Listen Carefully

As I travel back in time ( a regular occupation of mine) I'm soundtracked by Mr CBQ's History of Progressive Rock, Volumes 1, 2 and 3. More are due out on a daily basis, or so it seems. This is in addition to his other music sharing activities which cover a wide range of styles and tastes. So I'm revisiting past lives and haunts as this music runs in the background stimulating and exercising memory and recall. A lot of it sounds like something else, I didn't realise that at the first time of hearing but now I have layers of sound in my head. Such is the power of reflection. So I've nothing to fear from dementia or anything else, the benign patter of prog rock drum and based coupled with baffling lyrics, weird electric noises and sudden changes of pace bend and stretch the core areas of the brain and probe the soul to rise and paint pictures of faces and places and missed opportunities...or maybe it's just that strong coffee and a little too little sleep or the ritual disassembly of glued together IKEA furniture.

How we build

Some things get built in factories, some in yards, some in cottages. It all depends on the industry and the amount of exploitation that you are willing to endure. Also how desperate and hungry you are. Sad facts but these are the true lubricants of capitalism and what some might consider to be progress. My up-cycled guitars are built in the garden/garage/workroom; largely it depends on the weather. and that strange bed-fellow that is opportunity.  Here in the photo a Gibson/Baldwin Les Paul is getting a new neck and a new veneer skin on the headstock whilst sitting on my (so far) faithful B&D Workmate. All this is being done whilst avoiding various rainstorms and those naughty acts of god that regularly prevail round these parts.  New pickups are winging their way from some Chinese quarter as we speak, top quality parts are always used in any upgrade as you'll understand.

Last night's TV

Japan: I seldom watch regular TV these days, there's a repetitive blandness about it all that I can't be bothered with, anyway in a rare moment I accidentally stumbled upon Joanna Lumley's tour of Japan in glorious HD and strangely enough it was glorious. I only caught the last half hour, a victim of channel surfing but I may search for the first segments in slow time. The visuals, slow shots, colour and sharpness painted Japan in vivid, electric tones moving from soft landscapes to the hard details of temples, tall trees, snowy mountains and radioactive wastelands all captured beautifully while Joanna burbled her glowing narrative and purred her stunned reactions. It was a seductive piece of  filming and tourist baiting set at a high level, or maybe it was just plain cheesy, I don't quite no where one ends and the other begins. Ms Lumley, well into her sixties but still alluring remains the star of  the show, she has all the wide eyed wonder and enthusiasm of a convent girl out on her first school trip outside of England. Japan never seemed so attractive, pity that it's a tough destination to plan into any forthcoming  road trip.

The story of Indie: BBC4 had an endurance test style programme of made up Indie historicals rolling out all the craggy and balding pioneers of a sometimes dull and tuneless genre. There was a lot of good stuff but the most of the self indulgent dross is really bad Prog-Rock dressed in eighties clothes with added Ska or electronics to beef it up. I wonder where all the money went, money was never cool in that circle, too many idealists. Anyway I gave up after about 1130. Too much warped, grey haired nostalgia for me to take.

Anyone for tennis elbow?

I'm not a medical person, you may have guessed. I just think I have a sore left elbow from time to time. Mostly when I use it. The internet information seldom helps, there are too many options when you look for help. I was thinking that those long summer days in the heady 60s playing tennis with a splintered racket from Woolworths and the dog's ball (?) on the gravel in Rosyth had finally caught up on me.  Hand to eye coordination? None really. Of course I was no good and have religiously avoided the sport for years though I did play a lot of summer time campsite badminton for a bit. I guess it's all catching up but then what if it is golfer's elbow? There's a bit of a stigma attached to such an injury i.e. the suggestion of once playing golf, sticky social mobility and bad trousers, I'm not quite there yet. Could it also be bass guitarist's elbow or gear change elbow? Beer swilling elbow? Black and Decker elbow? Wanker's elbow? Nah! It's the left elbow anyway. Probably just a bad case of people of a certain age's wonky parts getting worn and time to reach for the ibuprofen or some other cheap medicine from Aldi, that and some minor alterations to my lifestyle such as avoiding tennis matches and courts.

Problem solved

I bought a seven guitar guitar stand from a nice bloke in China to hold at least seven of the numerous guitars I'm either putting together for future sale or actually using in order to play for (some kind of weird) pleasure. It was relatively easy to assemble and even easier to stand the guitars up in, all at a peculiar angle. It does however take up a bit more floor space than I has imagined. Imagine that. Perhaps it's better to consider it as a piece of furniture that can be moved around as required rather than as a permanent storage unit stuck in one set lace. Of course if I got up of my arse, got my up-cycled guitar shop started properly I might well sell some of these and thereby solve the problem. That is of course both overly optimistic and completely unrealistic.

