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I finally did it. Yes, I bought a banjo! Well, it’s a ‘banjetar’ – basically, it’s the body of a banjo, but with the neck of a guitar, i.e. six strings. Tuned in standard E, it’s played like a guitar too. Or at least the chords are. Banjos aren’t really for strumming, bit if you get a bit of finger picking going, they sound the same.

It’s fun to play, as it plays like a guitar, so there’s not much to learn. Just pick up and play. I had to set it up, as out of the box it wasn’t set up at all (probably for transport). Setup was simple though, as a found a guide on what to do. I followed that, and it was playable. I had to adjust the bridge a few times, but I think it’s about right now. It’s fun to play, if a bit loud! It’s also quite heavy, but the back is a big chunk of mahogany, so that’s no surprise.

A good buy though, and a worthy addition to my collection of guitars!

I’ve had two ‘owies’ this week. Well, three if you count my back hurting due to the god-awful chair I’ve been sitting on this week whilst in a training course I’ve been on.

The two things were my left hand, and my left foot. Totally unconnected, but quite odd.

Firstly, my hand. Thursday afternoon, I was chatting with some people at work, when I noticed my left hand aching, right in the middle of the palm. I couldn’t quite work out why, but as the evening wore on, it got progressively worse. I was driving home and pondering quite why it was. It seemed if I touched the tip of my index finger, it hurt most, when it suddenly stuck me – it was due to playing guitar! I play fairly frequently, so the callouses on my fingertips are quite well developed, and I usually don’t have any problems playing. Lately, I’ve been playing quite a few Guster songs, and songs like Come Down Stairs And Say Hello, Ramona, and Red Oyster Cult have a LOT of barre chords in them.

For the un-initiated, a barre chord is where you place your index finger across all the strings and press down, then use the remaining four fingers to press down on some of the strings to form the chord. Conversely, an open chord just uses the finger tips, and leaves some strings ‘open’ all the way up the fret-board. Barred chords are harder to play as you’re putting down a lot of pressure to hold down the strings, which leads to an RSI-like injury. I don’t play a lot of barres often – most songs I play only feature the odd few now and then, so it’s not an issue. These Guster songs, however, are ALL barre chords. A session of playing those, and you’re into ache-city the next day.

Next was my foot. It didn’t hurt, so much as was doing something very strange. I was sitting in traffic on the way to work, with my foot on the clutch, when my leg began to tremble. I couldn’t work out quite why, and the next day, it happened again. Trying to hold the clutch up slightly made it even worse. Trying to make manoeuvres, such as reverse parking, or crawl in traffic, is much harder when your leg is bouncing about on the pedal. I think I’ve sussed this one out too. Lately, I’ve been taking to put the heaters on in the car, and have it venting onto the windscreen and down into the foot well. The foot well vent is right next to my left foot! So all the way into work, it’s blowing hot air onto my probably cold foot, and making the muscle do some weird things as a result.

It’s funny how such simple things can lead to such odd or annoying things later on. My back ache was obvious, as the chairs we were using weren’t great – I felt like an old man trying to get into the car this morning!

This video of a Mellotron is just cool/creepy on so many levels. Firstly, it’s insanely twee. Secondly, it’s doing something quite radical for the time, and wasn’t really duplicated for some years. But also there the fact the ‘host’ refers to the other bloke as his ‘son-in-law’. They look the same age!!! Still, the sounds coming out of the thing are quite impressive.

Went to see Editors this evening in Oxford at the newly refurbished Zodiac. It was a damn good gig, with some very spirited playing from both the main, and support acts. Everybody seemed to be on form, and it was pretty enjoyable.

What wasn’t (there’s always SOMETHING to moan about) was the acoustics. They are DIRE. All the music was drowned out by itself. A real shame. If the venue can sort that, then it’ll be much better, but standing fairly near to the front, everything was just a distorted mess. Play it loud by all means, but not so loud it distorts to a mush!

Or it would. I thought I’d have a whack at recording some stuff today. Having tidied my desk up, I now had the room to put my mixer back up, and plug things in. So after much fiddling, I found that I didn’t have the cable I needed to plug it into my Mac! Even after much digging about through all my boxes of cables and other things (which led to me tidying up those things too) I still didn’t get it working.

So tomorrow I’ll go for a wander round town and see if I can find the cable I need. I have a feeling I won’t find it though. I know I can get it from CPC, but the P&P will cost as much as the item itself, so if I can find it locally, I’d at least try to. Since the likes of Tandy is no longer available, that leaves me with Currys (no point even looking) and normal AV stores, but I doubt they’ll have it too. Music shops might carry the cable, but it’d be a long shot.

Come tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be placing an order from CPC I think.

I suggest you go listen to this right now: MP3 Link.

It just randomly popped up in a random shuffle on iTunes. I got it as part of the 2007 South by Southwest festival music pack thingy. I might have to go look up some more of their stuff!

I’ve known about Guster for some time. The hardened Barenaked Ladies fan will know them as they have played with BNL a few times, and accompanied them on the Ships and Dips cruise, as well as had various working relationships with each other over the years.

I’ve always meant to look into them more, and find out more about the band and their music. There’s a lot of common ground in terms of the fan base, and the music genre, so I thought I’d have to have a look. The only Guster song I’d (knowingly) heard was from an album called For the Kids, a charity album produced a few years back by Nettwerk for a VH1 kids charity. The album features covers (and some originals I think) of some well known songs by various well known artists, including BNL and Guster.

I bought For the Kids recently, and was listening to the Guster track, I’ve Got To Be Clean and it stuck me how good it was. So I duly went off to Amazon and picked up a copy of Guster’s latest, Ganging Up On The Sun.

I’m quite impressed with it. It’s the folk-rock jamboree I was hoping for. More folk than rock I think, but that’s nice as BNL are more rock than folk these days, so I can see how they balance each other out. There’s plenty of jangly guitars, mandolin bouncing in and out, and VERY tight vocal harmonies. If there’s something I do love, it’s good harmonies. They catch my ear big-time.

Must say, I look forward to getting some more Guster albums.

I mentioned a few weeks ago eagerly awaiting the Cherry Ghost album, and it has since arrived. I’ve listened to it a few times, and it’s definitely a grower. There’s the standout tracks – Mathematics and People Help The People, but the rest don’t stand up as much as say ‘LISTEN TO ME!!!’ in quite the same way. Still, there’s a good vibe on this album. It’s good listening music. I’ve listened to it in the car a couple of times, and it doesn’t suit that environment well. It’s better to be listened to at home, or on headphones in a quiet place (like at work). Dead Man’s Suit and False Alarm are looking to be other favourites though. Mountain Bird also.

I also recently got the Tiny Dancers album. This is a good album also. Unfortunately, I’ve mostly listened to it on my iPod, so I’ve yet to make much of a distinction between the tracks – a lot flow into each other a little too easily. That said, they’re all in a good place, so it’s not a bad thing necessarily. Hannah, We Know is a great song. Ashes and Diamonds is also good as it grows from something quiet to something quite large toward the end. I’d quite like to see Tiny Dancers live, as I understand they do a good live show.

All things considered though, these are two good albums!  And, even better, both are home-grown bands.