The blog of Ryan Billingsley
- Post Gig Wrap Up
Well this past Friday I got to play my first gig in a long time. I think the last time I had a gig was when I was in my second year at Ball State. Our short lived career back then consisted of two shows and neither one went well. This time however, the band was well rehearsed and made up of some great musicians.
Oddly enough, my return to playing out happen to occur in Muncie of all places, the home of Ball State. I took the guys to a certain chinese buffet I frequented during my two years there. We had a good time questioning all the food that we saw or ate. Apparently this particular restaurant had been fined for fishing out of the White River.
After that we went to the venue which was more or less what I would expect. Not exceptionally nice, but not a total dive. We got our gear in, got setup, said hi to some people who had come out to support us and then we waited. We waited for an hour for the sound guy to show up.
It was fine for the first fifteen minutes, we just talked to people, Doc’s provided the band with free beer all night, which was nice. Then another fifteen minutes past and we started to get annoyed. The sound guy still hadn’t shown up. The manager had started pulling some stuff out but had no idea how to set things up. Then someone, who didn’t work there, volunteered to set everything up. While it was a nice gesture, he had no idea what he was doing. So then the lead singer and frontman for the band, Tyler, asked his roommate who is an audio technician to see if he could lend his services. Even though his roommate, Andy, knew what he was doing, it is almost impossible to be thrown into some else’s system and know where everything is being run, let alone know where they keep the mics. So for another half an hour, they tried to get something going, no avail.
Finally, an hour later, when we should have been packing up and Cory Hill should have been going on, the sound guy finally showed up. He scurried to get everything setup, fix what the other guy did, and then do a sound check. We played through our set as best we could, but it was difficult to say the least. They had three floor monitors, two side by side and one for the drummer. We might as well have had no monitors. The sound coming out was horrible and way too loud. If you weren’t right in front of one of them then you heard nothing at all, which was my experience. Our drummer smashed his hand early in the set and was flinging blood all over his kit the whole time. We missed cues because we couldn’t here each other. It was interesting.
Despite all of that though, we played pretty well and people said the music was good, but the sound was horrible. The sound guy obviously didn’t know what he was doing and wasn’t monitoring the mix at all. Andy had to come and give us some feedback on what we could do on stage to try and fix it, but there was only so much we could do.
We packed up our stuff and then headed home. I get in my door at 2:00 AM that morning. Even though the whole sound situation was really bad, the band said it was the worst they had experienced, I still had a great time and wish I could do it more often. There is something about playing in front of people that is rewarding and desirable. I get to moonlight with Tyler Bender and Training Wheel Fire again in May, and I look forward to it.
Finally, your Arrested Development for the day…
- Doc’s in Muncie
This is just a reminder that I will be playing with Tyler Bender at Doc’s in Muncie, Indiana, tomorrow at 10:00 PM. If you are around, come on out. Should be a good time.
Also, I slacked on my Arrested Development a day, but I am back on it. So here is Episode 2. Just a quick note, the clip here is just a portion of the episode but you can watch the whole thing once it has finished.
- Updated Reel
I just uploaded a new version of my reel to video.ryanbillingsley.com. Give it a look and let me know what you think in the comments.
Also on a different note, I will be playing with Tyler Bender at Doc’s in Muncie on April 4th so if you are around, come check it out.
- Mustache culture is pretty cool
I think it is crazy how much video is now available for free or semi-free on the internet.
I was checking out Hulu today and watching some Family Guy and making a fool out of myself by laughing because this show cracks me up. It really isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, the quality is good, they have full episodes, even full movies, which is pretty crazy. There have been about two to three commercials for a show, which isn’t bad at all. Give it a look.
- Ugh
Well obviously I didn’t make the posting every day goal I had set. I got sick this week and didn’t even want to look at a computer because it made me dizzy. I am finally getting back on my feet, so hopefully I will be able to get back into the swing of things.
I also just updated to Leopard on my Mac, so that is stealing some of my time. I haven’t been blown away just yet, but there are some things that are fixed that bugged me earlier. Also it seems software developers are starting to move away from Tiger already, so it was time.
- Hammered Dulcimer
Have you seen this thing? I mean I know it is incredibly old but I just saw one for the first time and I was really shocked. I have always thought of myself as a percussive person. I, like everyone else, wanted to play the drums when it came time to pick an instrument in middle school. My teacher, though some arbitrary test to thin the herd, said I was not able to. So I ended up playing saxophone for the next 5 years until I quit it never to touch it again.
So ever since, I have tapped and drummed on everything I can, sometimes to the annoyance of others. I used to play our drummers set during band practice, a real band that is, every time I had the chance. There was something exciting about how primitive it was in nature, but how incredibly complex it easily became. Anyone can bang on a drum, it is pretty easy, but to be a great drummer is incredibly difficult.
So I encounter the hammered dulcimer and it hits me two fold. On one hand it has that percussive element to it. You can strike the strings with a hammer. Pretty simple but watch someone do it quickly and you are dumbfounded. It is also musical though. Drums can’t really stand on their own. You don’t hear many albums with just a kit. They need some music to support them, or really for them to support. Yet the hammered dulcimer can stand on its own while being percussive. It is in the league with steel drums, marimbas, etc. all things I think are fascinating.
