Tag: Music

Volume Five is Done

I mixed the last song on the list for Quarantine Tunes Volume 50/90. This one makes 10 songs written over the summer, redone for the winter… or something like that.

There is really nothing to this song so I went overboard on the gimmicks and effects and now it’s a soupy, saucy mess, but I like it.

Now I need to come up with a running order for the 10 songs and I can declare the fifth volume of re-recorded songs finished and get back to work on the sixth volume.

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone. Maybe next year I’ll mix a Christmas song on Christmas Eve. For now, you’re stuck with this guy.

HoHoHo.

Brian May Shares His Covid-19 Experience

Brian May, the guitarist from Queen who is also an astrophysicist, posted to his Instagram yesterday that he has Covid-19. Today he shared his experience so far. There are two clips. One is short and is background (and some guitar playing) and the other has the main details (and also some UK political stuff).

Clip one:

Clip two:

In summation, he went to a birthday party, he tested every day afterwards (there’s a novel idea, eh?), and he and a whole bunch of people who went to the birthday party caught it. He has three Pfizer shots (me too! Brian May and I are Pfizer bros.!) and it was a horrible couple of days but thanks to the vaccine he’s coming out of it and he’s doing all right now.

Remember folks, this is a scientist we’re talking to. It’s not his specific field, but he is wicked smaht, m’kay?

Just sharing this to wrap up the post I made yesterday.

One More Song for Today

I haven’t finished Quarantine Tunes Volume 5 yet, but here I am mixing the first song for Volume 6. This is just getting silly now.

Written in February 2007, rearranged slightly and rerecorded in 2013, and now rererecorded in 2021. I keep coming back to this, even though it’s really a crap song. Also, this is a seriously ratty, crap performance, but it is a lot of fun to play.

Song, Second Attempt

I just wrote this post a few minutes ago and it included what I thought was a new version of a song from this past summer, but the hearthis.at player actually grabbed the original version. Weird.

Let’s try again and see if we get the right one this time….

This One is Pretty Blah

I thought this song was coming out pretty good but now that it’s done it doesn’t really do anything better than the first version. It is faster so I guess that’s something.

Two more songs to mix and then I’ll be done with this batch of songs.

Record Every Month Number 10

The RPM Challenge was in February. The new Record Every Month thing kicked off in March. I’ve had at least one song each month now for 10 months. Granted I did forget to submit a few of them to the website, but I didn’t forget this one.

I am lucky that this isn’t too terrible because it’s the only newly written thing I have this month. Whew!

We Must Protect Queen

Okay folks, shit just got real.

Brian May, PhD in Astrophysics, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and lead guitarist of Queen… has Covid-19.

Okay? Are you happy now? Enough screwing around. You’re screwing around too much. We must protect (the) Queen. We as a global community have to knock off all of the bullshit and keep Queen safe!

Get the effing vaccine. Get the effing booster. Practice social distance. No, don’t practice it, perform it. Be a friggin’ professional at it. Lock the Fuck Down. Wear a mask when you’re around other people. Wash your god damned hands and stop volunteering to be disease carriers. Treat the plague like a plague for a change.

Also, get well soon, Doc*.

*Is Doctor the appropriate title? He has a PhD, but do all PhD’s come with the title of Doctor? I think they do for science. Oh well. Just get the damn vaccine.

When Your Musical Hero is a Putz

Another instalment of finding out your musical hero is an even bigger putz than you already thought he was…

He sued a woman over approximately $11. The article goes into the dirty details. Now there is a strong possibility that he had nothing to do with this and it was just his management, but I do find it hard to believe this would have gone all the way to court without him at least hearing about it.

Racist, anti-vaxxer, general asshole. Yup.

Find My

Yesterday afternoon I kept the Find My app up on my iPhone so I could keep an eye on Harry’s progress as he drove home from school. Today it’s Bellana’s turn. She’s not coming home though. She’s driving a roommate home to the deep south. The app might be up all day today and tomorrow. I have no doubt that she and the group she’s with will be safe and healthy. In these uncertain and crazy Covid variant Omicron days though, I am also nervous. Be careful out there folks.

It’s Friday at 8:40am. I have to punch into work soon. I don’t want to. Harry has a remote final exam today. After he finishes that I am just going to want to hang out with him. I’m really happy he’s here. I don’t want to do anything else besides just enjoy the fact that he’s here.

Eight days until christmas. I have one gift to wrap and one more on route. I am going to be ready this year with oceans of time to spare. On the subject of christmas I feel that I should note that I have done a better job making sure the tree is watered than I ever have in any real-tree-year ever. Look at me, patting myself on the back. HoHoHo, babie.

Happy Friday.

ADDENDUM: Find My tells me that Bellana is currently driving though Saratoga Springs, NY. That brings two thoughts to my mind. First, I wonder if they took the ferry across Lake Champlain. Second, one of the best Rush concerts I ever saw was on July 5, 2008 when Jen and I road tripped all the way to Saratoga Springs to see them at SPAC. I was only in the town for a very short time, but I thought it seemed like a wonderful place. Someday we’ll go back.

Rush 7-5-08 Saratoga Springs, NY 1002
Rush 7-5-08 Saratoga Springs, NY 416

On the Way

Harry is on his way home, I think. I have it on good authority (iOS Find My app) that he’s on route 89 heading South. I think he’s coming straight here, but I don’t know that for sure. This makes me happy. Very happy.

One of our christmas presents was ordered online and set to deliver to the recipient’s address. It wasn’t supposed to ship until next week, but it was delivered today. It’s like the theme from Facts of Life. You take the good, you take the bad, yadda yadda yadda. HoHoHo. The gift giving bonanza is officially underway.

Want to know something that I hate? I hate when I go to Google News, find an article worth reading, open the article, and find it’s behind a paywall. Can’t Google filter that shit out? Do they already do it and I just haven’t turned it on yet? I don’t know. I hate it. Either way.

Pink Floyd just surprise released a shit load of live albums today. They are all from 1970-72. Almost all of them are from 1971. Back in my bootleg hunting days, I went through a major Pink Floyd bootleg obsession. I have heard most of the shows they released today. I was hoping they were going to magically have high quality, multi-track recordings of those shows but they didn’t. They basically just released the same bootlegs I listened to years ago. I tried listening during work, but the bad sound quality stopped me. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to listen to every note that came out today 100 times each. I am not complaining about the sound quality. My favorite bootlegs are all from 1970, but the 1971 shows were magic too. Echoes! They were still improvising then. Not as much as they did in the beginning, but it was still a big deal. I am going to listen to all of this stuff in headphones and get as much inside of it as I can. Oh, and there’s a partial show from ’72 that has most of a pre-release Dark Side of the Moon. The song titles match the studio versions, but does the music? Might there be a Preacher in there? Might there be a jamming version of On the Run? (please?please?please?)

Okay, enough of my yakkin’. Back to work. When Harry gets here and the work day is over, we’re doing Marvel and Burgers night, just like we did before he went off to college. Awwww.