So far every time I’ve shown the new guitar, it’s been a stock photo I grabbed from the American Musical Supply website (where I ordered it). But last night I was IMing (what an odd verb) with a coworker and I decided to show it off. Thanks to the wonders of Photo Booth and the built in camera on my MacBook, it was possible. (Photo Booth takes photos as a mirror image for reasons that are obvious when you’re sitting in front of the computer looking at yourself on the screen. I’m not really left-handed.)
÷0
Yes, it’s true, I’ve already begun another new CD, and this one even has vocals! (Hence the smiley-esque title.) The album is called ÷0 (Division by Zero) and I’ve posted one of the three so-far-complete tracks today, called “Saturday Night Pizza.” Check it out!
A little “Natural Science” on the new guitar
My new gear arrived today, including this:
I started noodling around with some new stuff, adding guitar and bass tracks to the new songs I’m working on as well as coming up with another completely new track, but in the end, it just felt right that I should introduce this guitar to the world with a little bit of one of my favorite Rush songs, part of which I can actually play on the guitar! So here it is…
[audio:http://blog.room34.com/wp-content/uploads/underdog/NaturalScience.mp3]Brooks Brothers: what’s up with the sheep?
I’ve only set foot in a Brooks Brothers store once. A $150 dress shirt was all I needed to see. I wouldn’t pay 150 bucks for a dress shirt even if it came with a lifetime guarantee, was 100% stain-repellent, and could magically tailor itself if it ever went out of style.
So, in short, I don’t pay much attention to Brooks Brothers. But as it happens, there’s a new store coming into a building near where I work, and as I was walking by the storefront’s concealed façade today at lunchtime, I noticed something I’d never paid attention to before: the logo. Previously glancing at it only in passing, I assumed it was an anchor or some kind of abstract design or something. But no. It’s a sheep. Suspended in a sling.
Naturally, Wikipedia provides a plausible, and presumably accurate, explanation, but I still think it’s a ridiculous logo. Then again, I also think it’s ridiculous to pay $150 for a shirt, so obviously I’m not their target market. (Though, for what it’s worth, I feel I should note that I’ve heard, but not verified, that their clothing is now made in the same foreign factories, by the same underpaid workers, who produce nearly-identical garments for companies like Gap and Old Navy, which are sold for about 1/5 the price.)
I’m in the “Drool Trough”
Way back in the Bassius-O-Phelius days of the mid-’90s, we started selling our cassettes (well, trying to) over the Internet. Back then it was via Usenet newsgroups. One of our most enthusiastic “fans” (to whom we jokingly referred as “Bassius Fan #001” — we were ambitious, but not too much so) was a guy in Ohio named Jerry Kranitz.
Well, these days Jerry’s the online king of space rock, with his series of streaming Internet radio shows under the banner of Aural Innovations. I sent Jerry a copy of Highway 34 Revisited and he featured “Heavy Water” on the latest episode (#65) of the “anything goes” show “Drool Trough”.