I believe it was Ringo Starr who said it best when he said, “I GOT BLISTERS ON ME FINGERS!”
At least I think that was Ringo.
Anyway. I’ve always found playing an acoustic guitar is more of a work out for the arms than playing electric, and boy are my arms getting tired. (No actual blisters yet though)
I’ve mentioned that we’re going on a trip to Disney World soon. I’ve also mentioned that my foot has been all screwed up and painful lately. I may have mentioned that I sometimes have a lot of back pain too.
The foot has been okay of late and the back pain hasn’t been much of an issue, but I get sore and tired pretty quickly and there is going to be miles upon miles of Disney walking so… I started going to the gym. I’ve been three times this week.
Now before you get all pissy, this isn’t going to be one of those lets all get healthy kinda posts. Screw that, this is about music.
When I go to the gym I almost always just walk on the treadmill until my foot or my back start complaining. It doesn’t take long. I’ve been shooting for 15 minutes to start with. Hey, screw you and your in-shape-body, stop laughing at me! Bullies. Anyway, I always bring my phone and my air pods (I used to bring ear buds but let’s embrace modern technology!) and I listen to music. I always hope that I can just let myself focus on whatever I’m listening to and not even think about the amount of time I’ve been treadmillin’. It never happens though.
Until today.
Today I put on that stupid Spotify playlist that I added to the side panel over there —-> yesterday. The plan was to put 8-10 songs that I’ve been in the mood for lately onto said playlist and updated it every so often. So much for that, it’s about 20 hours long now. Sorry. My plan is to shuffle it, but that is redundant since I only have a free account and that means anything on my phone is shuffled. Fine by me.
So there I am, walking along, listening to music, not being distracted from the clock slowly ticking upward toward the goal of 15 minutes. Then it happened. The shuffle brought me to “Still Got the Blues” by Gary Moore and I just got lost in it. That song is perfect, that recording is perfect, that guitar playing is perfect, that song is perfect (I think I said that already). I let it take me to where ever it needed to take me and the next thing I knew I had been walking for 20 minutes.
Thanks, Gary. Rest in Peace, Sir. I don’t know if you were playing Peter Green’s ’59 Les Paul standard on that one or not (the guitar that is affectionately known as Greenie and is currently owned by Kirk Hammett of Metalica) but I am choosing to believe you did and that is part of why the tone is just perfect.
Anyway, here are some Spicket River pictures and one from downtown Methuen because it’s Saturday and that’s what I do on Saturday…
As I mentioned in a couple of posts yesterday, we are celebrating my beloved bride’s birthday this weekend. She asked for two things: One, to stay in her PJ’s all weekend, and two, for me to let her work all weekend. I will make it happen! I have a few chores to do this weekend, and I need to go grocery shopping. The rest of the time is (hopefully) going to be spent on RPM (probably not though, let’s be realistic). In fact, I’m going to go spend a few minutes recording some acoustic guitar right now.
Happy Saturday, everyone and thanks again to Gary Moore.
The moon over Best Buy in Salem, NH.
This week is my turn to stay with my mother while my father does his volunteer work at his church. I go there straight from work and hang out until he comes home, usually around 10:15-10:30 or so.
He called me today around lunch time.
He’s taking the week off.
That means I am taking the week off.
That means I can go home after work and spend the evening with my wife, celebrating her birthday! WOOHOO!
Unless Jen made plans for after work, which means I will wait patiently for her to come home so I can wish her a happy birthday again.
Check it out, nerd boy is messing around with the layout on the page again. I had this goofy idea to add a music playlist to the sideboard. Just a few things that I’ve been in the mood for recently. I already forget where the idea came from (blame old age). Did I see it on someone else’s page? I think so.
Anyway, I went over to Spotify and started a new playlist and added a couple of Robert Fripp and Steven Wilson things because that’s where my head has been lately. I added a couple of Rush tunes too because RIP Professor. Then I went looking for a widget…
…and I couldn’t find one. Google to the rescue. While I was looking I found an Instagram widget too. I have a love/hate relationship with The ‘Gram. I love the idea of it, but I hate the shitty interface and the shitty algorithm and the shitty owned-by-Facebook. Oh what the hell, thought the social media whore, and I added the Instagram widget and a text widget with a Spotify tagger that linked to my new playlist. I then added a few more songs to the playlist. Prog and Blues, mostly. Not the most palatable of combinations, but screw you guys it’s my brain I don’t care, whatever.
You can see both things over there on the right somewhere. You might have to scroll down a little. >>>>>>>>
I also added a Flickr widget which didn’t work, and a twitter widget which reminded me that my twitter feed is almost entirely links back to this page. Can you say redundant? I can, and often do. I removed them both and moved on with my life.
Also, I totally forgot that you can’t actually play Spotify on an embedded playlist. It links you back to Spotify itself (I think it tried opening the player app before proceeding to the web player) and I think you need to be signed in to hear anything. Whatever. It’s only there because I’m a nerd and like doing nerdy things.
What this means is that any minute now I’m probably going to be changing my whole page theme. You have been warned.
Today is February 7th. That means it is my beloved Jennifer’s birthday! Join me in wishing the love of my life a happy birthday!
Unfortunately we have a tough schedule tonight so we’ll have to do our celebrating tomorrow. That’s okay, I think we can celebrate her birthday all weekend! How does that sound, Jen?
I love you more today than I’ve ever loved you before, and I have loved you a LOT before. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I am eternally grateful that you found me.
Happy birthday, Jen, and here’s to many more.
I wanted to record yesterday before work but we got ~one tiny inch of snow and my step son’s school district cancelled for the day. It sucks but okay, whatever.
I was going to sneak in a little recording before work this morning, after everyone else left the house, but it’s drizzling a tiny bit so the school district set a two hour delay.
There is no ice here. There are puddles of rain water but no ice. There had better be a frozen effing tundra two towns north of here where Harry goes to school.
Screw you, school district. Stop messing with my friggin album!
My RPM album project is now officially electric/acoustic.
I added 12-string guitar to song #9. That means the rhythm guitars are done on two songs. Let’s see if I can sneak another one in before work tomorrow.
I’ve pretty much done the same photo-a-day pic for three days in a row. I will never apologize.
Inside the Red Head's Head 