Eddie Van Halen (Left) is auditioning for a position in Iron Maiden. The legendary guitarist isn’t looking for a guitar gig though. He’s looking to replace the Iron Maiden mascot (right). Ironically Iron Maiden’s mascot’s name is….. Eddie.
I’m a “hired gun” today at the Park City Arts Festival. I play with a rock band on the big stage at the top of main street at noon.
I’ve played gigs with this band off and on for years, though I haven’t played with them lately. They sent me a set of CDs for me to review the tunes we’re playing. I checked the tunes out and made my notes for the gig so I’d be fairly prepared. Then they sent me a revised list and 3/4 of the tunes on the new list weren’t on the CDs and I haven’t heard them. So now, rather than being somewhat prepared I’m going into 3/4 of the gig with NO idea what I’m playing.
Sounds fun.
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X the band is in town tonight
I’m SO freaking excited. X (the band), one of the original punk bands and one of the best bands on the planet, is in the best venue in town TONIGHT.
The last X show here was amazing. They are SO tight, so good, so cool.
I got to meet their bass player/singer John Doe last year. Cool as hell guy and an amazing songwriter. I’m pulling strings to meet more members of the band and get back stage tonight.
I’m also excited because I’ll be enjoying this show with some really great friends.
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Newly repaired snare does the trick
Thanks to Sean for his work on fixing my new DW copper snare. Thankfully, at last night’s gig the throw off worked flawlessly.
Now I can honestly say that this new snare kicks f’n ass. It is quite possibly even MORE responsive than my old brass Ludwig (RIP). I’m a happy snare camper now.
Last night’s gig was great because my bass player who moved to Portland was in town to play. It’s SO much better when your bass player of 20+ years is there.
I bought a new video camera on the way to the gig and taped the show so we can give a DVD to any fill-in’s. That will be useful.
So at the last gig I was excited to try out my new copper DW snare drum. It wasn’t cheap but it was supposed to sound awesome. I chose it not only for it’s sound, but because the drum sales guy told me this would be a “durable drum which would last years of heavy gigging, even as hard as I play.”
I guess he was wrong because 30 seconds into the first song with this drum the f’ing throw off threw off. I thought I’d just whacked the throw off arm so I turned it back on. With each snare hit the throw off arm would go about 1/3 of the way off. So after 3 hits the damn thing would turn into a timbale, no snares…
Nice. I replaced a 35 year old Ludwig that worked perfectly at my gigs for two decades for a 2006 DW that lasted 30 seconds before it failed. I had to find some damn masking tape to tape the frigging throw off arm in the up position to finish the gig.
I’ve since had last year’s model throw off put on this thing so we’ll see if that can break the record and last, oh say ONE song?