Stress

Stress sucks.

Stress bites.

Stress... GRRRRRR!!!!!

My current mantra is:

In three weeks I'll be in Greece
In three weeks I'll be in Greece
In three weeks I'll be in Greece

I can picture it now. Crystal blue waters. Sun, sea, sand. I can't wait. I need this so much.

Last night I had another jam session. Right from the start I sucked. I tried to relax but I couldn't. Stress has me tied up in knots. I can't relax my hands enough to fret anything without grinding the strings into the fretboard. My strumming is Mr Roboto, not Sly Funk.

No Loosey Goosey here.

Even the trusty ol' pentatonic eluded me. It seemed awkward, alien.

Beach.

I need a beach.

Three weeks
Three weeks
Three weeks

Fade Away

This is not fun. This may herald the end. IT are clamping down on non-work-related sites. Blogger is still up, but more and more pages are disappearing day-by-day. It may not be long.

Placebo @ The Bush Tomorrow!

Hey all, long time no post. Been doin' band stuff lately, which means that I've had to invest more time drinking beer and pontificating in public houses than blogging.

Real life, man.

Got a brand new stretch target. It's unachievable, but hell, I'm going to have a shot.

Hooked up with another guitarist with some very cool ideas. Need to get some songs together and find a rhythm section. The plan is to put 5 songs together, consisting of 2 revamped and rocked-out covers and three originals. A small local pub is looking for bands to play short sets throughout August and September. If we can get all the elements together then maybe we can scrape in under the wire for one of the late, late summer shows. May be no hope, but I'm fired up about music right now and plan on giving it a shot.

And TOMORROW NIGHT we get to see Placebo play a warm up gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. We all know that I hate 'The Bush' but hell, it's an excuse to get all gothed up and part-ay!

If anyone knows who the support are going to be and when the band are likely to be onstage, please, please, leave a comment with that info here. I've been bashing my head against the wall trying to find out. We're likely to be a bit late, but don't want to miss a thing!

Derek Trucks, Beyond The Bush

Briefly:

Derek Trucks band:

New Orleans: Fantastic
Shepherd's Bush Empire: Awful sound, couldn't hear a thing
Manchester Academy 3: Bloody brilliant

I actually feel truly honoured to have been witness to Derek and the band's evolution since 2002. Back in the day, Derek's slide work was phenomenal. It's now even better plus his work without the slide, in alternate tuning (!) is more than it's equal. Amazing.

The Manchester gig was fan-bloody-tastic. There were a couple of technical issues which, if you didn't look closely, you might have missed. Mike's earpiece didn't seem to work right for the first couple of songs, so they broke from the setlist, went into an instrumental, off went Mike for a conflab then back onstage and bingo, everything was fab again.

It was interesting to see the band showcase each player. Most noticeably was on "Soul Serenade" where the band really reeled it in and Mike's vocals took centre stage. And he 'owned' the song, as they say these days (don't they?)

After the major disappointment of the Bush, Man 3 made up for it.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Celluloid Burn

Before I start, I'm going to confess that there's absolutely no point to this posting. As of two minutes ago I really didn't have anything in mind to say. Since I started typing I've had a couple of things pop into my head, though.

First off, check this out...



No reason. Just because. I don't have a decent graphics package at work and these days I don't seem to make the time to screw around with images at home. I've never considered myself an artist, but I used to enjoy sketching, generating computer images and so on. Somehow that got lost in the mists of time. I made this one in about 5 minutes using an online package called FotoFlexer. It's not exactly Photoshop, but it's got some interesting features. If you're stuck for a digital manipulator on the move, you could do worse. There's a link to it here. No download necessary!

What else? Well, on Sunday I actually made time to stretch Red's legs. I could feel the old girl calling to me, so I pulled her out of her case, plugged her into my Blackstar and let rip. Despite the fact that I've not had much time for music over the past couple of weeks I was bang on form, sounding good. I'm so ready to get back into a band that it hurts. Ready to ROCK!

After a few hours of solid bluesing I decided to give the neighbours a break, packed up and headed into town. I had a couple of errands to run and it afforded me the excuse to do something that I've not done for ages. I went into a record store! Yes, they still exist! Not everything's online these days. I treated myself to 3 albums by The Black Keys. I've been really getting into their sound lately, listening on Last.FM. I knew I'd be paying over the odds for the privilege of going to a real checkout, but I didn't care. Yes, I price checked them on Amazon and yes, I could have saved myself a tenner or so, but I wouldn't have had the Old Skool experience of actually 'shopping'.

Last but not least, Summer's coming! Top tip, if you're going to barbecue burgers, go for the lean mince, eh? Not only healthier but much less of a fire hazard! I nearly smoked us out of house and home last night, grilling up a couple of those bad boys!