One year ago today: February 2, 2016, free for $10 . . .
Five years ago today: February 2, 2012, Reese’s pieces.
Nine years ago today: February 2, 2008, Michael Jackson who?
Random years ago today: February 2, 2007, Miami and tow trucks, identical twins.
MORNING
Didn’t Nigel Farage retire? I guess not, he’s still delivering speeches at the European joke of a Parliament where he totally outclasses all his detractors. Makes them look the bumbling inarticulate buffoons they are, especially that fat one who speaks English like a cave man. (How do people who don't speak English even get into European politics? Ah, that's right, the EuroParliament is not voted into office.) Buffoons would be mean thousands of non-elected bureaucrats who are selling Europe out to the foreigners. I find it odd that Germany has not had a revolution against Merkel whose sole motive appears to be going down in history as a do-gooder. Such people are always concealing something horrific. He’s also taken on the BBC, an organization as corrupt as anything America has to offer.
Farage is making a mockery of the BBC, whose stance seems to be that Trump is wrong for representing the people who voted for him. Good luck, for Farange believes that is what elected people are supposed to do regardless of whether some leftard thinks it is wrong. They keep asking Farage the same question thinking he’s going to back down from that position and say terrorist lives matter. Or something.
The Wall Street guy was on this morning’s radio, the one who sounds like he’s about to break down and cry like a baby. I listen because he does bring up good points. I did not know that families earning as much as $92,000 per year qualify for subsidized health insurance. It shows you how powerful the insurance companies are to get the government to back that. The solution is to provide health care, not health insurance. But the big insurance companies aren’t going to go for that.
There is also a repugnant Quicken commercial saying that the economy is picking up, therefore you should take equity out of your home. For what? This is when you should be plowing money into paying off that house so you’ll have a place when the next blow-up happens. And it will, the numbers don’t add up.
Texas Hill Country
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NOON
Are you ready for some drama? Nobody likes a steady diet of it, but drama has a remarkable magnetic property. If you stand still, it can still find you. As the pace of life slows, items from the distant past begin to re-emerge. I’ve been offered a gig in Brooksville at the end of the month. The situation is do I really want to see Brooksville? (Yes, I do.) The catch is the trip is nearly 50 miles and the circumstances are iffy. I don’t mind going up there to perform, but I would not make the trip just to play audience, or to play dreadfully slow guitar ballads. You’ve guessed it, the Hippie called.
I keep a low profile because I’ve seen the hardships other people go through when they don’t. (People have gone to jail for the non-crime of refusing to fill out a census. Or jury duty, there is no law that says you have to, but.) This seems to be a lesson the Hippie has never really learned because he tends to presume anyone who doesn’t believe in compliance must be on the run. He’s not alone in that thinking, but I suppose it depends on the background you have with the system. Note I do give conspiracy theorists more credence than usual because I’ve found there is consistently some basis for their suspicions (except the New Age types). I don’t consider theorists weird or anti-social, and more importantly, I don’t call them down over it. You want to live privately in the woods, you go right ahead, it’s none of my business.
What’s this got to do with music? The snag has always been that the Hippie views a duo not as an equal partnership, but some other musicians whose job it is to him up. He claims he’s learned songs from my list, but that isn’t possible because it would involve playing acoustic accompaniment and he has never done anything of the kind. Example, there was no Merle on my list until after he suggested the tune “Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink”. He insists he learned that song from me. Not so, the first time I ever heard the song was when he played it. I didn’t learn it myself until nearly a year later.
That’s significant because he did not learn that new tune at my behest, rather, he dug it out of his maybe-later list. I repeat I have never seen him nor any other Florida guitarist learn something new AND do a decent job of it. They can only play the same songs they learned half a life-time ago and they have no intention of adapting to a changing world. Face it, anybody, even a talentless hack, should be able to do a decent rendition of any music he’s been playing for 30 years. You’d think.
This is not some puzzle as to what might happen, I know the drill. Tell you what, you non-musicians scan this list and ponder how I came up with it off the top of my head. My conditions to play the gig should NOT involve the following:
A) other musicians at the gig who also thought it was a duo.
B) soloing on stage before the announced start time.
C) fake “requests” for 20-minute solos.
D) pulling rank on stage once the gig begins.
E) playing shitty “Zydeco” rhythms behind your songs.
