Tuesday, January 7th, 2003
This is an interesting phenomenon. Yahoo Messenger has been on the fritz all day, not informing me when I have messages and whatnot. Well it’s now playing catch-up, happily informing me whenever I get an email… circa about 13 hours ago. It must have had every email notification backed up in a buffer and now it’s clearing it out. Hopefully it’ll sort itself out by morning, cause it’s pretty irritating otherwise.
So, since it’s due back at the video store tomorrow, I made the time tonight to watch The Man Who Wasn’t There. God love a black and white movie. There’s something about the visual impact that technicolor just can’t hold a candle to. And in the hands of a directer like Joel Coen, well it’s something to behold. The story is a convoluted murder-mystery, but told from the perspective of the man who actually knows everything that’s gone on. The trademark Coen eccentricities are kept to a minimum, but there’s a few distinctly Coen touches. A fine piece of moviemaking.
Blowing money… bought Dinosaur Jr’s Bug. Bought another distortion pedal – a Vox Distortion Booster – online. This one’s going in the home rig. It was cheap, it looks cool, sounds good. What’s not to like?
Also fixed up Brad’s beater guitar, it’s actually pretty cool. Holds tune pretty well if you go easy on the whammy and intonating a floating bridge was easier than I expected. Overall tone is a little woolly, I’d hoped for something janglier, but there’s some good twang to be had. I think it’s a keeper. I still need to take some decent pictures for ID-ing purposes. Would really like to know what this thing is.
Tuesday, January 7th, 2003
So the 2003 Grammy Award nominees are out, and it’s the usual pile of shit. Elvis Costello seems to be this year’s recipient of the “Old Guy Perpetually Ignored By The Grammies Getting His Due” nominations. Cruel Smile is up for best alternative rock album, despite the fact that it’s not a proper album, but a collection of b-sides, live tracks and remixes from When I Was Cruel. It’s good (though the folks at All-Music disagree quite vehemently), but I question the nomination of a compilation for any sort of award… but the Grammy folks are so clueless they probably haven’t even heard it. Dumbasses.
Other novel nominations – The Flaming Lips are up against Joe Satriani and Slash for Best Rock Instrumental.
Tickets for the Sleater-Kinney show at the Opera House go on sale Thursday.
np – Sleater-Kinney / All Hands On The Bad One
Monday, January 6th, 2003
So Brad walks into rehearsal today clutching this little fella. His boss at Sonic Boom had bought a stack of old beater guitars from a pawnshop for the purpose of decorating the store, and Brad rescued this one in hopes that it might actually be servicable. We plugged it in and it did indeed make noise, though the output jack probably needs to be replaced. I’ve brought it hope with the intent of cleaning it up, restringing it and figuring out exactly what it is, if anything. It’s a pretty cool little axe – the action is pretty good for a cheapo old guitar, and the big single coil pickups look to have some cool Harmony/Stella mojo in them. And I can’t resist anything with a Bigsby or Bigsby-like vibrato installed. The body shape looks like a scaled down Fender Coronado or something. I have a feeling that if I can get it playable and it holds tune reasonably well, this could be a neat little piece to have around for recording or just posing in videos with.
The rest of rehearsal was as well as could be expected without a drummer. Worked on the arrangement of one of the loop-based songs, I got behind the kit while we tried another one. I even did fills! Very exciting. We also laid down the game plan for Lake Holiday for the new year, mainly sorting out personnel and doing our damndest to find a long-term drummer. Pheobe would have worked but scheduling has been impossible thus far. We need someone who can show up regularly. The idea of Brad getting behind the kit and bringing in someone else to play guitar and sing was also brought up… not entirely unreasonable if Brad is fine with someone else performing his songs and someone else is fine with performing Brad’s songs. Who the hell knows, I just wanna get out and play. We’ve been unofficially offered a slot at Wavelength sometime this Spring, and I would love to accept it.
I cannot leave well enough alone. I’ve decided that my pedalboard still needs tweaking, and am looking at getting a new power source and tuner. Somehow, spending more money to make things tidier when they’re certainly not untidy as is makes sense to me.
The problem with long nights at rehearsal is by the time I get home, it’s time to go to sleep and then it’s another day at work.
np – Guided By Voices / Under The Bushes, Under The Stars
Monday, January 6th, 2003
One of the best videos ever.
Yo La Tengo – “Sugarcube”
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