Life As It Is XIXOur first show for Light The Pilot, Dec. 18th, didn’t go as well as I predicted. Our bassist Jake Blair, aka Beaker, believes that practicing before a show causes bad luck, as it did that day. But the rest of the band begged to differ, seeing as to how most of us came from marching band. We always practiced before a show and we got some pretty good scores and all. So we’re used to practicing before an important event. We were the opening band and I wasn’t fly with that, but whatever. The original sound check manager we were supposed to get wasn’t there, so we had a backup sound check manager who wasn’t that familiar with the PA’s unfortunately. Nonetheless, we all had fun at Trevi’s. My friend from Montana, Clinton Cochran (aka The Phoenix from an old group of friends I called The Star of Death), was even able to attend the show! He introduced me to Metal and expanding my mind when it came to music. I have Clinton to thank for me being in a band and wanting to learn more about music.
Other bands such as Stop The Phoenix (another band that uses the microKORG), Am I Alive, and Seven Ages also played with us. After that Ray, Austin, Beaker, and I went to go chill with Am I Alive, Jon from A Tale Of Two Cities, and a few other strangers, such as the younger brother of a member from a band called Confides In Chaos. There, we had a fun time and drew funny things inside of my sketchbook.
Dec. 23rd was more successful though, even though Chain Reaction had a smaller stage. Yet again, we were the opening act because two bands dropped from the list. Another un-cool event, but Garrett of Chain Reaction said that he would make it up to us somehow. Bleh, pre-sale tickets are not cool though, even though I sold all mine to my family. As we opened, the crowd we had was people we met from the parking lot, some friends, family, and others were staff members of Chain Reaction. Stop The Phoenix also played at Chain Reaction with us. As a matter of fact, they played after us. I’m not sure what happened, but I saw the singer for Stop The Phoenix, but didn’t perform for them that day. Beaker was up on stage and singing vocals for them, which confused me, but I’ll talk to him later about it.
I’ve made a guitar pedal bank on my microKORG because Ray got me a guitar for Christmas! It’s rather ancient and I’m still trying to do lots of research on this guitar. It’s called “De Armond M-55”. Similar to a Gibson BFG Les Paul, minus the maple quilted top paint job and all. It’s in a beige color, one double coil pickup, missing covers on the volume and tone knob, 22 frets, and has a unique parallelogram-like bridge (or whatever the part is called where the strings go through at the bottom of the guitar). The strap-bolts have been tampered with, but Ray has also given me some strap locks. I plan to put them on soon, but seeing as how it’s Christmas, I might as well spend lots of time with my family first and then go put them on. I’m thinking about customizing it further, but I’m going to need the help of my mom’s boyfriend to do the job. I want to add a neck pickup and a middle pickup just for the heck of it (hopefully it’s possible) and find a neck in the market that can give me 24 extra jumbo frets.
Ray is purchasing a new guitar. One of the MH models of ESP Ltd. With a full agathis body, see-thru black cherry paintjob (I call it crimson), licensed Floyd Rose tremolo, ESP Ltd. Licensed humbuckers, reverse-headstock, and 24 wonderful frets. Something as wonderful as this was seen at Guitar Center for $319! Now that’s a buy!
We have been invited to play at three parties: New Year’s Party of Jay Elliot (a current drumline member of the Titan Thunder Regiment), Gustavo Chino’s Birthday Party (a trombonist of TTR), and another of our friend Andrew (friend/fan of our music) in March. We’re hoping to redeem ourselves at Trevi’s Bowling Alley and doing a better performance.
Wow!
