One year ago today: October 25, 2022, Powell, the signs.
Five years ago today: October 25, 2018, immigrant rot.
Nine years ago today: October 25, 2014, I’ll follow you home.
Random years ago today: October 25, 2010, such short supply.
This nice piece of wood is more pallet lumber, now upgraded to a plank. I’ve learned to avoid joints right on the knots, but keep the knots as interesting a pattern as permitted. It took three cups of coffee to get going and the cool spell may be over. So let’s plan some indoor work and not stray too far from the K-cup. Have you seen the prices of the cartridges lately? A buck apiece. But so what, we have such nice planks on the production line. By the way, a test of the pallet saw ponies show they cannot survive well being stored outdoors.
In this instance, there are three embedded codes of which I will tell you one. The final word must contain nine characters. If one of the characters is the vowel “o” it tells me to go check something. It’s amazing how it took twenty years for the rank and file to realize their email is compromised. Today we are taking apart my old Ampeg for the speaker. While it is likely reparable, it has not worked reliably in 15 years and is inconveniently heavy. We are after that 12” speaker, but not until we’ve had another cup of coffee. I’m performing later today, so why expend myself?
Here is the repair on the speaker in progress. This time I won’t forget about the reflex tube, it was just big enough for that rat. I was in a box-making mood so that was the big portion of the day. This photo shows the wire mesh being fitted. The reality is I’m fixing old gear with old parts and even with old-school quality, time is a factor. They don’t tell you speakers deteriorate in storage.
Hora Sfakion.
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The speaker is repaired, but it has been damaged twice. The cap has been pushed in a bit and the cone is repaired with duct tape. Yes, cones can be repaired if you know what you are doing. The point today is that I am now out of all spare parts. The gigrack PA lasted around around 600 gigs. Today I determined one of the two amps inside is cutting out intermittently, giving me a four channel PA. However, since I have a working system of sorts, I will only buy [a replacement] when I get a real steal. I have no amps, power supplies, or spares [left] at all. The next thing that breaks puts me out of business. But I can build excellent speaker boxes, shown here being cleaned.
Let’s get to the jam session, the big event of the day. My concerns focus on the suitability of this show as a springboard to better things. Musically it was just another show, so let’s cut to the chase. The place was almost empty for the first hour, meaning nobody heard our material except the barmaid who does not possess the ability to understand what’s involved with music. However, she would have noticed it was my duo that carried the event. Yes, I knew the guitar player and he quickly tires after three songs in a row as his endurance wears off. That means the Prez & I had plenty of stage time. More than 2/3rds the time total, always by invitation.
At the second hour, a few people showed, but none were the regulars who will be the ones who will report back. However, four guitar players showed up including Bradford. They instantly glommed on to the fact my little duo makes one excellent backup band—and therein arose the hurdle. This time my band is trained to avoid any such temptations. We jammed with two of them who quickly learned in my band, they are just another flunky. By design, we don’t play any guitar “show-off” tunes. This gave them a choice. Play as a regular band member or play solo.
The effect was immediate. Rather than a guitar showcase, the material had the small but happy crowd singing along to almost every tune. I was a bit disappointed by the Prez, who did not play strongly tonight and was unduly influenced by all the guitar players and their big talk—fall for it and you have no band.. Trust me, these people are not fellow musicians seeking to mesh with a band. We are likely to stick with our plan, but yes, we make an excellent rhythm section. That’s where Bradford got into the picture. Brad showed up without his guitar.
The host guitarist had no song list, an interesting circumstance for a jam session. (It’s possible he figured out handing us his song list was not a hero move.) He had earlier played his best material to an empty house. So when he decided he could repeat the tunes, he was asking the Prez & I to accompany him with songs we’d already heard him play. We aced it. Overall, I would say the house is now aware if it came to that, we could throw together a show at the last minute. At least two local lead players know it is useless to try taking over, though they rarely stop trying. We are invited back next week.
While it is unknown if this effort will get us any gigs at that location, we are certainly on the map now. Plus the Prez has seen a side of the business he only glimpsed before and additionally has seen how under my stewardship we are prepared for the pitfalls and errors. I got over an hour of excellent footage before my battery died. We played a total of 26 songs, that is, most of our list.
ADDENDUM
NASA has sent updates to the Voyager spacecraft, launched 46 years ago. They are still in working order. Earlier this year they passed out of the part of space influenced by the Sun, a realm called the heliosphere. Some say that means it has entered interstellar space, but that ignores the Oort cloud which seems to stay put. If so, then Voyager 1 won’t really leave the Sun’s influence for another 14,000 years minimum.
Remember those red LEDs I used to buy in packages of 500 for $8? They now carry a price tag of 40¢ each. Worse, I can’t find my package that was still mostly full.
