One year ago today: April 3, 2015, punks, gas cans, Coast Guard.
Five years ago today: April 3, 2011, questioning olive oil.
Nine years ago today: April 3, 2007, a generic day.
Random years ago today: April 3, 2008, Wally’s Folly, by satellite.
MORNING
Spending the day at home means you get lots of editorial. I consider a day a loss if I don’t get out and learn something, so maybe later I’ll dip over to the coffee place. Otherwise, down time for ma and lots of reading. Today, I will type for one full hour.
Where is that long-awaited new system that replaces the Internet? (I believe it may exist but is being suppressed.) The world needs you now. Why isn’t there anyone smart enough to see the stop-at-nothing demand for privacy on-line? If I knew how to write the code, I would do it and be rich and famous by this time next year. And if McD’s really paid $15 per hour, hell, I might show up. There are 30 million students in American colleges who would consider it lucky to get that kind of a job. It always was difficult for me to imagine the mentality of drop-outs and laborers demanding high wages, even when I began to criticize it in my early twenties.
Kiosks. I first heard that word at the age of 18, in college. That was the little store that sold prophylactics after hours. I was a regular, while most college boys bought chips and dip. It’s a European word resurrected for the “robot cashiers”, which vendors like to call them, but they also replace jobs that involve just taking your order. Good, you don’t have to tip a robot. These machines are already installed and tested in Europe, which has always had some pretty outlandish job benefit laws. Didn’t I read in Italy, the employer has to pay 55% more than the employees wage in job benefits?
Thus, these are a tested technology about to be implemented nationwide. Hey, I don’t much go to McDonald’s, so if you are rolling your eyes, it is at your own poor life decisions. These businesses retain a few human servers along with the kiosks to give customers “a choice”. But read my lips, Trevor and Aaron, the writing is on the wall. You are about to move your Liberal ideas back in with mom and dad until they kick you out on your 28th. Maybe you can get a job repairing the kiosks, at least until some robot replaces you.
Sorry, folks. No mercy. We had the same bunch of minimum wage whiners back in my day. The only difference was the numbers and the older technology. They did not grasp basic economic theory that you have to produce more than you cost. I, too, was one of those students who could not get a job in my field (computers), but dammit, I took a union job that paid $5.85 per hour back in my teens. I had to get up at five in the morning and worked 22 miles out of town, but I had a job. (Mind you, I also realized working for any wage anywhere was a dead-end proposal.)
There were lots of overpaid people in the world back then, too. Everybody from garbage collectors to civil servants were considered “on the take”. I remember at age 26 deciding that if I could not afford to become a doctor (I’d looked at dentistry), the combination for me was a union job that left me energetic enough at the end of the day to pursue getting ahead. It was a recognizably sub-optimal decision, but I was short the $70,000 required for medical school. And at that age, I’d already lost out on my generational demographic. If you did not have five years’ experience and were not in management by age 30, you could kiss the career boat goodbye.
And what about silver, the pressure cooker? The longer it stays manipulated, well, let’s just say the silver people are probably the only ones more greedy than the oil mafia and the gold hoarders. Silver is also unique in the way that everybody knows it is being held down, but so few people will accumulate any. I’m concerned about not being able to afford a house if there is another round of either inflation or bubble buying.
You can find videos predicting every event, from silver dropping to $4 again, or climbing to $6,000 per ounce once somebody succeeds in unseating the US dollar. Should anything happen to silver on the upside, I’ll have the house of my dreams. Myself, I’m noting the increasing number of reports that the next run on silver will not be industrial, but financial. That’s what I’ve been saying all along, but unfortunately, I expected something to happen in 2013. I can’t win them all, but if it hits even $100 per ounce, I won’t exactly be hurting either.
Crepuscular rays.
