Lindsey Stirling/Johnny Rzeznik String Session

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One of the last “normal” things I got to do before the world went full lockdown was to attend a Goo Goo Dolls concert with Ruth, and so to see two musicians I enjoy team up to perform a song and share some words of hope and encouragement for a better future beyond these troubled times… feels fitting and inspiring.

Also awesome to see that Stirling’s perhaps as much a fan of Live in Buffalo as I am.

Fun diversion: I never know how to answer the question “what kind of music do you like?”, because I increasingly (and somewhat deliberately) find that I enjoy a wider and wider diversity of different genres and styles. But perhaps the right answer might be: “I like music that makes me feel the way I feel when I hear Cuz You’re Gone recorded from the Goo Goo Dolls’ concert in Buffalo on 4 July 2004, specifically the bit between 4 minutes 10 seconds and 4 minutes 33 seconds into the song, right at the end of the extended bridge. It’s full of anticipatory energy and building to a wild crescendo that seems to mirror the defiance of both the band and the crowd in the face of the torrential rain that repeatedly almost brought an end to the concert. Music that makes me feel like that bit; that’s the kind of music I like. Does that help?”

Alone, And With…

People who are in on the Secret Of The Jukebox will be delighted to hear that I’ve had a good long hack at it tonight (hence it being 4:30am) and I’ve managed to get heaps done and ready for Paul to break test, including but not limited to the new “Alone, And With…” engine, which doesn’t seem to suffer any longer from the age-old bug that gives it it’s name.

I’ve just finished listening to some old hard-to-get Goo Goo Dolls albums that I acquired a little while ago. One is silly over-punky shouty hard rock stuff; very coarse and unrefined, much unlike their later stuff. The other, ‘Hold Me Up’, is much recommendable: some tracks I’d heard before, some stuff I hadn’t heard, all very very good. In particular, enjoyed ‘Laughing’, ‘Kevin’s Song’, and the older version of ‘Two Days In February’. Toy.

I Wanna Wake Up Where You Are

Watching a Goo Goo Dolls concert on VideoCD.
They’re really quite remarkably good. I suppose you can’t help but respect the artistry that goes into making a song for which you need to re-tune your guitar such that five strings are tuned to the same note. I mean, can you see the conversation now? “Hey, Robby: tell you what, why don’t we see what this sounds like…” And Gutterflower is a simply stunning album.

Reading MMURTL v1.0 (Building Your Own 32 Bit Operating System)
It’s really quite remarkably geeky. I spent Christmas reading quotes from it to my family, Claire, and her dad. Claire understood bits of what I said. Sometimes. It’s great – a 600-page A4 book which contains at least 200 pages of solid assembly language (the most hardcore programming anybody could ever really justify doing) and another hundred of low-level C. It’s on a short print run – the attached CD-ROM is on CD-R media.

Missing Claire.