I need to post this and get it off my chest…

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Lyrics first, video is at the end, in case you decide to skip it.

Dying days of despair
Are the mirrors of pain
The glass in which I stare
Are slowly building a palace in my mind
Where the memories breeds my fear
With halls of mourning and with walls of bitter loss

The world around me dies
As the seasons change
The water turns to ice
And another year will push the past
Further back into forgetfulness
Among the moments never to return again

Lives are spread by the wind
Growing further apart
Can’t return what has been
I will never again touch those winters
Or the shadows of the fall
Never the innocence, the light of each day

Tell me now, where’s the end to our strive?
Shattered life, the point where freedom dies
Behold my eyes, can’t you see I’m terrified?
Desperate holding on to a distant time

Life Shatters

Lives are spread by the wind
Growing further apart
Can’t return what has been
I will never again touch those winters
Or the shadows of the fall
Never the innocence, the light of each day

So paint the edge with tears
Of a perished emotion
A wound so severe
And much too deep to be erased
By the healing hands of time
That life has withered, and is gone forevermore

Home from Atlantic City after seeing Heaven and Hell. Great show. All of these guys are living legends, and without exaggerating, there’s probably at least 100 years of combined musical experience among them. Geezer and Iommi have been in Sabbath from the start (altho there was a gap in Geezer’s membership), Dio was with Rainbow from the start, and Vinnie was been with Sabbath when Dio came on-board.

Although they didn’t headline, a local (PA) band named Halestorm opened.

Took some pix, and tried to take a vid, but my cellphone camera (Palm Centro) isn’t really that fantastic, so everything came out pretty lousey. CJ took some pix, but it’ll be a few days before I can get a copy of those. I’m not even gonna bother with the vid, cause it’s all blown out, light and music.

But here are two pix for you to enjoy. Or even if you don’t enjoy, here are two pix anyways. One thing I am impressed with is the respect they all give each other on-stage. Dio doesn’t take the spot from Iommi, and Iommi gives the stage to Dio, and all of them recognized Geezer’s and Vince’s solos. You can see Dio in front here on the first pic.

Then Dio backs off for Tony to play a solo.

It was an age range, from the “too old to rock and roll, too young to die” group to the 20somethings. I wanted seats, so I got balcony seating, but the majority of people in the balcony were pretty dull. All the energy was in general admission on the floor. The women sitting in front of me even turned around and told me to cool it. Well. Aren’t we the mature lass?

Got body-checked when Vince tossed his drum-sticks up to the balcony. It was IN MY HAND, and the guy next to me slammed me. I still have the mark. Couldn’t get any of Iommi’s picks, tho, they were too light to be thrown up into balcony. Tried to scour the floor afterwards, but that offered no joy.

And finally, we didn’t gamble either. We checked out the craps tables (three of them) at the Showboat, where the House of Blues is, but man, talk about no energy there, either.

Kinda excited. Going to Atlantic City this weekend to see Heaven & Hell at the House of Blues.

FWIW, this is basically the same band as the Dio-fronted Sabbath. Dio did three albums with Sabbath, but at the moment I can only recall Heaven and Hell and The Mob Rules. I guess they can’t call themselves Sabbath? So I guess this is more of a “reunion” kind of thing. Apparently the only person not playing is Bill Ward, who chose not to participate.

I had wanted to go see them at MSG this past Tuesday, but the logistics just didn’t work out. The doors opened at 7pm, and so we would have had to catch a 5pm train into NYC. That would give us no time to eat before the show. Either that, or we’d have dinner and that would mean we would miss the opening act, which was Coheed and Cambria. I would have liked to see them, but what can you do?

So we opted for the Atlantic City show instead, which apparently does not have an opening act. Oh well. So to kinda get me in the mood, I looked on YT for some 2009 videos:

Check Iommi, he’s got awesome stage presence. He’s a fantastic guitarist, but he’s not arrogant. Iommi is the only member of Sabbath who’s been with the band from the beginning to now, he could definitely have a case of ego, but it doesn’t look like it.

Figure it out *shrug*

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I posted this as a comment on Miyaws blog, but I decided to post it here.

Sung to “Where have all the flowers gone”; see below if you’re not familiar with the song.

Where have all the GMs gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the GMs gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the GMs gone?
They have left us and now they’re gone
When will we see them return?
When will we see them return?

Beware, long and potentially boring material ahead. Feel free to close this window, I won’t even know! Of course, in just over 24 hours, Happy Hearts will begin, and I’m sure I’ll be distracted by that, which means a brief respite in my inane postings; aren’t you glad? And the way I’ve been behaving lately, I’ll probably get disciplined by the GMs. They’ll turn me into a frog or something.

