Tag: Guitar

Stressing

Surgery is in 16 days and I am stressing a little. Not about the surgery itself, but about some things that go along with it.

I need to book a Covid-19 test three days before the surgery. They gave me a few clinics I can go to. I spent a lot of time on the phone with two of them today, trying to schedule a test, and never spoke to a human. Jen reminded me that today is a state holiday in Massachusetts, so that might be why. Still… if you’re not home today, add that to your voice message.

I haven’t had caffeine since February 3rd (I think). I haven’t missed it. Even last Wednesday when I did my 38 hour sleep-free stretch, I was never wishing I could have some caffeine. I am today though. I am jonzing go-juice in a big way. I’m exhausted and I could really use a little help staying focused. I can’t though. I can never have caffeine again.

I do have one little piece of good news, surgically speaking. I checked the documentation they gave me to see what restrictions there are on lifting things immediately post-op. It says not to lift anything over 25 pounds for six weeks after the surgery. Why is that important to me? The average weight of a Gibson Les Paul is around 10 pounds. That’s a ton in the guitar world, but it’s far below my limit. Sigh of musical relief.

My Second Gig Ever

In my travels through my childhood bedroom closet I found a folder full of old band stuff. There were some flyers and some set lists and…

Some pictures from our second gig!

I think this was June of 1987 maybe? It was before I bought my Les Paul Deluxe. This was my first electric. A super cheap Hondo strat copy. I was playing through Larry’s Kustom amp. The tiny Peavy sitting on top is my first amp. I was singing through it that day.

The most important thing in these pictures, clearly, is Mike’s first Rick! Awesome!

14 Down, 13 to Go

14 Marvel movies down, 13 to go! We have crossed the halfway point and we have closed out Phrase Two-ish!

Here is The Great 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe Chronological Rewatch of 2022 Update:

  • Phase One-ish
    • Captain America: The First Avenger
    • Captain Marvel
    • Iron Man
    • The Incredible Hulk
    • Iron Man 2
    • Thor
    • Marvel’s The Avengers
  • Phase Two-ish
    • Iron Man 3
    • Thor: The Dark World
    • Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    • Guardians of the Galaxy
    • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
    • Avengers: Age of Ultron
    • Ant-Man
  • Phase Three-ish
    • Captain America: Civil War
    • Black Widow
    • Spider-Man: Homecoming
    • Black Panther
    • Doctor Strange
    • Thor: Ragnarok
    • Ant-Man and the Wasp
    • Avengers: Infinity War
    • Avengers: Endgame
    • Spider-Man: Far From Home
  • Phase four-ish
    • Eternals
    • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    • Spider-Man: No Way Home

I just finished Ant-Man. I started it this morning and finished it tonight. So ends Phase Two, or what passes for Phase Two when you’re going chronologically instead of in release order. Ant-Man is a classic, so Phase whatever-it-was ends with a bang.

Phase Three-ish opens with an even bigger bang. Captain America: Civil War is Thor and The Hulk away from being a full blown Avengers movie and it squashes most of the rest of the MCU flicks like the proverbial grape. It’s awesome. I’m not going to start it tonight though. There’s a new episode of That Pedal Show that I haven’t watched yet, and they are going to talk about wet/dry rigs using stereo speaker cabinets and that is going to sound mega.

In closing though, why weren’t The Hulk and Thor in Civil War? Simple. Whichever side had them was guaranteed to win. I mean, they could have split them up, but saving them for the buddy cop vibe in Ragnarok was a stroke of pop-culture genius.

Been a While

It’s been almost a month since I played my guitar. It’s starting to effect my mental health.

At least I think it is. The lack of playing combined with the daily construction combined with the approaching surgery combined with the approaching lifetime of dietary and lifestyle changes that follow the surgery have all contributed to my current mental state. Given that information it’s hard to say if the guitar is all that big a part of the stressedness.

I think it is. I need to play.

Envy of None

Go. Now. Make this a part of your life.

Not being much of a synth-pop guy, when I listen to this I think of some of the Smashing Pumpkins stuff that Flood produced, or maybe some of the post-Actung Baby electronic stuff U2 did. Wait… wasn’t that Flood too? Or was that Brian Eno? I don’t know. I heard an interview with Andy Curran where he said it sounds like Depeche Mode or The Cure. That works too.

