Tuesday, October 16, 2018

"Rock Lobster" by the B52's

Marz shared my band's (FTP) practice with Shell and she said Shell was reminded of this song.  I thought gave it a listen and thought the keyboard part didn't sound terribly difficult and thought I would try playing along.

But the pins on the cheap-ass USB connector on my MIDI keyboard were still buggered up from last week.  I decided to try straightening them out again and borrowed a pair of needle-nose pliers from Sue.  The needle-nose tips were way too big to get down inside the USB plug.

So I got my tweezers and tried straightening them out as best I could.  I got them to a point where they didn't look too bad.  I was able to plug the USB cable in at least most of the way... as far as I could tell anyway.

I got my laptop and plugged the other end into it.  I was so excited that the power came on the keyboard and it showed up in the audio connections in the Jack dialog box on my laptop.

I hooked up my MR Rack synthesizer to the laptop and connected the keyboard to it.  Nothing!  No MIDI events were being sent to the synth.  :(  :(  :(

I installed a virtual keyboard on my laptop to test the setup.  After a bunch of fucking around with them, I was able to determine that the synth was receiving MIDI events and playing sounds.

I was pretty stressed out at that point and then the keyboard started to tip over, I tried to grab it and knocked some other junk over trying to catch it.  I lost my balance fell into my record cabinet, then tipped sideways, fell into my walker that was sitting there and landed in the middle of the floor.  I laid there and cried for a while.  Eventually, Sue came to see what the rukus was, found me and helped me up.

Later I went to get some groceries but remembered that it was the rehearsal for the Equality Utah Allies Dinner and realized I was going to be late.  I got all stressed because I couldn't remember if it started at 6:30 or 7:00.  So I took off, got there at exactly 6:30 and the parking lot was empty.

My knee was far too messed up after last night at the SunTrapp to do anything but sit there.  I came to the realization that with all the problems I've had with my condition this year there was no way I was going to be able to participate this year.  The odds of my being in a state to perform are extremely slim to none.

And I was in such extreme pain from the MS Hug that I finally couldn't even wait to talk to Mindy or say goodbye to Talia, Melahn and Lisa G.  I had to get home ASAP.

Anyway, this is such a fun song and the video is SO fun too!!!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofkzvM7Skxg

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