Austin City Limits Music Fest 2005: it was even hotter this year.]]>
We visited Yellowstone about a month ago and I finally got comfortable with the 17-40 f/4L wide zoom I bought in January. Oh my goodness, the colors.
A lady goose nested in my office parking lot.
I got obsessed with pictures of geese for a while.
The band traveled to Detroit in late April to play the Motor City Music Conference. Our showcase was in a smoky dive bar on the outskirts of town - one band took a look inside, turned around and left town. We stuck around and played pretty well that night to about fifteen people.
The springtime Dewey Beach Popfest was another good gig for us. Our postgame show across from Camden Yards was a little sketchy, in no small part to me goofing off all day at the Virginia Gold Cup prior to the set. I screamed up I-95 with the game on the radio, hoping for some late-inning trouble to buy me some time to park the car before the fans spilled into the streets. A pitching change in the eighth got me to the gig with seconds to spare.
Last Thursday's Millenium Music Conference showcase in Harrisburg was one of our best sets yet.
With a little luck some new tunes will be on the way by the end of summer. September brings us back to the Austin City Limits music festival - hotel rooms are going fast this year, so book yesterday if you want to attend.
Maybe by November I'll post here again.
Many writers and arrangers feel that when their song is in risk of getting a bit tired, it can be given a fresh lease of life by shifting the whole song up a key, usually in between choruses, towards the beginning of a "repeat-till-fade" section. You may have heard this technique informally referred to as "modulation", but the correct ethnomusicological term for the phenomenon is the truck driver's gear change.
...This site functions as an educational resource with the aim of ensuring that in a better future world, our children, our children's children, and ideally also our children's children's children, avoid this musical crime.
I was disappointed at the absence of So Lonely (The Police)... then ecstatic to find an entry for the KPMG theme song. Well played.
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Congratulations to JP McDermott on being named 2004 Country Music Vocalist of the Year by the Washington Area Music Association.
(the guy's gonna be impossible to work with now)
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Not that we played any Washington music or any Buddy Holly for that matter - I sang some Elvis Costello and JP sang some Marshall Crenshaw. The little set went by pretty quickly, but it was a lot of fun and they say we weren't speeding.
]]>Read more at dcrtv before it scrolls off the front page.
]]>A few music-related products which showed up at the door in the last few days:
I had "Kids In Action" running through my head last week... it's off of Kim Mitchell's long-forgotten 1982 solo EP, which I have on vinyl but my turntable is acting up. I'm pretty sure every label he's been on is out of business. Luckily Google found Wounded Bird Records, which is dedicated to re-releasing some really obscure stuff on CD. It took about five days for the CD to arrive. I'm very excited.
Winter's setting in, and that means it's almost Cracking Season. I need to cut my bass-plucking nails short, and by February I lose about a pint of blood a week through my index finger. Hurts like hell. Last year Sidey recommended Mane and Tail, but I hit the wrong veterinary website and bought a tin of Bag Balm, formulated for cow udders. It's like a tacky Vaseline. It weirds me out. I'm crossing my sticky fingers.
In the Austin City Limits festival mayhem I lost one of the little foam windscreens for my minidisc stereo microphone. Minidisco pointed me to The Sound Professionals, who promptly set me up with replacements for under ten bucks. I'm sure they're in there.
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For what it's worth, Beatle Bob digs my band.
Bob was all over the place at Dewey Beach Fest, just like he roamed at will around the Austin City Limits Festival. I first spotted him at a "mentoring" table with headphones on, analyzing some young alt-rocker's disc. As I weighed inviting him to check out our set Mike mentioned he'd spotted Bob gyrating and snapping up close to a girl playing solo acoustic folk the night before. That behavior made no sense. I decided to let nature take its course.
Nature's course deposited Bob two feet in front of Mike for most of our set.
Gotta say I was pretty happy, though Melanie and I both felt this was all happening too fast. We just got hip to the guy two weeks ago.
I barely remember what Bob said after the set - something about where to play in St. Louis, to drop by the community radio station where he works. I had to pack my gear and get it out of the way of the next band. We last spotted Bob up the street at the Bottle and Cork, onstage getting his picture taken as another band packed up its gear.
He's a controversial character who may be close to overexposure. I see he's on the speaker list for this weekend's Dewey Beach Fest. We'll have our eyes peeled.
]]>Where there's a will, there's a guy who'll take more chances than I'd ever dream of.
STRATEGY: I was inspired to figure this out because using an FM transmitter with an iPod sucks! Period. And since Subaru has made it virtually impossible to replace the radio in these cars (those bastards!), well, you've got to do what you've got to do....
WARNING #2! If you mess up, damage, or kill your car, your iPod, yourself, or anything else, it's not my fault! It's yours!
WARNING #3! I may not even know what I am talking about! You do whatever you do at your own risk.
Some helpful photos, but surface mount experience required. I'll stick with the CDs for now.
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A couple of weeks ago I noticed a click in the sound coming out of my little Hartke Kickback 10 amp. Rattling the cabinet didn't solve the problem this time. I hit the web to find a replacement speaker.
Hartke doesn't sell those trademark aluminum cones, at least not without thick strings attached. You can actually buy a replacement driver - provided you ship the defective speaker back to the factory first. Something about controlling where the speakers show up - god forbid they should hit the street for sale in some unauthorized cabinet.
Forget that.
I hit Atomic earlier tonight and picked up a new Ampeg driver for fifty bucks. It's four ohms - the original speaker is eight, but there's an external 8-ohm jack on the back of the amp... an external cab would bring the total load down to four ohms, so the amp should be fine with the new driver. I just need to remember not to ever plug in my non-existent external cab.
The amp's never sounded better. Time to find some unauthorized configuration for that cooked Hartke cone.
]]>Not sure what the future holds for this little site.
One thing the future holds for me - the Austin City Limits music festival.
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