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. 

A difficult child.

The "Lone Wolf" single Seymour Duncan Humbucker Strat is proving to be a hard guitar to complete. The neck simply isn't right and I'm getting more and more frustrated over trying every possible thing to adjust it all correctly. At the moment it's playable but only within a certain limited tolerance. I've done all the fiddling and balancing  I can to the bridge, tremolo settings and truss rod but I just can't get the correct result between all the possible options. A new or different neck looks to be the best solution at the moment; more time wasted but more lessons learned. This is one difficult child to deal with and the only answer may well be to start again with another neck.

Ben Vrackie

The Ben from a safe distance. 

Lunch stop loch.

It's a steep and rocky 700m climb and 6 mile hike  to the top but it's not a Munro it's a Corbet. Ben Vrackie east of Pitlochry was today's outdoor challenge and it fairly puggled me out. The weather was great almost all the way to the top but on arrival the top suddenly became a near icy, blasted place; amazing how the weather changes so suddenly. Anyway back home safe now, a shower and some rehydration makes all the difference...headed for the couch.

French Onion Soup

It seems I've reached that peculiar stage of life where I'm prone to strong cravings for French Onion Soup. This has been going on for a few days growing slowly stronger. At first I ignored it as if was an invasive religious type of experience or possibly some weird and unpleasant sexual deviation arriving from nowhere. It however has persisted and thankfully at the moment seems related to neither of the possible causes mentioned. It may be I'm just feeling a little sympathy for the French, something to do with own rejection of any Brexit thinking and French comfort behaviours coming to the surface. Perhaps I'm just in need of a big dose of onions and a good dousing in their magical healing and restorative properties, facts the Romans knew all about. The other odd thing is rather than buy a tub of it or get some in one of those foodie influenced designer cartons I've decided to make it myself, from scratch and even consulted a recipe book. This is something I never do; recipe books gather large amounts of dust in this house despite being freely available to read and even consult. So I've got the ingredients, all I need to do is take my time and get on with it. I just hope it fills this nagging, empty void in my....someplace.

Living a small part of the dream

Whilst exploring the exhibits at NASA Cape Canaveral I touched a piece of Moon rock a few weeks ago little realising that if you want to touch Mars (and there's no need to queue) all you do is visit the shopping mall in Orlando airport. Easy done, so that's saved me x Billion $  and added three years to my life. How did they get that rock back from Mars or is there some dark mystery here? The volunteer form has been ritually torn up. 

I bought these tools a couple of years ago whilst in a speculative kind of irrational or possibly stupid mood. They served no purpose then and they still don't but they might soon but just to clarify things I hope that I never need to use them either in anger or good humour. It's a bit like that.

Back to the bench

A welcome return to some guitar fiddling and making final corrections. I did some adjustments and added an ashtray to #Smaug2. The ashtray does actually help a bit, it's been years since I played any Telecaster with one, they simply didn't look cool so were generally discarded by players. They still aren't cool but it's a useful hand rest and kinda makes the guitar look a bit different.

Masked and protectively taped for some final sanding along with wood dye and teak oil touch up. 

This (Dragon) Tele needed the neck height changed so it was unceremoniously removed and built up again using about 1/8" of veneer. Basically a thin wood and glue sandwich to push up the neck (due to neck-pocket damage) so that the bridge could be let down and so that the pickup clearance increased (what you get when you use recycled and battered guitar bodies). This took a lot of strain from the bridge adjustment and has made the action better. Sometimes it's good to build a guitar and then just leave it a while to consider what extra help it may need as it settles, none of them ever turn out right first time, it's always down to the last little pieces of tinkering.

Not a doughnut

A sliced apple topped with peanut butter and chocolate is not a doughnut.

Monday's Post

Life skill hacks: Lovely and useful mash up based on good advice from NASA at Cape Canaveral and a Harry Potter / Professor Snape fridge magnet.

The best recovery method from possible jet-lag appears to be a) stay up all day after your return b) be distracted (go out, lark about etc.) c) eat a hearty meal and drink a bottle of red wine then d) go to bed around your normal time and then wake up as if quickly recovering from a car crash the next day. Result so far, no headache, chronic tiredness or irritable old bastard syndrome. What I didn't consider was the headache potential created by the strain of trying to recall how the TV remote works, what kitchen cupboards contain what items and how to drive a manual car.

Marker Post

Just back, jet lagged and tired but being well looked after. Head too fuzzy to type much so this is really no more than a marker post. I was on here today but conscious only briefly. More amusing and far reaching takes on the Charles Atlas "insult" here.