ok, just one more:
Its my blog, I’ll post self indulgent band pics if I want to, ok? Am I not allowed one frikkin moment of glory to search flickr? Some dude took a great series of pics here:
http://flickr.com/photos
And I want to give him a hi five. Lovely composition on those shots, flickr man. I especially like the way you caught my Excorcist/Alien moment. OK, now that we’re done with that, lets move on.
I had my 2nd workshop and first private lesson in a long time with Billy Martin this weekend. I spent several hours working on the material which I had severely slacked on this week, bringing my ability to somewhere between severe amateur and slightly less severe amateur. He built a barn out in his yard which now houses the lessons and workshops, and its pretty much my goal in life to have one. It creates this secluded vibe, where the only thing that exists is some percussion related voodoo. Wonderful stuff. I also feel slightly more confident in my ability as a drummer.
One Mister Paul Wagner solved a problem we had been having recently, and its pretty much going to make your brain explode with awesomeness. Ready? Our gate openers for our newly accessed parking lot would not work in the morning. This caused several minutes of delay getting out. So, the Wagner postulates that if we bring the gate openers inside, they will work in the morning, because the cold drains the battery. So i agree to test the theory in exchange for co authoring credit on the paper we’re going to submit to the scientific journal of gate opener medicine. Lo and Behold….BOOM! It worked. Yes, I know it’s going to be hard to continue your day after this.
Tonight will be a sad night. It is our last practice in our Meserole Avenue luxury condo/gold coast of Greenpoint rehearsal space. The bad has begun to far outweigh the good, due to some unprofessional shenanigans. There is this band of hoodlums who practice before us on Sunday nights, and we’ve pretty much narrowed it down to them. They’re not necessarily bad guys, just sketchy as hell. You almost feel bad for them at times. I’ve confronted them on several occasions, and they get to scared to even respond. Their voices shake, they cant form sentences. No, not making it up. I mean, we’re all aware that its my extremely gruff and intimidating biker personality thats causing this incredible fear, but really, come on. Pull yourself together man, just answer my questions. “Listen man, I can clearly see that you don’t own hi hat cymbals, but please stop using mine. You’re going to break them by putting them away incorrectly” “uuuh, but, i-uh, have cymbalss, uhhh somewhere”. They broke my hi hat stand, they used god knows what of ours, my PA no longer works correctly, all sorts of garbage.
The most confusing thing happened this weekend though. Our guitar player keeps his amps in serious road cases. Metal latches, giant heavy covers. To prevent people from getting to them, he stores them under 2 giant pedal board road cases, each weighing many many pounds, underneath yet another giant Pelican case of random things. You really have to be dedicated to remove this stuff. So, he goes through this elaborate disassembling process to practice. And things have been moved around. Not only that, the power was left on, after the amp was unplugged. Really, what? You’re going to use someones amp, who clearly does not want you using it, then you unplug it while the power is still on? Like, seriously? Who is that dumb? You’re lucky if the amp doesn’t explode, or some weird power failure kills all the tubes, or any number of things. For real guys, I just don’t understand you. We’ve thought about borrowing someones dog, and leaving it in the rehearsal space for a few hours after feeding it some ridiculous food. Anyone have a pet we can borrow?
Thanks for the shoutout, I can’t wait until we get that baby published and become rich. Or maybe I could just call the office and tell them about this in case anyone else has similar problems.
Comment by Paul — February 1, 2008 @ 2:41 pm