It is a picture of a blue crow. Why, what did you think it was? I took a picture of an American crow and bucket-filled it with deep blue. Now I suppose you’ll want the explanation. I am not fussy what the name of the band is, and the other guy, Cowboy Mike, came up with “Blue Crows”. While it would not be my first pick, or my second, third or fourth, it apparently has some significance to the Blues and there is at least one other band that uses the term.
I spent a few hours tinkering with the orders database for doggie wigs and eating ice cream cake which is totally off my diet. I’m afraid I’ve made a few errors with the database that make it difficult to track inventory balances, but the total mistakes so far are less than 1% of what goes wrong with manual systems. Especially when people try to adapt such systems to a database – ours is the other way around. The very basis on which we do some things depends on how easily the event can be adapted to a computer. The biggest “error” is that the primary key does not indicate the color of each model, therefore every search or reference has to address a compound key made up of both components. Database has always been so complicated for me that I have to re-learn a whole set of the features again every time I create one. It is not a simple matter of changing the key, for that would destroy all the queries, forms and reports associated with the old key.
Database means long hard hours on a computer, so I’ll talk about band practice tonight. We ran through ten songs, not as tight as I prefer, but well into the ready-for-performance stage. It is going to take some real live stage time before I am jolted into memorizing some of these Blues tunes. For every one that has a catchy tune, there are five I can’t tell apart yet.
It is also interesting to me to experience the things that others find important. Myself, I could care less than most what the band sounds like, as long as I do my part and do it in good balance with the remainder. I could care less what the band is named (right?) or how we start and stop a song as long as we do it the same way every time (it is kind of important like to play things the same as everybody else when you are in a band). So what if we play several songs in a row in the same key (guitar players are very sensitive about this, yet some of them would play ten blues songs in a row if you let them).
Generally, we’ve decided to play this Friday at Jimbo’s, and we went there an hour ago to introduce Cowboy Mike to the situation. His eyebrows knotted upon finding out about the Troll (who sleeps in the corner overnight) and the lack of atmosphere. Sam was bartending, so although we won’t be playing on his nights for now, we got the go-ahead to put up a few posters and similar advertising. Mike would like more practice, where I feel we are already over-playing a few sections that could stand to be looser.
Mike also bought a set of big, fat guitar strings. He calls them “meat-slicers” and replaced them with a set of medium strings. The new strings won’t stay in tune, I wonder if I should say anything. He tunes his guitar from the thinnest strings first to the thickest. Hmm, I always thought you tightened the thick strings first, as they apply the most tension to the neck. If you leave them till last, tuning the lower strings may throw off the others. Anyway, that’s what I think.
There has been no time for reading or studying in a week, except for an hour or two here and there. That means no trivia. The cat, Pudding, seems to enjoy not only music, but the television. She stretches out in comfort whenever either is playing in the background. Don’t ask me, I’ve never had a cat or dog that ever noticed music, but I did have a budgie, Memphis, who could tell one piano tune from the other. He lived to be almost 13. To keep her occupied, just switch on the TV and she will stay in that room.
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