions that the first nail in the band’s coffin happened during the recording of Sport of Kings. They had planned to record a song written by an outside writer, a groovy little ballad called Just One Night. It was expected to be the album’s big single and the band had decided that drummer/vocalist Gil Moore would sing it. The guy who was originally hired to produce the record had spoken privately to Rik Emmett and said he should be singing that song instead of Moore and he wanted Emmett to break the news. Emmett did, on an airplane flying home to Toronto, and I guess Moore lost his shit (probably very politely, given that they are good Canadian boys after all) and that was the first step toward everything falling apart. It took a couple of years but eventually, in ’88, Emmett quit.

Moore and bassist/keyboardist Mike Levine eventually tired to bring it back from the dead. They hired guitarist Phil X, who these days is best known as Bon Jovi’s lead guitarist, and made one more record. I heard a song or two on the radio and it was pretty good, but not good enough to really reignite my interest. I had high hopes for Rik Emmett as a solo artist but his first record was a glossy poppy disappointment and that was that for me.

Fast forward to a few months ago and out of nowhere Triumph announced a 50th anniversary reunion tour. Rock and Roll Machine Reloaded (Rock and Roll Machine was the name of their second record in Canada and their first in the US). I think the reloaded part of the tour’s name sort of points to some lineup changes. Early on they reported to us that Mike Levine would not be playing at every show. He had a medical issue to deal with (something wrong with his hand, I think?) and he would join the band onstage whenever he felt up to it. I’m pretty sure the tour ends next week and the total number of appearances he’s made is equal to zero. That’s disappointing. 

Due to that, a second bass player, Todd Kerns, was added to the lineup. Additionally, Phil X would also join them. He wasn’t a member 50 years ago, but he was a member in the 90’s. That seems fitting. When I saw them in ’86 they did have a second guitarist on stage with them. His name was Rick… something. I forget. I do remember finding him a little annoying. Like, I wanted to see the trio. I was okay with the extra guy but maybe he could have stayed off to the side out of the way. I was an asshole. Sorry. As if two extra musicians weren’t enough, Gil Moore made it clear that he wanted to come out from behind the drums and sing a couple of songs from the front of the stage. That requires a second drummer. Brent Fitz was added. He’s a keyboard player as well so I guess he’ll also be covering some of Mike Levine’s parts.

So this Toronto trio is now a group of five or six (if Levine appears). I guess everyone sings so the vocal harmonies are going to be denser than they used to be. Also, Moore and Emmett are old now, both in their 70’s. Their vocal ranges are nowhere near what they used to be (especially Emmett, whose near-soprano days are long over) so the “new” guys are going to be singing lead on a some of the songs. That is… troubling to me. That sort of makes me fear that this is going to be a tribute band that just happens to have two original members. I don’t know how I feel about that, but I am choosing to ignore it and just enjoy having this long lost band back again.

When the tour was announced, the final show was scheduled for June 6th in Boston and it sold out instantly. I tried to get a ticket but no luck. A couple of days after they went on sale I went to ticketbastard’s site just to see how it looked and there was a show on June 4th with almost no tickets sold. Huh? I Googled and sure enough they had booked a second Boston show and somehow didn’t really announce it. I grabbed a ticket in the back. I don’t want to say a cheap seat… how about a less crushingly expensive seat. 

Now here we are on June 4th and I am psyching myself up to go experience the Rock and Roll Machine in person for the first time in almost 40 years. I’m flying solo for this one. I didn’t want to subject anyone else to the 80’s of it all. I checked the venue’s camera policy and point and shoots are acceptable, so I am totally bringing one. We’ll see how it holds up to the lighting and the distance. I expect lots of blurry, shaky messes. Doors open at 7:00 and the show is supposed to start at 8:00. The opening act is April Wine. I’ve heard of them but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single note. I know they are another Canadian band so I expect them to be very polite and I will be equally polite as I wait for the headliner.

