Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

It was not that long ago when I would obsessively blog several times a day. These days I seem to be posting about once a month which in internet time is like a geological era. No wonder nobody reads this thing. At least the comment spammers stop by all the time to keep paying me their vague compliments on my “content” and “the information in this post.”

So what’s been going on since I could last be bothered to throw something up on here? I played another gig in town which went over pretty well. The kiddo has gone to two camps, each which ended in a very cute performance. I was most excited about Rock Camp, where they all got to try out different instruments, learned how to do power slides, and performed an original song about buying a time machine at Best Buy to go look at dinosaurs. Their band was called The Smudgies, which was changed from Smokey House Hot Bread which I thought was a much better name.

And speaking of rock and instruments and such… this Saturday I went on one of my usual weekend trips to Guitar Center. I’ve been hearing good things about some of the newer stuff that Squire has been putting out, and I thought I’d check out some of their basses. I’ve been really wanting a Jazz or Precision Special (Precision body, Jazz neck, both pickups) for a while. I played a few of the Jazzes, but didn’t really feel that it would be an upgrade from my heavily modified Fender Musicmaster. And then I saw a Fender Standard Jazz in the used area for about a third of what they go for new. I played it and loved the sound, versatility and feel. And it would definitely be an upgrade!

I ran back home and went digging through my closet for my dad’s old Ovation acoustic/electric. He gave it to me after he discovered Taylor guitars. I don’t play much guitar, but for a while it was nice to have an acoustic around just in case. But I hadn’t played it in several years and the strings and frets were rather crusty. I brought it to a friend who buys beat up guitars to clean up and sell for a lot more, and he helped me get this one all nice. We crowned the frets, oiled the fingerboard, tightened up the strap pegs and made it look beautiful. I brought it back to Guitar Center and they traded it for the bass, a case and a new set of string!

But here’s the hard part… because the bass was brought to them used, they have to wait 30 days before letting it out of the store. They call that the pawn shop law, so in case it’s reported stolen, they can return it to the rightful owner. So I have to wait until the middle of August before I can bring it home, giving me only two rehearsals with it before I play a gig with it. Barely 10 minutes goes by without me daydreaming about playing it!

The title of this post is the first line of a great Dinosaur, Jr. song. And unfortunately for all involved, that’s the only bit of Dino Jr. goodness you’re going to get from this post. Nope, this is another post about one of those stories you hear in the news where there’s not a single sympathetic side involved. Much like this story, it’s just pitting asshats against other asshats in an asshattery competition of epic proportions. And what is it, you ask? It’s the Ground Zero Mosque Controversy.

The first round of asshats are of course the people who want to put this thing up there. I mean seriously, what are you thinking? Yeah, sure, I realize you mean it as some sort of peace thing, but if people aren’t taking it that way, you don’t do it. While most rational people don’t see what happened on 9/11 as being an attack from all of Islam, it was still Islam (sure, it was the most fundamental extreme wingnut variety, but still Islam) that inspired this attack, it’s not unreasonable to view putting a mosque there as an act akin to planting the flag of an invading army on freshly conquered ground. And despite any good intentions, if it could be taken that way it’s not the right thing to do.

So instead of coming out with a reasonable argument against it like I just did, the other asshats in this story (and let’s face it, they’re pretty much asshats in every story they make their way into) are the right wing teabagger crowd who have to make everything about intolerance and racism and say mind numbingly dumb shit like this…

“We feel it would be more appropriate maybe to build a center dedicated to expunging the Quranic texts of the violent ideology that inspired jihad, or perhaps a center to the victims of hundreds of millions of years of jihadi wars, land enslavements, cultural annihilations and mass slaughter,” Geller said. [full article]

It takes special skill to cram that much idiocy into one little sentence. Hundreds of millions of years, huh? I’m no fan of Islam at all, but don’t even get me started on all the violence committed for Jesus, too. Who could possibly take that kind of talk seriously? Asshats, that’s who. The same asshats who protest our current administration doing the same things that they didn’t have a problem with when the white guy was doing them. The the same asshats who whine about their oppressive taxes while enjoying the lowest tax rates ever. The same asshats who defend the Christianization of every last thing in our society. The same asshats who have an awful lot going for them but still always whine about being the victim of something.

There’s a part of me who almost wishes they’d build the biggest mosque in the world at ground zero just to piss these people off. But two wrongs don’t make a right (while infinite wrongs do make a right wing). So the first group of asshats, please reconsider this. I realize you want peace love and understanding, but please don’t do it at the cost of alienating a lot of people who might not be as lame about it as your more vocal critics. And the second group of asshats, please consider mass suicide. You’re never going to be happy in a world with diversity of ideas and races and religions. Perhaps things might be better for you on the other side.

