Tag: Music

Friday

It has been a pretty quiet day at work today (JINX!) apart from my brief stomach rebellion. I have 32 minutes to go until I can punch out for the day. I am starting to day dream about the weekend a little.

Music. I recorded a vocal track for one song on Thursday. I have a couple more songs that could do with some car music vocals. I have to practice for Sunday’s band rehearsal as well. I have nine songs to brush up on. I don’t know if we have a working PA system or not, but I did pick up a replacement for my dead Shure SM58 microphone. If our old, dinky little PA still works I’ll take it for a test drive. My Vox AC15 amp is in the rehearsal room along with my great big use-with-the-band pedal board. It’ll be nice to visit with my sweet RYRA The Klone overdrive pedal again.

I suddenly find myself in the middle of a whole bunch of TV shows. The X-Files epic rewatch continues, and we’re in season seven which means the quality is taking a steady nose dive. Uh oh. Only a few episodes to go until we reach the two season mostly-Mulder-free stretch. Yikes. I have a new episode of Star Trek Discovery (Disco) to watch. I have a new episode of Manhunt to watch. I have 6-7 episodes of Fallout left. I’ve watched the first two. I didn’t expect it to be so… goofy. I never played the video game so I really didn’t know what to expect. Silliness was not on my menu though. I like the show so far even though I don’t really know what’s happening yet. I’m caught up on Star Wars The Bad Batch. There are only a few more episodes left and I am thinking about rewatching the whole final season. I don’t know. There’s so much else to watch. I’m in the middle of Ripley on Netflix too. It’s pretty twisted. I never read the book or saw the movie so this one is all new to me too. I am enjoying it in a sick and twisted kinda way.

What else is going on? I am hoping to spend some quality time hanging out with my wife, of course. That’s the best part of the weekend. She mentioned she’s going to have to work a lot, which is a bummer, but we’ll make time. I hope to cook for her now and then. Lunches and maybe dinners? We use one of those dinner delivery service things. You know, where they send you all of the ingredients and a recipe with (somewhat) detailed instructions and you prepare the meal yourself. We are supposed to get a delivery today. I like it best when we cook those together. I find that both less stressful and generally enjoyable. Mostly. Some of them are still stressful even when we gang up on them. Does everyone think they are stressful or is it just us?

I did not promise myself that I would avoid the sugar free bakery in Salem, NH this week… so when I go out to do errands… yeah, I am probably going to buy some cookies there. I can stop any time, really. I promise I can stop any time. Totally.

Okay. 20 minutes until quitting time. I haven’t had anything to eat in two hours and 56 minutes and my stomach is starting to ask me why it’s empty. Three hours is usually how long it takes for my stomach to wake up after a meal. We’re pretty much right on target. Here’s hoping I don’t mess up with my snack on the drive home. A repeat of The Foamies… in the car… yeah, that would be annoying. I keep a spit up cup in the car, though I have never used it. Here’s hoping we keep the streak alive!

TMI?

Make Your Happy, Happy

Daily writing prompt
What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?
View all responses

Five things… I can do that. In fact, I will give you six because one of the things I want to include is no longer what you’d call an everyday thing. So five things and a bonus… and “everyday things” might be a bit of a gigantic understatement in one case, but I am including it anyway.

  1. Jen. When I say that the word, “everyday” might be an understatement, this is what I am referring to. Jen is not an “everyday thing”. Jen is more like a miracle that I get to experience every day. See the difference? I hope so, because it is massive. Jen makes my world go around. Jen is my universe. Jen is the love of my life. Basically Jen is the source of everything that matters. Happiness? You bet your ass she brings me happiness. She brings me all the happiness.
  2. Bellana and Harry. They don’t live with us anymore. I don’t hear from them everyday. Therefore we have to consider this one sort of a bonus entry on the list. They are my step kids and they bring me happiness everyday, I just don’t see them everyday. See the difference? I can’t write a list of things that make me happy without including them though, so while they are number two on the list, they are sort of a bonus. I love them completely and just knowing they are out there in the wilds of Vermont fills me to the bursting point with happiness.
  3. Music. Now we’re getting to actual everyday things. I listen to at least a little bit of music every day. Even if it’s just a song here and there, or maybe something that comes up on my YouTube suggestions and I give a quick listen to. It doesn’t have to be hours at a time listening to album after album or whatever, though I suspect we’ll get some of that today at work. Playing music, listening to music, writing music, recording music, talking about music, thinking about music… all of it.
  4. A good story. It could be a book, or a TV show, or a movie, or a website, or a news article, or a chat with a friend or family member. I just enjoy a good story.
  5. Going for a drive. I don’t do this one every day, and sometimes (like today in the pouring deluge of rain) it’s less enjoyable than others, but I do love going for a nice drive. The enjoyment level is often tied to the destination, but any drive is a good drive.
  6. Cats! Robin, Lily, the late great Miss Patches, the late great Fluffy Puffy P, the late great Floyd, Buddy, all of my friends cats, all of my family’s cats. Cats make me happy. You might be able to tell from all the cat pictures I post around here. I do enjoy a good cat.

