There. Finally. I added a new music playlist to the My Music page. Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven is done and done.
This is a bandcamp.com playlist but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not buy it. I only use bandcamp for these things because the playlists look all nice on wordpress.com pages and they seem to work okay too. At least they did the last time I messed around with one. These recordings are absolutely not worth paying for. Believe me. Listen to your hearts content (which, obviously includes not listening at all. That’s 100% fine with me. I kinda suck at this stuff), but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not buy the album. Thanks.
My staff and I just went out for a group lunch. I ate too fast. It was really good and I got carried away so now my gastric bypass surgery’d stomach is complaining. I am dumb. I am bad at following directions. I am bad at eating in this new stomach pouch kind of world.
Oh well.
Here’s my photo a day challenge pic for today. I took it just after I finished my morning exercise at around 6:00am today. It might end up being the cover of Quarantine Tunes Volume Eight. The jury is still out on that one though.
The Leafs came back to take game two of the best of seven first round series. If Swayman plays goal in game three and wins, will we have a full blown goalie controversy? We’ll see. Game three is Wednesday (I think… isn’t it?)
Anyway, let’s chase those hockey blues away by listening to a newly mixed crappy song. Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven is done save for figuring out the actual running order for the 11 songs. More on that to come in the future though. For now, here’s the last song.
I’m packed up and ready for tonight’s band practice. One step closer to being ready to audition singers…. Or more like to try to find singers to audition. something like that.
A couple of years ago I was working on the Record Every Month Challenge and I had a couple of song ideas going at once. I didn’t realize until well into the recording process that the two songs had almost identical chord changes in their respective choruses. Ooops. I could have done the right thing and dropped one of them, but instead I leaned into my lack of creativity and used a line of lyric in both songs and turned them into parts one and two. Doofus, yes, but what do you expect?
Fast forward to the current re-recording project I’ve been torturing the universe with and I thought it would be further fun to sort of duct tape the two songs into one and record the whole shebang as if it were one longer song.
Done and done. I just finished mixing it. Here you go, universe. Enjoy my shitty song!
I played some guitar this morning before work. I have a nice, positive feeling of accomplishment. Granted what I needed to do was practice for this weekend’s band rehearsal but instead I recorded lead guitar parts for two songs. Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven is done with tracking. I have to mix the two songs I worked on today and then it is on to Volume Eight… which I already have one song that is a guitar solo away from being ready to mix.
I played through the direct output of two amps today. No noise. Headphones only. It is most definitely not as much fun as cranking out some actual sound and moving some air around, but it’s still always great to play. I used my ES-335, as you can see in the obligatory photo…
I was never an Allman Brothers fan. I went through an At Fillmore East phase the way most guitar players do. I was a huge fan of Duane Allman’s playing on Derek and the Dominoes Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album and at some point I needed more and that brought me to At Fillmore East. Duane Allman’s playing is other worldly on that record. In between the stratospheric heroics there were the moments featuring the other guy. That other guy is Dickey Betts. When you step back and look at it closely, his playing is just as good as Allman’s. Maybe not equal (because that’s asking too much from a normal human), but close enough.
On top of being a fantastic lead player, he wrote some incredible songs. “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” is pretty much perfect. I spent a lot of time in my youth sitting in front of my cassette player trying to figure out how to play that song. Just picking up what I could. It’s a twin lead guitar instrumental that to my ear is closer to Fusion than Southern Rock. I’d play along for a while, then stare at the speakers, slack jawed, when Duane’s solos came up, then I’d play along with Dickey’s solos.
Outside of that record though, I never really had much use for The Allman Brothers. Southern Rock as a genre has its moments but generally speaking it wasn’t for me. Respect where respect is due though. Dickey Betts as a song writer, guitarist, and singer is deserving of all of the respect.
Not much going on this afternoon. Jen and I had lunch together. Then she went to her computer to do some work and I did some chores around the house. I watched some TV… I finished season seven of the X-Files which means I have reached the (mostly) Mulder-free seasons eight and nine. The next 40 or so episodes are going to be tough.
I didn’t do any additional practicing, but I am packed up and ready to go to Lizardfish Mark II practice later tonight.
Everything I need is already at Mike the Bass Player’s house (except for a guitar), but the back pack has some emergency, just-in-case gear… just in case, you know? Some cables, some strings, some batteries, a couple of nasty overdrive pedals. Just in case. There’s a mic and some XLR cables too, but I don’t think we’ll be singing much today. Who knows.
It’s time to go help Jen cook dinner. The Red Sox have a 5-2 lead over the Angels in the top of the eighth. The Angels just had a lead off triple though. Is the collapse starting? We’ll see.
The Gibson Theodore… a lot of people hate it. I… I guess I… I guess I don’t hate it. I sure don’t love it, but I don’t think I hate it. I almost think it’s cool.
I’ll embed a video below that goes into depth, but the deal is that a few years ago Gibson unearthed a guitar design that was unused back in the golden era of the 1950’s and did a short, very expensive, run out of their custom shop. Recently they released a standard production model that is also grossly expensive, but a whole lot less expensive than the original version.
Yeah the body shape is kinda dumb. I liked the custom shop’s use of P90 pickups rather than the USA version’s use of humbuckers. I like the four knobs on the custom shop over the two master controls on the USA. I very much greatly prefer the bridge on the USA version.
I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t love it but I don’t really hate it. Weird, huh?
Change of subject: unrelated, both the Bruins and the Red Sox won today. The Red Sox snapped a really ugly four game losing streak. The Bruins… I think… clinched the Atlantic Division title… I think… didn’t they? No… did they? I knew they needed a win over Pittsburgh tonight, but I can’t remember if it was a win OR a Florida Panthers loss would clinch things, or was it a win AND a Panthers loss? Also, did the Panthers need to lose, or lose in regulation? I don’t remember. The Bruins won in regulation and the Panthers won in overtime. I guess I’ll find out the answer to this question in the morning. Whatevs, both of my teams won today. Happiness.
Back to the main topic. Where does the Theodore sit on my Gibson Guitar I-Want-One list?
Les Paul Junior
Les Paul Standard 50’s with P90 pickups
Firebird, but not a studio. I want the Firebird mini-humbuckers, not standard humbuckers
Les Paul Deluxe
Insert the Theodore here? Maybe.
Les Paul Special, or SG Special, or SG Junior
ES-330
Damn… that’s a long list. It’s also an insanely expensive list. Come on, Gibson USA. Help a brother out. Bring those prices down. I don’t want to start thinking about Epiphones. I’m a Gibson snob after all.
Inside the Red Head's Head 