I Don’t Know… I Don’t Want It

Beat…

Adrian Belew and Tony Levin were in King Crimson (the first time) from 1981 through 1984. The two of them have recruited two world class musicians to play the music from that time period once again. On drums they have Danny Carey from Tool. I am not terribly well versed in Tool’s catalog, but what I do know is good and he seems like a good choice to cover for the legendary Bill Bruford. The other new guy… I don’t know.

I should be absolutely stoked for this new band. Adrian Belew is a fantastic guitar player. He’s one of the most innovative, original musicians ever. He’s a giant. Tony Levin is literally as good as a human being can get. Whether it’s on the bass guitar or the Chapman Stick, or any other chunk of wood with strings on it, he’s as good as it gets. He’s one of, possibly THE, most talented musicians on the planet Earth at this time. I’ve seen him live twice, once just before the pandemic hit when he was playing in the last version of King Crimson, and once back in 1988 (or was it 1989?) with Yes spinoff Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe. I really wanted to see him with Peter Gabriel back in September but we went to Disney World and caught Covid-19 instead.

Belew, Levin, Carey… all people I should be salivating over the chance of seeing them live on stage together. It’s that fourth guy though…

Is Steve Vai one of the most talented guitarists in the history of wood and strings? Yes, that’s a fair statement. Is Steve Vai a musical genius? Yeah, probably. I just… I just don’t really care for his music, that’s all. To me, he’s sort of in the same boat as Joe Satriani. I heard once that he actually took lessons from Joe Satriani at one point. I saw Satriani live once. He opened for Deep Purple. There was no denying his talent. No denying he is an astonishing guitar player. Having said that though, two songs into his set I was completely bored. Enormous talent. Staggering technique. But no actual interesting music. None.

Vai played with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake back in the 80’s. His ability was jaw dropping. His actual music? I’m sorry but it was just boring. It was style over substance in the worst way. That 1981-84 period of King Crimson is very important to me. I am positive that Steve Vai is going to do amazing things with it. I am also sure that I will be bored to tears by all of it.

I honestly feel terrible that I feel this way. I should be giddy with glee over this new band. I’m not. I just can’t. It makes me sad, it really does. My sincere apologies to Misters Belew, Levin, and Carey. And to Mister Vai too. I just can’t get over my preconceptions. I am really sorry.

Fascist Free

Daily writing prompt
How would you improve your community?
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The best way to improve my community, my whole country, would be to do the same thing the free world did during the second world war. Just remove the fascists. I don’t want it to take a war like it did back then. Let’s give them an island or something. They seem to be okay with their cult leader visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s island so they would likely be fine with a nazi island. Then we let them think they are their own independent country and let them think they are able to sustain themselves, sort of the way many of the southern US states think they can operate without Federal funds that they get from the more liberal states they claim to despise. They can have their marches and their rallies and they can discriminate against anyone who doesn’t look like them and they can treat immigrants poorly (as if there would be any immigrants) and they can treat women like property (as if any women would go there). If they try to leave the island the rest of the free world stops them. If they get too big for their britches we slap them back into place.

Ahh, what a world that would be.

Of course I could never actually condone this because it goes against everything I believe in as far as personal freedoms are concerned. That sucks. I guess I have to stay true to myself. Bummer, eh? Still, a fascist free community would sure be nice, wouldn’t it?

Joe Flaherty

Rest in peace, Joe Flaherty. The SCTV legend who once appeared as Count Floyd to introduce the Rush song, The Weapon.

If you don’t wear your 3D glasses you’ll only see in one half D.

Legend.

Stomach Fun

Two days from now will mark one year and 11 months since my Gastric Bypass Surgery. That 2nd anniversary is right around the corner.

Today I think back to one of the regular check ins I had with the surgeon. I told her that I was having some issues with pain. I would eat something, then a few hours would go by and I would start to get a bad stomach ache. Am I doing something wrong?

No, she said. It’s normal. You’re hungry.

Huh… hungry, eh? That’s it?

Yup, you’re hungry.

Sure enough, when I get that type of stomach pain I have something to eat and it goes away. That’s all well and good except… well… I don’t want to eat. I want to not be hungry. I want to have breakfast and then not have anything else to eat until lunch, then not have anything else to eat until dinner, then not have anything else to eat until a pre-bedtime snack. That’s not how it works though.

Today I started feeling it about 2.5 hours after breakfast. I started feeling it about 20 minutes before my lunch break. I started feeling it again two hours and 50 minutes after lunch. It was probably 45 minutes before dinner. I had to have a snack. It was a small snack and it made me feel better, but not completely better. Now I’m having dinner so that should hopefully fix things for the next few hours.

Like I said though, I don’t want to be tied to food like this. I don’t want to feel hungry. I just want to take advantage of the fact that my bypassed stomach pouch is a little tiny guy and doesn’t require a lot of food to fill it.

I am not complaining. Not even a little bit. I am fine with all of this. I just didn’t expect it and I wish I had another way around it. I don’t though and it’s okay.

