old pain, new pain.
It's been a while. Work got insanely busy last month, and Brad and I started preparing material for some "laptop gigs", and I kept jotting down ideas for posts, but never actually posting anything.
Then my hands started to hurt from typing so much at work (and, I think, from stress) -- so I've been staying away from keyboards as much as I can. And dunking my hands in ice water for 20 minutes every night, prize fighter style. I've been through bouts of tendonitis before (thankfully it's not carpal tunnel) and I'm pretty sure I can get through this one too with moderation, good habits, and a metric ton of ibuprofen.
So what's been going on? Well, to follow up on my Ampeg restoration project... a few weeks ago, I bought replacement tubes. Plugged them, fired up the amp, and smoke came out. Guess I still have some work to do.
The new Matrix movie really sucked. Surprise! The best way to illustrate this is to see the new Matrix movie on opening day, then, that night see the Alien re-release in the biggest theater you can find (for us that's the Uptown). Oh the humanity. Oh I'm sick of CG. They don't make 'em like they used to.
On the other hand, nostalgia doesn't always cut it. I just got my super-limited edition red vinyl 10" copy of Low Murderer (released on Cameron Crowe's Vinyl imprint). Blah blah blah truly analog experience, blah blah mp3. I admit, the red vinyl is beautiful. But I don't care what anyone tries to tell you -- records suck. I bought a nice new cartridge for my (borrowed) turntable and set everyting up so I could play the record... once. To record it onto my PC. So I could burn myself a CD, and put mp3's on my iPod.
My "vinyl experience" was crappy. The record was slightly scuffed right out of the box and even without that, it had massive pops and crackles. For a Led Zeppelin record that's fine, but for Low it's really distracting. Honest. We spent an hour trying to treat the record to clean up the pops -- a light wash, anti-static brushes, all kinds of shit. In the end I ran Cool Edit's de-crackler over the whole thing (cringe) just to make it listenable.
While researching pops/crackles/cartridges/etc, I learned that vinyl fanatics have cleaning rituals for their records (that sometimes includes expensive machinery) to keep them sounding good. I should do this every time I listen to music? I value my listening experience and all but come on. What a bunch of crap. And don't give me that "analog tells the truth" bullshit. Ever heard of RIAA equalization curves? You know what analog EQ's do to audio that passes through them? Well, your purist vinyl is going through that shit a couple of times. If you want the real deal, get a 1/2" 2-track deck and get yourself the analog masters. (Best of luck with that.) You reading this, Mr. Crowe?
By the way -- the Low songs, especially the title track, are really nice. Wish I could get a first-generation digital version.