Just got home from band practice. Lucy did not pull the football away from Charlie Brown.
My finger tips ARE KILLING ME. The last two songs we did I could barely play. My fingers just said, “yeah we’re done for the day” and that was it. Outside of that, things went pretty well. There probably won’t be a practice next week as our drummer is traveling, but after that I hope we can get onto something like a regular schedule.
Band practice is supposed to start in 43 minutes. As of this moment we’ve all chimed in that we’re good to go for today. Fingers emphatically crossed that nothing changes.
I did a line check with all of the gear I want to bring today. I am massively downsizing the pedals and massively upscaling the amp situation. Also… I’m going to play the SG. I don’t know why. I am just feeling like today should be an SG day.
Everything is working. The new reverb pedal sounds cool. Here’s hoping nothing falls apart over the next 41 minutes and we actually have a practice today. It’s going to be painful. I have no calluses on my left hand finger tips. I’ve only played for about five minutes and already I am hurting, big time.
Bring it on, kids!
Band practice is on for 10:00am tomorrow. Morning practice is weird, but it will work. Hopefully the bass player’s family will all be awake before all the noise starts (eek!).
I told the other guys that I put it on my Google Calendar so there’s no backing out now. We’ll see. Lucy still has about 26 hours to pull the football away from Charlie Brown (me).
I’m rewatching the three new episodes of Andor right now. I’m up to the third episode with that scene with Bix. It is fucking disturbing and really hard to watch. Star Wars for adults is a pretty accurate description of this show.
What else… I don’t know. One work day to survive before the weekend arrives. It’s going to be a long day, I fear. I haven’t taken any pictures of cats yet. I’m sure the opportunity will arise eventually.
I also haven’t looked at the news yet today. I’m always afraid to do so. I’m always in a borderline state of panic to learn about what fresh nazi hell was unleashed overnight. I’m so tired of living in “interesting times.” Fuck this. I want my country back. Failing that, I want my state to just leave and start over. 249 years was a good run, I guess.
What else… I don’t know. Here’s hoping for a nice easy work day followed by a nice and calm weekend… that includes my cousin’s husbands wake… fuck. The universe is just piling on. Hopefully there are brighter, less depressing, less fascist days ahead. Now, where did I put those two cats?
Sundays are supposed to be band practice day. Are we on today or not?
As of yesterday, we are on but we don’t know when yet. Late afternoon? I hope so.
Change of subject, we’re going to Disney World again in June. In the interest of finding the silver lining, is it possible that with the nazis in washington trying to ass fuck all of our allies that enough countries will put travel warnings in place for citizens visiting the usa that we’ll have small crowds in the Disney parks? Bad for Disney, bad for america, bad for the economy…. good for our vacation? Look at me being all positive and shit.
Change of subject again, the Red Sox have now lost two in a row after winning their season opener. They play Texas again today. Opening the season with a four game series… yeah, I am ready to move on. As for the Bruins… they lost their fifth straight last night. They’ve lost eight of their last 10. Are they actively tanking? Sure feels like it. Suffice to say, it has not been a good stretch for Boston sports fans.
Yeah… I need a band practice to straighten my head out a little. Yeah.
We did it. We have had two band practices in a row. Oh thanks be to the gods of bad middle aged cover bands, we pulled off two Sunday practices in a row!
I fought with my gear through the whole thing. I have something in my signal chain that is adding a weird whistling noise and when it reaches my overdrive pedals it gets LOUD. I ended up bypassing half of the board and it seemed like it fixed the problem for a while, but eventually it came back and kept getting worse. If I had to guess I would say it’s probably my power supply. I don’t know. I think I might bring my stay at home pedal board next time and see if it had any similar issues.
I also just wasn’t vibing with my amp. The Vox AC15 is fun and I like using it when I record at home, but when the band was playing I was missing my Deluxe Reverb. I might swap them next time. Or maybe I’ll swap the pedal board next time and then swap the amp the time after that.