My Uncle passed away a long time ago. He’ll be with me in spirit though. I’ll be thinking of him. Especially if Rik plays the acoustic solo from the Thunder Seven record, Midsummer’s Daydream. Uncle Johnny was very impressed with that one.

Happy 50th anniversary to the first band I ever saw live. Here’s hoping for a good time at the old rock and roll show.

PS: I tried to find the set list from October 23, 1986. I failed. I did, however, find the set list from October 24, 1986. It is probably the same, and from what I remember it lines up.

  • Tears in the Rain
  • Somebody’s Out There
  • Allied Forces
  • Lay It on the Line
  • Midsummer’s Daydream
  • Follow Your Heart
  • Drum Solo
  • Take a Stand
  • Magic Power
  • Rock & Roll Machine
  • Guitar Solo
  • Spellbound
  • Rocky Mountain Way
  • Fight the Good Fight

If there was a difference, my show might have swapped the last two songs. I remember their Joe Walsh cover closing the encore, but maybe it closed the set and Fight the Good Fight (by far their best song… like by astronomical units) was the encore? Who can say.

Ouch, You Klutz

Yup. Self harm. Not on purpose, just due to me being an accident prone klutz. For shame, Robert.

Last night I was walking from the kitchen to my bedroom, fully intending to jump into bed and go to sleep for the night. Instead of doing that though, I stubbed my toe on a little piece of furniture that lives next to my bed. I stubbed my toe really, really hard. Oh my fuck did it hurt. Like… I almost screamed, involuntarily. It hurt. 

My first thought upon getting myself under control so that I could think about something other than how much it hurt was did I just break my toe? At the time I didn’t think so. This morning though…

When I woke up six or seven hours later my toe still hurt. I limped a little as I walked around but I was okay. I was asking myself if I was going to be able to do my morning exercise which normally involves a lot of running in place. I thought I’d be okay. Then I put my shoes on. Nope. My foot was swollen enough that wearing a sneaker made it hurt a lot more. Nope, no running in place for me. I did my 45 minutes of exercise on our stationary bike instead.

I started wondering yet again, did I break my toe? I was pretty convinced that I did. Now, a full work day later, I don’t know. It still hurts like a mutha, but not as much as it did. Is it broken or not? I don’t know. I will live with it for a couple of days. If it doesn’t feel better by Friday I’ll go see a doctor. I think it will be okay. Well… physically it will be okay. Psychologically? Emotionally? Spiritually? Not so much… you friggin’ doofus.

I Still Get Food Hang Ups

It has been a little over four years since I had gastric bypass surgery. In the immediate aftermath I struggled with some food hangups. I remember the first time I went grocery shopping after the surgery and I had a bag of chips on my list. I stood at the end of the huge chips aisle at (one of) the Market Basket in Salem, NH and I just couldn’t bring myself to step inside. I froze a little. I was afraid to be around a massive pile of junk food. It was completely irrational but it happened.

That was a long time ago, but I had a bit of a similar moment today. First off, some rules that I have to follow. I can’t have food and drink together anymore. If I have a drink I have to wait 15 minutes before I can have food. If I have food I have to wait a whole hour before I can have a drink. Also, the whole point of the surgery is to make it so a small amount of food fills your stomach to the point where you can’t eat anything else.

Today I had breakfast, then about an hour and a half later I was in the car driving to work and stuck in traffic. I ate a sleeve of Ritz Crackers to hold me over for a while. When I got to the office I immediately jumped onto a conference call with about 25–30 other people. I was still in my window of one hour after eating before I could drink anything, and I was feeling kinda parched so I didn’t want to eat anything more and thus delay when I could crack open my bottle of Crystal Light lemonade that I brought in with me.

The weirdness came from the video conference. One guy spoke for a few seconds and then took a drink from a water bottle. The next person to talk spoke for a minute or so and then ate a couple of spoonfuls of cereal. The next person took a gulp from a water bottle. It kept happening. Someone’s face would pop onto the screen and I would see them eat or drink. It actually started freaking me out a little. I really wanted a drink but couldn’t have one. I also really wanted to eat something but couldn’t let myself eat anything at that time. You’d think that after four years with my rewired guts I wouldn’t find myself staring longingly at someone else’s breakfast, but there I was.

