Showtime Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the long awaited day. We’re heading South to New York to see Rush. My step son is not going to make it. Between school and work he was just too busy. My step daughter will be with us though. I’m super psyched. My wife is super psyched. My step daughter is super psyched. We’re all super psyched.

I thought it would be fun to post a shit load of photos from the last time I saw Rush in New York. These were June 29, 2015. Just over 11 years ago. I honestly thought I would never see them again, but here we are. Neil Peart is gone and tomorrow’s show will be different. It will be new. It will be joyous and amazing and brilliant. I can’t wait.

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Okay, that’ll do for now. Here’s hoping that in a couple of days I’ll do another post just like this but with 2026 pictures instead of 2015 pictures. 

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 23/90

What’s a good word to describe day 23… hmmm… let’s think about this.

Productive.

Successful.

Crazy.

So I am up to 20 songs. The goal, as implied by the title of the post, is 50 songs. To still be this early in the challenge and already be up to 20 songs in the works is just nuts. Of those 20 songs, 12 were already finished. Six of the remaining songs had lyrics written and the rhythm section recorded and were ready for vocals. The remaining two songs just had basic tracks, (MIDI) bass and drums. They were ready for rhythm guitar tracks.

Of those eight songs, how many of them did I work on during day 23 (yesterday)?

All of them.

First I grabbed my MacBook and hopped into the car and drove to an empty parking lot so that I could record vocals without bothering everyone in my house. Normally when I do this I shoot for working on 4-5 songs. That’s usually all I have before my voice gets really tired (I am most definitely NOT a singer) or I have to pee or something. Yesterday I made it through all six songs. Every line of lyrics that I had written was sung and recorded. Many of them twice because I sang in two part harmony. I felt really good when I packed up and drove home. I could have stopped there and called the day a success. I did not, however, stop there.

Once I was home I took some time to help my wife with some chores around the house. Eventually, before lunch, I had some free time and was able to head down cellar to my music nook and start recording guitars. I started with one of the songs that needed rhythm guitars. I figured that would be a good warm up. I am absurdly out of playing shape these days and figured I’d be smart about things. Once that was done I moved over to leads and cranked out three songs. In my current state of sucky guitar playing, recording leads wears me out quick so I planned to take a break and record the rhythm guitars on the other song that still needed them. I was going to try to follow that with the other three leads but my wife needed help with another chore and I needed lunch and also needed to go to the grocery store to get something for dinner, so I took a much longer break.

After I returned home from Market Basket with the fixin’s for dinner and a big bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol (because the toothache is still kicking my sorry ass), I was able to head back to the cellar music nook and finish off the lead guitars on those three remaining songs. So over the course of the day I put guitar tracks onto all eight remaining songs.

But wait, there’s more!

After dinner we were just hanging out in the living room watching the tube and I slipped on some headphones and mixed this song and then mixed this song. The first one is my second attempt at 5/8 time for the month. It’s okay. The second one is rare for me in that I kinda don’t hate it. It feels weird.

And that, my friends and neighbors and readers and only friends, is that. Six vocals, six lead guitars, two rhythm guitars, and two mixes. My brain was definitely ready for bed.

What’s in store for today, day 24? A Dentist appointment. Likely that will be all for the day. I don’t handle Dental visits well. I expect to be thoroughly traumatized. WOOHOO!

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 22/90

I had some good progress on day 22. The first thing I did was add a new song. Song number 20, to be precise. It’s in 9/8 time and it is going to suck trying to put guitars on it, but odd time signatures make me happy so… yeah. Next I took song number 19, which was just a couple of riffs, and worked out the structure and finished the fake/software/MIDI instruments (bass and drums). After that it was all about lyrics and melodies. I think I had three songs that needed lyrics and I finished them all.

That was it for day 22. That left me with six songs ready for vocals and two songs ready for rhythm guitars. On to day 23!

I’m on Vacation

I’m on vacation and it is wonderful. Today is the first day. It’s Saturday so is that technically not vacation because I would be off work anyway? Explain it to me.

