Category: Music

Nothing Constructive

I didn’t play guitar tonight. I did play about an hour and 10 minutes of World of Warcraft and with the exception of the last five minutes or so when I died repeatedly I had a nice stretch of slaughtering bad guys and monsters so I guess it was okay. I know we said we weren’t going to play World of Warcraft anymore, but it’s still my wife’s all time favorite, and it is also the only game I have on my PC and my subscription hasn’t run out yet so… yeah.

Star Wars: Old Republic is downloading, so there’s that.

There’s a Pixies song in the soundtrack to The Suicide Squad. Hey, off of Doolittle. Yeah… that set off the old Boston rock fan zaniness in a big way. I had already started listening to a lot of Throwing Muses prior to watching the movie but now we’re just up to our eyeballs in the music of the city of Boston from the late 80’s through the late 90’s. Pixies have been the soundtrack to tonight’s video game violence. I’ve blown through Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa and I’m about 3/4 of the way through Doolittle. For my money, Pixies Doolittle, Throwing Muses House Tornado (or the first record), and Mission of Burma’s Vs are enough to justify the entire god awful decade of the 1980’s. Throw in a handful of Rush records and just dump the rest of the decade down the crapper and you’re good to go.

Did I mention that Betwixt is getting back together for a few shows soon? There’s your 1990’s justification right there.

You know, I wish I had something constructive* to add to the electronic conversation tonight but I just don’t. Go give Doolittle a spin and you’ll feel better. Try Betwixt’s Moustache album too. Also, if you can find Smackmelon’s Space Shot play that too. Trust me.

*Twice through the course of this post, once in the title and once in the body, I have misspelled constructive as constructed. I blame society for my spelling short comings. The Pixies playlist just moved on from Doolittle to Bossanova. We should be Digging for Fire shortly.

Addendum: When I logged out of World of Warcraft, the Steam app said I had 10 seconds to wait before I could play Star Wars: Old Republic. Groovy, thought me. Then when I hovered my mouse over the Start button it changed to 8 seconds, and then to 4 hours and 50 minutes. It’s currently reading two hours and 56 minutes. Okay. I guess we won’t play tonight. It’s all right. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a Jedi or a Sith to start with anyway.

Addendum #2: We watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory tonight while we ate dinner. In it, Sheldon played a Theremin. Did anyone else completely forget that there is a Theremin in the Pixies song Velouria? The world is a small place, and music makes time travel possible.

20 Songs Down, 30 to Go

20 songs down. 40% of the project is complete.

I told you I was going to mix a song tonight.

Here it is:

I still have five minutes of “exercise” to do, and then maybe I’ll try to sleep. It’s 11:06 and all is quiet on the parental front. Fingers crossed.

Muddy

I’ve been listening to a lot of Elmore James lately. Tonight I switched it up and went with B.B. King but the playlist I found was skewed heavy on the cheesy pseudo-soul shit and I had to switch to something else.

I went with some Muddy Waters. For some reason I always neglect Muddy Waters.

After tonight, I need to promise myself I’ll listen to more Muddy. Tonight was like rediscovering something magical. I don’t think his chops are in the same league as B.B. or Elmore, but the attitude… the passion… the fire… the sheer nerve…

Holy shit his music is good.

Song Number 17

Today’s 50/90 progress was impressive (to no one on Earth but me). Four vocals, one rhythm guitar, five lead guitars, and one mix…

Today was the listening party for the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month thing. I forgot to submit a song back in June, and I forgot again for July. Sorry. This song here was written and recorded entirely in August so that means I am still up to date on R.E.M. even though I haven’t submitted a couple of times. I have written and recorded at least one song each month since the challenge started in March.

As for 50/90, 17 songs down and 33 to go.

Ninety

I spent a solid 90 minutes tracking guitars today and I feel a tiny bit better about the state of the world right now. Granted a tiny bit better than OH MY GOD WE’RE TOTALLY DOOMED AND NOTHING WILL EVER BE RIGHT AGAIN is… well… relative, dig?

I put rhythm guitars onto one song as a bit of a warm up and then went nuts doing leads. Five songs. The four that got vocals this morning and one more that was left over from last time I did leads.

My finger tips are killing me right now. I really need the band to get back together so I can get my fingers into regular shape again.

Four

I managed a little car music this morning. I put a load of laundry into the washing machine, jumped in the car, recorded vocals for four songs, and got back into the house one minute before the wash cycle ended. I kinda felt like a genius.

Obligatory drive home ugly clock picture:

The pipeline now contains five songs ready for lead guitar, five songs ready for rhythm guitar, and three that are just little noodles and still need everything. That’s all on top of the 16 songs that are already finished.

Song Number 16

Here’s another new song. This one is better than most if not all of the others. At least I think so right now. I’ll likely change my mind later.

Both of my parents are asleep. They both fell asleep with a TV on. Dad is in the living room. I need to sleep in the living room. I can’t find the remote. I think he might be laying on it. I can’t sleep with headphones on. Insert the sigh of frustration here. At least he got up and walked around on his own, including a trip to the bathroom. No assistance from me was needed at all. That is huge. Super huge. What a relief.

Granted, he fell asleep with the news on, and this network ran the same 30 minute news program at 9:00, 9:30, and 10:00. I think I am going to hear the same things maybe five times before the talk shows come on. Gross.

Late Music

I put rhythm guitar on two songs and leads on two more. Not bad considering I didn’t even have a musical thought until 9:00pm. The leads came easy tonight, which is nice. The rhythm tracks came harder than they should have given how easy the parts were, but it is okay. My shiny new Les Paul could probably benefit from new strings though. Weekend plans.