John Hendow

Saturday night was an unusual early show for 80s Invasion. We played at the High Dive in Fremont, which is a great venue with a fun regular crowd. Zach surprised me by including “Kiss Them For Me” by Siouxsie and the Banshees. I’ve always wanted to add that one to our set list and I thought it sounded good. Also fun was the late addition of “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. The High Dive has a particularly aggravating issue with their stage power. I discovered this the first time we played there, and have pointed it out to the house sound man every time. There is a persistent ground buzz throughout their PA system, and it’s very bad onstage. And I suspect their line voltage fluctuates throughout the night. I swear if I ever own a bar, clean stable power will be a priority.

One especially interesting aspect of this gig was the presence of dozens of merry Greeks (!) dancing and drinking and yelling “OPAH!” pretty much throughout the gig. I don’t know what “OPAH!” means, but I suspect it’s the national salute to whoever founded the first Mediterranean distillery.

Recently I was putting together some documentation for a project that required a QR code generator, and I thought “why not make my own QR code?”. This way I can… um… do stuff with it. Well, I haven’t exactly figured out WHY I need this, but that has never stopped me from doing something geeky. Therefore, behold my personal QR code and be appropriately impressed / unimpressed. I think I might put it on some stickers and begin tagging my flight cases with it. If you don’t already have a QR code reader, there are a number of free apps for your cell phone that allow you to decode them.

Saturday night was an interesting and fun night. I sat in with The Dudley Manlove Quartet at an event called “Hops and Props”, at the Museum of Flight. As a sub, I had about a month to learn their set which is filled with great classics – many from my junior high days. As the gig approached, I felt pretty confident and was really looking forward to it.

On Saturday morning I was continuing my endless remodeling work at the house (actually, we’re in the home stretch… pun intentional…) and was routing some slots in new built-in bookcase. As always I was wearing safety goggles and hearing protection. Somehow a bit of wood debris got into my right eye and caused an immediate and painful scratch on my eyeball. It was so irritated that I spent a few hours flushing my eye with water and eyedrops. 

So that evening when I arrived at the DMQ gig my right eye was puffy, red and swollen. It had been watering all afternoon from the irritation so my sinuses were all stuffy and my nose was runny. Basically I looked like I had a headcold and/or pinkeye. Nice. But the show must go on. So during the first set I was supposed to start “Right Back Where We Started From” on guitar as a solo, then after 16 bars the balance of the band joins in.  I looked (blurrily) at the chart and saw a fuzzy shape which appeared to be a C, and thus began the song in the key of C. 16 bars later the band joined in… in the key of D. Nice. The band ploughed ahead and we finished the song without a problem.

During the set break I explained my newfound love of polychromaticism and recommended that the rest of the band get hip to playing in multiple keys. They were very cool about my mistake. I was mortified. I take music VERY seriously and mistakes like that, even when caused by funky vision, really gnaw at me.

The rest of the night was awesome and I had a great time. They guys in the band are funny and great musicians, and the music was a blast to play. Singing along to “Xanadu” was silly and joyful. Good stuff all around.

Friday night the 1 Uppers took the stage at Conor Byrne in Ballard. It was an opportunity for us to perform a number of new original songs. My newly simplified guitar signal chain (guitar + 1 effect + amp) really sounded and felt good. I had a minor challenge with my output jack on the tele which seems to be problematic… may need another go-round with the guitar doctor. The set went very smoothly and I enjoyed the way the new material flowed. It’s difficult for six musicians to play together without creating a muddy dense sound and I think we’ve gotten into a good habit of leaving plenty of space for interplay and dynamics.

As always, Jon Hyde and Kris Geren positively rocked the house. Those guys are both incredible players, and they fully deserve the accolades and attention at our gigs. Conor Byrne is the kind of bar musicians love to play… it’s comfortable, the bartenders are easy-going, the band gets drink tickets that can be redeemed for awesome microbrew beer (most bars restrict the band to crummy beer), and the regulars are supportive of live music.

I’ve had my POD XT Live for a few years now, and it does a good job of providing the tones I use in my various bands. I’m almost upon the time of year when I do “spring cleaning” for my saved effect patches. Every year (or so) I like to save all my old effects patches to the computer, then completely re-initialize the effects back to blank presets and rebuild from scratch. This forces me to reconsider the original patch configuration and it also keeps me familiar with the patch editing interfaces on the POD XT Live.

I’ve already re-implemented the base configurations for many of my most commonly used tones, and this will be a good start for tweaking the parameters for the more specific signature tones (e.g. Stevie Ray Vaughan “Let’s Dance”). I’m also going to spend some time building up patches for Warr Guitar. Fortunately, the POD XT Live has a decent librarian and editing interface; this will speed up the management of the programming. Some day I would like to see more manufacturers including fully-customizable color displays on guitar pedals. There are some aspects of the programming which are difficult to accomplish without a computer attached.

I have a few new shows added to my gig schedule:

• Friday 4/17 The 1 Uppers @ Conor Byrne (Ballard)
• Saturday 4/18 Dudley Manlove Quartet @ The Museum of Flight (Seattle) [PRIVATE EVENT]
• Saturday 4/25 80s Invasion @ The High Dive (Ballard)

Three bands. Three gigs. Eight days. Hopefully I’ll keep all the songs straight in my head… there’s a Preons gig on the horizon as well. More to come!

My good friend Jon just provided a big list of tunes worth hearing, all by Buck Owens. And so I’ve been working on learning a bunch of them. It’s easy to think of Buck’s music as being “that old-sounding countryish stuff”, but there is some seriously ferocious playing on these songs. I’m really enjoying learning them and looking forward to dropping some new stuff into the mix at the next 1 Uppers gig.

One of my favorite orchestral pieces:

John Cage’s “4:33” in a televised orchestral performance