One year ago today: July 4, 2016, the door to Hell.
Five years ago today: July 4, 2012, the 6 sixes.
Nine years ago today: July 4, 2008, PS: we got fired.
Random years ago today: July 4, 2013, discussing a million—toothpicks.
Here’s your July 4 shot of the living quarters. This is where I will live for at least a while. I told you it was cramped, but it is still a major improvement over the old trailer court. Shifting the furniture and office gear consumed a full eight hours so far. That’s all non-productive time, by the way. If you don’t like this kind of moving things back and forth, do your renovating before you move in. I didn’t have that option. Stuff gets lost and broken. But don’t mind me, this place has nearly quadrupled in value. In another year, it could well be the fastest money I ever made. Alas, it will never be Texas. And half the country seems to be moving to Texas, except me.
The big kids were up last night with their fireworks. What a strange way to celebrate, but then you consider it came from China. Firecrackers are not good enough any more, these people get downright dangerous. Some of the explosions are loud enough to say, hey, this could do real damage. I’ve begun reading another novel, I’ll finish the Indian book when I get time. This new plot is about how lawyers stock the juries for big corporate customers, in this case, the tobacco companies. The whole system knew the big manufacturers had a war chest, because if even one plaintiff is awarded damages, it “opens the floodgates”.
I learned there were some fifty-five trials before anybody got a penny out of the tobacco companies. It’s that seventeenth trial that I’m reading on. It is not illegal for specialized firms to track down, shadow, and snoop into the backgrounds of jurors they prefer. This is why you rarely see a fat old lady in the jury box. This is also another good reason why you should keep your name off as many lists as possible. If these operations discover anything in your past that can ruin you, they probably will to prevent the opposition from using you.
I was surprised to independently learn they often buy ATM surveillance tapes and scan them for people who take out certain but unspecified amounts of money—but reject anyone who is wearing sunglasses. I usually wear them because I’m on a motorcycle, but remind me to do it on purpose from now on. The book is called “The Runaway Jury” and I’m becoming engrossed. This book takes a different tack on jury manipulation.
Reading this story will permanently affect your outlook on jury duty. You might think it is a jury of peers, but in fact the finer details of each person’s lives are picked over behind closed doors by lawyers. If you are ever selected, time to become extremely suspicious why and cautious of who else they choose—especially if those people the types you never associate with on the outside.
One evident change is that the system only works because everybody is on file. The move is not only to have everybody’s life history on record, but to have that record instantly available to anyone who is on the inside. The social equivalent of “know your enemy”.
Scotland.
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Take a peek at this bed frame that has become a bench. As described, these are curbsided and turned into this type of bench, which nets around $75 - $85 per item. If they want it repainted, that’s cost plus another $40. In this case, you can see the headboard and footboard. The visible wood is because the boards have been quarter-rounded to prevent splinters and such. This example is actually darn ugly, but I feel you should know this is an ongoing and profitable enterprise.
Myself, I’d be a tougher customer, but that is only because in my world, any good deal is too good to be true and I’d get suspicious. It would be impossible to hold my family hostage, hell, take them away, the further the better. Nor do I own anything especially valuable or owe any money. Oh, they’d get me, but it would take them ten minutes longer. You will not like what this book has to say. My faith in the system just plunged another 50 points.
The plot takes another twist. This time the tobacco companies are up against a failed lawyer who knows how they work, and he’s got himself on the jury. This drop-out law student and his gal take the entire system of jury manipulation to the bank. If you think you have nothing to hide, read this book. This book was written as a movie script.
Next on the agenda, Agt. R and I are playing telephone tag. It’s our crappy cellular providers. I see he called me at 8:58 PM y’day and I was sitting on the sofa reading. No radio, no distractions, and the phone was on the desk. It didn’t ring. So this got me going through the call lists. Only one call in four is getting through. He reports the same thing at his end. We’ve learned to call the other number, and then wait for the return call. It’s not the phone models, since he has a smart phone and I do not.
I found the old Crate amp for him to practice. He’ll soon need to get accustomed to hearing the acoustic through an amp. He’ll most likely be playing through the Fishman now that I have the Tailgater, but no, he can’t take my $1,000 Solo home to practice with. The one I got for what, $350? That I had to dismantle and run an eraser over all the contacts and circuit boards before it quick crackling. That one.
“You’ll never learn much talking
to people who agree with you.”
