Category: Uncategorized

Snow, Sort Of

My wife called me at work today.  She said that she heard a traffic report saying that pieces of the route 495 overpass at route 93 was falling off onto the highway below.  Ouch!  I checked boston.com to see if they were reporting it.  Nothing.  I checked twitter.  Again, nothing.  I wonder if WBZ radio made it up?  I used Waze to find the best route home, figuring it would tell me to avoid both 495 and 93.  Nope, only 93.  It kept me on 495 for longer than usual.

Of course, crumbling infrastructure was not the only reason for my slow drive tonight.  Snow.  Or should I say, the threat of snow.  But not a lot of snow.  Right now it’s just somewhere between a flurry and a dusting.  The forecast for later tonight calls for an inch or less.  That means we’ll either get nothing and still have panicked gridlock traffic tomorrow morning, or we’ll get a few inches and then have panicked gridlock traffic tomorrow morning.

Is it Spring yet?

 

PS: Note to self.  Buy Powerball tickets.

What’s in the Bag?

Hey Robbie, what’s in that big bag?

Untitled

I’ll tell you in a second…

Last night’s band practice wasn’t very good, but it was okay.  We hadn’t played together in about a month and it showed.  I half expected that I would have forgotten how to play every song.  That wasn’t the case, but it didn’t mean I didn’t screw up left and right and get lost now and then.

I had a disconcerting technical issue.  I think I know what it was though.  After 2-3 songs my volume level dropped to almost nothing.  It was weird.  One minute I was roaring like a tornado of Big Muff Fuzz, and the next I was a whisper.  I thought it was my uni-vibe pedal as a light that usually doesn’t light was lit from the minute I plugged in.  I figured the battery was dead.  I bypassed it on the board but it didn’t solve the problem.  Screw this, thinks I.  I pulled my tuner off the board and bypassed everything else.  The signal path was guitar->wah->fuzz->tuner->amp.  The problem persisted.  So I bypassed everything and plugged straight into the amp.  It worked.  So I have it narrowed down to those three pedals.  I am acting under the assumption that the amazing Big Muff pedal has a dead battery.

So what’s in the bag then?  Speak of the devil, it’s my pedal board and all of my pedals from Mike the bass player’s house.  Now I can add all the new pedals to the board, replace all of the 9-volt batteries with the new DC Brick power supply, and rearrange the whole thing to get the most noisy fuzz boxy mess imaginable!  I’ll let you know when it’s up and running again.  There will be an I-am-so-cool-check-out-my-pedal-board picture, I’m sure of it.

End of a Short Era

Last year Jen gave me her MacPro.  It is glorious.

I knew that someday she would take it back.  Today is that day.  I’m back to a MacBook Pro through a Thunderbolt Display.  For some reason the USB ports on the display don’t work.  They did with the MaxPro.  What’s up? 

 
Really gotta clean my desk.  That’s probably half the problem.

Yes Spinoff?

I follow former Yes guitarist Trevor Rabin on Twitter, even though the music the band made during his tenure is the only Yes music that I feel fails to stand the test of time.  I think it’s second rate at best.

He dropped a hint today about a possible tour featuring him and Jon and Rick.  One must assume he’s talking about fellow former Yes members, vocalist Jon Anderson and keyboardist (the best there has ever been, ever) Rick Wakeman.

I’ve no need to see Trevor live again.  Once was enough.  (1991 Union tour, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen by any band ever). Jon Anderson… Maybe?  I don’t think he is quite the same talent he once was.  I’d probably be disappointed.

Rick Wakeman though… Playing Yes music?  Now that’s an interesting proposition.  I think I could be talked into seeing him on stage again.  It’s tough to say no when a certifiable musical god comes to town.

We’ll see…