You are allowed to enjoy this…

Stupid boy! I forgot to include the demo I had recorded last night.

This marks the introduciton of the Godin XTSA guitar into my permanent setup. It is my first “solo” recorded with that guitar. Well I like it and I don’t care if no-one else does. 🙂

I hate those days when you wake with a headache and it stays with you until you go to bed. That was yesterday and no matter how many pills I took, the headache lingered. I spent some time getting my “Dead Rock Star” campaign together and going through the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook finding publishers and agents. There aren’t that many publishers accepting unsolicited manuscripts, so I am approaching more agents. Of course, I could send out introductory letters trying to drum up some interest, but the way things are reading, getting an agent is the way in. So I have prepared seven folders to go out. Each folder is tailor-made for each agent/publisher with an introductory letter, synopsis, brief biog and the various amount of pages requested by each approachee. Some want the first three chapters, some want four, some want 30 pages, some want 50 pages, etc. So each folder is individual and personalised.
Of course, I am a dummy and I forgot to order any envelopes the other day and so I have these yellow folders cluttering up my room. Another delay in the campaign. Ho hum. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I am more likely to pass a solid gold bicycle from my bottom than get this book published, but you have to try. And believe me, I am very trying.
Yesterday evening, did some recording with the new guitar. The piece isn’t finished yet and is more just a way of me getting used to the new instrument and ease myself back into the creative process of soloing. When I am returning to recording after a long period, I often just put down a simple chord sequence and do my best to solo/improvise over the top of it. For me, this is a way of loosening myself up and it helps me re-learn my guitar neck. Sometimes a good performances presents itseelf like it did last night. On the third pass, I came up with this very workable solo. However, for the piece to now work, I need to re-record the bass and possible the rhythm guitars to fit with the new solo. This is how I work…a series of happy accidents…broad strokes…refinements…smudges and smears…blowing the dust from the canvas…a final touch and…viola…there is music!
In the post: nothing. I think the postman is ignoring me. Mind you, I think my new glasses have impressed him. He even made eye contact with me the other day and did the “Alright?” nod of the head that men that don’t know each other too well do to each other to acknowledge the other’s presence.
Talking of the new glasses, I am worrying that they are actually making my eyesight worse. When I don’t wear them, things look even more blurry than they did before. On the good side, my permanently twitching eye seems to have cleared up completely. I think it must have been eye strain that was causing that.

1 robert fripp love cannot bear
2 twitchy eye
3 ashbory bass
4 nookie bear
5 fripp love cannot bear
6 love cannot bear
7 erotic ironing
8 kate bush
9 ashbory strings
10 ashbory
11 bill mccormick phil manzanera
12 cocksucker blues mp3
13 malcolm xerxes
14 psp umd region code hack
15 fission trip
16 love cannot bear fripp
17 robert fripp – love cannot bear
18 darren lock
19 doctor darren lock
20 emperor dalek
Last month Robert Fripp dominated the search string chart with 5 separate entries, knocking the chart mainstay Nookie Bear from the dominating position. Well done, Mr Fripp. Also making a good impression on the chart is ashbory bass and Kate Bush. Search entries for me could only limp in at the bottom of the chart, which is most disappointing.
Now this month’s Google Mindfuck is:
I’m a Celebrity’s Jenny Frost in lesbian gangbang with Carol Thatcher and Jilly Goolden with Sid Owen sitting on Bobby Ball’s face with the ghost of George Best being fellated by the woman who had the first face transplant.
That should really generate some big, big traffic.

Not a bad day at all. The black toner cartridge finally arrived for my laser printer so I set about printing all 248 pages of my novel. It’s in a folder now and I am lovingly stroking it. I would have posted a picture but who wants to see a bundle of paper? Just got to sit down and decide who I am going to approach first. Not that many publishers accept unsolicited manuscripts these days, so I have my work cut out for me. Anyhow, I have already prepared myself for rejection. I am a useless worthless cunt and my novel is insipid, boring and borders the line of trash fiction. Using this as a foundation of my writing persona, I can take on just about anything. I remember sending novels off before, when I was a younger man. I did have a pile of rejection slips somewhere; trophies with which to remember each failure. Failure is nothing to be afraid of. To try and fail is an achievement in itself than not trying at all. Or something. I don’t know what I am talking about. 🙂
The other good thing was that I checked by payments schedule from CDBABY and the quarterly payments for digital downloads have come in. Whoo-hoo! I netted myself an incredible $45 in downloads…and for each track downloaded or played I get something between 90 cents and 10 cents, so you do the math. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be able to give up my day job as a professional dreamer? I jest, of course. I think this rise in payments has come about because more and more digital download companies are affiliated to CDBABY and more people are downloading my stuff by mistake. Poor fools. Will they ever learn?
In the post: A NIght at the Opera 30th Anniversary Edition. Always a big fan of this album. Queen were my first favourite band when I was about 12 years old. We audited the DVD audio disc in 5.1 Dolby surround and it is rather spiffy. So much so, that I am planning on penning a review. For £10.99 this is one reissue well worth having.