~ Various.
While moving my operation to the bedroom, I found some ancient photos. These are some of the earliest photos taken with my first digital camera, an Argus 1600. I’ll post this one repeat, as I want to see if I can match any of the others up with dates. This is the original “Sand Heiroglyphics” from one of our original skrunt hunts (chasing women) at Marco Island. Note that if I had bought in Naples back then, I would still be paying for the place today, but it would be worth a half million.
I’ve begun keeping track of which tunes I rehearse each day. This progress also modifies my list. Some of the old bingo music is so old it becomes new again, I’m looking at that because that fifth set can make a huge difference to the audience. What? You’ve forgotten what a set is? That’s 35 to 40 minutes of music, usually 8 songs, plus gaps and chatter. That’s what you normally play before taking a break. This called ‘play 40 break 20’.
Hence in the usual four hour gig, you run through 32 songs. Therein lie two problems. Thirty-two songs can overwhelm beginners, who may know 24 songs and make the mistake of playing repeats. The mental justification is that those who just came in haven’t heard it and those who’ve been there several hours are drunk and have forgotten. Wrong. They know. The other mistake is stopping at 32 songs. You’ve all heard this type of musician.
The first time, they sound great. But it wears off as they never change their set list. I seriously know a few musicians who have played the same list for at least 22 years, and I know of one band that has the same list after 51 years (the Karoll Brothers). In some cases they even play the songs in the exact same sequence. This type of performer wears thin on the audience and wearies the staff. What I traditionally do is learn a fifth set and arrange it like a five-piece wardrobe. So you can technically gig six nights in a row without ever repeating an entire performance.
In reality, this rarely works because you will find that each honky-tonk has a core set of favorites that they want repeated. In my five year house gig, my primo set three was identical for years on that count, but this is rare. Anyway, I’ve already begun pulling old tunes out of the hat. Today it was Johnny Rivers’ “Midnight Special”. This is a classic where the lyrics begin on a IV chord, a tactic I have never heard successfully repeated. For non-musicians, this is where the song is in the key of G, but the vocals start in C. I’ve written, but never published several tunes this way, used only for my own video backing tracks.
I’m also considering playing “Passionate Kisses” because I know all the chords. Lucinda somebody. I know the song from 1995 or so because I played the horn and keyboard flourishes entirely on the bass. They can be faked with guitar chords.
ADDENDUM
Here’s the view from my bedroom window at 8:58 PM today. That’s the moon, not the sun, compliments of Vivitar. The tourist bureau wants you to think this is the whole state, but they were not out there swatting mosquitoes and sweltering in the dank shadows. The color is pretty faithful in this shot. No, hold it. This shot is from Agt. R’s driveway. I have no palm trees on my property. They are too easily uprooted by high winds.
I’ll tell you the facts. Originality in music has little to do with theory, and is not affected by it. People who think theory is interference have not learned any theory. I’ve long since picked out the parts of theory that contribute to stage performance and the rapid learning of new material. My bands are significantly different on this count. Jag, who had studied theory, was on stage making money after six rehearsals. Not six weeks, six rehearsals. My bands don’t have the time to learn by repetition.
What’s happening here is Agt. R has already demonstrated he has zero resistance to theory. He knows when to ask why I’m doing things a certain way. This may be hard to imagine because normally music never teaches you the “why” part or where to apply it. Think of it this way, there are hundreds of math books out there that will explain how matrices work—but not one of them ever tells you where and how you would use a matrix in real life. Psst, the secret is because they can’t, and that’s what I’m saying about guitar lessons. Learning theory is not much good unless you know why, and that is where a teacher like myself can make all the difference.
So I put together a CD of the songs on my list. That was not fun, hacking the Winter Haven library computers to download the MP4s for conversion. I know people who will download for me, but relying on others is rarely a good idea and the copyright schemes are getting insane. But it’s done—learning to play a song is by any standard fair usage.
That’s a bit academic but now you know. When your DVD player does the same thing, you get artifacts, which you may call checkerboarding, a.k.a. "flicker". On a CD, you get nothing. For those who’d like to look further into this, part of the glitch is that discs don’t read files sequentially like MP3 players. When the disc reads a segment, it has to spin around once completely, then move to the next segment. If it is misaligned, it has to keep spinning around until it can find that address on its own, which takes time. Um, this is not an exact description, but more a way to think of the process.
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