I did a nice bit of music work today. I also went with my wife to her favoriate computer store and bought her a monitor. It has all been sort of spoiled a little (just a little) by the toothache. Three days ago I could take Tylenol and the pain would more or less go away for hours. Now? Three Tylenol buys me an hour. Maybe less. Sometimes a little more. It’s hard to judge. I want to take it on the same schedule as my vitamins, every five hours or so. I’ve been feeling huge pain for a couple of hours but if I stay on the schedule I have to wait until 9:00pm and I still have 15 minutes to go. I am literally writing this to try to distract myself from the pain and the desire to take some meds.

My dentist appointment is the day after tomorrow. That seems like a really, really long wait. I will survive though. Trust me.

We are starting to plan the nitty gritty details of our Rush trip next week. Train from Boston to New York on Tuesday morning. Rush concert Tuesday night. Train back to Boston Wednesday afternoon. What do we do with the rest of the time? Not sure yet. Am I bringing cameras? I’m bringing the little digital point and shoot. Should I bring a film camera? Will I have time to use it? Not sure. I’ll probably bring it even if I don’t have time or opportunity to use it. 

What else? We’re going to see The Odyssey tomorrow. I hope I can handle all of the historical inaccuracies folks like elon musk are complaining about… sorry… I can’t… I tried to type that with a straight face but that critique of the movie is so absolutely fucking idiotic. As if the movie were based on historical events and not an epic poem. Not a work of complete fantasy fiction. Cut the shit elon and fox and maga and all of you nazi fucks. It’s a story. Yes its thousands of years old, but it’s just a fucking story. Get over your racist asshole selves.

Okay. It’s time for the 9:00pm Tylenol. Wish me luck, universe.

PS: I think I set this account up to automatically cross post to Threads. If it works, this will be the first post to do it. Did it work?

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 21/90

This post is recapping day 21, which was yesterday, but today is day 22 and I really should be in the car recording vocals but I’m just overcome with laziness right now. I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise.

Not a lot of progress on day 21. I had a lot of stuff to do before work in the morning and I had a lot of stuff to do after work too. I didn’t have dinner until after 8:30. Fortunately I was able to sneak in some work after that. I wrote the lyrics and the melody for one song (song #18). I now have three ready for vocals. I also, just before falling asleep last night, came up with a couple of bass riffs that I have labeled as song #19.

That’s all for day 21. As mentioned, I should be doing some vocal recording today on day 22 but… nah. I’ll do that tomorrow. Today I hope to write some more lyrics and write some more melodies and figure out the structure for song 19 and maybe add another new song idea (or two?) and maybe record some rhythm guitars. I think it’s time to switch from my Gibson SG to my 1978 Les Paul Custom. Yeah, it is time for a guitar swap. Having said all that, I am feeling kinda lazy right now (I’m on vacation after all) so maybe I won’t do squat today.

I’ll let you know how it goes when I recap day 22 tomorrow.

Sigh of Relief

Can you believe it? I am officially on vacation. See you next month, work!

My toothache is killing me. I booked a Dentist appointment yesterday but the nearest time I could get is on Monday. Good thing I am already off work, eh?

No plans for the vacation week apart from two days in New York to see Rush. Did I mention I have tickets to see Rush on Tuesday? Oh the happiness.

Okay, I am going to go take a fist full of Tylenol in the hopes that it dulls the tooth pain enough to let me sleep for a couple of hours. G’night, all.

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 20/90

20 days down, 70 to go. It feels like it should be a big deal, but this year it really isn’t. Maybe I am ahead of my usual pace, but this time around I am not feeling day 20 stress. Weird.

I put rhythm guitars on song number 18. That was the only song that was ready for a guitar part. Everything else in the pipeline already had the rhythm guitars. I could have done more, but there was nothing left to do.

Other than that, I mixed two songs. I’m up to 12 songs finished now. I mixed this one and this one. Neither of them are terribly good (just like everything else I’ve ever written in my entire life) but they exist now and that’s the important part of this little game.

The state of the project after 20 days is:

  • 12 songs finished.
  • Two songs have lyrics written and are ready for me to record vocals
  • Four songs have the rhythm section finished and are ready for me to write lyrics

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 19/90

I have songs ready to mix but I didn’t mix anything yesterday. Why not? What’s wrong with me?

Nothing.

Instead I put rhythm guitars onto two songs, wrote lyrics and melodies for two other songs, and programmed the bass and drums for a new song. I’m up to 18 now.

So I didn’t mix anything, but I still did okay for a work day. I’ll take it.