One year ago today: September 7, 2017, ship-'em to Jersey.
Five years ago today: September 7, 2013, the original panels.
Nine years ago today: September 7, 2009, that $425 wart.
Random years ago today: September 7, 2015, 24 years, yeow!
Is this the day we fire up the cart? Return later or tomorrow to see how that goes. We’ve learned that all we really, really need is the new burners I installed and I know the other guy is rarin’ to make some damn money. We still haven’t gone through the phase where the person running the cart thinks he’s the core of the operation, the only one making money. I took the morning to set the Fishman up inside and am testing speaker operations and the Bingo setup. I’m looking around for things that should have been unpacked over a year ago.
Ray-B is heading back this way, probably around December. He’s got family in Jacksonville, and knowing how that can go, he’ll likely be crashing here. He’s been on the cruise lines several years now so the novelty will be completely worn off. After a while it is like living in a parallel world where you get out of step. Plus, you find out on board is just another pecking order, and with the confined population, that order is solidly fixed. He’s been playing the San Francisco-Hawaii circuit. When he left, I was just learning to sing, so times will be completely different now. If he’s here any length of time, we’ll give the locals a sample. Show them how it’s done in the big city.
The picture is the speaker wires, which I don’t solder unless I know for sure they will be permanent. Yes, one wire is longer than the other. So they can’t accidentally short out if the wires get yanked. Then I went through what few store-bought CDs I’ve got to find the most suitable. Not much. What’s her name from the bakery gave me a box full, but it’s Ann Murray and Gatlin Brothers, most stuff I don’t recognize. There is a Tammy Wynette, but what did I do with it?
I’m heading over to the cart now, see if Agt. R has finally developed a sense of urgency on this evening. It’s a cool day I should be working on the house and my scooter headlight is on the backup bulb. Keep the fingers crossed, I’ve tried so many things that broke even over the past ten or twenty years that I’m due for something to work out by now. These people that tell you to keep trying until you find something, well, they said that in a different America. They said it before every little something you could find, there were not already fifty illegal immigrants already doing it.
Fields of wheat & lavender.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Aha, what did I tell you? Don’t rely on others, don’t leave anything to the last minute. Relax, they said, it’s only Tuesday. Yeah? Get worried, I said, it’s already Tuesday. So this morning I went over to see how much got done. Nothing. I’ve been through all this before, so I went to work. I had warned that unless I get a lotta, lotta unpaid help, this cart will not get underway any faster than what I can manage. Shown here is part of the problems that remained because nobody else lifted a finger. You can see the new grill I installed, but when I went to close the gate, see that notch near bottom center? The grill gas hose won’t fit, I have to enlarge the depth. That is after I wedged that green meltwater bucket into place, and didn’t I leave specific instructions to replace those blue straps with a brand that worked? I also had to clean out the space because over time it became used as storage.
[Photo delayed]
I had to lift out the cooler, install the waste water tank, that was a bitch to do by myself. The hose fittings had long been scattered. It was off to the hardware store because nobody bought the bolts for the license plate, and I normally would not mount a license plate with brand new bolts (huh?) but I was left no choice. I got the hot water working and discovered the sink stoppers were gone. So much for that shelter on the north side of the house that was supposed to be built two weeks ago.
It turns out the supply run y’day was not done, so he’s got to do that today instead of helping me as planned. Now, whenever I need a tool, I have to get on the scooter and drive back to my place to get it. Then, the CD player he gave me, the Sony, did not work. Kept saying “no disc”. It had not even been checked, so we’ll have no music unless I can slap something together. I learned long ago if you make even the slightest engineering change, allow for time to fix the consequences. I replaced some rusty screws with proper stainless steel type which were slightly larger dimension. Now I have an access trap door that won’t shut. And it turns out my associate did not plan for any lighting even though he’s the one who planned a night shift. I’ll dig my strip light out of my nice camper and get out my mantle Coleman.
