One year ago today: June 4, 2017, heavily beautified.
Five years ago today: June 4, 2013, a neat anti-Boomer rant.
Nine years ago today: June 4, 2009, they hated DNS.
Random years ago today: June 4, 2011, on blog survival rates.
Nope, there are no pictures today. I was in the attic.
By now, you’ve got it figured out that the music business is a mass of dead ends and missed opportunities. I do believe it has gotten worse since 1980 but that’s one opinion. When I was younger, I used to read about and hear songs about how hard it was to make it in music. In fact, so young that I thought the problem was lack of talent and practice. Those who applied themselves to playing better music, I thought, won out in the end. Boy was I dumb, but it’s not like there were any mentors or role models in the towns we lived in.
It was after I was 18 that I found out the hard work was finding people with the right attitude. And that problem centered on guitar players. I never did have anything like the trouble others report with vocalists. Could be, I speculated, because I could fake guitar but I could not sing. Singing was a mystery that I thought required talent. When I learned the folly of that and could sing practically overnight, I still didn’t have problems with singers. Make sense? It was always them damn guitar players who think they are the center of the universe that introduce all the ego and drama they are constantly calling down.
See how that works? The minute you think they are wrong, it is automatically you who are supplying the ego and drama. Why, they are just trying to steer the band in the right direction and you guys don’t even appreciate that. That pretty much describes the majority of guitarists. They come in two basic subcategories. The ones that don’t realize that is what they are doing and blow a fuse when it is pointed out to them, often for the first time in their little lives, and often by somebody like me. The other bunch feel that trying to remake the band in their own image is the natural way the gods made the universe and can’t believe the rest of you don’t get it. To think all of this began in 1980, the decade after the electric guitar established itself.
How so? Because these guitards happen to know that before that time, all music history and theory was only so much bunk. Those European composers may really have know their stuff, but they weren’t playing a ‘57 Strat with silver flat-wounds and humbuckings through a stack of Marshalls. So what do they know? It’s useless to point out details like Clapton wasn’t that great and plagiarized most of his material because they’ll always retort by asking you if you know how much money he made. I didn’t say, but this is the behavior I’d expect from teenagers, not grown men over 40 and 50. It’s a weird demographic at work, because if anyone looks to see, most guitarists who do play out regularly after that age are the ones who think like me. Maybe it takes them that long to clue in?
So this morning, I reviewed last week’s efforts. The one guy who hasn’t played in a bit, I’ve got to keep him going if he wants. Each person gets my explanation that I have to keep going with others until the one person learns the sets (since they are joining an existing working situation, that is a priority). I can’t command anyone to practice, but I can introduce the element of competition. In this case, there is only one, that’s the guy from Lake Hamilton. We played twenty songs instantly and while he had some problems he should not have had, right off the bat he did a better job than the others. Thus, my decision is to follow up with these two guys for now, letting the cards lay where they fall.
One of these guys will move faster, but that won’t eclipse the other guy this time. The Polk County music scene could be described as a small group (around 11) bands that take in the central area. The county is too big to travel one end to the other, so the competition overlaps, but does not over-extend. Beneath that layer are (based on Craigslist ad as the only media that spans the area) some 28-32 drummers, 12-16 bassists, 8-10 vocalists, and around 90-115 guitar wannabes. This group does not perform, instead they waste incredible amounts of time, their own and others, trying to avoid the hassles of forming a group by finding that magical instant fit, namely a band that has enough sense to bow to their superior taste in music and back them up.
Both got up and walked away.
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Regarding the above, I have never yet got into a band with a guitar player who thought he was dictator. I weed those out pretty quickly because to date not one of them was capable of learning new music. Whatever the reason. Basically, the ones that got to stage were gifted amateurs who listened and learned. So, am I guilty of the same behavior in reverse? That depends. By the first hour, I’ve laid down some basic parameters, and even those tend toward the financial over the musical. After that, they are free to play or do any tune that fits the formula. This would be “rules” like no slow music, no guitar ballads, and no blues. I can’t charge top dollar for that stuff. The sign says, after all, that this is a country band, not an extension of the guitar player’s personality. Get over it. That still leaves them with several million songs to choose from. But they never do.
