My new speakers already need a repair. A small wire needs resoldering. Here, take a look. These are all patched up in my Florida room. I found grill covers over at AutoZone, then I will put these puppies to work. They weigh around half as much as the Yamahas. Even so, I will be pumping bass through them. Last day on stage I noticed some musicians had trouble keeping it together without foldback monitors. I have never personally required any.
Another perfect Florida day. Except for the traffic, I mean. I went for a two-hour bike ride in the sunshine.. This may sound less than exciting but I’ll compare it to 99% of the planet. I’d actually started out to buy cat food for the Princess and wound up over at the Panera chatting up these two Jewish ladies. They watched me solve a Sudoku puzzle and thought I was doing my math homework. (Boy, do Florida women ever go strange after around 35.) That is the one thing I miss about the phone company. You could, once in a while, meet older women who weren’t totally neurotic. Just nearly. That is not precisely the situation, for I was a single male craft worker in a clerical office of 300 women, something that most men never experience. I was doing the “same work” as the women for half again as much pay. I could point out, however, that it was never me that constantly needed their help all the friggin time.
Later. I fooled around with the speakers until I broke them. I mean, I got them not to work, they are physically intact. My guess is old computer parts don’t necessarily replace road gear. Either way, I am sure going to miss this place. I spent hour tinkering around and am now building a computer out of spare parts. I’ll get some new crossovers from Radio Shack next week.
There’s more on this thrilling Sunday. Pudding-Tat likes to watch TV. If you don’t want to be constantly stepping over on her, turn on the television and she goes to sleep on top of it. I found the History Channel and there is a documentary on Star Wars on its 30th anniversary. Don’t get me wrong, I like the movie and special effects, but I’m not in the fan club. I stated the reason after the first time I saw the movie, I felt I had seen each component before. Today it is common knowledge that every scene, theme and character of the movie was lifted but back then, of course, nobody believed me. Why, they had no History Channel to learn anything from, see, so itinerant movie directors had a field day.
After another two hours at the workbench, I seem to have thrown a computer of sorts together out of spare parts. It’s a piece of crap with a Dell motherboard, but it now has a Seagate 40 gig HDD, Infiniti 256K RAM and a TDK CD-Burner. It will take all night to shoe-horn the OS in there, but I think Capt. Sam is about to get himself a dandy little Internet computer that will burn MP3s. I had to use every trick in the book so he may soon have a free $600 computer. Plus, he’ll get some lessons on how to pull the whole thing together from one of the best computer teachers in the world.
Closing the books for the year, I now own $3,191 worth of musical equipment and my largest expense has been travel (gasoline). That is historically comparable. What else? Okay, the cat, who will not eat anything except cheap dry food is doing fine at a rate of $37 per year. I mean it, that cat will turn her nose up at Friskies and even raw fish in favor of “Alley Cat” pellets. What do they put in there, anyway, that cats eat it up?
It didn’t take long for the phone calls to start about another jam. My decision is no. I spent a couple of hours helping out (beyond moving my equipment) and then the sponsors didn’t show? That was doubleplusungood. Another jam would need some guarantees and that is not likely to happen in Florida. Musically, there was not a good West coast grade rhythm guitarist in the lot. This smacks of Van Halen; that the band is just there to back up the lead player. Many of them did not know what key they were playing in, and kept hollaring, “Follow me.” Must be some strange Florida mind-game. What do they put in there, anyway, that guitarists eat it up?
[Author’s note: The above was confirmed when I showed the guitarists my (now 100+) list. The guitarists recognized every tune but none could play them, that is, batting zero. (Of the lot, only the mystery guy spotted “these songs got no lead breaks”.) The number of failed guitar players in Florida is constant. These people, like the Hippie, will never get anywhere as long as they consider themselves leaders when, in fact, they are the worst of followers. For this, they blame others, always. How will you go down in history?]
[Author’s note 2016: I wrote the above when I was still pissed off at the Hippie. Why do I keep giving that guy chance after chance? He has never learned even on of my songs the way I asked him to. Anyway, it's all show biz.]
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