Current music:

Igor Kitty - Sour Grapes

Staying sharp
Staying sharp at something generally requires practice, and I have to admit I'm a bit rusty at live sound, which has been a pursuit of mine since the late 80's. So tonight's a welcome opportunity to practice on two bands run by people I've been working with since the late 80's - the metal cover band Brah, most of whom used to be in 80's/90's local metal legends Dead Rebecca, and Love Zombie, which is Filbert's current band. They're both playing tonight at Twist of Lime in Metalrie - a venue formerly known as the Rock'n'Bock.

Ten years ago, Filbert's band was known as Igor Kitty, and we frequently shared a bill with them at late, lamented Jimmy's Music Club. I also worked sound for them and was recording their CD, which never quite got finished. Well, thanks to our mutual friend Steve, I have just finished one more little piece of that CD. Steve was in town last weekend and asked me to provide him with a disc of the finished songs, so I went about finding the old masters and multitracks from that project, and found that like the C.O.G. material, they were in various states of readability. In the process of resuscitating those recordings (and remastering them all, while I was at it), I came across a favorite song that never was completed beyond a rough demo stage - 'Sour Grapes'. This is a Nirvana-like rocker, and a song I would always look forward to hearing live. Well, I know a little bit more about recording than I did back then, so I decided to finish the job this morning, using the existing tracks and some modern plugin polish. There was only one guitar track on the demo, and I really prefer at least two guitars on heavy parts, so I manufactured a second track for those sections by cutting up the existing track and exchanging the parts from chorus to chorus. The rest of the job was much more straightforward, once I time-aligned the various drum tracks and fixed some of lead singer Misty's little timing idiosyncrasies. Enjoy!

Aside from that, the only other 'new' thing (well, new for ME anyway) is a new arcade project - a 1982 Sega 'Star Trek'.

This is another classic vector for my collection, not a particular favorite of mine, but it was in such great condition and the price was so right I couldn't pass it up! The only thing really wrong with it was, one of the speaker clips had come unconnected, so, no sound. I fixed that yesterday and played it until I got on the high score board. Great speech in this one, like many of the Sega vectors.

Once I refurb it top to bottom, the question becomes - convert it to something I prefer (like a Sega multi-vector!) or sell it before it bursts into flames like these Sega vectors are known to do (I already bought a fire extinguisher and smoke alarm to go with this game!)