2008 was definitely an odd year with a great finish somewhat tainted by reality. Reality is my least favorite thing on TV, and yet another year passes and I don’t shoot it (the TV). I think I just can’t bring myself to go to a gun emporium. Unlike Ted Nugent, I am perfectly happy with my penis; some would say, perhaps a little too happy. Besides, in this day and age, it’s not the TV, it’s the cable box, and I’d probably have to be a decent shot to get the cable box. Maybe I should have asked for a TiVo for Christmas instead of that old Fostex.

Thanks to TV and the cable box, on November 4th, I did witness some serious reality impacting. So maybe there is something more to it. Maybe reality can be good. Let’s see, total financial collapse of the planet Earth, one of our continents is threatened to be reclassified as an atoll, bangs are back in Chicago, and the biggest tour of 2008 was AC/DC. Yech. Great, now my happy thoughts are resting on whatever I type next. It had better be good—no pressure, come on Max, squooze up the old piehole and pound something interesting on the QWERTY. Here it comes; I can feel it, come on… take a deep breath and type:

Blagojevich.

Fuck.

Bye happy feelings. See you in ’09.

It’s not so much that I typed the word that made my happy thoughts splatter on the concrete; it’s that I spelled it right the first time. Fucking Rod Blagojevich is committed to my memory. Sigh…

Let’s start over…

Riot Gear! opened 2008 with a column on trade shows. January is the peak of trade show season, which begins in October with the AES show in San Francisco. The biggest music trade show in the US is NAMM, which runs January 15th through the 18th in Anaheim. This year’s theme is “Come Together,” which has a sort of ‘huddled masses’ ring to it under the current economic clime.

The almighty CES show is January 8th through the 11th in Las Vegas. This show will no doubt be huge, like always, but it remains to be seen if its impact will be meaningful.

Macworld in San Francisco is January 5th through the 9th. Last year’s pre-show hype was the iPhone; this year’s hype is that Steve Jobs will not be there. I am not going to NAMM this year, and generally avoid CES. But I went to the AES show to find something to write about back in October. Other than a conference with Beatle engineer Geoff Emerick discussing how Sgt. Pepper’s was mixed and a bit of whoring to get some really expensive earplugs, there was no news.

Okay, Digidesign’s Pro Tools 8 was officially announced at AES in 2008. It is one better than Pro Tools 7. Actually, it’s more—Digi finally updated PT’s graphic interface, which was seriously long in the pixel, and Pro Tools now supports up to 48 tracks without having to buy an expansion pack. Rumors abound that Digidesign is going after Apple’s pro audio installed-base by modeling the new PT GUI after Apple’s Logic software. I’m sure the GUI engineers at Digi would have to say a thing or two about that.

Naturally, all the pre-reviews (hype) and reviews of Pro Tools 8 are glowing. The biggest negatives remain largely undiscussed in the press—Pro Tools is simply way overpriced for what you get (even though PT8 includes more plug-ins than previous versions), and their business strategy could make both Microsoft and Halliburton blush.

More than anything, the fact that the two biggest pro audio shows in the US relied on the Beatles for their bang is telling indeed.

Let’s start over…

2008 also marked my return to the infamous stink that comes with playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band.

Playing guitar in a band again has started a fire inside that can only be put out with more effects pedals. In spite of myself, musical aspirations linger, in part because the combination of influences has created a definite “sound” that, for now, we can call our own. It’s ironic that I consider this accomplishment reason for entertaining aspirations, since having one’s own sound isn’t always a good thing when it comes to striving for musical success. But with the political transition in America, I expect the musical trend to turn dark once again, which bodes well for us. The ’80s were an unhappy time for our country economically, but rock music and pop culture were darn happy, even punk was happy, though perhaps not as happy as it sometimes is today.

The ’90s brought prosperity, mostly, and rock music returned to darkness. So I’m hopeful that the positive change on order brings us some very dark music. Anyone in a band right now should be reading H.P. Lovecraft and writing some dank, ichorous music.