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Paul Wesley

Certifiably Surly
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    1993
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Everything posted by Paul Wesley

  1. I don't know why, but this memory popped into my head this morning: When I was a little kid - maybe only 8 or 9 years old - my older brother went to a Kiss concert. And the next day, he was recounting how incredible and amazing everything was... breathing fire, spitting blood, the light show, etc. And among the details he related to me with breathless excitement was this: Ace Frehley played a guitar solo, and he played the guitar **so** fast that it started SMOKING!! For years, I thought there was something about electric guitars where if you just played the shit out of them, they could overheat.
  2. I'm going to need chord changes and tempo pretty early on. If I have those things, I can just repeat them over and over (often at kitchen table with an acoustic and a notebook) while working out the structure of the vocals. I would have a hard time writing music if I had a full page of already-finished verse. That feels forced and inauthentic to me. I heard Joe Pug say this once, and I think it nails songwriting: At some point, the part of your brain that *finishes* songs is the same part that solves crossword puzzles. i.e. it usually gets more technical than creative -- working out rhyme schemes, figuring out what chord changes can get you from the chorus back to the intro, etc. It often requires a considerable amount of discipline and grit to finish (two things that are never required to start a song, IMO). Glad to hear you're riding a wave of creativity.
  3. And BTW, what a gut punch, humiliating, beat down of a loss.
  4. I mean, a big part of keeping Shaka a year ago was the recruitment of Greg Brown, right? Greg Brown, who played six minutes last night. Six. Took one shot and hit it. I know he wasn’t the only athletic mismatch on the floor, but he was a ridiculous mismatch for anyone on ACU. And whatever the holes are in his game, he is a high-effort rebounder, which was a brutally glaring need for us. But he hardly saw the court. And yes, I understand he’s had temper issues and maturity issues, but he’s also been on campus for a FUCKING YEAR, and I know someone who made many millions of dollars during that time, and their job description is to mold Greg Brown into a great player, and to win tournament games. I’ll marvel at his athleticism next year when he’s matched up against gifted big men like Miles Turner and Mo Bamba.
  5. so you're not going to call the contact on Andrew jones, but you're going to call **that**?
  6. I was 100 percent sure Ramey was going to launch there
  7. we better wake the fuck up
  8. bunch of ridiculous circus bank shot bullshit.
  9. I was trying to find you a used 65amps "Empire" head online somewhere. Very versatile amp. You'll never sell it. I like tbone's ideas too.
  10. Mine are within a few pounds of each other - the open backed on is actually heavier, but it has a handle on the top... so an easy one-arm carry. The Orange cabinet has recessed handles on the sides, so you definitely need two arms, and you have to lift it almost to chest height to move it around.
  11. Me and tbone leading parallel lives. I also have 2 2x12 cabinets. One open (the 65amps one with the blue badge and two different speakers) and a closed Orange 2x12. I agree that the difference between open and closed is subtle. It's a more subtle difference than you'd assume from listening and reading other guitarists talk about cabinet preference. I have shot them out side-by-side in the studio, and the closed-back Orange wins (tighter) on aggressive high-gain stuff. Otherwise, I prefer the open back. If I had to pick one, it would be the open-back cabinet, and it would be a very easy choice. It's a lot less money and space to buy heads than combos.
  12. That’s where I’ve landed too.
  13. Every Texas team in every sport is not a "country club team" Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense
  14. Paul Wesley

    The Police

    Good comparison. U2 made the same transition from sparse, low-budget records with the punk influences of the late 70's UK (simplicity, defiant attitudes) ---> to giant-budget big arrangements with tons of layers. And both guitarists - at least in the beginning - were into texture and space, and didn't try to be up-front at every moment of every song. I think the Police made that transition way more successfully than U2 (and the Police also quit while they were ahead). U2's records since the late 80's sound more or less like those of Nickelback and Creed, with shit tons of relentless, grid-perfect distorted guitars, and all the sonic characteristics of a chainsaw. Get off my lawn.
  15. Watching Texas play Tech this year... can't remember being so frustrated watching a Texas team in a mid-season game. McClung or however Danny Ainge spells his name -- he got about 10 free throws in the game in Austin that were complete bullshit. One was a cleanly-blocked 3 right before the half, followed seconds later by a tech on the Texas bench for protesting the missed call. Couple of absolute flops on 3-point attempts. And a play down the stretch where he threw it off the glass to himself and they didn't call the travel... he got ball and got fouled at the rim. And then to have him hit the game-winner. That was a brutal loss. Tonight felt like we were headed the same way. 8 fucking fouls to 1 to start the game, plus two loose balls that were given to Tech on blown calls. Looked like two teams playing hard and giving about the same amount of contact as they were absorbing, but it was only getting called on one end. Pretty bullshit first 10 minutes to sit through.
  16. Paul Wesley

    The Police

    Good review. I think you might be too hard on the back half of "Regatta," which I would rank as one of their very best album sides - "On Any Other Day" is a throw-away track. The rest of it is really strong, touches on a lot of different styles, and has all the elements that made them a great band (unexpected rhythms, great vocal takes, arrangements with a lot of space, great textural guitars). I agree that their first album is probably their best, but every record has a few gems. They went from energetic guitar-based, 3-piece rock songs recorded on a tiny budget.... all the way to massive-budget, complex arrangements with jazz elements and wide-ranging instrumentation (synths, keys, etc). "Truth Hits Everybody" is a million sonic miles from "King of Pain," but I think they're both brilliant. To me, even those last two records were pretty cool, and as a band, they never jumped the shark the same way that Sting's solo records did (too self absorbed, self-important, and dissonant jazz wankery just for the sake of being weird). Summers and Copeland don't have the songwriting chops or the voice (obviously) like Sting, but Sting definitely needed them to save him from himself.
  17. Paul Wesley

    The Police

    Great band. Their records definitely have a trajectory from loud, 3-piece punk rock (I love "Truth Hits Everybody") to highly produced pop. I don't know why Sting feels the need to constantly tell Stewart Copeland - undoubtedly the best instrumentalist in the band - how to play his instrument.
  18. Yeah, that’s a nice color combo
  19. Fuck that trash-talking Grizzly Adams piece of shit.
  20. I've been fighting with my image hosting account, so I'm getting caught up on replying to the last two pages of this thread. Specifically... When considering "who's a douche?" we need to agree on some kind of talent vs ego ratio. Consider Prince. He strutted, he sassed, and (at least in the person he presented publicly), he was a self-absorbed narcissist with an ego the size of Cleveland. But he was also among the most musically gifted writers, performers, singers, and instrumentalists of the last 50 years. Thus, (read this in your Maury Povich voice), "Prince, you are NOT a douche." Lots of rock stars in that group, I'd argue. Jimmy Page, Elton John, Chuck Berry. They might have been arrogant assholes, especially at the height of their stardom (though two of those three examples found contrition and humility in their later decades). But I don't think that being an asshole is the same thing as being a douche. It's like Dizzy Dean said: "It ain't bragging if you can do it." Lindsey Buckingham is a unique rock guitarist and a phenomenal talent who wrote and produced brilliant music. Not a douche. I will die on this hill. So where should we draw the line? Neil Schon ("You ARE a douche.")
  21. "The Lumineers" makes this one pretty genius:
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