I’m a Terrible Musician

I finished two of my March Music songs today. Everything’s done but the final mix. I wrote two songs worth of melodies and lyrics, and then recorded two songs worth of vocals and lead guitars.

Given that these are the first two songs I’ve brought along this far this month it might be safe to assume they are my favorites of all of the things currently in progress (there are eight songs so far) and you would be correct.

After today’s contributions though, these are now officially the two worst songs I’ve ever written, the two worst vocal performances I’ve ever recorded, and the two worst guitar performances I’ve ever recorded.

I suck.

I tried to make myself feel better by going a little nutty with Hipstamatic. Shake to Shuffle didn’t shake my current musical sucking.

Guitars and Statistics

I doubled the number of songs with guitars recorded tonight. I had three, now I have six. They all suck and my attempts at keeping things low-fi are making them suck even more. What can you do, right? Two of the songs are in 7/8 time because prog, and two are in 3/4 time because… I don’t know, waltz maybe?

So… COVID-19. WHO has declared it a pandemic. Duh. It is pretty global now so, yeah. Pandemic. Dig it?

I’m seeing all sorts of people calling the responses so far “panic”. They don’t seem to get it. It’s not panic, it’s resource management. Every single infectious disease expert is telling us to put “social distance” into practice. Why? Resource management. There are going to be x number of infections, based on the data we have from China, and y percent of those infections will require hospital care. Finally, we only have z number of hospital beds available at any given time. y is less than x, but y is greater than z. Dig? Statistically speaking there will be more infections requiring hospital care than there are hospital beds to put them in. If we put “social distance” (I fucking LOVE that term and I’ve been practicing it since I was about four years old) into place then we spread out the infections over time, thus reducing the number of cases requiring hospital care at any one time so that suddenly y is less than z. Boom. Problem if not solved then partially alleviated. Statistics, babie. Stats for the win.

Read this from the New York Times: Flattening the Coronavirus Curve

Read this from WBUR: Harvard Global Health Expert: Mass. Hospitals Face Capacity Problem If Coronavirus Cases Spike Quickly

I Should Have Known That One

In last Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead there is a scene (no spoilers) where Eugene is talking over the short wave radio. He is trying to find a record to play a song to whoever he is talking to and he can’t find it.

I now know why he couldn’t find it.

The song was published in 2010… there is no way it would have been released on vinyl. C’mon guys, you should have thought that through.

(okay, at this point I realize that I am not sure that he was digging through vinyl. I just assumed that but he might have been digging through CDs. I have to watch again to verify)

Worse than that? Later in the show he sings the song and I didn’t recognize it. I can’t say for sure, but I doubt I’d ever heard it before… but there is a chance I might have actually seen the band who wrote it do it live.

It was an Iron Maiden song. It’s not from a record I really know at all, but I still should have freakin’ known it was an Iron Freakin’ Maiden song! I am such a tool!

RPMarch 2020

Back in 2014 when I insanely did an album in a month project almost every month for the entire year, I started with RPM in February and then kicked off a new project in March. I was looking at an old blog post where I referred to this 2nd month as RPMarch. I also referred to how the nickname is ridiculously stupid, but I kept using it anyway.

Welp kiddies, RPMarch 2020 is well underway. Three songs arranged with rhythm guitars. One more is just a two bar guitar riff that I haven’t done anything with yet. I will though, it’s mildly groovy in a dad-rock-bluesy kinda way (in other words it’s about as cool as rotting cheese). I am such a tool.

The plan is simple. Literally, that’s the plan. Guitar, bass, drums, voice. No doubling, just one rhythm guitar track played with as few punches as I can manage. I’m also (gasp) not using any pedals (gasp, again). I told you this was insane. It’s just my Les Paul straight into my 15 watt Bassbreaker. I’m not even using my tuner pedal. Last Christmas I got a clip-on headstock tuner from my Secret Santa. I’m using that. I am only using one cable. It’s utter madness!

Recording stuff before work also gives me a built in chance to cheat my way through the Flickr Photo a Day thingie. Happy day #191.

New Cream!

Today should be a national holiday. No, an international holiday. Hell, the entire known universe should get today off from work so they can celebrate.

There is a new Cream album!

Well… sort of. It’s a four disc set that includes four shows from a stretch of US tour in 1968. It’s called Goodbye Tour Live 1968, but I don’t think it’s from the last tour, I think these shows are pre-Wheels of Fire, but I don’t know the dates so I can’t say for sure.

