So I was sort of waiting for something semi-momentous to happen that would necessitate a blog post. Well, that something came on the news last night: “At 2:00 tomorrow afternoon, world renowned shred guitarist Michael Angelo Batio will be playing at what promises to be the biggest guitar event in Sarasota history at the Sarasota Guitar Company.” Michael Angelo Batio?! Really?! That crazy guy who plays that ridiculously awesome double guitar?
Naturally, I had to go.
We wanted to get a spot in the crowd with a good vantage point, and I had a $10 rewards coupon at Best Buy (which is right across the street), so I went with my dad to Best Buy to kill time until the show. We went straight to the musical instruments section. I showed him the $1800 Taylor acoustic that I fell in love with last time I was there, and we were playing around for a bit. Finally, it’s about time to go across the street, but I hadn’t spent my coupon that was due to expire today. So I pick up a guitar cable, thinking “ehh, I could always use a guitar cable…” and stumbled upon the clearance table. Sitting on the clearance table was a 75W Line6 Spider III head for $129.99! I couldn’t believe the deal. So… I bought it, thinking that I could always sell it if I didn’t like it, and I needed something bigger than my 15W combo that I had in Pittsburgh if my music was ever going to get off the ground up there.
We stick it in my trunk and head across the street to the parking lot where the stage and a few booths were set up. A swamp-rock band was playing some okay covers of stuff, but as the ponytailed and pierced population starting slowly growing, everyone pretty much knew that no one was really there for the openers.
By the time the MC had finished throwing T-shirts at the crowd and Batio finally took the stage, there was a fairly large group of people baking in the middle of a parking lot in the 90° Florida sun. He starts his sound check, joking about how at shows in Britain, they charge people extra to sit in on the sound check… he was very animated, and quite entertaining. And then he started playing.
He played a Deep Purple cover (Burn), an original (Rain Forest – see video I took at the bottom), a tribute to Dimebag Darrell, and a tribute to Led Zeppelin. He took a fifteen minute break cause he was dying from the heat, and then he brought out the double guitar.
I have never seen such an awesome guitar performance. He went from playing the right hand neck with his left hand and arms crossed, to harmonizing his leads to one hand playing rhythm, the other playing lead, to shredding on one of the necks… it was really impressive. After the show, he said he would be in the store doing a signing, so my dad and I went into the store where there were at least five different guitars at any given time in various stages of shred and distortion and an inchoate line starting to materialize. I saw the owner of Dean Guitars (who was pointed out by Batio, who is a hugely endorsed Dean artist), Elliott Dean Rubinson, and got an autograph from him on my Dean Guitars catalog. We then joined the line, and after about forty minutes, got up to meet the master himself. I bought his “Hands Without Shadows” cd, had him sign it and a poster, and got a photo with him.
I wasn’t really thinking that I was going to be going to a shredfest when I dressed myself this morning, so I wasn’t as “METAL” as I usually am at such events, but hey, I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity just because I was wearing a lame shirt.
NEXT TOPIC: job
So I finished my first three weeks at the Robot MarketPlace. I must say, it’s a fantastic job. I’m working with things that I have an interest in and experience with, and the greatest people I could imagine working with. My boss (who has about a 50% probability of reading this… which is kind of weird…) is a “giant man-child” as described by my two main coworkers, and I couldn’t ask for anything better. I’m doing a lot of work keeping our selection of products current and at competitive prices, website maintenance, new product selection, and answering phone calls about technical questions and, if I’m the only one available, general customer concerns. I’ve been really accepted into the family of this business and I couldn’t be happier. I even have my own cubey-desk-computer-chair-place!
I’m going on a vacation to Colorado and Utah in a few days, and after that, I’m going to start doing video product reviews and tutorials for the website. I’m really excited!
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