NOON
I was on the phone for an hour, that’s rare. It’s not right, but there are so many musicians who have completely false notions about making money in this business. Remember how the Hippie wanted to record a “demo CD” and I said just hand the club an old Beatles disc. What? Well, he wanted a studio and the whole bit to make the tunes “professional”. I held it was a fake, we had no drummer, no rhythm player, no harmonies, so if his plan was to bring people in for the recording, handing out a Beatles disc was better. At least there was a chance it would get listened to.
Here’s a link to an open letter that gets most of this right. Give him a break, he is not a musician himself, but he’s got the lerts to figure out music. He grasps the same points I’m making from his bar manager’s point of view. I’ll recap his points for those who don’t want to read the link. This is why, when I get a guitar player who will listen, I can guarantee high-paying work.
1) Play simple music that people recognize. Pssst, Glen, that’s me.
2) Make your money from the crowd, not the house.
3) Live music is a form of visual entertainment.
[Author’s note: bands that are not run like a business fold or get nowhere. That means elements such as curb appeal and showmanship take precedent over musical quality—and that flies in the face of what guitar players “know for sure”. After all, most of them did, at some single point in their careers, actually make good money one night. And each one magically believes their music can do it again, if it wasn’t for a world full of people who have no musical taste whatsoever.
Consistent good gigs and income are no accident. The only tactic I can guarantee works is to learn what the audience at a given joint does not like. Initially, anyone will listen because your sound is novel to them. It is easy to get fooled because rock and blues fans tend to be more loud-mouthed than pop and country, so watch your tip jar.
However, cutting a CD is a complete rip-off sub-industry of people trying to sell you studio time, lame recording devices, and duplication services. I know countless musicians who knocked themselves out over a demo CD and got nowhere but broke. I’m considered an outsider because I’ll play for tips only, but that’s because I know I’ll make, on average, half again as much as if I ask to get paid.]
My method is a vastly different approach from the guitar player who pre-calculates his set list to educate the audience to his best material at the end of the third set. Hell no, the crowd will come and go, very few people sit out the entire four hour gig. Guitarists have a difficult time with that, especially the ones whose performance is dependent on their mood that night. You know who you are.
So you’ll know, the drunk driving laws put an end to band followings at the local level. My set is designed to tweak the interest of anyone who catches a few notes. Then once they sit down and order, I watch like a hawk to see which tunes they pay the most attention to. And that is what I play. In a bigger room, it is majority rules. The music? Well, it quickly sifts out the overplayed standards and before long, you’ll find you play nothing but country-based items that people can toe-tap or sing along to. And you avoid slow music. Those who disagree are those who never tried it my way.
Now, I’ll make another little confession of no consequence. It’s another trick I use on stage when I get a guitarist who tries to dominate the show. This is for music theorists, mainly. I’ve pointed out how guitar players like 4ths. Because the only convenient thirds are on the B string. So when I hear a show-off leave out that 3rd, I’ll sometimes throw in a flatted 3rd. You might recognize this as a minor chord, but I bend it slightly toward the 4th. It creates a dissonance in the guitarist’s ear but is a crowd grabber.
This sound is actually the most common “twang” you hear on a steel guitar, so it must be used sparingly on the bass. There is another catch, and it’s an important one. Since the note is technically wrong (on the bass), you must have supreme confidence on the instrument to play it just right. Ha, I can’t tell you how many times a guitarist has told me, after a standing ovation, that I played it “wrong”. I just nod and promise to do better “next time”.
AFTERNOON
To drive the above music point home, here’s a link to exactly the WRONG way to promote your band. Those tactics are a waste of your time and assure your group will stay small and local. Almost everything in this “wiki advice” is the opposite of reality. I cannot believe that article was written by anybody with any real live music experience. Let me refute the major points of that insane post.
A) Music quality is important, but there is no need to be the best. If you think your music is the best, try booking yourself across from my gig and we shall see.
B) Believe me, don’t change band members unless the guy is obnoxious. That writer makes it sound like it is easy to find replacements. Try it.
C) Embrace change? All musicians only think they do, few actually manage it.
