What's that noise?

Found "Max", but no new Maiden to be found. I bought best of CDs of Steppenwolf and Morphine in its stead.

But I had a good time the best I could, right hip notwithstanding.
Reason: Iron Maiden concert at Blossom Music Center last night. Two of my brothers and I went there at about 6pm well in time before opening act Dream Theater came on stage. The temperature was about in th 90's for a good portion of the day, so sweating one's brains out was normal. DT was fine, even though I had not listened to any prior works they have done. Really liked the stands the keyboardist used during their set: one can be spun around while the other was on a pivoting arm to both swing and spin in place so the musician doesn't have to just stand there.

Maiden themselves had a fine stage show with the set looking like something out of the second "Alien" movie: the exterior of an abandoned base on some far away planet. They ran through some of their good old stuff* while playing some off their soon to be released "The Final Frontier" CD. Maiden has a third guitarist now by the name of Janick Gers, who gigged with Ian Gillan as well as Bruce Dickinson's solo spell. They even dedicated a song, "Blood Brother" to the sadly late Ronnie James Dio, which the audience really dug.

Eddie looks more like the mascot of Motorhead now, with huge fangs and green skin. That and being 12' tall. During his walk-on, Eddie managed to grab I believe Adrian Smith's guitar and tried to play a riff or two.

*Missing from the set: Aces High and Trooper

Got the last of my personal CD collection ripped into iTunes after having to manually type in track/artist/CD name data, then uploaded all that info GraceNote just I wouldn't have to go through all the PITA effort ever again. I even found three more surviving comps I had burned to CD-R I had stashed somewhere.

---

I will be going to L-5 tonight to not only run the Sonar software, but to celebrate two things: Mr. Thompson's birthday, and the return of a drummer that the project got along well with. To update with the *real* recording project, that _ahem_ extra sound instance was handled in a way where it is masked to satisfaction. I hope to hear this sometime soon.

Fine, thank you. A tad busy, but that is to be expected with everything I gotta deal with.

Yesterday at the oncologist's office, Dr. "M" noted that one of the blood markers that measure the amount of cancer cells has been reduced to near-normal levels. Next week when I have more blood work done, a copy will be sent to Dr. "V" for her files.

---

On Sunday was a small family get-together in which the youngest niece was officially baptized into the Roman Catholic church. St. Peter church is a very tiny place for a RC house of worship, considering that North Ridgeville is still primarily rural in nature; modern "suburbia" is slowly making inroads there as my brother's current (and soon to be ex) household is: a development of only less than a decade in age.

I can say this about my niece: she really loves being the center of attention. Maybe she'll go into acting in another18+ years...

---

Save for a couple of discs I have to hand edit the listings and upload to Gracenote, my entire CD library has now been re-riped. Next I'll raid somebody's own collection for the stuff I had on file as well. Oh yeah, download what I have on FA as well.

---

I finally got the pop-rivet gun, ended up having to go to the power fastener aisle of the blue hardware store to find the cheapest they had. K-Mart, Sears, and Autozone all failed me in my quest to find one.

---

Lastly, last week Monday I visited L-5 again, only this time to check out things at a studio called Iron Lung. In a prior life, L-5 building was at one time a very small medical supply house, and happened to leave an iron lung on the top floor as part of what was left behind when things went flat there. For those too young to even remember of such things, an iron lung was used to respirate polio patients. The down side is that they would have to pretty much stay in the chamber for who knows how long. Getting back to what I was talking about, the studio makes the one LT has seem more like my meager setup in comparison. It was mostly vocal tracks that were done this time around by LT. He had to go through a few takes to get close to what he wanted, but someone down in one of the rehearsal rooms ruined the take by power-thumping a drum kit at the wrong time, in spite of the main control room in which the vox were being sung in being of a room-within-a-room construction. Before I left , SV arrived and setup his Roland keyboard to lay down some synth parts. I don't know how they went.

Hi dere,
Last night brought another trip to Level-5 to help with things that are going on. The travel north on 71 was crazier than the return, as I couldn't do better than 50mph getting there with late afternoon rush traffic in play as well. After banging on the door long enough to get inside the actually non-descript building that is L-5, I had to wait until somebody to let me into the actual room itself; the studio area is separated the main office door by a good distance, so getting anyone's attention was adventure in unto itself.
Anyway, the trio went through some tunes while I manned the studio computer hitting record and spacebar when needed. Real important stuff considering that the drummer needs to learn the material that will be recorded under more intense conditions (probably one musician at a time being recorded, instead of all at once with lottsa cross-bleed from the mikes.) I like this drummer: he has good and subtle jazz technique that he uses in a more rock-like context; as if Keith Moon made a strong, but sane impression early in this guy's life. This guy doesn't go wild like Moonie did, but uses the sticks in a manner that makes it possible to come up with great drum patterns.

I did make what is hoped to be a slight streamline of sop by making a "Universal Default" file for Sonar by making a copy of a track file, erasing the recorded tracks but leaving the mike settings as is so one can bring up the file, save it under whatever title/date format one wants, and record away.

I should really get my own rig up and recording right now...

Seriously, I think of Professor Dumbldore[spelling?] when I hear this work.