I was writing about a crash my Mac had, just as I was about to finish a promotional video for the Hickoids. Said video project had to be reconstituted on a PC laptop (the one I'm typing on now), using the editor in Movie Studio Platinum (an offshoot of Vegas). The editor turned out to be okay, although it's missing one crucial feature for anyone editing anything over a minute in length - the ability to set up individual sequences. Since the total time of the video ended up being 1:42, it wasn't super necessary, but still a bit painful to navigate around. The previous one built in Premiere was several sequences of a few seconds in length each.
Within a week, I had it done, and it came out.....okay.
Got a bluish tinge going on in some of the shots which comes from the residue of removing green screen, but I'm not sure why blue. If anyone asks me, I'll just say there was a blue light in the dungeon. That makes sense, dunnit?
Continuing along with computer woes, or more accurately, fixes.....
In the last entry, I stated I was done with Macs, and I'm sticking to that. I ran into my friend Larry Stern a couple of weeks ago (he got me the Mac system several years ago), and he thought it was fixable, although perhaps at some cost. I politely declined. I'm still done with Macs. There's just something I don't like about the Apple company in general, and hey, if I'm going to get political about it....Bill and Melinda Gates have my vote. So, back to a Microsoft operating system.
I chose a Lenovo tower that is set up for gaming, which means it'll be fine for my non-gaming, yet sometimes video-involved self. I decided on this one after much shopping around, and so far, so good. The OS is on a separate SSD drive and boots up really quickly. I haven't done a lot with it so far - still deciding on what video editor I should use - and as I'm about to leave town for awhile, it'll be some time before I really get down to serious usage. But that'll also give me time to decide on software I want to put on it. And, since this laptop I'm using has Windows 10, I'm fairly familiar with it as an OS.
This recent purchase inspired me to get a hard drive enclosure and do some "house cleaning." I pulled all the hard drives from towers I'm declaring dead (two from the Mac, and two from previous PCs), and I've been able to read the data from the two Mac drives - with the help of cross-platform software - and one of the PC drives. The oldest PC drive is an IDE drive, and my enclosure is only suited for SATA drives. Frankly, I'm sure I didn't need anything off a drive inactive for ten years, so I'll just destroy that one. I was able to donate the PC towers to Goodwill, and I'll figure out a home for the Mac tower. It might go back to Larry! Cleaning house!
I mentioned leaving town for awhile...and the video gives that away....yes, the Hickoids are about to embark on an 18-day tour, going west. At the halfway point, we'll be in Vancouver and Victoria, BC, which will be my first foray into Canada. We're not going far into Canada, but still, it's Canada. It's a bit like going to Reynosa and saying you've "been to Mexico." Still, I'm looking forward to a bit cooler weather. Hopefully, we won't run into any of the awful blazes going on in California right now. Jeeziz, those poor folks dealing with that.
On this tour, I'll have responsibilities exceeding drumming and occasional yodeling; the sampler's coming with, and the tour will be documented on digital video. We have folks lined up to shoot the video, so thankfully, I won't have to do that. A really nice fella named Carl is coming with up to Canada. He's a native San Antonian who now lives in Victoria, BC. He was down for a couple of months visiting family, and so he's riding back home with us. He'll be shooting our misadventures, etc. I'll give him a quick tutorial on the camera, and hopefully he'll get some good stuff. We're so photogenic.
We'll leave Carl in Victoria, and Patrick (Harvey McLaughlin) is joining us in Seatlle for the trip back. He'll, of course, be playing his piano on stage with us, but in the van, he'll be cinematographer. There might be more interesting stuff in the second half, I'm thinking. Sleep deprivation is a big cause of tour hijinks, let's say. Although, our significant others are meeting us at different points on the west coast....so that might cause us to behave, if only for a bit.
The sampler is coming as a sort of "audio enhancement" for the stage show. There's an intro, recorded by Jeff, for the show. There's a version of "O Canada" to preface our wonderfully awful "Canadian Medley." And, there's Plastic Patrick's "Hickoid Massacre," to play as an outro. Easy stuff, but I think I'll add a few more things to keep it lively. The sampler's a pain in the ass to set up but worth it, if you have a soundman willing to play ball. I'll elaborate more later.
We had a couple of warm-up shows this weekend, one in Austin, one in San Antonio. The Austin one was a fun, but hot, affair. We played after the Beaumonts, which might not have been the right call. The Beaumonts had a huge crowd that diminished somewhat by the time we took the stage. Still, we put on a pretty good show, although it felt like it was petering out toward the end - probably the heat. The best thing about it was we had Wade Driver in attendance, and he jumped up and played guitar on a couple of songs. He's recovering from a stroke currently, but the energy was there, for sure. It was great to have him on stage. I tried to get him to come up and drum with me on "Back in the Truck," but he didn't seem to want to. No matter. He was a major drum inspiration to me back in the bad ol' days, so I was just honored to share the stage with him. We also stumbled through the Canadian Medley, although it needs work. We're not far off, though.
Last night's show was, as some of my friends like to say, "tits." Fred Greene told me he thought it was one of the best shows he'd ever seen us play, and he's certainly seen enough. The stage at Bang Bang Bar in San Antonio is pretty tiny, but somehow we all got up there. I thought for sure Patrick would have to set up on the floor, but no, he didn't - although he was hidden by a speaker main. Cody was somewhat hidden by the other one, as well. Basically, if you like looking at Jeff, Tom, and Rice only, this show was for you. Jeff didn't want to do the Canadian Medley, so we didn't. It does need a little tightening, still. The only issue I had was getting the soundman to actually put the sampler into the speakers. He seemed a little, shall we say, slow on the draw. He didn't understand that we were using it as a pre- and post-show entertainment, as well as occasionally through the show. After finally getting him to turn it on before we started, he just turned off the channel for the rest of the show. When I quizzed him about it later, he seemed....not really uncaring, but not really cognizant of it, either....I think chemicals were involved. But really, all this is my fault. I realize I'm going to have to have a chat with every soundman on this tour to explain what I need for the sampler to be worth bringing out. It's not much, but it'll need to be said.
I'll try to chronicle along what happens on the tour, although I may just do it in one big chunk after getting back...sort of like I did with the 2013 Euro Tour. We'll see. Until then......stay cool, friends. Your working drummer boy loves ya.
