Who's the Boss?

"Have you ever seen a one-armed man punching at nothing but the breeze? If you've ever seen a one-armed man then you've seen me."

Do you live your life on the run?

"It choses the body, but not the soul."

Mandelbrot Set Zoom

It's still not as far as light goes.

Flashback to Reality

I just picked up this sweet little guy; spent most of the week's pay doing it too. I think I suffer from that poor-person syndrome where as soon as there is a little money in my pocket, it has to get spent-TODAY!

Delay pedals are so awesome. The uniqueness of delays is right up there with overdrives and distortions. Even if the effect does the same thing as another one, there are subtle differences and proponents will go to the mattresses over their favorite.

Delay pedals are in a decidedly more complex

category than overdrives though because there are many different kinds of delay effects derived from different technologies that produce their own unique kind of delay. I could go into the important differences between tube echos, tape echos, analog delays, lo-fi delays, digital delays and so on, or I could let someone else do it for me.

There are pros and cons for each kind and it really is a matter of what kind of effect you are trying to get before you start weighing in on a particular unit. Is an $800 vintage Roland Space Echo better than an inexpensive digital delay? Yes, but they make completely different sounds, that's my point.

The TC Electronic Flashback delay is great because it has a wide variety of popular delay sounds packed into a compact pedal. Additionally, it's a lot easier to use than, say, a DL4, but it's not as versatile either. One of the things I wish it had was a tone knob or "x-factor" knob to change some of the parameters within a delay type. For instance: the lo-fi delay voicing is great, but I wish it could get even lower-fi where the repeats are super squawky and chirpy; or on the modulated delay setting, you can't really dial in more or less modulation without getting more or less of the overall effect level.

One of the most inventive features of this pedal, though, is really ground breaking. There is a small connection on the front (depending on how you look at it) of the pedal that allows you to hook up to your computer's USB port and download an artist-created special delay. They call the process TonePrint and I think it's a great ideal. There is a library of over two-dozen-and-growing TonePrints available for this pedal alone. I only wish there was a way of giving the sound a listen before downloading it so as to prevent from downloading them all, because they all seem like they would be useful and usable.

Questions without answers

Somebody get this girl a glass of milk!

The terrible present

"...wild me lost among wild you."

On the Road, Again.

Over a month since a blog post? Something must be awry! Not that anyone reads this, but so many wonderful things have happened that I have hardly had time to collect my thoughts.

First, there was the holidays. The holidays, for me, is a reminder that there are some justifiable reasons to commit suicide. If it's not the stress of dealing with pent up emotional abuse from your childhood, it's the stress of dealing with on-going emotional abuse from your adulthood. Thanks the Lord Baby Jesus for whiskey and beer, even if it's the not-good kind.

Next, there was a move. No, wait: TWO moves. Or three. You can never be sure because the sky keeps on changing. And here I sit in the Windy City (that's what they call San Francisco, right?) and the wind is a-blowin'! I just returned from a short mini-tour with my friend's band. They dropped a new record and it's good enough to allow them to take a professional like me out on the road with them. I did all kinds of heavy lifting and guttural laughing and string tuning, and light mooning. The van had no heat and we were headed north! It was great to be back in Minneapolis for a day and see some old friends and my cuss of an ex-girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's band. Wait, my ex's ex make him my...what? Who cares. I had a blast and got to hang out with a bunch of good old boys, a girl, and a sassy three-year-old.

Has anyone ever thrown you one of these: I can't remember the last time I fucked a super model? I can. BOOSH! But enough about my dreams...

Then there was the guitar, oh, Lordy, the guitar. I am super excited to have it, even if it's only for a limited time. If I can manage to save my dollars, it'll be my second next big purchase. I'm proud that Bilt has made a name for themselves and came out of Des Moines.

Things are really heating up! Kid Rock, Los Lonely Boys, some black guy and... was that Stallone?

Netflix can't keep me entertained.