Sometimes things just go against you. Today Steven and David had band practise at our place. For some reason, David decided to wire things differently and put his pedals and cables in front of his beloved AVT50X Marshall valve amp.
During the session somehow a cymbal stand was knocked over, it fell in front of Dave’s amp and sliced into the mains cable. The result was a bang and flash as the cymbal cut into the cable and shorted live to earth.
The up shot is Dave’s amp now makes a lot of horrible noise and very little guitar sound. We fear the short circuit has damaged a valve. 
Black Clouds & Silver Linings has just dropped through the door! Time to listen to it in full, although with 3 discs it’ll take a while. Only £12!
- Disc 1 – the album (only 6 tracks)
- Disc 2 – 6 covers
- Stargazer
- Tenement Funster/Flick Of The Wrist/Lily Of The Valley
- Odyssey
- Take Your Fingers From My Hair
- Larks Tongues In Aspic (Part 2)
- To Tame A Land
- Disc 3 – the album’s instrumental mixes
F1 qualifying is on the Beeb in a couple of hours too, we’ll never make it. 
On a friends advice, I ordered a Lightscribe DVD writer and 50 blank Lightscribe disks on Saturday morning. The bundle was a snip at £30 including postage. They arrived yesterday and I began work on making many demo CDs for Steven’s band, Cuttin’ Edge.
Nero worked perfectly, it detected the Lightscribe drive and enabled the options in the Cover Designer. To be fair, I did download and install the Lightscribe Control Panel before running Nero, so perhaps that gave Nero the information it required.
Below is a scan of the final disk. It features the Cuttin’ Edge logo that was drawn by Jon Haward, which is perfect for CDs. To ‘print’ the label side of the Lightscribe CD, takes about 15 minutes, by the way.
Cuttin' Edge demo CD Lightscribed
We’re very pleased how the disk has turned out and is an improvement over the first drafts of paper labels. Now Mike has to distribute them to local pubs, which hopefully lead to some more gigs appearing at the Cuttin’ Edge website.
Oh and thanks Ant, I’d forgotten all about Lightscribe. 
This morning we finally got time to listen to Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King. The Dave Matthews Band are back on course, after a serious hiccup with Stand Up. Having said that You Might Die Trying was featured in the second episode of the new season of House the other night. Initially I was convinced the song was from Some Devil because it sounded so good, but I was surprised to find it was from Stand Up.
The main thing I noticed on first listen is that electric guitars pop up all over the place… a good addition. Secondly, no fade outs on any track. It feels like the tracks are written and performed by the band so natural endings are the norm. And those drums… Carter is really high in the mix and sounding great.
And best of all, this CD is not a victim of the Loudness War.. look at the extract of the Audacity sample picture… peaks and troughs, dynamic range. At last these bands are waking up to the fact that less is more and we all have a volume control.
Mmmm, dynamic range!
Listening through again as I write this confirms my initial thoughts. It’s going to be a fine CD. Like most of my favourite CDs, the songs are coming through over time. Lying In the Hands Of God (with a burst of one of my favourite sounds, acoustic slide guitar), Why I Am, Squirm and You & Me have leapt forward so far. I’m sure others will follow.
Oh and Steven informs me Seven is actually in 7/4 time. I’ll take his word for that, my technical music knowledge is limited to say the least.
Isn’t it typical, new CDs are turning up like number nine buses now, Chickenfoot arrived this morning. It’s going to have to wait a bit.
Yesterday an email informed me the new Dave Matthews Band CD has been posted… fingers crossed it’ll be with us tomorrow.
Every now and again there are new CDs that arrive in our household that demand a proper sit down and listen in their entirety on our 5.1 system, instead of via iTunes on our computers. Fear Of A Blank Planet was one that springs to mind (a true classic, especially in 5.1) and Experiments in Mass Appeal was probably the last one. Big Whiskey And The GrooGrux King is going to be the next one… my first opinions will follow in a few days.