Look at me, making plans for the next two practices, as if I wasn’t just worried about ever having two practices in a row again. Why don’t we focus on the next practice actually happening before we start looking beyond that, m’kay?
As for me personally, my playing was awful. Probably worse than last week. That’s okay though, I will get back up to speed soon enough, assuming we get ourselves on a regular schedule, of course.
How about a couple of gear pics?
There’s a good chance that tomorrow, Sunday, is going to be a good day. My step son is coming home tomorrow morning. We’ll spend nearly the whole day with him. I have a band practice that I am looking forward to but trying not to be overly excited about. See my post on the subject from earlier.
I just had one of my sugar free bakery cookies and it was goooood.
Yeah, Saturday was super busy and stressful. Sunday, I hope, should be a little more relaxing. Fingers crossed at least.
For now though, I’m going to bed. G’Night, Moon.
I didn’t get my hopes up last week and everything worked out. Now we’re shooting for two weeks in a row. Should I be excited?
Last week we had our first band practice in months after more false alarms than I care to remember. After all the fails I refused to get excited about it until we were all actually in the room together. Once we were though… rock and roll bro.
Now we’re talking about practicing again tomorrow. One week later. Is it going to happen? Is it going to fall through? Are we on or are we dealing with another false alarm? I don’t want to get too excited. I don’t want to get my hopes too high… but we’re practicing at noon tomorrow and my stuff is already packed up.
Rock and roll, bro.
We did so much this weekend I can’t keep it all straight.
I hung a mirror, two paintings, and two coat racks in the bedroom, put together a big cabinet for the office and a storage rack for the bedroom. Rearranged most of the furniture in the bedroom and added a new cabinet. I took all of the stuff we bought from IKEA for the office that isn’t going to be used and loaded them into the car, though we aren’t sure when we’re going back to IKEA to return them.
What else, what else… I hung some pictures in the living room, replaced some old table lamps with new table lamps in the living room, pulled up two rugs and put down a new one down in the office. Rearranged some of the electronic devices in the office, or at least rearranged how it all plugs in.
I cooked lunch twice and dinner once, went to a whole bunch of stores for various reasons (not on Friday though), listened to the Bruins win one game and lose another, explained our issues to the HVAC guy who we called in tonight and after he started looking at things correctly guessed what the problem was (and the problem has since been corrected and all is well).
Oh yeah, and had the first band practice in forever where we all reiterated our desire to keep things going and hopefully start playing out again before the year ends. I also, for the first time, decided that the signal chain of Les Paul into Klon Klone into Rat clone into Vox AC15 wasn’t doing it for me, though the Les Paul into the Big Muff clone into the Klon Klone into the AC15 was absolutely doing it for me in the most ferociously fuzzed out blissful way possible. Next time I’ll have to bring a different overdrive pedal with me and replace the Rat clone.
Now the weekend is coming to an end. I still need to have my afternoon vitamins because I fell behind in all of my dietary goals today. The vitamins is the only thing still outstanding though. I will be cleared to have a drink in about half an hour. I’ll have them then and be all set with all of my goals for today. After that I’ll try to sleep for a while and then go back to work tomorrow.
That was a busy weekend. A crazy, busy weekend if you will.
The car was packed up… did the band practice happen? It’s been so very long…
Yes! Yes it did happen! All four of us were there. The first band practice in ages!
Yes, we sucked but who cares! It was fun and we weren’t nearly as bad as we could (should) have been. We have tentative plans to try again next week. Fingers crossed, folks. A few practices… get back into playing shape… relearn a bunch of songs… book a gig. That’s the hope. We’ll see how it goes.
I don’t want to feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football but… that might be the case.
We have a band practice scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Will it happen? I keep getting my hopes up and they keep getting canceled at the last minute. Should I be excited about this or should I be resigned to the fact that it’s going to fall through.
I don’t want to feel like Charlie Brown. I am choosing to be excited, but maybe not quite as excited as I was the last bunch of times.
So which guitar should I bring to the practice? Whichever it is, it’s going to need new strings. I’ll decide in the morning.
Inside the Red Head's Head 