Tomorrow is going to be a big day for prog rock fans.
I mentioned earlier that we are supposed to get a new Pink Floyd single tomorrow. We are also getting some new Alex Lifeson.
Envy of None’s album comes out tomorrow. It won’t sound even the tiniest bit like Rush, and based on the press they’ve been doing thus far, half the time you won’t hear guitar. Instead you’ll be hearing some other non-guitar sound that was actually played on a guitar.
I think the heroic Mr Lifeson may be embracing his inner Robert Fripp. Frankly, I am 100% here for it.
Yes indeed, it’s going to be a good day for prog fans.
I am writing this in the final few minutes of my lunch break. Today has not been fun. Neither was yesterday or the day before or much of last week. I am going to be needing the universe to lighten up and I am going to need it soon.
Apparently today is Opening Day for Major League Baseball. Hooray! The Red Sox are in New York to face the Fucking Yankees and wouldn’t you know it the game has been called off due to bad weather. If that isn’t a bad omen for the season I don’t know what is. Hopefully it’s more of a bad omen for the Fucking Yankees than it is for the Red Sox. We will see.
What? New Pink Floyd? Read this article. It sounds like Mr David G. once played a show with a Ukrainian artist who is now fighting against the Russian invasion. That guy posted a video of himself singing to Instagram, and the Floyd has worked it into a new song. The release will raise money for Ukraine. That sounds pretty sweet to me. Now we just have to hope it’s a good song. We’ll find out tomorrow, I think.
Okay, Robert. This work day ain’t gonna finish itself. Get to it!
I saw this picture today. I had never seen it before…
It’s Genesis. That’s Phil Collins standing on the right. Mike “and the Mechanics” Rutherford is seated on the right. The other guy from the 80’s pop band, the guy who never had a hit outside of the band but who probably wrote the best songs, Tony Banks, is standing on the left.
Those three guys were also in the 70’s prog band along with Peter Gabriel, who is standing next to Banks, and one of my all time mega guitar heroes, Steve Hackett, who is sitting next to Rutherford.
The guy standing in the middle isn’t always included when they all get back together but he is often enough that I immediately recognize him. It’s the original lead guitarist, Anthony Phillips. He played on the first two albums.
So who is the other guy? I’d never seen him before. At least I’d never seen him included in any reunion things. I had an idea but I had to Google it to be sure.
I was right. It’s John Silver! Holy crap! He wasn’t the original drummer (that was Chris Stewart, I think) but he played on the first album. Wow! He’s noteworthy because Genesis started out in the English equivalent of high school. When it came time for college his parents were so afraid he would decide to make Genesis a career that they shipped him across the Atlantic to Cornell University. At least that’s how I heard it.
The guy who replaced him played on the second record. That was John Mayhew (I may have spelled that right but who knows). Mayhew was replaced by Phil Collins who played on every album except the last one and I don’t know who played on that one.
The Google tells me this photo was taken at a press event in 1998 to celebrate the release of Archives Volume One. That was 22 years ago and I’m just seeing it now. Crazy.
For the first time in a year I failed to come up with anything for Record Every Month. Im a little sad about that, but it’s okay.
What will April bring? Probably not much. We have so many home improvement things going on that I don’t know if I’ll have any time for recording.
Still no dates for Lizardfish rehearsals. Im hoping we can get something in during April because im going to be out of commission for most if not all of May.
I had to take down the cellar music nook for reasons. It’s all in cellar storage now. Im mad at myself too because the reason I stopped using it came down to a misunderstanding. Jen said it was too loud for her to concentrate and I thought she meant that in general. She didn’t. She just meant it was distracting that day.
Oh well. My mistake.
Hopefully I’ll have some time for writing and recording before I go under the knife. I’ll write lots of songs about being scared shitless.
I am supposed to be working on the Record Every Month challenge. Why hasn’t there been any new music?
I have two songs in progress. They are both ready for vocals. It’s March 29th. What’s the delay?
Well, the main delay has been that there is always something going on in the morning right now. I haven’t been able to eek out any time for car music to put the vocals onto those two songs. I was hoping to get it in tomorrow morning, but my doctor’s appointment was just rescheduled from 10:30am to 8:00am. I might be able to do it after the appointment. Then I would have Wednesday and Thursday evenings to put down the lead guitars and throw together a mix.
I think I can pull that off. It’s been so long since I listened to these two songs that I am not even sure how they go anymore. We’ll have to see tomorrow, right?