It was strange. I guess I have to come to grips with the fact that, while this doesn’t happen often now, this sort of thing is going to jump up and bite me on the nose every now and then. I wouldn’t change anything that I’ve done, but still… it’s a weird new world I’m living in.

I Need a Nap

I’m stressing out about home improvement projects, big time. 

1–800-GOT-JUNK was here today. I had so much shit for them to haul off that they had to send a second truck. That sounds bad because it is bad, but it’s not as bad as it sounds (talking in circles much?). The first truck was about 1/3 full before it go here and they actually fit everything into the first truck, but they had to pull a few things out from the previous stop and move them to the second truck so that they could go to a different facility because they were metal and get recycled differently? That’s what they told me at least.

The bad part is that we’re going to be scheduling another pick up next week. All of this so that we can clear out our cellar storage space so that a work crew can get easy access to the exterior walls so that they can close up any gabs between the house and the foundation. All of that so that we can qualify for a Massachusetts loan and rebate when we buy and install a new AC unit for our central air. They are coming to do the foundation stuff on June 12th and they just asked if we wanted the new AC unit on the same day. Do we? I thought we were going to wait until the fall but they said the loan and rebate paperwork will be complete by the 12th so why not do both jobs at once.

Ummm… okay?

My head is literally spinning. There’s also a customer project at work that is stressing me out too. I am just Mr Stress today. You know what would be nice? Not being stressed. That would be nice.

The good news today? I took the last week of July off from work. Turns out the new Spiderman movie comes out that week. Might we be sneaking in a matinee? Could be. 

Okay. That’s enough of a mental health minute for me. Back to stressing out.

Busy Busy

Today is Sunday. The last day of May, 2026. It is about quarter past 8:00am and it is 48 degrees out. It is warmer than it was for most of the day yesterday. Thanks for nothing, mother nature.

I have a home owner type project going on this weekend that is both overwhelmingly intimidating and completely kicking my ass. That’s probably why I am writing this post rather than actually working. That’s okay though. I guess. Maybe?

We are doing a long term sort of thing. At some point later this year we are going to upgrade our HVAC system. We had a guy out to do some routine maintenance on the AC unit and he told us it’s pretty much at death’s door. Shit. The upgrade is going to cost a fortune, but Massachusetts has some solid rebate and loan options if you qualify. Now in order for us to qualify we have to have some work done on the house to bring us up to code. 

One of those upgrades requires me to clear a three foot wide path around the outer walls in the cellar. Unfortunately for me, about 60% of those walls is made up of storage and closet space, all of which is full to bursting with crap. I have to clear all of that out which wouldn’t be too bad except that our cellar interior is also full of crap… well, crap, a laundry room, an office space where I do my morning exercise and my music stuff, and a living room. Basically, I have to pull everything out of storage but the only place that makes sense to move it to is already full of stuff. Shit.

The solution then is to purge. We’re going to book a visit from a junk removal service. They are going to take as much of the shit as I can pile up. Then we’re going to book a second visit and they will take the rest of the shit when I pile it up where the first load of shit was piled up. After that I just have to move furniture away from the walls. It’s going to suck to the high heavens, but it is worth it. We have all of that storage space (which was a huge selling point when we bought the house) but it’s all full. Now it will be cleared out for the most part and we can get to work filling it with new useless shit. Bonus!

So that’s my big project for this weekend. My smaller, less important project is already finished. On Friday night after work I mixed two songs. I wrote them on Monday, Memorial Day (I think the last time I wrote about them in a post here I said I wrote them on Sunday, but it was Monday). I had the bass, drums, and rhythm guitars done on Monday. I put the vocals on both songs on Thursday morning before work, and put the lead guitars down on Friday before work. Then I mixed them and uploaded them to my alonetone.com account before bed on Friday. For the first time in ages I submitted something to the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month challenge thing. 

