A night at Lenny’s Night Out!
Slackjaw and the hillbilly Hershall Dow played tonight at Lenny’s Night Out at KC’s Corner in South Plainfield NJ. I have no pictures of us because I forgot to give someone the camera before I went up.
But I was able to take pictures of some of the other bands that played. One band worth mentioning is the Lou Gatewood band. This guy reminded me of a mellow Jimi Hendrix. Great funky blues rock style, and they even did a funky version of “What’s Goin On”.
Also, there were a couple of kids that have their guitar chops down pat. The one in the picture played a straight up Gibson Les Paul, and a real one too. It was a great night.
Acquired the LG Ally
I now have possesion of a smartphone for the first time. I have been opened up to a whole new world of possibilities. Almost anything that can be done on a PC with internet access can also be done with an Android smartphone.
For instance, this entire blog post was written using my phone’s WordPress android app. This app has every feature of the WordPress dashboard available to me. Any task that I might want to accomplish can be done using this phone. I have access to the world’s knowledge anywhere at any time.
Another interesting observation is that it is quicker to jot down a note on my phone’s tactile keyboard than it is to write it down on a piece of paper. This is a complete infomatic evolution. This section of the paragraph is written with voice recognition.
I will attach a picture for the sole purpose of amazing myself with this technology.
A Night at the Pattenburg
Last night it was Slackjaw who tore the roof off the Pattenburg. We played until close to 2am, our originals and some covers. A female fan favorite “Cry On Me” was revered with woman’s tears. Then we switched gears to end the first set with our most Metal rendition of “When I Did Nothing Wrong”. That song can be distinguished as “Metal Slide Blues in Open D”. Towards the end of the night we had some incredible guest appearances by Steve “The Doctor” and the incredible Mike Frank on guitar. They brought the funk to mix with the blues for a little while. We played a funky version of “After Midnight” with Carl switching to the role of funky bass mastah. Mike Frank and John switched off burning solos while The Doc gave us the beats of Dr. Funkenstein on drums. We ended the night with “On My Way Home”, “Back On Track”, and a hard rendition of beatles favorite: “Helter Skelter”.
Note: Band pics will be posted later.
An Email asking for advice.
Hey ***,
I’ve just been yelled at by [my manager] for bringing a book into work and reading it on the overnight shift. This has pushed me in the decision to quit —— and find a better employer. I’ve called ——— back and they were about to tell me that they’ve passed on my application, but I convinced the manager to call me back and now we’re due to talk about customer service issues this Monday after ——. I’ve explained to the ——— manager that I am well acquainted in customer service experience and that I’m not very good at being interviewed. I am also not one to be looked over. He/she agreed to see me on Monday, but anyway…
Back to Louis yelling at me for bringing in a book. It seems to me that he’s displaying the wrong message to me and a few other employees. Although he yells at me for having a book, my co-worker Bamboni will bring his [Game System] to overnight work and play it all night long. This is the kind of thing I’m seeing, is that he’s allowing other employees to bask in the fun of a game while I’m reading a book for education and that’s not allowed. The fact that I break my back every night cleaning while the gas pumper gets to sit in the booth all night doesn’t seem right to me; doesn’t make me think very highly about my job.
So I’m currently winding down on my way to sleep; it’s almost 9am and I will have to wake up at 2 to be at work at 3pm again today.
Other things I see is the laxed attitude he and his employees have towards certain issues. Smith, an employee of —— willfully denies a sale of a sub any time he can, and this is looked over by the higher ups. Joe Shmo, another employee, is in trouble for clocking in way too many hours and going into overtime, whilst not being productive; but this has happened more than once and could’ve been prevented if the manager was paying better attention to what was going on with payroll. &%$#(, another employee, is charged with being lazy too many times, and she gets a much bigger rate of pay than I. He/she also has been rumored to commit the act of stealing, but alas, he/she still works there.
These are multiple reasons for a revolt in the way things work at the ——. This is due time for change. How do you think I should go about talking to Louie about this? Or should I go straight to Human Resources? I think that Louis should listen to what I have to say, because I’m done being stepped on without a chance to rebuttal (stand up for myself).
–
Someone.
A facebook rant + updates
Really…I mean, come on! Facebook is now everywhere. And I mean everywhere. There’s a “like” button on almost every website, and almost every modern corporation has a Facebook page. Facebook has really become the social network of choice for many many people. I mean, most, if not all of my friends have a facebook account. People post their lives on Facebook, and most people don’t think twice about how their privacy might be breached using Facebook. They just want to be social.
Facebook is mainly a way that people can keep in touch with all their friends, but without actually calling them or emailing them. Who even uses email or instant messaging clients anymore? Facebook does both of those functions pretty well. I used to use AIM, and then I used Pidgin, but now their both almost obsolete when you can do pretty much the same thing with Facebook.
But anyways let me update my profile pic for WordPress. Go to my band’s website at www.slackjawbluesband.com and my Youtube channel at www.youtube.com/user/Guitarguy234.
Also, I’ve been listening to Weather Report‘s Forecast: Tomorrow box set. My favorite song is Havona, and you can check it out here. Havona is I think one of Jaco Pastorius‘ best compositions, if not the best. Yes, Jaco wrote that. But he didn’t write Birdland, which is another great Weather Report song.
Here is a Steve Vai live video called “I Know You’re Here.” He uses a custom 3 necked guitar, with the top neck attached to a synth somehow, in an open F# tuning, the middle neck is fretted and in standard tuning, and the bottom neck is in some type of E tuning, possibly Esus2, and is fretless.
Memorial Day Somerville Bike Race
I had a good memorial day weekend. My band Slackjaw played at the Somerville, NJ Annual Memorial Day bike race, called Tour of Somerville. More than 500 cyclists participated in this race. We played our set in front of the courthouse on top of the steps. Here is a pic of us.
Dropping Dreamhost Hosting (for now)
I became a Dreamhost customer in May of 2009 because they were holding an incredible deal. Free hosting for a year if you register one domain with them. So I did it just to see what hosting your own website or blog would be like. It was fun while it lasted, and I learned a decent amount about web development and hosting, but I sorta lost interest and for a couple of months I wasn’t doing anything with the site.
My main PC hit the fritz a month ago so I’ve lost even more interest in the whole web development world. So I’ve decided to save a bit of money by closing my hosting account for now. I did enjoy Dreamhost and I loved their tech support, and if I start hosting again I’ll probably go back to them. But for now I’ll keep my domains registered with them and cut the hosting.
Anyway, I’ve been busy with stuff for a while and trying to get my financials in order. I’ve been playing gigs with my new band Slackjaw (www.slackjawbluseband.com) so I’ve been busy with other things. This blog will be my main blog from now on. I still <3 WordPress 
.
That’s all for now.