A lot of this stuff has already been released. I’m only four songs into my first listen and already there are two that I recognize. White Room and Politician from the Oakland show are from Live Cream Vol II… I think. White Room definitely is, Politician might be from Goodbye, but I’ll have to check on that. I’m pretty sure it’s from vol. II though. I’m guessing most of those early ’70’s live records came from these shows. Did Wheels of Fire’s second disc? I don’t know, but we’ll find out. The first versions of Crossroads and Spoonful (I’m up to disc one, track five now) are not from Wheels of Fire, and I’m hearing them for the first time right now. Crossroads sounds so under-rehearsed that they might have all been playing a different song (not really). Spoonful sounds awesome.

Come and celebrate with me. New Cream! Rest in peace Jack Bruce, rest in peace Ginger Baker, and if the universe makes a move on Eric Clapton I’ll lose my shit in epic fashion. Let’s all work together to keep our last surviving member of Cream safe and healthy for as long as we can, okay?

Addendum: I misspoke… mistyped? whatever. It’s not four US shows, it’s three. Oakland Coliseum, Los Angeles Forum, and San Diego Sports Arena. The fourth disc is from the final show at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I’m hoping it’s not a straight pull from the movie soundtrack because I’ve always been disappointed in the sound quality. I’m still on disc one, track five (a 16:46 take of Spoonful) so it will be a while before I find out.

Addendum II: Definitely not pre-Wheels of Fire. I should have known. Deserted Cities of the Heart from the Oakland show is the same as Live Cream vol II and Clapton introduces it as a “another one from Wheels of Fire.” Duh.

Addendum III: Looking at the track list last week the one song that jumped out at me was Passing the Time. I couldn’t imagine how they would work that one live as it seems very much a studio project to me. What I didn’t notice was that Toad is not listed on the Oakland show. That probably would have clued me in to what’s coming. Passing the Time starts out roughly similar to the album arrangement (again, sounding woefully under-rehearsed) but instead of going into the first verse they jump right to the jam in the middle and then… drum solo. A long drum solo. My first thought was, will this show have two drum solos? What about Toad? That’s when I peeked ahead. They did this instead of Toad. Ah, I get it now.

Addendum IV: I’m So Glad from the Los Angeles show is definitely the same as the version on Goodbye. It is just as freakin’ amazing as you remembered. More importantly, Sitting on Top of the World from Los Angeles is also the same as Goodbye. When guitar groups on Facebook ask everyone to list their favorite guitar solos, Sitting on Top of the World from Goodbye is usually one of the songs on my short list. I’ve already listened to Politician from the L.A. show but it didn’t jump out at me as being familiar. I might have to double back to that one.

Addendum V: Sunshine of Your Love from the Los Angeles show might be the best version ever. Clapton is on fire. There’s one interesting spot where Ginger Baker might have colossally screwed up, but like the jazz cat his was at heart he rolled with it and turned it into something really cool. There’s also a moment when the bass disappears from the mix. Was Jack Bruce having equipment issues, or is this one of those moments when one of the band members would stop playing and the other two wouldn’t even notice?

Ah, at the end of the song Clapton apologizes to the audience for the technical problem. I guess he did notice! Who said these guys weren’t paying attention to each other!

Addendum VI: Disc 2 track 10, Spoonful from the Los Angeles show. Three word review: Clapton is God. Now an alternate two word review: Holy Shit! This is why they were the best live band on Earth. This is all you need to listen to. Wow.

Addendum VII: The San Diego show on disc three is the weakest of the US shows by far. There are moments when they sound almost lazy and disinterested. After all the years I spent reading about how this band fell apart in its last few months, this is more like what I was expecting the whole box set to sound like. The Los Angeles show being as good as it is was almost a surprise to me. There are some stellar moments on disc three though. I’m So Glad is played with an intensity that was unlike any version I’d heard before. The jamming in Spoonful is incredible. Clapton does a thing where he shreds for a bar, then switches to a warp speed version of the rhythm part for a bar and then repeats the pattern for a long time. It’s a technique that Jack Bruce actually used all the time to allow him to improvise like a maniac and still hold the bass line. It’s pretty cool. It’s followed almost immediately by a (very) near train wreck as they completely butcher the transition from the jam back into the song. Clapton misses his part altogether, but manages to hold on. Bruce then does some really nice messing with the vocal melody on the last chorus. It’s cool.

Addendum VIII: The London show is the movie soundtrack and it sounds just as atrocious as you’d expect. It’s bootleg quality. It almost sounds like someone set up a mic in the lobby and let it run. That’s a little disappointing. I know the performance is going to be outstanding, as they did go out with a bang, but I probably will never listen to this disc again.

Addendum IX: I’ve finished listening to the whole set. All four discs. Yes the London show sounds like shit, but the performance… oh my god. During Baker’s drum solo on Toad it felt to me like I was listening to someone who didn’t want it to end. Given the way he hammered his way into Blind Faith a few months later, that’s probably true.