This, folks, is why the boss gets paid so much more. I’m back home getting ready to drill the new grill plate and grab a sandwich. As it stands, since Agt. R had to get up this morning at 4:30AM to be at work 5:30AM to 9:30AM, by the time he commences operations at 10:00PM tonight, he will have already put in a grueling 17-1/2 hour day of frantic last-minute chasing around. And the cash box? It had no tray on the inside. Not my problem.
ADDENDUM
Well, that was easy. Due to a miscommunication the event tonight was canceled and I never got the memo. The upside is we got the first argument out of the way and the cart went from 90% operational to 100% in this one day. And I know more about fixing hotdog carts than was thought possible a month back. It also makes me the only one who has fired the cart up alone, and I’ve done it four or five times. Makes me the resident pro. (For clarity, the only other person who has done the startup procedure on this cart is Agt. R, who has done it only once, and I was there to quote the rulebook. Right now, the only thing he can do is light the burners, which, mind you , we now know is enough.)
Just bear with me here, this is a complicated thing to describe, and it fell into place kind of quickly. Um, how about I tell you how it went and see if that portrays it. Considering music a must, I grabbed at anything I could. I rejected the Proscan because it can’t be set to shuffle. Then I remembered that crappy mp3 Wal*Mart player. I once optimized it to play my list through headphones because it was only intended for practice, which made it useless for much else. And, even though I have no rehearsals, I kept the Tailgater (battery) bass amp fully charged. I rigged it all together on my kitchen chalk table.
I was stunned by the incredible sound. That solves the hotdog cart music question. Wait, there’s more. I mean an awesome sound, but, but, it was my old song list from way back, the song list I from before I learned to sing. Up to ten years ago, my show was just playing the bass line along to the original recorded. That’s it, I just stood there and played bass. But that is misleading, because I’ve had a distinctive “piano” or “rhythm” style bass since my early 30s. Still with me so far? Okay, but once I learned to sing, I discarded that list. This is the point in time where I discovered I didn’t have to stilt my bass playing like 99% of other bassists when they did vocals, and that includes McCartney. Trust me, this is making sense to some of you.
This discovery, around 2009, embarked me on a long and fruitless search for an accompanist guitar player. Years after, the search is still futile. But what happened to my old list? I never played it again. I mean, why would I? Let me explain that I had electronically lowered the recorded bass lines to a level that made my live playing stand out more. So when this old list started playing, I instinctively reached for my bass. For the first time, I sang and played bass simultaneously along to my old act. How did it go?
Pretty damn nice. I stopped what I was doing and played through a dozen tunes. This is really a great sound. This could work. I sat back and did some thinking, you know, as best I can. My show is not based on winning music awards. My act sells through novel presentation, and there are people making it on a lot less than that. The guy who just plays air guitar old rock tunes has been at it for years, and he doesn’t even sing. And a lot of the central Florida karaoke shows are so substandard it is painful. I need to find another Jimbos.
The logic next is even more convoluted. I could try and fail to learn guitar again, but I’ve stated how that would never rise above grunt level. I may now have the option of vocalizing my old act, and I made a lot of money and such with that. I just got myself a decent sound without hardly trying and another thing that has changed since 2009 is my bass stage appearance. Once again, that’s dealing with a non-musical facet. These days, every tune I play is custom designed for duo work. I found I could lower the mp3 volume by a few percent and this just could work. And I tried a few from the old list that I would not have sung years ago by lack of experience. Hmmmm.
Let’s be clear on this. It would be totally a B circuit act at better-than-nothing joints. But it is a top-notch display of what can be done with limited resources. Musical purists would laugh, but they would be doing so from the audience. There is also the unmeasurable factor of crowd management. Now I wish I had written here how many times I have been paid to play other people’s money on the juke box. I’m not talking juke box hero stuff, I don’t like those guys any more than you do. They play what they want with their own money, I’m playing what the crowd wants with their money. And it happens fairly often. This last Tuesday, I had the whole joint turned around and singing along. Juke box heroes can’t do that.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
