What’s happening to the encore at concerts? In the last 3 concerts I’ve been at none of the bands did an encore? 🙁 Is this the impact of the festival culture? At festivals, unless you’re on last in the day I expect, you have a set time to do your set and that’s it. No extensions. Is this now carrying over into non festival gigs? Bands just play their set then bugger off.
I will miss the encore if it dies out.
Got a call from Andrew Guyton today. There is good news and bad news about my new guitar.
Good News: The tuning problem has been fixed. An adjustment to the knife edge in the tremolo fixed that.
Bad News: Some of the lacquer has bubbled on the head around the tuners. Andrew is going to have to fix it. He might have to dismantle the head and rub it down and re-lacquer it. If this is the case it’ll be about a month before it’s ready. it has to dry between cats etc.
I’m okay with this. I want it to be perfect when I get it. In the interim I’m going to borrow the Burns Red Special guitar on the right of the picture on this page to do some recording when I’m off work for a week.
Lyric I first did ages ago. Have resurrected and amended it. Probably still needs some more polishing and refining to make it scan and easier to sing.
Let’s Party
Sometimes I feel I’m pissing
Straight into the wind
Other times I feel as if I’m
Being slowly skinned
Perhaps I’m on a treadmill
Going round and round all day
Or is this all illusion
Does life have to be this way?
At times like this I have to say
Sod it!
There’s just one thing to do
Just step back and loudly say
I’ve had enough of all this crap!
Let’s party for the rest of the day
Let’s party, Oh Yes!
Party!
So don’t let life get you down
Treat your problems with disdain
Just stick on your favourite music
And get down to its refrain
If people try to drive you down
Step back and loudly say
I’ve had enough of all this crap!
Let’s party for the rest of the day
Just step back and loudly say
Let’s party for the rest of the day
Let’s party, Oh Yes!
Let’s party
Party!
Just get right on down
Party Yeah!
It’s the only thing to do
Let’s party for the rest of the day!
I’ve just got the following in an Email from Andrew Guyton:
Ok, I’ve attached a photo of your guitar. Must admit it doesn’t look very green in the picture, but I can assure you it is.The certificate is coming this Friday, so all being well, I’ll get the guitar on a carrier to you by Tuesday or Wednesday.
And here is said photo:
Click Picture for larger view
OMG! It’s beautiful 🙂 Cancel all appointments next week…
I don’t know why, but there are lots of bands and lots of music from Sweden that I really like. For example: The Knife, The Concretes, Taken By Trees, Nina Kinert, Jenny Wilson, Jose Gonsalez, The Cardigans, and probably others I can’t recall at the minute.
Two new albums dropped recently from a couple of them. Jenny Wilson released a new solo album. Her 2nd. It’s called Hardships! It’s not as easily accessible as her first album. I haven’t listened to the new one as much as I would have done if there hadn’t also been a new solo release from Karin Dreijer Andersson of The Knife. It’s called Fever Ray and is released under that band name as well. It’s brilliant. If you like The Knife you’ll love Fever Ray.
The tracks Seven, Now is the Only Time I Know, Triangle Walks and Keep The Streets Empty For Me are especially good.
[Edited on 8th April 2024 to use Songwhip links and also remove embedded Vimeo videos.]
Whilst I’m testing blog features I might as well test audio integration between Ecto. iTunes and WordPress hosted blogs. Here is a short piece of music, called Europa, that I created using GarageBand..
I like to set goals. I’m not that keen on keeping to them, but I like setting them as targets and frameworks to work with. I’ve got a set of personal and work related goals that want to work to over the next few years. Sort of my own personal Soviet style 5-year plan.
Work Stuff
Become the go-to guy for VMware VI3 questions and also for Mac OS X integration into Windows environments. Also be the person people search out when they have questions about current and new technology.
Personal Stuff
Learn mathematics. Using this selection of self study books:
Click picture for larger view
I want to be able to read Penrose’s The Road to Reality and understand the mathematics in it.
Do several Open University courses to finish a BSc I’m doing with them:
SXN390 Science in Society Project
Do the Open University MSc Science and Society. As long as they let me in. [Update: They did!] I’ve pulled out a few courses recently and they have a rule that stops you registering for new courses. Which is fair enough. They don’t get paid by the government if people don’t complete the courses. In any event I’ll be doing something in the science communication field (including many more posts here on the Soapbox) as we need to fight the hoards of superstitious nut jobs. We can’t cede any of the ground won in the last 400 years with rationality and the scientific method.
Continue to work on some science fiction stories I’m writing. One is set in a space opera scale universe and the other is set in the Frank Herbert Hellstrom’s Hive universe.
Music – I’ve got about dozen songs in various stages of work (all have full lyrics). I want to continue to work on them and maybe package them together as an actual album. That’d be cool 🙂
Write a cricket match scoring system for Macintosh and iPhone using Cocoa. Unless someone else develops on that meets my needs first. I’d be happy if they did. Programming projects always bore the tits of me after the initial requirements specification and design are done! [Update: I’ve also had an idea for an app that uses the Twitter API]
We’ll see how I get on…
There won’t be a TVital festival in Belfast this year. Piss!
Or is that a redundant question?