Blur of a week...
Last week was such a blur I didn't even have time to post for days... just enough time right now to fix that before I jump back into the fray.

Wednesday we got together with Filbert Snodgrass and went over some material for the 'Crowbar' show in late July. Filbert's done a good job remembering the old songs he helped write and has picked up on a few new ones. We still have a great deal of work left to do fleshing out the 'show' parts of the event. After a quick rehearsal I went over to the practice space of space rock band Alias:Orion and hung out for a few hours to suss what they were doing. Very cool people whom I think we'll be working with very soon...

Thursday (and Friday) evenings I got together with Rachnid's old rhythm guitarist, police capt. Mickey, and began recording his demos. He's got two songs, one of which is a Johnny Cash type number and the other of which sounds like the Byrds. They're both catchy and fun to work on. We laid down a guitar guide track, then drums, then doubled 12 string rhythm parts on both with a pretty Yamaha acoustic 12 string. After that we did some vocals. Next thing will be Rachnid coming in and laying down bass parts and some backup vocals...

Friday morning I got a call back from MTV networks. Interesting! Perhaps they're not totally cold on my involvement with their weird superhero project (see my post a couple weeks back)... and I'd be only too happy to appear in-character on national TV, as long as the conditions were right. More on that if it develops...

Later on Friday I got an email from Dee Long, the writer of DeeSampler, saying that he'd solved the midi program change problem in his otherwise outstanding program. Excellent! With that hurdle removed, I can now integrate full streaming video playback into C.O.G.'s stage show. I settled on a laptop with a broken (and now removed) screen to do the actual work, donated by the very generous Petri Laihonen. It's a Dell 5150 3Ghz P4, and it does a fine job on video clips encoded in xvid. Hopefully next time we perform, our video will be a LOT more professional looking! It's also finally starting to push me into a more modern mindset that would make it possible to deploy a C.O.G. show from much less weighty equipment. The computer rack I've used for all these years has been a heavy albatross indeed... time to do something about it, methinks!

I now have to decide whether to stick with the old composite cable, or string a 50ft s-video cable to the projector. Does anybody have a Dell composite adapter that I can borrow? I would like to see how much better s-video would look. (50ft. of VGA, sadly, is out of the question!)

Friday afternoon, to make a good day even better, I got a nice gift in the mail... really nice footage of us performing in Pensacola. As usual, the sound isn't that good but the visuals are great - John Hand, the cameraman for Nightmare Theater, really knew what he was doing. Their invitation to appear on their show later this year was also very appealing. I think we'll be playing there again, as soon as it starts to cool off a bit.

Saturday I got together with longtime C.O.G. writer Hacksaw and one-time C.O.G. comic artist Ben Beamis, and hashed out plans for a new C.O.G. comic book/web comic. More on that as it develops!

Now it's time to get some BBQ and treat my dad to a well deserved Fathers Day...