imaposeur

So I guess I'm officially back after a short leave. Not only is this my second blog in three days, but I also went through my groups and commented finally. I only read some of the postings that I missed up until about the 20th (which I know is only like 4 days, but I'm pretty tired), and I also skipped some of the postings that didn't seem too interesting... but anyways, hopefully I'll be able to keep up with them again, or maybe I just won't try as hard to read every single posting of every single group I'm in.... Whichever.

So Guerilla Activity is still my main focus for my musical life, but it seems to be going down hill pretty quick. Our drummer quit to join a screamo band who had a pretty big name for themselves, so it seems to me that he basically sold out. Then again though, I guess he was into that kinda music anyway, so maybe he did like their music more than our's, who knows? After he left though interest in the band has dwindled quite a bit. Ben and I are still really into it, but everyone else? Not so much. I've even noticed some dwindling on Ben's end as in he's taking 8 years to reply back to people on My Space, he's not really scheduling practices, not following through on plans, and all the related. The last practice was a pretty big joke with the trombonist and the second singer pretty much just goofing off the whole time. The trombonist pissed me off as well by deciding to empty his spit valve on me..... At the last practice though we did get a REALLY awesome guitarist and singer in the band though, which is definitely awesome. He's the lead singer and guitarist for The Gammas, which is one of my favorite local bands, so it's pretty awesome. I guess Ben & I are going to have some drummers trying out for the band this weekend, so hopefully that goes well.

I haven't played with Cody in a while, but we set a date to practice this Monday. It's going to be me, him and Tim this drummer that we used to play with a long time ago. We were playing with some kids who wanted to do more of a screamo/nu metal deal, but I wasn't really into it, and Cody seemed more into doing the grungey thing that we were doing anyway. So I guess Cody is going to keep playing with the screamo kids, but also be in a band with Tim & myself doing the grunge thing. I'm not really too into the band, but it's fun to hang out with Cody, and I love Tim and haven't seen him in ages, so maybe it'll start to be more fun. The music sucks, and I dread practicing, but it's nice to hang out with the guys sometime.

Kulturkampf has asked me to join the band again for it's final months. They're going on a week long tour and have about 5 or 6 more shows planned that they want me for. I told them I would try to, but I'm not sure if it'll work out with my work schedule and not being sure if & when I can take days off.

I've been wanting to get a new job for a while now, but am just afraid that it won't pay enough, and my current job is really helping me get out of debt and a steady pace, so it's better for me financially to stay with my current job, but if I got a job with flexible hours, I could do more of the band stuff that I love so much, be so much less stressed and I could have more freedom and more of a social life.... Oh well for now though. I think that I may look half heartedly pretty soon.

I also got a new saxophone and a new bass. It's actually my first saxophone, so I'm still learning to play it. I'm having some reed mishaps, but for the most part, it's going really well. My knowledge of music and more specifically the bass clarinet is helping me out a lot in trying to learn the saxamophone. I was working off of an online learning thing, but the lessons stopped a lot more suddenly then they seem to, so I have a book that is being shipped to me as well as some harder reeds as I'm not able to play lower notes which I guess is a somewhat common thing to happen with really soft reeds, so hopefully it fixes the problem as I don't think it's a problem with the sax itself.

My new bass is an Ibanez 6 String Sound Gear that I won off of Ebay. It sounds like a dream, much better than either my Fender Jazz V String, my old Univox that I bought for $100 (that I"m hoping just needs new strings), or my shitty cheap Samick (which is not much of an accomplishment either).... It also plays really well. It's neck is really flat which is quite the opposite to my Fender V. I'm thinking about tuning my 6th string to a B rather than a C so that it's more like a guitar, and some of the scales are easier to play and are easier to find for me. Anyways, I'm really happy with it, and the only downside to it was that it didn't come up strap buttons.... I made sure to read over the Ebay auction after I received it to see if he said anything about it, and he said that there was no strap included in big font and underlined, but when I read it I just kinda chuckled and laughed because I probably wouldn't want a random strap and that it didn't matter to me at all. Maybe they meant that there wasn't strap buttons..... Which did suck because I had to go buy strap buttons. I ended up getting Strap Locks which I have traditionally been against because they don't usually work too well for me, and the make too much noise in my opinion. Anyways, I got them installed (which took forever because I'm retarded) and now I'm very happy again with my new bass again. I can't wait to play with one of my bands to see how it sounds with them and nice and loud too.

I like the tone of the new bass so much in fact that I don't even plan on using my effect pedal with it! On my Fender I do sometimes for a bit, realize how not so great it sounds unless they're brand new strings, and go back to the pedal, but with this new bass, I don't even think I'm going to need my pedal anymore!!! My hands did get tired fairly quickly playing it, but it's neck is a tree trunk like I love them to be!!!! I love how it looks, how it sounds, how it feels, how it plays, it's an amazing bass!!!!