Category: Music

Strat-Tastic Practice

Band practice tonight.  I took my Fender Strat instead of one my Gibsons.  Mike the Bass Player asked me what I’ve been listening to.  I laughed, yeah I’ve been listening to the new Robin Trower record.  He’s a Strat guy.  Funny how that happens.  As of right now I am planning to take the strat to the next gig as the 2nd guitar.  Let’s see if I stick to that.

Two practices in a row I’ve been fuzz box free.  Tube Screamer into OCD has been my dirt, with a Soul Food as a volume boost for leads.  I’m not convinced it’s the way to go.  We’ll see.

ADDENDUM: I swear these effin’ hearthis.at links used to pull in the embedded player.  I even went to the band’s website and looked at the source code for a post where it worked and it is literally exactly the same as this post, but this time it didn’t work.  The hell, wordpress?

Superstition

You know this song, I am sure of it:

 

Are you aware that this is not the original recording of this song?  Stevie Wonder wrote Superstition for Jeff Beck.  The story, as I heard it (I don’t know if it’s true or not), is that Beck played on one of Stevie’s records and Stevie wrote him the song as payment for the session.  Beck had just started a new band and used the song as the centerpiece for their first album.

The band was Beck, Bogart, Appice (aka BBA) and despite the fact that it might have been the most talented trio in human history, their album is pretty crappy.  Superstition is by far the best track, but even it is a bit on the weak side.

 

Regardless of the quality of the recording, it’s an awesome riff and a monster groove and Jeff Beck is a god.  When I was a kid I had a cassette tape full of songs that I loved to play along with when I was locked in my bedroom playing my guitar.  Beck’s version of Superstition was absolutely on that tape.  I could totally play it in my sleep.

Fast forward about 30 years to modern times.  Two weeks ago at a band practice, the four of us sat around throwing out ideas for songs to learn.  Someone suggested Superstition.  They were thinking Stevie Wonder.  I said yes, thinking BBA.  Over the last few days I have taken to re-learning the song.

Oh my goodness.

I don’t know how I used to play this song.  It was tying my fingers in knots.  What a mess! I was playing around with both versions, as well as the Stevie Ray Vaughan version, just trying to make some coherent sense out of the whole thing and damn was it rough! When we played it at rehearsal tonight it was okay, but I scared myself for a minute there.

So I guess that answers the unanswerable question… am I a better guitar player today then I was when I was a kid?  That would be a solid NO.

Speaking of Stevie Ray Vaughan, I changed up the dirt section of my pedal board.  I took out the green Big Muff and added a Tube Screamer (Stevie Ray used Tube Screamers… that’s why I said speaking of Stevie, get it?).  I used to have my Fulltone OCD as a boost followed by the green Bass Big Muff followed by an EHX Soul Food for a volume boost for leads. Now it’s the Tube Screamer as a boost into the OCD as the dirt source, and the Soul Food stays as the volume boost.  It sounded okay, but I need to bring the board and the amp home for some detailed tweaking before the June 3rd gig.

You are fascinated.

Music Discovery

 

Last night I was waiting for the laundry to finish….

Have you noticed that like 90% of the stuff I do, I do while waiting for the laundry to finish?

…what the hell was I talking about?

Oh yeah, I went to a site I hadn’t been to in over a year called albumoftheyear.org.  The goal being to find some good bands that I had never ever heard of before and then listen to them and hope they are good.  I picked a few genres and then checked around for the highest reviewed bands and made a playlist to keep track of them.  If the band sounded okay within a song or two of the album I was listening to then I added a song to the playlist.  Now I can listen to more and decide if I like them or not.

Brilliant?

Yeah, maybe.

Then again… maybe it was just midnight and the Dodgers/Phillies game I was watching wasn’t really holding my interest and I wanted to stay awake.

This playlist is designed to be shuffled, and if all goes well it will be a living document of bands that I don’t know but maybe should.

 

The Upside of Streaming Music Services

I keep looking for the upside to streaming music services.  Apple music is nice because I can add tracks that I don’t physically own to playlists made up of tracks I do own.  That’s cool.  Also not having to buy individual records is okay, I guess, but for bands I really care about I still do.  So that’s a wash I guess.

The real upside though is browsing.  Assuming the service you are using has a wide enough catalog, you can dig into things that years ago you wouldn’t have exposed yourself too for whatever reason.  Personal case in point, Peter Green.  I knew him by reputation and a small handful of Fleetwood Mac songs, but that was it.  A couple of nights ago I was poking around on Spotify and stumbled on a multi-disc compilation of his music.  I gave it a spin and really liked it.  So what other British blues guitarists did I over look when I was a kid that I can give a chance today?  Rory Gallagher came to mind.  Good stuff.  Maybe not quite as good as his contemporaries, but I liked what I heard a lot.  Gary Moore?  Sure.  I remember back in 1990 holding the Still Got the Blues record in my hand and wondering whether or not I should just buy it.  I never did.  I’ve listened to a lot of it now.  I should have bought it back then.

