My first day at Home Depot was yesterday and that's cool and all. Money and somesuch. Not really what I'm here to talk about.

A few days ago I picked up a second Big Muff Pi by Electro Harmonix. This is the black Russian version made by Sovtek. It's different than the other one I have, an NYC model, in that it's a little smoother, not quite as gritty. It doesn't break up quite as much as the NYC, but of course it's a fuzz pedal so it's going to break up. The night I brought it home I plugged it in and thought it was broken 'cause I wasn't getting sound out of it. Then I realized I had the damn thing in backwards. I switched the cables and did a little A-B with the NYC. My first impression? They kinda sound the same.

See, the russian Muff is known for having a slightly different sound than the NYC, which is why I picked it up. At first I couldn't hear it because the difference in subtle, but now I'm really hearing how the Russian has less "dirt" than the NYC, while also having a little less volume drop when engaged. A guy on shortscale.org said the Russian will get a Queens of the Stone Age type sound, while the NYC gets more of a Smashing Pumpkins and White Stripes sound. I think either way I win.

I was originally going to only keep one of them, but I might have to hold on to both now. Maybe use both in my rig at once. Hit 'em both for mad feedback squeels!

There's also a second russian version with a green casing that's different still. Someday I'll have that one too.

some things:

today consisted of watching the last three episodes of Season 4 of Angel. Back to back. By the start of the last episode I was really hungry. I didn't eat until after the special features started running.

I made an omelet for breakfast at 3:30 pm right after I finished Angel. It was pretty good, although not my best.

I pricked my finger on the loose end of a guitar string today after eating. Not too bad, it stopped bleeding in a few seconds, but it did sting a bit.

After that, I sat in front of my computer and started typing out this really dumb blog entry.

It's unfortunate that I am still afflicted by this

My Grandmother used to always joke, "If only we could get over this whole eating thing, we'd save so much money!" I always thought that if Humans didn't need to eat to survive (but could still eat) that food would be way more expensive and even fast food would be really expensive.

Just so you know, this entry is not about food.

Where's the bassist?

A few weeks ago I arrive at the studio and hear Chris and Kendra working on a new piece. It has a kind of slow acoustic building to a heavy distortion chorus kinda thing going on. It's pretty cool, and we work on it a little here and there while getting ready for Slims, Sub-mission, etc.

A few days ago Jim sends the rest of the band a link to The Letter Black's video for "Hanging On By A Thread" and asks us to think about a song in the same vein. I listen to the song and I kinda like it. It's got a catchy chorus and the chick singing is pretty hot and it's got that "modern hard rock" feel to it. The only think is that it seems like a two person show. What I mean is, the video shows the singer, the lead guitarist, and that's pretty much it. You can tell that there's a drummer, another guitarist, and a bassist in the video, but there are barely any shots of them. It's honestly a little baffling to me.

When you're in a band, you are expected to not only play your instrument, but contribute your knowledge to the band collective. What I mean is, I play the bass in my band and I sing in my band, but not only that, I'm expected to take what I know of playing bass and singing and anything else to help shape our songs into cohesive wholes. And in return, I want to be in the friggin' music video! It's really upsetting when I see "bands" that only feature the lead singer or the lead guitarist, and everyone else in the band looks like an extra they hired that day for the shoot. If a band is shooting a music video and the band has five members, I want to see five members in the video, and not just off to the side or just one or two shots. Everyone in the band should get to look awesome in the music video.

What's the point of being in a band if you don't get to be all, "Look at me! I'M IN A MUSIC VIDEO SUCK IT BITCHES!"?

BTW, our new song actually does kind of have the vibe Jim was asking about. It's called StandStill.