Tycho Talk

Anyone up for some Rock Band tomorrow evening?

I've got a shift until 8pm, but consider the house open for visitors after that. I don't have to be anywhere the next morning, so we'll go until we're done going. BYOB, don't be a jerk, blah blah. Even if you don't necessarily want to do any Rock Banding, feel free to pop in and say hi!

Yeah, I said it. Here's the thing- I don't have to work an early shift on Saturdays anymore, so we can stay up as late as we want! But to get that day off I had to take a Friday evening shift which ends at 8pm. So please don't show up before then, since I work right up through the end of my shifts. But yeah, come on by; bring drinks or snacks or what-have-you.

Hey! Guys! Guys! Guys!

I've pre-ordered a Rock Band 3 package that comes with the game and the keytar and some extra songs! It's being released 10/26! Hot damn!

I like it. But you knew I would. Well, even if you didn't, I knew I would. The only way I could not like it would be if it was a band I really loathed. Like... oh, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

So, I started playing around 2:30; Threeve and Amanda came by a bit after 3. JD showed up at 6pm, and Eric got in on the action near the end- but we went though all the songs by about 10pm. I think I sang on every song except one or two. Amanda, Threeve and I were all doing vocals initially because all of us wanted to sing, and on a couple of songs that needed only one vocalist I went and screwed with laundry and whatall. But the songs were fun, and I'm currently at 5 on the Leaderboards for 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams', and in the top 20 for a bunch of others. I'm sure that will probably evaporate as more people get the game and play through it, but screw it! I burned a day playing Rock Band. I'd do it again too! I regret nothing!

I cannot concentrate on my work this morning. It's a bunch of hotel reviews (WAFFLES!) and it's just boooooring. I've got things to do, man! Places to go!

Eric was kind enough to pre-order Green Day Rock Band for me. I am not a huge fan, but like I told Stevie, I'm Rock Band's bitch, especially now that they've figured out how to do harmonies. The dude told Eric that Rock Band 3 is coming out for Christmas; you know I'll be all over that. In the meantime, I need to start listening to some Green Day, I suppose. But even if I don't, I suspect that I will like them a lot better after RB comes out. Learning any piece in order to perform it almost always makes me fall in love with it.

Gaaah, back to work.

After fucking up my shift this morning, I pretty much hung out and did a bunch of nothing- well, I did some laundry and some dishes, so on second thought, I busted my ass today! Also, Stevie came over and we learned how to make coffee! And, sung a bunch of Beatles songs.

Eric got home, and shit was starting to ice over but we figured what the hell- we still wanted to try to make the Howie Day concert. Hey, maybe the weather would keep more people home! That kinda worked, actually. Maybe Howie's not as popular as he could be, and it was a Thursday, but even showing up awhile after the doors opened we were able to get about 2 people away from the stage.

But first, dinner. For the first time ever I got a craving for a hot dog (hush, you). So we went to Frank which is a sort of fancy-ass hot dog place that serves poutine, among other things. We stuffed ourselves on probably not the most healthy food ever (but really tasty I tell you!) and delicious cream soda. Here's how they are- more than half of their desserts had bacon. This is definitely a sometimes food place.

Anyway, concert- the opening act was a last-minute reschedule and it was some guy from New York (Mikey Wax) with a keyboard. He was an okay musician, but too... I dunno, clean-cut and Manilow-esque, which worked for me when I was 12 I guess but I wish he'd said 'fuck' at least once for some reason. Howie was fine- it was pretty much the same concert I saw a few months ago. I saw again how uncomfortable the guy is with between-song banter. He gets nervous and awkward and it's really kind of cute. He did play around with his old stuff a little more, and was obviously having fun, and it all sounded excellent. He's the one that has a billion pedals and loops stuff so that he sounds like a pretty substantial band but is just the one guy with an acoustic guitar. Pretty snazzy.

More concerts coming up- John Mayer's actually coming to Austin for once, as are the Flaming Lips. I hear Muse is coming to town for SXSW, but SXSW is expensive and vexing to one as crowd-averse as myself. Them Crooked Vultures seems to be getting a lot more airtime these days; it'd be awfully keen if they were to tour...

This head cold, verily it sucketh. I don't think I've had one this bad since the one I got right when we went to London. I stayed home from work yesterday and spent time with the Quil brothers (Ny and Day), and also with Threeve because we hadn't hung out in awhile and I was not sick enough to want to sleep all day, and was feeling bored and lonely. I also wanted to pick his brain about my drumming- but when I sat down at the set, I did a hell of a lot better than I had the day before. I'm not sure what was different- maybe my brain just needed a bit of time to wire up the neural pathways, but I was scoring at least 90% on just about every song I tried. On Easy, yeah, but this was only day two of this process so that's not too bad. He offered a couple of pointers, though, and we caught up and had a nice afternoon.

