Fatigue and Potential Injury

The whole thing about my back, shoulders, and hands that has been bumming me out. I suddenly remembered today that this happened once before...when I was learning Blondie songs on the drums. Basically, I pushed myself to learn things that were beyond my skills at the time...and then kind of hurt myself.  In the end, the solution was to relax and not try so fucking hard. I didn't get things perfect...but they ended up being good enough all the same.

Halloween 2011

This photo is just about the coolest thing ever.

It was pretty insane, but I managed to make it through this double header show. I did not play the Blondie set my best. I was dropping sticks a lot and was nervous and just missed some things. The kit was not exactly like I was used to...the cymbals too far away. I switched to longer sticks part way through and stopped dropping. Spaced the tempo on one song...we had to start 2 or 3 over. I'm sure it all went fine and I'm just frankly glad it is over. I'm also glad that I know that I played the songs flawlessly a few weeks ago in rehearsal. Think I had two or three beers between 4pm and 8pm when we took the stage. Alcohol was not a factor.





Here's a video of Call Me:


Went and ate dinner at the Brass Ring, changed costumes, and came back for Flaming Lips. The show was running maybe a half hour late, but not too bad. Learned the lesson that when you throw 30 three foot balloons at an audience they do not play with them peacefully, but throw them back at you violently. I was not prepared for this and was glad I'd practice Race for the Prize hard enough that I could stop and start playing my part as I dealt with balloons. Still...the balloons were cool and people loved them.

I made some mistakes in the set...spaced guitar chords on Yoshimi a bit, forgot to turn off the tuning mute going into Do You Realize...amp maxed out and cut out on overdrive part of Pompeii. Overly the amp held up well with all 5 bands playing through it. One of the other bass players complimented me on how great it sounded. It seems to have survived. I think that it cutting out on Pompeii probably had something to do with the way I had it set and the fact that it was just over the top too much signal. I had one more beer before FLIPS and two more after. The next day I was tired, but not at all hung over. I was drinking low grade 12 oz beers the whole night.











There were many technical glitches with the sound check (RS's vocal effects mostly) and the video (don't under-estimate compatibility issues)...but overall it came off as we'd intended (minus the confetti, which was vetoed by venue owner a week before the show). The dancers worked out really great. We had pro sound and pro video on hand. The show was captured and then some.

It was all well worth doing. But the herding cats (and trying to learn drum parts above my skill level) for Blondie and the dealing with all the extras (including harmony vocals) for FLIPS ended up being pretty exhausting over the 8 months of prep. I grew weary of it all and am glad both projects are over. There is some talk of reprising the FLIPS set and we've have an offer on the table to do so...but I think it took so much out of all of us that I'm not sure if it will ever happen. I kind of just want to go back to playing the Pixies. This was hard (my drumming on Blondie and FLIPS as a whole), no doubt about it, and a strain on all involved. It was an accomplishment and I fear we'll forget that too quickly...but I'm tired and ready to move on. I think that we all are.


Blondie Setlist:
Heart of Glass
11:59
Call Me
Dreaming
Rip Her to Shreds
Sunday Girl
X Offender
Denis
Tide is High
Hanging on the Telephone
One Way or Another
Detroit 442

Flaming Lips Setlist:
Race for the Prize
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Part 2
What is the Light
Fight Test
Bad Days
Do You Realize
Kim's Watermelon Gun
The WAND
Pompeii and G
She Don't Use Jelly
Turn It On

Blackie

I was in Seattle last weekend and caught Blackie...a politically incorrectly named Blondie tribute band.


(not from the show I saw, incidentally...and actually the lineup was totally different than in this video except the singer and drummer)

They were good. The drummer did some things differently than me, but mostly the same. In some cases I prefer the choices that I've made. The singer stumbled over (though totally covered) a couple of lyrics and that was fun to see.

I was reassured that we are doing all right...and that I am in particular perfectly within the realm.

The Next Thing (s)

So in 24 days the Halloween show will be done and that's the end of Peroxide, my Blondie tribute. In theory it is also the end of Labia in the Sunlight, my Flaming Lips tribute (though I suspect there will be more Labia shows to come). Hopefully Crackity Jones will continue to crank along...and The Drain and Seven Stone Weaklings. But I'll want a new challenge.

On Sunday I was asked to play in a Queen tribute (I think this was a joke) and a Heart tribute (I think this was semi-serious).

I'm just going to assume Queen was a joke.

But Heart. Well...Heart.

