Yes, I know I haven’t updated this in over a month and a half. I’m a bad bad man. Spank me.

Okay, I’ll get you caught up now.

Since we didn’t hear from any of you about whether we should spend our time recording or practicing for the gig, we had to make the call on our own. Fortunately, since we had to cancel a couple of practices before the gig, it was a pretty easy call (that means we practiced).

So at the last practice before the gig, we pretty much concentrated on songs that needed practice, like “Boomtown” and “Roxanne” and Radiohead’s “Just,” as well as a few new surprise covers (including “Super Bon Bon” by Soul Coughing, which ended up going pretty well. Or, I should say, “pretty wellaaaaaah.”). By the end of practice, we were feeling pretty good, like we were ready for the gig.

Two weeks later.

Here’s a tip. If you have a gig, try not to have it at the end of two weeks of not practicing. Otherwise you’re likely to not sound quite as tight as usual.

The night of the gig was August 11. Thanks for coming. I say that because if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you were there. Hell, there’s a good chance you were performing there. But, to maintain the pretense…

Our two-week rustiness was only one issue. The other was the fact that we couldn’t get our PA to sound decent. Normally we borrow another pair of speakers from a friend. They’re these cute little Fender dealies that clip together, but they actually have a lot more power and sound quality than they look like they do. We played the gig without them. They were missed. We were told later that our vocals sounded like this:

“FffffffmfmfffmfmfmfmfPPPfmffmfmfmPPfmffmfmmmmffPPfmfmmfmfmfmPP”.

For three hours.

Again, thank you for coming. At least nobody died this year.

The following week, Pete and Richard and I brought all the equipment back down to the KrakaTomb and set it back up. All of the equipment that wasn’t in Jeremy’s custody, that is, as he was unable to make it that night. We got set up again, the three of us jammed for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes on one of Richard’s new songs, and we adjourned for almost the rest of the month.

On August 29, we had our first Wednesday practice. Pete’s class schedule for this semester pretty much requires us to meet Wednesdays now. So we did that. Jeremy brought back the gear he had with him and we set that up. He also brought CDs of the recording he made on the 11th. It was as we feared.

The recording only covered the second set, which sounded better than the first set but still had problems. It’s a double CD set. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet. However, it is nice to know that Jeremy is able to translate files from his digital recorder into a physical artifact. That’s a plus.

While disk 2 played in the background, we had a brief band meeting. A lot of it was regarding the website. Richard is talking about scrapping the whole thing and re-coding it. Better him than me, I say. We talked about the new site, and what we want to keep from the old one, and what we want to add in the way of new features. I’m not giving anything away just yet. Right now, the site is unavailable for some reason. So I’m pretty much just writing this to myself, aren’t I?

I forgot to mention that there’s some new wiring and new outlets in the KrakaTomb. We now have outlets on both ends of the KrakaTomb “stage,” and it’s nice to be running off of those instead of a single extension cord plugged into a ceiling light socket. I’m pretty sure the KrakaServer is on a different circuit right now. Oh well.

We also did a little brainstorming on logos. Don’t give me a lot a grief about bands who spend all their time on logos and never focus on the music. That’s not us, Sparky. We have dozens of original songs and scores of covers, so I think we’ve earned the right to talk about a logo. Especially since something has to go on the front of the T-shirts we’re going to be making and selling. Yes, you heard me right. Stay tuned.

Then we worked on some new songs that are in the pipeline. Jeremy has a melody for his new song (the D/A to F/B-flat one), but there are still no words. Or, to be more accurate, its words consist of “na na na, na naa, naaaa.” It’s really good, though. I’m convinced that song is going to get a lot of people laid one day. The bridge is still coming together. We went through it a few times and each time the bridge sounded a little better. Rather than writing it, we’re just sort of letting it organically develop to where it will span the space between the chorus and the verse. We also worked on Richard’s new D major tune. We knocked off at around 9:00. No, it’s not because we’re getting old. We just had other places to be.

Last night was another rehearsal. We’re still sort of easing into our new schedule, where we start at 6:30 instead of 7:00. Don’t worry, we’ll get on the same page eventually. Rob stopped by and we talked about stuff like marketing, demos, T-shirt and sticker sales, CD production, and so on. Richard and Rob also talked about the website, which is still down as of this writing. Yes, I’m writing for a website that’s down. Shut up. Jeremy’s going to work on recording his parts of the demo, Richard’s going to look into T-shirt options, and Rob may have some more free time to manage us in the near future. Sort of a good news-bad news thing going there. That’s all I’m going to say.

Then we played for a little while. After a song or two, Richard dug out a harmonica and handed it to Rob to play with us. Richard got him to play directly into the microphone and he sounded really good. What did we play? Oh, just a 12-bar blues jam. Except it’s a C harmonica, so we were jamming in C. That’s Krakathoom for you. Always expanding their horizons. Then Rob left.

We played a bunch more songs. We did a few covers, then a few of the songs on which Richard plays acoustic guitar, most notably “Boomtown.” That song is really coming back. Last night was the best it’s sounded in perhaps years. Maybe one of the factors there is the way we have the equalizers set on the head. Our theory is that since we were outside in Somerset, without our full concert PA setup, that made our PA sound muddier than usual. So we cranked the treble as high as it would go, which helped but didn’t resolve the problem. However, once we got the PA back in the KrakaTomb, the treble was still jacked to 11, and when we started singing into it we realized we could hear ourselves better than we ever had before. You’d be amazed at how much that can help your singing. Good thing too; I was about ready to buy myself a new microphone.

Next week we’ll keep working on the new songs. It kind of feels like a new stage for the band. You know, how bands record an album, then go on tour, then write songs for the next album, then go on tour again, et cetera. The best bands evolve as they go through these stages, so you have concepts like “Green-era REM” or “And Justice For All-era Metallica.” Not that I’m comparing us to either of those bands, but you get the idea. Or you would, if we ever recorded albums or went on tour.