UPDATE: That second group of asshats  are so racist… (how racist are they?) They’re so racist that they almost beat up a couple of Egyptian Coptic Christians who flew 9 hours to join their protest. Nice job, people. Way to represent America.

And for everyone who slogged through this miserable post, here’s your reward. I lied about there not being any more Dino Jr. in this post. Enjoy!

So last night was another band practice. We’ve been kind of in a slump since our last gig. We had a great deal of momentum coming out of that gig. We played really well and made a solid connection with our audience. We had another gig booked a few weeks after that one. And then our keyboard player fell ill. We heard through his girlfriend that he wouldn’t be able to make rehearsal. And then another rehearsal. And at that point we were a week out from our next gig which we had to go and cancel.

We scrambled to try to get somebody to fill in, but keyboard players are few and far between, not to mention ones who can play the complex music that we play. Although our keyboard player is back, we are still looking for another one to come in and make the sound bigger as well as to make sure that last minute changes in health conditions won’t mean having to cancel a gig. We’ve been asking our friends and trolling Craigslist for new members, and we’ve gotten some interesting (and some hilarious) replies as well as responses from people who are into the music we’re playing and just want to be on our mailing list.  We also heard back from this amazing sax player who was in our very first jam session before we were even a band. At that point we were not up to his level but he was a great sport and had a lot of fun playing with us. Now that we’re practiced and gigging, he’s into playing with us from time to time which would be a really sweet addition.

So last night we were practicing. We have a show in 3 weeks and we’ve been working as hard as we can without having any keys. Our keyboard player did manage to get there last night, though a bit late. He called me from outside so I could let him in. When I opened the garage door, I noticed that the entire block was sealed off inside a police line. A cop came over and asked that we all stay inside since somebody just got shot around the corner and they were looking for the shooter, whose car was parked with the door wide open right behind my guitarist’s car. I told him that we were just doing a quick load in and he was cool about it. And then, like the egotistical self involved musician I can be sometimes, I asked a guy who is working on immediate issues of life and death how we sounded from out there. He smiled, gave a thumbs up and said “alright.” We got back upstairs and dedicated the next song (Deep Purple’s Child in Time – definitely apropos of the situation downstairs) to the boys in blue outside, and by the time we were done all that was left on the street was a little bit of broken auto glass where the shooter’s car was parked.

Here’s a blurry cellphone shot of the police tape right over the hood of my car.

By the way, in case you were wondering, we sounded great! Our next gig is going to be a lot of fun – Friday, June 18th at the Baltic in Point Richmond.

But don’t take their word for it. See the video evidence…

Our gig last Friday night really kicked us into high gear and we thought we should add a new song to our set. There are a couple of really challenging ones that we’ve noodled around with for a long time that are just still miles away from being stage ready, namely Genesis’ Return of the Giant Hogweed and Yes’ Long Distance Runaround. When we have a nice long time between gigs (like between our May 7th and June 18th gigs, perhaps) we can maybe get one of these in shape. But with only 3 rehearsals between, we needed something a little bit less challenging, yet still complex and interesting enough to add to our set of complex and interesting music.

We all really like Genesis, though not the Genesis most children of the 80′s know. Before they were a pop band fronted by Phil Collins, they were a prog band fronted by Peter Gabriel. And that’s just how we like them! There are three brilliant chapters in American Psycho where Patric Bateman takes a break from all the killing to talk about music and wax philosophically about his incredibly pedestrian musical tastes. The one on Genesis is hysterical. He pretty much says that their old stuff sucked, but they finally achieved greatness with Invisible Touch. So when it was suggested that we try a song from the first post-Gabriel album, Trick of the Tale, I was a bit skeptical.

But Squonk rocks. According to wikipedia, it’s Genesis’ attempt to sound like Led Zeppelin. Most of what I’m playing is just basic thumping on open D and A strings, but there are all sorts of places where we need to anticipate and come in a little bit ahead of the beat. Having worked on it all alone during the week between rehearsals, there were some spots where I just could not figure out what I was supposed to play, but last night it all came together in practice. We spent about 2 hours on the song and by the end it was damn near respectable. We went over the transitions, and over them, and over them, and over them, and it paid off. I can’t wait to debut this song in a little over a week! And now, for your listening pleasure…