As you can see, I am rather hard-pressed for words. As a matter of fact, the only reason that I am doing this, at this particular time, is due to the fact that I am test driving a pirated copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking.

It seems to work rather well; too bad it can’t come up with content, as well.

Playing guitar mostly, and spending all my time at home, except when I go out to see bands or something like that. It’s been like this for about four months. About four months ago, with the assistance of Lesla, I bought a Les Paul, a Mesa/Boogie guitar amp, a bunch of cables, a boatload of strings, some literature, an Apogee GIO (an analog/digital instrument interface), and even a couple of music stands.

That’s about it really. I’m playing around 8- 10 hours a day.

Maybe that was two weeks ago? I don’t know, but I do know that I can make almost anyone look “good” when it comes to timely back-and-forth. I’ll send her a note soon. Ha ha. No really, I’m serious this time.

Moving along … I still haven’t finished the Nils web site. I’ve gotten zero help from several guys who told me, eight weeks ago, that they would contribute higher resolution images, and well-written historical pieces concerning the legendary Montréal band.

People are busy, no grief there. But I feel guilty. Anyway, I have my own excuse, and it’s a doozy … and it’s one of those “multipart” deals: With the assistance (not to mention enthusiastic support of) my girlfriend, I picked up a guitar and amplifier. I hadn’t touched a guitar in 17 years or so. Now, I’m stuck, er, “attached” to it, on a daily basis. All day-ly, ha ha ha.

Over the years I have collected a lot of high-end music and recording software. Why? Who knows? I collect thing, I suppose. So, after the house is repainted (interior-wise) later this month, I’m moving my large desk and music study/production gear out into the front room (adjacent to the kitchen, with a view of, basically, everywhere), and setting up shop.

I’ll post a picture of the guitar/amp. But, for the record, the guitar is a Gibson Les Paul Jr Special. Yeah, I know, too many names, but it’s basically a Standard, without the binding on the body, and it has two of the fat, black single-coil pickups. It sounds beautiful, both electric and (albeit quietly so) acoustically. And it’s the “Robot” model. (Yeah, yet another name)

Robot? Say what? The guitar has a computer chip-driven tuning system, made by an outfit called Tronical. I had read about it, and was skeptical. I’m somewhat deaf (60 dBs, across the board, if you’re keeping track), so a guitar that can auto-tune itself sounded like it was made to order. And it was! Even with relatively old strings it can tune itself to a very finite concert pitch (actually more like a recording pitch, i.e., finer than concert), and it can be instantly switched to any of six tuning scheme variations (dropped-D, open G, etc). It realy works. Unbelievable.

Now, electronic tuners are nothing new, but … This thing has sensors on each of the six, individual bridge saddles, connected, internally to the tuning gears at the other end of the guitar. And, without any need for amplification at all, they measure the tension and pitch of their strings and physically wind the relative tuning gear, automatically, on demand. How amazing is that? Answer: Very.

For the amplifier, I bought a Boogie (60-watt combo) from Mesa Engineering. The amp is 29 years old. it’s the third instance of the exact same model, that I bought two of … 29 years ago. The thing sounds absolutely brand new. And I would know, trust me. I picked up a Mesa extension speaker cabinet, to go with the internal 12″ Celestion speaker, that has a “closed/open-back” switchable design. The extension is loaded with a really great Altec speaker.

It sounds awesome. And it has the usual “slave” output, and an Effects Send/Return loop (between the pre-amp and main amp stage), and a pre-amp output. All in addition to the normal internal-and-external speaker cabinet outputs. Perfect for live, or recording (direct, or miked), and incredibly flexible as far as apparent power/volume and tonal characteristics.

Mesa Engineering (a “local”, Petaluma-based company) has been at it a while. The guy who started the company was out here in the Bay Area, hot-rodding (customizing) Fender Princeton, and Fender Deluxe Reverb amps, for a ton of guitarists. The musicains urged him to build “from scratch”, and that’s what he did. The model I have is the second iteration of the original Mesa amp. Carlos Santana reputedly gave it the name “Boogie”, which is its official model designation. Santana knows a thing or tweo about “tone” and “feel.”

Friends, mainly non-musicians, had told me, back when I was explaining why I no longer played, and “how long it had been”, etc., that it would come back to me, “like riding a bike.”

They were sort of right, as it turns out. Scales, and how they fit together, have been “coming back” to me, in “chunks.” That “chunks” thing is the best way to describe it, for me. I remeber reading once that after emerging from a diabetic coma, Jerry Garcia had “forgotten” a ton of guitar/fretboard knowledge. And he later said that he was rehabilitated, and that the guitar had come back to him, in “chunks.” I understand that now.

The funniest thing about it is that one of the things I “forgot” (apparently) was my old (incorrect, technically) manner of holding the guitar pick. I used to hold like most guitar players; gripped between my thumb and tip of my index finger, with the other three fingers of my right hand kind of spread out, loosely, and sometimes acting as a “brace” against the guitar body. (As if they were being used to gather data about where my hand “was” in relation to the geomtric plane of the strings, themselves.

This astonishing guitar player back in Montréal (who works under the name Jimmy James) was over at my old place a few times, and I’d asked him for tips, or “help” in becoming a better player.