This is merely a sample of the dirty tricks already done. We know from history that for some phenomenal reason I keep giving the guy another chance. Why? He refuses to admit I’m better on the bass than he will ever be on the guitar, because he doesn’t know enough about bass to recognize it. He composes “original” music, but it is barely as original as any other guitarist, in the sense that collections of new chords and lyrics don’t make for an original act when everybody else is doing the same thing.
Ah, but when is the last time you saw somebody get up on stage with just a bass and no backing tracks and entertain for an hour with the audience singing along? That’s original because unless you’ve seen my show, you’ve never seen anyone do anything like it. It breaks new ground. And if “bass is easy”, I’d like to see certain people give it a try.
The drama! So let me think this one over. There is minimal chance that he’ll play the gig as a personable quitarist sharing the stage, but these days I have the option to solo without him. Before, he was the vocalist who owned the PA and could just unplug to stop the show. Now, my “bass amp” is a PA system that is quantumly ahead of his old Fender. Just you keep in mind there is no conjecture, he’s pulled every one of these stunts on stage while I was there. Let’s get to some examples—it’s keen how music always provides so much great blog-filler. (You are supposed to chuckle at these, but they are true.)
Item A) above, that gig booked as a duo, but when I showed up, there was a drummer, bongo player and saxophonist on stage. That’s the time I told the Hippie he had to pay them out of his half and he accused me of not being a “true” musician. Remember that?
Item B) he tells you the gig starts at 7:00, but when you show, he’s already on stage to make it look as if you walked in as part of his “following”, which he doesn’t have.
Item C) this is one of his classics. Then later he doesn’t want to pay your full cut because, “You didn’t play the whole gig.”
Item D) no matter what was agreed, once the music starts, he reverts to a stage Nazi, dictating everything down to even what song gets played next. (That reminds me, he is the only person who has ever dissed my beautiful Russian/Japanese batbike, calling it the Nazi-mobile. Can you get any more jealous, Dude? I regret I didn't take a picture the way your face hit the floor the first time you saw it.)
Item E) this one is sad, it is the reason he never has an enduring band. You can’t blame him for this one—but that doesn’t mean he should do it. Yes, it is boring to play most songs on stage next to some guy who is showcasing his best material. But if you expect others to play hum-drum accompaniment to your tunes, you should at least provide the same in return. You have to revert to a lesser role, play under your own ability, make the other guy sound great. He doesn’t do this. He’ll start playing some whacked-out version, or start playing your song at half-speed. (He loves to butcher the classic, “Jambalaya”.)
Something else he may not like is my NO PLAY list. Eight of the twenty songs on it are due to him. I don’t play Last Dance With Maryjane, Stormy Monday, or Come Together. Besides being outdated, overplayed, and mood-killers, they are also guitar show-off songs and nobody likes a show-off. So sit back and see where this goes. By coincidence, the 25th will be two years since that day I hopped the train and went to Deland to see what was there.
“The man who discovered copper died penniless.”
NIGHT
I had to get out of the house, so I went up to the club and wrote a report to JZ. He knows he’s falling behind, so all he gets is progress reports and what I’m learning. As for what I’m doing, he gets only pictures. Last day I told how some folks try to belt out to the juke box like I do. Ha, well, there are also other people who know I can do it, so they will play the odd tune on the jukebox to see if I will. And Mark was in there. I kind of have to be coaxed sometimes, so I gave a few samples to show ‘em who’s boss.
I copied the page for you to examine, this is no idle reading. My habit of recording dates in the margins means you can easily confirm the dates I read the same material repeatedly—to the extent that I had a pencil with me. I may have read the same page countless more times when I had no implement.
You can tell the amount of study by the other notes on the page. Near the bottom is the example I studied for ages, and it was wrong. It’s a small error, the typesetter put in the value from a table (08’). It’s the tiny difference in declination, the distance the Sun moves north or south in the sky daily as the seasons change. It means every celestial calculation I’ve done is off by that factor. The example is correct, but the explanation is wrong for purely by coincidence, the table can be used two ways to get the same answer. The snag is that coincidence doesn’t work in other cases. Nearby dates penciled in indicate I’ve been using this wrong example since July 17, 2014. How do you like them apples?
I’ve half a mind to get out my sextant and use my own rooftop as an artificial horizon just to break the habit created by this misleading example.
Last Laugh
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