Category Archives: Music

Criticise This

It occurred to me on the way home from dropping Liam off to play with his Auntie Pasley that my inner critic has been taking over my brain for the past three weeks. It’s been scraping away at my spirituality (why do I bother?), my writing (I have a book coming out in a month, so of course now I’m waking up at night desperately wishing I’d left something out, or included something else, or said something differently), and my music (I’ve been tame in how I’ve expressed myself here over the past few days to protect audience and fellow bandmates from my self-loathing). I’m surprised it hasn’t told me that I’m a bad mother yet, because Liam’s not napping as long as he should and waking up at night.

But you know what? My inner critic can go take a long walk off a short pier.

We now return me to my regular scheduled programming. I’m passably good at some of what I do, really good at most of it, and I enjoy myself. So my inner critic can just go hang out with the bottom feeders in the cold murky muddy depths of the seaway.

Hi Cat

We tried Liam on yoghurt again today. This time it was a success, which is a relief because this container won’t get thrown out like the last one did. Of course, I used a half cup of it making scones this afternoon. And I could make lots and lots of my special pancake batter, because there’s no way I’d eat it; I hate the stuff. But still. And he may have liked it this time because I swirled some fruit into it. Whatever.

Jan was in exactly the same sort of mood I was today, which is a good thing. There were books, and tea, and cats indeed. Liam was by turns charming and cranky. He said “Hi cat” a lot. And I got him to sleep at naptime with only a cry or two, in about twenty minutes, and he slept for forty. Not as long as he used to, but better than the twenty or thirty he’s been taking lately. Damn teeth.

Once he’s in bed and I’ve eaten, I too am bound for bed. Maybe this way if he wakes up in the middle of the night, I’ll have had enough sleep to be functional.

I’ve stopped being less happy with the gig because Jan pointed out to me today that it was only the third time the band had played live, which means it was only the second time for me. I keep forgetting that. I’m really tired of not enjoying myself because I’m not being as good as I know I can be. Part of me just wants to give it up because I’ll never be satisfied, and I don’t mean in a striving-for-excellence way. I’m just too damn hard on myself, and I know I resolved to be less hard on myself, but it’s hard. You know? So now I’m not unhappy, I’m just neutral about it.

Tired And Cranky

Well, the crock pot directions weren’t kidding when they say “trim the fat from the meat”. Normally when you trim fat, you trim excess fat because most meats benefit from a bit of fat marbled throughout to help keep it from drying out during the cooking process. Next time I’ll trim all the fat, because what little fat was left ended up melting over everything. Greasy carrots and potatoes are not what I had in mind when I made this pot roast. Lesson learned. Apart from that it was delicious, and I’m looking forward to experimenting with other things. And possibly the best part of dinner was that I could feed the roast and vegetables to Liam, so he ate exactly what we ate last night. And wow, did he ever eat a lot of it.

The further away the gig gets, the less happy I am with it. I’m certainly not looking forward to the recording. Most of me just wants to forget it and remember Invisible’s portion of the evening. Goodness knows my body remembers it; I haven’t danced in, well, possibly over a decade (save for the dancing to Sheena Is A Punk Rocker during Invisible’s sound check last October) and things started to be rather ow last night. And I have a bruise across the top of the palm of my bow hand, and my little finger on the same hand was swollen when I got home on Saturday night, but those are from the hand locking during the second song of the set and forcing me to switch my bow hold. It gave me a lot of trouble, which I’d expected, but I didn’t anticipate having to deal with it so early on.

I finished Bellwether the morning after I’d started to reread it. Now I’m rereading Lincoln’s Dreams, and I’m almost finished that too. I’ll have to reread Connie Willis’ short fiction next, because I recently reread Passage and Doomsday Book not long before that. I seem to have lent my copy of Remake to someone, because it’s not on the shelf.

Everyone’s tired and cranky here. Liam keeps waking up in the middle of the night, and I know it’s because of his teeth, but there’s not much more we can do than give him Tylenol and cuddle him while he screams. And once he’s up and finished his bout of hard crying, he’s really awake so he wants to eat a full meal of milk and play for a bit before going back to sleep. And then it’s only nap-length sleep, so he’s up bright and early to begin his day. Do these teeth need a formal invitation or something? They’re taking their damn time.

I’m currently fighting the need to crawl into bed with a pile of books, a cat, and a pot of tea to ignore baby and husband today. (Apart from the obvious reasons why this won’t work, ai731 is coming over today.)

Standing Room Only

I don’t know how many people ended up attending last night’s show. I do know that more chairs had to be brought in, and it ended up being standing room only.

