You've had a nightmare week Plank, ripped off at Wendys, ****ed right over by Skrillex, bank cards cancelled and just to rub salt into the wound, you have to endure a Rush gig at the weekend. Try and keep yer chin up Plank, i know it cant be easy but try and be positive, next week can only be better cant it?


I didn't laugh at the bank card thing, but i laughed my nuts off at the car stereo thing (serves you right).

:)

Who are you, and why are you mocking one of my favorite bands?

Get the hell off my lawn.

Cool. Thanks for the rec. What sucks is the return policy for BB is 14 days. This happened on day 15, and it is now day 16. There is a 1 year warranty with the sub, but I don't want to wait for them to mail my crap, so I'll be ponying up some ducketts for a better one during the interim.

I am the walrus. I know that you know that i knew that you knew i was joking.

What the hell happened to your credit card man? Did you ring the bank? And don't listen to that nurse: you know Rush rock! "We are the priests - of the Temple of SYRINX!!!!!!!!!" :D

They gave me a full refund, but I did an upgrade:

Actually, this is too much bass.

http://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/B...anvasWidth=105

...not really, but whoa.

Noice.

Check it out but that's our musical terrorism album, we mixed some tracks to break or damage speakers and I don't want to hurt your subby.

...and you knew that I knew that Gary Gnew wasn't new, but he knew that.

Yep. I personally went and spoke with a bank manager. The wheels of justice are in motion.

I'll keep it low.

https://wolvesinsheepskin.bandcamp.c...m/lizard-of-ox

I'm damn glad I listened to it on my PC at work first. Holy hell.

That sucks about your subwoofer, man. Which song off Bangarang did that to you? "Kyoto?" Sometimes I think Skrillex is really an employee of a subwoofer company and makes tremendously loud music in order to blow up subwoofers...so that you have to buy new ones. You're probably not the first one he's done this too, if that's any consolation.

It was the title track. The new sub is outstanding though, so I'm actually glad it happened.

It's funny how new music comes at you once in a while. A good friend on a geek forum showed me his brothers work a while back, and I added him to my subscriptions on soundcloud. Today, I was going over a few of my recent things, leaving it play, and this came on as a recommendation.

https://soundcloud.com/jason-william...w-and-the-dove

Very moving.

Eric Mantel had this up on his FB page today. He's been through the industry and is now struggling to keep food on his table. I feel a bit of empathy for artists that get caught up in the music industry grinder like this, especially when they have nothing to fall back on.

Nice. Seems interesting. I'll definitely be checking out this documentary.

It does paint a grim picture, but it is accurate.

I got to witness a small example of all that BS firsthand when Scotty Gelman from Jam Productions signed Zoetrope to a 300k (? I forgot exactly how much) contract for their 3rd studio release. I was the only non-band member in the room when they signed, and I was there everyday at Streeterville studio's for the recording of the album, then I watched it all spin out of control. The band ended up owing Jam Productions a lot of money, and I believe they all filed for bankruptcy. It was an eye opening experience for me, but I had no idea of the enormity of what I was witnessing at the time I was seeing it.

It's pretty weird when you think about every law they've passed to protect workers' right, and everything that organized labor has done, and yet musical artists are just thrown to the wolves with nobody batting an eye.

In the eyes of the people that have the power to put those laws in effect, it serves no purpose of growth to a community to be an artist. There is no immediate end product, only an intangible element that is more often uncontrollable, more so than a person who digs a ditch.

Going through some of my stuff today, trying to get motivated.

My homeboys, Convoy! have a show with Green Jelly tomorrow night. Should be a killer show. I might stop in. The band has been pretty busy lately, and they've been cutting a new album that should be out on Sept 5th.



This is the only tune I know from the Jelly though, since I've never felt the urge to seek out this brand of silliness:



Not sure what to expect. We'll see tomorrow.

Going to see Eric Mantel this Saturday. The last time I caught one of his shows, he dropped tickets off at my buddies house, and we talked a bit about how rough it is for a career minded guitar player with nothing to fall back on like himself. I gave him an extra 20 for the tickets. Up until a few years before that, I had no idea who he was until a band mate scored a gig for us with him at a Nancy's Pizza. For one of his breaks that night, he played a blues rhythm on a loop, and asked me to jam over it for a bit while he went out and got some fresh air. As I was jamming, quite a few people threw money in his tip jar, and a beautiful black lady walked up to me and smiled, saying how wonderful my blues chops were. That did it for me, and I was fulfilled. I never told Eric about the money in his tip jar and just let him have it. I try to support this outstanding guitar player every chance I get, with sharing his links, spreading his name out to places I frequent, and by attending some of his shows. I'll be there at one of my favorite dives (The Looney Bin) this weekend to have some brews and watch a master in action. Who knows, I might even get a little stage time. Crazier things have happened.

I made a bit of an error with that last post ^ Eric is playing tonight. I'm heading out that way to a friends house to help carve pumpkins for the kids. He lives a block or two away from the venue, so it'll be a nice little all day get-away.

...anyway, as I'm perusing FB this morning, I see that one of my friends from a guitar forum went on a trip to Germany. He posted a couple pics of flying over the Alps and other things, and then as I scroll down I see this:

http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/f...pshs6q2vq1.jpg

What are the odds that a person becomes a guitar player, learns some Joe Satriani, then many years later he goes to Germany on vacation, only to walk down the street to go have dinner and meet Joe Satriani along the way? Pretty fucking slim I tell ya.

