As of this moment, band practice is on for 6:00pm tonight. I’m swapping out my amp and my pedals so I have a bunch of things to test drive before I go. I might put new strings on one of the guitars while I’m at it. I have to clean the kitchen first though.
Work has been good this week. No disasters, no scary moments. I did get a call from a customer (service programmers, like me, are not supposed to get calls directly from customers) but I was able to help the guy and it actually felt pretty good. Nope, this past week was a good week at work.
It was the rest of civilization that blew chunks. My wife and I agreed when we discussed it last night that this week has been the longest six months of our lives.
I need to do something creative this weekend. I NEED TO. Photography. Let’s go out and snap some pictures! Let’s play with the new long lens I bought a few months ago. Let’s play with the 120 film camera I bought a few months ago. Let’s go to the ocean and watch the sunrise and shoot all sorts of good stuff. Of course we should check the weather first… snow and rain today and tomorrow and rain on Sunday. Well you can just bite me, mother nature.
Music it is then! Guitar! I will play guitar this weekend if it kills me! I don’t know if we’re going to have a band practice or not. I’ll post something to our messenger thread later today (when it’s not pre-8:00am so that the other three guys don’t think I am weird and obsessed or anything) and see what’s up. If not then I need to find something else to do.
I do not want this weekend to be spent doom scrolling news sites and reading stories about the collapse of american democracy that will build up inside of me until I have a stroke. No. That would be bad, even if it is more or less inevitable. I must play guitar! I! Must! Play! Guitar!
Gotta go to IKEA to return something.
Gotta go to Best Buy to return something.
Gotta go into the city, Cambridge, to pick something up.
Gotta find two 9v power plugs for guitar pedals. I know I have a bunch of them around here somewhere. Probably need to grab a power strip too.
Gotta setup the guitar rig I want to use for the next practice (tomorrow?). Guitar (Gibson Les Paul Standard) -> Duel overdrive pedal (Keeley D&M Drive) -> Digital reverb pedal (TC Electronic Hall of Fame 2) -> Amp (Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 which does not have a built in reverb, hence the digital reverb pedal). We’re going simple for a while. My big pedal board is making a ton of awful, squealy noise and I want to rip it apart and see where it’s coming from (guaranteed it’s the power supply).
Gotta write and record some music. There are only three days left in March and I haven’t written or recorded any music this month. I still want to try and get something in for the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month challenge. Probably not likely, but we’ll see.
I also need a shower because… ewww, gross.
The last time I bought something form guitar center’s website they gave me a delivery date, told me the package was out for delivery, and then didn’t deliver it. They did this two or three days in a row. When it finally arrived they had failed to pack the power cable and when I complained they asked why I needed it… it was a guitar amplifier… was I supposed to use it without power?
I had forgotten about all of that when, this weekend, I ordered a pedal from guitar center’s website. Today is the delivery day. It has been showing as out for delivery since 9:36am. The estimated delivery time says it should arrive between 11:30am and 2:30pm. It is now 2:47 and it has not been delivered yet.
Yeah, I should have known better. I’m never getting that (relatively) cheap little digital reverb pedal, am I. I’m an idiot. Just call me sucker.
ADDENDUM: I got an email notification saying the package was delivered. I guess all it took was me complaining about it on the internet. Heh, as if.
Go back in time two posts and look at the picture I shared of my Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 amplifier with something that appears to be mold covering the imitation tweed. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know why it’s on that amplifier but not on either of the other two Bassbreaker products I own (the Bassbreaker15 watt amp and the 1×12 extension speaker cabinet).
It’s gross.
I found a post on reddit that suggested using white vinegar to clean off whatever that mold looking shit is. I guess mold growing on tweed amps is a thing? I’ll share a screen shot of the post here:
I went grocery shopping today and picked up a bottle of white vinegar. I just finished sponging off the amp and it looks like it worked. I am mostly pleased with the results. The only negative I can see at this point (assuming whatever that shit was doesn’t just grow back immediately) is that now my amp smells like vinegar… and so does my cellar… and so do I. Oh well.
It looks good so far though.
If the band practices tomorrow, the other guys might be in trouble…
#inspired
We did it. We have had two band practices in a row. Oh thanks be to the gods of bad middle aged cover bands, we pulled off two Sunday practices in a row!
I fought with my gear through the whole thing. I have something in my signal chain that is adding a weird whistling noise and when it reaches my overdrive pedals it gets LOUD. I ended up bypassing half of the board and it seemed like it fixed the problem for a while, but eventually it came back and kept getting worse. If I had to guess I would say it’s probably my power supply. I don’t know. I think I might bring my stay at home pedal board next time and see if it had any similar issues.
