Tuesday, December 01, 2009

11.30.2009, ftw

insomnia's back, so might as well blog. said bye-bye to november by joining mr. horn (off from school due to flooding) for lunch at tokyo cafe. saving the fried whole trout (not snapper) for when my sweetie can go. then the dude that works at doc's when jennings isn't there saved me $25 by not being able to find the van der graaf generator alb jennings was holding for me.

in the morning, dicked around with my gear, which sounded ok; think the probs i experienced friday might have been due to plugging directly into the phoenix project's dirty power. should carry a power strip next time. also discovered i can get a disgusting '60s fuzz sound (like my old dallas arbiter fuzz face that used to broadcast radio signals a la hendrix at isle of wight) using the "blues" setting on the bluesbreaker i got from sir steffin. next year i might spring for another ts-9, but terry said he dug the clean tones (with lotsa 'verb) i used at phoenix project, so that might be the sound i employ for HIO going forward. now i'm waiting for terry to upload the vid to the HIO virb page. he's added more to the book that's going to be included with the "box set" of our 10.17.2009 jam and it's coming together very nicely. he'll probably make 10.

had fun playing along with the move at fillmore 1969 recording i downloaded last week and have been listening to ever since ("don't make my baby blue" and "cherry blossom clinic"). gawd, i love bootlegs. it was through the sketchy-looking records in the back of the store where i worked as a teen, the ones with the white covers and mimeographed artwork, that i got to experience some of my earliest epiphanies of fandom, hearing the large chunks of the who and yardbirds' discographies that you just couldn't get any other way in the u.s. back in '72. also the nth-generation audience cassettes through which i discovered that captain beefheart's music really wasn't complete chaos but rather, was scored note-for-note.

it took me awhile to hear the move after getting obsessed with them, reading nik cohn's rock from the beginning; the older guys i used to buy records from talked me out of shazam! and into the first led zep alb the first time i tried to buy it. it's crazy that the move could play that whole album live, including the insane choral bit at the end of "cherry blossom clinic revisited." and i love that they cover the nazz, eliminating the electric flag-sounding solo bit from "open my eyes" and repeating the verse and chorus over and over like picking at a scab because they know what's good. the truncated version of "under the ice" (which goes back into "open my eyes") sounds like a tape splice, though, and i dispute the dates on the files (they say october 16th and 18th) because on the "16th" one, carl wayne talks about playing there "the last couple of days," and they were in san francisco from the 16th to the 19th (a bit of trainspotting here).

here's a vid of carl and bev bevan playing "i can hear the grass grow" with a band called the shazam in y2k. r.i.p., mr. wayne.



depressed about stuff i can't do anything about since last thursday, tonight i was listening to the saddest music i could think of: second side of lou reed's berlin (correctly deduced by barry kooda on facebook!), first side of simon & garfunkel's bookends, early tom waits, elvis costello & burt bacharach's painted from memory, but i stopped short of sun kil moon's "duk koo kim" and played the hal willner mingus tribute album instead. wish i'd picked up the copy of the pogues' rum, sodomy, and the lash i saw at doc's today for "the band played waltzing matilda."

2 Comments:

Blogger Grubbermeister said...

Tis the season of gluttony. Shame on you for not having the whole fried trout yourself... and a stomach pump for the sorbet.

8:53 AM  
Blogger Becky said...

Dang. I hate things I can't do anything about... except be depressed about them. I'll say a little prayer for you and whatever it is you're facing. (You don't have to post this comment, 'a course.)

2:28 PM  

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