Rocker Guitar Studios sits south of Market Street in San Francisco, at the end of an alley that is, shall we say, well soaked in the Tenderloin's atmosphere. Up at the top of the alley are the kind of million dollar lofts which belong to people who unaccountably crave a view of bone-drunk homeless folks passed out cold on the sidewalk in front of their houses. Next door is an auto body shop which, with its rollup metal garage door and dull gray paint, could be an exact twin of the studios themselves. The only things that are romantic about our practice space are the Christmas lights and the freedom we have to turn up our amplifiers as loud as we want. Anyone who doesn't think that loud, distorted guitars are capable of sexiness lives on a different planet than I do.

Today I was hurrying down the alleyway at 4:04 -- hurrying because, as is too often the case, I was running late. I'd set up a time for the band to meet with a prospective drummer, and I wanted to get their close to on time. 4:04 was pretty good for me.

He was there waiting for me, and we shook hands and headed inside. Incredibly, the rest of the band was already there, so after the usual futzing around with gear and amplifiers (exacerbated by the fact that Jamie's new bass had arrived) we got to business. Tammy was kind of listless, because she'd contracted the death grippe that's going around right now, but she still played, even if she was staring somewhere in deep space for most of the practice.

Something that has become sadly clear to me over the last month or so is that, as much as I love its tone, my amplifier just doesn't hack it. It's a solid state Crate amp, and it's supposedly 90 watts, which ought to be more than powerful enough, but either the fact that it's driving a 4x10" bass cabinet or the fact that it's only intended to be a practice amp means that it vanishes when Tammy and Jamie get cranking. It doesn't help that Jamie has a 200 watt Mesa Boogie head going into some monstrous tuned and ported 2x10" cabinet and Tammy has everybody's favorite beast of an amplifier, the beloved and crushingly loud Marshall JCM900. When those two decide to get loud, it's very hard for me to get my guitar to cut through the mix. I've got my eye on this Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier head, but I'm going to have to spend some time saving up for that. Just thinking about it makes me feel a little giddy.

Jamie's been dying to have a drummer to play with, and the rest of us have definitely been noticing the lack of one, so today was a lot of fun, whether or not things work out with Steve, the guy we were playing with today. Jamie and I were both sweating by the end of practice, which never happens, and it was really nice to have that feeling that everything's running right on the edge of falling apart. Even though I want to be on top of things when I play, I take more chances when I have to pay attention to what I'm doing, and I'm often surprised by the results. It keeps the music interesting, even after I've played all our songs a hojillionty times. That's what music is all about.