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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…

Yep, I’m back. Nothing to see here yet. I’m still not quite sure what to do with a new blog, but my old stuff was just sitting there getting stale and I couldn’t have that.

The only agenda I have is to try something new. I’m just going to start by playing around a bit, throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I’m not getting any younger, so the old angry snarky profane political thing doesn’t really suit me so much anymore.

Of course, I am open to suggestions. What do you, all 3 people who might know about this, want to see here?