November 13, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: November 13, 2015, day trip to Naples.
Five years ago today: November 13, 2011, I discuss Gold Membership.
Nine years ago today: November 13, 2007, Minority Report arrests.
Random years ago today: November 13, 2012, a generic day.

MORNING
           I’m up early listening to the Mormon Tubercular Choir, wondering why these gospel radio stations have never devised a way to make the sound more true to life. They can do it with rock concerts, but a church broadcast always sounds tinny. Like the vocals are a half beat behind the tempo. The good news is, I had the Fishman Solo on overnight and it is not crackling. Did the WD-40 overhaul work? That would make my day.

           I set the exact stage arrangement up in a corner of my living room. I rehearse the presentation as well as the music. And I’ll need to pick up the guitar a lot more though I’ll never play that thing. I’m a bass man and that’s what I’ll be until they pound sand on me. I’ve notice that I naturally play each tune a little differently. I had to work on that with the bass when it came to simple root and fifth songs, so hopefully I’ve inherited that with my guitar strumming. It saves me having to customize each piece.

           [Author’s note: this picture is not me and that is not my Fishman The photo is to show how discrete the PA system is. Unless you are a musician or know what to look for, you will probably notice all this musician’s stage clutter before you can spot the PS system. It’s sitting atop the tripod.]

           Next, I hung more shelves and then mulched the yard leaves. One bag, gang, and I was tuckered out. One lousy bag and I had to lie down until noon. Well, it wasn’t that bad. I finished varnishing the sawhorses and checked the vehicle oil levels. And took some catfish out to thaw for supper, then drank a half gallon of lemonade spiked with fresh lime. And wrote this passage, downloaded pictures, and made a lite breakfast, but I mean other than that, I’m dog tired. It was not hot yet the perspiration soaked right though my cotton shirt. What Sweet Judy Blue Eyes used to call my “It’s time” glow.
           Maybe it has something to do with lingering flu symptoms. Oh yes, I’ve still got those. Sniffles, sore throat some mornings, loss of appetite. I’ve been keeping up with the vitamin C even though I know that is largely horsh. As long as that grapefruit-like tree in the back yard keeps doing it’s thing, nobody around here is getting scurvy. Is it possible to OD on vitamin C. I doubt it, the stuff is water soluble. Before I forget, I’ll mention I gave the sawhorses another coat of varnish. They are now kind of yellowy. And screws. I picked up expensive boxes of screws in Zephyrhills for pennies. Nice, chrome screws with pan heads. I like flat heads.
           So let me know if you need any vitamin C, pan-head screws, or varnish.

Picture of the day.
Philadelphia.
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NOON
           Where am I? Power naps aren’t supposed to last three hours. I got an idea. Today we stay home and putter around the house, now that we have one. Thank goodness for programs like VLC player so we don’t have to worry about digital rights when you buy a second hand DVD at the thrift. Don’t you hate that when Media Player throws a fit because you are in the wrong zone. MicroSoft has been in the wrong zone since day one.

           I made a potato-ham-cheese casserole and set to tidying the place up while watching old comedies. I’ve never seen “What About Bob”, the 1977 comedy where the patient drives the analyst bonkers. Or “Weekend At Bernies”, 1989, about two guys whose host is dead. I watched it mainly for the beautiful babes. In 1989, it was still okay to make movies with slim young bikini-clad blondes. Not one woman offensive to the eye in the entire movie. Nary a one. All those women with poodle cuts, especially Catherine Mary Stewart, who can’t act, but who cares?

           [Author’s note: Catherine Mary Stewart is a rare bird, an educated actress. She’s the babe that contributed a lot to the myth that Canadian girls are cuties. From Edmonton, Alberta, she is still a hottie today, but being educated, she cleared the fuck out of Canada the instant she could.]

           Otherwise, it was a Rice-A-Roni day as I cut small lumber and hunted down things packed where I’d forgotten. The pace was right, since this week I turned officially old. I’m as old as my ex-wife’s parents when her and I met. They increased my respect for old people a thousand percent. I was not used to parents who did their best. Their attitude was I was the big world traveler who seduced their daughter, but in fact, I was the farm boy and it was the other way around. But, that was 30 years ago now. And this is what I get for tasting the forbidden fruit. The aging playboy lifestyle.
           There’s one point I’m proud of about it all. When I say playboy, don’t confuse me with the strip club crowd. I never had to get a yacht or a Rolex, I never had to pay hired help, or move up the corporate ladder to get laid. While I have no doubt some of the women I’ve been with eventually moved on into that sordid crowd, I got them long before the rot set in. I’ve never had to sniff powder or even get a gal drunk. I have a basic contempt for men who go that route. I’ve never seen a gal wearing leather underwear and quite frankly, have no desire to.

