So I order some envelopes from my usual office supply vendor. Imagine my surprise when a box of padded envelopes do not arrive, but a whiteboard for office presentations turns up instead. So I duly inform them of the error and they tell me I can keep the whiteboard (whoo-hooo!) and a new box of envelopes will be dispatched. Now I have no need for a whiteboard, I scribble all my insane plans for world domination on a standard post-it note usually, so I am wondering what I can do with this large item. Anyone want a free whiteboard? I’m hoping that my faithful office supply company messes up and mistakenly delivers an Xbox 360 instead…but somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?
Then I decide that I need to restock on some guitar supplies. I’ve just received my $45 from CDBABY for all the songs I’ve sold electronically and I’m feeling kinda flush. So I order some bass strings, some guitar strings, some polish for my new guitar, boring guitar stuff. I hit the payment button and the website bums out. I try two more times and nothing – no payment processing. Then I receive an email today telling me that it was my fault and that my credit card details were wrong – no, no, no…the error message said something about “failure to connect to the database” not “Darren bleeped up”. I replied I told them about their glitch. Then this afternoon I had some sales spod from that shop trying to contact me on the phone. The hard sell, eh?
Internet shopping isn’t supposed to be like this, is it?
In the post: Christmas cards. Not really for me, but I married the popular one, so I get to share the cards. Whoopsie-fricking-doodle.
Worked on “No Concessions” (working title) last night and used a load of EQ on the drum pattern to turn it into a bass drum only track in order to let the psuedo-acoustic guitars breathe. It’ll do. Textures II is now in the region of 17 minutes long with a further possible seven minutes committed to disk in various formats. Not really sure if this is working out too well. Hmmmm…I think that I am thinking to much and not doing nearly enough. C’mon where’s that gut instinct you bleat on about, you imbecile.
Today, had an unpleasant accident. Not revealing further details because:
1) It was unpleasant
2) It was an accident
Just making a note of it here for future reference, so I can say: “It was on 7 December 2005 that I had that unpleasant accident”.
Latest Entries »
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.
As a record buyer it is very easy to succumb to “remaster fatigue”. I don’t know how many times, like a slavish dog, I’ve dribbled to buy the latest edition of my favourite record. In this case, there was very little stopping me buying this album. The reason was that this remaster featured two discs: one a standard remastered CD and a second DVD-Audio version of the classic album remixed in 5.1 surround sound.
Queen was the first band I ever got into. I think it was because throughout my childhood my breakfast times were marked by listening to Radio 1 and it seemed like every morning I heard “Seven Seas of Rhye”, “Killer Queen”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Don’t Stop Me Now”, “Bicycle Race”, etc. And so I was almost preprogrammed to like the band. Probably the greatest rock compilation “Queen – Greatest Hits” is technically my first album (if you discount John Williams’ score to “Close Encounters/Star Wars/ET” that I purchased on the Music for Pleasure label or the “Russ Abbott Madhouse” cassette that my nan bought me for Xmas). When I was dying of pneumonia at 13 years old (it was Christmas 1984 – I remember it well as the news was full of Rick Allen losing an arm and a few years later I bought the abysmal Def Leppard album “Hysteria” out of misplaced solidarity), I had two albums with me to get me through the experience of having my lungs drained and being put on the cancer ward to watch geriatric men die in their sleep. The two records were “Queen – Greatest Hits” and “The Works”, which I played in rotation on my old mono tape recorder. It wasn’t until the following Christmas that I received “A Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races” as my Xmas present. I must have worn those cassettes out. Anyway, I digress…
Now I am not the biggest fan of surround sound albums. I think that rock music is probably best heard in stereo and many surround sound mixes that I’ve heard have been very busy, concentrating on guitars or sound FX whizzing past your ears and generally being as distracting as an errant wasp trying to land in your pint of cider. Not so with this album. A Night at the Opera is probably the pinnacle of Queen’s studio experiments and the producers of this DVD-A have done a very tasteful job of using the 5.1 speakers. The wall of overdubbed vocals that are synonymous with Queen are put behind you and allow the listener to concentrate on the instruments. For me, this worked really well as it was like listening to a new album.
OK – sometimes guitars do fly all over the place, but if you are familiar with the record, tracks like “Death on Two Legs”, “The Prophet Song” and “Good Company” lend themselves to audio trickery greatly. The DVD itself doesn’t just rely on clever audio, as each song is accompanied by a visual presentation made up of band performances, photos taken from the time and old black and white Pathe footage. It works really well and it is like watching a video album, even though it has been constructed around the music at a later date. I greatly enjoyed the visuals and allowed for repeated viewings/listenings.
The DVD-Audio disc also features interviews with the band about the making of the album. It’s a bit like the extras on a movie DVD and the band provide a commentary to each track. Again, this is extra value added to an old album and you learn a lot about the record too.
The packaging has been expanded from the original album and my only complaint is the awful plastic slipcase that surrounds the digipak. It fits so tightly that it can be difficult to slide on or off (insert suitable double entendre here) and if you have no fingernails like me, it can be a frustrating time just getting the set out of its packaging.
For the £10.99 I paid for this, I think for once, it was money well spent and I recommend it to any Queen fan wishing to revisit the past – it’ll also make a nice stocking filler for the Queen fan in your life.
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:
https://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!