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?
I mentioned a band practice was on the books for this evening?
As of this moment, band practice is on for 6:00pm tonight. I’m swapping out my amp and my pedals so I have a bunch of things to test drive before I go. I might put new strings on one of the guitars while I’m at it. I have to clean the kitchen first though.
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?
First, allow me to say thank you to Lily the cat for sitting still this morning so that I could take a picture of her in the mostly dark room without the iPhone’s low light functionality turning her into a blurry mess. Thanks, Lily Pad!
Next, all of my Sunday plans are still on. Fingers crossed it stays that way. No word about canceling band practice. No one has backed out, and our meet time is less than two hours away. It’s never going to be back to normal if we can’t get at least two weeks in a row in, know what I mean?
Fingers crossed.
My step son is coming over today. He’s not here yet. I hope he gets here before I leave for practice, but if he doesn’t that’s fine too. I’ll have the whole day post-practice to hang around with him.
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.
Inside the Red Head's Head 