One year ago today: December 9, 2016, horse-drawn seed drill.
Five years ago today: December 9, 2012, cake and coffee.
Nine years ago today: December 9, 2008, checking out Bluetooth.
Random years ago today: December 9, 2007, It’s also $30,000.
She’s a cold one. No working outdoors for me whether it’s too hot or too cold. There’s a band just south of town advertising to start a country show for several weeks now, so I contacted them for a set list. Sixty tunes of which I only recognized one, “Killin’ Time” by Clint Black. The rest is all new country, but I gave the guy a call back. Completely different generations, I didn’t recognize most of the artists, either. Then, we had the smart phone conversation. Does he have copies of the music? No, he just listens to them on the smart phone and learns them off there. This means he’s never really heard the bass lines.
You can hear the music, but the quality is so low I don’t believe anybody can do a good job off tinny smart phone speakers. I know it can be cone, but I specified “a good job”. This is made worse because, like the Hippie, such people only listen to their part. To them, all the other instruments are easy. So no, he doesn’t have his songs on MP3. He also has that snarky attitude that people who use smart phones have about those who don’t. That the ONLY possible reason is that they are no-techs who missed the social media boat.
He does have a practical point, however. In my own generation, I do not know of one single person who has the proper equipment and know-how to utilize the computer and Internet to acquire and learn music. The closest would be Fred, the computer repair guy. He still has to call me every other month to be reminded how to send a picture by e-mail. I’ve been alone with computers this way my entire life. There’s nobody to ask who can or will give a straight answer. They call themselves power users but when you go to use their computer, it is entirely optimized for gaming. Most of them are only vaguely aware of what a spreadsheet is for.
I may not have a smart phone, but when somebody asks me for a song list, I know better than to send it in png format. That’s not a list, pal, that’s a picture of a list. The fact they don’t know the difference is scary indeed. I used to ask such people how they sorted their list, but that just met with a blank stare before they asked why you would want to do such a thing. Or that, “Oh, you’re one of those” looks. Here’s a copy of the start of the list, with one Hank Jr. song. They don’t play any classics, but other than that, they’re a country band.
This probably not for me. It’s new country, which I find too shallow for my tastes. I hinted that I’d look the list over and if any seemed familiar, I’d polish them up and get together for an audition. I can’t tell you how many people like that I’ve met over the years who consider themselves computer literate, but actually do things “by hand” on the computer. Remember Bill, the guitar player? Whenever he needed a different list, he actually typed up a new one—on the computer. Or the assistant at the Hollywood library who didn’t know about cut and paste. He typed up each daily schedule sheet. Even the Hippie deems himself a computer user, but when I met him he could not figure out how I knew how many duplicates were on his various lists.
It’s still unwise to turn down any potential contact in the music field. The guy and his brother are an acoustic show, but man, have they got severe cases of guitar-think. He can hardly imagine anybody looking at things in a different way. For example, I asked him why they had any slow music at all on their song list. He said something about it being part of the “mixture” and besides, everybody just knew a band was supposed to play some fast songs and some slow songs. Yet how he knew this for sure he could not say. Like most, he never questioned the concept. I mentioned that in my show, I had not played a slow song since 1987. He thought I was pulling his leg. So much for musicians being open-minded, huh?
[Author’s note: I listen to slow music regularly, I just don’t play it on stage. I always noticed how slow music loses the crowd, but it was right here in Florida that I developed a distaste for it on stage. You can thank the Hippie for that. Time after time, we’d get the crowd fired up and he’s kill the moment by playing a slow song next. The guy has no stage savvy whatsoever in that department. You will never be able to play any music so well that you’ll change people’s preferences to your own.
And the only people I’ve ever met who like jazz are those who knew either far too much or far too little about music. The former are generally men who took lessons and were sold by some sharp music school that jazz was some sort of superior musical end-product. Which is nonsense. But you’d be surprised how many guitar players still believe that.]
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There was another aspect to talking with the other musician this morning. I regularly scan the ads all the way from Orlando to Tampa as I’ve found it the best way to find out who’s succeeding. An ad doesn’t make a band a winner, but losers never advertise. They can’t afford it. Anyway, he said that there are acoustic and bass duos all over the place. I get that a lot until I ask them to name some. It turns out there aren’t any, they just thought there were. Every such band turned out to be two guitar players, one of whom played a sort of bass-like pattern or two. Sometimes.
I’m well aware that a man my age should be sitting back in the ‘warm after-glow of success’ when in fact, I’m now inside my insulated back room with a space heater, a cup of noodles, and a few tales from the trailer court. Notice how I slipped that last clause in there. I zipped downtown to what I call the Housewife Karaoke and my lady guitarist was there full of apologies. This often happens to no surprise, people realize that getting to the top normally involves a lot of, shall we say, skilled labor.
Here is a photo of the only electric bass/acoustic guitar duo that is anything like what I do. And they appear to be a studio pair, playing music I never heard of. By contrast, my show is totally familiar country classics, so you had best know your shit inside out before you get on stage with me. Because this is hardly the first time I've been fifteen years ahead of my time.
[Authors note: if you want to find out how exceedingly rare the electric bass/acoustic guitar duo really is, try doing a search for photos. You get a few, but the stand up bass is not at all the same thing. What I do cannot be done on a stand up bass.
It cannot be done on an acoustic bass. It cannot be done on any of those massive 6+ string thingees that some people call a bass. And yes, I have been unfairly accused of stealing parts of my stage show, but I rarely do such a thing unless I was really impressed. Which is evern more rare. However, a possible explanation exists because I sometimes do guitar things on the bass and not everybody in your average crowd is sharp enough to know the difference.]
I had not intended to sing but tonight became a personal challenge. She was, since just two weeks ago, utilizing a lot of techniques gleaned from me. The house knew it (they’ve seen my show) but she’s the gifted amateur and it’s not like I have not lifted parts of my show from others. The friendly competition resolved to a match of who was better with the crowd. Damn, she edged me out. She did a perfect rendition of one of my own best, “Folsom Prison Blues”, plus she’s learned about keeping the crowd focused on her during the instrumental breaks. That stung. She did this in a pair of blue jeans meant for her kid sister. I was lucky to come in second.
Am I discouraged? Nope. She was copycatting and the women present were not about to be taken by a chick singer half their age prancing around in tights. I even had my I on a blonde until her boyfriend showed up. My lesson from tonight is that I should learn at least one duet with the singer, she suggested a tune called “I Need You”. Okay. One major gaffe she’s still making is not memorizing her lyrics. She’s glued to the [Karaoke] screen start to finish, where I’m often racing between the tables firing up the crowd.
Last Laugh
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