Category: Music

For me, the most tiresome part of our endless search for a new lead guitarist is having to listen to all of the guys in the band geek out about guitar amps and guitars…over and over and over. After every audition, they all stand around and talk about their musical equipment for hours.

You’d think that since my husband is a drummer, he wouldn’t be a part of such a conversation. However, he’s also a recording engineer, so he’s made a special point of learning everything there is to know about guitars and basses, their amps, strings, pickups, etc., ad nauseum. That means he, too, can say things like, "Oh yes, I had a couple of Mesa Boogies, but I preferred the tone of the Marshall, so I sold them."

My eyes started glazing over just trying to think of that example sentence.

I own music gear myself, but nobody wants to hear about my AKG microphone, my Crown power amps and my JBL PA speakers. I am fully aware of this, which is why this is the first time I’ve ever brought them up by brand name.

Do people in other professions talk endlessly about their equipment? I can’t imagine farmers getting together to debate the merits of Pequea Fluffer Tedders. (Yes, that’s a real piece of farm equipment. I did a Google search.)

Here’s a look at a few of the photo files. Once we pick our favorite group shot, we’ll have the photographer touch them up a bit to make sure we have one chin each, smooth eyebrows, no bags under our eyes, etc. I may have him do the same on our individual head shots.

Just kidding! Although we are going to work that one into our MySpace page somehow.

I posted this one on Flickr last night and put the link on J-Walk Blog and Twitter. Comments included, "I think I was mugged by that guy on the right, back in 2002. He’s
wearing my watch. Can you send me his name and address so I can press
charges?
" and "Average Jane poses with her bodyguards."

This was another photo location and although I like the lighting, etc., I think I like the outdoor photos better. What do you think?

By the way, the photos were taken by Paul Chokota, who gets my wholehearted recommendation if you ever need a photographer.

Since I’m sleepy today, I’m stealing this meme from Bea.

Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.

How many songs total: 1240
How many hours or days of music: 4 days
Most recently played: Waiting for the Bus – ZZ Top
Most played: Walk in the Shadows – Queensryche
Most recently added: Possum Kingdom – The Toadies

Sort by song title:
First Song: Abacab – Genesis
Last Song: 99 – Toto

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: The Hellion – Judas Priest (42 seconds)
Longest Song: Give Up the Funk – George Clinton (15:22 min)

Sort by album:
First album: Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits
Last album: 2112 – Rush

First song that comes up on Shuffle: Airwaves (7" Version) – Thomas Dolby

Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death – 1
Life – 15
Love – 60
Hate – 5
You – 100
Sex – 6

(There were a lot of duplicates, but I just put the raw numbers.)

Anybody else want to play?

Did I mention that the classic rock band broke up? Well, it did. We played the one gig, then everyone but me lost interest. Or maybe they just said that to get rid of me. Who knows? The end result was the same either way: I took my gear and went home.

So I immediately set about forming a band of my own. My husband is playing drums, we got back a guitarist and bass player from a previous band, and we added a rhythm guitarist who does great background vocals.

Our plan is simple: we want to learn songs quickly, play out often, make as much money as possible, and keep practices to a minimum.

A few weeks ago, we’d chosen ten songs and e-mailed the list to everyone. Last night was our first practice and everyone did a splendid job learning the songs on their own. We each chose two more songs for the Tuesday after next and I’m hoping the next batch goes just as smoothly.

So far everyone seems to be pretty compatible personality-wise. The bass player is one of those people who makes a great show of grumpiness, so we had to explain to the rhythm guitarist that he wasn’t in imminent danger of quitting the project. The guitarists sounded good together, the vocal harmonies were awesome, and my ears only rang a tiny bit after we finished up.

We’re choosing songs from a huge list of popular tunes from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Any suggestions for songs we should do? The only requirement is that they be rock songs (no country, rap, pure pop, etc.).

Remember last month when I was all excited about my band’s latest song, Predator?

I posted it to GarageBand.com and entered it into their review system, then sat back and waited to see what that community thought of it.

Well, they hated it. A lot.

The negative reviews came fast and furious. To paraphrase: It’s not metal…well, not contemporary metal anyway. You guys must be OLD. The lyrics are stupid. The vocalist sounds like Geddy Lee from Rush. (We actually got a Best Male Vocals nomination somewhere along the line.) The guitars suck. There’s no hook. The chorus is horrible.

It went on and on and on.

At first it was kind of a slap in the face to be reading all of these terrible criticisms about a creative work that I had been quite proud of. Every time a new one came in, it was as bad or worse than the ones that came before it. Clearly we had a flawed song on our hands.

The band discussed things and agreed that the reviewers had some valid points. We really aren’t a metal band by current standards. "Hard Rock" is a better, more all-encompassing category for us. The chorus is too repetitive and needs to be rewritten. Even though we’d worked hard on the guitar sound, we hadn’t really gotten it where it should have been before releasing the song.