Saving the world one bee at a time

OK, it's not overly impressive but a spoonful of sugar at the right time and in the right place may just save the life (temporarily) of one of your friendly neighbourhood bees. Not sure why, with all the daft superheroes bouncing around on film and in comics nobody as yet has been stung by a radioactive bee and so received super powers. These powers would obviously include the ability to fly albeit somewhat erratically, buzz very loudly, be annoying at picnics, get mistaken for a wasp, gather huge amounts of pollen and require regular pit stops for sugary water. You can probably tell the scripting of this may need quite a bit of work. As for the costume, not an easy design even for the best artists out there.

Right now

So what am I thinking about right now?

Breakfast and a shower, most likely breakfast first which will be porridge, banana and syrup. The shower should mainly form warm water, soap and no porridge whatsoever.

Partner gone to work. Traffic.

Guitar pickups: I put two new Warman Humbuckers on an old Les Paul copy. They work really well and importantly worked and fitted first time with only a tiny bit of tweaking being required. No drama.

Weather forecasts, even though it seldom stops me doing things I still zoom in on today's weather.

Instagram. What are people taking pictures of today and will there be any good ones offered up for one dimensional approval via the little red heart?

Last night's fishy leftovers (?), salad with a really good dressing and of course well sliced, tasty tomatoes.

A phone call or email from a prospective employer, so many things that are promised but take far longer than they should to arrive.

Road trip and Amazon delivery.

And then there's the blurry edges, between the real and the imagined, sitting considering the pale light of day and the hazy recollections of a distant night time and what might have passed by or been experienced in a few hours of sleep but is now remote and forgotten.

Cloudfest

Here are a few pre-Poldark clouds from Sunday evening: Sometimes clouds are pretty dull, sometimes they are interesting. You never really tell what you're going to get until you take a little time, stop and look upwards. Commonplace as they are they still make strangely compulsive viewing unlike Council TV. "Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air..." They've been blocking the sun for some time but I guess that's part of their job, if they didn't we'd be in a mess, or even more of a mess. I'm just glad that Michelangelo was astute enough to invent them back in the Renaissance or at the dawn of time or whenever, I can't be precise on this. Too young and not observant enough.

Maggies 16

We had a good time last night playing and participating in the 2016 "Song for Maggies" charity benefit gig.  The venue was the Sailing Club at Dalgety Bay; cheap drink, free food and the fine company of a group of skilful musicians and enthusiastic supporters. I've no idea how much money was raised, but I'm sure it will be a decent amount. Some great original material was aired along with a variety of covers, two of the highlights being a mother and son performing "Parklife" with gusto and our Norman's spirited rendition of "You can call me Al". Thanks to Neil Drummond for putting the whole thing together and paying us in bottled beer and a unique copy of "Band of Gypsies" on vinyl.

Neil takes command.

Stills from Ghibli

"Meditation in the still of the grey dawn as the lake holds back on that vital answer."

"Moon talks to grasses, grasses ignore the moon."

"She's gone all catatonic for no reason."

"Completely losing track of which planet I'm on at the moment. I'm sure that it'll all come back to me in time."

"That was one mean blast of heat, didn't even see it coming. Things are still standing however."

Taking random stills in no particular order from Studio Ghibli's Princess Kaguya on TV on Film 4. Quite interesting in their own haphazard way. Things taken from their context and planted apart can quickly take on other meanings if you allow them to. As you might imagine it takes a few shots and few deletions to capture something that looks close to OK.

Sonic confusion

Or possibly and more accurately, perpetual art of continued sonic confusion. What is best? Valves or transistors or digital or acoustic or what? What if it's all really just in your fingers like Jeff Beck (a theory I've always liked to think I've subscribed to) or is it really that (playing live) most guitars sound pretty shit really and it's only the magic of studio rendering and witch doctor type of spells that fixes anything? Fabulous mistakes where solos end on that awkward wrong note (Miles Davies said "it's the note that you play next that matters).  Hmm... as Frank Zappa said to Steve Vai (people seem to say a lot of things about tone) "your playing is great but your tone is like a ham sandwich". Me? I'm more in the Marmite on toast tonal zone with a little porridge on the side, quite comfortable in there really.