D) Don’t take your squeeze to the gig. Okay, he’s got a point. But my modus operandi is to date a gal who plays in the band or pick up a new one from the crowd as the situation merits.
E) Establish a “look”. Ha, then you are stuck with it. I say unless you are a singularly characterless weakling, no names mentioned Kim, just be yourself.
F) Booking agents are the cockroach parasites of the live music industry. Then again, letting one of the band members handle your affairs is usually even worse. Do it yourself.
G) Flyers, youTube, social media, t-shirts, CDs? All group-think crap. The only thing that gets gigs is gigging. Play for free to get started if you have to. It is the ONLY thing that will get you hired in most venues by this weekend. Jump on gig cancellations, if only by reminding the bartender he can call you at the last minute—and be ready to either play or say no on that little notice. (That was the original reason I rarely went out Fridays.)
Moving from music in general to bass playing, here is a video of everything that is wrong with bass playing. As the comment says, “a bass being raped by a fat man with too much makeup”. Yet, I say this represents the ultimate outcome of anybody who takes “bass lessons” from a guitar player. Or, if he uses a limp wrist instead of a pick, from Guitar Center.
And if you’ve read this far, good for you. A musical quirk. I watched a number of videos of Putin and son-of-a-gun, he’s got the same thing I do, except on his right side. I backed up the videos and sure enough. I’ve sort of kept it as much a secret as I can because anyone who knows what to look for can easily spot you in a moving crowd. I wonder? But we will never know for sure unless he tries to play bass. Hint only. Watch his right wrist when he is walking.
NIGHT
Okay, you talked me into it. I’ll return to Panera and use a kiosk—if there is a cash pay option. I viewed a few youTubes that didn’t capture the experience. I see a defect in the process already with the kiosks that don’t take cash. That means you may gain no time at all if you have to stand behind your average Florida gimptard and wait for the oaf to pull out his wallet and pay. Stupid people take twice as long to pay a $10 tab as a $5 tab. And Florida is chock full with more pouring in every day.
Kiosks appear to accept a credit card or equivalent smart phone app. I’d go for a cash card, but not a credit or debit card. Folks, you should not be letting anybody scrutinize your money-spending habits. Trust me, they have no intention of “serving you better”. They are devising ways to squeeze you for the last billionth of a penny. It’s the new Millennial marketing. It is now mass con jobs for fractions of cents per mark. It’s the last resort of the desperate, who no longer possess the brains to actually invent anything new.
As far as that goes, there have been no breakthroughs in America for decades. Everything “new” is either just something old now in plastic, or like nanotechnology, mostly talk. But no alpha events, no discoveries of new and untapped sources of energy, or of anything really.
Did you know college costs an average of $24k per year? The economy simply does not have enough high-paying jobs to pay back the trillions that will be borrowed. Or the news this morning that two people were killed in a train wreck. Way to go, USA Today. Nobody on the Amtrak was killed. But face it, when your target audience is Millennials, that sells more than two die in backhoe crash.
ADDENDUM
What’s this, an over-weekend plunge of house prices in the interior. It’s averaging $4,100 each, but don’t get your hopes up. That just brings it back to late last year’s prices. And it is only the low end properties again, the ones I described as junk for sale. Most affected are the least sought-after. Bad neighbors, major repairs, or high crime. Still, I’m watching the situation.
Plus, the database reveals a few places returning to market at lower prices. What would you make of a place that sold last month for $31,000 listed this month at $27,500? Somebody got taken by surprise. Or the place that has been on Trulia for 2,848 days? I may revise the database to keep track of more detail. What a pity Deland was completely taken over by some monstrously wealthy outfit last June, but they got taken a bit.
They bought in bad areas and are trying to flip. Won’t work, as they plug the same ads every day. Area “in transition” and “ready to explode”. Ha, like we don’t know what that means. Or how about “blank canvas” or “near Stetson”, or “start from scratch”, or “good rental market”. Yeah, if that area doesn’t explode, it will get burnt down next riot season.
Last Laugh
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