Monday, January 23, 2006

Musical Tastes

I'm pretty sure not too many people that know me that well frequent this blog, but just to clarify on my "currently listening to" choices as of late, I'm not going soft by any means. As you can see I've been listening to "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" by Elton John and "Gasoline Alley" by Rod Stewart lately. Before that it was "Dareh Meyod" by OAR and "Take Your Mama" by Scissor Sisters. I promise I'm not losing my edge. I still listen to Meshuggah, Mastodon, and Isis on a regular basis. lol Part of me listening to these songs has also been finding songs I like that are popular enough to play in the band that people can dance to. I think "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" would be huge. We definitely gotta throw that one in there.

Hail hail metal.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

I said, "Kick me in the jimmy!"

I talked to John (bass) yesterday to see how he was progressing with learning the songs and to make sure we were still on for practice today. He said things were all good and he's learning the songs just fine. He also said he hurt his back at work and it's causing pretty intense pain in his leg. He got some painkillers, so he should be ok. Good shit.

I got an e-mail today from John saying that he can't make it to practice today because he's in extreme pain from his injury. He can't even sit in a car for more than 5 minutes. He also said it might sound like bullshit because he cancelled last week, but he likes us and he still wants to jam. At the same time though he understands if we don't want to wait for him to recuperate, so we're going to keep searching for someone. This sucks. If John gives us a call when he's healthy and we still haven't found someone, then he's in, but we're not going to wait around forever.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Johnny Not-So-Rock?

So I got a call last Wednesday at 5:15pm (practice was at 7pm) from John saying he couldn't make it because he was "exhausted from work". I really didn't know what to say considering that's the most pussy excuse I've heard from someone for not wanting to practice. My dad's been a truck driver for 25 years and for most of that time he's gotten up at or before 4am everyday. All the while he was in at least one or two bands. Don't tell me you're tired. You're a bass player. You stand there and play easy shit, as far as what we're doing. Since he called so late, Dan and my dad were already on their way and I had to break the news to them when they showed up. We all pretty much agreed that he probably didn't learn most of the songs we gave him, so he came up with that lame excuse. I'm calling him tonight to see where he's at in the learning process and make sure he's on track. If he shows up on Wednesday, he might have a tampon hanging where he stands during practice...

The biggest thing that pissed me off was not only that I busted my ass to learn one of the songs on Monday and Tuesday, but also because I really look forward to practice. It's the #1 thing I look forward to right now in my life (besides eventually getting out of debt) and all that energy and excitement that I had built up just fluttered out of me like air out of a balloon. Hopefully this isn't a regular occurrence and purely just a fluke. I'm way too excited to get things going to lose another bass player.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Johnny Rock

We auditioned another bass player last night and I must say things went well. This new guy, John, was really busy with work so he only learned about 5 songs. We ran through them with moderate success, then ran through a few again and worked out some kinks. All in all I'd say he's a good fit with us. He's no Les Claypool, however in all fairness he really didn't get to show off in any way, but he's solid and he gets the job done. We're no virtuosos ourselves, so I think he fits nicely. Plus he's somewhat young (28-33?), pretty laid back, and he's not a slob (e.g. he's presentable to play in public). He's also got a good amount of experience gigging, so that helps a lot. From what I understand he seems to like us so far and he's coming back next week for practice. We added a bunch of songs for next week and we're gonna rock the joint. Bung.