Today, the Hello Kitty guitar picks I recently ordered arrived. And wouldn’t you know it, about two hours after I placed this order, I found one of my other picks. That’s my kind of luck. Well, I know there are others floating around, and you really need more than one, so it wasn’t an unnecessary purchase.

I’ve placed my other pick in perspective, which is just a standard medium gauge tortoise-shell pick. The HK picks are of the same size and gauge. Six of white, six of pink, and the back is the same on all. If you look closely at the pink one here, you might think that it is blurry. It is actually that rippled finish that changes the image depending on the angle.

They are fairly nice, almost too cute to actually use. And they’re medium gauge, so they have a nice firm bend. They feel like a different material, or may it is just that finish, so I don’t know how they’ll hold up to heavy picking.

But the saga will continue. When I was noodling with my bass, I was having a horrific time with the intonation. I tuned it, using both the 5th fret and open string method, and the 5th harmonic and 7th harmonic. But when I was playing, it sounded horribly out of tune. At that point, you have to look at the neck. And BOY was it seriously bowed. I’m ashamed that I didn’t notice the horrible bow.

Most guitars have a truss rod inside the neck, which adjusts the bend of neck, to make it flat. So you just crank it up or down. Not too much, because it’s possible to snap the rod, and then you’re looking at buying a new neck. The instrument needs to be stringed and relatively tuned, otherwise the neck won’t have the proper tension to adjust.

Once the neck is re-tensioned, you’ve really changed the the performance  of the bass, and now you have to adjust the bridge. You need to bring the strings up or down so they’re parallel with the fretboard. No hard rules of thumb, just no buzzing and a comfortable fretting. You shouldn’t need to muscle the string to fret it.

After the string heights are adjusted, THEN you need to adjust the intonation, by shortening or lengthening the string. The 12th fret, the 12th harmonic and the open string should be exactly in tune (give or take the octave).

Two hex screws on top to adjust the height, one screw on the rear to make it longer or shorter.

Once I get it all tuned and adjusted, then maybe I’ll amaze you with my mad skillz at playing.

Well, that was all very interesting, wasn’t it? Say yes. Please? Thank you.

Having found my bass guitar, I need to find the rest of the accessories. The only thing I can’t find right are picks. Yes, I play bass with a pick. The only time I finger-pick is when I want a warm sound, but I like the speed and sound of picking. If you are confused by all this, it’s Ok, ask someone who plays bass and see what they say :)

Anyways, I guess I couldn’t resist these.

The only problem is that they don’t say what gauge they are (light, medium, heavy) or what kind of material they are. When I play with plastic picks, I usually shatter them pretty quickly (yes, I’m heavy-handed), so I prefer nylon picks in medium gauge.

Geez, all this issue over such an insignificant accessory?

When my father unexpectedly died, my mother was alone. The only other family is my sister, but she lives 3000 miles away, and has her own family now. My life situation is such that I was able to move in with my mother. They have a pretty big house (four bedrooms), and it’s a lot for her to manage by herself. So I do a lot of the yardwork (mowing, shoveling, raking, etc), and other stuff, as well as keeping her company.

Anyways, when I moved in, I packed one of my bass guitars in the basement, and sort of forgot about it. I hadn’t had much chance or reason to really play it. I’m “bandless”, and it’s hard to find people who share the same (self-admittedly esoteric) tastes in music as I do.

With the wet weather we’ve been having, I went into the basement and noticed that water was getting into the house, due to a clogged gutter. Unfortunately, the bass guitar was sitting in a puddle. After unclogging the gutter, I took the bass up to make sure it is Ok. Other than needing a tuning, it didn’t get damaged.

This is a Squier from Fender. It’s kind of a “beginners” bass guitar. I did have a Ibanez SR-406 6-string bass guitar, but sold that, and am really regretting getting rid of it.

The astute among us might note that this is a pose, there’s no patch cable.

Now, the final irony is that the Hello Kitty Shop USED to sell a Squier bass guitar with Badtz Maru. I had noticed it in the past, and didn’t pay much attention to it. It is a Squier, black, almost identical to the one I currently have, it just has Badtz on it. Now I go look for it, and apparently it is sold out :( I googled around, and here is an image of what it would look like.

Freedom Call is an excellent but under-rated German power-metal band. This is the song that made me say “wow”. I’m feeling frustrated with my life right now, and when I hear this song, it usually makes me feel a little happy; but right now, I wish I could take the advice and “arise from the cower”. This isn’t live or anything, just static images.