Blogs
April 19, 2009
I was too excited by Sidney Crosby’s save Friday night and win Sunday to spend too much time on my blog, so read this instead.
BTW, since Earth Day is this week, all our Mystery Tracks will be environment-related. Maybe they’ll have “green” or “earth” as part of the title, maybe they’ll have an ecological theme. The prize for all of this week’s Mystery Tracks is a $15 i-tunes gift card.
April 12, 2010
I’ve been busy making vacation plans for later this year. My girlfriend and I wanted to get away last year, but couldn’t get our vacation schedules to coincide. Luckily, this year we both managed to get off the same week. We’re going back to Vegas!
I’ve spent the last few weeks talking to travel agents, checking online travel sites, visiting hotel websites, and we finally settled on a travel package. Last time we went, we stayed on the south end of the strip, at the Riviera, and the time before that we were at the Sahara, but this time, we decided to try the north end of Las Vegas Blvd, and found a good deal at the Excalibur.
Now that we settled the big details, we've been having a lot of fun figuring out what we want do to and see while we’re there. We always try hit at least one high-end restaurant, a place that’s really too classy for us, and this year, she suggested Spago. We also want to see Penn & Teller—I hear that’s a great show. Maybe we’ll go back and check out the comedy show at the Riv again, and we definitely want to get downtown to Freemont Street. She wants to hit a spa for a full body massage, possibly featuring hot rocks, and I was thinking of treating myself to a real barber shave.
She told me she wants to set aside some time for the Miracle Mile shops, and that’s cool with me. Last time we went, I found this micro-brew bar, so I told her to keep going, and that I would wait for her there. That was a well spent afternoon.
Oh, and we decided that this year, we want to ride the roller-coaster that encircles the New York New York Hotel and Casino. 
Otherwise, we’ll probably leave thing pretty open-ended. We have 5 days and 4 nights to fill, and in Las Vegas, that’s never a problem.
As Bon Scott so wisely put it:
Spin that wheel, cut that pack
And roll those loaded dice
Bring on the dancing girls
And put the champagne on iceI’m going in, to Sin City
Now let’s see…1 pair beats high card, 2 pair beats 1 pair, 3 of a kind beats 2 pair, straight beats 3 of a kind…
April 5, 2010
I was going to spend some time over the weekend writing something to post here on my blog. It was going to be compelling and witty, insightful and humorous. When you finished reading what I was to have written, you would have reflected that the few minutes you spent perusing my words were a fantastic use of your time.
But then the weather got really, really nice. So instead being chained to my computer, on my time, to write a new post, I was in my back yard. Instead of having my fingers draped over a keyboard holed up in my office, I cranked up the tunes and fired up the grill for the first time this season. There I was with a beer in one hand and tongs in the other, while the chicken sizzled.
You know what? I made the right call.
March 22, 2009
At this writing (10:30AM Monday) it looks like the 3Ms (Maiden, Motorhead, and Metallica) will all be out of Mad Marchness. Iron Maiden lost a round one match-up last week, and though I was disappointed, I can’t say I’m surprised. After all, it was up against Hey Jude. Pretty stiff competition.
In one of today’s match-ups, Metallica’s Enter Sandman is currently losing to Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive , but there’s still lots of time to vote, so that could change. Right now, it seems like Metallica is the most likely of the 3Ms to make it to round two, but only if my metalheads vote in full force.
The long shot is Motorhead’s Ace of Spades. As much as I’d like to see that one advance, it has to get though Layla, and that doesn’t seem very likely. But for as great a song as Layla is, did a Derek & The Dominoes documentary just debut at South by Southwest down in Austin? Nope, but a Lemmy documentary did. Thanks to Carol at Penn State for sending me the link. If I caught you before you voted in Mad Marchness today, maybe you’d like to check out the trailer before you vote? Wouldn't you like to be part of a major upset?
And remember...
Q: Who would win in a fight between Lemmy and God
A: Trick question—Lemmy IS God.
March 15, 2010
Spring starts this week. A sure sign is that newscasts stop causing panics over snowstorms, and start causing panics over rain.
I hope you remembered to set your clocks ahead over the weekend. When I was in college, my sophomore year I think, my roommate had to leave town for a family emergency the weekend we switched to Eastern Daylight Time. He wasn’t able to return until late Tuesday night, and when he did get back, he crashed immediately, and didn’t remember to reset his alarm clock. On Wednesday morning, he walked into his first class an hour late. The professor didn’t buy his Daylight Savings Time excuse.
On a serious note, when you changed your clocks, I hope you remembered to change the batteries in your smoke detector.
I’ve been checking out some of the new TV shows. Parenthood is pretty good—I may have to tell the TiVo to get a season pass for that one, but The Marriage Ref sucks out loud. Even having Larry David and Ricky Gervais on the same panel couldn’t polish that turd. Producer Jerry Seinfeld has been making the talk show rounds and explaining that it’s supposed to be a comedy, rather than reality show, and that the panel won’t really help the couples who appear. The problem is, the show, despite having some funny people on, just isn’t funny.
I still miss Calvin and Hobbes. If that comic were still around, I’d probably continue to read a daily newspaper, instead getting my news on line.