I also just wasn’t vibing with my amp. The Vox AC15 is fun and I like using it when I record at home, but when the band was playing I was missing my Deluxe Reverb. I might swap them next time. Or maybe I’ll swap the pedal board next time and then swap the amp the time after that.
Look at me, making plans for the next two practices, as if I wasn’t just worried about ever having two practices in a row again. Why don’t we focus on the next practice actually happening before we start looking beyond that, m’kay?
As for me personally, my playing was awful. Probably worse than last week. That’s okay though, I will get back up to speed soon enough, assuming we get ourselves on a regular schedule, of course.
How about a couple of gear pics?
I didn’t get my hopes up last week and everything worked out. Now we’re shooting for two weeks in a row. Should I be excited?
Last week we had our first band practice in months after more false alarms than I care to remember. After all the fails I refused to get excited about it until we were all actually in the room together. Once we were though… rock and roll bro.
Now we’re talking about practicing again tomorrow. One week later. Is it going to happen? Is it going to fall through? Are we on or are we dealing with another false alarm? I don’t want to get too excited. I don’t want to get my hopes too high… but we’re practicing at noon tomorrow and my stuff is already packed up.
Rock and roll, bro.
Eric Clapton announced US tour dates. There are two New England shows, TD Garden in Boston and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. Tickets go on sale on Friday.
Do I want to go? I don’t know.
It wasn’t that long ago (just before the pandemic, I think) that I told my wife I wanted to see him one more time before he’s gone. I know he has some sort of neurological issue that is reducing his ability to play the guitar so the days are definitely numbered. Jeff Beck is gone… how long before Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page are gone too? I really should go see them before it’s too late. Those three guys are, more than anyone else, the reason I started playing guitar. Clapton more than the other two. I should want to go see him one more time, right? That makes sense.
But…
During the pandemic he demonstrated clearly what an absolute piece of shit he is as a human being. Do I really want to reward him for that by shelling out what is likely to be an absurd amount of money?
I honestly don’t know what to do.
Keith Relf and Jeff Beck are dead. John Mayall is dead. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker are dead. Rick Gretch is dead. Delaney Bramlett and George Harrison are dead. Duane Allman, Jim Gordon, and Carl Radle are dead. Clapton is going to turn 80 at the end of this month. Based on that very long list of band mates (no, Jeff Beck was not a band mate, though they did play together a few times over the years) who have died, I think he might actually be immortal, but that’s just speculation. It could be true.
I really don’t know what I want to do.
PS: I am just thinking out loud. I have zero interest in anyone’s comments on this. None at all. This one is just for me, dig it?
We did so much this weekend I can’t keep it all straight.
I hung a mirror, two paintings, and two coat racks in the bedroom, put together a big cabinet for the office and a storage rack for the bedroom. Rearranged most of the furniture in the bedroom and added a new cabinet. I took all of the stuff we bought from IKEA for the office that isn’t going to be used and loaded them into the car, though we aren’t sure when we’re going back to IKEA to return them.
What else, what else… I hung some pictures in the living room, replaced some old table lamps with new table lamps in the living room, pulled up two rugs and put down a new one down in the office. Rearranged some of the electronic devices in the office, or at least rearranged how it all plugs in.
I cooked lunch twice and dinner once, went to a whole bunch of stores for various reasons (not on Friday though), listened to the Bruins win one game and lose another, explained our issues to the HVAC guy who we called in tonight and after he started looking at things correctly guessed what the problem was (and the problem has since been corrected and all is well).
Oh yeah, and had the first band practice in forever where we all reiterated our desire to keep things going and hopefully start playing out again before the year ends. I also, for the first time, decided that the signal chain of Les Paul into Klon Klone into Rat clone into Vox AC15 wasn’t doing it for me, though the Les Paul into the Big Muff clone into the Klon Klone into the AC15 was absolutely doing it for me in the most ferociously fuzzed out blissful way possible. Next time I’ll have to bring a different overdrive pedal with me and replace the Rat clone.
Now the weekend is coming to an end. I still need to have my afternoon vitamins because I fell behind in all of my dietary goals today. The vitamins is the only thing still outstanding though. I will be cleared to have a drink in about half an hour. I’ll have them then and be all set with all of my goals for today. After that I’ll try to sleep for a while and then go back to work tomorrow.
That was a busy weekend. A crazy, busy weekend if you will.
Inside the Red Head's Head 