Tag: lizardfish

Panic Level: Rising

I HAVE A GIG IN EIGHT DAYS!!!!  SWEET CHRISTMAS, I HAVE A GIG IN EIGHT DAYS!!!!

IAmNotReadyIAmNotReadyIAmNotReadyIAmNotReadyIAmNotReadyIAmNotReady

Here’s a bit of symbolism to demonstrate how I feel right now:

Yesterday I ordered some packs of guitar strings from Amazon.  I also ordered a little musician’s exercise tool.  It’s kind of like one of those things that you squeeze with your hand but instead of squeezing one thing you have four, one for each finger.  I was planning to spend the last week or so before the gig working out like a mad man in the hopes of not having the same problems I had back in November.

When I placed the order the estimated delivery date was 1/27.  When the order was processed the delivery date was changed to between 1/27 and 2/3… two days after the gig.  Yup, that sums up my current state perfectly.

Now that I’ve vented about that, let’s get back to Picard.  I found out this morning that there are a couple of prequel sort of things out there.  Tie in’s might be a better term.  The first is a three issue comic series called Star Trek Picard – Countdown.  I started my lunch break by reading it… well, reading 2/3 of it because issue #3 doesn’t come out until next week.  Admiral Picard, Romulans, and a predicted super nova.  Enough said.

There is another tie in too.  On CBS All Access there is a series called Star Trek Short Treks (I think… that’s the name, isn’t it?).  I was looking at it yesterday but I didn’t watch any of them.  Turns out the most recent episode, titled Children of Mars (again, I think) is somehow related to the new series.  It’s 8-9 minutes long so I watched that too.  Two school aged girls, both of whose parents work on Mars, are having a really crappy day at school and they really don’t like each other.  No spoilers, but it telegraphs the ending pretty clearly and it still hit Mr Overly Emotional in the feels.  I should also state that this clip proves that Peter Gabriel is literally timeless.  David Bowie too, but mostly Peter Gabriel.  If I were the director I probably would have passed on Gabriel’s cover of Bowie’s Heroes in favor of Genesis’ Return of the Giant Hogweed, but that’s just me.  Heroes made more sense in terms of the story but it doesn’t have an awesome riff like Hogweed does.  Again, just me.

Speaking of Genesis, apparently Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, and Phil Collins were seen together at a NY Knicks game the other day.  80’s Genesis reunion confirmed?  What else could it mean?  I’m sure Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett were around too.  Were the Islanders playing that night?  Maybe they were there instead?  I’m sure we can count on a full reunion any day now.  The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway rides again?

Damn… I need to practice.

Saws-All and Other Fun Topics

My foot still hurts.  It is more or less a non-issue when I’m barefoot, but it hurts like the dickens when I have shoes on.  I think I’m a little swollen, but not a lot.  It’s actually a lot better than it was last week, but it’s still an issue.  I really don’t want to go to the doctor for this, but my resolve is weakening.

I was discussing Plantar Fasciitis (hence forth to be known as Plantar Fascist-itis in honor of our nazi putz of a president) with a friend today who has had it in both feet, one after the other.  His suggestion was to just get it over with and cut the bastard off now.  I’m not that far gone, but it’s something to keep in mind (yup yup).  It actually made me think of something from a few weeks ago.  My father in law and I were in a store looking for a tool to help install our new door lock.  Right at the front door with a whole stack of potential impulse buys was a Saws-All.  I almost got it.  Why?  I don’t know.  Now looking back I think I should have picked one up.  It would be a perfect cure for my friggin’ foot.

Yuck yuck yuck.

In the immortal words of the evil doctor in Hellraiser II, “I recommend… amputation.  No anesthetic at hand… shame.”

Yuck yuck yuck.

I don’t think I’ve seen that movie since the late 80’s or early 90’s so I can’t remember for sure if those two sentences (complete with the dramatic pauses) were from the same scene or not.  Probably not.  That was the first horror movie I ever saw, and it lead to my becoming a serious Clive Barker fan.  Not just movies, but novels (stop what you’re doing and go read Weaveworld.  Right now.  I’m serious.  Do it right now) and short stories and even a couple of plays.  It was at Brian G’s house.  I can’t remember who was there exactly, but despite all of the awesome, quotable lines it had (and there were countless) the one phrase that will never leave my memory and will always come to mind as soon as I think of that movie was someone in the room saying, as the movie ended, “rewind to when Julia comes out of the mattress!”

I just took this picture while I was putting the finishing touches on our chicken and a side of quinoa dinner tonight.  I thought I’d share because… why not.

