Earlier in the week I had found a small bass drum. I quickly modified it and I’ve been practicing playing all three instruments at once: bass, lo-hat and drum. It doesn’t sound bad but I’ll have to mic the bass drum. It is small, a child’s drum, around the size of a tom-tom. The major change is that I have to be sitting down to play this combination. Those drum lessons I took from Bert Gunther have paid off many times over.
You can see the small scale of the drum by the sunglasses near the pedal. That is Pudding-Tat’s old TV blanket inside. The design makes it impossible to remove the front skin but the sound is still pretty incredible for the setup. The trap (drum pedal) is flimsy but works fine. This increases my tail-to-teeth ratio by making practice even more complicated. Further, there is no room to practice at the new place.I missed my own gig tonight. Medical reasons. After a blood test, the doctor called me in to discuss the results. In street talk, that means he charged me $65 to tell me what I already know. (High blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides and go see a heart specialist, which his clerk could have told me on the phone.) He also said my condition was beyond his experience. (My system seems to be manufacturing its own triglycerides.)
However, no prescriptions to tackle the numbness in my left hand which prevents me from playing more than a few moments at a time. I know—of all the things that could go wrong, my bass-playing hand. It is one of those anti-karma things, you see. A good thing gets rewarded by bad at the very moment I can begin to use it.
[Author's note 2021: excuse my bad choice of words. I never miss my own gigs, I means I did not show up for a jam or something. Also, while I found working with a drum interesting for practice and some recording, it is impractical for much else. I even rejected it as a comedy routine. It did make for a quick recording session if you just want a basic drum-bass track.]
To make things easier on my system (sales can be stressful, as in, if people had brains, there would be no need for salesmen), I will look for “dumb” work. The idea is to qualify for more work quarters. (In the end, I hired a lawyer and had enough credits already.) It seems I have a few years less work history than is permitted to become disabled in this country. I mean, as a single, white male, I mean. Otherwise you would not believe how many athletic programs and prime parking spots the disabled have.
Jose, the neighbor, and I were chatting today. He was mentioning that there is lots of work in Mexico and Peru. Construction work, which he does. If he had not spent so much of his life trying to become American, he says he would consider going back. Things are admittedly bad here, but I never thought I’d hear somebody say that.
There is a house in Hollywood he’s been looking at, and he asked me to help him find out the price. I wasn’t sure what he meant until I called the seller. What a two-bit slimy stinking con artist. I could not get a straight answer out of him. Every 1970’s worn out sales line in the book, but no price. All I got for several minutes was, “It depends”, “How much is it worth to you” and “How good is your credit”. (When I informed him my credit was none of his business, he got something up his behind. How did he know if he was wasting his time; I told him that is the way I thought from the minute he started talking.)
I finally hit him with his own game, insinuating if he was too stupid to know the price, we might get his kid sister on the line. Then he said, “Two hundred thousand”. No bloody likely. I should follow up and see who he is and expose the bastard. If you want to be an expert in evasive answers, use the Internet, not the telephone.
