Wolves on the Wing

Yep. Its that time of the day.

TIME FOR METAL!!!!!!


Hey I haven't had a chance to play my guitar lately. Time to indulge myself in some slow slithery riffs mixed with power chords run through my two distortion pedals. And yes, sometimes I do use them both at the same time. Tonight will be one of those nights.:-)

Courtesy of a friend's facebook feed here is some really nice music. Now how the hell am I supposed to get stuff done now? :-)


First for my late uncle Mike. I think he'd enjoy this take on one of his favourite band's classic songs:



Next here's a nice take on one of my favourite movie soundtracks pieces. Trust me, what he's doing with his left hand at the beginning is not easy to do well:




And finally this. I think it just illustrates why I love music and finding cool new stuff. It's the only part of my life that never shrinks to nothing but instead always expands to new horizons.



Most of these are from Candyrat Records and can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/user/rpoland/featured

Not that its ever been great. I'm much more of a strummer who likes to drop slow sledgehammer style power chords rather than a "all down strokes all the time" thrasher but yeah, I'm slow.

Oh well. Practice.

Yeah I wasn't in the mood for any tonight. What I was in the mood for was just making my fingers raw and my ears bleed (figuratively of course) so it was all Sabbath, Priest, Zeppelin and even some Ted Nugent coming from my amp's headphones.

Yeah "Stranglehold" is definitely a trip down memory lane. I used to jam on that with some guys in my college dorm. Fun song to do when you just want to meander for 20 minutes. Self indulgent but sometimes needed.

So here is the week that was:

1. Sens defenceman Eric Gryba has received a two game suspension for his hit on Lars Eller. Now I do think this was more of a legitimate hockey play gone terribly bad (they do call this type of pass a "suicide pass" for exactly this reason) but given the concern over headshots I can understand and support a suspension. That being said is consistency in the rulings too much to ask? Some plays seem to get nothing, while similar plays result in multiple game suspensions. I sure I'm not the only one who's confused by this.

If anyone is curious about what the hit looked like you can watch it on youtube here. It's not the raw video but rather the analysis the TSN panel did on it, so no blood.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83qHq-RgEGM

2. Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman is dead at 49, apparently from liver failure from a spider bite over a year ago. That's a sad end to what was starting to look like a feel good story, since it appeared he was coming back from a bought of necrotizing fasciitis in his arm that forced him to take time off.  At their best he and Kerry King were one of the best guitar partnerships in metal, I thought.

Here's the first Slayer tune I ever heard back in high school "Seasons in the Abyss". Hanneman's solo runs from 4:28 to 4:54 and has some rather nice tapping in it, I think.



3. I'm happy to report that Canada's Conservative government has announced that they have awarded a ship designing contract to a company for the bargain price of $288 million dollars. These ships will be based on a Norwegian patrol boat design Canada bought for $5 million dollars that cost the Norwegian government approximately $100 million dollars to design...and build.  When asked why Canada is overpaying for ships other countries design and build for a fraction of that cost Defence Minister Peter MacKay simply said "other shipyards are wrong".

Now I don't expect anyone to tell me why my elected representatives have decided to bankrupt my country but I will ask that if anyone has a spare defibrillator to let me know. Considering I get massive chest pains and shortness of breath from just the thought that this might make the F-35 purchase fiasco look cheap...well, I have no words.

You know, I've always voted but I've never joined a party or worked on a campaign. But with this being the type of leadership the Conservatives are becoming known for I think I might. Don't get me wrong. I'm not voting FOR the NDP or Liberals, I'm voting against incompetence.

Here's the link to the story if interested.  http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/05/02/pol-milewski-shipbuilding-design-mystery.html

I raised the action on my strings by about 1 mm, and the fret buzz seems to be greatly reduced, but I think the neck maybe bowed a bit. Since I can't really see how that can be fixed I'm going to try detuning down a full step to see if that helps. Failing that I may need to try a neck swap, and if I do that then I might as well just go nuts and scallop the neck.

Not sure I really want to do that since that's only about two weeks of labour and 30 different grades of sandpaper...*sigh*  On the bright side at least I've got the exacto knife blades and masking tape.

And for those of you wondering "Exacto knives? Sandpaper? What the hell is this idiot going to do to his guitar?!?" if it goes to that level I'll post the process here. Should make for some good comedy.

I keep meaning to post a write up of my recent vacation in North Caroline, but once again I procrastinated. I did do something productive at least. I'd been lacking time to play guitar lately, so I took the opportunity to run over a few numbers.

Anyway you slice it, I was pretty rusty, but I wasn't too upset with a few of the pieces I played. Considering I haven't played either "38 Years Old" or "Hammer to Fall" in about 6 months the fact I remembered both the chords and the timing can't be a bad thing, right? :-)

Time to get some dinner, so I'll leave you with the original for that tune. It's a good one, but tragic, no pun intended.

For the last couple of days my fellow guitar playing LJ amigos bluesman and fen_wolfchile have discussed the thought experiment of getting a guitar from their birth year. So since I'm not one to resist a little insanity I've been just trawling ebay to get an idea of what said instruments from 1976 might go for these days.

For Fender Stratocasters it seems the bidding starts at about $2000 and goes upward, although from the look of the photos its hard to tell if they are just a little road worn or embracing full on Stratocrapper Syndrome. Looking onwards towards the Gibson Les Paul's on offer the prices appear the same, generally, but the instruments at least look a lot better. I'm not sure if that's because the typical Les Paul paint job fades out more nicely than a Strat during that time period, or if they were just better maintained.

Ultimately though, even after looking for specific vintage gear I'm not really hearing its sweet siren call, and I have to confess if I'm going to spend a lot of money on an instrument that I've never played before buying I'll spend it on warmoth.com instead of ebay. I think I'm always going to prefer putting my own scuff marks on an instrument, rather than living with someone else's.

I think it just gives an instrument a more personally meaningful history, you know what I'm saying?

Last night my friend telemeister and I stumbled independently upon the same groovy guitarist demoing some sweet vintage guitars. I can't say it any better than him, so here's his quote:

"He clearly loves to play, and communicates the joy of it.

Also, he bloody rips."


That he does. That he does.

Also, isn't this a sweet looking 1966 Gibson EDS-1275 6/12 doubleneck? :-)

Last night my friend telemeister and I stumbled independently upon the same groovy guitarist demoing some sweet vintage guitars. I can't say it any better than him, so here's his quote:

"He clearly loves to play, and communicates the joy of it.

Also, he bloody rips."


That he does. That he does.

Also, isn't this a sweet looking 1966 Gibson EDS-1275 6/12 doubleneck? :-)