And there you have it, folks. Five plus one things that make me happy. Hopefully you will have a few things make you happy today too. It is Friday, after all. Enjoy yourselves.

My Slightly Defective Brain

In 1982 King Crimson recorded a song called, “Neal and Jack and Me.” It’s on the album called Beat.

Recently I have been listening to an audiobook version The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. There is a character who often refers to her parents by their first names. Their names are Neil and Melanie. Every time this character says the name Neil my brain inserts “and Jack and me.” It’s driving me a little crazy. Neil (and Jack and me) and Melanie did this. Melanie and Neil (and Jack and me) did that.

Can you imagine?

Tonight my wife was telling me about someone she’s working with. His name is Neil. Every time she said his name my tiny little broken brain inserted “and Jack and me.” Neil (and Jack and me) said this. Neil (and Jack and me) said that.

Somebody stop me! Somebody fix me!

Two Songs

To make up for not having a band practice today, I mixed the two songs that I had that were ready to mix. Both are for volume seven of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, aka Quarantine Tunes.

I pretty happy with this one:

I’m not very happy with this one:

I think I have two more songs to work on for volume seven, then it’s on to volume eight. I’ve actually already started one song for volume eight… so are volume seven and eight really just one big double sized volume? I don’t know, I am making up the rules for this stupid thing as I go.

Wait Until Next Week

The plan was to start The Great New Singer Process today with a band practice with just the three of us so we could start rehearsing some of the songs we’re going to ask auditioning singers to try out with.

Nope. We have a one week delay. Mike the Bass Player has something going on at home that he needs to take care of, so we will meet at his house seven days from now and kick off the journey then.

This is bad news because we were all looking forward to it, but for me personally it is also good news because holy crap do I need to practice.

Seven days from now. My calendar is marked. Bring it on.

New Update to the Band’s Blog

Something Brewing

I am thinking I might start posting to the band’s blog more frequently. By “more frequently” I mean more often than never. I’ll reblog everything here too. Why post to one site when I can post one thing to two?

I used to own a custom domain for that page. It expired ages ago. If a new name is in our future, I’ll wait until we pick something to look into a new domain.

I Don’t Know… I Don’t Want It

Beat…

Adrian Belew and Tony Levin were in King Crimson (the first time) from 1981 through 1984. The two of them have recruited two world class musicians to play the music from that time period once again. On drums they have Danny Carey from Tool. I am not terribly well versed in Tool’s catalog, but what I do know is good and he seems like a good choice to cover for the legendary Bill Bruford. The other new guy… I don’t know.

I should be absolutely stoked for this new band. Adrian Belew is a fantastic guitar player. He’s one of the most innovative, original musicians ever. He’s a giant. Tony Levin is literally as good as a human being can get. Whether it’s on the bass guitar or the Chapman Stick, or any other chunk of wood with strings on it, he’s as good as it gets. He’s one of, possibly THE, most talented musicians on the planet Earth at this time. I’ve seen him live twice, once just before the pandemic hit when he was playing in the last version of King Crimson, and once back in 1988 (or was it 1989?) with Yes spinoff Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe. I really wanted to see him with Peter Gabriel back in September but we went to Disney World and caught Covid-19 instead.

Belew, Levin, Carey… all people I should be salivating over the chance of seeing them live on stage together. It’s that fourth guy though…

Is Steve Vai one of the most talented guitarists in the history of wood and strings? Yes, that’s a fair statement. Is Steve Vai a musical genius? Yeah, probably. I just… I just don’t really care for his music, that’s all. To me, he’s sort of in the same boat as Joe Satriani. I heard once that he actually took lessons from Joe Satriani at one point. I saw Satriani live once. He opened for Deep Purple. There was no denying his talent. No denying he is an astonishing guitar player. Having said that though, two songs into his set I was completely bored. Enormous talent. Staggering technique. But no actual interesting music. None.

Vai played with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake back in the 80’s. His ability was jaw dropping. His actual music? I’m sorry but it was just boring. It was style over substance in the worst way. That 1981-84 period of King Crimson is very important to me. I am positive that Steve Vai is going to do amazing things with it. I am also sure that I will be bored to tears by all of it.

I honestly feel terrible that I feel this way. I should be giddy with glee over this new band. I’m not. I just can’t. It makes me sad, it really does. My sincere apologies to Misters Belew, Levin, and Carey. And to Mister Vai too. I just can’t get over my preconceptions. I am really sorry.

Something to Play Along With

Just saving this for later, as this blog sometimes serves as a browser/machine independent collection of bookmarks for me…

That’s a playlist of my band rehearsing each of the songs currently on our new-singer-audition-to-do-list. I haven’t listened to any of it yet so I don’t even know if the takes are complete or not, and I don’t know if they sound good enough to actually make anything out, and I don’t know if we made any colossal screw ups or anything.

In other words, this playlist might be a waste of time, but I did it during my lunch break so it is morally on the up and up.

I have a wordpress.com blog for the old band too. Maybe I’ll post it there for funzies.