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The RPM Challenge is 11 days away.  I haven’t given it thought one.  My next gig is also 11 days away.  I have given that many thoughts, most revolving around how much practice I need.  Note: I am sitting at my desk typing this blither instead of practicing.  I had a day off work to honor a great American even though our nation is in the hands of fascist pieces of dog shit and did I practice at all?  No.  I thought about it, but I didn’t do it.  I even thought about asking the other guys if they wanted to try and sneak in a rehearsal tonight seeing as we wouldn’t have to wait for my endless evening commute.  Nope.  Nothing.  I’m still physically beat from having to deal with shoveling on top of all of the previously discussed pains.  I’m getting better.  Don’t worry.  It just sucks to be me today.  It will suck less tomorrow.

My step son, Harry had the day off from school.  This was a mom’s house weekend so he woke up here this morning.  Mondays are dad days though so I knew he’d be leaving shortly after he woke up.  I did something sneaky to try and get him to stick around and hang out with me for a little while.  I watched a Marvel movie.  He was still asleep when I started but I figured he’d wake up and watch it with me.  It was Captain America: Civil War.  Awesome freakin’ movie.  It worked, but not as well as I’d hoped.  When he finally woke up (teenagers and sleeping late, ya know?) there was only 30-40 minutes left in the movie.  He stuck around a little after it was over.  He had some breakfast and watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb because… why not?  (sing it with me, doobie doobie doobah, doobie doobie doobah, A-Gent-P!!)

Speaking of Harry, we had a seriously great moment on Saturday that I think I want to share.  My wife and my step son both have February birthdays.  My wife thought that maybe it would be fun to celebrate her birthday at Disney World.  We started making plans.  Then she decided it would be better to wait a few weeks and bring my step son with us.  We booked a room in the Yacht Club for a few days and made all the park arrangements.  We did not tell my step son.  My step daughter won’t be available due to college, and Jen has a little Canadian get away planned with her already, but we ran the plans by her just in case and she was okay with it.  On Saturday we had a mini-pre-birthday-birthday celebration for Harry.  We gave him two presents: His park ticket and his luggage tag.  He never saw it coming.  Awesome.  He says he is really excited about it, even though he’s going to be stuck down there with two old people.  He’ll adjust.  It’s going to be fun, and I can’t wait to go away and hide from reality for a week.

Here’s hoping my foot feels better by then because if not it’s Off With His Foot!

Yuck yuck yuck.

Snow Practice

So remember a couple of months ago when my band, El Pez Lagarto (the Lizardfish), played at my high school reunion?  Well the organizers of that little shindig, while putting the plans together, created a Facebook group and added every member of our class they could find to it.

Also, remember a couple of days ago when I posted a flyer that Kevin the drummer made to advertise our 2/1/20 show onto this page?  Kevin often makes flyers like that for our shows, but in this case the manager of the venue actually asked for one.

Well those two worlds just collided.  Mike just posted the flyer into the high school reunion Facebook group.  To quote the guy from Quantum Leap: Oh boy.

We’re practicing tonight.  We’re also supposed to get a mini-blizzard tonight.  I’m thinking I’ll take the less-expensive guitar with me.  What do you guys think?*

 

*Don’t answer.  I don’t actually care what anyone thinks.  It’s just a figure of speech.

 

On a totally unrelated note, did you know that Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage is on Netflix?  I didn’t know before, but I do know… because I just watched it.  It’s still my all time favorite rock music documentary.  It’s even better than the best rock mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap.  You could even say that the movie is so epic that by the time it ends it is being influenced by itself at the beginning.

Band Practice Recap

I woke up this morning feeling like crap so I called in sick.  I slept away almost the entire day and I’m just clearing the cobwebs now, so I figured I’d give a quick recap of last night’s band practice.

We’re a soul band now, dontchaknow?  We had a request from our singer for an Al Green song.  It was a last minute thing and the bass player didn’t have time to learn it all, but we muddled through it.  I hope it happens, I really do.

For me personally, it was a mixed bag.  First and foremost, I took my little Vox MV50 amp and my new 1×12 speaker cabinet to test drive them and make sure that they are loud enough to use in place of my Deluxe Reverb if need be.  Oh were they ever loud enough.  With the attenuator off, I nearly blew down the walls.  It was awesome.  I also brought my little ABY switch and for the first time in human history, I played through two amps at a practice.  The drummer asked why and I answered, because it’s awesome.  And awesome it was.  The Deluxe Reverb was behind me, and the MV50 was off to my left.  I was surrounded by speakers and they were pushing the air hard enough that my pant legs were being blown around.  Awesome.  Just awesome.  Unfortunately no one else could hear anything so after the first few songs I took down the Vox and went back to my Deluxe Reverb on it’s own.

