Post Covid Vax Come Down

My wife and I both got our latest Covid-19 vaccination shots yesterday evening, and we are both feeling the effects today. The last time we did this I felt legitimately sick the next day. Today I am just tired and sore and flakey-brained. I’ve managed to check a couple of things off of my to do list, but I feel like I have punted a lot of things off until tomorrow.

I finished the laundry and made the bed and bought a gift for my work’s yankee swap on Tuesday. I ran an errand for Jen and I helped her with a home office project she’s working on. I wrapped some xmas gifts, but only about 25% of the pile. Hopefully I can pick off some more tonight. I had told Jen that I was thinking about hanging xmas lights outside but that I wasn’t promising anything. I just didn’t have it in me today. The weather is supposed to be bad tomorrow, but it could be okay early in the morning. We’ll see if I feel better then.

My stomach has been a jerk today. Lots of “hey, I’m empty so I am going to hurt you a lot” stomach aches. I wonder if that can be related to the vaccine shot. Probably not, but who knows? I’ll be fine tomorrow, I am sure.

On unrelated nerd notes, I have not watched the third and final Dr Who 60th anniversary episode yet. I got a text from my step son, Harry, asking me if I have seen it yet. I told him no but asked him if it was good. He said very, without any spoilers. I’ll get to it before I sleep tonight. I did manage to watch the 4th and final episode of Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too with Krist Novoselic from Nirvana. What a fascinating guy. I also finished season three of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The 3rd season finale is one of my favorite episodes ever. The 4th season premier is another one of my favorite episodes. I’m in a good Star Trek binge watching place right now.

Okay, time for dinner. Time to try to talk my stomach into calming the hell down. No problem!

Two Rush Items to Note

I have two things I want to comment on that refer to members of Rush.

First, I watched the second episode of Are Bass Players Human Too this morning before work. It focused on Robert Trujillo of Metallica. I knew nothing about this guy as I’m not much of a metal fan, never mind a Metallica fan. I saw them in 1989 when Jason Newsted was their bass player. I guess Robert Trujillo played for Ozzy Osbourne back in the 90’s. I saw Ozzy in the 90’s but Geezer Butler was playing bass at that time. I guess I sort of missed him twice then? Not really.

Anyway, Robert Trujillo is the current owner of Jaco Pastorius’ Fender Jazz bass. The one he ripped the frets out of to turn it into a fretless bass (but what did he put into the gaps? How did that work?). Watching Geddy Lee play Jaco’s bass, even if just for a few seconds, was something that I did not realize I needed in my life. It was a quietly magical moment.

On a side note, Metallica’s bass player owns Jaco Pastorius’ bass, which to many is the holy grail of electric bass guitars, and Metallica’s guitar player, Kirk Hammett, owns Peter Green/Gary Moore’s 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which to many (including me*) is the holy grail of electric guitars. How did that happen? Does Metallica’s drummer own Keith Moon’s kit or anything? That would be too weird for my tiny brain to process.

Anyway, on to Alex Lifeson. I mentioned yesterday that Lerxst has released an overdrive pedal. It’s called By Tor. The first write up I read said that it had two channels that shared drive and tone controls. I don’t think that’s the case. I think one channel is just a volume boost and only has a level control. The other channel is an overdrive which has level, gain, and tone controls. That makes more sense.

Check out this demo from (the youtube legend) Andy from Reverb. I started watching this last night but had to shut it off before I finished. I’m posting it here so that I won’t forget to watch the rest of it later tonight.

*Peter Green’s Les Paul is probably my definition of The Guitar Holy Grail. The only guitar that might challenge for that tile would be Eric Clapton’s 1960 Les Paul Standard that is generally known as The Beano Burst. It was stolen in 1966 and has never resurfaced. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, but unless some collector gives it back to Clapton we will probably never see it again. The reason it might not supersede Greeny is simply that I prefer the spec of a 1959 Les Paul Standard to the spec of a 1960. The neck is supposed to be thicker on 1959’s. By that logic I would probably prefer 1958’s to 1959’s as the neck is supposed to be even thicker on 1958’s. How’s that for cork sniffing? A little too much, maybe? Nope. It’s never too much.

Are Bass Players Human Too?

I just watched the first episode of Geddy Lee’s TV show, called Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too?

I freakin’ loved it!

It was about 20 minutes of Geddy and Les Claypool of Primus just hanging out. The two of them are just plain goofy and it was kinda delightful.

I’ll admit that when Geddy was reading from a script he didn’t sound particularly… professional. It’s clear that reading copy is not something that he generally does. When he and Claypool were just talking to each other it felt natural and… I’ll say it again, delightfully goofy.

There are three episodes left. One is the new guy in Metallica, one is (I think) a former member of Hole, and the third is some guy who used to be in some band called Nirvana or something.

I’m looking forward to all of them. I now need to know, are bass players human too?