We're All Fine Here Now, Thank You. How Are You?
Issue #11: I Ain't in This For Your Revolution!
Happy St Patrick’s Day to all of you that celebrate the beloved Irish holiday!!!
I see you are back for more randomness. Unless you’re new here. In that case, welcome! This is Otter Limits, the newsletter about everything and nothing all at the same time.
There hasn’t been a whole lot going on this week outside of the normal stuff. We are still preparing for our upcoming relocation to Michigan. We will be talking to a real estate agent next week to discuss whether or not we want to use them to sell our house which we will be putting on the market in a matter of weeks. We have our moving truck scheduled. So there is that.
While on the subject of moving, I would like to point out that having all of my music gear shipped up to Michigan was not a very good life choice. As a musician, I often have periods of drought. That is, times when I have, more or less, writers block when it comes to writing lyrics and music. Other times, I full of ideas. I was in one of those drought periods when I made the decision to send my gear up to the house we bought. I figured that the drought had gone on for so long that I would not need said music gear for a while. Unfortunately I was wrong. Over the past week, I have been flooded with ideas. So while I can jot down lyrics and that sort of thing, I am unable to put any music to those ideas since I have nothing on which to do the writing. I suppose I could go rent or borrow a guitar or something.
I think next week I might talk about some of the bands that I’ve been in. A sort of music history of Steve so to speak.
Anyway, have a great week and I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.
For this week’s list, I got a recommendation from a friend. He asked me to do a list of my favorite guitar players. Like last week’s list, I have done this one before. I’d like to point out that this list doesn’t necessarily comprise guitar players that I think are the most proficient at what they do. It is just a list of guitar players that I enjoy listening to or personally like their technique, tone (sound), or have influenced me as a musician in some way, shape or form. This top 5 list is also not in any particular order. So here it is, my top 5 favorite guitar players:
Stephen Egerton - Stephen is the guitar player for the punk bands Descendents and ALL (as well as other projects he has worked on). I just love to listen to him play. The stuff he does with simple chord progressions is just amazing. He has an almost jazz technique with what he does in punk band. Just an all around amazing guitar player.
Page Hamilton - Page is the guitar player, singer, and founder of the band Helmet. He has an amazing tone and the way he attacks chord progressions is equally amazing. Interestingly, he has a jazz background so his technique has a bit of that in it as well.
David Gilmour - He is the guitar player and singer for Pink Floyd. David is not super fancy with his playing but this is a guy that can do more with 3 or 4 notes than a lot of guitar players do with more than a dozen. Just listen to any of his guitar solos and you will understand what I mean.
Tony Iommi - Tony is the guitar player for one of the original heavy metal bands, Black Sabbath. His tone is simply amazing. He is also not one of those super proficient guitar players from a technical standpoint but his tone and the way he approaches a guitar solo makes up for all of that.
Tom Morello - Tom is the guitar player for Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave (and some other projects). The reason that he is on this list is because it is fun to listen to him. The sounds he gets out of his instrument are phenomenal.
An honorable mention goes to Greg Ginn. Greg was the guitar player and founder of the hardcore punk band Black Flag. He gets an honorable mention from me because of his overall influence on me as a musician and guitar player. It is his playing more or less convinced me that I could play guitar.
Around the Ring
After taking a few weeks off due to life getting in the way, Around the Ring returned this week. This week, Justin and Steve discussed a multitude of topics including the unfortunate passing of Scott Hall (aka Razor Ramon), the appearance of Jeff Hardy on AEW Dynamite, and covered some highlights from the week of wrestling. You can check out the episode on Apple Podcasts below:
Rogue One Radio
This week, the crew was joined by Adam of From A Certain Point of View to discuss the bronze age of Disney. We talked about the Disney films that were released from 1970 to 1988. We also played some tunes from Ann Beretta and Rare Bloom. Also, speaking of Rogue One Radio, we hit a milestone on our YouTube channel. We hit 100 subscribers. I’m pretty happy about that. It not only means that there are at least 100 people slightly interested in what we are doing, but also it means that I was able to create a custom URL for the YouTube channel. Pretty stoked. Anyway, you can check out the new episode on YouTube here:
I’d like to give a shout out to the podcast ATSW The Escape Pod. This is a podcast that, like Rogue One Radio, is part of the Red 5 Network. They just celebrated their 100th episode. Congratulations to Don, Brady, and Chris on 100 episodes of craziness! Check out their 100th episode celebration here on YouTube:
This week’s pull list consisted of one single issue and two trade paperbacks that were released this week. Batman: The Knight #3 was the single issue that was released on Wednesday. Batman Vol. 5: Fear State was also released on Wednesday and Radiant Black Vol. 2 was released on Thursday.
These books were not on my pull list but they are books I have read over the course of the week.
First, a graphic novel called Afterlift, was written by Chip Zdarsky, who wrote the most current run of Daredevil (which I really need to finish), is currently writing Daredevil: Woman Without Fear (Elektra is Daredevil now), and is also writing Batman: Knight limited series. This one looked interesting. It is a Comixology exclusive. It is about a rideshare driver (like an Uber driver) that picks up an unusual couple and essentially ends up driving them to hell.
The next one is #1 of a new Punisher series that released last week. It was written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Jesus Saiz and Paul Azaceta. Punisher has been one of my favorite Marvel characters that I’ve been following for a really long time. I like Jason Aaron’s previous work, particularly on Avengers and X-Men, so I figured I would check out his take on Frank Castle. I’m not sure if I like this take on the Punisher but I’m willing to keep reading this series to see where Jason Aaron takes him.
The third book I read this week was Batman Ego and Other Tails.
This week’s track comes from a trio from Bielefeld, Germany called Dead Years. The track is “Creation and Decay” and comes from their self-titled debut LP. I discovered this one when a song of theirs popped up on my Spotify release radar. Pretty good stuff. I look forward to seeing more work from this band in the future. Listen to the tune on their Bandcamp page here: