The Smashing Pumpkins put out a call for a new guitar player. They are asking for resumes.
Should I send one?
Tag: Music
January Music Goals
Right then. It’s 2024. Enough of that crap that was 2023. Let’s get our shit together and make some music. In February I will dive head first back into the RPM Challenge, but until then what am I going to force upon myself to jump start creativity and make me feel like I can be a musician for a few weeks.
In other words, what are my musical goals for January 2024? There are three.
First and foremost, we are hoping to start auditioning singers for the cover band. My playing is utter shite right now so I need to get into shape. I need to find out what songs we are going to use for the audition and practice the holy hell out of them. They all used to be second nature but that was almost four years ago. I have to make them second nature again.
Second and second most, my 1979 Gibson ES-335 Pro needs to go into the shop. The same shop my Les Paul Custom spent time in a few months ago. I think it needs new frets, and I think it might need a new wiring harness as well. I need to get things going this month so that the guitar will be available for me to use on February’s RPM Challenge album.
Third and third most, it is time to get back to The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, where I take old songs from old writing projects and clean them up, edit them, rewrite where necessary, and then record a slightly higher quality version. This project is also known as Quarantine Tunes. There are six Quarantine Tunes albums on my alonetone page. I told myself that I was stopping at six but then about a year and a half ago I started work on volume seven and also sort of started thinking about volume eight. What can I say, I am a nerd about this stuff. Last night I added two more songs to the volume seven to-do list. I plan to spend January working on volume seven and hopefully finishing it. That should put my brain into a good recording and playing space in time for February.
I am also slightly overwhelmed by a scary compulsion to go out and buy a new guitar. I need to fight that urge. I want a Les Paul Junior or a Firebird, but I don’t need them. Hopefully playing the shit out of the guitars I already own will calm me down on the online shopping front… hopefully… I think.
So there you go. Practice, get the 335 fixed up, and record. My three musical goals for January.
Bring ’em on.
Bad Song Alert
A super rough mix of a terrible performance of a really bad song. My first Record Every Month Challenge song since September. I’m back, babie! My finger tips are killing me after recording the lead guitar parts today. Yikes!
New Years Eve Music
I played some guitar today. I finished tracking two songs that could be December’s submission for the Record Every Month Challenge. Both songs really suck though… so… yeah.
New Years Eve
It’s New Years Eve again. Wasn’t it just New Years Eve a few weeks ago? 2023 is ending? How the hell did that happen?
We don’t have any solid plans for today apart from picking up some take-out Chinese food. Maybe some board games? Maybe another round of Yahtzee?
I watched Rebel Moon on Netflix. I was conflicted. I wanted to watch it but I also did not want to watch it. See the conflict? My spoiler free review is to recommend that you wait until part two comes out in April. This movie feels like two hours worth of a four hour heist movie, where generally the first half of a heist movie is assembling the team. That means the movie that is out now is really just the assembling of the team. That’s why it doesn’t have a coherent story. It’s more like a bunch of mini-movies introducing all of the characters. Hopefully part two will make sense on it’s own. So if you wait for part two to come out and then watch them both together, maybe it will be a decent movie as a whole. For now though… eh.
I have to play guitar today. I have two songs in progress for this month’s Record Every Month challenge. They both need lead guitar parts. I need to record them today and then mix the two songs and then I will have my first R.E.M. win since September. It’s a must.
Speaking of guitar, I went down a rabbit hole last week that I find myself visiting once every couple of years. If you read this page you might have noticed that I have been obsessed with the band Rush since 1981. Back then there were two bands that I was obsessed with. The other was Led Zeppelin. As I got older though, the whole unending adolescence vibe that Zeppelin had sort of got tiring for me and I moved away from them. Also, Jimmy Page is one of my guitar heroes, and he is definitely one of the reasons I NEEDED to learn to play guitar when I was a kid. When I look at my own playing objectively though (if that’s even possible) I don’t hear a lot of his style in my playing. I think as I moved away from the debauchery that Zeppelin represented, I sort of moved away from Page too.
Every once in a while though, I feel the need to really dig into the catalog and try to remind myself that there is a lot of value there. That comes up once every couple of years, and it came up for me on Thursday. I put together a playlist with all of their studio records and over the course of the work day I plowed through all of it. Did the old musical feelings I used to get when I listened to Led Zeppelin as a teenager come back? Yes. Not exactly the same, as I am no longer that kid that I used to be, but it was close enough that I felt good about the whole experience. Now I can move on to other things again until the next time I feel cosmically compelled to examine the Zeppelin again. Probably some time in 2025, I think.
Okay then, it’s almost 11:00am. I have not had anything to eat for about three hours. It’s time to have a snack to keep my stomach happy. Gastric Bypass for the win!
Happy New Years Eve, everyone. HoHoHo.
My Morning in Pictures
Here’s what I did this morning… in Hipstamatic pictures… Because… I don’t know why…
And there you have it. My morning excursion in pointless photographs.
Thread
I feel gross using the facebook/instagram owned twitter alternative app, Threads. Really gross.
That isn’t quite enough to stop me right now though. I am such a social media hypocrite/whore.
Anyway, someone asked, “what are your guitar goals for 2024” or something along those lines. I responded with a few. I figured I would port the response over to this post and maybe add a thing or two because I ran out of characters on the app. First, does the embed code work? I tried just sharing a link the other day to see if that pulled anything in, but it didn’t. I found that each post includes some embedding HTML code. Betcha a dollar it doesn’t work…
Post by @reallytallredheadView on Threads
https://www.threads.net/embed.js
Based on the preview function in the editor, it didn’t work. Oh well. Here’s the text I wrote:
I want my cover band to finally get back together after a covid-hiatus and an exiting singer.
