Dickens is back from the Keys. He was in for a half hour but had to finish the usual chores of returning from a break. It was a quiet two weeks over here, as in off-season so I had nothing to report. Other than downloading a dozen new tunes, I can’t say I got much done either. Dickens mentioned he experienced the same difficulty when trying to list on eBay, that a steady trickle of customers is enough to prevent total focus on a side project.
Unusual donations of this week include the first two Barbie dolls of a special series of 25, a weird container called a “salt box” and a box of men’s socks that were two feet long, no pun intended. They would easily come up past your knees. Crunch! There was an accident right outside the main entrance. Rumor is that this is not unusual and when it blocks the roadway, customers cannot leave the parking lot.I experienced a palace revolt later today. Last rehearsal I reported great progress with the Blue Crows, but I have the sad task of now writing that it was temporary. Alas, Mike promptly forgot what we had learned, and apparently, also what we had agreed to. There have been telltale cracks in the situation for some time, and I admit to glossing them over.
Mike was not holding up his end of the bargain, and that bargain was very simple. To create a band that was playing as quickly as possible. That, I accomplished against considerable opposition from his direction which I wrote off to his inexperience. The fact is, he was not learning new material or responding to instruction that was only given when it was necessary to save time.
He was turning the rehearsals into a free-style jam where he wanted to “go over” the same fifteen tunes every session. He was continually bringing in different guitars or instruments but it was the same tunes. We were not moving forward. When I objected he stated that the rehearsals were so “we” could “experiment”. Sorry, you noodle on your own time.
[Author's note 2018: and we had agreed to exactly the same format I've always used. I learn one of the tunes on your list for every one you learn on my list. And the first tunes we learn are the ones that are already on both lists. Most guitar players will lie, they never intend to learn any of your music.]
His playing was inconsistent, not a great quality in a band. This is okay for innovation but I’m referring to such basics as chord structures, keys and the number of beats per measure. In a band, everybody doing the same thing in those departments is kind of important, like. For weeks now, I’ve played around his errors but he finally took it upon himself to say that the problem was that I was not playing the same thing. This is a truly odd statement coming from a person who has personally seen me playing note-for-note renditions in front of a live crowd.
On record, note that I held up the bargain I agreed to. I learned all the music he suggested, often better than he knew it himself (remember Cowdonla?). The music was learned by the next time we met, never a hint of delay on my part. I invested countless hours of my own private time over what he promised. Allow me to point out once more, and please tell me if this is still not clear: I played Blues ONLY because Mike wanted to play Blues. Never in my entire life did I ever know, listen to, play, identify with or even like the Blues. To quote myself, “I lack the vocabulary to state this any clearer.”
Mike would have terrible memory lapses of non-musical things, like forgetting which version of the song list he gave me just days earlier. These tactics don’t work on me since I would show him the list (which proved he was wrong, which he didn’t like at all). He would develop “a headache”. We’ve all seen this before, hopefully when you were a child, I mean. Instead of knuckling down and learning the material, he began to object to me keeping the lists, or worse, saying I was getting the lists mixed up? Anyway, you get the idea.
The break occurred when he said that I was screwing up on stage, playing the wrong keys and setting the wrong drum beats. When I said I was playing the song as we had practiced, he went into that old “so you’re perfect” routine. End of band. He was suffering from stage fright. I play the correct beats, not because I’m perfect, but because I write it down ...
I feel he misrepresented himself and must have known he had neither the time nor self-discipline to meet his own commitments. It is too bad, because we did have a great sound even if he didn’t like it. All his talk of learning new songs was, in the end, just talk.
On the bright side, I came out of this phase with more good solo material spurred along by the early fact that I suspected he was not practicing. Some think that having a backup plan contributes to failure because the existence of the plan anticipates it. Such people usually lack a forward plan, also. Things had reached the point where I could move ahead faster on my own. Put me in that position and you eat my dust. I regret the situation, but wasting my time is never a good choice. See you Friday at my gig.
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