I'm not a Heart fan, but I know that they had some seriously hardcore drum stuff going on. It would be a challenge even more so than Clem Burke's Blondie. So who was Heart's drummer? I'm glad you asked:


Again, I don't know much about Heart, but the drumming was more than basic rock.

All that said...we didn't talk specifics...so I suppose that I could also do bass...or something else entirely. Or that it was all bullshit and wine and beer and good times and we will never speak of this again. We'll see.

In the meantime I should maybe look into the band a bit...

Pero, 10/1, LRC

Peroxide played Ladies Rock Camp as a warmup for the big Halloween gig.

I was hungover because I am an asshole. I also was more nervous than normal I think because I was worried that I'd seem like a fraud...a music instructor who might not measure up in chops. Anyway, I'd say I didn't nail everything, but the basic ideas where there and reasonably well pulled off. The rest of the band did pretty well. We had one hang up where we were all obviously lost and I had the presence of mind to yell "key change" to get us all back to the same place. It worked and we kept going. We're still figuring out endings and everyone watched me really well for where to stop. I definitely felt, more so than usual, that I was driving the bus.

We played for 30 minutes and got paid $75. We were perhaps too loud for the small room...though a recording of the session revealed this wasn't as bad as it seemed. I know that we were all turned down about as far as we could go.

Setlist (in alpha order Pixies-style only because we are lazy):
Call Me
Denis
Hanging on the Telephone
Heart of Glass
One Way or Another
Sunday Girl
Tide is High
X Offender

Ladies Must Rock

This weekend is Ladies Rock Camp. I'm teaching bass, coaching a band, and performing with our Blondie tribute on drums at a lunch break. As always, I worry that I am not qualified for any of this...that I will seem a fraud...but in the end each time I put myself out there I become a little more qualified, and I guess that's all that I can hope for.

To be fair, while there are better bass instructors and players out there...I am EMMENSELY qualified to coach hopeful beginning female rock stars on how to
1) pick up an instrument they've never played before and make sounds from it
2) ask someone (friends or strangers) to let them play in a band with them (even to ask boys if you are a girl...or seem like a girl)
3) shamelessly proceed to play in that band...for fun or profit (well, for gas money anyway).

Indeed this three part process may be one of the few things I've ever been good at doing in life.

Lately

I am feeling better about my contribution to FLIPS. I was pretty down on the whole thing, particularly my vocals, but it seems to be getting slowly better...though I'm not putting in nearly the effort that I ought to be with practicing. It just isn't as much fun as the Pixies.

Blondie has caused physical problems with my right hand because I'm trying to push to hard and fast too soon. My technique is for crap. I basically haven't been practicing at all while I try to calm down both my carpal tunnel/tendonitis and also my depression at realizing that I am going to have to take a few of the songs down a notch. I'm hurting myself and not having any fun...so what the fuck. Make them easier to play by a hair. It makes me sad, cause this whole project was about me learning to play these songs right and do things that I couldn't do before. But it just isn't worth all the injury and self-hatred and frustration. I give up. I'm doing it the easy way.

TD has also been on my poop list. It isn't that much fun anymore either. It is a strained scene on many levels...which I knew going in...but now that I know the songs as well as I'm gonna know them it feels a little boring. So I don't practice and then the songs go to hell and then they aren't fun to play cause I suck at them.

SSW isn't playing out at all and hardly practicing and I'm actually relieved for both. Another case of knowing the tunes...getting bored...not practicing...starting to suck at the tunes...and growing to hate it.

So...

In summary...most of the stuff that I am doing isn't fun anymore.

And maybe that's why I haven't been around the blog much lately. Of course, I'm also trying to quit drinking and that makes everything feel different too.

But you know what is still fun? Pixies. Just really the best thing ever. We haven't been playing much because of all the other stuff going on...but I really hope that we get back to it after Halloween. I feel like I do a good job and that the band sounds good and that people enjoy it and that even if I know the songs that I still like playing them. It feels easy and fun but still like I'm accomplishing something.

For no good reason at all...right in the middle of playing in 5 bands...I've started trying to learn to play Breeders tunes with an eye towards making an all-me ep like I used to make in the old days. Even dusted off the multitracker and got it working. Just a pointless exercise with so much else to do. But it is fun. And I miss that.

Not sure what post-Halloween holds...feels like a turning point though. I need to power through and not make any rash decisions in the interium. There's a lot of change happening in my brain of late and probably best to just hold the line and try to be gentle with myself.

Detroit 442 and 11:59

Two songs are giving me fits. Neither are ones I knew existed prior to a month ago, and so had no idea.