I accomplished something musically. That felt good. Maybe next week I can accomplish something photographically too. That would also feel good. Creativity is good for my soul, or something like that.

So Much for Grand Awakenings

What Can You Do

Okay… time to start my day and see if I can’t get some stuff done. Happy Sunday, everyone.

17 Years

Hold on, let me do the math to make sure I am getting the numbers right…

2026–2009=17

17 years ago today, my best girl and I stood on an alter in front of most of the people we know and pledged our love for each other and said “I do” and got married.

That’s right, folks. Today is our wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary to my brilliant, beautiful, amaze amaze amaze bride Jen. I love you, sweetie. I love you a little more each day, and after 17 years that’s a whole ton of love!

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Not Fun and then Fun

It is 3:30pm and it is already the longest day in the history of the universe.

I went to sleep at about 10:30pm last night. Later than I would have liked, but earlier than most days over the past month or so. I woke up at about 2:15am needing to go to the bathroom. I’m old. It happens. Deal with it. When I was done I fell right back to sleep.

Then at 3:51am my phone rang. It was work. The overnight staff were dealing with a customer issue that was causing the customer a lot of stress. I knew what the issue was but I wasn’t sure how to find the process that was causing it. Fortunately the overnight guy I was on the phone with mentioned one little detail which set off a trigger in my teeny tiny little mostly still asleep brain and I knew where I had to go to set things right. By 4:15 I was off the call. I took a few minutes to write a message to all of my staff members who would be involved in the follow up during normal business hours and I went to bed. I didn’t sleep much before my alarm went off at 5:30am, but I did manage to snooze a little.

All of that was not fun. Not fun at all. It was a lot less catastrophic than it could have been, but it is never fun having work call in the middle of the night. I’m just glad I was able to help. Even though the situation was not fun, I felt pretty good about myself when it was over.

By 6:00 I was out of bed and starting the day. By 6:15 I was in the cellar starting my daily exercise. The ball was rolling. An hour later the fun part of the day was starting. Guitars, babie!

On Monday I wrote two new songs and started recording demos. Bass and drums were MIDI instruments, rhythm guitars were the real thing, the melody was sketched out on a keyboard and lyrics were written stream of consciousness style to fit the melody. Yesterday before work my laptop and I drove to an empty parking lot in town and I recorded the vocal tracks for both songs. Today before work I recorded the lead guitar parts. Normally the lead guitars are my favorite part of the song demo process but right now I am so out of playing shape that there are no calluses on my finger tips and playing for more than a few minutes hurts. The strings start to feel like razor blades, especially when you play like I do and you bend strings all over the place. Ouch.

Still, despite the pain, I was able to finish tracking both new songs. Now all I have to do is mix them so that they are somewhat listenable (relatively speaking, of course) and then they are done. A few years ago I was writing 10+ songs each month over the course of the whole year. Last year I did the RPM Challenge in February (write and record an album’s worth of music all within the month of February) and then nothing for the rest of the year. This year was starting to look the same. I finished RPM in February and then it wasn’t until Memorial Day weekend that I even thought about doing anything more. Now that I am feeling like I am back in the saddle again, or some horse shit like that (get it? Saddle? Horse shit? Oh, come on!) I am thinking about trying to write a bunch in June and then do the fifty ninety challenge over the summer (that challenge is to write 50 songs in 90 days between July 4th and October 1st). We’ll see if I can stick to that.

So on this fine Friday in May, in fact the last Friday in May, the day started off not fun, and then for a little blast of time it was fun, and then it was just the usual… right up until about an hour after lunch when the lack of sleep caught up with me and now I am completely out of gas with 93 minutes left in my work day.

It’s going to be a long afternoon.

