One year ago today: April 4, 2017, a picture of Peaches.
Five years ago today: April 4, 2013, pimping MLK.
Nine years ago today: April 4, 2009, stranded by Greyhound, the dog line.
Random years ago today: April 4, 2007, I took this picture.
It wasn’t planned but I spent half the day shopping, more like window shopping. The idea was to find the bathroom sinks that I liked regardless of price. Don’t laugh, that was the high point of the day. Eventually I got close and again the tag was like $1,800. That’s one corner I’m going to have to cut. They are nice pieces of furniture, but most people would have to take out a loan to buy them. Credit card you say? That’s a loan. Actually, the day was a lot of fun, but by mid-afternoon it was down to serious music practice.
Sorry I can’t stick around today. No time for writing. I didn’t get morning coffee until 1:00PM. And reading. I usually read a few hours per day. Instead I got a few chapters on audio tape, I’m listening to “McNalley’s Bluff”, one of the best and worst styles of audio book. Some of these narrators are really talented, doing up to eight different voices themselves. The hero is a crusty detective in Palm Beach who hobnobs with the ultra-wealthy and is on speaking terms with every gossip, widow, brat, and socialite in the county. In this plot, a midget circus performer’s giant wife is found a corpse in the middle of his huge garden maze.
Like such books, the tape has character bloat. I’ve long since given up trying to remember who’s who. Kind of like real life for me. Face it, unless someone is a drop dead gorgeous babe, I’ll be needing a name tag. Don’t bother with this production unless you like audio books and long trips. This one is six cassette tapes for a total 9 hours listening time. I’ve been on it since the last time I got back from Miami.
Trivia. When adjusted for inflation, the highest minimum wage in the USA was way back in 1968. It works out to $9.86 per hour. And for a publication to legally be called a “book”, it must have at least 49 pages. What? You want more trivia. Okay. July is National Hot Dog Month. And ten-pin bowling originated when some states outlawed nine-pin bowling as a form of gambling.
Edmonton, Alberta.
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Wednesday, rehearsal day. I wonder, does anyone else say wed-nez-day in their brain whenever they spell that word, or is it just me? I called it right, this new group is in for the long haul and improvement, while barely measurable, is there. It’s still closer to the goal than anything else available in Polk. But before you get to practice, you must run the dachshund deluge. Here they come, now there are six of them plus the parrot. Don’t forget their doggie treats or they will not settle down. Ever. Just remember, they are all rescue pets, so break the goodies into bit size pieces and only 1/2 order each. Some of them don’t have that many teeth left.
I’ve put things on a regimen of going back over each song we’ve played and identifying the problem spots. You can imagine how painstaking this is for me, yet there is no reasonable alternative. Both of us have guitar elbow by now and no new music is pending until what we already have is up to par. (We do run over other tunes at times.) As speculated, this is going to take the better part of a year. We are playing out this Sunday. Same place, from 4:30 until we run out of material again.
The club reserves the right to cancel out at the last moment, but you know, Lady Nik already has a small fan club over there. I check in usually a few days before each gig and they immediately asked about her. The skinny guitar player guy and the one who put $15 in the tip jar himself last week. You can imagine the results once I get Lady Nik some real stage time. She knows I shouldered the load myself last time and has said she realizes the distance that has to be covered.
One weak area is the instrumental breaks. Like many guitarists, she learns the break taking cues off the rest of the band. Except now the band isn’t there. Myself, I learned the passages by rote memorization, as in studio recordings the fancy parts of the song are not necessarily a consistent pattern with the balance of the music. A good example is the fiddle break in “Tight Fittin’ Jeans”. I call such instrumentals “injected”. They don’t match the rest of the tune and this is giving her real difficulties. I hesitate to change it for compelling reasons we have already discussed. We do not know why that or any given song was a hit, so don’t change anything—and also that prevents the guitar player from making every song too customized for you to go join another band when he/she quits.
For the record, that tune, “Tight Fittin’ Jeans” is already one of our signature pieces and a top tip producer. We are also getting results with any tune that has what I call “rolling guitar”. (I have never had lessons.) For instance, “Six Days On The Road” and “Midnight Special”. My guess is these will become our stock in trade along with any Johnny Cash. They are also fun to play which has a charm of its own audience-wise. The number on our list most fun so far is “Guitars, Cadillacs”, and let me tell you that one is a real workout on the bass.
PS: yes, I do have a dedicated doggie brush. After ten minutes or so, the dogs all form a ring sleeping around me on the sofa. Acting like they were orphans or something.
ADDENDUM
The new truck windshield. The paint job is damaged from hail.
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