Clouds and sunshine...

Hmmm, a bit of a hackneyed title, but I'm no lyrics man.

Stuff has happened. Not all good stuff, but life is supposed to challenge you a bit and I've spent too much of mine so far trying not to get into situations where I have to make decisions: I'm pretty sure at some level I'm always petrified of making the wrong one.

El Stacko
Well, I got some speakon cables last saturday (ta maplin) - pity they didn't have any 2.5mm diameter conductor ones so I'll have to see how these 1.5mm ones work out in the short term - they're all I could get. I also took the time to buy some "proper" XLR to XLR balanced mic cables.

I spent a portion of the weekend meeting up with some old friends down on the Reading meadows, where they were chasing around after coloured plastic discs which sail when thrown. I thought only retrievers did that, but there you go, there is a game called frisbee.

On arriving home, yours truly eagerly hooked up all items, and turned on the amp (mute on, of course, although I'm sure the amp has speaker protection). Preamp lights are on, we're go across the board. Plug in the 6 string (no pod yet), hit the mute to turn it off and....

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzhummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Bollocks.

I fiddled with cables (checking their polarity and wiring against the helpfully located labels on the amp and cabs) for about half an hour, but nothing could elicit any noises from the stack. The poweramp section is buggered. Arse.

So, I rang the bass centre in london (or now, the "house of guitars" as they are known) and yes, they are open on sundays, but the amp guy doesn't get in until tuesday (bank holiday monday y'see) so I could drop it off.

Wanting to get things moving as quickly as possible, I got up early on sunday, and tried to get into london (ealing broadway by car, then overland to paddington and circle to liverpool st, then a shortish walk to their place). Took me 3 bloody hours, lugging 26 kilos of busted amp. Thankfully the luggage shop ("left luggage") in Paddington has baggage trolleys which will take 30 kilos, so after I hit paddington things became a tad more comfortable.

So far all I know is the amp guy is looking at it. Grr. I'll ring him in a minute and see what I can find out...

The Band
Things seem to be moving apace: our residency at Bridge in oxford looks to be in the bag - 25th of May is our first gig. Last night, however, we played something of a mini-showcase style gig for some assembled contacts of Jake's. It's gone awfully well... but I can't reveal any more than that right now. We really did play blindingly well though, Dan's drumming is becoming something of a revelation!

Phew! Enough for now.