Jen and I were feeling like today should be the kind of day where we just lazily sit on the couch and watch the boob toob. Neither of us has any interest in the super bowl so we just popped over to Netflix to see what was what.
We stumbled upon the show An Idiot Abroad. We thought we’d give it a shot. What the hell, if it sucked then we put something else on. 44 minutes later we had both laughed our butts off and we’ve since plowed through two more episodes. Damn that is a funny show.
I don’t know why I am doing this, but I am going to make a soundcloud playlist of all of my works in progress and update it every time I record anything. It’s kind of a dumb idea, but what the hell, I’m kind of a dumb guy.
Song idea #1 is underway! I am bending my RPM rule of working all songs from scratch. During November’s NaSoAlMo silliness I bought a new 12-string guitar. When I took it home I opened up garageband on my phone and recorded the first thing that popped into my head. It was just a little 2 bar thingie in A minor. Yippee. I meant to use it for that project, but I didn’t. Now it makes up one little bit of RPM song #1. I think I’ll bend the rule again for what will be song #2. I’ve had a silly little idea for a riff that couldn’t really work as anything other than a bridge that’s been in my head since the mid 90’s. It keeps coming back to me for some reason. I’ll use it in the next song, if I can.
We went to BJ’s today for a water cooler and a Keurig machine.
Ummm… Are these necessary? How many of these do they sell?
As for this… Badass or nitwit? You be the judge.
Finally… It took a while to get it all running but now it’s all set.
I just weighed in for the week. Down another 5.6 pounds for a total of 13.2. I’m happy, but in a week or two when things level out I’m going to be super disappointed.
It’s February first kids, The RPM Challenge is officially underway! You can all look forward to a full months worth of pointless posts about how I dreamed up another repetitive guitar riff! WOOHOO!!!
And now that it’s time to start the music? I have to go to a weight watchers meeting! WOOHOO!!!
It’s tough to take pics of the birds in the yard when the sun isn’t exactly up, but when the cardinals show up you have to try it.
Today is hands down the happiest non-holiday business day of the year for those of us working for the company I work for.
Today is annual bonus day! Along with our W2 and our profit sharing trust documents for the previous year we get a nice bonus. It’s nice enough that, when added to my annual salary, it makes my income less laughable! WOOHOO
How did I celebrate bonus day? By changing the cat’s litter box! WOO(cough)HOO!
One more before the RPM craziness begins. This one was written in 1998 during Spring Break. It was then recorded in 2007 when I first heard about RPM but was too late to try it officially so I recorded 10 songs in March before taking a real shot at the challenge in April and failing miserably.
How’s that for a run on sentence?
I’ve always liked this one but I’ve never really been able to pull it off. The lyrics are about a photo of my grandparents that I first saw at my grandmother’s wake. I never new my grandfather, but my grandmother had always been there. Then she was gone. At the wake there was a picture of the two of them together when they were young. I think it might have been taken while they were dating. They were standing on the street looking like too kids who were acting goofy. It was hard to reconcile the saint I knew with the goofball in the picture. A few months later I came up with this song. My brother, John wrote the drum part. I was playing the guitar part in our little practice room at home and he came running in and jumped on the drums and started playing along. Just one more reason to really dig this song.
Here’s the new version:
http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/photograph-redux.mp3%20
Here’s the old version, for suffering’s sake:
http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/photograph.mp3%20
Inside the Red Head's Head 