Very serendipitous, that's so awesome. I got to see Joe in concert for free. I was handed the tickets from some keyboard salesman in Guitar Center who was suppose to give them away but didn't. I too was calculating the odds of me walking into a guitar shop and someone plopping free tickets in my hand, and asked him a few times '...are these free?' '...are they for me?' An added bonus was discovering that Steve Morse was Satch's opening act.

Well, now I'm flabbergasted. The show "Chicago Fire" features one of my designs, which is the huge red training tower that get's cameo's every now and then since the show's base camp is set at the Chicago Fire Academy, and look who's going to be on the show coming up:

Rush to Appear on TV Show 'Chicago Fire'


http://ultimateclassicrock.com/files...1&s=0&a=t&q=89

It's gonna be a Rush kind of day today. Yep.

Checkin out some new tracks from my friends band, Sausage Brain tonight:

https://www.reverbnation.com/sausagebrain

Glenn (the bass player) used to be in Beyond the Z with me. Outstanding player, and one helluva cool dude.

Metheny

I ran into Glenn at a local diner the other day. He said he's booked up playing in three bands every Saturday until mid-summer. I really do miss it, but I don't miss the everyday struggles that go with it. Too much work for such a little reward, but it is a lot of fun.

*Plank longfully gazes at nothing above*

I was going through some older stuff from one of the bands I was in and found these gems:

SoundClick artist: Koncrete Pillo - page with MP3 music downloads

SoundClick artist: Koncrete Pillo - page with MP3 music downloads

SoundClick artist: Koncrete Pillo - page with MP3 music downloads

Some more goodness from one of Glenn's other side projects:

https://www.reverbnation.com/theagel...iends-are-gone

Some Nat licks today. Here's one of his samplers:

https://soundcloud.com/nate-franches...zon-and-itunes

I had my USB stick with a few thousand songs on shuffle this morning in the SUV on the way in to work, and a few Schenker tunes came on, which got me thinking about the fusion between neoclassical guitar riffs and rock and metal. I know that Uli Jon Roth was a big part of it's origins, and had a large influence on Mike, but I got to thinking... again... who influenced Uli? Who or what made this man start to think along those lines. Come to find out that he was more influenced by Jimi Hendrix, and bands like Cream (Clapton). The only tie I can find is that he started listening to classical music at around the same time those influences were taking over:

(taken from: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news...ove_music.html)

The man literally started a genre. Such an underrated musician, especially these days, but his influence touches just about every corner of the rock and metal world as we know it today.

Feeling a bit revivalist, so I made a playlist with a little twang at the tail end. I love this stuff.

The Anti-Metal Playlist of Life

J.D. McPherson is playing a Telecaster with (what is commonly known as) a "Charley Christian" pick-up in the bridge position.

Maybe it's a matter of getting use to them, but some of those songs didn't gel right. Of course they give a nod to the past, but they are new songs, that contain new elements, which leads to cognitive dissonance imho. You know, while listening to them I first thought "oh they have that retro sound," but then I was thinking "wait a minute, they didn't do that back then." I thought that hipster with the beer belly & beard, and his band sounds as much as a sped up version of Camera Obscura as they do as some throwback band. Sorry Plank, I hope I didn't sound too harsh there, that's just my impression. You should really comment on that stuff.

So I went through most and I guess Wagon Wheel is my favorite, nothing seems out of place in the song music-wise. I hope you don't mind me commenting on gear ... again. (It's something I can't control.) Darius Rucker is strumming a Gibson L10 in the video. The inlays are the distinguish feature. They are split hexagons, which are sorta rare and unusual for inlays.

I heard North Side Gal by J.D. McPherson before and the first time I heard it I was under the impression it was a cover song. The shuffle on the snare tricked me into thinking it was by Ray Charles or Fats Domino or some New Orleans artist. Compare the intro of the song to Twenty Flight Rock by Eddie Cochran. Did you catch the Hammond rotary speaker cabinet making a cameo in the video?

So, were you a fan of Hootie and the Blowfish prior to Darius' solo career?

Nope. I was not.

I like the tunes. I think it's kind of neat that the artists are making an effort to bring that type of vibe to something new using new technology combined with old. Not much else I can elaborate on besides that. Thanks for stopping by though. It gets lonely around here sometimes.

Nigel Tufnel on Joe Satriani

Gotta love Nigel.

Thanks. No Spotify atm, but maybe soon.

My friend just posted this little gem of a write-up up on FB. I've seen it before, but it's always fun to pull out the old **** once in a while.

https://www.metal-archives.com/revie...platter/12862/

I have some great memories of being involved with this album a little bit. I was the only non-band member present through this albums entire production, from initial contract signing with Jam Productions to the release party. The stories I could tell would probably get me in trouble, so I'll just leave it at that.

Zoetrope's (almost) final line-up. They opened for Megadeth, Testament, Suicidal Tendencies, and a **** load of other bands that went on to shove their foot squarely up the ******* of fame. Michael Garret (bottom left) was one hell of guitar player. Class act too. I wonder what he's up to these days.

https://scontent.ford1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...57&oe=5B0E2FCD

This was a fun summer.

The Day Disco Died