Axes of Ego

I got a nice compliment today.  I had to go to the dump because my beloved wife cleaned out the basement and discovered quite a few items that were no  longer good enough to take up space in our subterranean area.  When I arrived at the local sanitary landfill, it turned out that a fellow musician was right behind me.  He enthusiastically told me that we rocked our set at KVMF and he mentioned our rendition of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.  It was worth all that practice, he said.  Cool.

Congratulations to the boys in Blind Vinyl for winning the youth division in the Battle of the Bands in Terrace, BC.  Way to go, guys!

I’ve uploaded the MP3s from our 2011 KVMF set.  These were recorded straight off the mixing board.  I did a bit of EQ and added some compression and encoded them to 256 kbps MP3 files.  Unfortunately, only the last part of the first song got recorded.

To download or stream them, follow the links above or click here.

Our set at KVMF 2011 went well.  Very few mistakes (at least one of which was made by me) and a positive reaction from the crowd — not to mention a very positive reaction from the sound crew.  I love the sound guys out there on the River Stage.  A young woman and her boyfriend were waiting for me at the back door of the stage — she asked me to autograph her wrist band.  That was sweet.

As I left the stage, I heard one audience member say to another, “They get better every time I hear them.”  That was very cool but my favourite comment of all came from a fellow musician who told me that, even though he doesn’t like rock music, he likes listening to us.  He suggested that the fact that I “actually know how to play guitar” might have something to do with it.  Well, my friend, there are plenty of rockers who play guitar far better than do I but I really do appreciate the compliment.

When people compliment my playing, I keep forgetting to use what I think is a very clever response: “Oh, I’m not nearly as good as I sound”.  😛

My favourite acts, other than us, were Blind Vinyl and The Racket.  Way to go guys.  During Blind Vinyl’s set, I spent some time with an old friend who loves rock and has some experience as a music reviewer and who used to be a DJ.  I asked him what he thought of them.  He said, “There is hope for the younger generation!”  Yes, there is.

Last night we had our last practice before KVMF. We are going to rock.

We’re going to close with The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.  You’ll notice that, in the last chorus, instead of “Smile and grin at the change all around” I’ll sing “Smile and grin at the hope and change all around”.  You know what I mean.

We’re scheduled to play at KVMF on River Stage, Sunday, July 24, at 1 pm.  Had a practice last Sunday and evaluated how the set list went at Midsummer, tweaked it to make our KVMF set even stronger.  We are going to rock!

I’ve finished adding pages and features to the site for now.  I’ve created a page each for photos, audio, and video.

So, we played our set at the Midsummer Music Festival last night. This is what we’d planned for our set list:

EBCB (Because those are the first four notes) – original
Right – original
Shopping Blues – original
Bad Bad Boy
Keep On Lovin’ Me Baby
Distance – original
I Want to Break Free
Won’t Get Fooled Again

I think it went well, despite a technical fault on my part.  I forgot to plug in the power supply for my wah wah pedal so, when I tried to use it in the middle of Right, my guitar went silent.  I had to take the time to plug it in before the last song because it was essential for that one.

The title of the first song, including the bit in parentheses, got the expected laugh, which seems to be a good way to start a show.  Shopping Blues was the song that really got them up dancing.  I usually play it in A in normal tuning but I used the old hollow body electric for it this time, tuned to open G, using the slide for the flourishes and solo.  This was our first time trying it that way and it seems to have been a bit of a hit.

Because of one thing and another, we ran out of time and didn’t get to do our whole set.  We got the five minute warning near the end of Keep On Lovin’ Me Baby so we skipped to the end of our set list.

They say you’re only as good as your last song and we had a great response to ending the set with Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who.  I meant to fall down after my big jump at the end.  Really I did (not) — but people liked it.  The guys in Blind Vinyl were in the audience and they made my night by joining in on the big scream, which just might be the best part of the song.  I thought that was pretty cool.  Made me smile.

– Brad

Well, I’ve put the new blog in and I’ve used it to replace the old web site. The old photo gallery software got hopelessly corrupted so I’ve got to put in something to replace that and re-upload all the pics.

All in good time. Now, I’m getting ready for our set at the Midsummer Music Festival tonight, 8:30, Stage 3 (the rock & roll stage, apparently).

I’ve abandoned the previous blog but, if you insist, you can still see it here.  And now the news.

We’re playing tonight, July 1, at the Midsummer Music Festival in Smithers, BC.  Our set starts at 8:30 on Stage 3, which appears to be where they’ve slotted the rock bands.  Looking forward to playing and to seeing the other bands, most of whom are a fair bit younger than us.

Later this month, we’re scheduled to play the Kispiox Valley Music Festival.  We’re scheduled for 1 pm on the River Stage on Sunday, July 24.

Rumour has it that we may be playing the Alpenhorn Pub & Bistro some time in August.  Stay tuned for more about that.