Category: Generic

Chasing the Green Sound

Prior to the 50th birthday super gift, a new Les Paul Standard 50s, I was thinking about the future, post Covid and post college bills, where I was going to modify the shit out of my ’78 Les Paul Custom. I was going to go full blown boutique, cork sniffing snob on it. I was going to find the best sounding clones of original Gibson PAFs possible and put them in, and replace the wiring with a 50’s style harness and basically try and make my Custom as 1950’s-ish as possible.

Now that I have the shiny, wonderful new Standard, I’ve changed my plans to updating the holy hell out of the Standard and leave the Custom alone (except for the frets… and maybe the wiring harness). The question then is, do I try to turn my guitar into a modern knock off of a Les Paul from the late 50’s, or do I go for a modern knock off of Peter Green’s Les Paul?

I don’t know. What if I go for Peter Green and decided I don’t like the out of phase stuff? boutique, cork sniffing pick ups are expensive. I don’t want to have to play this game twice.

So we’re being goofy on the youtubes today, checking out some pick ups. I am going to say without a doubt that I will not be buying a set of Monty’s Guitars Bethnal Green PAFs. Partly because they don’t seem to be available yet, and also partly because the website makes me think they won’t be available in the US. That’s okay though. Let’s file this under research and Gear Acquisition Syndrome and just being a totally unabashed guitar nerd.

ADDENDUM: So I wrote the post while watching the video for the first time. After I published the video mentioned that you can buy them from Andertons if you’re in the US, and it’s not that they aren’t available yet, it’s that they are making them in small quantities and running out.

Snowpocalypse: The Aftermath

The National Weather Service told my beloved wife Jennifer that Methuen, Massachusetts got about 14 inches of snow yesterday. That’s a good number. Anything over a foot is noteworthy, really. It’s nowhere near what the worst doom and gloom forecasts called for (I did see one that predicted 30 inches), but it’s still a decent haul.

We lived to tell the tale. The tale being Jen played lots of World of Warcraft, I finished an album and watched a lot of The Mandalorian, we ate a frozen pizza for dinner and then watched a disturbing amount of BravoTV. We never lost power. I don’t know if anyone in Methuen did, but I know a lot of people in MA lost theirs for a while. We stayed lit.

So now what? We booked a plow to come and dig us out. Normally on the day after a storm we spend most of the day wondering when they are going to show up. Wondering if they are going to show up. I was planning on writing a big paragraph about that but about half an hour ago he showed up! He’s still out there, but he’s packing up. It was one guy with a pickup truck with a plow and a snowblower and a shovel in the back. We booked it online through plowzandmowz which is your typical gig-economy service app. We didn’t talk to the guy directly, but I think we can all agree that the dude is a friggin hero!

I still need to do some shoveling. He cleared one drive way, but we sort of have two. He took the snowbank off of the end of both rows so the hard part is done. I need to shovel around the kids cars. I don’t know if I am going to bother brushing them off. It’s going to be six weeks before Harry needs his car, and six months before Bellana needs hers. Also, the forecast for the second half of this coming week is calling for warm and rainy. The cars are going to clean themselves off. I want to clear around them though, on the off chance we need to get inside one of them. I haven’t checked the path to the door on the side of the house. We usually ask for that but it rarely gets done. No big whoop. Finally, there’s a fire hydrant in front of our house. I need to get that.

Other than that? Barring any freak power line accidents or anything like that, I think we can put snowpocalypse 2022 to bed. Let’s close the book on this one and move on with our frosty cold New England lives.

I am going to watch another episode of The Mandalorian. This is the way, eh?

The Nerdiest Music Nerd Thing I’ve Ever Done

I’ve done a lot of musically nerdy things in my life. I’m a Rush fanatic so I sort of goes without saying.

Years ago I made a playlist on Alonetone that held songs I wanted to re-record. Before I started actually finishing songs I just kept adding songs to the playlist. When I started finishing songs I added those to the playlist and matched them up with the originals. Now that it’s done there are 114 songs on the playlist.

Through all of this time I kept the playlist private. Today I made it public. Good lord what a nerd I am.

The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project Reference Tracks

Tray Cat

Sitting on the tray thing on the coffee table thing. Often when she sits up there we end up with a fireworks display of cat vomit. She turns into a lawn sprinkler spewing in all directions.

So far she hasn’t shown any signs of a puke-splotion.

Snow Check In 4

3:00pm looks pretty much the same as 1:00pm. That’s the wind. The storm hasn’t slowed at all, but the wind is making it hard to judge accumulation. There are huge drifts in some places and almost nothing in others.

Right now the driveway doesn’t look bad at all, but the cars look buried. The wind does that. Oh well.