I’m still planning on more re-recordings. I am much more interested in that project idea than Record Every Month, but I haven’t had time or energy to work on any of that either. I have one song in progress but I haven’t even recorded the rhythm guitars yet. There is just too much going on. It’s a little nuts.
So to sum up, musically speaking… let’s see what happens.
Genesis ended their reunion tour with a show in London the other night. Phil Collins announced from the stage that it would be the final Genesis show ever. Not surprising given the mess he’s in health wise.
He also announced that Peter Gabriel was in the audience and wondered if he was the guy yelling out requests for Supper’s Ready. I like to think Pete would have been requesting The Knife, or maybe Twilight Alehouse instead.
It doesn’t sound like Steve Hackett or Anthony Phillips were there. Hackett just had to postpone a bunch of shows due to someone in his band catching Covid. Maybe he was quarantined?
I always hoped the five of them would play together one more time, but Phil can’t play the drums anymore and if he can’t play then it’s not the real thing. That makes me a little sad, but we still have those records.
My mother’s having another rough day. She’s still in the hospital. Last time we went through this it took five days before they discharged her. My sister was with her yesterday, my brother today, and I’ll be there tomorrow. I had to juggle some things at work but everyone is being very helpful. I appreciate it. I work with good people.
The contractors are working like crazy in the kitchen. The end is in sight. At least for the stuff we contracted out. There’s stuff that we’re planning to do on our own and we haven’t been able to start yet. That should be fun and chaotic and fun.
I have two Record-Every-Month songs ready for car vocals. One of them is pretty bad. The other is really bad. I also started on volume seven of the ol’ Great Re-Recording Project of 2015 today. Bass and drums for one song. Bring on the guitar.
I learned something about the protein shakes I’ve been having for breakfast. Normally I make a shake in the morning using my little single serving electric mixer. When it’s done I put the mixer and the glass I drank it out of into the dishwasher. The next morning they are both sparkling clean. With all of the kitchen fun, we currently don’t have a hooked up dishwasher, or a hooked up kitchen sink, or a hooked up kitchen faucet. So I used the mixer on Monday and then didn’t get around to washing it until this morning. I tried washing it in the bathroom sink, but I couldn’t. The dregs of the protein powder had morphed into a cement like solid. Note to self, get that thing into the dishwasher each day, Stat.
Remember in that last post when I mentioned doing another round of re-recordings of older songs?
I have literally lost my mind.
How about two more rounds?
I picked out a handful of songs to think about re-doing. Most were from the last couple of RPM Challenges but I poked around through other projects looking to fill out the numbers. When I got to the 2020 50/90 playlist I thought about how I made a whole 10 song project out of songs written for the 2021 50/90 and I thought… do it again?
Sure enough, I have 10 songs from various places and projects, that will be round seven. I also have 10 songs just from the 2020 50/90, and that will be round eight.
Robert… come on… what are you doing?
Realize that this is just me trying to be a 50 year old schmuck who is following social distance protocols up to and beyond their maximum who still wants to play the guitar a lot and who also likes to think that part of him is still that 22 year old kid who went to school to learn how to operate a recording studio.
So… yeah. That’s happening.
It might be a while before I get too deeply into it as I still haven’t started doing the laundry. I’ll get to it though.
Jen and I spent our Sunday morning prepping the kitchen and the dining room both for the next week’s worth of contractors and for what comes after the contractors are done. Mostly we just talked about redesigning things and cleaning up some of the places that require changes. We also built the first piece of pre-fab kitchen furniture. The ball is rolling and it is out of control.
The Bruins traded for a new defenseman and the Red Sox signed a new infielder (I think). I don’t know either of them because I am completely out of touch, but they both received long term contracts so maybe they’re both pretty good? I hope so. I missed the last couple of Bruins games so I didn’t hear that Bergeron is injured. Shit.
I may have made a decision about music last night and it may result in more annoying blog posts. Duck and cover kids. It was well after midnight and I should have been asleep but I was wide awake. I started poking through my Alonetone account. I listened to a few things from the last couple of re-recording projects. I thought to myself… do I want to do another one? I have six “albums”, do I want to do a seventh? There are two or three songs from last month’s RPM Challenge that might be worth another look. There’s also a couple of songs from the previous RPM that might be worthwhile too. Shit… I think I am starting to put together Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven. Just when you thought it was safe to listen to music again.
Spring officially began about an hour and 10 minutes ago. We survived another Winter. Now we just need to avoid any unscheduled Spring snow. That would be nice, right?
Okay. I need to do some laundry. I’ll talk to you later.
Inside the Red Head's Head 