Winter Slacker

I have been done with the fall semester and finals at University of Houston for almost two weeks and this is my first post.  I told myself that, beginning the day after my last final, I would start blogging about my preparing for a performance at the University Center on campus on February 24th.

I haven’t felt like doing anything at all except lounge around on the computer since finals ended.  I did manage to scrounge up a list of covers I could play.  Some are songs I already know how to play and a couple are ones I would have to learn, but that’s easy enough.  The big challenge is choosing which songs to play and in what order.  Also, I want to fit in a decent amount of my own material in there as well. Here is a few songs I’ve come up with that I could cover.  This is NOT my actual set list.

I only get 30 minutes, so I will have to dwindle this down a bit. But also, I will be playing a couple of my own songs as well.

I will probably use both of my acoustic guitars for the set so I hopefully won’t have to tune during my allotted time.  I’m not so good at tuning and talking… and that tends to create a very awkward silence which is prone to making people lose interest in me. (I learned that the hard way.)

There is one aspect of the event that I am curious about;

 

the acoustics.  I haven’t been told exactly there at the UC the event will be held, but if it is where I think it is I’ll have some work to do with whomever is “in charge” of the sound.  I have found that a lot of “sound guys/girls” actually have no idea what they are doing and they get paid (or are even doing it pro bono) because the person hiring them knows even less.  The problem is that live sound is an ever-changing beast, so you have to be in tune with the acoustics of the room.  So many sound people at small places just make it all sound like muddy slop.  I know it is sometimes difficult to work with a certain space, but with the right EQ settings you can at least make it sound decent.

I’m going to go back to doing nothing for a couple hours.  Well, not complete nothing.  I’ll be internetting and stuff.

Under the Mickey and Dreaming

I just had the weirdest dream.  I was at some kind of Disney inspired water park with my cousins Keith and Brian.  Keith was his current age but Brian was 10 years old.  So we were waiting in a super long line watching people coming out the bottom of the tube.  They were flying out of there pretty fast.  We finally got to the bottom of the attraction, grabbed our tubes, and began to go up the stairs, but then the stairs stopped and turned into a weaving path, which turned into a mountain climbing wall.  There was this group of like 8 year old girls ahead of us that were flying through these obstacles.  I thought, “This is a water park, what’s up with the O-Course to get to the top of the slide, and why are these little girls having an easier time than us?”  After an hour of random obstacles we got to the top of the slide tower and there was a big group of body guards around someone whom everyone seemed to want to get an autograph from.  There was a Hispanic guy in front of me and he said, “El Mickey.”  There was an entire football team, in football uniforms, waiting for Mickey to autograph their jerseys and helmets… I kept trying to get to go down the slide, but everyone was judging me for not wanting to stop for Mickey’s signature…..

 

Then I woke up.