WEAK NOTES are here, insofar as anything that only exists as information can really be here.

Went to see Extreme supported by Living Colour on Monday. Extreme were good (and it’s my first time seeing… 30 years later) but I have to say I was mainly in it for the Living Colour. Living Colour don’t disappoint. I realised about 10 minutes into their set my face was hurting because I was grinning so hard, and their whole set was sublime. The are the real deal.

After that my little brother did a gig in London… mainly to prove a point that people who ask him to play in London never actually turn up when he does (which was accurate).

And then on Wednesday it was Billy Bragg at the Roundhouse doing his Roaring 40 retrospective. That culminated with him playing the whole of Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy as an encore with the original guitar it was recorded on, which was fantastic.

Spider-Man 2 didn’t win anything at the weird winter game awards thing which I find deeply weird (it’s honestly the best time I’ve had with the PS5 in ages) but the corresponding Steam sale has enabled me to pick up a couple of other games that did win on the cheap. I’m particularly keen on trying Cocoon.

But also, this is the week this trailer came out:

There might need to be a GTA V playthough while I’m waiting (particularly as it’s been in my Steam library since a different sale a while back and works perfectly well on the Deck).

I’ve never had much interest in GTA Online, but the single player story experience has always been favourite. I’m a huge fan of the open world map game where you can choose to do something… or nothing. Some of my happiest times in both GTA and Spider-Man have just been traversing the map and exploring. At speed. While being shot at.

Leaving this here for personal reference (there’s a jazzmaster build in my future, and there are JM holes in a Squier thinline that I adore): Guide to buying Jazzmaster pickups

Mike Adams knows his shit when it comes to Fender offsets, luthiery and Star Trek and when I read stuff he’s written I find it very hard not to hear his delightful cadences. If you’re unfamiliar and have more than a passing interest in guitars check out his YouTube and other socials.

Speaking of projects… I just won this Westbury Standard on eBay for a couple of hundred squids. That’ll be going in the cupboard for a new year project, but it’s a double cut Gibson-esque clone made in Japan in the late 70s/early 80s. They’re supposed to be good… we’ll see!

Meanwhile the Jazz Bass is holding up nicely and sounds great even with the old Squier pickups in. All JBs should have series mode switching in them. It should be the law.

I’ll need to shim the neck slightly (the G saddle bottoms out), and I am going to matte the black finish with a paint pad, and I’ve got some new Toltec pickups to try out… oh an I wrote all this last week.

Work rattles on, my patience for them actually signing off on the work is waning though. I think we may have tipped the threshold where this is a death march. Not because the work is bad, or the project is wrong… just because the organisation isn’t in a position to actually do the work at the moment.

Goals achieved from the previous week:

  • Shift this crappy cold thing - pretty good, although still got a bit of a headache on
  • Argue about contracts - the deadline we’ve set ourselves is now next Friday, and then I’m job hunting, regardless of what they say

Goals for the coming week:

  • sort out Christmas
  • sort out the kid’s birthday party
  • rebuild the Jazz Bass

God it’s dark. Surely we should be hibernating by now?