Skip to main content

Going Underground

During band practice last night, the clear bottom snare head split in half. I've never had this happen before in my 10+ years of playing. I continued to play on it but it sounded like I was hitting a beach ball. Maybe this is how Billy Joel, Liberty DeVito or Phil Ramone got that snare sound on "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me."

I'm currently reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Jeph Loeb's Batman: The Long Halloween, Please Kill Me and Live From New York. When I finish one I think I'll start reading High Fidelity or Hot Water Music. My mind wonders too much to settle on one book.

While I have barely played my Playstation 2 in months, I'm back with it thanks to Tony Hawk's Underground 2. The last game in the installment, Tony Hawk's Underground, took me about two weeks to beat on the Normal difficulty. Well, I'm nowhere near beating this one and am really enjoying playing it over and over again until my fingers hurt. I can't play it too long if I want to write some stuff for the book, blog and write e-mails.

Left of the Dial (see more details below) has a lot of great SST material digitally remastered. Maybe this will lead to reissues of Flip Your Wig, Zen Arcade, Damaged, Double Nickels on the Dime, Milo Goes to College, etc.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air
4 comments
Read more

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J
Post a Comment
Read more