Not being a basketball fan, I really don’t care about March Madness or playing the office pool, but I am excited for the return of Mad Marchness here on the Bus. You can check out the matchups and even start your own office pool. Thanks to everyone who sent in the great suggestions. And thanks also to the person who suggested Huey Lewis. I appreciated you participating, and your pick gave me a much need chuckle. You were being facetious, right?
And how about the prizes we’re giving away? Tell you what—if you win that giant Sony LCD HDTV that we’ve got as the grand prize, and you simply don’t have the room for it, I would be happy to store it at my place for you. No, No, No, please don’t thank me. I’m just happy to be able to help.
Round One competition begins Wednesday, and I’m especially pleased to see the 3 Ms in the brackets—Motorhead, Maiden, and Metallica. Still, Won’t Get Fooled Again SHOULD win, because after all, it’s the greatest song ever.
March 8, 2009
I really didn’t want to post about The Who two weeks in a row, but, since I’ve got nothing else…
Last week, on his birthday, I wrote about Roger Daltrey. In the course of that blog, mentioned Pete Townshend’s recurring tinnitus problem, and how it could mean the end of The Who. Well, here’s an update, directly from Pete himself. This is from his blog, available at the Who’s website.
In addition to his hearing problems, Pete writes about the playing Superbowl, and the hat he wore at the show. Enjoy.
The Super Bowl show is now history, and next up is our concert version of Quadrophenia at the Royal Albert Hall, for the Teenage Cancer Trust, on March 30th. We start rehearsing ten days before the show. So there is almost a month to do some other stuff.
While Roger does some more solo shows, this time supporting Eric Clapton, I am writing some more songs, testing out some studio and stage in-ear monitor systems, and wearing a Phonak hearing aid almost all the rest of the time. I feel as though I've been reborn in some ways. Not everything I hear is worth hearing, but at least I don't have to turn the TV down in order to tell everyone in the room that what they are watching is rubbish. I don't have to turn it up in the first place. Instead of TV interspersed with conversation, we have TV with conversation that happens at the same time. That kind of family running commentary on what we watch on TV is something I didn't know I missed, but I did miss it. On a higher note, hearing birdsong again is pretty amazing.
I'm also working on Floss. I've gone back to the story and I'm fleshing out the characters, digging into their fictional past to learn more about them. Quite a bit of what I've been doing until now has been creating new studio set ups for the soundscapes that the hero of the story is so distracted by. I need a lot of triggers, buttons and switches, and powerful software playback systems that will allow me to 'perform' each soundscape in a variety of ways, allowing me lots of takes if necessary. I'm mixing dialogue, sound effects, music-concrete and music. So the set up I need is rather like a movie sound-mixing desk, with almost as many elements sometimes.
By a strange coincidence, while searching for music charts of Quadrophenia for our Music Supervisor on the RAH show, I found technical notes and drawings for studio systems I devised while cooking up the four channel version of the 1973 album - the Quad version that got away. Looking at the plans, designs and drawings I have before me today for Floss it's clear that I haven't lost my mojo when it comes to taking myself to the edge of technological nervous breakdown.
Thanks everyone who stood by me during the Super Bowl (especially Roger as always), and to everyone who has emailed to say how much they enjoyed the half-time stint. The hat I wore, that was popular with some-but not all-of our fans, contains some ancient technology that helps me hear myself better on stage. It's called, the BRIM.
PS: This is the last week for Mad Marchness listener picks. Remember, there’s ALWAYS room for more Who songs, and I’m STILL waiting for Iron Maiden to get a spot.
March 1, 2010
Happy Birthday to Roger Daltrey. The Who singer, who is currently on the road opening for Eric Clapton, turns 66 today.
 
Thursday night, the first night those two icons performed together on this tour, I was sitting at home when my phone rang. It was my friend Brad, who lives in Pittsburgh.
He said, “Pat, guess where I am.” And before I could answer, he told me he was on his way to that very show. As you can probably guess, I was incredibly jealous. I would have loved to have gone to that show, but stupid work always gets in the way of all the fun stuff. Also, I don’t like to make date-specific travel plans during the winter, because bad weather has a way of really screwing them up. Turns out, that was probably a wise choice.
I haven’t heard from Brad since the show to get his review, but I’ll bet it was spectacular. Here’s Roger’s set list.
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Mannish Boy ( A Muddy Waters song)
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Baba O'Riley
Anyway, happy birthday to my all time favorite singer and front man, Roger Daltrey. I hope I get to see you live again real soon. That abbreviated set at the Superbowl half-time show left me with a severe case of Who-balls.
But with Pete Townshend’s ongoing problem with tinnitus, the future of my favorite band is again in jeopardy. If things don’t work out, however, Roger may have a back-up plan. According to Rolling Stone, Daltrey told the BBC that he’d love to do an album with Jimmy Page. And Page indicated that he was interested in making music again in 2010. With Townshend sidelined, Robert Plant playing bluegrass music, and John Paul Jones working with head Foo Fighter Dave Grohl in Them Crooked Vultures, maybe it will happen. I know I’d pay good money to hear it.
February 22, 2010
In case you missed any of the Pennsylvania Mystery Tracks last week the were:
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Monday--Last Mile by Cinderella
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Tuesday--Agnes by Donnie Iris
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Wednesday--A Better Way to Save the World by The Badlees
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Thursday--Girlschool by Britny Fox
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Friday--Better Off Without You by The Clarks
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