Tuesday, May 29, 2007

One year of rockin out

so, today I have been playing guitar for one year. I celebrated by vacuuming the rehearsal room (like my mum always said, a clean rehearsal room is a happy rehearsal room) and setting it up properly, which meant getting out all the random non-music related junk and organising all the random music related junk, setting up the digital drum kit (it's really my brother's but he's incredibly lazy and I figure this is the only way I can get him to play, plus if we can't find a drummer for our demos I'm going to have to do all the drumming and bass too), putting amplifiers in nice places and making sure we have enough power outlets (we don't, I need another power board - I thought eight would be enough, but we have three amps, digital drums, the keyboard, my computer, the mixer, speakers, a lamp and a stereo). We still have four guitar cases taking up a ridiculous amount of floorspace, but considering it's a small area (it's half the front lounge) there's not a lot of storage options. Now all we need is a rug and a column heater (that room gets freakin cold in the winter) and we're talking. I'm meant to be going to the gym, but I'll also squeeze in a bit of guitar, and I'm seeing Liam Finn tonight - woot!

-R

PS Goddamn. I just bought two t-shirts from threadless.com for $50 australian last week, and now they have a bloody sale on. I could've saved myself $15. *sigh* i might just have to buy a couple more then...heh.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

I am an uber fan

I got my second edition of the Franz Ferdinand Fan Club (FF:FC, it's much more compact) magazine in the mail today. I was flicking through it and came to the page where there were lots of photos of Fans and Franz and saw my photo of me with Paul and his fake baby at the Do You Want To shoot in NYC in 2005, which was quite exciting. I'd sent in the photo about eight months ago, so hadn't expected it to make an appearance.

Oh and in the car after the gym today mum and I had Vega on and they played the new Crowded House single, Don't Stop Now.
Despite the fact that it only started to get airplay last firay, I have heard it that many times (thanks to my bootleg of the webcast) that as soon as the first note played I did the little squeal of excitement and know most of the words...and tonight in Soul Mama they played Close To Me by The Cure...I have heard that song lots in the past few days. It's a very good song.

And I have Ballroom Blitz stuck in my head.

-R

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

A few guitar things to yay about

I'm teaching one of kathryn's friends guitar. I thought it would be a bit like the blind leading the blind, but until this afternoon she hadn't even picked it up, so I can definitely show her a few basic things. It's nice to be able to show someone stuff, and good incentive for me to improve my technique at the same time. Steve came over tonight and fixed my Epiphone (I hope) and played the Gretsch. Now I'm going to bed because the past few nights I've been staying with Brendan while he house sits, and going to bed around 11 to wake up at 7...good habit, but I'm knackered now, up past my bed time.

Monday, May 14, 2007

A few changes, and general stuff

Fall Out Boy is on channel v right now and I just realised that the acronym for their name is FOB (it's in big light up letters at the back of the stage). I wonder if they know what a fob is. That is hilariously unintentionally un-PC. I'm trying to work out if they're singing 'thanks for the memories' or 'thanks for the mammaries' because there's a girl with big tits in a dress in the video.

Anyway, enough blabbing on about whiny shit American bands, and blabbing on about my own not whiny but pretty rough sounding Aussie band. We've got a song up on our myspace now, called So Young, but the url will change pretty soon, because we found out that there's an LA band with the same name as us. We'll probably decide on a name tonight. Work yesterday sucked big time, I just wasn't in the mood and I really hate working sunday nights at the best of times, but it's especially bad on mothers day. Lots of cleaning at the end of the day and changing all the menus around. eurgh.

Oh and Kathryn's school band won their division at the festival at Mt Gambier, which was a pretty big shock to all involved. The judge of their division was some dude from the Cat Empire apparently. I've just come home from the gym so after lunch I'm going to put my muscles to good use and help her put the keyboard and amp back in the music room. I need food.

-R

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

OMGYAY!!!!

Crowded House are playing Live Earth. *implodes with excitement*

It was officially announced today, but like everything to do with Crowded House lately, it was leaked last week (albeit by Neil himself at Coachella). Missy Higgins, John Butler Trio, Jack Johnson, Wolfmother, Eskimo Joe, Paul Kelly and God knows who else are also playing, so I'm going to do my best to score a ticket. My mum once again proved that she is majorly cool and said she'll drive me up there. So I'm a wee bit excited.

-R

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Bring the ROOOOOOOOOOOCK!!!!!!!

I broke my first guitar string today. I feel so rock and roll. The high E on my Epi Les Paul, snapped while I was strumming quite hard. It kinda stung when it hit me. Lucky I have the Gretsch home now, because the LP is out of service until I buy another set of strings next week. Still not looking forward to breaking a string on the Gretsch...I have a feeling the Bigsby will make replacing strings interesting, to say the least.

Unfortunately we're not ready to upload anything to the net just yet...we worked hard at recording though, and we've got a couple of very rough cuts to work on.

-R

Thursday, May 03, 2007

sorry sorry sorry

Hey,

I know I haven't blogged for so so long...apologies. Stuff has happened, and when I've wanted to blog, the bloody net has been down. Anyway I'll fill you in on what's been happening. Life is going along as usual, nothing out of the ordinary, except for the band stuff, which is all getting rather exciting now. Alana and I have been getting together most weekends for rehearsing/writing sessions, and we've picked 6 songs we'd like to demo to put up on myspace or give to friends or whatever, so the past couple of weeks have been spent getting those songs good. Today I went and bought a Behringer mixing console from Melbourne Music on North Rd and have spent all afternoon setting it up. It's finally all set up and working properly, except I'm missing a few things, namely a microphone stand and lead which Alana will get for me tomorrow, and the big headphones which I know are around somewhere...probably buried under piles of crap in my room! Ummm what else...oh yeah, finally told my mum about the Gretsch, we rehearsed last night and my parents came to pick me up, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to finally bring her home. I'm still not used to playng with her but hopefulyl that will change. Technology permitting, we'll record one, maybe two songs this weekend to put up, so yay.

-R