This is what a kitchen table should look like after a successful Sunday morning music practice. If some shavehead tells you different, he/she ain’t doin’ things right. It was a successful practice, too. Was it the threat of holding three a week that made all the socks get pulled up? Don’t know, but it sure made a difference. Another reason this duo will not be easily copycatted is their lack of this grade of management.
Note the telltale signs of affluence in the photo compared to a year ago. Biscotti and ladyfingers, both. Wooden, not plastic, stir sticks, class or what? Half and half, not Carnation. Go away mad, but don’t go away without coffee and cookies. This practice is rated as one of the best yet and we are getting ever so close to stage work.For those who just arrived, Trent was not a band guitarist when we met five weeks ago. He plays guitar like I do. No fancy chords, no sharps or flats, no pickin’, and roughly the same strum in each song. The upside is that I have an easy time selling this brand of guitar playing. It suits what I do on the bass to a tee. If it’s shaky or a little off time, that just becomes another part of the package. We are not out to be prodigies.
I’d put the duo about half ready at an amateur level. If timing remains rough, management (that’s me) brings in a drum machine. Intros are slowed down and played at half speed until aced. We use syncopation more than expected and tend to apply this to almost all weaker musical passages. I have to smile because Trent often has to really struggle not to play what I do, that is, to keep a steady strum going behind the bass lines.
[Author’s note: if there exists any instructions on how to do all these things I talk about, I’d like to have it. Nearly 100% of anything novel I do on stage has been unlearned from doing things the wrong way. If you know all the little things I talk about, don’t criticize me, call me and tell me where you got them from. I’d really like to know. For example, no lessons ever taught me it was better to play what the audience expects to hear over doing the music note for note. I say it is better to practice an error to perfection than to memorize the studio versions.]
Next we move it over to the Super Bowl party. The important word is party, not only am I not a sports fan, I am not fond of television period. A good time was had by all, but I was there for the party, the people, and to catch up on things. JZ is not getting surgery; that was somebody’s odd choice of words. He is going to the dentist to fix that tooth he’s been nursing for four years. Here’s JZ making an emphatic point about something.What an excellent party it was. Cory and Alaine again went all out for thirty-nine people. Baked grouper with spiced pistachio, shish-kebab, beef, ham, five brands of salsa, I simply cannot describe everything on that fifteen-course buffet. But I can state Cory, the master chef, has done it again. Nobody said anything, but I know very well what a thousand dollars worth of food looks like.
In related news, I saw the new barbeque that Cory hand-built, plus the aquarium he is constructing in the garage. The new pool is finished in the backyard, the high-def TV is truly amazing (I want one), and JZ and I consigned ourselves to the fact no single women showed up at all this year. No wonder they are still single, know what I’m sayin’? Unmarried women are supposed to know that non-sports guys like us show up at parties, football or not.
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