At 6:30 AM I was driving out west to the clinic, a thirty-mile round trip to give a single drop blood sample. This lunacy is why the US economy cannot be fixed by any few billion dollar incentives. The past four generations have been passing the buck until we can no longer do business the “American way”. The clinic locates itself up in Sunrise to save on rent, but the overall cost is likely higher due to the gasoline required to get there. The clinic saves, but not the customers or staff. Florida saves by not posting mileage signs on the highways. The cost is made up by those who get lost.Agt. M got a mini-lecture today about going full blast. I could care less if he wants to burn out, but he missed the Monday meeting. Can’t have that. True, he could claim I did the same when I was young, but you know, he is already well beyond the age where I learned working like that doesn’t pay. You must use your brains, and use them in the correct way despite how this draws enemy fire.
Speaking of which, allow me this opportunity to make some clarifications. When I said my new musical direction was competitive, some took that to mean unbridled aggression. Wrong, I never said that, and that is not how I compete. The key to success is to avoid confrontation and I am the past master of the flanking maneuver. My target is not other musicians; my target is the audience.
And, my position is entirely defensive, focusing on what I can do, not how other players will react. I’ll even tell you my strategy. I am really doing much more than singing and strumming at once, so I’m heavily developing advanced reminders to the audience that this is as “live” as it gets without tracks. And I’m around 60% ready to go.
While I’m here, let me address the “wrong” topic: the facts about available gigs. In a larger sense right now, there is some guitarist out there who is taking work away from me. That he may not consciously realize it or admit to it is a matter for sociologists, not musicians or economists. Music is inherently competitive and my suggestion that the number of unemployed guitarists is constant means I could not create an imbalance if I wanted to. Just because my approach is planned and deliberate in light of what is going on does not make it any better or worse than a person acting in a vacuum.
Put another way, if I was competing with other musicians, I would copy them. When a farmer plants corn because all the other farmers plant corn, he is going to reap exactly what they reap. If nothing else, my act is certainly original and it’s not like I’m invading territory. I’ve been in this business for decades. Even when times were bad recently, at no point ever did I own less than two guitars, a keyboard, a harmonica, a drum box, three amplifiers and a complete PA system.
If you want to know how I view other musicians, it is with indifference. Most of them don’t play what I want to hear. For that matter, another droning gitar-boy doing another endless version of Hotel California can damper my evening. Guys, that tune is so worn out only the drunks still like it. I despise the fact that in this town, if you want to go out to a saloon with a band, you’ve got about two choices in music. I’m merely shifting some ballast toward a third popular choice.
Here’s the old truck from Outdoor World. They put it outside to slowly rust away. Like Molina Health insurance does to old people. Trivia. Snakes use four methods of propulsion. They are lateral, rectilinear, concertina and side-winding. That means they slither, lift-pull, coil around something or twist along. But the correct terms are so wonderfully academic I thought to learn them. Please, no allegories about at fifth method of snake movement called “Molina”.Last, I notice the candidate, Gingrich, has sworn off adultery. Who came up with that one? A 62-year-old man swearing off extra-marital sex? Five years after he swore off sex all together. Okay, to my fans, I formally declare I will cease wearing a Mohawk and swimming the English Channel. It is only right that those of us in the public eye make these meaningful sacrifices.
