After including three Rush songs in the last post, this new thing should sound that much shittier.
A song from 2010 with new lyrics and a new coat of paint. I waffled on whether to re-do this song for years. Literally. It went on the list of songs to work on in 2016 and was dropped off and re-added at least twice. Now that it’s done… I probably should have left it off.
It has a drum solo though.
I didn’t go out for car music today. Nope. I was going to. I woke up at 6:45am (on a Saturday, you savage!) and my watch told me it was 2 degrees out. Yikes. Well… we’ll see how things look after my shower and stuff. When I was all dressed and ready to go my watch told me it was 1 degree out. Welp, maybe next time.
That’s one thing dropped from the to-do list. We are hoping to add one thing too. There will, hopefully, be a FaceTime call with Bellana today! All the way from The Netherlands where she is quarantining and probably super bored. I still haven’t decided if I want to share their YouTube video or not. I’m hoping they post things regularly so we can feel like we’re a distant part of their adventure. Fingers crossed. I probably won’t post the videos here. I don’t know. Maybe, but probably not.
In closing, yesterday I listened to a podcast that broke down the Grace Under Pressure Tour video that Rush released in 1984 or so. It brought this little masterpiece back to the front of my brain and it doesn’t show any signs of leaving any time soon.
Fear. A sort of suite. Sort of. In 1984 when Rush released the Grace Under Pressure album, the song The Enemy Within was subtitled Part One of Fear. Well what the hell did that mean? They eventually explained it to us. One of my friends in Junior High said he had figured it out, but I don’t believe him.
Fear is a three song suite-ish that includes one song each from three albums… in reverse.
Part One is The Enemy Within from Grace Under Pressure, released in 1984.
Part Two is The Weapon from Signals, released in 1982.
Part Three is Witch Hunt from Moving Pictures, released in 1981.
Simple, right? If I remember correctly, Neil said he numbered them in order of the hardest to write to the easiest… or was it the other way around. Damn it. I don’t remember for sure. It doesn’t matter, they were numbered based on the writing process, that’s all you need to know. I don’t recall if The Weapon and Witch Hunt were ever officially given a Fear subtitle on any subsequent release, but they might have. There was also a fourth song, Freeze from Vapor Trails, released in 2002, but they never played all four of them together. In fact, they never played Freeze live at all. They were never supposed to play Witch Hunt either. That was written and recorded as a studio only thing as there were little things that couldn’t be pulled off live with just three people at the time. As a result, this arrangement is a little different than the Moving Pictures album and that was something that Rush just didn’t do, making this version extra special. Years later, as sampling and triggering technology caught up with the band, they did do Witch Hunt as it was originally arranged. I really like this one though. It lacks the cowbell in the beginning, well most of it at least, but it adds that killer guitar solo at the end. Awesome.
Gee, I hope these videos actually play though… seems like a lot of people have posted this with the sharing options off. Yikes.
Whatever.
We’re going to hear from Bellana today. Happy.
I started working on adding guitars to a new version of an old song.
There’s a 16 bar section in the middle that is too fast for me to play.
Shit.
Tuukka Rask returned to the Bruins tonight and beat the Flyers 3-2. Pastrnak scored all three goals. A hat trick for Pasta tonight after a hat trick for Marchand last night. Sweetness all around.
Note to self: you opened a new jug of distilled water for the CPAP machine’s humidifier tonight. Try and keep track of how long it lasts, for future reference and stuff.
Patches is fully back to normal tonight. We can tell because she puked 17 pounds of partially eaten cat food onto Jen’s desk. Right as rain, feline.
I’m sitting up in bed for a little while. Should I rewatch episode 3 of The Book of Boba Fett or should I watch the first episode of The Peacemaker. Or should I just sleep.
You’re right. Sleep it is.
Possible car music in the morning. We will see when the morning gets here.
I get the impression that the guy from Nirvana saw Kiss meets the Phantom of the…. of the…. what was the phantom of? Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, isn’t it?
Anyway, the guy from the Foo Fighters saw Kiss Meets the Phantom and thought, I can beat that.
I started my lunch break a little late today. It’s now almost over. I need to dump the brain droppings so that I can get through the afternoon.
Eternals is out on Disney+. Hopefully we’ll get to watch it with Harry before he goes back to school. Did I mention that Harry’s going back to school? With all the drama over Bellana going to The Netherlands, I feel like we’ve been giving Harry the short end of the stick. We are driving him back to school on Sunday. Another drive to Vermont and back. I really enjoy that drive. I just wish he was coming with us for the return drive.
He did well in his first semester, obviously. He’s spent the last few weeks working for an internet based delivery company who shall remain nameless as he tries to build up his bank account while he still can. I remember those days. There was never enough money. I also remember trying to stretch $5.00 worth of gas across a full week so that I could stay on my budget. Ah, college life.
I am going to miss him, of course, but unlike his sister he is still close enough to us that if we need to get to him for whatever reason we can. It’ll take 3-4 hours, but we’ll get there. The Atlantic Ocean and the circumference of the Earth make that really tough in Bellana’s case.
