my goodness gracious me, but it was a musical weekend.

that is, after the total collapse I had on Friday. not sure why, but I started to fade right after lunch, and could not wait to get home and hit the sack. passed out the minute I got home, practically, waking up at 11:30pm (j came in and i thought it was morning already!) for a quick cup of tea and a bit of viz comics… then back asleep again at midnight, til 11 the next morning!! must've needed it or something

so on saturday morning, j tells me we can do anything/go anywhere I like, as long as we swung by a music store, as he needed to buy a microphone. he and his friend Dave have been doing a "boys' music night" once a week now (sorta like how guys' guys tend to have their poker nights, i suppose), and j has really built himself a nice little digital studio setup.

since we also needed some breakfast, and i was in the mood to leave the city, i looked up breakfast places in the east bay, and decided it was time, at long last, to try Cafe Fanny — Alice Waters' spinoff (cheaper, faster version) of Chez Panisse. After a nice, simple breakfast amongst the, uh… multiculturally clad denizens of Berkeley, we got back in the car and spotted a store on Shattuck called The Starving Musician.

it was a great place, full of quality used gear and very nice salesguys. while jason was lingering over the microphones and chord books, i found myself in the back section playing with the percussion instruments. they had quite a nice selection of handheld drums like djembes and congas. so i started thinking how much fun it might be to get something like that to bang around on at home. unfortunately, the only pair of bongos they had were a bit ratty-looking and mended with duct tape, so we decided to take a look and see if we could find any music stores on Telegraph Ave.

of course we went into Amoeba (where I picked up dub versions of a couple of my favorite cds: suzuki by tosca, and richest man in babylon by thievery corporation. good good cds!!) but after a trip up and down both sides of the street, we found nothing. jason popped into Rasputin's, asked where we could find a musical instruments store, and was told to head back to shattuck. we found a funky old place down there that was going out of business, but they had very little in stock. specifically, there were no congas or bongos to be bought, discount or no.

so of course we ended up at guitar center. which was semi-unfortunate, since it's always such a zoo there on saturdays. to make matters worse, I'd never been in the percussion room before, and so was wholly unprepared for the chaos and cacophony. but i found some bongos that seemed decent and bought them, as j would not let me take the 3+ foot tall standing congas that were on sale for $189.

 oh come on… they're not that big!!

it's been fun playing them, and has made me feel like picking up the bass again, so that's good.

and if that were not enough musical goodness, we headed back to guitar center today, as j finally settled on a digital piano he was ready to buy. which gave me a good excuse to buy some more stuff: headphones I'd been wanting for a while, plus some downbeat loops and a "Teach Yourself Piano" book.

the new piano is fun! can't wait to start learning…