Yes, it's been a long while. Three weeks. Has much happened? Perhaps; depends on how you look at it. I believe I wrote about fish and the blues last time. I'll mostly avoid that this time.
Two weeks ago, the Pocket FishRmen played a benefit at C-Boy's for the employees of Casino el Camino downtown, which suffered a fire earlier in the year. Of course, the building itself had insurance, etc., but the employees needed a hand making bills while said reconstruction was going on. So, the PF pitched in. Very fun show, including some acts we would almost never play with, at a place we would probably never play. (On a side note, this concludes each of my bands playing C-Boy's. Interesting.) The show was backlined, making everything easy, and Michelle was working later, so she saw us play, then skedaddled upstairs to work. Some of us hung out afterwards. It was nice. (This is now sounding like every other boring blog post you read.)
Last weekend, I went to visit Mom in San Angelo. Usually, I dread these visits for reasons I won't go into here, but this one was a bit different. I had a good time overall. We watched a lot of baseball (College World Series and a good Mariners-Red Sox matchup), a movie ("The Ox-Bow Incident," which I'd never seen), and some interesting TV shows, including one profiling the Dublin bottling plant in mid-north Texas. The drives weren't bad; I'm finding podcasts are the best thing to put on for a long drive - even better than music....for some reason, the time moves faster that way.
This week has been busy. Each band rehearsed, and the Pocket FishRmen played last night at the Lost Well for the Free Range Bastards' 20th anniversary show. Kind of funny for the PF to be hitting a 32nd anniversary soon and playing someone else's 20th anniversary.
It was a great show, though, and I finally got to play the electric green drum kit with the matching snare drum fixed up. Travis Garaffa got the right lugs to put it all back together. I had to pick up another snare throw-off for it, but all seems to be working properly now. I still need to work on the sound of the drum. There's no internal muffler on it, which works to a bit of a disadvantage for how I like the snare to sound. At least for the PF, I want that snare to crack, with very little overtone. I'm thinking I might have to use a head with a dampening ring, or even a bit of moon gel....which I've never used in a live setting. Nice to have the full kit together, though.
And speaking of drum kits, I finally made the big move and ordered the drum wraps to convert the Sonor kit into a "corn cobbette" kit for the Hickoids. It'll be my first drum kit to wrap, so it should be an experience. The type wraps I'm getting are ones where you merely lay the wrap on the existing finish and the end of the wrap has some adhesive you press down at the end. The company I ordered from has a video of a guy wrapping a tom to show how it's done, and it does look pretty simple. Other than needing some clamps to hold the wrap while you work, and an X-acto knife to cut holes for hardware, it should be a simple process. Time-consuming, but simple. I'm thinking it'll take me a full day to do it all. Actually, I'm mulling over stripping the shells down while I wait for the wraps. I can use my Vistalite kit for the upcoming San Marcos show, and the July 4th benefit should be backlined. Well, I hope it is. After that, my next gig is July 21st at the Empire Showroom downtown (ugh), but maybe that will the debut of "full drum corn."
Work (I still have a full time job) has been, well, interesting lately. And that's saying something. I've flown under the radar for so long at work (for various reasons) that it's nice to be a bit "back in the light." We have a new process for building our elearning modules, and I'm down with it. One of our programmers bascially saved the federal government a couple of million building this, and I hope he's rewarded justly. It's, dare I write it, fun to work on something in a new fashion. So, there's that. Plus....
I've been using my combination recumbent bike/desk for work at home, and I'm seeing (really, feeling) the results. My right leg is almost without pain now. I haven't seen the physical therapist in two and a half weeks and may not need to again. We'll see. But this pedaling while working seems to be paying off. I'm a bit surprised, but the therapist thought this would help. Seems he's right. I'm kind of astonished, but don't want to celebrate too much.....yet. I haven't mowed the yard in a while....that will be a serious test.
Let's see.....what else? This post feels like a keyboard diarrhea attack.
I still feel in the middle of a "music renaissance," although I have to confess to getting back into the movie game a bit. I've watched several things lately, running the gamut from a popcorn thriller like "Jurassic World," to a W. C. Fields silent, "It's the Old Army Game" (with Louise Brooks!). Watched a sort of dull but sort of interesting sci-fi-er from 1962 titled "The Day Mars Invaded Earth." And, maybe due to recent political events or simple masochism, re-watched "The Final Solution," from the "World at War" set. It's the most interesting documentary on the holocaust I've seen (and yes, I've watched all of "Shoah"), taking it from the roots of the persecution through to the end. In general, anything from the "World at War" series is gold, largely due to its being produced 30 years after the war ended giving it both perspective and loads of witnesses still being alive.
I feel like I've spilled it. Michelle and I are heading to Wimberley later for a Sunday fun day. We discovered a place out there that has great food and atmosphere, so we'll hit that. I need to get back to movie reviews sometime....
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