What’s this, more promo for Club M? No, but I am certain some will take it that way. Club M is a much-maligned local pub that was once a great little night spot. However, progressive generations and higher prices ($3.50 for bottled water) leave the place vacant most of the time. The current owner has a fondness for young skinny barmaids from eastern Europe, underpaying them so they expect a $1.00 tip on every drink. (So make that $4.50 a bottle.)
This is a photo of next Monday, but these fully-documented, legally-immigrated and green card-carrying Mexicans are repairing the signage. The club’s poor reputation stems from the owner’s shifty methods of paying for the band. He promises a cut of the till, but does not let the band see the register tape. Good move in a town where most musicians you’ll meet haven’t a clue what a z-tape is.With the known high prices, even on a holiday weekend the place is often deserted. The main draw is that the club has been downtown for so long everyone knows it is there. I’ve played the place as a duo and didn’t get paid enough for the gas to get there. My guitar player was a capitalist pig who exploited fellow musicians, so don’t blame the club. That guitarist was one curious shit-head. He would use other musicians to play groupie by falsely promising to pay, understate how much the gig was paying and then accuse others of being capitalists for wanting to be paid for their time and effort. Duh!
A day of real progress, and now we find out if the cat stays or goes. Cancer Steve called while I was rigging up the wireless network “atlanticjune”. Don’t you think the names I give networks are the neatest ever? Okay, already, I just thought I’d ask. He’s got a place lined up for the first and needs his clothes for now. Remember the call blast feature I reviewed years ago?
That is where you set all your phones ringing when any one of your numbers gets a call. It may have limited use for stockbrokers or prostitutes but I repeat myself. Of more interest is a feature that rings your numbers in a predetermined sequence. The Vonage phone is chock full of all the things that are really of limited utility to people who conduct their lives in an orderly fashion to begin with. Still, the technology is fascinating, including an option to receive an email whenever anyone leaves you a voicemail.
Then Marion called. I love it when that happens because we all need to talk to a sane person now and again. I can always tell when she is about to ring, I’m developing ESP of when she’ll get on the blower, maybe it is one of them there telepathic things. Either that or call display. She is chipper but chatting with her reminds me we have not visited in six years. It has never been that long and besides, we were neighbors back then so nobody kept score.
You’ll want to know about the music portion of tonight. Sure, but allow me this opportunity to say that just too many people have complimented my song list for anyone to reasonably deny that I know what the crowd likes. No, I don’t play any Clapton. Tonight, the Thursday karaoke guy came in to scope out the show. He personally said the music mix was “fantastically suitable” for the crowd, and later took the tip jar around and collected us an extra $36. So there.
The gig at Jimbo’s. We hit the predictable doldrums and I’m watching closely to see how everyone reacts. The doldrums are what happens to a band when beginner’s luck wears off. It is usually your second through fifth gigs, where you draw blanks on stage, the equipment sounds funny, and the music does not sound at all like what was rehearsed. This happens no matter how well you prepare and, take my advice, get it over with.
It was a rough gig, but partly because we practiced most of the material here to slide guitar and Mike switched to harmonica on stage. Couple this with the natural tendency for bands to overplay new material and we had a tougher time usual. This cannot be avoided so don’t blame anyone. The crowd still loved us and the tip jar was full. We have a small fan club, Juliet is the leader. She brought in snacks for everyone, a cheese ball cake in the shape of a guitar and a huge tray of crackers. Garlic perfecto.
The gig for tomorrow is only tentative and that may be good, as it will get me off my tush to get some new material onto the Farmer AB [category name of the CD disk I use to record my solo music]. I’m going to instantly include several Blues tunes and my student teaching material, such as the Dixie Chick’s “Travelin’ Soldier”. These are not set lists, but MP3s with a single measure click-track intro, I just don’t have the software for anything fancier. Nor the patience to learn any new software right now. And it turns out my old recording of Fur Elise is really top rate [128K], so I’ll see about something there.
This reminds me of the answer to another oft-asked question: No, you cannot print the list of file names that Microsoft displays when you look at a directory using My Computer. You have to accept that it is just the kind of people that Microsoft are. You cannot even copy and paste it to another document (it will try to copy the files themselves rather than the list). You could do a printscreen, but that is not likely what you want.
Trivia. One can of water produces 1,600 cans of steam when heated. I learned that from a TV show about locomotives, so I can no longer say TV never taught me anything. Actually, that will be easy because I never did say anything like in the first place, and in fact I do watch educational shows. The trivia stuck with me because I have always been amazed by the versatility of ordinary water, and I don’t mean just the fact that it is water. I mean things like the fact that it freezes from the top down in a crystalline form that is less dense than the liquid it and begins to dissolve any container in which it is placed.
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