Detroit 442


11:59


They've ended up surprising me. As soon as I heard Detroit 442 I knew it was fast and would be tough. I thought 11:59 was gonna be relatively easy though. Turns out that Detroit 442, while fast and full of fills and strange timing issues...is actually the easier of the two once you figure out how to play a double stroke roll (which I'm still learning to do).

But 11:59...it's harder than it sounds.

First off, it is faster than it seems. It swings and so seems slow...but over the top of the loping bass drum beat is 8th notes on the hi hat...and man those cook. I think the song comes in around 200 bpm. And then the real kicker...an open hi hat foot pattern pretty similiar to Heart of Glass (or any number of Blondie songs, I'd say this foot pattern is Clem Burke's signature move). It took me a long time to learn the pattern for Heart of Glass...but now I'm solid on it. But only with a four on the floor bass drum beat. Stick that swinging bass in and it all goes to hell.

I spent a good half hour working this last night. I can play the snare with the bass (with a quarter note hi hat hand and no hi hat foot)...the snare with the hi hat hand 8ths and foot pattern...but putting all four together is a bear. It's one of those things that, if I can ever get it, it will be a revelation...but right now it feels impossible. I know I just gotta keep working it. It's just really, really tough.

Detroit 442, which I thought would be impossible due to the speed of the rolls, ends up being hard for different reasons. The rolls are double strokes, so those go by half as fast as I thought and so are half as hard (once I get the double stroke thing down...particularly on the toms, which have less rebound). My main struggle now is that I can't quite figure out what the pattern is during the choruses. It is a floor tom pattern with quick snare fills. I'm not sure if the snare rolls are two handed or one handed...if they are two handed than the sticking pattern really matters because it is so fast and you're moving back and forth between snare and floor tom. I just can't wrap my head around what is happening, it passes too quickly for my brain to dissect.

It doesn't help, of course, that he rarely seems to play live what he played on the recordings. He takes short cuts and plays easier things live. No fair. You wrote it you ought to have to play it.

UPDATE: Just watched video REALLY carefully. At 1:44 is the part in question. He's definitely playing the snare rolls two handed and doing 8th notes on the floor tom. I can't really tell what the technique is, but it seems like he has the sticks pretty loose between thumb and finger, so he's probably using rebound to get that speed and not wrist motion for every hit...like a double. I wonder if he's keeping a constant double stroke with the right hand and a constant single stroke on 2/4 with the left hand and just moving one of the floor tom beats (two notes with one hit) to the snare...or if he plays one than one note of the roll with the left hand...it's hard to hear if it is 3 notes or 4. Probably 4.

So
Floor tom with right hand: 1 + 2 + 3 +
Snare with left hand: 2, e a (on 4th beat)
Snare with right hand: 4 +
So the right hand pattern never changes and it is just the left hand that changes (just a fill, no big deal). Then it is just about the speed and getting between the drums in time. Bass can just play along with whatever comes natural.

Rapture

It takes a while for them to pan to Burke long enough to see what he's doing. Again, the recording seems more finessed than this performance.



I'm beginning to think that not even Clem Burke reproduced Clem Burke's recordings live. And so I shouldn't feel too bad about not nailing something precisely right so long as the feel is correct in general.

Call Me

From the recording I was convinced that Burke played a jazzy shuffle on the hi hat with his right hand on this. I've now seen multiple videos where he plays two handed on the hi hat. I wonder if he changed it at some point. I kind of like the way I hear it on the album better, though admittedly that is harder to do with enough force to come out at a live show.

Blondie Lineup

At least in the early years, Blondie was a singer, one guitar, keys, bass, drums. (Photo from 1976):


Later in their career they added a second guitar player...an addition which happened prior to most of the big hits (below photo from 1982).

Blondie

We are a go for playing a Blondie tribute for Halloween...in addition to the Flaming Lips tribute.

I don't actually have a band to do this with yet...which seems kinda crazy, but also I'm not real worried about it. The key piece, besides the lead singer which is nailed down already (MW), is the keyboard player. I don't know many keyboard players. I asked Dr. K, but I think he's leaning against doing it. Which is too bad. I think he could pick it up with nearly no rehearsals. Keeping my fingers crossed. Looks like KS is in on bass and I'm gonna try to convince CT to play guitar. Not sure if we need a second guitar or not. Suppose I should figure that out.

I had been a little worried about learning the drum parts, but I'm starting to feel better about it. The whole reason I wanted to do this was to learn Clem Burke's drum parts...particularly the open hi hat stuff. I don't know if I'll nail everything perfectly by October, but I think I can get the point across.

Maybe I'll even get as good as this kid:
Call Me


Dreaming