TD, Mr Roberts, 6/1/2013

We picked up a last minute show with damidol and Slow Form of Suicide.

We played well except I fucked up the start of Movin' On and had to restart us. We also played that song way too fast but that wasn't my fault. Ok turnout despite conflicting high profile shows. We made $50. I drank some but it was not a factor in my performance.

Setlist to come (unlikely)

Speaking of Upgrades

Oh...and I put a fresh set of strings on the acoustic bass. I got Ernie Ball Earthwoods. The thing is BRIGHT now, but that's okay because I need it to cut through unplugged.

Good Head

At the show last Thursday I noticed that my heads on the black kit are pretty pitted. The floor tom sounds pretty bad too.

So my current drum situation is that

• The Red Pulse is at TD practice space with all Remo heads on it except for the resonant bass, which is a Pulse. The heads are old, but in good shape. All my extra hardware is there and so is all of my extra cymbals.
• The Sonor is at my house with all Remo and the newest heads on it. I use the Sonor for personal practice, I loan it for ska practice, and I use it for TD gigs whenever possible. My best hardware and cymbals are with the Sonor.
• The Black Pulse lives in my gig bags and I use it for SSW gigs and for any outdoor gigs. It has very old Remo batters and the stock Sonor resonants. I grab hardware and cymbals from one of the other kits when I need it.

So this week I bought a full set of Remo resonant heads and a pinstripe Remo Rock Pack of batters and a Remo Powerstroke bass resonant. Basically a complete set of everything. This cost me just about $175 online.

I'm now debating what to do with the new set...put it on the Sonor or put it on the Black Pulse. If I put it on the Sonor I'll move the Sonor heads to the Black Pulse. Not only is this twice the work, part of me wants to see what is the best case scenario for how the Black Pulse can sound. So probably I'll put everything on the Black Pulse and get new heads for the Sonor in a year or two...or maybe just replace the tom batters sometime soonish. If we ever get around to recording TD I'll certainly replace everything immediately before that.

SSW, 5/23/2013 Wisco

Crap I nearly forgot. SSW played a show. It was nearly this exact show but with a couple of adjustments to the setlist. Most of the other details were the same...except that ED brought a green bulb to plug into the audience-blinding light fixture. Other fun fact...we had not played together since that other show.

I did not drink all day. I played fine. We were fine. Maybe we should never rehearse again.

There was an enthusiastic drunk fellow who had been there a month ago and was there again. Both times not to see us...both times shit himself over our setlist...both times wanted to have a full blown conversation with us mid-show multiple times. Deja vu.

There was nearly no audience at all other than that except for KS's soon-to-be wife and Homie. Someone played a cover of a Blondie tune (Dreaming I believe it was, which JG debated with me if we'd done...yes J, I had to learn that fucking tom song) on the juke and we (5 of 6 members of Peroxide present) all rejoiced.

Setlist to come (probably not)

That Pesky Left Foot

I've been listening to the 94 Stockholm concert non-stop ever since I got it on Monday. Yesterday I drove out to Cross Plains to tend to GRC inventory and ended up listening to the concert maybe four times in a row. Aside from being amused by all the drunk KeD banter (amused only because it is ancient history now) the biggest thing I've noticed is JM's drumming.  In particular, his left foot.

My left foot (sounds like an art film) is the last thing to integrate into my drumming. I use it a tad, but not much at all. I noticed that much of the time JM is keeping time with it, often with 8th notes (but sometimes with quarter notes). This strikes me as a very jazz-oriented thing to do, which makes me wonder what his background is. (UPDATE: here's something). I sat down and gave it a shot yesterday and had better luck than I'd expected. But it is quite foreign to me.

I also noticed that he switches back and forth between on beat versus off beat snare hits alot...so much so that one might call it his style. This too I suck at.

Recording...or not...yet again

Someone donated an M audio interface to GRC and I was gonna take it for a test ride under the guise of testing it for camp but secretly cause I've wanted one forever. It turns out it is a firewire device, which I have no way to hook into. On a whim I stopped into a local music store to see if they had firewire to usb converters. They didn't, and they looked it up on the internet for me and we figured out together that you don't really want to try to convert firewire to usb for audio...it doesn't work that way (flash back to my optical to usb quest). While I was waiting for them to look stuff up, on the clearance table I found a Yamaha Audiogram3 with Cubase ai5 software for $71. It had a usb hookup and worked with my operating system. What the hell thought I?

Of course, as these things go, "plug and play" wasn't really the case. I'd hoped to set this up on my old laptop, but quickly figured out that I'm so behind on Windows updates on the thing that it crashes when you try to update or install anything. Sigh.

I successfully used up the very last bit of memory on my other laptop installing the thing. Can't quite get it to work right yet though. And the latency is horrible (you sing...and the sound returns to you half a second later). I found my project for "Do You Love Me Now" and suddenly wondered why I'd bought the thing at all...for here was a multi-tracked project in Audacity that I clearly put together WITHOUT a device at all.

That said, it would be nice to be able to record two tracks at once if I can get the thing to work and one would assume that it would be better quality (it has a pre-amp) than what I could get from my pc mic input. I also want to try using one of the mixers that GRC also recently acquired to see if I could record a live band all at once (though, of course, the tracks would not be separate, but once upon a time this worked pretty good for SPB demos).

I'm not sure if I'll play with it for a while and then return it if I can't get it to work...or rack it up to life and just let it sit in the corner and make me feel guilty and like a failure for the rest of my life.

Why is this so HARD? It's like the central ongoing pain in my ass of my musical life.

CJ, 5/8/2013 State Street

The weather was swell on Wednesday. It's been a long, rough winter. Wednesday was all sun shine and 70s/80s and glorious. Around 2:30pm or so our own private David Lovering texts our intrepid band of Pixies impostors..."rehearse outside? Ha, Ha." Figures me, well if the drummer is willing who can deny him? And so there we were three hours later caravan-ing to busk (not having even thought enough about the situation to think to carpool).  We played until about 7:45pm and mostly the set from Busking for Books. We made $13. 

I was prompted to post the following the next day in a different venue

"Observation: If you say to a crowd of people "we will play any Pixies song for you" 10% will keep walking. 85% will stare at you blankly and say "just play your best or favorite song". 4% will smile widely and say "hey" or "where is my mind" or "monkey gone to heaven". 0.99% will have an orgasm on the spot and pass out. After you revive them they'll ask you to play something off Surfer Rosa probably. 0.01% will sing along or do something else odd even though they have no idea what you are playing or possibly even where they are. (Note: Not in this list is the one person who knows you and asks for something really hard or that they know you don't really know yet just to be a dick.)"

and also this:

" CJ had a little help during our impromptu busking style rehearsal on State Street last night. A fellow joined in about 5 songs from the end. He did not know the Pixies but he sang along anyway. His rendition of Debaser sounded oddly just like this demo version, only I'm pretty sure he was saying "Da Basement" instead of "Debaser" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnkR4khikh0&feature=share&list=PL66D677C7F9FC9C78 He also, of course, asked us for money after the set was over."

Twas a fine evening outdoors and perhaps the most impromptu thing we've ever done.

I do think that all this pick holding is giving me arthritis in my thumb tho.