One year ago today: June 2, 2017, 3rd rate solo acts.
Five years ago today: June 2, 2013, gals, I'm wearing cutoffs.
Nine years ago today: June 2, 2009, I punctuate to clarify.
Random years ago today: June 2, 2008, at the new place.
What, a light switch gets top billing? Yes, because it came to me while sleeping. The diagram on the package is wrong, but why? If you connect it as depicted, you will have a bare wire left over, not a good idea. That configuration will work, but it doesn’t work right. The natural thing to do is remove the extra wire. I wonder how many of these switches out there are wired wrong. The wire is a jumper for something. The reason is what hit me and woke me up. This happens more often than I care to say. Here goes.
Keep an eye on today. The best that could happen is the audition this afternoon going well. I know the guy is talented, which means I’ll be dealing with pre-conceived notions. I may have to hit him with the facts right at first. I am seeking a rhythm guitarist who enjoys doing that. I can solo my entire act and I would like some accompaniment. I am not looking for a lead player and it has been my experience that anyone who plays lead will eventually try to take over the band and that is not going to happen. It is a waste of my time. To that effect, few of my songs have lead breaks and I normally play those that do.
What’s making me wary this time is this guy may be reacting to what the crowd says, and my act is geared to delivering the wow with bass and acoustic. When that happens, we know that every lead player in the room thinks the music is lacking his invaluable participation. In this case, if he did hear me a year ago, it was as part of a four piece group, and yes, I’m a lead player’s delight at that kind of bass playing. He got my contact info from the barmaid who tends to oversell me because tips go up when I perform. There is no way she could communicate any of this information.
Another curious item [to many] is that I don’t care for weddings. It’s a gig many band members talk about, but don’t really do much of. There’s an old wive’s tale that word gets around and the band gets these bookings. That’s not so. Weddings are a rather specialized music event and my set lists don’t match. There’s more. Weddings often mean setting up in unfamiliar surroundings. I’ve had pool parties where an extension cord 150 feet long was required not to mention it increases the chances of gear left behind. My big restraint is that weddings are the bride’s special day, which creates a clash you may not have thought could be a problem.
You see, my entire show is subtly built up note-for-note to focus women’s attention on me. I don’t take any flak because it always comes from men who have failed to do just that. Last month I took a third-rate guitar flunky and produced standing ovations. I told her it was her doing but you know better. I probably didn’t tell you how people were glued to the stage, often waiting for a break before even going to pee because they might miss something. My behavior toward women is habitual and brides hardly appreciate any competition. Nor do I think bar and pub sets work well at pool parties.
And that is a good self-test. If you conclude I’m inflating or bragging up any of this, you probably don’t belong in this blog. Maybe I’m guilty of self-promotion, but my blogs have the strength of many public witnesses to most everything I write, so I don’t need any third-party ankle-biters. I am an unschooled bassist who’s never had a lesson and I sound like it. I also play too quietly and let the audiences sing too much. If that’s possible, I mean.
In other news, allow more time to get used to 12/2 wiring. It seems not that big a difference, but the handling characteristics are altered. I had to install a connector box that I had down to 20 minutes with 14/2 and it took me 1-1/2 hours, mainly from breaking wires that nicked when stripping by applying slightly too much pressure. Plus the other back and forth, that is pretty much what I got done all morning. That’s working on the bathroom exhaust fan. It is four times the recommended minimum flow. I call that planning ahead.
Drum Day, Tulsa.
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South Kissimmee, the guy lives 40 miles from here. We breezed through 20 songs and the sound is excellent. His goals are also similar, primarily to get out there and entertain. He still has to show he’s able to learn this new style, but if he does, we could be out gigging in two or three weeks. He can’t sing but he can hold a solitary note on key long enough to be useful. As ever, don’t place too much reliance on a first impression. He is totally alert to this being a unique opportunity, there’s a good chance he will knock himself out to get this underway.
It’s the follow up meeting that tells the difference. Very few guitarists make it that far, but if this one does, he’ll likely be fine. He’s got the right motive; that it is always better to be in a band than not be in one, for just about any reason except the wrong kind of band. Follow that logic? It’s circular, that’s why they tellyou to read the whole test before you go back and start answering questions. I quit the 5 piece because it was the wrong kind of band. Endless practice, no gigs, no money, wrong music, inflexible attitudes. I haven’t got my fingers crossed yet, but you know a band is my social life, my hobby, my part time job, and my greatest artistic pursuit.
Another aspect of this rehearsal is how quickly he understood this is a concept band. Put another way, this band is not striving to be just like all the other bands, but a new concept (at least to me and at least in this area). He was astounded by the effects I got out of that bass but then, he wasn’t around to see how many decades that required. Band or not, since 2011 when I decided on the course I’m on now, I play around 20 hours per week. This is where you understand what took me so long. One can’t do that when one is forced to have a full-time job to pay the bills.
Later, reviewing my notes of what we went through, this could be worth the extra travel time. If he peels off (fast learns) the twenty songs by next session, we could work out an arrangement whereby he travels here every second week. If you look at this map fragment, at the center is the settlement of Lake Hamilton. See the side road running east, it’s called Highway 542. He lives roughly where the top of the letter “t” appears.
ADDENDUM
I’m nearly finished “Big Wheat”. It unwittingly reveals the onset of several social evils of today. The book, well, I will slightly recommend as an excellent piece of period literature. It’s the pre-1930 era and that was before a lot of farm mechanization took hold and farms required large crews to take in the harvests. One theme is the pressure for police to keep records on everybody instead of only the criminals. Another is the lack of positive ID. A person out west could basically be anybody he said he was unless he got recognized. It emphasizes the lack of forgiveness in the American legal system.
The whole book is eerily gloomy and everybody has something to hide. Every woman was a housewife or a prostitute. Bankers are evil, cops are corrupt, the system is rigged, the surviving farmers are millionaires, migrant workers follow the harvest northwards,and revenge is brutal. Kind of a forerunner of today’s South Florida. It would make for a boring movie, though that is possible because of the chase scenes. An Indian motorcycle down a mud road at speeds up to 40 mph, with a Model T Ford in hot pursuit bouncing through the ruts.
The plot is full of holes. All the bad people die, the majority of them being policemen. The hero, Charlie Bacon, is believable in the sense that he’s not the hero all the time. Nothing worse than a non-stop hero, somebody should tell the Marvel people. I watched a movie, “Eagle Eye” about a computer that uses the system to trap people into fighting the enemy within, and I was rooting for the computer. It was going to blow up the president and his staff, turning the country over to honest people. I didn’t like the role of the lady, the stereotypical single mother. Someone should start asking what is it with these women whose “motherhood” always seems to clash with so damn many of other people’s everyday activities.
Next, I get some repairs done around the place and go to salvage the power cable from the old circular saw. Hmmm, I found an internal break in the wire. That means I probably didn’t have to buy the new saw, but it’s a done deal.
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