It is 12:01am on February 1, 2025. In other words, the RPM Challenge is officially underway once again!
Now that it is time to start writing and recording new music… I am going to bed. I’m totally beat.
Breakfast at another hotel tomorrow. Check out from our hotel. Take a bus to the airport. Fly home. The Challenge for me this year will probably start on February 2nd.
Good luck, everyone!
Do do do, just whistling past the american graveyard again… still… do do do…
I’ve been listening to King Crimson’s Red album quite a bit over the last few days. Crimson, in their original incarnation, had a sax player. First it was Ian McDonald, then it was Mel Collins. When band leader Robert Fripp shook things up and hired a whole new band with a drastically new sound in 1972 the saxophones went away. For a while, at least. By 1974, when they were recording the Red album, they were down to three band members, Fripp (guitar/mellotron), John Wetton (bass/vocals), and Bill Bruford (drums/percussion). Fripp was the only soloist in the lineup… sort of… the other two guys could have cranked out leads with the best of them (because they pretty much were the best of them) but instead they brought in a bunch of session musicians to help fill in the gaps. Among those session musicians were two sax players; Ian McDonald (alto) and Mel Collins (soprano).
Collins plays on the album’s centerpiece, “Starless” and his playing is wonderful (as always). McDonald also plays on “Starless” as well as “One More Red Nightmare”. His playing is out of the fucking world amazing. He wails, especially on “Starless”.
Listening to this record quite a bit lately has me thinking… is the sax playing inspiring me a little? The RPM Challenge is less than two weeks away and it’s coming up on time for me to start recording some new music. Do I suddenly find myself wanting to play the saxophone again? I haven’t taken my alto sax out of its case since I finished the 2020 RPM Challenge. Five years. Is it time to break it out again? I think it might be. I know I can still play even if I am only about 1% of the sax player I was when I was a music major from 1989-1991 and sax was my primary instrument in school. Guitar was a hobby I played on the side, even though I spent nearly infinitely more time playing guitar than sax… which contributed to me leaving school before I graduated.
So I guess what I am trying to say is, if throughout the month of February you start hearing about me writing songs in the key of E flat or B flat instead of E and A, and you start hearing me complain about severe pain in my lips and jaw (due to not having practiced at all in the last five years), then we can probably go ahead and blame Mel Collins and the late Ian McDonald. Just saying.
I had a moment today. I put the Bruins game on the radio just in time to hear the national anthem. Given the circumstances of the day it made me feel sick. I thought I was going to vomit. National anthem, my ass. What nation would that be? The fascist states of america? That nation? Fuck that. I don’t live in the US anymore (there is no US anymore), I live in Massachusetts.
So what should we use for a new Massachusetts national anthem? The obvious choice is probably “Must Have Got Lost” by the J Geils Band. That feels a little too obvious. If we wanted to go with an instrumental song I would suggest “Foreplay” by Boston. Again, probably not the best choice.
Assuming the other five New England States join in my little Massachusetts Independence crusade and we create the United States of New England, I would go with this one…
“New England” by Tanya Donelly. That would be pretty much perfect.
A new song from The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, also known as Quarantine Tunes Volume Eight.
Volume eight is all songs written during the 2020 50/90 Challenge. I think. Volume five was all songs from the 2021 50/90, I think… those songs were better than the 2020 songs and it shows with this one. If this was one of the 50 songs that was good enough to consider re-recording then… we’re definitely scraping the bottom of the artistic barrel.
Oh well. It’s done.
I just finished putting rhythm guitar tracks onto two song demos. Look at me being musically productive!
Also, I used Hipstamatic’s Shake-To-Shuffle on my new iPhone for the first time. Wow!
The band practice is on the books for 4:00pm tomorrow. I should be super psyched.
I’m not.
We’re going to get slammed with a snowstorm tomorrow afternoon. Practice is going to get snowed out.
MUTHA PUSS BUCKET!
I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but I swear that mother nature hates my guts. What a bitch!
It still looks like Sunday will have a band practice. The first one in ages.
I need to put new strings on my Les Paul Standard. I also need to not get too excited because statistically speaking it’s probably safe to assume something will take the plans and cock them up.
Ugh. I want to be in a band again! AARRGGHH!!!
4:00pm on Sunday?
We’re trying to setup a time for the band to get together this weekend. I think everyone is in. At least we’re all in as of this moment. I need this. I so need this. I don’t even know when the last time all four of us got together to play was. It’s been way too long. So long that I was pretty convinced it would never happen again. Pessimistically I am still pretty convinced that it is never going to happen again but I am choosing to look on the bright side right now, like the ray of fucking sunshine that I am.
My fingers are crossed. Band practice on Sunday. Make it so.
My lunch break is coming to an end. I was late to work today and had to take some personal time. I took my lunch break a little later than usual and who cares about any of this, right?
There is nothing going on today. There was this morning, but nothing is happening now. It’s turning into a quiet afternoon. I have to go to a store after work and then Jen (my beloved bride) and I are going to get some Japanese take out for dinner. Other than that? Nuttin’, honey.
I was thinking about tomorrow morning. I am working from home tomorrow so I have some time to do stuff before work (assuming I don’t oversleep). Should I take my new/old camera out and finally shoot a test roll or should I track some guitar parts for a song demo or two? I checked the weather. The forecast is calling for temps in the teens around sunrise tomorrow morning. I guess guitar tracking it is!
I have two songs ready for rhythm guitar parts. I just have to remember how to play them. Then I have to learn how to play them in a different key, because I changed my tuning for this round of recordings. I just tuned down a half step but that means I can’t just listen to the original demos and learn the parts. I have to tune back up or I have to change the key on the fly. We’ll see. I don’t think either song is particularly hard. I should be able to re-learn the parts easily enough.
Isn’t home recording fascinating? I can see by the bored, glazed over look in all of your eyes that you’re all just riveted. You’re welcome, really. Any time.
Here are a few of the random things going through my pea brain on this Wednesday evening.
Inside the Red Head's Head 