Five Person Splunge - Now With Alcohol

Mouseketeer roll call: Jason, Nick, Steph, Jared, and yours truly. Everybody present went out to see other bands in various combinations this weekend, some combinations more alcohol-soaked than others, with some unfortunate impact on the Sunday session. I wasn't personally among the heavier drinkers (one cup of beer from a pitcher on Friday night), but had problems of my own due to serious allergy issues this past week seriously messing with my voice. So, on the downside, we weren't at our best sounding on the whole. On the plus side, the excursions seemed to bring some combinations of people closer together personally, which should be a Good Thing in the long haul.

We got through almost the entire song list, even with slowing down to work out details on most of the songs. The songs we didn't get to were, once again, songs that one guitar player or another hadn't yet worked out well enough to function, and I even played guitar again on a couple to enable us to play them so Jason or Steph could work on one part or another. I've got to take some of the blame for our difficulty in getting songs down as a group, because I learn fairly quickly, but the others don't have my experience, and I suspect that at least part of the problem is that I've thrown too much at them too fast. We've cut back on adding new songs, only adding "My Boyfriend's Back" for this session. Virtually every song is steadily getting better, yet virtually every song retains a few rough edges, which I'm finding frustrating.

One thing that I know slowed us down is that the other two guitar players had been relying on Sal for lead guitar parts and some guitar cues, and since he hasn't been able to make the last couple of sessions, other members have had to pick up lead guitar parts or new cues for transitions, causing us to step back on things we'd previously had down. There's really no reason for me to be impatient, as nobody is chomping at the bit to get in front of an audience. I'm getting a little bored of going over the same songs repeatedly and still not getting them quite right, though.

Local Cabal Campaign - Second Session

I wasn't as well prepared as I would have liked, and we were missing our voodoo priestess player for personal reasons, but all in all, it wasn't a bad session.

We introduced a new character this time, Nate's attempt at playing an enlightened 15 year old boy. I don't know how well this is going to work with the existing cast in practice, but it should be a worthy experiment that might show how dark (or not) the other characters really are. As usual with new character introductions, a fair part of the session was spent in adding him in a way that made some degree of narrative sense. This was a Very Good Thing, since the time it took covered my relative lack of preparation.

We also covered more territory in the mystery of Lauren's murder (the ghost character), with Jonah the vampire cop getting some screen time that way. Lauren's investigation of her own murder should be the centerpiece of at least this initial phase of the campaign, especially since it's very easy to tie Jonah into it as a resource. We were able to end the session with a cool scene involving Lauren visiting her comatose husband and dealing with a young psychic woman who seemed to be checking on him for reasons unknown at this time.

Next up, I expect we'll spend a little time re-starting the voodoo priestess' search for a lost magical flute, go a little further with Lauren's investigation, and throw a few surprises in Jonah's direction that don't have to do with Lauren's murder.

Four Person Splunge - A Step Forward

The line-up for this session was Jason, Nick, Steph, and myself. Sal and Jared were both unavailable for the session, but the stripped down sound had distinct advantages. Down to one guitar, we were able to really hear everything Nick was doing on guitar, as well as the group vocals. This was a lot like the last session in that we only worked on about half of the songs and went after some things in detail.

"Dani California" stood out as a highlight. It worked well enough last time with me singing lead, but got even better with Steph singing lead and freeing me to take off on bass more than usual in Flea-like style. My own bandmates seemed surprised, since I usually have to be relatively conservative on bass to handle the amount of singing I do with this group.

"Poor Poor Pitiful Me" finally sounded the way it's supposed to, since we changed over to the Linda Ronstadt version, had Steph sing lead, and moved it up a step to better suit her range. I don't know why the original Warren Zevon version has historically been such a rhythmic problem for this group, but it was.

"Black Horse & A Cherry Tree" remains a work in progress, since Nick hadn't picked up the guitar part yet (Sal's been doing it) and I had to play guitar for that one. That was actually fine with me, since the occasional excuse to play guitar as part of a group is useful experience. I'm still not nearly as fluid doing that as playing solo. I think this song is going to be fantastic once we get the vocal parts down and have at least one of the guitar players move over to playing additional percussion for it.

A number of songs are slowly tightening up to where they need to be; it's just a matter of really focusing on the details. We're going to add designated time for jamming next session, which should tighten us up collectively as well if we make that a regular practice. We had a long discussion (about two hours) over dinner afterward, and made plans to go out to see some of the local cover bands together to get an idea of what others are already doing. I'm really looking forward to it.

The Tudors

I started watching "The Tudors" based on heavy recommendations from the people I work with. Very good stuff. I've watched the entire first season and all but the last episode of the second so far.

High marks across the board for acting, writing, etc. The series has come under some criticism for being historically inaccurate, which I think misses the point. I'm far from an expert on the history part of it, and even I caught the occasional historical glitch, but it's good drama.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is fascinating to watch as King Henry, reconstructing reality to suit his desires on the fly. And Natalie Dormer is great as Anne Boleyn, scheming her way up the ladder at court, only to find herself seeing threats around every corner when she gets there. I miss Sam Neill's Cardinal Wolsey from season one; he was my favorite character for that season.

Highly recommended unless the historical inaccuracies especially bother you.