Shoveling, I mean. I felt okay when I first came back inside after shoveling, but now that a few hours have passed… Ouch town, population me, bro. Every inch of me is sore, and despite having two of the best nights sleep I’ve had in ages over the last two nights, I am completely exhausted.
I don’t know if I have the energy to do anything other than sit on the couch for the rest of the night. I think we were already planning on ordering out for dinner tonight. Maybe I’ll be able to crawl to the door to bring the delivery in.* I mean, really… that’s asking a lot.
It is a good thing I managed to put rhythm guitar tracks onto two RPM Challenge songs this morning before I shoveled. I don’t know if I will be able to do any more than that tonight, though I really need to. We’ll see how the pain goes. For now though, it’s just couch time. Much needed couch time, believe me.
Here’s a few guitar pictures to hold us over until next time.
*Obviously I exaggerate. I mean, it’s still laundry day after all.
It’s Friday. One week from today I am going to be writing about how I only have an eight hour work day standing between me and a full week’s vacation. I am already hyper focusing on it. Crazy.
I just watched the season two finale of Silo. It was very good. I sort of screwed things up though. The show is based on a series of books. A few weeks ago I got tired of waiting to see what was going to happen on the show so I started reading. I’m going to finish the third and final book probably this weekend. When the super confusing twist happened in today’s episode I knew what it was and I knew it was coming. I spoiled myself. I don’t care though because the books are good, the show is good, and the books and the show are just different enough that I can still feel engaged with both.
This week I also watched the season (series?) finale of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and I am down to the second season (series?) finale of The Alienist which I am enjoying a lot even though it’s creepy as hell. Fortunately season two of Severance came out today. I’ll watch that tonight before bed, I think. Silo is over, but I still have a Friday show to watch out for. That’s nice.
Last night I watched a video on the youtubes. Five Watt World’s Short History of the Les Paul Deluxe. My first “real” guitar was a Les Paul Deluxe. I didn’t learn how to figure out the date on a Les Paul until years later so I have no idea what year it was made. I think it was very late 70’s or very early 80’s. I bought it in 1988 at Russo’s Music in Lowell, MA. All of the knobs had cracked off of it and I never replaced them. I was a kid. I didn’t have the money or even the know how of how to get replacements that would fit. It also had a nasty gash in one of the frets, and I seem to remember that one of the inlays was coming unglued. I didn’t care. I loved that guitar. I adored that guitar.
On a Sunday night/Monday morning in November or December (pretty sure it was December) of 1990 it was stolen out of my car. That was pretty much the end of the world for me. I have never really recovered from the violation of it all. I bought my Les Paul Custom a short time later and that is still my number one guitar… but some days I really find myself missing that Deluxe. I would have loved to have taken it to a good shop and had all of the negatives fixed up. It would have been epic, mini-humbuckers and all.
Watching this video made me feel all the feels. Steve Hackett, Pete Townsend, and me. All of us, Les Paul Deluxe veterans.
Okay. Time to stop farting around and get ready for work. Happy Friday, everyone. The weekend awaits.
Here’s a photo of me playing this guitar on stage with Lizardfish on July 2, 2016.
Here’s a crazy low-res pic of me playing the guitar with Break Even at some point between 2003 and 2005.
Here’s another one for luck. Same bar but maybe a different date? No, probably the same date. If I had to guess it was August 1, 2003 at J Rags in Tewksbury, MA. Pretty sure that was the date. It was our first gig together.
The guitar is a 1979 Gibson ES-335 Pro that I bought off eBay in 2000 for a smidge less than $800. It was a mess when I first got it. It has no finish on the back. It’s stamped a factory second. Most important, some previous owner was a heavy, heavy smoker and it was covered in cigarette grime and sludge. I managed to clean it (mostly) and I just fell in love with it.
A few minutes ago, the Trogly’s Guitar Show posted a video to youtube of a 1979 Gibson ES-335 Pro! My guitar! Well, not my guitar but my year, make, and model! Even the same color! Awesome! Trogly’s 335 Pro was a mess too, and all the greater for it!
