July 7, 2019

Yesteryear
One year ago today: July 7, 2018, I built this.
Five years ago today: July 7, 2014, Greenwich Mean Time.
Nine years ago today: July 7, 2010, MIDI – has no user manual.
Random years ago today: July 7, xxxx, WIP

           Food picture time. Here’s some baked boneless chicken thighs, my long-term favorite. These are covered with a lime-coconut sauce of no particular recipe. Otherwise, it’s into the oven forty minutes at 350°F. I like my dark meat a little overdone. This is fresh out of the stove, and look, in the moment it took to go get the camera, two pieces disappeared. I’ve eliminated the butler, maid, gardener, and the professor from the suspect list. And the Reb, well, she’s a vegetarian and 750 miles away. Just don’t underestimate her resources. She’s smart enough to do it, and I like such women. Opposites attract.

           I’ve made an effort to search out organic produce, but don’t know enough to confirm much yet. She recommended Smart Balance™ spread but it contains 16% less vegetable oil than the generic brand I’ve used for years at a third the price. What I mean by content, is what oils? I’ve asked before since when did coconuts, cotton, and palm kernels become vegetables? Smart Balance™ lists olive oil. But is that necessarily any better? It is certainly overprice since the source is reputedly a Mafia operation. Plus, I’ve had olive oil before that was most definitely some kind of blend.
           I may have the brand wrong, I know there are several different spreads with this same name. I can’t tell the difference but this is the one that is most readily available in this district. Now, excuse me while I crawl under the house. Got to work up an appetite, y’know. The red color to the chicken is a sprinkling of paprika and creole seasoning. You are welcome to come over, but finding this place is a bitch. Especially since I don’t give out the address very often.

           It will be a while before I crawl under there for some pictures, but two hours of clearing the path and I’m worn out. But the job can’t wait. Behind one of the old walls I found a handful of nails one of the builders must have dropped. After all these years, no rust, yet they are not aluminum. I’ll save them to test later. It’s the corner where I stacked everything while working on the rest of the place, so there’s a few more hours moving stuff around. See, now I wish I’d build that outdoor shed when the going was good.
           Storage was always a premium around here and a bigger place is not the answer. I’d just accumulate more. This forms part of my aversion to roomies, I have too much to keep track of on a month-to-month basis. If it disappears, I may not know till the next quarter. Amusingly, this is where my barmaid enters the picture. She’s hard-nosed about possessions and is convinced someone like the Reb could be just out to help herself. After all, I own a house and she doesn’t. The logic breaks down because why would the Reb steal anything that she could take without asking? The American system is based on the fact few people have anybody they can really trust. I neither trust nor distrust the Reb, but she cannot steal a thing from me.

           Another couple of hours gone by. I have to stop for a rest every fifteen minutes even though it’s light duty, like sweeping. So there’s progress. I’ve got that Sunday afternoon rock show on Boss Hogg, the one that still boggles me. They play hits from my own prime time and I never heard a lot of them. I recognize names, like Peter Frampton, but some of his “biggest hits” mean nothing to me. I counter saying a lot of that music is slow ballads. And slow music rarely means anything to me until 30 years later when I hear it in the car. Maybe. I keep needing tools from the shed and it has been pissing rain steady for hours. Buy a house, they said. It’ll be fun.

Picture of the day.
Ulukhaktok.
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           For those who have been around long enough, here’s a familiar sight. The 30-ton stubby between the joists, a cinder block at the ready, and the scene of a lot of work. The area is clear and I can now see the piping for the shower and where it goes underground to the back hose bib. I found several lengths of iron pipe with very careful markings, but no clues what they are for. I set them aside. To the left is the wall to get 24 duplex outlets.

           This is destined to be the main work station and recording area. There will be 12 outlets per twenty amp circuit, which is over code, but they are all GFCI protected and the outlets higher than 24” are intended for low-drain computer equipment. I’ve invented the cover story these are handicap outlets, as allowed by code. Those can be mounted at almost any height. I prefer the height of computer peripherals lying on a standard desk.

           The visible wiring is one of the bedroom circuits and a dedicated line to the A/C. This place will not suffer from electrical problems. The blocks will be sunk two deep around center of the open space here, with a new support beam completely under the bathroom floor, propping it up to original height. Two of these laminate beams are planned. Following that, a complete new bathroom drainage system, then it’s connect the water supply, which is mostly in place already. Like the rest of the premises, once the situation is functional, how it looks remains a future concern.
           Once more we hit the blight of DIY renovations. I cannot find the extra electrical wiring, though I know there is 60-foot roll. I can’t even find the box of yard leaf bags I brought back from Hermitage last Sunday. I’m thinking of roughing in the CPVC for a new shower without deciding to connect it. The piping is cheap enough. I would like to have it ready and I want the faucets up at shower height. There’s a spout if anyone wants a bath, but that hasn’t happened yet.

           You know what needs fixing? Those hammer-in electrical cable staples that never work. You know the ones, you bash your fingers getting them started between studs, and then they never go in straight. Maybe there is a trick to it, but they don’t say on the package. I made the error of buying a big box of them instead of the type with the two little nails. Boss Hogg had a feature whereby they played the songs of the ‘70s that reached number three on the charts. The idea, I think (I was under the house), they tell you what tunes made first and second, you try for the third. This completely gasted my flabber. I could not name the tunes, nor recognize the band. And this was my college years.
           All the big hits were in the pocket. But go just a tad deeper and I’m out. I don’t even remember bands like Manhattan. Some of the passages were “oh, that song” identifiable. If there was a pattern, it was a lot of the tunes were McCartney style where it seems he writes the lyrics and then makes up music to fit the syllables. I prefer the music that has a better balance.

