I’ve got a headache. It’s sprung from nowhere to abuse my brain. Not enough sleep, too much coffee, and quite possibly the edges of a cold all encroaching slowly on my skull.
We’re sitting at a Lovely coffeehouse called Niko’s somewhere west of Pittsburgh abusing their internets, sort of killing time. There’s talk of pizza, but mostly – even though I’ve only been up since about 11, I sort of just want to go back to bed. I’ve called around to a couple of venues to see if there’s a decent open mic going on, but one’s just a blues jam, another’s number is disconnected, and my favourite:
“Hi there, I was reading you guys had an open mic tonight, is that still true?”
“Uh, well, are you coming to play?”
“Well, if there’s an open mic I might want to.”
“Well sometimes we do, it depends if anyone’s going to be coming. But if you guys are coming to jam, I guess we’ll have it.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we’re coming.”
Yeah. Fail. No. And so, even though we haven’t been playing THAT much recently, we’ll relax into a night off gratefully, because even when we’re not playing, we’re generally working.
Most of today has been a stupid waste of time as I’ve been battling technical errors, security glitches and connectivity issues. How I hate that aspect of the world. Even as I think that most of what I do wouldn’t have been possible even ten years ago, all the tech just adds its OWN list of problems.
Today the internet hasn’t latched, and the GPS lost us, and my cell phone was contrary. Today Behringer doesn’t answer the phone. Shafton Fire Hall doesn’t answer the phone. Encore doesn’t answer the phone. Yeah. The Snuggies on TV are actually looking, if not attractive, then at least devilishly comforting. I want a Snuggie, a fireplace and a gigantic bowl of mashed potatoes. Snoof.
Last night we went out to a bar, met up with a bunch of friends, played the open mic – but the PA system was EQed heavily towards the “oh sweet Jesus” end of the spectrum. This is opposite to the “brown end” of the spectrum. This is the skull-splitting, AM shrillness sound perhaps appropriate if you’re speaking over the high school PA and don’t want to get lost in the background noise, but it has no place in music.
Still, we had a great time, ate some excellent french fries and heard some good 90s covers.
Afterwards we came back to our friend Crystal’s place where she made us an excellent dinner before everyone went to bed. It felt like a longer day than it legitimately was.
All day today however has been that headache – and I’m worried that I’m coming down with a cold or something. We went out to Guitar Center to “feel some speakers”. I shouldn’t put that in quotes, because that’s exactly what we were doing, but it’s kind of fun to put it in quotes. We’re weighing powered speakers to see what we’re comfortable with lifting with eyes towards getting a secondary system for smaller venues. We just don’t need to haul around our big-ass speakers everywhere – it’ll free up space in the car and be easier on my aging body.
After the coffeehouse and Guitar Center, after being thwarted by the local open mic scene for a Thursday night, we decided to just go back to Crystal’s so Heather could school me about Facebook. I fear it, but it seems to be the social network of the now.