So there I am, listening for the first time and really enjoying it purely on a holy-shit-this-hook-is-infectious level. I wasn’t hearing any stand out guitar parts, but I knew that was coming. Alex Lifeson (as well as everyone else involved in the album) has made a big deal out of the fact that he’s playing the guitar without ever sounding like a guitar. He’s basically a guitar synth player rather than just a guitar player. Then you get to Spy House, track five, and there’s a stretch of about four bars where he just shreds like the Guitar God he is, and then it’s back to synthy stuff.

I imagine Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew sitting in a room together listening. They both nod their head in approval. Then they look at each other and nod their heads in agreement. Then they look over at Alex Lifeson and nod in solidarity. Yeah. I’m 100% sure that exact thing happened.

No go and listen to it.

More Changes Coming Today

Are you sick of hearing about our home improvement odyssey? Would it bore you to hear that the drywall guy is coming today to start walling up our cellar? Drywall->paint->flooring->finishing->furniture. That’s the to do list as it stands now. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing it.

Are you also sick of hearing that I am watching Marvel movies? I bet you’re all really sick of that one. Fed up, indeed. Turns out The Incredible Hulk is on HBO Max. I’m sneaking in the first 20 minutes before I have to sign in to work. Bore-ing, am I right?

At least I am not boring you all with guitar playing posts, right? You’ve got that going for you. I haven’t played at all since March 19th. That was 18 days ago. I need to play.

Okay. Time to punch in to work. Here’s hoping the stress level goes down a notch today. Fingers eternally crossed.

No Music?

For the first time in a year I failed to come up with anything for Record Every Month. Im a little sad about that, but it’s okay.

What will April bring? Probably not much. We have so many home improvement things going on that I don’t know if I’ll have any time for recording.

Still no dates for Lizardfish rehearsals. Im hoping we can get something in during April because im going to be out of commission for most if not all of May.

I had to take down the cellar music nook for reasons. It’s all in cellar storage now. Im mad at myself too because the reason I stopped using it came down to a misunderstanding. Jen said it was too loud for her to concentrate and I thought she meant that in general. She didn’t. She just meant it was distracting that day.

Oh well. My mistake.

Hopefully I’ll have some time for writing and recording before I go under the knife. I’ll write lots of songs about being scared shitless.

Rock on, fat boy.

No March Music?

I am supposed to be working on the Record Every Month challenge. Why hasn’t there been any new music?

I have two songs in progress. They are both ready for vocals. It’s March 29th. What’s the delay?

Well, the main delay has been that there is always something going on in the morning right now. I haven’t been able to eek out any time for car music to put the vocals onto those two songs. I was hoping to get it in tomorrow morning, but my doctor’s appointment was just rescheduled from 10:30am to 8:00am. I might be able to do it after the appointment. Then I would have Wednesday and Thursday evenings to put down the lead guitars and throw together a mix.

I think I can pull that off. It’s been so long since I listened to these two songs that I am not even sure how they go anymore. We’ll have to see tomorrow, right?

I’m still planning on more re-recordings. I am much more interested in that project idea than Record Every Month, but I haven’t had time or energy to work on any of that either. I have one song in progress but I haven’t even recorded the rhythm guitars yet. There is just too much going on. It’s a little nuts.

So to sum up, musically speaking… let’s see what happens.

What Am I doing?

Remember in that last post when I mentioned doing another round of re-recordings of older songs?

I have literally lost my mind.

How about two more rounds?

I picked out a handful of songs to think about re-doing. Most were from the last couple of RPM Challenges but I poked around through other projects looking to fill out the numbers. When I got to the 2020 50/90 playlist I thought about how I made a whole 10 song project out of songs written for the 2021 50/90 and I thought… do it again?

Sure enough, I have 10 songs from various places and projects, that will be round seven. I also have 10 songs just from the 2020 50/90, and that will be round eight.

Robert… come on… what are you doing?

Realize that this is just me trying to be a 50 year old schmuck who is following social distance protocols up to and beyond their maximum who still wants to play the guitar a lot and who also likes to think that part of him is still that 22 year old kid who went to school to learn how to operate a recording studio.

So… yeah. That’s happening.

It might be a while before I get too deeply into it as I still haven’t started doing the laundry. I’ll get to it though.