I had a party in my apartment on Sunday night. The place is still filthy. I hesitate to walk around downstairs barefoot. Still, it was an excellent party. I pulled the touring rig from the studio and installed it in the living and dining rooms. It's a nice little set-up, especially after I dropped a couple of minidisc decks into it. It normally has a cd player, but it's a two sided DJ deck that you can mix between. Hypothetically. The A side is busted, so you can't do any fly spinning on that deck now. I'm going to compile a list of suggested improvements for the person who performs my job the rest of the year. Like another amp. I wanted to string up four speakers, which seemed possible, as the tour cabinets are rated at 150w/300w max. Plenty of room in one channel of the amp for both---except that the cabinets were rated at 8 ohms (a measure of resistance), as were the channels in the amp. So, even though the wattage had loads of headroom, the resistance was too high to gang the cabinets into the same channel. As it was, the two cabinets performed quite well.
The party was pretty hot until the people from the Lear cast came over around 1230. Before their arrival, there had even been a dance-off in the middle of my living room to Peaches and Herb's Shake Your Groove Thing. It was an impressive show by all. None of the Lear people were in the mood to dance and instead totally packed our modest kitchen. There was a request for the Gipsy Kings. Around 230, I threw on The Princess and the Warrior and headed out to the porch.
There, I learned from my boss's boss's boss that they would be running some tech elements on Monday. Monday, which was to be my first full day off in six weeks. Monday! So, I hauled out my laptop and checked all the rehearsal reports, and sure enough, there was a tiny note about it buried deep in the report several days ago that I somehow managed to miss. So, I got up on Monday and called my board op to remind him of the call, then called the designer to see if he had any other needs. Fuck it, I thought, I'm having my day off. So I drove to Northampton to do a bit of shopping. A responsible voice in the back of my head told me to make it back to the theater by 630 (they wanted to start at 7). A very good instinct, as my board-op was a no-show. He just gave himself the day off, without discussing it with me. And ignoring the fact that I had called him in. So, he got his first full day off in three weeks, and I got screwed out of mine for the seventh week in a row.
I got three cds from an excellent used music store in Northampton, Turn It Up, for about what it would cost to get a 2-CD set new. Not too shabby. I picked up a Tori Amos cd that I didn't buy when it came out. I sort of fell out of love with her for a couple years after that shabby two cd set she put out while I was in college. Scarlet's Walk really reeled me back in. I also bought Bjork Debut, to replace a long worn-out tape from high school. Bjork is too brilliant to pass up a $7 cd of her work. I also purchased Beth Orton Daybreaker, which I had elected not to purchase when it first came out. I saw her live in Central Park and nodded off during the concert. What a bad place to fall asleep, no? Actually, it was fine, but it didn't inspire to shell out $15 for the cd. $8 is a different matter. I had a crazy hope of finding some new (to me) Brubeck, like Jazz Goes to College or Time In, but alas, no. All they had was albums I already have or don't care to own. I may have to send off to Europe to get a copy of Time In.
Now, I'm the studio burning my new acquisitions to minidisc. I'm getting spoiled having a studio at my disposal! I'm also burning through my cache of minidiscs much faster than I anticipated. My mother wants to get a minidisc player for herself, in order to make stable copies of cassettes in her collection, so maybe I should stock up again! I got a really good price on them from Full Compass the last time that I ordered there.