Dinner tonight is salmon and it’s delicious. Given all of the grief I used to give my mother when she tried to give us fish for dinner, she would be shocked that I am loving a nice piece of fish tonight. Who even am I?

Something to Play Along With

Just saving this for later, as this blog sometimes serves as a browser/machine independent collection of bookmarks for me…

That’s a playlist of my band rehearsing each of the songs currently on our new-singer-audition-to-do-list. I haven’t listened to any of it yet so I don’t even know if the takes are complete or not, and I don’t know if they sound good enough to actually make anything out, and I don’t know if we made any colossal screw ups or anything.

In other words, this playlist might be a waste of time, but I did it during my lunch break so it is morally on the up and up.

I have a wordpress.com blog for the old band too. Maybe I’ll post it there for funzies.

Which Guitar?

I have two musical goals for tonight after work.

First: Put together a playlist of the songs on our potential-singer-audition-songs list so that I can start practicing the holy hell out of them.

Second: Decide which guitar I want to use for the band’s come back work. As of right now I am leaning toward the birthday Les Paul that my wife bought me for my 50th birthday almost three years ago. I’ve been playing the two 70’s Gibsons that I had all of the repair work done on since November or so, but I think I want to start the return-to-the-band process with my newest guitar.

Whatever guitar I decide to use for the band’s comeback (which is scheduled to start this coming Sunday) is going to need new strings. I have a couple of boxes here, but I might need to order some more from the Amazonians today. We’ll see.

It’s time to start focusing on getting the band running again. I’m mentally ready for it, but not quite ready from a guitar playing ability standpoint. I have a lot of rust to shake off.

These are pictures I took for today’s photo a day challenge, but they are not the guitar I am talking about. Oh well.

215/365
215/365
CIMG7537
CIMG7539
CIMG7540

Weather or Not

I made a pun in the title of this post. Did you like it? It takes the phrase “whether or not” and replaces whether with it’s homonym, weather because the post is going to be about the weather. Get it? I feel so friggin’ clever I could spontaneously combust*!

We’re supposed to get a nor’easter this week. The forecast yesterday said 3-6 inches of snow on Wednesday into Thursday. I just checked the accuweather website and it’s still calling for some snow on Wednesday but no real accumulation. Then Thursday into Friday we’re still looking at 3-6 inches.

I am taking my father to a doctors appointment on Wednesday and I am working in the office on Thursday. Wednesday is looking good but Thursday might be in trouble. We’ll have to see.

The long range forecast includes something I am looking forward to. When the temperature outside hits 60 degrees I like to open the windows. If the forecast is correct, next week I’ll be opening the windows. It stands as more evidence that I am now officially a really old fart, but stuff like that pleases me immensely. Come on, weather. Let’s let me open the windows. Just stop snowing first, m’kay?

*That’s sarcasm. I am not clever at all. Not even a little bit.

Adapting to Covid

Daily writing prompt
How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?
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When the lockdown started we got on board quick. We locked everything down and we locked it down hard. My wife and I were both overweight and pushing 50 years old (well, I was pushing 50 more than she was as she still hasn’t hit that “happy” milestone yet) and that was enough to justify our response, but more importantly to me, my step son has Crohn’s disease and type one Diabetes and there was no way in hell that kid was catching Covid-19 on my watch. We were all high risk but in my book his high risk out weighed everything else by far.

We still haven’t let up completely. Well… I don’t know, maybe we have. Maybe the mindset behind our day to day has changed so much that we can’t really perceive that we’re basically back to pre-pandemic normal.

We aren’t masking up every time we leave the house, but we are quick to put one on in some circumstances. If I have a sniffle I’ll wear a mask. We still hesitate to go out socially. Restaurants are few and far between. Doordash, Amazon, curbside pickups, they are all our friends. We’ve let ourselves go on a couple of trips. The last one was seven months ago and wouldn’t you know it, Jen and I both caught Covid. Shit. At the time I said to Jen that we needed to go on a trip right away after we recovered. We needed to get right back on the horse because if we didn’t we might never be able to bring ourselves to travel again. That was seven months ago. No one has returned to any horses yet. Shit.

So even though everything is steadily recovering and getting back to normal, we have adapted such that normal no longer feels completely normal, and we may never fully un-lockdown. I hope we can bring ourselves to relax, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to pull off that little magic trick.

The good news here though… my step son did not get sick on my watch. Mission accomplished.

Mother Nature’s Revenge

If you live in New England like I do, you may want to not look at the weather forecast.

Wendesday… snow.

Thursday… snow.

We’re going to get a Nor’easter… in April.

Damn it, Mother Nature. Why must you be such an insufferable asshole? Really. What a jerk!

It’s still a couple of days away at least, so maybe the forecast will change or turn out to be completely wrong. Maybe we won’t get snow after all. I’m not betting on it. If winter is going to give spring one last kick in the nards, it’ll be like this.

Good thing I didn’t already plant my peanuts!*

*I haven’t written a post about it for months, but I am still planning on trying to grow some peanuts this year. I am an idiot and this is the proof.