Hey, Screw You Ticketmaster

I’m going to a concert next week. Triumph. I saw them in 1986. It was my first concert. My Uncle Johnny took me. I was 15. Now here we are 40 years later and out of nowhere the band announced a 50th anniversary tour and I got me a ticket. Uncle Johnny is no longer with us, but he’ll be going to the show with me in spirit, I am sure.

That’s not the story with this post though. Not directly at least. No, the point is that ticketmaster is an asshole and I want them to fuck right off.

Over the last week they have been sending me emails reminding me that I have a ticket to a conert. As if I would have forgotten, you know? Not bloody likely. Today though, they put a new spin on the spam. Today’s email reminded me that if I wanted to sell my ticket I can do so through their reseller option. 

Ah… no thank you, fuckwads. I do not want to sell the ticket to the show that I have been waiting 40 years for. Fuck you right the fuck off. To borrow a line or two from The Book of Mormon, fuck ticketmaster right in the eye and then fuck ticketmaster right in the other eye.

Blah, Again

Yesterday was a tough day. Today has been tougher. I need (another) vacation. That’s a common theme around here.

I don’t have to work in the office tomorrow. That’s nice. Maybe if I get up early enough I’ll have some time to work on those two new songs I wrote on Sunday. They both need two tracks of vocals and at least one track of lead guitar. Maybe I can get some of that done tomorrow and then the rest on Friday. We’ll see.

The last two work days (including today, which is down to the final 36 minutes) have been insanely, absurdly, busy. I haven’t had a minute to catch my breath. It’s frustrating. I’ll be heading home soon for the day. Hopefully I won’t have a repeat of last night’s commute. There was an accident on route 495. Google Maps detoured me around it, but it also detoured 1000000 other commuters and it resulted in a monster traffic jam on a side street. It cost me more than half an hour of my life.

On unrelated commute news, I had to stop at a rest area on route 128 today in order to get gas. My tank was almost empty. I had enough gas to get me the rest of the way to work, but not enough to get my home afterward. As I was pumping gas, I saw something I’d never seen before. I saw a tractor trailer truck… do a donut. Sort of. He pulled out of a parking spot. He should have turned right and gotten onto the highway. He didn’t. He turned left… and kept turning left… he did a full 360 degree turn. Effectively he did a donut, but a donut in slow motion. He also blocked the ramp onto the highway and had 3–4 cars stuck waiting for him to get his dumb ass out of the way. It was a very weird thing.

Okay. I have 31 minutes left in my work day. Time to hit publish and squeeze in some more work. Thanks for reading my pointless, useless, bullshit. I appreciate the effort. I’ll try to write something more interesting tomorrow.

Blah

Memorial Day Weekend: Three days of rain and gloom and cold.

The Tuesday after Memorial Day Weekend: Blue skies, sun, 80 degrees.

Mutha puss bucket.

It was a good weekend otherwise. We tried to have a cookout but had a cook-in instead. I was hoping my step son would be able to join us but he was too busy. My step daughter was away for the start of it but she came home Sunday afternoon. That was nice. 

I didn’t go out to take pictures or anything, not just because of the shit weather. I was also feeling too lazy. I sort of made up for it, in the creativity department, on Monday though. I wrote two songs. The demos aren’t finished, but everything is written for both of them. My finger tips are still burning from recording the rhythm guitars. The strings on my ES-335 felt like rusty razor blades. It was fun.

We found out today we’re going to have a little bit of work done on the house that is going to require me to do a HUGE amount of work in the cellar to prepare for it. It’s not for a couple of weeks but I am already feeling overwhelmed by the very thought of it. It’s an important project that will lead to an even more important project a few months down the road, but for now… fuck me.

I’m going to a concert next week. Expect me to be super psyched about it in the coming days. That’s a little blog spoiler for you.

Nothing much else to write about today. I had to commute to the office today and I’m about 20 minutes away from my commute home. I’m in the office again tomorrow. Hopefully the commute is better tomorrow, but I doubt it. Whatever.

Okay, I’m clicking publish now.