He gave me some “exercises” that were essentially non-musical (for dexterity, and independence of hands-and-fingers coordination, told me to consider quitting drugs (“just for a few months, and see the impact it has on your playing”), and mentioned that I should try to hold the “pick” between the flat side of my thumb and the first “jouint” of my curled index finger, meanwhile keeping my other fingers curled up, like a loose, relaxed fist.

Well, here we are, more than 20 years since Jimmy’s advice, and I’m going on 15 years clean and sober, and somehow, through no fault or “credit’ of my own, as soon as unpacked the Gibson (and to this day, a month later) my right hand very naturall gripped the pick in exactly the manner that Jimmy had suggested.

What does it all mean? I have no idea. Probably nothing. But, it’s peculiar and very cool, somehow.

As the months went by (slowly) Nancy talked me into moving back to California. I’d left Cali (for good, as far as I was concerned), in early 1984, and moved to Montréal, where I’d lived for a few years earlier in the Seventies.

But there was a ‘deal’ of sorts: They’d help me move to, and relocate in, the San Francisco Bay Area, and at some point I would do “what you’re meant to do.” What they, and others before them, meant with that “meant to”, or “be good at” stuff, was write.

In view of the fact that a deal’s a deal (until ‘cancelled/changed/updated, etc., like those garden variety “Terms of Service” we see everywhere these days) I’m going to start writing bits and pieces of things while I can still remember things, for the most part.

All RSS Feeds

Client: ”So I just wrote my first post on the blog you made for us. Can you publish it to all RSS feeds?”

Me: ”Do you mean publish it to your RSS feed? Because that happens automatically.”

Client: ”No, I mean ALL RSS feeds. Like every one on the internet.”

Me: ”That’s not possible.”

Client: ”Yes it is, I read an article about how RSS is the equivalent of newspapers on the internet, so if I post something everyone on the internet should see it, just like everyone reading a newspaper would see the front page.”

Me: ”Er… that’s not really true, that’s not how RSS works.”

Client: ”Well then this whole “blog” thing isn’t what I paid you to do, then, is it?”

Hah, if you know Niko or Carlos, well, you don’t have to take my word for it! But I’m chillin’ out a bit, and am just going to put in another strong week (like last week) and not let some of the complicated stuff get to me.

What else is up? Well next Sunday night is Neil Young, playing solo, at the Fox Theatre in Oakland. Definitely up for that!

After Neil it’s another week on the current website project, and as soon as that’s done I’m going to build my own, less complicated, business site. I’ll add more “newsy” stuff later. Thanks go out to Alissa, for reminding me that a few other, special people are out there, and still curious as to how I’m doing and everything.

The power of friendship and love (not to mention understanding and forgiveness) is amazing …

I’ve had a version of a show Roky did with his band (at the time) known as “The Explosives” in Berkeley in 1981. With a lot of bootleg recordings you run into incomplete and/or “out of order” set lists. Does that matter? Hell yes, it matters!

So, while looking for details, or references to the 1981 show, I stumbled upon an entirely different recording. My fellow Roky fans ( a clique, or cult, really) would know how great that is.

The show in question was from “The Rather Ripped Records Thank Ya! Party” at the Longbranch Saloon in Berkeley on November 10th, 1975. They do two complete sets on the record. Awesome.

Rather Ripped Records was one of the absolute coolest record stores on Earth. It was over on Euclid, just north of the campus (only a few blocks from where I am now, small World, eh?). Patti Smith did poetry readings there. One of my fave Bay Area pop/rockers, Greg Kihn, used to work there as a clerk. (Lots of people used to work there, of course). Rather Ripped was founded (I think?) by two guys who had started Leopold’s Records in Berkeley and had left it.

Anyway, Rather Ripped threw a party at The Longbranch, and Roky Erickson & The Explosives were the music. By the way, Roky did in-store at Rather Ripped, and according to outside sources, he told anyone who “looked him in eye” that he was “watchin’ you die.”

The recording is downloading off the Pirate Bay, rather slowly (only two seeders now), but I’ll update this post when I’ve given it a thorough listen.

[Update: Okay, it was great. But I'm prejudiced. There are several tracks that were outstanding. It didn't sound like there was a large crowd at the Longbranch, but that might have been an 'artifact' of the soundboard-based recording. This wasn't done by some guy with a cassette player, that's for sure, nice quality throughout.]

Meanwhile, I’m back on Facebook. I have all of the ‘applications’ and ‘games’ blocked, so I can use the site to stay somewhat in touch with the outside world, without being annoyed-to-death by that other stuff.

I’ve gone and gotten myself in another pro bono web site thing. I’m “fronting” web server space for a web site dealing with my old friends, the band called The Nils.

But wait, there’s more! I also grabbed their current site, which was on one of those freebie sort of sites, wherein you sign up, and get a cookie-cutter front end in which you fill in the blanks (for the text) and upload files like music or images. And get this, the entire site (not just my friends’ small part of it) has the style info embedded in every HTML tag. That is so 90s it’s awful.

So, I’m separating the mess, and then putting the site, with the same look-and-feel, back online in a properly formatted, standards-compliant (not to mention modern manner.

At least this is a project I volunteered for, rather than one in which I was corralled into what was supposed to be a professional, business venture for which I ended up being stiffed as far as remuneration. (To say nothing of financial losses, on my part). People kill me, sometimes.