A rare photo of the front desk area of the shop. You see the computer gear of ages stacked deep. Those are the laptops Mike is configuring, usually by watching a good movie on the DVD player. I was in side for just a few moments today.
Of course I always keep on looking for new musicians, and I did the same even after meeting Jean. I have high hopes but she cancelled out on our first scheduled rehearsal y’day. Her kid had pneumonia. The single-mother thing is over-ridden by the pluses that she is talented, local and needs the money. She bought into the single motherhood thing long before learning the downsides. (Read later, we got together for a couple hours in the afternoon. But I'm too regimented to practice whenever the other person feels like it.)The next alternative for now is a lady in Ft. Lauderdale. I have not heard her sing, but generally I don’t have to; I work with what I’ve got. The point is that she writes back mentioning she has FMS. What is that? I’ll look it up but it sounds like the acronym they give to nerve conditions. Tony, my guitarist from the early 90s had something similar and it translates into me moving the equipment by myself all the time. True, I do that now, but I do it for myself. The very purpose of a duo is to generate more work.
A fateful day for the trailer. Thanks to a paperwork mixup, I may get $1,800 less than planned. That would still be a profit.
It took me an hour to get over to JZ’s. Miami traffic. Then I got him over to the land title transfer office and $246.75 later, he owns this trailer. On Monday I will be talking to The Urban Group about a reasonable offer. It seems the situation became slightly more complicated after I left JZ in the office with the secretary whose could best be described as a buxom lass for those who are into such things. Like JZ. She still has a layer of baby fat, but you know, I never cared for fat babies either. Well, he pumped her for information and it turns out this unit is the last unsold trailer in the park. Hmm, is that so? And that was just the title transfer, it ain’t sold yet. The last one, huh?
Jean called and we ran over some material. That is both good and bad. We have a great sound, but so does every mediocre guitarist who finally finds a good bassist. But I did not follow protocol and time is thus already going to be wasted. For example, she did not listen when I asked her for the keys she plays things in when she gave me her list. Now I learned all the bass lines in the original keys and have to transpose them. Sure, I can do it, but if she had taken 60 seconds to write down her keys, then the time would not be wasted and we could have got more done.
She still got an incredible jolt because she had never been accompanied by a bass player before, only another guitarist. She knows she has to do this but also knows it is a lot of work because she was not really listening while I was talking. That is why I wanted to meet up with her over coffee for a couple of hours, to iron out some of the obvious obstacles before we were trying to learn the material. Cowboy Mike was bad for this, he always to talk policy during rehearsal, unless the discussion didn’t go his way, then he wanted to get back to rehearsing.
Jean’s attitude reminds of Canan O., the green-eyed Turkish girl I dated in college. For instance, they both have that insecure streak of needing to know everything about you before getting the slightest amount of work done. Half the time gets wasted covering ground that will never be of any use once things get underway. Examples: “Is this your car?” “Why don’t you have Internet at home?” “What sign are you?”
If you don’t put a stop to that crap early, it becomes incessant. She has learned that as soon as she asks an irrelevant question, the conversation is going to turn into how soon can she learn this or that song. Like Canan, she shows up empty-handed (read next paragraph). This is a paradox, in that such women often maintain they are independent.
Jean had a guitar, but that is it. No pick, no strap, no cable, no music stand, no microphone, no PA, no speakers, no books, no blank CDs. But sure, she is serious about getting a band together. If I think back, I may have named this syndrome. It is obscure, but it works like so. These women don’t like to admit they are nearly helpless when it comes to organizing a business (such as playing in a band)
.
When they meet me, they realize clearly there is no overlap of ownership, no blurring of who stands where. They then realize to get access to my help, they have to do a lot more than they did for their old boyfriends. They also realize if they had done that much for their old boyfriend, he night still be around. The last stage is when they realize that because of that situation, it is unlikely I will ever be the new boyfriend. If things get over this hurdle, then we’ll have progress.
The schedule is she is dropping her kid off at her parent’s place after Tuesday next week, and should have time to practice between now and then. We shall see. I’ve got a gig to play in a few hours. So I used my own time and energy to burn her CDs and print out lyrics and charts because it would have taken her weeks to do it by herself. Some may point out that I just fired that guitar player from Boca for trying to get me to do the same for him. What? Isn’t that two-faced double-standard hypocrisy? Certainly, yes, I agree, you’re right about that. (The difference is his attitude was that I was “supposed” to do these things for him.)
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