I find it interesting that when I woke up this morning I was thinking, “Wow, what a great concert I attended last night” as opposed to, “Oh yeah, I played a gig.” That’s what happens when you open for a kick-ass band like Invisible. They wipe all memory of your own set away. Not that I needed much help in that area; I remember the first three songs of our set really clearly (excellent! fast! precise! fun!), and then everything goes mysteriously missing until the dismantling of the set and unplugging of the instruments. Which is probably good for me, because I know there were things that went wrong for me, and if I can’t remember them then I can’t get upset about them. Oddly enough, I clearly remember thinking that things were slipping away from me during the Boom Desjardins song, and just letting it go and not stressing because there wasn’t anything I could do. But I don’t remember the actual music in the middle or latter part of the set, other than Moon Over Bourbon Street. (I can’t even blame it on alcohol, because I had only three sips of my whiskey sour post-performance before having to stop, because my stomach and head started doing odd things as a result of the sound and the crowds. Of course, we were sitting right in front between the speakers for Invisible’s double-length set, and I did dance rather hard for a bit, so that may have contributed to the odd nausea.) I had fun during our set too, though. I’d’ve had more if that song hadn’t gotten away from me, but we enjoyed ourselves. And there’s plenty of proof that the audience doesn’t know when things go wrong. It’s just because we know the songs we’re doing so well that when we make a mistake it stands out with flashing neon lights and sirens to us. I’d like to do some simpler songs that allow us to have fun and be relaxed as well. Our covers tend to be of complicated stuff that sounds brilliant but that requires a lot of concentration. Having fun and being relaxed is a good goal to strive for, I think.

We thoroughly enjoyed Invisible’s set, from the Johnny Cash through the originals. I’m so glad this gig was recorded. (And no, it won’t be available for public consumption; it’s a learning tool for the bands.) We sang, we danced, we cheered!

Unfortunately when I got home I couldn’t fall into a deep sleep despite how tired I was; I kept skipping the surface and waking up. And then Liam woke up at five o’clock, so I had a total of something like three hours of sleep. And the baby’s out of sorts today as well; no sign of teeth yet. Argh.

We’re trying the crock pot we got for Christmas for the first time today. Pot roast: just the thing for a dark rainy spring day.

Gig Minus Five Hours And Counting

We had a good, solid dress rehearsal this morning where we got some blank-memory moments out of our systems, committed music (there were goosebumps!), and were in general pleased with how things happened. I am personally satisfied with my bits in the IBFKATCS. I’m looking forward to the gig tonight.

I had my first soft-serve ice cream cone of the year yesterday. Chocolate and vanilla swirl, dipped in hard chocolate coating. Delicious.

And happy Earth Day to all!

Friday

Since my original engagement was cancelled last night, I joined the impromptu open rehearsal some of the band was having at the studio. There, in the words of the lovely and talented Mousme, “we beat the instrumental of J’Veux pas vieillir into bloody submission, and lo, all was right with the world once more.” I threw my bow at the floor three times in frustrated despair during the beating, however. (Kids, don’t try this at home. I have four low-end bows; I can afford to do stupid things that can damage the equipment in question. And now it occurs to me that I have a heavier bow that would probably better serve my purposes in the band, instead of my lightish all-purpose one I use for orchestra. Note to self: Get the hard case and all the extra bows out of storage from the in-laws’ basement. Bonus: I can finally give t! my old three-quarter fibreglass bow to mess about with as well.)

So, The Instrumental Bit Formerly Known As The Cello Solo will happen. It may not be as pretty as I would like it to be, but it will happen. (And assuaging my gnashiness with the knowledge that it will be over before the audience figures out what bit it is does no good, of course.) Ceri and Mousme were absolutely rock-solid supportive and patient friends last night as we did it over, and over, and over. They even recorded their bits onto tape for me to practice against at home, as I can play the damn thing when no one else is playing with me; it’s listening to the other stuff going on at the same time that throws me. It will be fine, of course; I’ll be the only one who knows it’s not as good as I want it to be.

Tomorrow is full of dress rehearsal, moving equipment, setting up the space, and sound checks. HRH gets to watch Liam during the day while I do music-stuff, until Liam’s grandma takes over the babysitting in the late afternoon.

I had an excellent morning/early afternoon today with ai731, having my hair professionally highlighted (and I have it on good authority that it looks “really, really, really gorgeous”, although I can’t tell because I can’t see it from the correct angles, darn it all), doing lunch, and helping out with corset refitting. We ran errands together yesterday afternoon as well, and I picked up the most adorable little boom stand for the supplemental microphone that’s only about eighteen inches tall. Now I don’t feel as if there’s something looming over me when I sit between the supplemental mic and the amp.

Book roundup: I’ve finally finished Rose of the World by Jude Fisher, the final book in an epic fantasy trilogy, and the end kind of trailed away. I think it lacked punch because the climax was being told from the POV of over six characters, and things kept skipping around. The momentum was lost over about a hundred pages. Anyway, when I realised I was just turning pages to get to the next plot point, I put it down for a couple of days and reread Pratchett’s Witches Abroad instead. I’m always surprised at how quickly this book is over: it’s a very smooth read, and full of truths about basic stories and how they play themselves out again and again. And while discussing Connie Willis with Ceri and Mousme last night I decided to reread Bellwether, so I started that this morning.

Now: more practicing, a warm bath, then bed! And my fingers are crossed for Liam sleeping through the night, for everyone’s benefit. He had a bad night last night. I want these new teeth of his to finally appear and be done with it.

There Is No Fast

Three hundred and sixty five days ago, Mousme picked up a pair of drumsticks for the very first time. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So, happy anniversary to the Rocking Thing! And to the rest of the band as well, for committing music together for the first time one year ago.