My Dry Year: September

OK, so August is over, and the Black Dog Institute will be up, if my calculations are correct, about $125 or so for five nights off the wagon.

What? What am I on about?

Oh yeah. Until July 2012 I am operating under Dry July Golden Ticket rules, meaning that I don't drink unless I (or someone else of a charitable nature, of course) hand over a minimum of $25 to the nominated charity (or non-profit) of the month.

So now it's the end of August and it's time to nominate a new cause.

For this month of September I shall be handing over my drinking money to...

Skepticamp Melbourne

Melbourne's Skepticamp will be taking place on 22nd October 2011, and to make the event a zinger, it does need a few donations. Skepticamp Australia is a non-incorporated group operating as a non-profit, so I think it applies. Complaints to the comments area. Donations to paypal using the email "skepticamp@melbourneskeptics.com.au". 

And remember, you don't have to donate merely in order that I may drink. You can donate anyway. Same goes for the Black Dog Institute and any of the groups I nominate over the year.

I have no idea who will get donations for October, but given that its a month that has my birthday and the Skepticamp Melbourne event in it, the total might be a half decent wedge of cash in the offfing. Suggestions are welcome.

The Len Ganley Stance

Len Ganley died on the 28th August.

Given the Half Man Half Biscuit connection, I had to do a version of the song.

And before the requests for chords come in, the original is in C, my version is done two steps up in D by putting the capo at fr5. The chord shapes you then play are:

A, flavoured with Asus4 (by adding fr3 on the B string)

E, flavoured with E6 (by adding fr2 on the B string)

repeat.

Then the chorus (no, no, no, no) has an E (playing a barred B shape with capo at fr5) 

Lyrics can be found via Chris Rand's excellent site.

This is not the canonical way of playing the song as per the original recording, rather it's the way I arranged the song so I could get the video out quickly.

The recording has, obviously, my Cherry Epiphone SG, also my Jazz Bass and aNueNue Banjulele, and was recorded in an ad-hoc manner on a single condenser mic picking up the guitar amp (actually a bass amp) and the main vocal, then the backing vox were added, then the bass track was recorded direct into the desk and compressed hard, then finally the banjulele to brighten the upper range a bit. Tweaking in the multitrack was kept minimal, aside from dodging the "come on boys and girls" bits into more pleasing spots and compressing/normalizing the tracks a bit. Overall about an hour was spent learning, recording and fixing.

Len Ganley's family requested donations to the Paul Hunter Foundation, and who am I to argue?

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