It was supposed to be a rehearsal night, but Mark, Rich and I instead took a trip up to Livermore to check out the Pine Street Bar and Grill (where we’re playing for the first time next month). Being an odd little place tucked away in a strip mall in the middle of a residential area, I found it to be the most brightly lit bar in which I’ve ever been. The place was decent enough, with a funky corner stage, and the PA (or at least what we could see of it) seemed to be, well, um… in need of some help. Chris, the woman who runs the place, kindly showed us the PA, safely stored way in the back room, and our fears were somewhat allayed. Mark and Rich were still unconvinced that the house PA wasn’t going to do Rich’s drums justice, and spent the whole ride home talking about submixers, snakes, cables, and mics.

The show at the Time Out in Concord went off pretty well. Despite getting lost just off the freeway, we arrived in plenty of time to have a leisurely set-up, which is usually quite rare. As an added bonus, my bass rig actually functioned properly this time (as opposed to the show with King’s X last year where it was throwing sparks in a highly uncooperative manner). Having the best stage manager/tech supreme Brian (Lamby) Lambert on hand once again was truly a delight. Here’s a clip from one of the new songs we debuted that evening… Ghost Curve (2.8 MB – Quicktime Required). Special thanks to Children of Umlaut for helping set up this killer show (and for playing killer set as well!).

Set List:
Jack Palance the Ninja
Ghost Curve (new)
Intercepted Entropy (new)
Accidental LoFi (new)
Botched Civillian
Bad Mind

I haven't listened to much of Damageplan, or Pantera for that matter, but regardless... one wouldn't think their music would lead to this. Very scary indeed.

Another decent practice last night… the set seems to be shaping up okay. I think I have all my sample volume problems ironed out, but now my bass POD switching is being a little glitchy. Of course. I took mark’s monstrous new pedal board home and started the upholstery process… which is actually kind of fun. All done now.

We're got just under a week until our show at the Time Out in Concord, and things are looking pretty good. Mark constructed a new pedal board to accomodate yet another guitar processor. I still have some volume issues to work out sample-wise, but overall the new stuff is coming together quite nicely. The new web site is almost complete... but of course by the time you read this it whill have already launched!