I want to write a shit ton of songs, record listenable demoes of all of them, and maybe have one or two that don’t objectively suck.
I want to play a bar gig for the first time since Feb 1, 2020.
After getting my 1978 Les Paul refretted a couple of months ago, I want to do the same with my 1979 ES-335 along with maybe getting a new wiring harness so that all four of my guitars will be in gig shape.
Me: https://www.threads.net/@reallytallredhead/post/C1ch8b9LyTx
Yes, kids… I just quoted myself. I dun did that.
Anyway, there are a couple of things to add.
I want to replace all of my guitar straps with heavy, leather straps like the one I have on my 50th birthday present Les Paul Standard. I have amazon shipping one for my Les Paul Custom and it should arrive tomorrow.
I want to buy either a Gibson Les Paul Junior, a Gibson Firebird, a Gibson Les Paul Standard with P-90 pickups instead of humbuckers, or a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. The order I wrote them is from most wanted to least most wanted. The chances of me buying any of these is about 0.0000001%… so there’s a chance.
With all of these goals in mind, mostly I would just settle for playing more. That’s what I really want to do.
I Played Guitar Today!
Oh thank heavens, I played some guitar today. I worked on two songs for Record Every Month. My finger tips are sore as hell, but I played my Les Paul Custom with the new frets and it felt really good. Really good.
I seriously over did the obligatory pics.
1971
I was born in 1971. One super important event occurred that year but I am going to make you wait for it. First, I Googled “events from 1971” and figured I’d share a few things that I found.
This site gave a top 10 list. Allow me to share it:
https://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1971.html
- The New York Times begins to publish sections of the Pentagon Papers
- The Voting Age in the United States is lowered to 18 yrs old when the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified
- Border battles between India and Pakistan erupt into full-scale war
- The Walt Disney World Theme Park is opened in Florida
- The Soviet Union launches the first space station, Salyut 1, into low Earth orbit
- Ibrox disaster in Scotland when On January 2nd 66 die in stairway crush at Rangers v Celtic football match
- A new stock market index called the Nasdaq debuts
- Decimalisation in United Kingdom and Ireland both switch to decimal currency.
- Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher’s ends free school milk for children over the age of seven
- The US table tennis team visits to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) known as “Ping Pong Diplomacy”
You can click the link to get more details. Interesting stuff. Americans, you’re welcome for the 26th amendment. Also, for Disney World.
This site also gave a short list. There’s a lot of cross over, but I’ll share a few highlights.
- The total number of American troops in Vietnam dropped to 196,700, the lowest amount since January 1966. On the other hand, the number of British troops stationed in Northern Ireland increased to 11,000.
- The Supreme Court “unanimously upheld the constitutionality of busing as a means to ‘dismantle the dual school system,’ of the South.”
- Charles Manson, along with three of his female followers, were convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders.
- Here are some sports facts from 1971: The Pittsburgh Pirates won their 4th World Series, the Baltimore Colts were the Super Bowl champs, and the Montreal Canadiens clinched the Stanley Cup.
- Satchel Paige became the first African-American MLB player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- The first Starbucks opened at the historic Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington. The coffeehouse chain was founded by Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegl, who later sold the company to Howard Schultz. Today, Starbucks has 32,938 retail locations worldwide.
- The South Tower of the World Trade Center “topped out at 1,362 feet, making it the second tallest building in the world.”
- In 1971, Amanda Holden, Corey Haim, Denise Richards, Justin Trudeau, Lance Armstrong, Mark Wahlberg, and Ricky Martin were all born.
Yup, my birth year sent Charles Manson to jail for what turned out to be the rest of his psychotic life.
So what is that one huge event that I teased at the start of this post? It’s mega. It’s universe altering.
In July of 1971, Rick Wakeman joined Yes. By the end of 1972 the universe had been granted the musical masterpieces that are the albums Fragile and Close to the Edge.
You’re welcome.
Admirable Traits
This is a tough one for me. There are a lot of things I could mention, but explaining them are somewhat beyond me. Maybe I’m just suffering from some minor brain fry today. Maybe I’m just letting the cold, damp weather get to me. I don’t know.
The one thing that comes to mind is focus. I am such a procrastinator that focus is an issue for me. Is work ethic a better term in this case? I don’t think so. I think my work ethic is okay, I just feel like I need a jump start now and then to get me out of procrastination mode.
Speaking of procrastination… it has more or less taken me three tries (and counting) to write the prior two paragraphs. Ugh.
What are some other things? I admire people who don’t have to eat all the time. Even post-gastric bypass, I feel like I am snacking on something all the time. I also feel like the length of time I can go in between snacks is getting shorter. Yesterday my stomach was yelling at me to eat all day long and it was annoying.
I admire people who are decisive. I am not decisive. I am Mr Indecisive. I constantly second guess myself. When other people do that I get upset because I have faith in their decisions, even if they are just gut reactions. I don’t feel that way about my own decisions though. I doubt and doubt and doubt.
I admire musicians who have the discipline to practice. I just can’t do it. I can’t sit down and practice scales or picking patterns or anything like that. I have to come up with a project and work on it. That’s one of the reasons I do so many song writing challenges. I feel like I won’t play at all if I don’t have a project to work on. I wish I could just sit down with my guitar and practice for the sake of practicing. I admire people who can do that.
Okay, there are a few examples. It took me almost an hour to write this because I am in full procrastination mode today. How’s that for irony?