Just reflecting on the fact that most of my musical references are set from forty years ago or by people long dead and gone. That looks dangerously out of time however I do subscribe to Pro-Guitar Shop's latest tonal suggestions, hints and advice when ever I can. The trouble is most modern equipment is hell bent on replicating the "classic" sounds from the golden age of whatever genre happens to be mentioned.

Neil Young's wonderful, ramshackle rig, as you might have guessed.

Early morning trees

Mrs GB drove out and caught the sun in it's usual wake up place earlier this morning whilst I was still snoozing. Welcome September and all that you might bring. It's been a long, enjoyable and busy summer.

Maltese Falcon

Today's quirky adventures have mainly consisted of attending a job interview and "are you reasonable person" assessment (quite interesting and generally good fun), cleaning out the garage and watching the Maltese Falcon in a kind of stop/go piecemeal fashion. Black and white, film noire films are a bit of a guilty pleasure and my knowledge on them is...incomplete. Anyway you can see from the poster above that this story is as "explosive as his blazing automatics", not sure how strong a sales strap line that is but it proved to be an interesting diversion and an excuse to quaff some mid-afternoon red wine.

Last days of summer

Limekilns and Charlestown, the tide's out and all is still as the sun sinks slowly in the West. Warm and peaceful and we've just had a big meal of fish and chips at the nearby Ship Inn.

Sunny afternoon in Dunfermline Glen rose garden. A solitary and amorous pigeon is perched on a bench awaiting his ladylove who is over in the trees. She appears to be experiencing mood swings of some sort and is unwilling to join him. I'm just killing time waiting on as new exhaust pipe being fitted to my car. 

Broke

It seems we broke a bit of the internet and drank a lot of beer and wine this weekend. It's all a bit of a blur to me. Perhaps I'm just getting things a bit out of proportion. I thought it went rather well. Good photos here...

Porridge

Porridge for breakfast again this morning, generally speaking a small tub topped up with a banana and syrup keeps me going all day. This graphic pretty much covers the effect.

Minor modifications

Control cavity as was, note there's no shielding here at all.

On a more practical and less artistic note ( no pyrography) I changed the pickups in an old lightweight (Korean?) bass today. I've had these Jazz Bass pickups lying around for a while and having not got round to using them anywhere else a transplant operation seemed in order. First trick is to photo the wiring as is, just in case there's some weird thing going on to trip me up. Turns out there wasn't so after a small amount of screwing, rewiring and soldering (with no burned finger tips) it was good to go.  Actually it sounds fine now, it was a bit thin and dull previously. I had also changed the bridge and so improved the action a few weeks ago, now it's time to leave it alone, that is unless I get some strange desire to use it.

Unfortunate situations with contractors

Staring into the void i.e. the black hole of a redundant firefighter's pole trap door (rapid descent for the use of). The fire station is now a cafe and arts lab.

Few things in life go smoothly, transactions get mixed up or delayed, messages are lost or failed to be relayed or a phone remains unanswered or an email never arrives. Just trying to get a wooden garden gate built to size via eBay probably wasn't the best idea ever ... maybe the best method would be to just plant a tree, watch it grow, chop it down, cut it up into pieces and then slowly, over time, fabricate a useful gate of sorts.

You are at position one

Apparently I'm currently at position one in "this queue" and I must wait to be connected. This has gone on for a while, like some strange test of wills, patience and stamina but I'm still at position one. Call centres present a bleak version of modern life, long and mechanised, scripted and unbreakable with the key outcome being frustration. Designed by those seeking the most economic contact solution with the minimum of possible interaction, a doomsday pill to fix the problem no one is free to discuss. The queue and the music drone on and imagination takes over. Perhaps there is only one position and it is one and many others are also here or there, bundled awaiting connection but bound to fail.  We are the callers, trying to call those too busy to listen, so we languish at position one for long periods of time and eventually a single noted tone rings out ominously and we are all disconnected with no new options - until the next attempt comes around.

Difficult child revisited

Regards yesterday's troublesome guitar, the simple answer was to change the neck. In retrospect I was using a neck that fitted and looked ok but was damaged or warped enough to screw up everything, when you're beat you are just plain beat sometimes. The new, lighter neck immediately resolved all the problems and niggles I had and the guitar is now much more playable and there's still some room for further, finer adjustment. Fine adjustment is not my strong point, patience and care being required and sometimes my stamina in those areas wears thin but I guess I'm learning and each instrument I've now put together has given me valuable experiences that I must remember not to forget.