So I’m thinking… blues guitarists… 1980’s-ish… who can I check on?  I know, Robert Cray.  I liked him back then, but I never came to really like him.  You know what I mean?  I found a compilation record and started listening.  Holy Shit!  This is SO much better than I remembered!  Even the songs I knew, “Smoking Gun” and “Phonebooth” and a couple others are way better than I remembered.  Why wasn’t “Smoking Gun” the biggest hit ever?  This song rules!  Is it possible that my tastes changed between the ages of 15 and 45?

I might be starting to come around on the whole streaming music thing, even though I know in my soul that they are screwing artists left and right.  Call me conflicted.

Musical Stuff

Band practice was a bust last night.  Mike’s bass was slightly damaged during his cellar flood a couple of weeks ago.  It’s in the shop.  We are hopeful it will survive, but maybe a little part of us is also hopeful that it won’t survive and he’ll be forced to buy that Rickenbacker 4001 he’s been dreaming of since high school.  I brought my cheapo-ebay special Squire P-Bass so he could use it if needed, but my bass is actually in worse shape than his.  Playing in tune was out of the question, so we sat around for two hours throwing out ideas for new songs to cover.

I was listening to a podcast on the drive home tonight.  It’s put out by the fine folks at CD Baby and it’s called DIY Musician Podcast.  The topic this week is, Is your age an obstacle to music success.  I guess, and the podcast agreed, that the answer to that question depends on how you define success.  Is success being able to make music full time?  Is success being able to tour the world?  Is success being able to bang groupies while doing blow off a passed out hooker’s behind like an 80’s hair metal band?  Not for me.

If I get to define what success is for me, then I am an unbelievably successful musician.  I’m a couple of weeks shy of my 46th birthday and I played four gigs in the last year.  That’s more than most of my bands played during their entire lifetime back during my 20’s.  If I remember correctly, the next gig will tie Lizardfish for the most gigs ever played by any band I’ve been in.  Break Even played five.  I’m really stretching my memory here, but I think the band I played in in High School might have done eight or nine.  However, four were with the one main line up.  The four or five others were with variations on that lineup.  The band Mike and I had with Maria the drummer as well as a number of different singers was by far the best band for my taste as it was the only one that was all original, but it only played two gigs.  El Pez Lagarto has played four gigs since I joined, and has three more booked.  That’s amazing to me.  In my eyes that makes us supremely successful!  Now if we could just start doing the occasional original song.  That would be icing on the cake.

I am going to start mic’ing up the room during band practices again and trying to make decent sounding rehearsal tapes.  I haven’t mentioned it to the band yet, but I think I might want to try recording a show as well.  All the more reason to start slipping in original songs.  How about an EP of original music titled, Live at Racks: Bootleg.  I see a hit in our future.  Now I just need to get those songs written and rehearsed and my little idea for recording a show needs to be practical and the band has to go along with it.  No problem.  (yes, problems.  everywhere problems.)

Steve Hackett has a new album.  It’s on Spotify.  After me posting all of my crappy songs back in February, here is an example of what a real guitar player sounds like.

Enjoy.

Is That How It Goes?

I’m sitting at my desk.  My wife is sitting at her desk right next to me.  She started laughing a little and then put on some music.  The first song was one that my band plays. It was odd… I learned it by listening to a recording of the band with their previous guitar player.  I don’t think I had ever listened to the original recording.  It was weird… I don’t even come remotely close to what was on the record.

That song ends and another comes one.  Same thing.  A song my band covers.  This time what caught my ear was more tone based as I played the same part just much, much heavier.  Then the chorus kicked in and my backing vocal was off by a whole octave.

The third song she played… also one my band covers.  I asked her, did you make a Lizardfish playlist?  She just laughed.  I love her so much.  Again, what I play and what I hear on that record… not the same thing at all.

Damn it, Robert.  Do you play anything right?  Why haven’t you been kicked out yet?

Then someone on Facebook posted this image:

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First off, Chick Corea is a genius.  Okay, now that I’ve said that, I have no idea if this was really written by him.  It feels like things that a jazz legend would consider, especially the parts about knowing when to just shut the hell up.  I wish I could do that, but I just can’t wrap my brain around it.  Even when I’m supposed to be silent I am still throwing noise into the mess.  Bad, Robert.  Bad.  Anyway, the one that sticks out to me also validates all the screwing around I do within the confines of my little cover band.

9. Guide your choice of what to play by what you like – not what someone else will think.

I’ve never met Chick Corea.  Return to Forever’s Romantic Warrior album is godlike.  Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew is beyond what humanity should ever have been able to accomplish.  More than any of that though, #9 on that list is, in my mind, the most important lesson a musician can learn.  Be a human being.  Don’t be a jukebox.  Do what speaks to you.  Don’t worry about what others will think.  I told you the guy was a genius.

