Until last night I hadn’t picked up a drum stick for at least eight months. Truly sad, but the lame gig situation in this town and my personal and business life have gotten in the way of bashing the skins.
Last night we had one opening band and they sucked. They really sucked. By the time they finished their overly long set, they’d chased half of the mediocre crowd away.
I was worried about my chops so I played pretty straight for the first few tunes. I still have some speed and abilities, but I definitely ran into situations where my brain would send commands to my limbs to do certain complex licks and my limbs would simply misfire or just plain gag and not do anything at all.
I ran into an endurance problem toward the end of the set as well. It was a good thing we only played one set, because in the last song my forearms started feeling like they were Popeye-ing. They were seizing up!
Despite being a fairly lame crowd I still had a really great time bashing the shit out of the drums.
No Smoking!
Perhaps the best thing about last night’s gig was the fact that I didn’t have to take a shower and discard my clothes in the laundry room when I got home. For years of playing in smoky bars I’ve gotten home completely covered with a smoky stench. Now that laws have changed and no smoking is allowed in clubs, I don’t have that disgusting smoke film on my body after the gig. I wish that law would have been enacted 25 years ago.
Studio Drumming Today
I’m off to the studio to play drums for some guitar player’s solo album, then another gig tonight.
mediaguru Gigs, Musicians
No gigs for months, then two in 48 hours
I haven’t played the drums since last year. I’d sort of retired from my rock band since my bass player and very good friend moved to Portland. It just hasn’t been worth playing since he left. He’s back this weekend, and I’m playing TWO shows.
My hands will be hamburger and my body clock is in for a shock. I’ve gotten used to going to be early, like 11pm. This weekend it will be back to the 3am bed time.
Studio drums
Just after I confirmed my availability for the 2nd gig this Saturday night, I got an email from a studio who needs me to do drum tracks during the day Saturday. I’m gigging Friday night, studio drums Saturday afternoon, and gigging Saturday night.
mediaguru Gigs, Recording
Am I having a nightmare? Somebody wake me up.
A couple of posts back I said I’d be reflecting on the hell project of 2008, since it was done.
It isn’t.
Unfortunately my new vendor who was doing the replication (two of my old ones went out of business in this economy) screwed the pooch. I’m now waiting for the client to supply me with some samples of the screwed up discs to verify what happened so I can get it fixed.
I can’t write the closing chapter on “Hell Project ‘08″ since “Hell Project ‘08″ is now alive and well in ‘09.
mediaguru Random, Rants
Man what a cool web site for women called Don’t Date Him Girl @ www.dontdatehimgirl.com.
It is a site for women to write about and rate the bad men they’ve dated. If you want some pure entertainment read some of the posts these women have written about their men. I’m not sure what is more pathetic, these lousy men, or the fact that these women stay with them for years.
Quote:
“dated him for 5 years. He was nothing but drugged out the whole time. When I was sleeping he would steal my cell phone, my car and my money and go god knows where and wake up at some whores house. He lied and lied to me about having to work late but he was really sleeping with one of his managers. He also slept with 1 of my best friends and 4 other friends. He is nothing but a compulsive liar who will manipulate you to no end. Then when I broke up with him he stalked me and would break into my car and follow me when ever I went anywhere. STAY AWAY FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!”
How pathetic or desperate is this person to stay with a guy for 5 years who was “drugged out all the time” and slept with all of her friends…
mediaguru Boneheads
Now that it is officially over I’ve been reflecting on the big hell project of 2008. There were many “come to Jesus” moments during that period and I learned a lot about myself.
I’ll have my closing reflections soon…
mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Random, Recording
One of the biggest legends in drumming died a few days ago, Louie Bellson. Louie was one of the most incredible jazz drummers ever and gave Buddy Rich a run for his money on many occasions.
First double bass drum
Among may of the things Louie was known for was being the first guy to play two bass drums. Even today not many jazz cats do that.
Nice
I had the pleasure of seeing Louie play live several times and I have yet to see another musician on stage who enjoyed what he was doing more than him. Louie was well known for being a very nice gentleman, unlike the reputation that Buddy Rich had.
Louie, I’ll miss you man. Cheers to you. I’m sure you’re playing drums in drum heaven and still have that great smile on your face.
mediaguru Gear, Musicians, Random
I’ve gone through my blogroll and gotten rid of all the bad links. Many blogs I used to link to are now gone. I also delete blogs that haven’t been updated for a long time.
In case you didn’t notice, I also changed the look here. With Obama as president I guess I can’t resist the “change change change” thing…
mediaguru Random
I’m really getting sick of this latest craze of improper grammar. People are mixing up “then” and “than” more and more and I don’t know why.
Reading CNET news today I saw this quote under an image:
Palm CEO Ed Colligan is more worried about the Pre launch then a looming patent war with Apple.
I saw this one in a kid’s book:
Fact can be stranger then fiction.
When I was on vacation last summer in LA, there was a booth on the pier at the beach advertising tickets to a TV show which pitted adults against fifth graders in a Jeopardy like contest:
Are you smarter then a 5th grader?
Yes I’m smarter, and then I’m a 5th grader… And apparently the people who did your PR aren’t smarter “then” 5th graders either.
mediaguru Rants
If you have markers you want to delete in a ProTools project, you can’t just select them and hit delete. You have to use a pull down menu called “clear marker.”
This really sucks. Let’s say you need to delete 10, 100, 1000, or even 2800 markers from a project like I had to once. That means individually selecting 2800 markers then pulling down a menu 2800 times? No f’n way! That is at least 5800 mouse clicks and a case of tedinitis waiting to happen.
To be clear, there is a “clear all markers” in ProTools. But in this particular project I had over 3000 markers, 2800 of which needed to be deleted.
mediaguru Rants, Why ProTools Sucks
I’m editing this book on CD. It’s a 350 page book where the author has read the entire thing. The author has a speech impediment and screws up constantly. So there are over 3000 markers in this ProTools project, each marker represents an edit or fix that needs to be done.
I’ve got the book edited and now I need to get rid of most of the 3000 markers and put new ones in. So about 2800 of the markers need to be deleted. Should be easy, right? Just select a marker, hold down the shift key, then select the end of the group you want to delete….right? WRONG. Click and hold your mouse, then drag across the markers then? NO. You can’t select multiple markers in ProTools. You can delete ALL the markers, but you can’t say select 30 of them and delete them, leaving the rest.
I have the choice of deleting all 3000 markers, and losing the 200 I want to keep. Or I can delete 2800 markers, one at a time. Oh you can’t just hit the delete key when you have a marker selected either. You have to select the marker, then use a pull down menu to select “clear marker.” This process would take me close to 10,000 mouse clicks on this project. Is digidesign willing to pay my doctor bill for ligament damage which I’ll incur from clicking my mouse so many times?
See Why ProTools Sucks #9…
mediaguru Rants, Why ProTools Sucks