Some advice for you budding computer repairmen. First of all, don’t get into the field, the day of the throwaway computer is near. Second, stay away from Hewlett-Packard Pavilions. Jose dropped one off a month ago, so I thought I’d shoehorn a more advanced operating system into it. This led to a series of attendant upgrades until I had it stripped to the motherboard. It now has 256K of Toshiba RAM, a Sony CD-R/W and a 40GB Maxtor. I doubt I could sell it for $75, but I will.
I also looked back to 2005 to see about back-dating this blog. That is when I was working full time, so I typed around 90 minutes per day on the job. You know, less than the amount of company time you spent making personal phone calls, visiting the john or surfing porn sites. Some of the daily records are massive, as in 15 pages long. Plus, they will have to be proofread, for I see too many real names in there.That is misleading, but good press. You see, my job had the dead minutes in stretches, so idle time was expected. I just didn’t idle. The part about real names is correct, so some of you will be able to note some very detailed records of your goings-on. Did I mention the lady y’day? Yes, I did. She had never seen anyone play to a recording before, didn’t know it could be done. Interesting.
That play-along is the progress I can report today. I went back through my archives and dug out all the music to which I know the bass lines. Aren’t I glad I kept all the words, music and chords? Then I made a [MP3] CD of the tunes, without bothering to compress or edit anything. These are the originals, not sequenced versions. I just played right along. So, what happened?
First, there is far more music there than I could play with almost any band. Everything from Love Me Two Times to Summertime Blues by Los Lobos. What a treat, playing every song note for note the way it made a hit, no “Zydeko” version. I only got through 30% of my tunes in six hours. No, I did not cut and paste the tunes, or any of the things I planned. Didn’t need to. Just ran the CD player through the drum box foot pedal and started playing.
Second, it is already good enough to play somewhere. I don’t sing, but neither do the majority of musicians. I won’t get an A room, but I won’t be playing to empty coffeehouses either. I’m on to something here and I will surely follow it up. I can play all my custom bass lines to the music Robynette sang so that’s two years of hard work that came back to me instantly. And she did everything from Patsy Cline to Nancy Sinatra, and from what I found out, a lot of people in between as well.
Third, it is time to stop waiting around for anybody. I’ve had worse bands than the sound I’ve got now and we still got booked. For the record, except for a couple of lengthy house gigs in my 30’s, I say 80% of the gigs I played were before I was 19. From 19 to 32, I managed and booked but rarely played. But then I got year long-contracts and it was the difficulty finding a good bass player that prompted me to pick it up. Drummers, guitarists, singers were a buck a bushel and probably still are.
If it works, one of the things I will most appreciate is the privacy. This Florida thing about personalities is a crock. My last band “Three Good Reasons” stayed together for over four years, and I never knew Annie’s last name or the religion or philosophy of anyone in the group. Here in Florida, they shove their personal junk on you, as if you have some obligation to put up with their nonsense. Oh, and the reason the band dissolved was Annie insisted on replacing the guitarist with her friend, who was a better picker, but had a horrendously interfering wife who thought I wouldn’t can the whole bunch of them.
That is an interesting story in itself. Let me tell it to you. Annie had a voice like an opera singer, but she quit her day job at a light bulb factory, against my advice. She then wanted to play more often than the rest of us because she had to pay the rent. She felt by bringing in a friend, she could outvote me. Somehow she had forgotten that I owned everything on the stage except her buddy’s guitar and pick. One dollar, one vote.
The last straw was when the bad wife mentioned claimed I had “stolen three dollars”, which I could “make up” to her by buying a drink. One thing led to another, and they decided it was their gig and they were firing me. Problem, when they showed up the next day, there was not a scrap of equipment on the stage. As I was loading it earlier, I joked with the club owner that they would be showing up with their home stereo speakers in a shopping cart.
Around mid-afternoon, I received a call from a music store in the south end who said I had been given as a reference. Annie and her friend were trying to rent a PA system. I told the guy okay, but take cash only. Within the hour, and I’m not making this up, I received a phone call that they “had a PA” and wanted to know when I was going to come pick it up, drive over to the club and set it up for them. I asked if they would also like the ride home after in my Cadillac, the way they were used to, and they said that was part of the deal.
When I stopped laughing, I heard the rest of the tale. They had only rented the PA for four days and since the club would not give an advance, the music store came buy and picked it up. Where I kept a tight rein on drinking, they hit the bonanza and got sloshed every night. On the fifth day, a Saturday, I dropped by to see what was going on. They were not there. The club owner had fired them. Something about a shopping cart.
Later. Here is a little good news. “Audacity”, the freeware that does very simple edits on .wav files, well go get your old copy. It works just fine with MP3s and just now I am editing all my tunes to have exactly a one second delay after I push the start button. There are lots of “musicians” out there who can’t do this kind of thing with their own recordings. I’ve often wondered what slang term the studios use for those types.
Later. Audacity can be difficult to work with. Once you get used to the idea that it considers things like volume to be just another special effect, you move along. I’ve taken to inserting a one measure click track before the intro of each piece, giving me time to get my hands back on the bass neck. Here is a plug for Audacity – it is great for trimming the audience out from live tracks and I was able to successfully lower Johnny Cash’s “Cocaine Blues” from an Ab to a G on the first try, notwithstanding he is out of tune in both keys. However, I still cannot get rid of the bass track completely, for using the equalizer also takes out the drum track. Give me some room to work and I’ll keep you posted.
Later. I don’t know what Pudding just knocked over but it had better not be anything expensive. The [Audacity] pitch control can make the Pointer Sisters sound like Iron Butterfly or the Chipmunks. It only works in a narrow range. I’m also using it to put in stops that are not really there, and to clip fade-out endings. Remember how T. E. Williams sang “Sixteen Tons” in B major? Well, not no more.
Even later, I took a break and rode my bike three miles one way up the road. I believe I have my first booking as a single act. Not a solo, but a single. This Saturday, I may try it out. Take note, experts, that even if I am lousy, it sounds like a good time. I hear I should be worried since I don’t know any Clapton or Eagles. My God, whatever am I to do if there is ever a Florida-educated guitarist in the audience but to scurry left and right from pillar to post?
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