What else is going on? I mentioned Jen going crazy in her office and in the living room by re-doing all of the plugs and extension chords and stuff. Basically she rewired half the house. It was amazing. This weekend… maybe… I will do the same to my office nook in the bed room. I have a big power strip that will replace all of the little once I have daisy chained in here. I’m going to have to take down the whole desk and start from scratch. Unlike Jen, I don’t mind working at a cluttered desk, but even I have my limits. I won’t say it will be neat when I am done, but maybe it will be a little more logical, and electrically safer. All of that because the love of my life inspired me.
What else? Car music tomorrow? Maybe. Depends on the weather. I would take a minute to check the forecast, but I have to get back to work instead.
May your afternoon be happy and productive and free of fascism and shit like that.
I forgot to post this yesterday, but I mixed the January song for the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month thing. I guess that means I am done? We did the actual RPM in February, and then I had at least one song each month from March through January. Three of them were also part of the 50/90, and one was National Solo Album Month, and I forgot to submit most of them to the RPM site, but I still did at least one song each month. Hooray.
I also made a little playlist with one song from each month because I get a little obsessive about stuff like this. You know how it is.
I don’t think I realized how much I needed this.
Sure it’s not Rush. There will never be new Rush. Even if they spend the next 50 years slowly but surely emptying the vaults, there will never actually be new Rush. Why? Because the universe sucks, that’s why. This, though… when you listen to this and hear a guitar, or a sound that doesn’t sound like a guitar but was actually played on a guitar, what you are likely hearing is Alex Lifeson.
I very much needed this.
I wasn’t planning on any guitar playing tonight. Mostly because I didn’t have songs ready for any guitar parts. So what did I do? I started a new re-recording just so that I could have something to play.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need to have something to record to play. If I want to play I can just play. No big whoop, right? It’s just that I wanted to play and I wanted to record something so I came up with something to record, that’s all.
I didn’t play for long, and I didn’t play well, but I did play and that’s all that I care about.
I accomplished two things tonight with a little guitar playing. First, I made myself a tiny bit less sad over Bellana going away, even if it was for only a few minutes. Second, I think I may have convinced myself to not use retail therapy to make myself feel better even if only for a few minutes. Well… I avoided retail therapy again. I went to the Rush website earlier and bought a couple of t-shirts. As stated in a previous post today, I am in a rare period of my existence where I feel the need to resupply the wardrobe as it were. Whatever, I almost bought a new Fuzz Face pedal (the Joe Bonamassa signature. It’s supposed to be geared toward humbuckers where Fuzz Faces are more traditionally geared toward single coils even though I am pretty sure that is just bullshit based on Jimi Hendrix, but I digress) but instead I took the little mini Fuzz Face I already had and put it into the signal chain and used the shit out of it.
The only things I had ready for recording were leads on the two January Record Every Month songs, and on one re-recording. I decided that all tracks recorded this evening would be with great big gooey gobs of fuzz. The Fuzz Face on the two January songs and a Big Muff clone on the re-recording. I always always always have a Big Muff on every board at all times. I love fuzz pedals, and Muffs (despite their awful, terrible, horribly sexist name) are my favorites. They are the smoothest and the filthiest, both at the same time. Fuzz Faces have that spitty quality that really bugs me when I am playing chords (usually) but is okay when I am playing leads. Big Muffs are awesome for rhythm too, but only if there’s an overdrive pedal in the chain after them that boosts the mid range frequencies. Something like a Tube Screamer or (preferably) a Klon. So I don’t keep the little Fuzz Face on the board and only pull it out when I am in the mood. Today I was very much in the mood. Actually, I have been since before Christmas, which is when I started jonzing for a new one, but today was the day I decided to act on it.
So when the time came to play tonight, I gave in to the urge to go ape shit on the fuzz. While my playing was particularly shitty, the tones were pretty effin’ gnarly and they made me happy.
Here is a shitty little blurry (why?) pick of the Fuzz Face pedal. It’s a Dunlop Band of Gypsies Fuzz Face Mini that is supposed to be modeled after the pedal Jimi Hendrix used on the live album Band of Gypsies, which may actually not have been a Fuzz Face at all but instead a custom octave fuzz with the octave circuit removed that was just stuck inside Fuzz Face enclosure. If’n you believe the stories and all.
And here we have a picture of my very dusty Wren and Cuff Super Russian. It’s been sitting on that spot on my bedroom floor since February and I really should dust all this stuff before the knobs get all noisy and scratchy. This is my second favorite Big Muff clone. My favorite is on the big pedal board in the cellar. It’s a Wren and Cuff Tri Pi ’70 and it’s probably pretty dusty too. It’s based on the original Big Muff Pi pedals that Electro Harmonix made in the early 70’s. The Super Russian is based on a Russian made Sovtek model from the early 90’s. They are both viscous little bastards and I love playing them.
The Bruins are spanking the Washington Capitals tonight and it’s glorious. I started watching season two of The Witcher, even though I am kinda over the whole fantasy sword and sorcery thing. This show’s not bad though.
None of this is making me miss Bellana less, even though she hasn’t even left the state yet, never mind the continent. It’s going to be a long six months.
And that, boys and girls, is what you call a long and rambling blog post that uses a lot of words to say very little. Enjoy.