I thought about calling in sick for yoga- Pixie has been giving free yoga lessons for her teacher certification. I sacked up and went anyway,and I'm glad I did. I learned how many frogs I can do before my legs cry 'uncle'- 19. I tend to think I'm in bad shape because I'm generally such a lard-ass, but yoga makes me think I'm in better shape than I often assume. Maybe it's a high constitution. I don't know if I could fight off or outrun a grizzly bear, but you betcha I can do breath of fire for a long time.

I didn't sleep worth a damn, and the cold is trying to crawl down into my lungs. Bleh. There will be more drumming today.

So, the rest of the Rubber Soul album was released for Beatles Rock Band today. I downloaded it and immediately jumped on and did the vocal tracks at Expert level, just to see how I'd do. My thoughts, and scores:

Norwegian Wood: 97%, 5 stars, 17th on the leaderboards around noon. Mom told me when I was a wee child that this song was about marijuana, which flies directly in the face of statements that have recently been made about the Beatles having no drug references in any of their songs. So, make of that what you will. I'm surprised I didn't do better on this, but I'll attribute that to it being the first song and I don't believe in warming up.

You Won't See Me: 99%, 5 stars, 14th. Nothing of note; this wasn't a song I was very familiar with.

Nowhere Man: 99%, 5 stars, 26th. This song seems so... sixties, I guess, but I like it anyway.

Think For Yourself: 94%, 4 stars, 23rd. Here's George Harrison being kind of preachy. It's another song I wasn't too familiar with, and the tune has a lot of short phrases that aren't very intuitive.

The Word: 98%, 5 stars, 9th. I wasn't familiar with this one at all, but the phrases were long at it's repetitive, so easy to sight-read. I like the sentiment too.

Michelle: 100%, 6 stars, 19th. My very favorite Beatles tune, since it's my middle name, and I've heard it and sung along with it a zillion times. I don't speak ze French, but I was still able to nail the tune. I think a lot of other people must like this one, because to get essentially a perfect score and still get 19th on the leaderboards means more competition.

What Goes On: 99%, 5 stars, 9th. Oh lord, this is such a hick-sounding country song. Still, those are fun to sing. It will be fun to try the harmonies on this one too.

Girl: 99%, 6 stars, 15th. I'm surprised I got the gold stars for this one- I'm not as familiar with it. It's interesting, because it seems like quite a romantic tune until you really get into the words, and then it's about what a mean twunt (as my brother would say) this woman is. It also features John Lennon's breathing, like a couple of other songs I'm not immediately recalling. Revolution, I think, and there's at least one other one.

In My Life: 99%, 5 stars, 22nd: Ooh, I sure like this one. Not much else to say about it.

Wait: 92%, 4 stars, 19th: Why did I suck on this one so much? Again, lack of familiarity, and I just don't care for the song that much.

Run For Your Life: 98%, 5 stars, 13th: This is probably the most fucked-up song by the Beatles. I like it even less than 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' which at least sounds cheerful if you don't realize it's about a damn serial killer. The sentiment is really disturbing, though the Wikipedia article mitigates that a little. On top of everything else, it sounds like a Monkees song.

It may have shown up before because I can't look at the animation much when I'm singing, but a 12-string guitar showed up for one of the songs which was cool. I don't remember which one though.

This is the last download that Rock Band has planned for the Beatles, as far as I know. They've said that it's a huge pain in the ass to secure the rights or get ahold of the masters or something, so they're not promising anything- but if sales are good, they might come out with more. I sure hope so. I've heard rumors that they're working on a Who version, but blah. The next Rock Band needs to be Led Zep or nuthin'.

It's been a good day so far. I slept in (woo!) and then Stevie came over for some Rock Band lunch. I've been trying my hand at playing bass and singing at the same time, which I haven't done a lot of lately for whatever reason- it hurts my brain, but I'm doing pretty well. I just got 100/100 (bass- easy, vocal- hard) on
Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band/With A Little Help From My Friends. He also bought me some more xbox points so that I can get the rest of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album when they release it tomorrow. Woo again!

Work Steve and Gordon and Eric and I met for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, where I got the smallest birthday sundae ever, which was exactly the size I wanted. Later, Eric and I are going to go see that disaster porn movie 2012 at the Alamo Lake Creek, since they have poutine on the menu. I have very low expectations of that movie, which I think is the best way to go see such a film. It's been said that Roland Emmerich makes the best shitty movies, and it's at the Alamo (the theater, not the mission in San Antonio where the famous battle was fought- which led to a very amusing misunderstanding in a conversation recently) so there's booze. What could be better?