It took me long enough but the scooter now has a reliable tail light. The plastic flange broke replacing the first burnt out bulb, now it rattles slightly and eats more bulbs. You are looking for the LED red (550nm) light at the bottom, it stays lit all the time the ignition is on, as the old one used to fool me. The fine for no light is $273.00, so it was worth it, plus I installed a small harness to accommodate a license plate light and side markers instead of reflectors.
Don’t let anybody who did too much acid in the 60s read the following. It still gets dark early, so at 6:15 PM I reached up to turn on the overhead in the Florida room. Just as I pulled the chain, a police car on the street hit his siren and at the same instant, all the street lights in the neighborhood came on. It was like my pull-chain lit up the streets and set off the siren. As they used to say, “Freaky”.I’m placing a large order with California tomorrow, supplies to last a year, but only at the rate things are going. Music is already taking a bigger chunk, which I totally do not mind. Trent, the new guy, showed up in a Prius, the hybrid electric car. Chevy is recalling their electric car, the Volt, after tests showed the thing likes to catch fire when broadsided. More technically, the lithium battery is surrounded by a coolant that leaked and that’s what burns.
I’ve never been in a Prius. Anyway, with Trent getting the guitar parts underway, I can ease up on my own strumming lessons. But don’t worry, going solo is still very much my backup plan. What happened was I reached a plateau where some of the music I strummed was not of very good quality, I’m just not advanced enough yet. But switching back to bass brings all the tunes up to speed. Eddie says my bass style of doing fills is called stacking. I disagree.
Stacking is a recording technique used a lot in studio vocals, but otherwise I don’t know much about it. What I’m doing is something different that involves playing the melody or fill of some other instrument where that action does not detract from the bass line of the original. As an example, I end “These Boots” by playing the saxophone and horn notes on the bass. In “Long-Haired Country Boy”, I play a harmonic bend that emulates the steel guitar. So Eddie, it’s not stacking. It’s talent.
Because these are often passing notes in piano style, it gives the bass line a “question-answer” effect between vocal parts. I also developed a knack for jazzing up refrains, such as in “Hey, Good Lookin’”. It gives ancient tunes a new lease. We do an entire tune already where I play the lead on the bass, “Tennessee Flat Top Box”. It works because my guitarist is willing to strum and leave it at that. Another few tunes like that, and my theory will be vindicated: get rid of your lead guitarist the instant he tries to dictate his own musical direction. A real guitarist knows his place.
Actually, Eddie and I were arguing about that. He says it is wrong, I say if it sounds good it isn’t wrong. He says I want it that way so I can be the star, I admit to purposely preventing any guitarist from dominating the sound. I would not have to do that if the local guitarists were anywhere near as good as they think they are. Eddie, and around half the 17 guitarists I’ve fired, still have the mindset that only a singer or guitarist can be headliner. I say there is no such rule and if there was, I’d break it.
Put another way, if you can tell what band is playing by listening to the guitar player, then I don’t want him on my stage. He isn’t versatile enough. This does not automatically promote me or anyone else to being the star, it merely puts a clamp on the attitude that my band is there to support the guitarist. No, the guitarist is there to support my band. I fully understand how this insults their massive egos.
This also partially explains why there are no country bands in the area. If you notice, very few country bands feature a guitarist. The star is usually some pretty boy using a guitar for a prop. Plus, with fiddlers and steel, the country spotlight is far too wide for the local heroes. The Florida guitar gods will cling with bloody fingernails to rock and blues till their dying day before they’ll share a stage. There, that’s enough music for today.
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