Why?
Been having a few issues with “The Beast” lately. “The Beast” is my PC. Of course, I’m a nerd and in order to make my PC sound rugged and manly, I have given it a testosterone-fuelled moniker. Actually, it’s more to do with the case – when constructing this PC, I ordered the biggest case they had and it is made of steel and weighs a fair bit. Of course, I breathed life into “The Beast” on the kitchen table and carried it upstairs to its final resting place. This is how it got its name because it was a beast of struggle humping that box to my little room. Weak arms. Pathetic.
“The Beast”
Anyway, since its birth in September 2001, “The Beast” has had two new motherboards and various add-ons to make it the monster it is today. The other day I noticed some files had disappeared off my hard drive. These were important files…pictures of my various trips abroad and writings and stuff. Gone. Nowhere to be found. Done a virus check, did a hard drive check. Nothing. Where did these files go? Gone were the backups of the various websites I’ve put up. Gone were the little memory aids I keep and the timesavers. All gone. Forgotten. Using an application called Undelete, I had a peek at that virtual graveyard where all the files go when they are gone. Despite what you might think, when you press delete, your files don’t go anywhere and they can remain on your PC for quite a long time before eventually being overwritten. Anyway, my searching uncovered some of the files, but the rest were lost. The mystery still remains what happened.
So…I took it upon myself to back up my important files and resintall Windows XP again. Hurrah! Let’s waste my time again (and again and again). Of course, I would love to defect to a Mac, but until they are as upgradeable and as flexible as PCs, I will stay here and moan and moan and moan. All this PCs support pisses me off. I hate wasting my time doing it when I could be wasting my time doing other things like searching for the cheapest place to buy a guitar that I am not actually going to buy. <---- That's the 21st Century version of window shopping you know. It's great because you can do it in your underpants and after hours and no-one will bother you.
I'm in a downward phase at the moment and the black cloud hangs at my shoulder. In the back of my mind I kind of wish for some life-shattering disaster to happen just to wake me up, just to make me grateful that I am who I am. But I am in this rut. Tired and feeling devoid of creativity, devoid of the energy to be creative and generally sorry for myself. Poor little diddums wants a kick up the jacksie. Indeed.
Been having thoughts about writing again. While doing all the virtual filing at the weekend, I came across the first ten chapters of my London novel, which is still ongoing. It was called "London Voices", but that might change to something pretentious like "The Touch of Consequence" or "24 Dreams of Modernity" or "Billy and the Cloneasaurus" (<---That last one is for Simpsons fans). I don't know. It all seems like BS to me. In the past it was about telling a story, but who wants to hear a story that everyone has already heard? Have all the best stories already been told? Even Billy Shakespeare was plagiaring other playrights. Gah, pull your finger out man and get back to the keyboard. Fool. So I read a little and I got thinking about writing something a little less poncy. Go back to the source. Write a story for teenage boys. I had this idea for something like that, but if I told you the synopsis, I'd have to kill you. Let's just say it involves life, death, a rock star and Elvis getting into a fight with Jim Morrison. I've got it all worked out in my head and it could be good fun. It's actually a murder mystery, but the protagonists don't realise that until the last couple of pages. :-) If only I had the energy to actually type it up.
Wait a minute, if you can type all this BS, you can write a novel, fuckwit! Oh dear...I just got busted.
In the post: Honeytrap - Leo Abrahams. I took a chance ordering this record on the strength of an interview I read in Guitarist magazine. He came across as a nice guy and had a similar outlook to music as myself. I should really write a review of it and post it places because I think it is a really good album. Unfortunately, when I put it into my PC it got classified as "Easy Listening" and no-one wants their listening to be easy, no? But Mr Abrahams has put an album together of intelligent, inspirational instrumental guitar-based music. Parallels can be drawn between my other guitar fave Henry Frayne and Lanterna and there's also a dash of Penguin Cafe Orchestra sensibility in there. It's very good, very good indeed. Feel free to check out samples at: http://www.justmusic.co.uk/store/TAO012/.
The CD packaging design is neat too, with Just Music (the label) commissioning individual artworks to feature on each of its releases. It’s not often I buy a record this satisfying, though I doubt other people will find it that interesting, and a good record, for me, is one that makes me want to pick up my guitar and start recording.
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The top search strings for this website for July 2005:
1 nookie bear
2 my-nude-album
3 ashbory bass
4 ashbory bass sound samples
5 cocksucker s diary
6 anderson sec 1 blog
7 ashbory
8 ashbory bass mp3
9 bone bomb mp3
10 computer webstore liverpool
11 cottaging blog
12 darren almond 15 minutes moon
13 darren lock
14 darren sharper 2005
15 electric six gay bay video
16 eno bone bomb mp3
17 how is postalservice and old age managed in nigeria
18 lyrics when everyone was here
19 my psp froze and i cannot shut it off
20 my squelchy life dr. dream
There are some interesting entries this month with cottaging making another entrance into the top 20, but nookie bear is still holding strong. Why o why are people coming here to look for Nookie Bear? It was only an off-the-cuff remark way back in March about the similarity between Sir Alan Sugar and Nookie Bear, but it keeps the Nookie Bear anoraks coming. Oh well, if I mention Roger De Courcey today that should really set their search engines alight!