That last show was in November 1968. It was roughly two and a half years before I was born. I wasn’t even a twinkle in my daddy’s eye at that point, as the saying goes. Why then did I find myself feeling a little sad as they were bomb blasting their way through the last song, Stepping Out? I knew it was the last moment in their collective career. I knew that they knew it too. Sure they got back together briefly a couple of times, and the London shows in 2005 were amazing (I haven’t heard the New York shows that followed, but rumor has it they were less than stellar), but this was it. It was over and even though it was a little more than 51 years ago I was sad that it was ending.

I am such a tool.

I seem to recall one of them, Jack Bruce I think, saying something like as they were all back stage after the last show if one of them had decided to change their mind the others would have agreed and they could have continued. Knowing what I know about the state of mind Eric Clapton was in at the time there is no way he would have suggested it. He was the one who broke them up in the first place. Still… it’s a nice thought in an alternate universe kinda way. What would have happened if they had stuck around another couple of years.

In closing, I went back and listened to the Los Angeles show again and Politician is definitely the same as the version on Goodbye. It makes sense that they would use the best of the shows for their last official/first posthumous release. Sunshine of Your Love from that show is definitely the best version I’ve ever heard, even with the bass dropping out here and there. You can almost hear Clapton and Baker communicating telepathically during the jam… Jack’s having problem, let’s just keep going until they get it straightened out. That’s exactly what they did. Ginger tried reigning it in and Eric just took over. It would have been better if there was bass all the way through, but even with that hole it still sounds incredible.

Just When You Thought it was Safe

Just when you thought it was safe to come to this page without being inundated with soul crushingly boring discussions about mind numbingly bad music…

I recorded some guitar today. I snuck it in before I left for work. Nothing special, no doubling, no multiple amps. I didn’t even use any pedals, just straight into the amp. I can almost hear r/guitarpedals screaming in horror from here.

Could I Be That Dumb Again?

In March of 2014, after finishing my February RPM album, I started an album-in-a-month thing. I didn’t finish. In April I started another one, even though March was still out there. I didn’t finish that one either. In May I finished both March and April. In June I started another one and finished it (yay). In July, August, and September I did the 50 songs in 90 days challenge, and in the process completed an album-in-a-month each month. In October I took a break and did half an album-in-a-month. In November I did NaSoAlMo… an album-in-a-month. In December I started one but somehow lost more than half of my GarageBand files and ended up with a little less than half an album-in-a-month.

So… when I woke up this morning, a telecommute day, I looked over at the corner of my room where all of my gear is still set up and thought to myself…

Could I be that dumb again?

I don’t know. Maybe. First I have a new episode of Star Trek Picard to watch. Priorities, kids… priorities.

Projects

March kinda sucks.

I go through this every year. I finish my February music projects and then feel this gaping hole in the universe during March. From reading blogs and forum posts on rpmchallenge.com I’m clearly not alone in feeling this way.

So what to do?

A few months ago I was working on a way to add the rest of my old myspace blog to this site. I started up on that again last night. WordPress.com is able to back date posts but it’s a royal pain in the ass to go back to 2007 and 2008. Instead, I created a Blogger account and I’ve been posting back dated entries there. Once I have them all I’ll export them to an .xml file and import them here. That should work fine. The myspace blog covered pretty much all of 2006 through November 2008. I had pulled all of 2006 into my previous wordpress.com site so those are all here already. As of last night the Blogger page has almost all of 2007. I think I have about 75 more posts to go.

I’m still going with my Flickr photo-a-day project. It suddenly feels difficult though. It was easy last month. There was always music happening so I could take pics of that, and Disney made things even easier. Now? What the hell do I take pictures of now? Where’s the cat when I need her?

Back in January Jen and I did a tutorial for a javascript extension (I think that’s the right way to describe it… a scripting language built on top of javascript). It was fun and interesting but my javascript knowledge is ancient and more or less nil at this point. I thought I might have gotten more out of it if I did a javascript tutorial first. I would like to try something like that in the coming weeks. I would like to be a better all around programmer than I am right now. My company’s development tools and programming languages are proprietary, so even if I’m firing on all cylinders at work it doesn’t really extend to the rest of the world.

Years ago I found a set of wordpress.com tutorials called Blogging University. There are various beginner and intermediate level courses to help you get the most out of your wordpress.com experience. There were classes for customization, writing, photography, and interacting with other blogs. I might give some of those a try again, just for schnitzengiggles. If I remember correctly they were mostly prompts. Things like, today you should write a better About page, or today you should take a picture of water. Stuff like that. The photo stuff would be fine to redo, as I just said I’m always looking for ideas for photo-a-day. The basic blogging stuff is probably too simple for this page, but there is always the lizardfishmusic.com page. I could make some changes there. I don’t think I’ve made any changes to the layout there since I first created it. Maybe a face lift would be fun?

