This is a picture of City Hall at noon. There are no more customers to be seen here than downtown. I went for a half day bike ride to keep up my spirits and wound up over in West Hollywood. The cloud cover made this another pleasant day. Just don’t count on it during the summer season.
I went to Miami to fix a network problem that turned out to be just a loose monitor cable. So now we have another fancy bottle of wine that we don’t know anything about. It says 2003 product of Hungary, a semi-sweet wine. Some relation of Wallace’s works for the liquor board, remind us to ask. Meanwhile, I told Wallace if he supplies the women, the wine is on me.Sure enough, the club [I was going to play tonight] was not ready. At the rate of progress, they may not be ready next week either. They cleaned up the stage area and there is an excellent spot near the door. I like clubs that channel the crowd right past the stage to both arrive and leave. Face it, thanks the still heavy influence of Robynette, to this day I play a lot of chick music. I don’t mean Ronstadt tunes, but music that appeals to a crowd of women, or generally more to women in the crowd. There is plenty of videos around here of me playing to rooms with just the women dancing and singing, and if I ever get round to making them into mpegs I’ll prove it. We all know who really gets the old man up dancing.
I used the spare time to begin customizing a bass line to PEF (Peaceful Easy Feeling). My approach to these sleepers is to listen for the necessary gaps every solo guitarist has to leave in these over-produced studio tunes and fill in short licks that remind the audience of the melody. There are actually two guitar breaks, the first one is a choice target to be taken over by the bass line except that is plays on the forward beat rather than the back beat. It is a hoot watching guitarists trying to play back beats.
This is the first time I’ve really listened to PEF despite years of hearing it. There are several “mistakes” in the bass line because the guitarist doesn’t keep a consistent set of chord changes. That goes to show you the exact era that spawned the arrogant guitarist. More than once I’ve had a guitarist play a minor second instead of the dominant and look at the band like we’re the ones who messed up. Nonsense, minor seconds are easy. I’m going to see if I can work in part of the riff from Faith Hill’s version of “Take Another Little Piece of My Heart”. Anything except another boring Eagles’ bass line, most of which sound like they used a guitar with the bass tone knob turned up full.
Before you knock yourself out learning a new tune, first check if there is a tablature on Chordie.com. It will save you time and grief although you should bear in mind a lot of the authors are more tone deaf than you are. Your reward for reading so deep into my blogs is a trick of the trade for those who don’t know what tabs are. They are pictorials of guitar music lines that don’t use notes, but number that indicate which frets are used. Here is a sample that is hard to read. You get the idea. No, your favorite songs are never there. There are some bass tabs, though they tend to be simplistic.We have the big screen TV set up and it is a piece of junk with great sound. Even got the after-market remote control working on the second try. There is a program on the “Kamikaze Trail”, the road along the Alaska pipeline. Back in the boom, some friends of mine from California made a fortune on the stock at a time when I didn’t have 50 cents to invest. The road has 18% grades and climbs 100 mountains, replacing the original road they bulldozed through the permafrost. Of course, I am quick to point out in old aerial photographs whenever I’m sure I can see Wallace hitchhiking. It said there is one plane in Alaska for every 60 people.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