Yes with Geddy Lee

The best part of this video is knowing that Geddy Lee is playing along with some of his heroes, and while he appears cool he is probably freaking out with glee on the inside.

No Bill Bruford on the stage, but he’s retired so I didn’t expect to see him.  No Tony Kaye either.  I don’t know what his story is.  Trevor Rabin is half everyone else’s age but he’s starting to look old.

Geddy Lee is more than a replacement for the late great Chris Squire.  There’s nothing missing on the bass guitar front.  Still… the lack of Chris Squire’s harmony vocals is a Titanic sized hole in this performance.  Hell, you could fly a planet through the Squire sized hole.  Rest in peace, Chris Squire.

Two Amps

I don’t have an A/B switch, or an A/B/Y switch, but I do have a DoD Flanger with a stereo output.  I’ve never used it with two amps though.  I’ve always wanted to play with it.  I have both of my tube amps at home right now, a 22 watt Fender Deluxe Reverb and a 15 watt Fender Bassbreaker.  This weekend might be time to experiment a little.  Two Fender amps kinda defeats the purpose, but they do sound very different so it won’t be a total loss.

Here are a couple of videos, for research purposes…

 

Video from Last Night’s Show

The love of my life wasn’t supposed to go to the show last night but she did!  She stayed for two sets, it was amazing.  Everything I do is 100 times more fun when she’s there.  That’s just how it is, folks.

She was kind enough to take a bunch of pictures and short videos.  I took the videos and stitched them all together in iMovie because Apple is awesome.  I posted it on the band’s website, and on the band’s facebook, and now I am posting it here because I am a content whore and that’s what content whores do.

Boy Scout Fail aka Gig Recap

The band played out last night. It was our fourth show at Racks Bar in Plaistow, NH. Overall it was a decent show. The two day long snow storm kept a lot of people away so the turnout was lower than we’ve gotten at previous shows. Also, I think the success of the first three shows has left me a little over confident.

Mike the bass player owns one bass guitar. I own a cheap bass too and I’ve brought it to all of our shows so Mike would have a back up. I forgot to bring it last night. That was dumb of me. That was one thing that I look back on and wish I could do over.

There was one other thing that I felt was a bad move done in the spirit of over confidence. Picks. At every gig I’ve ever done in my entire life I have had a pick in my right hand and a bunch of spare picks in my pocket. In some cases there were picks taped to my microphone stand too.

Last night during one of the first couple of songs it occurred to me that I didn’t have any spare picks on me. I had a box full of them in one of my guitar cases, but nothing up on stage with me. I told myself that before the second set started I would fill up my pocket with spares.

A couple of songs into the second set it dawned on my that I never grabbed that box of picks. I started getting nervous. What the hell am I going to do if I drop this pick and can’t find it? There was another pick with my second guitar, I could grab that one if I needed to. Still, that would suck. I told myself I’d get that box out of my Les Paul case before the third set.

Fast forward to the third set. Did I get those picks out of the case? Of course not. Sure enough, we were playing one song that has a great solo section where I always try to come as close as physically possible to shredding like a demon. As the moment approached, I stepped on the pedal I was using as a volume boost for solos and…

Whoosh, out of my hand went the pick. I knew it was going to happen eventually, and there it was. Fortunately it landed right at my feet and didn’t get lost, but I had to finger pick through the rest of the song. I lost my chance to shred like a madman and then I had to get down on my knees and pick the stupid thing up. I should have just been able to pull another pick out of my pocket and keep going like nothing happened.

I did screw up a lot last night. There were some small miscues all through the first two sets. The third set… I train-wrecked a little. The other guys held it together but I was off the rails once or twice. I think I know what happened to me. We had a lot of snow overnight Friday and I was planning on getting up pretty early to dig out so that we could drive up to see my step daughter perform with the all-state choir in Concord, NH at 1:30. The stress of it all must have popped me awake at about 3:30 am. I couldn’t get back to sleep no matter what I did. So when the third set came around I was at about the 20 hour mark. I didn’t feel tired. There is too much adrenaline pumping for that, but I think I was really mentally fatigued. Things that I usually do without a second thought suddenly escaped me. Guitar parts that I usually nail became challenging, or I just flat out forgot them. It pissed me off, but I took out my frustration on a couple of solos and it got better. Still, stupid snow storm.

We booked two more shows for later in the year so we have three booked now. Every show we’ve done and every one we have booked has been at the same bar. That’s not really a good sign, but I am too old to care about such things. My days of seeing music as a career are so far gone that I can barely remember when it was an actual thing.

The next show is in early June. I promise I will have spare picks at all times.