Did you see that the fuhrer-elect was advertising a guitar brand? $10k for what I can only imagine is a $200 Chinese knock off of a Gibson Les Paul (that’s just a theory, of course. I don’t care to investigate whether it’s true or not so I am not saying it is or is not true, dig?). When I first heard of this it was a headline with an image of the fucking slime ball holding one of the guitars. My first thought was I hope it’s not an actual Gibson. My second thought was, if it is an actual Gibson I will never give them my money ever again.
Fortunately a related story hit the presses yesterday that soothed my company-loyalty fears:
Just for clarity’s sake, I should mention that I have not read this article. Reading anything about that fucking nazi piece of shit makes me physically ill. I got the rundown via social media yesterday. I linked to this article because it came up first for me on a Google News search. There. Transparency.
Anyway, I just want to thank Gibson for not releasing a $10,000 nazi signature model and for going after the trademark infringing assholes who are trying to scam guitar playing fascist collaborators. Not that the guitar playing fascist collaborators haven’t earned a good scamming. Well… they voted for the nazi piece of filth so they’ve already been scammed once. Let’s say they’ve earned a second thorough scamming. Whatever.
Learning that Gibson has not aligned itself with evil kinda makes me actually want to buy a new guitar. How about a Les Paul Junior, or a Les Paul Deluxe, or a Firebird? You know, something to show my thanks.
I did it again. I messed up my morning routine. Big time. I overslept, then I had a problem that came up and screwed up my morning exercise. I am just off today… again.
I did work on some music though. I put rhythm guitars onto two songs. I used my SG for both of them.
Then I switched to my Les Paul Custom and put leads onto one song.
Musically speaking, what’s next for today? I haven’t a clue. I’ll let you know once I straighten out my brain. Maybe in 25 years or something? Who knows.
Here we have a post sharing two random things on this quiet Sunday evening that have nothing to do with anything anyone other than I would ever care about.
First, I watched an episode of The Trogly’s Guitar Show on YouTube today and accidentally learned something about my first Gibson guitar. It was a Les Paul Deluxe but I never learned what year it was made. Deluxes date from the late 60’s to the mid 80’s (I think). I bought mine in 1987 and always assumed it was from the late 70’s, but I had not learned how to get the manufacture date for a Gibson guitar until after my Deluxe was stolen in 1990.
Thanks to Trogly’s I can narrow the date down a little. The guitar had a Gibson chainsaw case. From a description on the episode I watched it was a version two chainsaw case. Trogly told us that Gibson introduced the version two chainsaw case in 1978. Therefore my guitar (assuming the case I had was the original case) could not have been built prior to 1978. That knocks about 10 years off of the possible dates. Thanks, Trogly!
The second item of note: The anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is coming this week. That means Jen and I are in now entering our annual 9/11 remembrance period where we binge a shit load of documentaries. We’re watching the first of the season right now. Things have already been super heavy around here due to my father’s passing. Now it’s going to get heavier still.
I just felt the need to share all of that with the wider universe. You’re welcome.
Well, I ran out of guitar tracks this morning. I put leads onto two songs (and boy, are the two songs bad. Baaaad songs, bad) and those are the only two things I had that were ready for any guitar tracks. Time to start writing and recording vocals and adding some new songs to the 50/90 challenge worklist.
I played all right today, but the songs I worked on are just bottom of the barrel crap-o-la. Oh well. That’s how it goes with these song writing challenge things. Lots of bad stuff cranked out in the hopes of accidentally coming up with one or two keepers.
I played some guitar this morning. I put rhythm and lead tracks onto one 50/90 song, and leads onto two more. I played very poorly and my finger tips have been torn to shreds. Serves me right for going almost a week without playing at all.
Here is a photo to prove that I don’t always have my guitar’s volume controls maxed…
356/365
(I was doing the Clapton thing where you use both pickups but roll the neck pickup’s volume off a little. It’s not as famous as his “woman tone” thing [dude, come up with better names for this stuff] but it’s something he did when he was still playing Gibsons. Oh, and the woman tone thing? Play the neck pickup and just turn the tone knob all the way down. He sometimes did it with both picksups as well, turning both tone controls all the way down)
Inside the Red Head's Head 