           Not bad, a five-hour day for me. I earned myself a Budweiser and I’m going out at 8:00PM tonight. Maybe out on Highway 60, where they have real honky-tonks. No lounge lizard Sundays because of the prices and the crowd. I want to roll up my sleeves and do some sketching. You know, it would not be all that difficult to move the water heater somewhere outside, maybe the north side of the building. The spot behind the bathroom would be ideal except for the location of the window, but let’s not be hasty.
           It was and will be grungy work under there, you don’t want to do this for a living. But, when finished, it will represent that I can, in fact, fix up a house by myself. All that remains other than the plumbing, a chore no doubt, is finishing work. My sentiment is that if I can learn the hard parts, finishing is a matter of practice. And speaking of practice, I now have a handle on 51 of the 65 tunes on the active list. The few remaining are either too old or too new. Items like “If I Die Young” I have not heard yet. That will be remedied tonight. Did I accomplish things in music today?

           I’d say so. That song “Baggage Claim” was meh for me, but once I adapted the Joe Cocker bass line, I began to inspect the instrumental break. Hmmm, one of my hallmarks is, where possible, to put a mind-boggling bass patch behind all guitar lead breaks. I’ve become ace at this, careful to always retain the notes that count, so the guitarist cannot really complain. Most of them have substantial reasons for wanting as full an accompaniment as can be when they are riffing. Usually, they can’t imagine anyone co-existing in the same space. I consider it unprofessional to play the same patterns as the rest of the song behind a solo.
           Nor do I use volume, it is usually after a lead break that somebody will ask me to turn up. I pretend but never do. Ha, what used to irk Bill (the lead player from Hollywood) is when somebody would tell him to ask me to turn up. To a guitarist, that is a supreme abomination. (But even that repeated occurrence never shook their idée fixe that I was “just a bass player”, and thus at the bottom of their pecking order.) Once I spotted the guitar pattern on the bass of “Baggage Claim”, and that is was studio-injected, that tune is about to become a key segment of my presentation. Thanks to Joe Cocker.

ADDENDUM
           Mild insomnia means I tore through the Nashville song list at 3:00AM. In the soundproofed back room mind you. And I finally played the four or five Eagle’s tunes on the list. Repetitiously boring chord patterns, but it fit the spirit of the times. It was the end of America’s greatest era since the war. But the eldest of the hippies were already over 30 and selling out to the system. That’s your first tier of Boomers, who although the system was not ready for them, got most everything they wanted via government programs designed for a much smaller population. Like the last good public schooling, although you often found over thirty students crammed into each classroom. The second tier Boomers got the leftovers, the third tier got practically nothing.
           I retrieved my five-string from the shed. The strings are corroded from the damp climate, but everything seems in good order for the years it was out there. I’ll work on it myself or get it to the shop, as I see little alternative to learning this instrument. Pooh-pooh to those who say switching is easy because it is just one extra string. Nope, that’s a dumb as saying a typist can switch between qwerty and Dvorak. It does not work like that. There is something wrong with the phono jack, a standard plug will not insert.

           My intention is to switch to this bass on stage for certain tunes. “Black Magic” comes to mind. At the volumes I usually play, I have never checked if my equipment is rated for the lower notes. I’ve probably been told to turn up louder more than any other bassist you’ll ever encounter. Claim: I likely may be the only five-string bassist in Nashville who uses a pick, certainly the only one who uses a nylon thin (better sound, faster action). It’s the time line. Claw bass was popularized by every bass school I know of beginning in the 80s. At that time, five-string instruments were a specialty item. Thusforth, the bulk of bassists who can play a five-string would have been influenced away from using a pick long before the instruments were even familiar. Whether they began on four strings and switched, or started with five strings, it is doubtful using a pick even crossed their minds.
           Now append the age factor. Most bassists older than me would unlikely have much reason to make the changeover. So when I pick up a five-string, I’m stepping back into a realm where I’ve played with a pick for some forty years. While I’ve seen a few bass players using a pick, I’ve never seen any one of any age doing so with a five-string. In Nashville or anywhere. So there’s the basis of my contention.

           I should be less harsh when I say the Eagles have weak bass lines because they are really guitar licks. Give a listen to “Already Gone” and you hear these guitar parts moving all over the place behind the rhythm player. Don’t get me wrong, I can ace this type of bass playing, but the more notes you play, the less power you have. I credit the Eagles for achieving a fantastic balance with it. What I do is punch these notes up just a bit by playing them mildly staccato and “leaning into” the chord changes. I’ll give you another of my “anti-lead” techniques when the guitarist starts showing off.

           It’s the psychology of the guitarist you work with on this technique. These egotistical bastards are completely unused to stage competition—I speak from experience, having learned all this for you at great personal risk to myself, yadda-yadda. You know how solo guitarists will often equalize down so their lower notes clash with the bassist? They refuse to change that simple knob setting because they want to retain their solo sound even when accompanying. Besides, they’d forget to change it back and that won’t do.
           Here’s how you get one of them. Take the bass lines up an octave where the clashing goes the other way. Use this sparingly, just to give him the hint. I’ve applied it heavy at times, but careful that you can play the lead licks flawlessly because his knee-jerk reaction will be to crank the volume. I’ve got a guitar player joke for you. Q. How many guitarists does it take to eat an armadillo? A. Three. One to eat the armadillo and two to direct the traffic.
Okay, so it’s really a Karaoke DJ joke.

Last Laugh