The internet offers some fascinating opportunities for creative people to get good, solid feedback on their work before they try to do something commercial with it. Of course, you may also get rude comments from bored teenagers in Denmark, but that’s just part of the experience.

Learning to take criticism is a tough thing to do. The ego gets bruised and pouty for a while. Ultimately, though, it helps you change things for the better. But I’d still like to teach some manners to a couple of the little punk reviewers!

Finally, my original band has another song ready to share with the public. When you have a home recording studio, nothing is ever completely finished, but we decided to at least post it on GarageBand.com and make it available here in its current form.

This song is called Predator, and it was inspired by someone I met who seemed perfectly nice but set off some primal alarm bells. As the lyrics say, he’d "stand too close…stare too long." To this day, I have no reason to think that there’s really anything threatening about him, but you’ve gotta take inspiration where you can get it.

Here are the lyrics, if you’re interested:

Predator

You step closer and I move away
Not sure how to feel about you
You stand too close – you stare too long
In my gut I feel there’s something wrong

Instinct tells me
I’m not safe with you
Fight or flight…

Predator, predator
Predator, predator
Predator, predator
Predator, predator

Something feral hides behind your smile
Cold eyes send shivers up my spine

Your words sound innocent
But they don’t match what’s on your face
What do you feel, do you feel at all?
And how fast can I get away?

Instinct tells me
I’m not safe with you
Fight or flight…

Predator, predator
Predator, predator
Predator, predator
Predator, predator

I make sure that we’re not alone
Something not-quite-human you betray
My primal senses warning me
And I refuse to be your prey

Something feral hides behind your smile
Cold eyes send shivers up my spine
Catch the unwary in your web
Uncounted victims left behind

I say "get back" and you move away
You can tell that I’m onto you
You won’t get me, I refuse to fall
Victim to the predator

(Copyright 2007, all rights reserved)

P.S. If you like the song and missed the previous one I posted, it’s called Haunted. Feel free to download it, too – just in time for Halloween!

Last night we went to see Rush in concert. We’d gotten the invitation from another couple the night before and my husband wasn’t all that enthusiastic about going.

Hubby: "I’ve seen them in concert before. Eh."
Me: "What tour was that?"
Hubby: "I think it was 2112."
Me: "That was in 1974! I think they might have, I don’t know, changed since then."

I’d seen them in concert numerous times when I was in my hardcore Rush phase as a teenager. To be honest, I’d pretty much outgrown them by the time I was in my early 20s, too. Still: free ticket to a band I tend to like. Win, win.

We got to the outdoor amphitheater a little early and stood in the long line at the gate while we waited for our friends to arrive. Most of the fans didn’t get the "Don’t be that guy," memo and were wearing Rush shirts from various tours. The nerd quotient was high, as usual for Rush concerts. I readily include myself in that category so it’s not an insult, merely an observation.

I paid the price for not keeping up with Rush since the ’90s when it turned out that I was unfamiliar with a good 70% of the songs they played. They did do some of their hits from the ’80s and early ’90s, and some more obscure songs from that era, too. They didn’t play anything at all from the ’70s.

During the intermission, while the husbands were off looking at the ridiculously overpriced merchandise, a guy came up to us as we sat on our blankets on the lawn and wanted to know if we were actually Rush fans or if we’d been dragged to the show by our husbands or boyfriends. I told him I was a long-time Rush fan, which seemed to assure him that all was right with his universe.

My husband and I decided to leave during the encore so we could get home at a halfway decent hour. It was a good choice, particularly since we didn’t recognize the first encore song anyway.

All in all, I had a good time despite our great distance from the stage and lack of recognition of many of the songs. It was fun to revisit a band I used to really love, even if my enthusiasm had dimmed over time.

No time for a real blog post today. I think showering takes precedence.

However, I invite you to listen to my band’s song if you haven’t already. It’s the first of ten that we’re recording for a CD.

Enjoy your Thursday!

We’re still on track to have at least one song mixed and uploaded by the end of the week. See! Here’s my husband and our guitarist working away at it just last night.

And to answer your unasked question: Yes, the Roomba’s rollers are always just choked with long hair.

It looks like we won’t be recording vocals or miked guitar today after all. Sometime last night, this happened in the vocal booth:

The inside window pane just fell right out of its frame and smashed.

My husband discovered the damage when he got home from his gig last night. I hadn’t been in the studio all evening, so I didn’t see it until this morning. (Jokey post title aside, I do not believe that the disaster had anything to do with me.)

Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any damage to the gear in there. My husband retrieved the condenser mic that was knocked over by the glass and he’s hoping it’s okay. A few scratches on the stands won’t hurt anything. I guess I won’t be singing in there barefoot again any time soon.

I’m just glad I wasn’t in the booth recording when it happened, although maybe if I had been, I could have steadied the pane as it tipped and kept it from falling out and shattering. Or maybe I’d have been cut to ribbons. Who knows?

I don’t know when we’ll be able to get the glass replaced (firmly replaced), but I’m soldiering on with lyric writing. Maybe I can work in a nice broken glass metaphor…