Good news, everyone!  MusiciansFriend is working with me to come up with a mutually agreeable compromise.  More details soon!

After four years of debt freedom, May is our first spending month.  I had a little birthday and freelance money saved up, so I bought a Les Paul Traditional Gold Top that you see above.  I was a little tempted at the end of the month, as MusiciansFriend had a 15% coupon and a used one available for $1750 but without my paycheck in hand my hands were tied.  Unfortunately, that used guitar sold on the first day of their coupon’s availability… but then I sat down and did the math and realized that with the coupon I could just get a new one.  Granted, it was at the top of my price range but that’s just fine by me!

My buddy was so tempted on my behalf that he offered to let me put the used guitar on his credit card and just pay him back.  This was a really nice gesture, however I just couldn’t justify buying myself a debt-free gift with someone else’s credit.  He understands why I declined (I think) and I’m sure he’s going to be pumped when he finds out about my new axe coming soon!

The only downside is that the ship date listed on my invoice is June 18.  So I’ll still have to wait awhile before I can actually put my hands on this thing.  In the meantime, I’ll keep on practicing with my other guitars to learn some new songs.  I think some CCR is in order now that I have a similar guitar to the one that John Fogerty plays!

Well, our show was canceled due to bad weather.  I don’t know any more details than that, but it was locked up when we arrived.  I have some other good stories from the night, but those will wait for later.  Oh well!

This is going to be an interesting one… tonight I’m going to see Johnny Rotten‘s post-Sex Pistols band called Public Image, Ltd tonight.  Now you might be wondering if I’ve gone quite insane for some reason, and the answer is no.  The reason I’m attending this show is that my buddy Paul is an insane Sex Pistols fan and he had nobody to go with him to this show.

Judging by the crowd that is generally attracted to punk and post-punk shows, I don’t think this gig is the type of thing you want to attend by yourself.  I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into, and I sincerely hope this isn’t my last post on this blog but time will tell.  If nothing else, I’ve been working on running a lot lately so that’s always an option.  Since the Sex Pistols were around in the 70’s, my hope is that the crowd might be a little older than your average show of this kind so it might not be as rowdy as I’m expecting but it’s always good to expect the worst and be surprised.

I will be sure to post again here when the concert is over to let everyone know I survived, I can only imagine my Mom is going to be insanely worried after reading this blog post. 🙂

My Amazon order arrived today, I got The Fender Stratocaster Handbook and The Stratocaster Chronicles. The latter is a 50-year anniversary retrospective of how Fender came to be, famous players, notable guitars, and all sorts of excellent details about the company’s history.

The prior book is all about setting up, maintaining, troubleshooting, and modifying a Stratocaster. A professional luthier takes you through all the steps needed to perform general maintenance, and even in-depth changes like fixing the finish on the neck or body of the guitar. I find the whole thing very interesting and would love to get more into doing my own guitar maintenance.

Fun stuff!

This is Jonathan Coulton. He quit his job as an IT guy and started a career as a musician, and that’s what he does for a living. Very successfully. This is his song Code Monkey, which is about writing software for a living. Enjoy!

Today was a lazy day!  Tasha and I slept in, then lounged around the house all day doing our own various hobbies… she played a lot of Dragon Age and I played a lot of guitar today.

I worked on Barenaked Ladies new song “You Run Away” and Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” which has a very difficult picking pattern that will take some time to get natural.

We also watched most of the Oscars, which is always entertaining.  I was expecting Avatar to do better, but I guess the handful of awards it walked away with was respectable.

That’s all for me tonight!

Tasha just told me that The Eagles are going to be here in May and I’m GOING.  Also, James Taylor and Carole King are stopping here in July and I’m going to that too!  Let the concert season begin!

For the record: yes, I have the musical taste of a 65 year old.  Deal with it.

Paul, Kanika and I are going to see Black Rebel Motorcycle Club tonight in Englewood!  I’ve never heard of these guys much before this, so it should be fun to experience some new music.  To the gig!

Tonight is jam night at Walton Manor!  I’m off to pack up my gear and get over there to rock out!