One year ago today: April 30, 2014, somewhat political.
Five years ago today: April 30, 2009, Beer? What's that?
Here is a montage of the bicycle conversion process from y’day. The newest items we produce use the new brushless hub motors. This is a better design than the side-mounted motor of the original e-bike, but makes the bicycle more difficult to repair. It also swaps out a major component of the bike, which might put some people off. With experience and the right tools, it takes less than 40 minutes to convert a bicycle to electric, and better yet, we can customize it down to the size of the spokes. I’m thinking.
Here’s the deal. Sometimes I put the bingo money aside because the bakery needs the change on Tuesdays. And sometimes I forget the bingo money until the next time I look. Which was this morning. Lucky me and I had the theater to myself. If this had been Miami, somebody would have come in and sat right in front of me. Here’s my review.
“The Railway Man” is that Euro-Australian format where all gory scenes are left to the imagination. The movie has no action and no heroics but that could be intentional. The acting is “within budget” and I didn’t get the significance of some opening scenes. In general, the movie was a little intense for the mornings so forgive if next time I choose a comedy. Also, AMC has never learned that business is probably better if the trailers match the movie, you know, if it is a detective movie, advertise other detective movies. This Film Board of Canada rubbish is hard to sit through.
So, I get a reply concerning the incident with the eye doctor who insisted he would not renew my eyeglass prescription without charging for another eye exam. I refused because the co-pay was a lot of money. Turns out I’m right. Eyeglass prescriptions are good for five years and the prescription belongs to the patient, not the doctor. All I needed was a duplicate, not a new prescription, for which the standard fee is $15. Welcome to Florida, land of the Medicare scam. I get this sneaking suspicion the Dania Eye Clinic is going to be sorry they ever tried to shaft me.
And while I’m in the mood for griping, I think all on-line universities, diploma mills or not, should be required to fail 50% of their students unless they write US Dept. of Education exams. Face it, the caliber of all on-line grads is appalling. Trivia, one of the top indicators of quality is the number of students who successfully repay their student loans on time. It means they are getting the jobs.
Note that while my old college does offer on-line degrees (over which I withdrew my membership in protest), I point out that all credits on my transcripts are from attended lectures and proctored exams. I have taken a few on-line courses and they are some kind of bad joke. Come to think of it, my motorcycle license exam was multiple-choice, one answer said to drive with my headlight on bright all the time. Duh.
I do not believe in degrees offered for “life skills”, which includes honorary doctorates to political figures. However, there is a field in which such skills dominate: Music. I’ve mentioned stage time before, but I’ve never put any numbers to it. I expect a lot of people to disagree with me, but I believe that it is the time you spend on stage before you are 20 that shapes the majority of your musical career. Between 20 and 32 are the consolidation years. Stage time counts, studio time does not. In my teens, I spent around 420 - 516 hours on stage, which does not seem much until you realize that is six times as much as anyone in my town.
After age 32 you begin a long, slow but steady decline. If you have not matured and succeeded b then, you gradually lose touch and get ossified, there are always exceptions. I don’t play bass any differently than I did that long ago. Attitude still counts, but not if you let it control you. For example, I dislike the blues, but I play it. I dislike country, but I play it. And I dislike old Beatles because it has become “listening” music instead of singing or dancing music. But I play it. I am currently in a band that will not play anything except what they personally like.
College was a bad time for me, musically, as I had no equipment or way to get to rehearsals. Yes, I regret the lapse. But at 32, I began playing steadily for years bringing my stage time up another 3,150 hours in a trio. My solo time adds another 2,346 hours. And now that I know that fronting the bingo act is more intense than singing, that’s 1,530 hours to date. And I’ve sung around 30 hours in my life at shows and Karaoke.
Thus, I’ve accumulated a lifetime 7,500 hours on stage. Yes, I can tell roughly how much a musician has and I know that I have more than most amateur Florida bands put together, which is fair because I rate myself an amateur. With this newest band, I’ve got 12 hours in the past year and one was a dog show. To do so required 66 hours of rehearsal time. I know this business.
The ultimate phase here is, of course, to compare my twenty tons of experience with my newest band after a year, actually a year this mid-July. I believe that except for the keyboardist, who has another band, these folks have at best maybe 800 hours combined. There is a huge gap at the meat and potatoes level. They think my “country music” is quaint and hokey, yet none of them have soloed. They still play “at” the audiences while even if I make an apparent fool of myself, every eye on the place is on me.
None of them have soloed. They play at the audience rather than “unto them” and have stiff stage personas. Think for a moment about bingo. Same audience most of the time, so you cannot get up there and front the show with memorized lyrics every week. You must work the room and keep it flowing with up-to-date material. I should count such hours two-for-one, but I don’t. Tell you what, there was a recent incident that isn’t really related but makes a point. Ready?
At the last gig, there were maybe 30 people in the audience. That’s a record for this band, but doesn’t come close to my crowds—on average. During the second set, the guitar player blew an amplifier and had to swap out with one in his truck. Now pay attention here to what happened. The keyboardist said here’s my chance. I asked what song and he said “Folsom Prison Blues”. I never thought for a second that if he intended to accompany me, that he didn’t know how to play the very song he himself suggested. He didn’t. (Worse, he could not even get the tempo or feel from context.)
Who had the guts to step up to the mic? Who filled the gap? It was not me who could not play the song and yes, the audience saw that. Further the audience was not watching the band except when I sang. They were watching the TVs above the band’s heads, shown here on the empty stage. Importantly, even when I “flopped”, every eye in the place was focused on me start to finish. Ignore that fact and you are missing a golden opportunity. This band plays great, but it is the wrong music for the wrong market. So there, and I have no intention of quitting, if they fire me they will never get a decent replacement. Why? I'm not the best musician, but I'm one of the fastest-adapting.
Here are some videos
Robot Mule.
Australia, my eye, though this does look a lot like the neighborhood I grew up in. Maybe not the scene of the man swigging milk, then smoking a pipe. Did you see the steak at 39 cents a pound? Some say this video is idealized, others say it is the future the Liberal left gave away with their bleeding hearts and entitlements. It’s got so bad, people can’t say anything in private any more without some self-righteous ass-clowns taking away their sports franchise.
