What’s in it for 2014? I can tell you what I hope, since my guess is just as good as those self-styled experts. (If all the economists in the world were laid end-to-end, they would not reach a conclusion.) I want food prices to double again, as in the past two years. I want another housing bubble since the Feds slowed down propping up the business sector. I’d like the stock market to wipe out several hundred billion in artificial wealth. Let house prices totally tank and let those who borrowed educate themselves on some of the woes they’ve inflicted on others. This is the fourth year the Feds have been pumping easy money into the system, and they are running out every few months now.
If you want gloom, how about that Fed proposal to have a license plate tracking database? Actually, I thought they already had one, considering the number of times I was photographed (about 32 times that I know of) on my recent trip out west. The claim is that it will be easier to track terrorists, an argument that has grown thin, and to track illegal immigrants. That is not the nature of this beast. It is not like they have a list of suspected plates and are watching for them. They intend to track everybody for life. In a free society, the innocent are supposed to be free from recorded surveillance of their day-to-day activities. It is a basic principle of being free.
The principle, in case anyone out there missed it, is that you should be free to live your life without some stranger monitoring your movements. Why? Because it always leads to a bureaucrat sooner or later cooking up theories and making laws to take advantage or enforce behavioral standards on you and your family. How long after the traffic patterns are analyzed do you think it will take before new taxes arise over it? The authorities have done this without fail throughout all of recorded history, including the killing of the first-born. How do you suppose the Pharaoh even knew who had a first-born? Could it be the people who told him thought they had nothing to hide?
But don’t worry. Nothing like that could ever happen in America. They would never allow someone to kill our sons, say by creating a draft and marching them off to undeclared foreign wars. Why that kind of killing is totally different, at least to some, and as long as it only happens to somebody else’s son. And besides, if you are rich, your son is an officer, like. So there is no cause for alarm. I mean, you wouldn’t drive your car anywhere illegal, would you? And it’s not like your elected representatives are going to one day, when it suits them, make it illegal. Or anything like that. Look left and cough.
Here’s the contradictions. If the beat is as simple as you say [it is], why [the hell] can’t you play it [to perfection]? Don’t claim being busy, as I asked before we started if you had the 40 hours needed to devote to this project. No, we are not going to just get out there and play it because I know that can’t be done right with arranged material. Why arranged? Because we agreed in advance we would do it that way and you are being paid to do it that way, for starters.
Again, not just with Billie-Bill, but the conversation goes over all the hogwash you get from every guitar player who didn’t learn the material. He can make such and such money elsewhere, he once made $X hundred dollars long ago, he could be playing in X number of bands right now, I must think I’m perfect, he knows all about playing bass but would not care to demonstrate that at this time, and the big one, if I change the bass parts, he should be able to change the guitar parts, right? Wrong. They can only be changed conditionally--and those conditions were spelled out BEFORE we started.
This is the schwerpunkt, the crucial point where bands break up. Here is the major, unassailable difference about “changing” the bass parts. BEFORE you make the changes, can you play it like the original first. No changes until I hear the original. What? You say it can’t be done? Oh, really (but when I do it you say something stupid lie “bass is easy”). The point is, you can make any changes you want as long as all the original rhythm guitar parts are there in their entirety, which is what you are being paid for.
I know, it gets confrontational at this stage, but it would not be that way if the guitar player would STFU, learn his part and quit with the arguing. Now you see why I want to hear the original. It is the only absolute proof he has done his homework. The arguments, which ever direction they take later, ALWAYS BEGIN as the result of a guitarists trying to obscure that he didn’t do his homework.
This is a tough decision for me, because I know Billie-Bill is a talented player. He has unusual difficultly hearing the “beat” of each song. I can hear it instantly but, alas, can’t play it on guitar. We have reached the stage where he is growing weary of practicing the same things over and over because he is not getting it. Predictably, he wants now to just get out there and play and he’ll show me how good he is. Yeah, that is the exact situation we originally set out to avoid. The wailing demi-god guitarist playing his own made up versions on stage with the other band members reduced to flunkies backing him up.
Full f*****g circle.
ADDENDUM
Now changing the subject to a completely different band. The big band, the one where I sat down in the past seven months and learned 68 new songs. From scratch. At home here, on my own time. Found the right versions, downloaded them, converted to MP3s, and meticulously learned the bass lines note for note. That, guitar players of the world, is how it is done. I did not learn twelve of my favorites and spend the next twenty years trying to bully the other musicians into “following” me. When I show up for rehearsal, I am ready to arrange the song for presentation. Not try to memorize the chords while the rest of the band waits up.
The big band, well, I should admit I have not yet ever seen them learn a new tune either. Let me reflect. Nope. Never seen that. Maybe I should think again. I mean, it would bore the daylights out of someone to listen to me learn new music. Hmmm. Nope, every song we’ve ever played, it seems they already knew the piece. They start strumming and say, “Do you know this song?” Thus, they learned previously. Next, by formula, they talk nonsense, “It is just A, D, and E.”
The five-piece band has released a new demo, giving a half-minute clip of twenty or so tunes. An intense listen through the Sony battery-powered headphones tells me that none of those recordings have me on the bass. It is muffled but still, I have not played that kind of bass since I was maybe fifteen years old. So if you stumble across this CD, that isn’t me. Sorry, blog rules say no link here. But allow me to elaborate. What gives me the right to judge?
That’s easy, I was one of the first electric bass players in the world, the instrument was invented in my lifetime. I’ve been playing it successfully in bands over a 45 year period, despite never having had a single lesson. I said playing, not recording, get that straight, Jim. That means I must necessarily be better than the academy trained types, or they’d have the job and not me. And if you are not sure what I just said, read it again. I don’t have time for pissy arguments. I’ve often gone up against the so-called best and been hired on the spot. These are tough qualifications I’m citing here. Please don’t bore me with stats, I am not a recording artist and I don’t care who is.