From the moment I switched to one amp until the end of practice, I was struggling.  It took about 30 minutes of goofing around with two amps to completely spoil me to the point where I couldn’t make the one amp alone sound good.  I was monkeying with pedal settings and amp settings the whole rest of the night.  It was really frustrating.  I also may have decided that my Russian Fuzz pedal clones are not workable in the band setting.  I just can’t get enough output to fit into the mix.  It’s not a mid scoop thing, I need more output to compensate for that, it’s just a sheer volume thing.  Even when no one else was playing, I couldn’t get the output level to match what was coming out of the D&M drive.  I think next rehearsal will see the return of the Triangle Big Muff clone.  The mid scoop is much more dramatic on that pedal, and therefore takes even more volume to compensate, but at least the output level is there.

Hopefully I will now be able to add a couple of song files, just for fun.  This first one (assuming it embeds) is the one song that all four of us were playing on that had both amps.  The second song is just there because I used my cheap ass little Mooer flanger pedal for the first time and despite being a disgustingly cheap Chinese knock off of an EHX Electric Mistress, I think it sounds great.  The last song is just there because I like soloing over the chord changes.  It’s one of those songs that I really don’t like to listen to, but I really enjoy playing.  Weird.

 

 

Post Gig Recap

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We survived another show last night. Barely. We have been lucky over the last year in that we haven’t had any technical difficulties at any of our shows. That lucky streak came to an end last night.

The last time we played at Racks in Plaistow was a couple of months ago. That night we noticed that one of the house PA speakers sounded like it was going to give up the fight. At some point after that it died. That wasn’t really an issue for us last night, but more on the PA later.

I was paranoid as hell last night. We set up all of our gear and then waited. During that wait time I was going nuts. What if we go for sound check and something is wrong. I need to go double check everything. Mike the bass player was feeling the same thing. It was odd. About 10 minutes before sound check we both went up on stage and checked everything out. His gear was fine. Mine? No.

I plugged in my guitar, turned everything on, and nothing. I tried changing the input on the amp. Nope. I plugged directly into the amp. That worked. Okay, so it’s somewhere on the signal chain. Ah ha! One of my overdrive pedals’ power cable was unplugged. Fixed. Just as we were ready for sound check, I was up and running. But why does everything sound so wrong? Oh crap, I was still plugged into the wrong channel on the amp. Fixed.

So we’re bombing through the first set. Everything is going fine. Then someone in the crowd says that Greg the singer’s microphone was cutting out intermittently. Okay. Mess with the speak, the board, the PA amp, the cables. Nothing helps. We even strung together a couple of mic cables to stretch across the stage to use in place of the cables the house had. It worked for one song and then we lost the PA completely. We actually blew a fuse on the power amp. What the hell do we do now? Mike the bass player and his gigantic bass amp rig to the rescue. We ran a 1/4″ cable from the headphone out on the mixing board into a second channel on his bass amp and we sang through that.

It sounded like… what… shit. That’s what it sounded like. That is how it always sounds when you run a vocal mic through a bass amp. It’s supposed to sound awful, that’s why no one does it. The important thing here is that it worked and the show went on. We were halfway through the first set and we were looking at the possibility of going home 2-3 hours early, but Mike’s big yellow bass amp (Big Bird) that weighs 20,000 pounds came through for us and we were able to play the rest of the show.

As for me personally, it went pretty well. I didn’t have any pain in my left hand to speak of. There was a little early on, but I got through it. By the end of the night my hands were protesting and the end of the show was much needed. I think we really went two songs too long for me, but I made it through. Once I got through my own little tech issues everything went fine. My OCD pedal is really noisy, especially when it follows the Tube Screamer. It’s really noticeable when we are practicing in an otherwise quiet room. Last night the noise floor was high enough that I could only hear it when I was listening for it, and I don’t think anyone else could hear it at all.

As for the crappy tone I’ve been getting at practice… I wanted to open things up at home and mess with EQ, but I didn’t. At the show I thought I would tweak on the fly but I didn’t have to. I thought the three overdrive chain worked really well. I thought I sounded pretty good. Not great, but good. I’m starting to think that maybe the issue is just the walls in Mike the Bass Player’s basement. Maybe it’s just the room effecting the tone. I don’t know. I do know that I was pretty happy with everything last night.

There were no other issues. No dropped picks or anything like that. I had the mic stand pick holder with four spares on it. That did not end up being needed, which is exactly the point. It’s there if you need it, but hopefully you don’t need it. I also had a glass slide. Why? Because the mic stand pick holder had a slide holder too, and if it’s there I should use it. I had no plans to play slide at all, but I did use it on the very last song of the night as a goofy attempt at being gimmicky. I don’t think anyone noticed.

One more item of note, the crowd was huge! Well, by our standards it was huge. Probably the biggest crowd yet! It was great! It was also pretty funny that almost everyone left after the second set. So big crowd for the first set, who thankfully sat patiently while we tried to fix the PA, then a bigger crowd for the second set, and then a tiny yet extremely enthusiastic crowd for the third set.

