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INDY ROCK BLOG #96 10/11/20 By Les Mitchell Diffusion... My final thought from the last blog entry mentioned repurposing my living room as a music room. It was a spontaneous and half-baked idea at the time but it has picked up momentum in the last month. Every time I walk around the house, my thoughts range from head-scratching bewilderment to childish amusement. It’s almost as if my musical possessions have been perfectly distributed throughout the house by diffusion. On a cold and windy Sunday, I decided to take a quick visual inventory. In the living room, there are three guitars leaning against a couch and a guitar case lying comfortably on the couch in a spot which was, as far as I understand, designed for humans. There is also an empty case on top of the coffee table and another one on the floor. There are four full guitar cases and an amplifier sitting in the middle of the room as if they meant to go somewhere but got lost on the way. Yet another case appears to have crept into the dining room to a corner resting place near a pile of cables and old setlists. There is a lone guitar in the hallway leading to a spare bedroom containing another pile of guitar cases and a desk which was once used exclusively for creating and editing, but has since become overgrown with strings, pedals, batteries, posters, and things no longer identifiable. I know there is another practice amplifier in the main bedroom because I trip over it on a near daily basis. I’m sure most readers will have gotten my point by now so I won’t bore with further details. Needless to say, most other areas of the house reveal a very similar pattern and continue to cause involuntary eye rolls. I’m sure most of my fellow musicians out there have had similar experiences. When I visit any of my bandmates, I feel right at home immediately because I usually have music gear over there that has joined up with their own equipment and randomly scattered itself about, just as it does at my house. These observations are by no means exclusive to me but damn it, I’m going to be the one to do something about it! This is no longer an idea; it’s a personal mission. I’m going to organize all of my music gear in one big happy room and make every effort to keep it that way, the laws of physics be damned Les Mitchell 18 rabbit

INDY ROCK BLOG # 92 13/10/2020 By Les Mitchell Conviction... That familiar and unmistakable chill is in the air as the thermometer begins its inevitable descent toward minus f**k. It is the end of a season that is usually filled with live music of all shapes and forms. Missed were the outdoor festivals, the lounge patio acoustic shows, and the campfire jams. We were fortunate enough to be involved in what seemed at the time to be a loud and proud return to the way things were. That proved to be a false start and everything now seems as uncertain as ever. We will continue to make lemonade out of society’s lemons. We are still in good spirits. We are still writing and recording music. We are putting together a band documentary with a local television station for release in the near future. It is easy to forget that their world has also been turned upside down, so this project is a good outlet for all of us and our creative impulses. We recently filmed a bunch of interviews and those will get spliced in with some live footage and other stuff to make a cohesive and hopefully entertaining video product. It is always interesting to see the end result of the talent and expertise of others outside of the band. We are also discussing the idea of filming/streaming live shows (the kind without the audience). This is an avenue currently being travelled by artists of all genres and magnitudes. It is something we find intriguing as we explore the logistics of actually pulling it off. We also have new songs to finalize and release and we still have our last CD to remaster for release in digital format. There is much to keep us occupied and somewhat sane while taking advantage of the forced downtime. On a personal note, I’m looking at the music equipment piling up in every corner of my house. I have decided to officially transform my living room into a dedicated music room. After all, life is music and music is life Les Mitchell 18 rabbit www.indyrock.net

INDY ROCK BLOG # 88 14/09/2020 By Les Mitchell Relaxation... As our whole music scene remains in lockdown, a small group of local musicians decided to plan some outdoor fun for everyone a golf tournament. It’s no secret that I am a golf fanatic, but I wasn’t sure how well received the idea would actually be in the music scene at large. With last minute planning and very short notice, we were able to get six teams signed up. Even with inclement weather (90k wind gusts), we still got four teams to participate. At stake? A striking handmade trophy loosely resembling the Stanley Cup for the winning team and an equally eye catching trophy based upon a likeness of David Hasselhoff that would be given to the last place team. Game on! Our team was composed of the full lineup of 18 rabbit so I knew going in that the whole day was going to be ridiculously hilarious and it didn’t disappoint. The round was full of beer and crazy golf shots. We had the music cranked so there was also a lot of air guitar and air drums happening in the howling wind. I don’t think we talked about our own band once during the round. When the subject of music came up in conversation, it would be a comparison of Van Halen vs. Van Hagar or Ozzy vs. Dio vs. the other Sabbath singers. The tournament was so much fun, it went by rather quickly and eventually evolved into the after party. Nearly everyone stuck it out into the wee hours where the teams really got to hang out and talk about the past, present, and future of our music scene of all genres. It was nice to catch up and learn how everyone has coped in these trying times. Many ideas were shared and committees were formed to help plan for our collective musical future. One of our first objectives is to continue this golf event annually. Based on this year’s success, and despite all of the things working against it, we are confident that it can become much bigger and better, hopefully with a live music component down the road. Indeed something to look forward to and a great way to build and maintain camaraderie within our scene! By the way, our team was presented with The Hasselhoff Les Mitchell 18 rabbit

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INDY ROCK BLOG # 84 11/08/2020 By Les Mitchell Exhilaration... Ah our first full electric shows in quite some time took place this past weekend. We were scheduled to perform Friday and Saturday at our city’s go to club for live music. We had a couple of rehearsals to knock the rust off but there wasn’t much of that considering that everyone had been keeping up their chops. The day of the first show, I woke up with an excitement I hadn’t felt in some time. Even the equipment felt much lighter as we lugged it to the gig. It seemed like the boys all had devious grins on their faces while we were setting up and doing soundcheck. We found an old setlist, presumably from the last band that played there months ago. We had fun with it the rest of the weekend, taking turns replacing each other’s real setlist with that one when they weren’t looking same childish shenanigans as always. Fast forward to show time. After the initial four count, it was as if four wild animals had been released from a cage. It’s been way too long without that feeling. Crowds were small but appreciative as we gave everything we had for two sets each night. It was definitely two of the sweatiest gigs I have ever played. We were done by midnight each night but of course it took band beers until sunrise to wind down from the adrenaline. Going back Sunday to tear down and haul gear out was when I noticed that our equipment had returned to its normal ridiculous weight. It’s like going on vacation where the trip getting there is always more exciting than the trip home. Nonetheless, we came, we saw, we conquered and the whole weekend was as fulfilling as I had expected. Unfortunately, due to a recent uptick of health cases in the past week, it appears that live music here is beginning to shut down again already. I can now say that I performed on the last night of live music here in March as well as the return of live music and possibly its last night again in August a dubious distinction to be sure. It’s better to be safe than sorry, but for one weekend at least, things felt somewhat normal again Les Mitchell 18 rabbit