MORNING
See the picture below? I’ve never been to this place, but be darned if I’m letting November go by without seeing something new and different. This is the interior of an old church. Keep reading and I’ll go over it a bit. At this point I’m considering a trip there for myself.
Mind you, no more critical than those who find it odd I would stop at a library while on holidays. First thing I notice is four churches are ranked higher than the library, though one suspects the Jesus freaks are behind that. That excellent water trolley tour Wallace and I took is listed below the Afro-American Cultural Center, which is a complete load of crock as other sources list it as the top local tour.
So, what is there to do in Ft. Lauderdale other than drink and eat? There’s that Packard museum near the hospital. Or the Cinema Paradiso, a theater renovated out of an old church. I keep thinking of such places as showing porno-flicks but this one has a reputation for ordinary foreign films. One of the supreme obstacles to attendance is it is very difficult to find out in advance how much tickets cost. But I have reason to believe it is around $9.
It’s still too early, so I perused the Craigslist musicians list. What a joke, but I kept reading. What exactly is a “session” bass player? Am I one of those without knowing? I play a lot of sessions. There, done reading Craigslist. Nothing changed there in the last ten years. There is a tiny core of around 35 bands who work steady and have all local clubs that pay sewn up between them. These bands have established circuits, long term members, and all know each other. There are around ten times that number of wannabe musicians. Like me. Well, except that there are lots of times I actually do make it to the stage, guys.
NOON
Did you like the plush blue velvet seats in the old theater? They may be gone, I drove over there to find the place is sold and now just a regular theater. The foreign film aspect is gone, it is now “Mulano’s” which also explains why I could not find any movie listings. Parking is always a huge problem in that part of town so I did not even stop. Typical, as soon as I have the time and resources to seek these places out, they close.
So the Packard car museum it was, and if you look closely, this is the Packard car that wasn’t. It is converted into a pickup truck. Packard never made a pickup, although they made work trucks, army trucks, and paddy wagons. All of which I saw.
Sofa? Yes, it is real furniture inside. The driver’s seat is usual, but the interior of the Packard before 1931 is nearly unbelievable. The riding coach ancestry is all over the design and the size of these cars was awesome. I have never seen such vehicles before except in the movies. When I grew up even the town mayor would not be seen riding in a pre-war car. Correction, I’ve seen Model T’s and such, but those are little toys compared to the Packards. These luxury sedans stood eleven feet tall and the running boards were required to enter or exit.
They have one of the frames in the corner so you can see the massive scale of things. That’s when they knew how to build a car, American style. Trivia: there have been approximately 2,600 auto manufacturers in the USA since it was invented. The six or eight that survive now survived by building the cheapest, most disposable vehicles they dared. Chevs and Fords, even the luxury models, pale next to these classics.
There is a huge display of cigarette lighters, actually the handles that range from ivory to plastic advertising slogans. Time permitting, I’ve cover some in the near future. New to me was the golf club compartment, standard on pre-1920(?) models and a fuel pump vacuum. The driver pulled the pump handle forty times to start the car. Thereafter, the motor supplied the vacuum. Another wall panel is covered with the chrome door latches from back when they made them right.
One last thing about that Packard frame. They have a small section at the back of the museum where it is set like it was in a garage. You know, just the motor and transmission, though the sign says everything is in 100% running condition. The frame is hard to believe, I mean that, unless you see it. It is probably five or eight times as strong as necessary. It looks far sturdier than modern day truck frames I’ve seen in the wrecking yard.
NIGHT
Hang on, we are still rehearsing. And it is all coming back to me the tribulations of learning to play bass the way I do. One clear concept here is that I do not play bass like most others. There is no hint of guitar nonsense in any aspect of my show. There have been traces, but I stomp them out as fast as they get detected. Drop back here later and I'll tear another strip off guitar players.
Here we go:
Guitaritis is a mental disease that strikes huge proportions of North American males who play guitar. I’ve been seeking an uninfected specimen for seven years. The few that don’t have overt symptoms always turn out to be carriers. I know that I’ve regularly described indicators, like inability to learn new music and the like, but the bottom line is all (no real exceptions so far) guitar players have a hugely distorted perception of self-importance.
They universally feel that bands center on the guitarist, with one possible exception. A guitarist will allow a vocalist to take top billing. But certainly not a lowly bassist. There is a pecking order ingrained into all guitar players whether they consciously know it or not. From lowest to highest status are drummer, then bass, then keyboards, then horns, then guitar, then vocals. So just you get the hell out of the way of any guitarist who can sing. Like now.
And this is the real barricade I have run into with my duos. No matter how mellow the guitarist initially seems to behave, once they learn they are not the star, they go sour. It’s not as bad now as back when I didn’t sing, but now I get the Florida double-whammy. Since the way I do things worked right for years back home, it seems strange the world could change by crossing the Mississippi. But out here, no guitar player will accept a subordinate role.
This would be tolerable if my goal was to be a star, but it is not. My goal has always been to entertain by putting on the best show that I can. But that does not involve any images of myself wailing away under the spotlight. When I imagine a band, I see two guys in a small venue ensuring the audience is having a good time. But the average guitarist, holy mackerel! His self-image is mega-god with a stomp box. His reality, I’ve found, is he is an overweight middle age troll who posts his pictures from 1997, still gets an allowance from mom, and lives alone. And maybe eats kittens.
I know what some of you are thinking. I should tone it down. But that means you have not been paying attention. I tried that many a time. No rational amount of congeniality is going to disguise from the guitar player that he is not number one while on stage with any singing bassist. It can’t be done, these guys are azzholes but they ain't blind and deaf. You tell me how it can and then I’ll take your advice seriously. I’ve tried all kinds of things, but it gets down to physics. Two objects cannot occupy the same space.
I also have concrete experience on my side. The most common symptom of guitaritis I encounter is the can’t/won’t learn new music because he already knows all the good songs and if you had any brains you’d already know that and you’d learn the bass parts and hurry it up because he hasn’t got all day to wait for you to catch up to his superior level and don’t go thinking because it is your band and you are the singer that makes you any better than a bass player which means all the music you like just sucks. Now shut up and play “Hotel California” again.
ADDENDUM
Australian desert documentaries. That’s what I got around to this morning. You see, I like a learning atmosphere. Well, that, and I’ve got a big fat cold sore on my lip. Is it true those who get cold sores are more resistant to the flu? Or, as they said in “Dumb & Dumber To”, is that just a suburban legend? Anyway, I see Australia is reverting to calling things by their aboriginal names.
Fine, if you know the lingo. The justification for this is always that the natives had great religious significance to natural wonders. It’s not like they had a bustling tourist trade to consider. Ayer’s Rock is now Uluru and the weathering spalls were now caused by gigantic spear tips. And every other feature no doubt was caused by something else already present in that primitive culture.
I learned something about those aboriginal sand and rock paintings. The natives are reputed to have seen the moon landings in their dreams. Hmmm, if you notice the paintings with curving lines, they are said to represent watercourses in the desert as viewed from great heights. While one supposes such perspectives could be the result of very keen imagination, I still find that remarkable. It is not enough for one artist to paint the picture, if it is some kind of map, others must be able to read it.
What I’m saying is I find something very coincidental how the ancient people’s (Australia, Egypt, Turkey) seem to have these perspectives from high in the sky, yet they can’t draw a picture of what is just over the horizon. What is the connection?
Today’s Togla Treat
The Famous FreakyMap
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