We all have those days we could do without. I’ll trade anyone as long as it is just today. The blunt news is that I got wiped out at my gig. Three people in the room, all running bar tabs (no tips). This, on my second anniversary as a soloist. At least that means I lasted 1 year and 46 weeks longer than expected, and considerably longer than my erstwhile competition.[Author's note: the following is describing how I self-canceled my music show after 104 consecutive weeks. The pub is ceasing to draw a weekend crowd and will not advertise or allow others to advertise. But 104 weeks, that's a record in this town, you know. For a bass solo act, anyway. I did not know that bingo was about to take over as the primary show of the week. Folks, there is money to be made in gambling. Provided you are not in the audience.]
[Author's note 2021: The original of this post is inaccurate in making sound like I gave up the show. What actually happened was the following week I went in to get some gear off stage and wound up with a different show for the next four years (approx.) And it was a full 4-hour entertainment gig, just not focused on me playing music. But music was very much a part of the show. I was getting twice as much stage time, for which there is no substitute.]
I’ve decided to stop playing the same room for a period long enough to make my standard material fresh again, and to use the interval to practice up an entire new act. I am no longer afraid of singing. That does not mean I can make up for all the lost years. Jackie and I had time for a talk, he is not as optimistic as before. His prognosis is that he won’t last six months after his disability claim is approved.
That I can identify with. When you have a medical condition, everybody knows somebody else worse off. If you said you had five minutes to live, they’d say the other guy had four minutes and wasn’t complaining. These are not the hard-nosed bureaucrats who are even worse. Who does he have to chat with? The waitresses become utterly beyond unsympathetic after the first shift in that part of town.
We have contact with Wilmieville, North Carolina. Theresa reports the situation is not ideal so I hope the weather is nice. Fred gave me a copy of Filemaker, a relational database that will likely replace File Express (FE), which I first used back in the Stone Age. FE is DOS based and I was unaware that most contemporary printers require special drivers. If I recall, all printers used to have a default “Epsom compatible” setting that would always work in a pinch.
Of course, I’ll give you a full report on the software. (Since I was not using it a month later, it sucked.)
