We're Havin' a Heatwave

Well, we were - the heat seemed to break this afternoon with a series of intermittent rainstorms that pretty much continued throughout a mid-afternoon jam I had with friends. Yesenia took advantage of it and threw the living room's french windows open and by the time I came back upstairs it was blissfully cool. Compared to earlier in the day, when me and my father worked on wiring in the attic while simultaneously showering in our own sweat. The second day in a row of that, actually. As a perfect illustration of just how much nastier it is in the attic than the rest of the house: we also worked up there yesterday, and my father stopped by this morning on his way into the city to drop off his junk clothes so that he could come straight here after work and right back to the attic.

His clothes from yesterday were still soaked through.

Honestly, the guy is sixty-seven years old. I was up in the attic for only about a third of the time he was and I thought I was going to have a stroke. If I ever needed proof that my dad is made of sterner stuff than I am, today was it.

As far as the jam: less Zeppelin than the last time (visiting bassist Emmy is planning on auditioning for all-female Zep tribute act Fem Zeppelin when she gets back to California next month, so I've burned her some songs and accommodated her by learning a few myself so that she could try playing them. As it turns out, she nailed the bass, and with Sean on drums the rhythm section sounded really good. The problem was me; since I was both playing guitar and singing and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are so far out of my range of abilities that I singlehandedly make our versions of the Zep chestnuts into inadvertent parodies.

This week, I tried to get a few more tunes in my range without the more demanding guitar parts - we threw 'No Quarter' and 'All My Love' (probably the band's most famous keyboard numbers) at the wall, and they certainly stuck better than 'Over The Hills and Far Away,' 'Good Times, Bad Times,' 'Ramble On' and 'Immigrant Song,' the four of which were last week's offerings. Frankly, I can't even count out the opening measures of 'Hills' properly, which is kind of depressing since odd time signatures and stuff are my 'thing.'

But the keyboard songs were decent. In fact, one or two more runs through the two keyboard numbers and they'd have been what I'd call 'pretty good.' We may get a chance to play once more this summer, so I hope to commit that to 'tape.' Emmy has a Zoom H2 digital all-in-one recorder, and I was pretty impressed with the sound from the one thing we did record.

If I do, I promise to put either best or the absolute worst up here. My Robert Plant impression is something else...

Anyway, I'll be posting the unfinished Weekend Listening sometime in the next day or so, and it's not that. Sorry, or you're welcome, depending on how you feel about it.

D.