Exercising should be an obvious target for new projects. I had a really bad night Weight Watchers wise last night and I’m feeling a little crummy about myself today. I got home from work and just started shoveling food into my face and I really didn’t stop until I fell asleep. I need to be better than that. The gym might help in that regard, or at least minimize the damage of any future bad days. Right now I am having a problem with one of my feet (again). My right foot feels a little swollen and it hurts to walk. It’s not the same thing I had a month or so ago, and it’s not nearly as bad, but it is slowing me down right now. Once that eases up I need to get back to the gym, and I need to get into a regular routine.

There is always more music to record, and more songs to learn for Lizardfish, and more practicing in general to do. Just because February is over doesn’t mean I can stop playing. I was doing pretty well with finding time to practice back in January. I need to keep up with it. I’m tired of feeling like the weak link in the band. I’m also thinking of trying something new gear wise. I want to try to run a two amp rig in the band, but most of the amps I have now are way too powerful and if I paired them up I’d be unable to not drown out the rest of the band during rehearsals. I keep looking at my 15 watt Fender Bassbreaker as the solution. If I could pair that with another lowish watt amp that could work. I am thinking about going to Guitar Center to inquire about trading my Fender Stratocaster in for a Vox AC15. I think that might be the key to making it all work. A Fender Princeton reissue could do it, but it’s only a 10 inch speaker and I’d prefer to stick to 12 inch speakers if I can. I just like them better. We’ll see.

Should I start looking into using in-ear monitors? One of the guys in the band uses them. One of the hosts of the Gig Gab podcast swears by them. So much so that he’s always inspiring the other host to try them, even though he has a hard time with them. I don’t really want to spend money on it, but we’re getting to the point where we’re going to be mic’ing the room during rehearsals and I always wear ear plugs anyway. Is it time? I’m trying to decide. I’m definitely on the fence. We’ll see.

I was hoping that by this point in 2020 I would be able to do something to help out with the Warren for President campaign. I guess that isn’t going to happen. At least it seems highly unlikely now. I can get behind Bernie Sanders, but the idea of a candidate in his late 70’s who has already suffered a heart attack during this campaign is a little depressing. Platform wise I can 100% get on board. Human wise… ugh. As for Joe Biden. He’s a great guy and I love him to pieces, but he’s literally my last choice of all of the candidates we’ve had. Dead last. Yet another guy in his late 70’s but this time one who just feels like a frat boy who got lucky. He just seems a little too dumb ass for the oval office, and we already have a total dumb ass in the office now. If he ends up with the nomination he’ll get 100% of my support… I was just hoping the rest of the country would jump on the Warren bandwagon, that’s all. Yet another reason to feel let down by my fellow Americans.

There are a crap ton of TV shows that I want to watch. February has resulted in me falling way behind on all of the CW super hero shows that I like to watch. I’m like two months behind on The Flash, Supergirl, and Batwoman. I’ve been trying to get caught up on Star Trek Discovery. Season two is really good, I just haven’t had time to power through. The last season of Star Wars The Clone Wars is either about to come out or has just recently come out. I wanted to binge the whole series before I watched the new season but… Jar Jar… he kinda killed my interest in that. I want to finish season two of You even though it’s definitely meh. I want to watch Lock and Key and The Expanse and I still want to get back into Breaking Bad and Preacher. I’ve started both of them, but just haven’t been able to keep going. I’m not sure why, the are both good. I’m caught up on The Walking Dead, and the second spin off is just a month or so away. One show that I did not fall behind on in February is Star Trek Picard. It is so good. Just, so very good. I wish it was going to be a 25 episode season instead of 10 (I think it’s just going to be 10). I don’t want it to end… ever.

I’m sure there are other projects I can come up with that are just there for fun and a sense of creative accomplishment. If we get lucky and Spring actually gets here there are always day trips up to the mountains that I can drag my beloved Mrs to. There are so many waterfalls, and so many scenic views up there. They are all just sitting there, waiting for me and Jen and my camera to come and visit.

There’s also always Disney World. Or Disneyland. Or Euro-Disney, if that’s even still a thing. I’d say Tokyo Disney too but I have a co-worker who was supposed to go there next week and he told me it’s closed due to some global pandemic* thing. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

On an unrelated note, I am trying a new browser again. The same podcast that inspired me to try Brave has inspired me to try Vivaldi. This post is the first thing I’ve done with it. Isn’t that exciting? I’m just glad that the Last Pass plug in for Chrome works in Vivaldi too. That makes life a tiny bit easier.

*Go wash your hands. Seriously.