Dom's Rambles

Fuck me I needed that! After thirteen and a half years I'd forgotten the sheer - well, escstasy - of when the pill hits, and it all comes together to make for the best time it has ever been possible for people to have in all of human history! A big thanks to Tim Neale and Tommy Lee for putting it on.
Right then, let's get back to finishing Down & Out... before I go back to work next week.
Laters.

posted by Dom  # 8:41 PM 0 comments links to this post

Not only do some people have way too much time on their hands, they also appear to have disturbingly morbid preoccupations - like the guy who put this montage together.

posted by Dom  # 12:37 PM 0 comments links to this post

Okay, I knew I said that the next blog post would be announcing the upload of the last chapter but we’ve had a number of unforeseen delays.
Firstly, when I took a week off work to get the thing finished I turned my PC on to discover it had picked up a fucking viral infection which locked me out for the next three days until it occurred to me to boot up in safe mode and disable the evil little bastard in the msconfig menu and then run my anti-virus software to kill it.
Then Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 dropped through the letterbox and by the time I’d worked my way to the end of that it was Thursday night.
Just before I got down to a serious writing session I called one of the guys from back in the day to confirm a couple of things about the character I called Twiggy. During the course of our conversation it became clear that I’d got a lot of stuff wrapped around my neck which meant I had to delete and rewrite a good 3,000 word section. That took me the rest of the time I had left off work - and then some.
Then, just as I had a long weekend coming up, my ear started throbbing and after paying a visit to the doctor it looks like I’m going to have to have the operation which knackered my hearing up so badly that it scuppered any realistic chance of me turning my home recording studio (which I’d spent the previous two years working twelve hour shifts, six days a week to equip) into a paying concern, redone.
This is a major fucking hassle and a not inconsiderable distraction. Regardless of the fact that it’s by no means a safe procedure, it also involves going over to Sheffield and being bed-ridden for the best part of a week. Yes, I could have the operation done in Lincoln but there are two reasons why I won’t.
Firstly, I’m not going to let the incompetents at Lincoln County Hospital anywhere near me. They spent over twenty years unsuccessfully trying to figure out why I kept having recurring ear infections when it took a consultant at Sheffield’s Hallamshire Hospital all of five minutes.
The second reason, although this is a much lesser concern, is that I don’t want a certain person to spot me on the hospital grounds and thereby fuel her deluded conviction that I'm stalking her.

Right then, on to Friday night’s rather splendid Paramore gig, which I took my twelve year old niece and her friend to.
Just before I left Lincoln I forgot where I’d put the tickets and spent half an hour going frantic, throwing stuff about, kicking other things all over the place, screaming and swearing at the top of my voice and generally trashing the flat until I remembered that I’d used the envelope containing the tickets as my bookmark the previous night (Under The Dome by Stephen King in case you’re wondering).
Then I realised I’d left the Sat Nav at work and had to negotiate the rush hour traffic across town to fetch the fucking thing - which meant I got to Nottingham to pick the girls up over an hour later than I was supposed to.
We hit the traffic jam from hell on the approach to Birmingham city centre which took us longer to get through than the rest of the journey up to that point (tip for folks driving in Birmingham: the secret is not to show fear). Parking was even more stressful and whoever designed and/or manages the NIA car park deserves a sustained and merciless hoofing in the genitals.
And all the time I was worried sick that I was going to look like some dodgy ebophilic pervert who had turned up solely to frot against teenage emo chicks (I needn’t have worried about that as it happened, there were plenty of older people in the audience who were quite obviously chaperoning youngsters).
But for all the fuss and bother it was more than worth it just to see the look of awestruck excitement on those girls' faces when the band hit the stage - even if poor uncle Dominic had to spend the entire night holding an armful of jackets, scarves, jumpers etc while the girls hot-footed it down to the front rows to emerge an hour and a half later gasping for breath, drenched in sweat and both sporting huge beaming grins!
Some things really are beyond priceless.
In other news I just got sent some work in progress shots of my custom Firebird guitar which is currently drying having just been given its Olympic White paint job and will, I’m assured, be ready for dispatch/collection early this coming week.

Here’s a shot with the neck in place and an ad hoc tremolo unit and pickup to give an idea of what the end result is going to look like.

The actual hardware I’m using (all Gotoh kit – only the best for Dom!) is in a finish called 'Black Chrome' which doesn't really come across too effectively on a photo (see the machine heads below), but take my word for it, to the naked eye it looks absolutely gorgeous.

The pick up I eventually opted for was the DiMarzio X2N which, I was delighted to discover, is available in white (even if it does cost a tenner more) and which I reckon is well funky.

Finally, here’s a Photoshop sketch of the prototype headstock graphic. I'm still not sure whether calling the guitar the 'DBG (Dom Bescoby Guitars) Dominatrix' is too cheesy – not to say narcissistic - but then it is a none more metal axe so I guess that’s probably acceptable!

Regarding Chapter 10, it is coming together and I think it would be fitting were I to upload in on January 10th 2010, the twentieth anniversary of me first moving to Sheffield.

posted by Dom  # 8:34 PM 0 comments links to this post