Track Listing
1. Electric God MP3
2. Birdsong
3. Apathy
4. Control
5. Drifting
6. Coils of Sleep (including Lullabye)
7. Secret Son
8. Last Train to Leytonstone
9. Vision Thing
10. Devil’s Claw MP3
11. Timelapse
12. Eye Needles
13. Shot Myself in the Foot Again
14. Over the Horizon
It seems such a long time ago that I recorded this old thing. It was put together using my first four-track recorder made by Vestax, which was a huge clunky piece of kit that looked like something that would look at home in the former Soviet Union. The subsequent tracks were then mixed and recorded onto a fresh tape in my hi-fi.
Equipment used on this recording including my faithful Yamaha RGX guitar, my Encore bass, a marvellous Zoom 9000 guitar FX processor, a very old Casio keyboard, and a Yamaha 12-string guitar. There is also an appearance from a very out of tune mandolin too.
The sleeve itself was painted by me. OK – it is a slight homage to the King Crimson album “Discipline” but I am quite pleased with the results. I painted using acrylic paints onto transparency paper so I could get a very clean looking design.
Spent Saturday tidying my room and making sense of the all the mess. On Sunday, went to the local dump to offload an old monitor and printer that was no longer needed. Both of these items were too old/heavy to be sold on eBay.
The heavy head that came on me late yesterday remains today. It’s like a headache but not. Just a dull ache that’s causing me to frown and making hard to focus my eyes on anything. I’m sure it will pass.
Did some more recording yesterday afternoon and transformed the recent demo into this:
The new album has around 15 minutes already glued together with another 10 minutes in the box marked “shall we bother to include this?” I’ve been enjoying recording. It’s nice to get back in the saddle again, as it were.
A lot of people visit this website courtesy of Google looking for information about the Ashbory bass guitar. Seeing as I own one and there wasn’t a dedicated page before, I thought I’d cobble some information together for all you weary web travellers. Firstly, I got turned on to the Ashbory bass in 2000 when I saw it being used by Trey Gunn at a King Crimson concert. Expecting the instrument to cost thousands of pounds, I was surprised that you could pick one up new for around $200. At that time, there weren’t that many stockists in the UK selling the Ashbory Bass, but luckily I was visiting Los Angeles for my birthday in February 2001. A search on the web, brought up the details of Highland Park Music & Pawn. I got in touch with Doug the propreitor and arranged to pick one up on my visit. So for $200, I got myself a little bargain in black.
The Ashbory itself is a unique instrument. It is around half the size of a standard bass guitar, fretless and uses silicon rubber strings. It is the combination of the strings and the pickup that makes the unique sound – it is supposed to give you a similar tonal range to that of a regular upright fretless bass for a fraction of the price. I like the tone of the guitar, but there are issues that make it difficult to play. Firstly, it is the tuning. My instrument is always slipping out of tune, especially the “G” string. The “G” string is always the first one to snap too and it can be expensive to buy replacement strings. Luckily, I found a man on the net that sells replacement “G” strings for a fraction of the price.
Here are some pictures of my instrument:
Here are some sound samples I’ve recorded using my Ashbory:
Ashbory Links:
The Story of the Ashbory Bass
The DeArmond Website
The LargeSound Ashbory Bass Resource Page
Replacement Ashbory G-Strings
Every year I tune into the freak-fest that is Big Brother to see how Channel 4 has degraded the format. The very first series was an interesting social experiment, but now they tend to fill the house with people who are just too media-savvy for their own good. However, the really great thing about Big Brother is the betting culture that’s grown up around it. Every Friday, you can have a flutter on who is going. Every series there is at least a couple of good chances to make some money when the bookies get it completely wrong. Where else in a two-horse race can you get odds of nearly 5-1? Even if you do lose, the odds are too good to turn down and there’s always at least one eviction that catches the bookies out. I’ve been biding my time and waiting and last night, I took my chance. I had a flutter on Kemal getting the boot and my horse came in. I made a nice £50 out of the show. So who says that reality TV is rubbish? Not me. You’ve just got to find a way to make it work for you. 😉
Why o why o why o why do rock stars feel it necessary to cover the classics. This time it is Justin “I’m only 54, you know” Hawkins from the Darkness slaughters “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us”. Ha de har har…it’s so funny. And so post-modernly ironic as both Russell and Ron Mael appear in the video. This balding chipmunk should be taken out, horsewhipped within an inch of his life and then made to personally apologise to everyone who’s ever had the misfortune to hear one of his goddamn awful novelty records.
Apart from that little outburst, it has been a quiet day. 🙂