Progress, or is it? Maybe I should take a journalism course to be able to create drama where there isn’t any. It works for P.J. O’Rourke and Dave Barry. The new drum box is here and Dave-O arrived on schedule this morning. We got in a solid two hours, during which he admitted he has only been on stage one hour in his life, but he did work for a lot of the big tour groups. Meaning he has a good idea of what is involved.
He’s a talker, like I’m a writer. It was a clumsy run through of three chord specials, what struck me is how he did not know even one of these classics. Jambalaya, Act Naturally, and so on. These are not just popular hits, these are all time classics covered by hundreds of other musicians, and he cannot hum even a few bars. I can work with that, and he at least is focused in the right direction. The way I knew I could convert any guitarist who cared to listen. At least with Dave-O, we’ve gotten that far.
Actually, we got even further. He was understandably unsure of the concept. Then, we played “Last Train To Clarkesville”, music totally produced by studio layering. He said afterward if we can pull that off, we can do anything. Probably. This is an area of music that gets a lot of lip service but has few active participants, the idea that music and showmanship are equal partners. And no, that little Chuck Berry skip-dance for five seconds middle of the third set doesn’t count.
He’s woefully behind in practical techniques. He bought a book with 2,000 guitar chords. That’s 1,988 more than we will use. But it is the kind of book beginners would buy, a beginner who believes you need to know all those chords to perform. That’s what I thought when I was 12 and just beginning to figure out how bands worked. Sigh, what I might have done if I’d met even one good example during my entire youth. Just one.
His ‘caster is still in the shop. Today was a little disheartening but that is not the whole metric because I’m showing him broad techniques rather than individual melodies. Remember the guitar class last year, and that took only ten weeks of Saturday lessons. Once he catches on to the rhythm queues and picks up on what my bass runs mean, he’ll be learning five songs a day. He need only stick it out for a few more weeks to be a stage idol.
[Author's note 2015-07-16: just so you know the outcome of this in some detail, he was picking up the guitar rapidly enough, but social factors crept into play. For example, he kept calling me from the local jail. Nope, I don't need that. He eventually disappeared, like the Hippie. Folks, do not call me from a jail or a courthouse, or any place where they investigate and record all phone numbers. It isn't fair to innocent people.]
One other thing naturally gets talked about when the boys get together: women. He likes the same qualities I do, and is frank about his motives. There are two types of men who go for younger women. The desperate married cheaters who think they are missing out on all the good times just because they really are. And musicians, where a steady supply of girlfriends is part of the motive since day one. It is one of the traditional rewards and music would suffer harshly if that ever changes.
For the record, the musician’s cut-off dating age for women is 27. I did not make it so, that’s just the way it is. I know 65 year old musicians who will not date women over 27, but I’ve also met a lot of losers, pardon me, exceptions. Dave-O will be competition for the same women if I don’t watch out. That won’t really bother me, since anyone who can take a woman away from me probably deserves her.
It would be different, of course, if the world was full of pleasant, undemanding, self-supporting, older women who understand romance, live in Disneyland and who just want to be good companions. I believe I’ve only met three women like that in my entire life, and naturally, they were long since taken (Sandra H., Cheryl H., and Robyn S., sorry to all the rest who did not make that grade, it was fun, though). But the way it is, you might as well pick the pretty ones. In the Silicon-Botox Metro Zoo, that means okay when caught young and trained. Dating old women is like finishing playing somebody else's saved game.
I worked with the Zoom drum box. It is full of quirks, like losing memory settings when the battery needs changing. It is what I have to work with for now and it will do. One thing hard to do in this town is buy good, fresh batteries. There is no reputable place that only sells the good ones. This is Florida, for nearly dead batteries, they don’t throw them out, they put them on sale.
I’m attempting to read “Laws of Our Fathers”, a book I am finding too cheesy even for bathroom material. This is shaping to be the third book in my life I may start and never complete. Or is it the fourth, I can’t recall. Happens to those who’ve read 5,000+ books, you know. (In the end, I not only didn't read it, I threw it out.)
My major objection to contemporary tales is when reality is portrayed as an ideal, and that is so wrong. I don’t want my heroes pining over lost lovers and entanglements. I want my heroes to be heroes, only flawed at the intellectual level. I want my ladies unencumbered, not neurotic single parents. The divorcee, no matter how rich and successful, does compete with the single babe for my daily reading hour. What is so damn hard to understand about that?
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