It was a day of developments. First of all, my infrastructure is creaking. All the little things I used to rely on cash income for have been let go too long. Twenty dollars of gas rather than a full tank means that much more time driving just to get gas, an effect nobody warned me about when I was younger.
Worse, I’ve begun to spend money on weekends just for entertainment. Only people who are way smarter than me wind up having to do such a thing. I do understand how some people think spending a lot of money to see the show is better than being the show, but I won’t go there.
When I arrived to pick up my Jamis [bicycle] there were customers waiting at the door, so I opened and did well by the time Dickens came in just before noon. From there, I lugged some used computer equipment to Fred’s for a tuneup and stuck around to fill ink cartridges. These are exciting times. My entire income for today was $1. I spent that for a coffee at Olga’s. Which is next to an ice cream parlor with the strangest paintings on the walls.The Polish beauty who disappeared walked in today. That is good news is that I get to see perfection again. The bad news is that she was obviously not in the shop to see me and was surprised that I was there. The word is that she reconciled with the guy she was shacked up with, an extremely common brand of stupidity. Women that beautiful do tend to attract and fall for the slipperiest men in the world. That is why I view relationships with beautiful women as nothing more than a matter of degree.
Here’s a new round in the guitar wars. Wain showed an hour and a half late, with a second audition on 441 and 595 [two local main roads]. We played some excellent music, biting right into that 1970’s material before he had to leave. The down side was that he had not learned even one of the tunes on the list I had sent him a week ago, he lives 42, not 20, miles away and is far too sold on “guitar” music rather than the required “dance” music.
That explains why he did not send me his list. He plays the “wrong” music, where that is defined as basic list of the same tired old tunes every guitar player runs through with incredible precision matched only by the same degree of boredom. Every one of these people has to be educated as to what constitutes dance music, because they do not know. Each will say you can “dance to this”, but leave out that it helps if you are high on dope. It also helps if the audience only knows the first verse and chorus. I’ve heard a hundred guitar players better than you who got nowhere because nobody could dance to what they played.
One particular tune that typifies boredom to me is “Mustang Sally”. Dull, droning, slow music that drags on and on. The beat is too slow, the lyrics are meaningless and drinkers ignore it after the first minute – it is just too worn out. Yet guitar players think it is fantastic and use it to gauge “how good you can follow”. Something about learning guitar must make that exact part of their brains go dormant. That song should be defenestrated.
Of course, Wain wanted to play this tune even after I told him I did not know it – another strange quirk of guitar players, “What, you don’t know Mustang Sally!”
I don’t know it and have no reason to learn it – it is bump and grind music. Seriously, I have fallen asleep listening to that song. Clap your hands to that music and tell me that is not dismally slow. All of this took time and now it is too late to start anything else.
Around two hours later, Wain called back. Seems the other band was either not ready to go or had fed him a pack of ju-jubes. He wanted to head back over so we could practice a few tunes more, but I told him to make it this Friday. After he’s had time to send me both his song list and learn at least a dozen of the tunes on mine. It is too much of a coincidence that most guitar players find my list to be completely new material, although they all could whistle the tunes.
They won’t admit that it is because they were all copycats, but I can work with that. The second phase is when they realize that I play arrangements that are difficult to make sound better as a single. I would be dumb to do otherwise, hello. He also does not know when to stop playing [a sign of too much soloing], but I can teach anybody how that is done. We’ve agreed to tentatively play together until something else comes along. The last time I did that, it lasted seven years.
A chick guitarist, Jane, wrote to say she does a lot of material from that era. I wrote back saying I’d have to hear it. I don’t know enough of it to carry off a gig with a female vocalist since Robynette left. I know it can be done, as long as I do 85% of the work. I’m obligated to give her a listen. A man, Jeff, called. He wanted to form a duo but keep his bigger project going. I turned that down flat over potential conflict of interest.
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