Recently, I’ve been able to download two illicit DVD-quality recordings of the Van der Graaf Generator concerts that happened earlier in the year. I attended one, but gave the second one a miss because it occured the day after the tube bombings and I wasn’t in the mood to get pumped up for it and engage with the music. Seeing the two performances, I can see that the second show was a lot more muted – a lot of the energy displayed at the first show seemed to have disappeared. Anyway here’s a clip for all you fans of Sleepwalkers being performed at the Royal Festival Hall. The funny thing is that when I burn these DVDs and watch them on my big TV, I immediately want to throw up because of the “shakicam” effect. However, on a smaller screen, on my PC, they look fine.
Had to remove the video clip because of bandwidth restrictions…sorry!
Also, someone contacted me today singing the praises of my music. It’s nice when these words plop into my inbox. I think I get one virtual pat on the back a year for my musical noodlings. Here’s an extract:

“Was checking out more of your music at cdbaby. I am not too free with compliments, and a lot of today’s new music and a lot of today’s new artists and musicians don’t impress me whatsoever. But I have to say your music is really incredible! I did not realize you were that good!”

That was nice. I like that. It gives me the energy to approach my guitar again. And for those stray readers who might have missed it the first time, you can download a whole CD of music from this site and even print your own CD sleeves. Just visit:
http://www.darrenlock.com/mt/archives/2005/10/easy_listening.html
Talking of making music, last night I was noodling around with my guitar and I leant forward to make some adjustments to one of my effects units. As I leant back again, my chair moved from out of me, sliding backwards (because it is an office style chair with castors) and I was caught off balance. I crashed to the floor, cracking my shoulder on the wheelbase of the chair. As I plummeted, my instinct was to protect my new, expensive, snazzy guitar – so I held it aloft. I lay there for a moment, breathless, slightly winded and wincing in pain. Luckily there was no major injury or damage to the guitar, but boy do I have a sore left shoulder today. Yowser!

With the novel “done”, I am feeling at a loose end. I guess now I’ve got to concentrate on my real work. The last couple of months have been fun because I had something to concentrate on. It’s good to have a project going and giving it your total attention.

I’ve been thinking that I should be recording some more music now, but my muse just isn’t with me. I just can’t find a way back into that at the moment, which is a terrible shame as I have this fantastic new guitar. The Godin XTSA really is the guitar of my dreams. It does everything I want and has enough quirks to make you re-think your playing. For example, the marker dots on the neck are positioned so that you can’t see them clearly. With the neck scale being slightly shorter (I think) than my regular guitar and the fret markers off-centre, out of eye-line, I finding that I am making more mistakes when I play. I think this is good because it is making me refocus my mind slightly and pay more attention to my instrument, rather than just playing on auto-pilot.

I might even do a review of the instrument to put in my gear section. It truly is a wonderful instrument and I realise I should have bought a Godin a long, long time ago. I’ve also been thinking about doing another podcast, but I can’t think of a topic. The closest I came was to do a broadcast about looping and some of the techniques you can use to create ambient noodlings. I don’t know if this would be interesting enough though.

Of an evening, we managed to create a new game using the two dogs. The Missus goes ahead with my mother’s dog, Cappy, and me and Alex the Wonderdog give them a head start. Alex then bombs after them following the scent. Alex is not the best walker in the world, in fact he’d rather just lie on the sofa all day (yes, all day…that’s why we call him the Wonderdog because we wonder how he can be so lazy) and now Alex has found new vim and vigour chasing his tiny rival. Oh well, it passes the time.
Here’s a joke that we often tell about Alex the Wonderdog: if he had his own reality TV show it would be called Bone Idol. Think about it. 😉

Gratuitous Alex the Wonderdog shot because I know his cute looks always elicit a comment.

So after a gargantuan, nay Herculean, effort I managed to get “Dead Rock Star” to 70,000 words. Oh well, I was aiming for 77,000 but what can you do about it. The story had been told; anymore wordage would be padding. So now I’ve written my introductory letter, the synopsis of my novel and gone through “The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook” getting the details of publishers and agents.
So last night, I sits down to start printing out all 248 pages of this carefully constructed, double-spaced magnum opus and horror of horrors, my laser printer informs me that I need a new black toner cartridge. Fuck and bugger. So after spending another £40 I simply can’t afford, I order a new toner cartridge. Printing will have to wait for now and my campaign to upset publishers and agents will have to wait. While moaning and complaining to The Missus about how shit modern technology, I remarked about my trust old Brother M-1109 printer that I bought in 1987 and which used to print my very first short stories all those years ago. Moan, moan, moan…
Anyway, it’s only when you write a synopsis of your novel that you realise just how crap and preposterous it all is. This is shit, you think. This is so fucking shit. Who’s going to want to publish this? Who’s going to want to read it? Oooooooh why did I bother? Why didn’t I just throw myself under the train when I had the chance, etc? This is part of the process, I guess. Then there’s the upset when the postman delivers rejection letters and unread copies of your manuscript.
In the post: five years of bank statements from the Abbey. Not sure why, but they sent me all of this information, but it is virtually useless as none of the entries actually feature the year, only the date and month. Why o why? I guess this must relate to my account being “reactivated” by the bank last month, despite the fact that I had been successfully using it for the past five years. Banks and money leaves me confused and bewildered.
Alex the Wonderdog got so excited about barking at the neighbour’s meals-on-wheels delivery that he actually became aroused (not bad for a dog with no knackers), something that only usually happens when he starts begging for his dinner.
What a wonderful life I’ve got.