I have several clients in the buildings but it is really a large and expensive nursing home. They have these scales in each room networked through the phone system to take a daily weight measurement. Ostensibly to watch for any rapid gains or losses, it is really to make sure the occupant is alive.It will be a long time before I ever do another database for someone else. Not that the work is difficult, but that the average person cannot always perceive the value of the work. I was at the doggie wig place for a few hours and really had to stand my ground that I was not there to write emails, only to train others how to write emails.
The new clerk, Alex, is trainable. She’s worked with the systems before and was quite impressed with how things are arranged. Not so with the owner, who thinks that the computer can instantly produce any report. And worse, that anything that happens in the office magically gets into the computer.
Pudding-Tat showed up. Full of fleas and wasp eggs and almost certainly pregnant. My contact at the Humane Society says they are booked up until January, which will be too late. It will be a tough decision.
This was a Friday without music. I don’t like missing a chance to play. However, I did check out a club called Moon Shadows, up on Federal. The server there is the same one who hired me to play the Duck Inn. Mood Shadow’s is a cramped little restaurant-bar with no stage. The sign said rock music on Saturday’s. I may look in but it is not suitable for what I do. Nor did I care for the attitude of the lady behind the holding bar. Florida and California can be really bad for middle-age has-been career barmaids.
This is not conjecture, for I know of a bar manager who pulled a good one. He ran an ad in a California paper offering a two month job paying [in today’s money] $1,200 per week plus free room and board plus tips plus round trip air fare. I can’t specify because what he did next was probably illegal. He chose six girls, but only the tall, gorgeous, single, blonde, blue-eyed girls under 24. To this day twenty years later, his bar is still packed every night with guys who want to know when they are coming back. Can’t do that in Florida because there aren’t six women who fit the bill.
There is no more news on the guitarist, except a short email stating he is also the singer. Now we are getting somewhere. His song list reveals he is a jazz guitarist, but that bad habit can be cured. I wonder if there would even be a market for jazz if it wasn’t plugged to generation after generation of guitarists. If he likes the idea of a duo, okay, but the rest of his band sounds flakey. There are only three or four clubs in the whole area with a real stage, so I’m not gung-ho about a four piece group to start with.
That is the reality of playing music [in this area]. The market is saturated. There are probably three times as many musicians as there are clubs to play in. I won’t say no to joining an existing group but I will keep my own act together and focus on working toward a duo. There are roughly thirty places that a duo could find work. It is odd that there are no real “bar” bands around here, yet that is exactly where most of them wind up playing if they play at all. And they all sound like they are auditioning for a recording session. Zero real audience interaction, certainly nothing on the scale of my act. The first thing I do on stage is start training the audience.
Want an example? Okay, once a night at Jimbo’s, I ask, “What’s Mary short for?” The regulars are trained to wait a moment and then chant in unison, “Because she’s got no legs.” Ten percent of people don’t get that one.
