3-Man Guitarmy

We consciously decided last night to have a small, quiet, guitar-centric practice. The idea was to work on stuff that we usually can't work on in the context of a regular practice.

Of course, it was probably louder than usual due to Mower's knobbling with a Bassman head that he may or may not buy (he should).

But we made good progress on 3-guitar versions of Centrifuge, Kevin Spacey, and, um... maybe that's all we did. Really? Oh, wait, Armadillo.

Hiccups? Yup, I got 'em. They lasted all the way home.

Green Lotus Strat Copy with Duct Tape

Dig the Mulder Sticker

Approaching Alien Lifeform

Working on New Songs

Great practice last night, all of us were there, and we were firing on all cylinders. Except for me. We started playing Francis, and like 4 times, I started it wrong. The notes were correct, but I was playing it half time of what it should have been. Lots of looks going my way at that point. Duh.

Work is progressing on two (maybe three) new songs. There's Fearless, which is arranged and done, just lacking verse vocals. Then there's "Classic Squeaky Song," which sounds like, well, a classic Squeaky song. Mostly because of Steven and I both using our old E flat B flat G tunings. While mush-mouthing sound-lyrics, I think I blurted out "frozen margarita" a few times. Not sure what's up with that. We also improvised a song that started with this weird pulsing organ (heh heh) thing, which also turned into a "song" with "parts." We'll see what happens with that. It sounds pretty cool.

We didn't talk about the greatest American rock band issue much last night, except to say that it probably wasn't Minor Threat. And we did listen to a few tracks from the new Van Halen album, which was released on International Ray Valla Day, Feb. 7. I really miss Michael Anthony's vocals on the songs I heard—triple-tracked Dave is a little tedious.

Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

With Mower out of town, Karlo vomiting, who knows what'll happen tonight.

Practice Last Night

Practice last night was old school, Mower was in S.C. For some reason, we strolled down memory lane and dusted off a bunch of old songs. I'm talking old songs. Like Trophy Shoppe, King Me, Dual Mono, Sparrow, Quiero, Free, House Music—a ton of songs from An Elaborate System... We also dug into Do Both, we worked up Kevin Spacey and Fireflies and the Arsonist.

As usual, Danny made me laugh so hard, I really was afraid that I would vomit. And watching/listening to some of Karl's basslines just made me grateful to be in a band with that guy. He and Danny are total assholes, they remember everything about old songs, pull them out of their memory fully intact. For Steven and I, it's a little more...complicated. We get there, usually, but it takes a little work.

Steven got a guitar tuned up for his C tuning, which enabled us to play many of the old songs that we couldn't. But he's using one of my guitars, which means we can't play certain songs like Rocky Records or Constellation #9. We listened to our eponymous album as we were packing up, and we marveled at how complicated the songs are and how we have totally been avoiding playing almost all of the songs on that record since we recorded it. They took a lot of work to write, and it would be only slightly easier to remember them. We got Centrifuge going, but that was always the easy one on that record.

Onwards. H/SQ