Category: Music

Neil Peart Article in Rolling Stone

For decades, Rolling Stone seemed to have a bias against Rush. On the rare occasions when they mentioned the band it was usually negative. It lead to most of us having a pretty bleak opinion of the magazine. Granted, there was a lot more to make Rolling Stone irrelevant and unreadable, but for a Rush fan there was that little irksome thing on top of everything else.

In the waning years of the band’s career that started to change. Rolling Stone started publishing articles on Rush that were positive and seemed to imply someone in the company “got it”. They were fair and seemed honest, but left me and my fellow Rush fans feeling good about the universe and that was a nice thing.

Yesterday, on the first anniversary of Neil Peart’s passing, they published this article. I would recommend you give it a read. It’s long, but worth it. They take a guy whose public image was one of a grumpy dude who didn’t want to deal with you or anything you cared about and turned him into a human. Good work. Thank you.

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Bye Bye Cheeto!

Did the nazi Cheeto really concede? When did my phone’s autocorrect start capitalizing Cheeto?

Whatever, he’s evil and he’s gone. Fuck him right up his orange ass.

I played guitar tonight. At first it was stress relief but then it was celebration.

Tied for the Most Uploaded Song

I mixed a song today for the re-recordings volume four. This song has been recorded and uploaded to my alonetone account three times, which (I think) ties it for the most re-uploaded song ever.

It was written in 2008 (I think, it might have been 2009, but I’m pretty sure it was 2008) and it’s a little ditty about what a putz The Boy King George W Bush was. We didn’t know how good we had it when we were stuck with that schmuck for eight years.

The First of the Year

Check it out, the first ugly clock downtown picture of the year!

That means I left the house, which means I either did car music or had to drop a package off at a UPS drop box, right? Well how about both?

I started with car music in The Loop parking lot. I did four songs, all for volume four of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project. All of them sound… eh. Oh well.

I then went to a UPS drop box near my old apartment but the box was overflowing with packages. Any clown walking by could have just dipped in and stolen a bunch of things. I decided to wait for another day. Tomorrow? We’ll see. Tomorrow is a work day. How depressing is that? Today is the last day of the Christmas long weekend/vacation season. It’s all down hill from here. BOO!

That “BOO” was meant to express displeasure. It was not evidence of a ghost. I just thought I should clear that up. You’re welcome.

12/30 Random

Tomorrow is New Years Eve. I have to work. We never get NYE off. We get Christmas Eve off, but never NYE. Why don’t I ever put in for that day? I don’t know… I guess I’m just responsible. Idiot.

Speaking of work, late next week I am going to be issued a new computer. A laptop this time. 16+ years as a desktop user and I’m making the switch. Actually, we’re all making the switch. At least that’s the rumor. The company is going laptop across the board. I’m actually the last of my group to get one. No more trying to find an open desk when I travel between buildings.

Traveling between buildings is actually the issue here. I actually have to do it in order to pick up the lappy. I have to go to the building in Canton. I don’t want to. Not even a little bit. I haven’t been in a work building since March 13th and I was really hoping to stay out until I got that second dose of one of the vaccines. I have to do all sorts of health checks before I can walk into the building, and I have to wear a mask the whole time. It’s safe, I just don’t like it. I’ll only be in there for 15 minutes or so. Still… I’m freaking a little. Just a little.

Speaking of work things that don’t have anything to do with work, I’m sitting at my desk finishing up lunch, typing this little postie and listening to music. My iPad is streaming to our new pair of HomePod Minis. It’s a really sweet little setup. I set my entire iTunes library to shuffle. It’s been running since a bit before 9:00. If I leave it on for a few days it still won’t have repeated a file. It just played a song from a Boston music compilation CD (Pipeline!) by a great band called Christmas. I thought to myself, I wonder if they are on Apple Music. I brought it up and searched and… yeah, shoulda known better. Naming your band Christmas back in the ’80’s might have been a cool move. Naming your band Christmas in the ’20’s when no one goes to record stores anymore and everyone finds your music by searching in one app or another… not a good move.

The kids are coming over tonight. That makes me happy. The kids are spending New Years Eve at their dad’s. That makes me sad. It’s the price we pay for having them at our house Christmas morning, but it still makes me sad.

Okay, it’s 2:00 so I need to get back to work. Lunch time is over. Back to it, red head.

Slide? Oh Please No

The last time I did car singing I finished what I had planned quick so I did a re-recording too. I didn’t have rhythm guitars down so I was working off an old scratch track. Tonight I put the guitars down… all of them… oh, so many tracks.

Four tracks of fat finger flubbing rhythm guitars (two takes, each with two mics for a total of four tracks)

Six tracks of lead guitar. Three takes, two mics each. One take was my usual guitar sound, one was a cleanish sound, and the third was tons of fuzz and feedback and… and… slide.

I am the worst slide player on Earth but don’t fret, I only used it for noise, and I’m probably going to play the two tracks backwards. You’re all safe. Trust me.