coffee and toothpicks

Things currently keeping me entertained (i.e. helping ensure my eyelids stay open):

1) www.i-am-bored.com
2) Al Jazeera
3) The CBC
4) Dime-a-Dozen (bittorrent site)

[a note about dimeadozen: caveat emptor! You will become ridiculously addicted and will find that your CD collection swells to overflowing in a matter of months. I have, I think, increased my CD collection by about 300 CDs now, to the point where fully a third of what I own is now live music. Have been getting *killer* stuff, mind you, and all at about 50 cents a disc, but it has become a virtual obsession. So just don't say I didn't warn you.]

5) listening to previously favourite albums to hear great melodies which I can then use for the Project...
6) CSI
7) the Freeway community on Hamilton
8) Stephen Lewis' Massey Lectures on the CBC
9) getting my proposal together for a FACTOR grant

Hit and Miss

Well... had this gig with my band @ the Casbah in Hamilton on Friday, and like 8 people showed up, including my mom and my wife, so I'm not sure if we'll get asked back again... sigh. But, on the bright side, we had planned to record the gig and when we showed up, the band who were playing the late show had hired a pro sound guy to record their gig, so everything was really well mic'd and the sound came out *great.* Spent some time over the weekend cutting the material into tracks and playing with the volume a little, but now have samples from 4 tracks for a demo which we can now peddle for more gigs, in Toronto this time.

The band is me on brass (trumpet, mellophone, pocket trumpet, and eventually marching trombone, though I have some work to do with that before I can really play it well), Avi Granite on guitar, Kurt Nielsen on acoustic bass, and Dennis Song on drums.

Gig started a little late because it was slated for 6:30 and the guys were all driving in from TO, which on the best of days is a long trip, but on a Friday during rush hour is a nightmare, so we had to cut down the sets by a song each.

This is what we ended up playing:

Set One:
Mother Nature's Son
Florin & Florina
Just Because
Fall
Knives Out

Set Two:
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Lull
Early One Morning
Airbag
The Vicarage

...given that this was only our fourth time playing together, I was pretty happy with how things went, though I counted in Just Because (which was never rehearsed even once) painfully slow, and it dragged on and on... as well, while we had done Mother Nature's Son before, it somehow ended up as a bossa this time, which made it pretty damn chezzy. Best tunes were Knives Out, Fall, Airbag, and Florin & Florina... so those are on the demo.

Then on Sunday afternoon I got all spiffed up and got Jen to take a bunch of pix with our new digital camera. Some of them came out really well, so I picked a couple and used them for the cover of the demo CD. All that remains now is the legwork and the schmoozing.