           I’ve never bought a Playboy magazine, but I’ve read them. Most of the women I’ve known didn’t need any help from an airbrush. I don’t like rich women or the sleazy way they act when they are still single over 21, but I have dated some exceptions. But I learned early once a gal has crossed that line, there is no redemption. I was the only person in my graduating class, male or female, that was not divorced by age 28.
           How’s the book? I’m on Chapter Nine and they finally got the cajones to sneak into the library. The way it works is nobody except the librarian is allowed. You request a book, he gets permission from the head honcho, then brings the book out to you. The insides of the library are a labyrinth, which I’ve never seen for real, but recognize the place these things play in any book about the ancients. Those guys never leave a trail of bread crumbs. And not one of them bothers to take a roll of string or some kind of marker.

NIGHT
           It’s weird for me, too, now that I’m at the stage where yard work becomes the big event of the day. I’d planned for it, but thought by now I’d be doing it keeping an eye on my grandchildren. Mind you, so did a lot of people these days. I grew up in the generation that changed marriage from a religiously social affair into a legally binding contract. I only met two women in my life who were self-supporting in the sense that is required to make a marriage work. One didn’t want my heart, she wanted my very soul and the other didn’t want either.

           Every other woman I met in my life either wanted my money, whether through marriage or divorce, or simply began to bore me once the novelty ended. I’ve also had very bad luck meeting educated women. The smart ones I meet tend to have bad taste in men and were often bitter that a great education is not a substitute for the parts of being sexy that a woman has to learn while still young. You know what I’m talking about. The gals that didn’t sleep with the professor because he chose somebody younger and prettier. That seriously affects the other women’s attitude and behavior for life, and does so in a manner incompatible with me.

           Enough about me, I worked outside until dark and the skeeters came out. I wired the better of the two sheds for temporary light and hauled out some of my robot gear. Face it, this place is not going to get finished before I really move in. I put up another partition to set up my hobby and computer room separate from my living room. I’ll have room for that dining table and my dream rocker-recliner. The kind you don’t mind falling asleep in a few times a week.
           Later, success with the Fishman amplifier. Not a click out of it in 24 hours. Live music rules. I took time to read the music ads last week for Lakeland and surrounding area. Similar to Broward, everybody who can possibly solo is already doing it. So I’ll tell you the inside scoop on that, it’s not a vicious circle, it’s a stupid circle. When the market gets saturated with soloists, nobody makes any money, and that’s why you get guitar players making the claim they aren’t in it for the money. They’ve tried and failed.

           But you can’t reason with such people. I take dead aim on that “solo” market with an act that actually draws a crowd. That’s something no Florida musician I’ve ever met could faithfully claim. The crowd may ask who’s playing this weekend because they are going there, but they do not follow anybody. The solo acts are plain not worth it. They are virtually identical past the point of monotony. Down to identical song lists.
           We’ve seen this effect in so many occupations. Everybody freelances to the point nobody can make a living at it any more. Yett nobody wants to haul in the reins and put some effort into a new act that will fly. There is some down time to putting a duo together and, in another similarity every musician I’ve met can’t afford to skip a few gigs for a bigger payoff. I know from experience I make up every penny in tips, but it is impossible to show this to somebody in advance. So, it’s a parade of losers. And the number of losers in Florida is constant.
           There is that one guy who solos but is actually good but has the stage presence of a limp dishrag. I missed him at the club last Friday. When I saw him two months ago, his tip jar was so empty I put a fiver in there. What I usually do is learn five or six of their tunes and ask them to jam. Sooner or later, they’ll ask you to show up at a gig. It’s always a shot in the dark with these characters.

ADDENDUM
           By 10:00PM I’d run through some of my song list and you bet I’m rusty. I also covered the song list of the new guitar player and I have something to say. I stress I am not singling this guy out or even saying what he does is wrong. I’m pointing strictly to the example of how guitar players can get themselves into a situation where playing in a band becomes an impossible task.

           The guy would use the Karaoke machine to play the intros and fills, all he would do is come in on the verses, chording and singing. We’ve all seen this before and it is ho-hum. The thing is, those intros and fills are often the best parts of the music. Two tunes we tried, “Kiss An Angel Good Morning” and “Long-haired Country Boy” are bland without the riffs. I can play them on the bass, but the new guy could not come in on time. He could do it to the machine, but not live.
           Nor could he play the parts even when I showed him how. I’d borrow the guitar and show him both chords, but he could not grasp the concept. Nor could he follow the theory of coming in off the fifth. I’m saying that even at the first grade level of showing him exactly what to play, he could not even learn that. What? Who? “This song is in C, right? So why do you want me to play G.”

           No, you can’t work with somebody like that because they have a built-in resistance to learning anything new. Especially music theory. It involves them admitting they’ve been wrong about something for a long, long time. And of course, there is the added irritant that at some point they have to concede to playing what is best for the band instead of what’s best for themselves. That is a precipitous tumble for most guitarists.
           Turning to my standpoint, where there was an instrumental break that could not be avoided, he wanted to turn up the Karaoke track to the point where my custom bass lines were drowned out. He could not have come up with a worse scenario for the bassist if he’d intended to. Skip the intros and drown out the solos, that’s a good one, you guitarists.


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