To sum up, it came within a whisker of being a total disaster but it ended up being a really fun night. Thanks, everyone!

Gig Day To Do List

Hello and welcome to June 3, 2017.  It is gig day.  The band is playing in Plaistow again and I need to write a to-do list for myself.

  • Decide which guitar will be the #2 for the night.  It’s always been the ES-335, but tonight I am about 56% set on it being the Fender Strat.  With the exception of Tempest Fero’s first couple of appearances back in 1988, when my guitar was a very cheap Hondo strat copy, I have never played a non-Gibson guitar in front of people.  There were a couple of times when I played my friend Larry’s Epiphone, but that is still a Gibson product.  Will tonight be my first time with a Fender?  Will I take it but not use it?  I have no idea yet.
  • Restring two guitars.
  • Velcro the Tube Screamer Mini pedal to the board.  Right now it’s just sitting there, not tied down at all.  That could be a problem come show time.
  • Set everything up at home for a warm up/practice/find a way to tame the mid range nonsense in my tone session.  Possibly use my new A/B/Y switch to let me play with my Fender Deluxe Reverb and my Fender Bassbreaker amps at the same time.  I don’t expect to do that at the show, I just want to do it because it’s awesome.
  • Pack everything up, including the box of picks, the mic stand pick holding device, and the glass slide.  I don’t have any reason to play slide tonight, but the pick holding device is also a slide holding device, so I am taking it with me.
  • Take a shower.  Very important.
  • Go to Mike the Bass Player’s house and pick up the stuff I didn’t take with me after last weekend’s practice.
  • Go to the bar.
  • Unload the car and set everything up.  Will there be a Fender guitar?  I still haven’t decided.
  • Soundcheck… maybe.
  • Play the show, all three sets.
  • Pack up the gear and load it back into the car.
  • Get paid (assuming we are still getting paid).
  • Go home.
  • Unload the car.
  • Go to bed and hope to sleep for 12 hour straight, but realistically only sleep for maybe four hours.
  • Wake up tomorrow and call it a successful gig.

No problem!

Strat-Tastic Practice

Band practice tonight.  I took my Fender Strat instead of one my Gibsons.  Mike the Bass Player asked me what I’ve been listening to.  I laughed, yeah I’ve been listening to the new Robin Trower record.  He’s a Strat guy.  Funny how that happens.  As of right now I am planning to take the strat to the next gig as the 2nd guitar.  Let’s see if I stick to that.

Two practices in a row I’ve been fuzz box free.  Tube Screamer into OCD has been my dirt, with a Soul Food as a volume boost for leads.  I’m not convinced it’s the way to go.  We’ll see.

ADDENDUM: I swear these effin’ hearthis.at links used to pull in the embedded player.  I even went to the band’s website and looked at the source code for a post where it worked and it is literally exactly the same as this post, but this time it didn’t work.  The hell, wordpress?

Is That How It Goes?

I’m sitting at my desk.  My wife is sitting at her desk right next to me.  She started laughing a little and then put on some music.  The first song was one that my band plays. It was odd… I learned it by listening to a recording of the band with their previous guitar player.  I don’t think I had ever listened to the original recording.  It was weird… I don’t even come remotely close to what was on the record.

That song ends and another comes one.  Same thing.  A song my band covers.  This time what caught my ear was more tone based as I played the same part just much, much heavier.  Then the chorus kicked in and my backing vocal was off by a whole octave.

The third song she played… also one my band covers.  I asked her, did you make a Lizardfish playlist?  She just laughed.  I love her so much.  Again, what I play and what I hear on that record… not the same thing at all.

Damn it, Robert.  Do you play anything right?  Why haven’t you been kicked out yet?

Then someone on Facebook posted this image:

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First off, Chick Corea is a genius.  Okay, now that I’ve said that, I have no idea if this was really written by him.  It feels like things that a jazz legend would consider, especially the parts about knowing when to just shut the hell up.  I wish I could do that, but I just can’t wrap my brain around it.  Even when I’m supposed to be silent I am still throwing noise into the mess.  Bad, Robert.  Bad.  Anyway, the one that sticks out to me also validates all the screwing around I do within the confines of my little cover band.

9. Guide your choice of what to play by what you like – not what someone else will think.

I’ve never met Chick Corea.  Return to Forever’s Romantic Warrior album is godlike.  Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew is beyond what humanity should ever have been able to accomplish.  More than any of that though, #9 on that list is, in my mind, the most important lesson a musician can learn.  Be a human being.  Don’t be a jukebox.  Do what speaks to you.  Don’t worry about what others will think.  I told you the guy was a genius.