Thanks Everyone...

    Thanks everyone for the helpful hints for the migraine relief.  The wooden vise does sound absolutely de-flippin'-lightful.  That pleasant little realignment of my cranium sounds as delicious as the feeling one gets from a perfectly cracked spine that travels up one's backbone with those wonderfully warm numbing little waves.  Mmmm...

     As for the ice cubes on the gums, I've never heard that.  I do know I'm well past my teething stage, and well, right now I think I'm at the age where the most effective method of using ice cubes to cure a headache is to drop them in a glass of gin with tonic.  But, that's another story. 

     What I normally do when the headaches get unbearably brutal may sound unbelievably masochistic, but it's oddly effective. 

     First, I make a pot of insanely strong coffee, pour myself a cup, take a drink and wince as I head into the basement where I have my little studio set up.  I throw a countless number of switches, pick up one of my acoustic electric guitars while the tubes of my amps and PA warm up, and, lastly, flick the switch on my wireless, step up to my mic and start playing (I can't use guitar cords.  I move around a lot, and for some inexplicable reason, even when I stand perfectly still, the cord will inevitably knot itself into something that looks like a two-year old's first attempt at tying his or her shoelaces).

     The strange thing is that, in order to get rid of the aching melon, I can only play songs from the Dave Matthews Band.  I don't know why that is.  I've tried to play tunes from many other artists, but they don't seem to work as well. 

     My current theory for this odd form of therapy is that, in order to play Dave tunes, I've really got to remove my brain from the equation and think about as few things as possible.  The second I start to wonder what my fingers are doing, they'll wind up in a tangled mess whose chaos will cascade into my brain and turn my singing into a stammering mess that sort of sounds like Jimmy Stewart impersonating Dave Matthews.  So, normally, when I play his music, I tend to think about things like what color to paint the bathroom, how much gas is in the tank of my Jeep or whether or not I can make the thumping subwoofer behind me rattle the change in my pockets.  In fact, as I was playing "Crash Into Me," earlier, I was actually trying to remember whether or not I'd given my cat his heartworm pill. 

     I know.  It's pretty odd, but it really works wonders.  I do wish it would work when I cover other artists, but I don't know why it doesn't.  Strange, huh?

-DP