They also learn the tunes must be arranged for duo and I realize what a head start I have on that. But the rules are easy and there is no reason they could not extend the effort. You must play everything rhythm that is supposed to be there, just like how I never leave out a bass note that is in the original—as long as it does not change the character of the tune. No Zydeco. I do more than just the bare bass, obviously, but so can they on guitar because I’ve seen it and heard it. I put in the time to get there and they can do the same. Or shut up.
The reality is once when we get on stage, the response is so overwhelmingly positive that they decide to leave the arranging up to me. It’s not all one-sided; around a quarter of my song list is tunes introduced by a guitarist at the time. What guitarist can say that about his drummer or bassist? But now, when I look back on the struggle the real obstacles are in the guitar player’s mind. Unless you can come up with some other explanation of why I can play my entire song set solo on the bass, nobody will listen. I didn’t set out to solo, like most I first thought of the bass as a backup instrument. But I learned. Did they?
That’s actually a bigger picture. I was also raised to believe you grew up, you got married, and you spent the rest of your life working to pay off a mortgage. That seems just as silly now—unless you ran with the crowd who bought into it. That would mean definitely don’t even try to say the other guy is wrong, especially a guy who retired in his 40s and never used a credit card. Yet, that is parallel to what guitar players are constantly trying to pull off. Somebody oughta write a book.
It brings to mind what Lady Nik was saying toward the end. That her hero in Tampa was telling her this band was all wrong. Playing the wrong music, etc. Lady Nik quoted the hero had 20 years experience, remember that? I told her to tell this hero this band’s bassist had twice that amount. But, it was what she wanted to hear, that this band was not glamorizing the guitarist and that just ain’t right. If you want the skinny on what happened last Saturday, let me put it this way. If that guy can quick learn my easy material, we will be a deadly force to contend with. And that includes Tampa.
Conclusion: I was right about the huge pent-up demand for a country band that played classics in this area. Consistent full tip jars and standing ovations are my evidence. If anybody thinks I’ll throw that away over some guitarist’s clone version of “Hotel California”, they got beans for brains.
ADDENDUM
So, let’s put things to the test and go out an actual night club this evening. It’s a Monday, so theoretically all the women tired of the bar scene should be here tonight. It’s the only time they can go have a few without the mob. They know there’s only two types of men on the roster. The deadbeats and the potential suckers who stumbled into a Monday night bar by accident. How about we take a look around? First off, we got Sally. Tattoos, cellulite, pierced parts, body odor, laughs like a hyena. Oh look, there’s Gail, four kids, spending her welfare check—don’t worry, she’ll make it up later in the month. She always does.
Is that Jenny? Buy her a round and she’ll tell you that tale how her mother/uncle/whatever died and left her a medical clinic. Again. Or Brenda, who is convinced she still fits into her teenage daughter’s jeans. Can you spell “muffin top”? Or good old Mary. Don’t quiz me on these names. The 40 or more guys known to have seen her naked swear it is not something the uninitiated can stomach. I picked up that much looking at her varicose veins.
And there is Karen, with her hair dyed brown because that blonde thing was not working. This is the classiest joint in town, guys. They got your $6 beers and your two-bit women. All them gals who bitch they can’t find men are not here tonight, where they would be outnumbered nine to one, not even counting Marky. You yourself may one day find your body needing Markey’s same 5-6,000 calorie per day diet, forcing you to bulk up with pizza, popcorn, pickled eggs, and pouches of product claiming to stem from potatoes.
Why, here is Sharon, the belle of the ball. Thirty-eight, four kids under 16, puffy but not fat yet. Lookit the guys stare. She’s the best that came in yet. Sharon has standards, you know. Sharon happens to like medical examinations, especially the probes required by male interns under 25. I think she writes her phone number on the washroom walls. They say she was in the county beauty pageant less than 20 years ago. I’ll take their word for it.
And because this gif is so popular, I'll make it my first intentional repeat. The others were, you know. Hey, this is a major documentary of contemporary American life. I like to think my existence is a lot less repetitious than usual.
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