Alive In London

How many coffee shops have real gold and platinum records on the wall? Very few, but Brie's Brews is the exception. There's something humbling about going there to play knowing you are going to get the (not really) evil eye from a fellow who has sat behind the console for multiple million-sellers. And if you're lucky, you will also get an outstanding smoothie from the same fellow.

Due to a variety of personal scheduling issues, we didn't actually meet our drummer until we got to the gig, but for all of that it was a lot of fun. Naturally, there's video; just as naturally, somehow I killed the video by playing a guitar solo.

Maybe it wasn't the solo... maybe it was the fact that I put the wrong set of Eneloops in the recorder. Anyway, that was all we got. The first five minutes. But it was a huge amount of fun and we'll be playing more stuff just like this in the future.

I was really frustrated by my tone during the gig... I was working flat-out in the days before and didn't have time to set the amp up the way I wanted to. And when I actually got there, my brand-new CryBaby started making really weird noises. But this was the first outing for my Seven Sisters Red Witch setup:

PRS 408 MSL Limited Wood Library -> Lily Boost -> Ruby Fuzz -> Eve Tremolo -> Roland VGA-5 COSM Amplifier

I only used the Lily for most of the evening. The resulting tone was tres generic but on the other hand the whole chain is solid state and you can let it sit in a hot van all day without bursting a tube or upsetting some sixty-year-old doped-germanium vintage fuzz transistor.

On the other hand, the Green Destiny was a true joy to play. A lot of the evening was spent chunking out EbMaj7 behind the saxophone and the Pattern satin-finish maple neck is a delight in those conditions.

We had so much fun in our ad-hoc gig that I think we'll do it some more in the future! For my car friends --- I rented a 2014 Chrysler T&C Touring with just 46 miles on it when I picked it up, so I'll be discussing that on TTAC this week.

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