I would love to play one and see what it is like. Sadly you have to venture out to find one, most of the good ones come from the mountains, which my wife was very happy to hear. Maybe one of these days when we go to Tennessee or North Carolina, we will have to stop in give one a try.
- This will be a quick one…
Had to get this in before the bell so to speak, but I am going to manage. If you haven’t, for whatever reason, gotten on last.fm, that is http://www.last.fm then you need to. See what you are listening to, what others are listening to, get recommendations. All very cool and something worth doing. If you do join up, let me know what your name is so I can add you as a friend. That is all, something more profound tomorrow, hopefully.
- Ghost
I picked up the new NIN instrumental epic today. 36 tracks of a twisted soundtrack by one of the great musical composers of our time.
After going through the whole album, it is hard to isolate any part. It really feels like you are being lead through this eerie story that only Trent could weave. I need to listen to it a hundred more times to really get a full understanding of everything that is going on, but I highly recommend you pick it up. 36 tracks in three flavors of DRM-free Mp3, FLAC Lossless, or a Apple formated Lossless ready for iTunes and your iPod all for 5 dollars, doesn’t make sense not to get it.
If you still aren’t sold, go pick up the free nine tracks from ghosts.nin.com.
- Iron Man
If you missed the new trailer for Iron Man during lost last week you need to go see it. Finally, a Marvel comic has been put in the hands of a capable director, Jon Favreau, and looks to finally deliver an entertaining experience.
I am a diehard Marvel fan. My dad first introduced me to the likes of the Fantastic Four and Spiderman when I was a kid and I have been a fan ever since. He was even cool enough, or maybe you wouldn’t think so, but I did, to take me to a weekend comic book and trading card expo at some Marriott in Fort Wayne, so we could try and track down the missing issue of the Maximum Carnage series I was collecting.
During the past couple years, my comic book reading had become sporadic right until the announcement of Civil War. Before it started I decided to catch up a little and read House of M and all of the Road to Civil War. House of M was great and I really enjoyed the story. Road to Civil War, especially the Spiderman issues, were crap. It seems they were letting the lesser known, lesser talented writers and artist some time to get something published before the experts took over for the course of the Civil War.
I have read everything single issue of the Civil War storyline. This includes all of the spinoffs that came from it. Not all of it is good, but for the most part it is thoroughly entertaining. If you were to just read Civil War 1-6, you would be in for a treat. For me, it combined my favorite things, superheros and politics. Lets just say, I followed the West Wing religiously. The external conflict is met with a heavy dose of internal conflict as long time friends turn on each other in the interest of the greater good. The series asks a lot of moral questions that you might not think about when you are reading a comic. For instance, who does pay for the three city blocks that just got taken out by a battle between the X-Men and some Sentinels. So go give it a read.
As well as brining Iron Man to life, the Hulk is getting a second change, this time with Edward Norton as the Bruce Banner. I am glad that they are trying to bring the big green machine back to the silver screen, because the Hulk really is an interesting character and the possible stories are endless. Recently, World War Hulk just concluded, which had the Hulk return from exile after a secret group of Heroes, who are referred to as the Illuminati, tricked him into a space shuttle and launched him out into space. That would have been fine, had the warp core not exploded and killed his recently acquired bride who was pregnant with their child. Needless to say, the Hulk was not happy. If you haven’t checked out the series, give it a read, it isn’t half bad.
- The Constant
First, a challenge has been issued to me and I have accepted, though rather reluctantly. I am going to write in my blog, every day, for a month. The month of March is blog month for me. This means a couple of things. I am going to go against my previous entry regarding consistency and make this thing a total free-for-all. Mostly, I will be writing about entertainment: music, movies, and tv, as well as some Apple related stuff and whatever else comes to my head. So as Tobias would say, “Let the great experiment begin!”
The Constant. Wow. Many have said it, but I certainly agree, the best Lost episode ever. I really started to lose hope last year when the producers said that we actually wanted to see the nauseating love triangle that was Jack/Kate/Sawyer. If I wanted to watch that crap I would watch the stories. No this was something special. Finally, they got back to blowing our brains all over the living room wall. Time space continuum, how could you go wrong. It really started for me when Daniel Faraday, played by Jeremy Davies, conducted a test by having a missile shot off from the freighter and timing how long it took to reach the island. When it finally struck down, he was perplexed at the amount of time it took. This certainly sparked my interest. It did what discovering the hatch or first seeing the others did, made me ask a million questions. This is what makes Lost a great show. The Dharma Intiative, the others, polar bears, the stuff that makes no sense but then all makes sense somehow. It is one of the last examples of good television that still remains.
I must say I really enjoy Jeffery Davies as Dan, the eccentric professor from Oxford. He pulls the character off flawlessly. Oddly enough, the very things that make me enjoy his character so much, are some of the things that drove me crazy about his character in Saving Private Ryan. At some point in that movie, I was hoping some German would just do us all a favor and shoot him. However, the coy, odd head twitches, really sell his character. Sure he is weird, but he is brilliant. I can’t wait to see what they do with his character, because it is a gem.
If you have wandered away from the show, or never watched it in the first place, you owe it to yourself to get caught up and have a solid reason to turn on the TV before April (when new episodes return to such classics as The Office). Besides, the early seasons are just as good and mind blowing.
