One year ago today: February 7, 2019, Tennessee ground cover.
Five years ago today: February 7, 2015, a familiar ring . . .
Nine years ago today: February 7, 2011, eyeing a new scooter.
Random years ago today: February 8, 2014, another 500-songer.
See the fence in this picture? Neither do I. That was near hurricane winds, whipping right through everything here right off the Gulf. But warm enough that I had to work without a shirt. This is Florida, things to go wrong at around three times the normal rate. I have books that fall off shelves by themselves, and one kitchen cupboard where things keep rolling out onto the floor. Due to the settling floor, they have to defy gravity to manage that. This is looking from my front yard to the back, past the wreckage of my fence. That’s the sticks lying on the ground. The blast took down an eight-foot section, oddly in the opposite direction of the storm. I’m not finished looking for damage but the chicken coop didn’t budge, if that’s any consolation.
I counter saying the enduring pattern with live music is not a history of gradual gains and increasing tax returns. It is very much based on chance and circumstance. My argument would be anything that lessens the odds of success under such a regime, if inflicted by others, is most definitely harm and harm is actionable. The only decision is placing a value on it. I doubt many musicians would be willing to openly discuss their earnings even if that revealed an advantageous curve. Another disincentive is that with one or two exceptions, every musician I’ve met in Florida was on some kind of government assistance. When I stop back to think of how the Hippie was paying his bills, I know damn well it wasn’t from giving guitar lessons twice a week. See today’s addendum for a deeper analysis of my musical direction.
By the way, guess who I saw last evening all alone? The mother from the all-girl band I almost teamed up with. I said hello and that I was still looking. There is something so wrong where she is coming from and going I can’t imagine. I know why I’m here in the middle of nowhere, but what’s she doing here? I was going to buy her a drink and opted out as that’s what all the other guys were doing and I don’t think she’d distinguish mine. She seems to have a predilection for burly gruff looking big fat men. It is difficult to say if that is her preference of just the local norm. But they are the type of men about as opposite of me as it gets. Thank god for that.
Gasprom Neft
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Agt. R also named several other plants around the yard including that “bean” plant outside the back bedroom window. It turns out to be a seedling from that tree in the neighbor’s yard I called the pistachio tree. It’s a fast grower, around 15 feet this season alone, but he says it can be cut back and trained. Either way, I’m moving it. There is a hedge plant, which I immediately took cuttings and also a bright leaf kind of shrub he calls Mexican heather. I took sixteen cuttings from that.
It was a day in the yard and I harvested a cup of collard greens. Agt. R showed me how to top them and keep them producing. They have a pretty small yellow flower, there might be a picture of it somewhere nearby. I also planted a small row of green onions slated for harvest in early April. I’ve begun tapping into that rich black dirt in the back, it seems to be 18” inches deep before hitting a yellow layer of sand. If that proves consistent, that’s more than enough black dirt to cover the front yard to planting depth. And that’s $225.50 spent on the yard just this afternoon. I could say I regret not spending that on a chicken run, but the budget is always Plan A.
I priced out the logs for the raised garden. The most economical are ordinary fence-posts at $4.27 each. Not the square 4x4 posts, but like the fences you see on farms. I’ll shop for something even cheaper, as I’m going to need around 40 to include planters for the front yard. With all this chasing around today, there was zero progress on the bathroom. Remind me to pick up some potting soil tomorrow; there are some trees on order from the nursery.
ADDENDUM
Skip this unless you want my music described in too much detail I’ll throw in a couple pictures of progress in the yard, but this is mostly about music. It’s my blog and I need to get this down. Think of the wealth of information they’d find here after I become the world’s “most oldest” new country artist. By the way, I’ve given up on the Kaiser. He’s great but going nowhere, I know the scenario all too well. This is more to do with my own endeavor. This section covers a lot of ground, but if you missed reading the blog ten years ago, this is time to go over it again.
For me, this was a discovery and then some. I found out by experimenting with my ancient DVD player, which I still have. Not a regular DVD player, but the portable type with screen. This is important, because I had to get around the anti-copy feature that displayed “Track 01” type info. Most CD player had, and still have, a liquid crystal display that is next to useless unless you have the album jacket for reference. Plus, CDs had limited capability. That’s how my research discovered MP3s. My original solo act was just playing bass along to recordings of cover tunes—and I got a house gig (Jimbos) and I made money at it. Why was this not a wake up call? Because of my almost inborn “duo-mindedness”, that’s why.
I have used computers on stage, but they eventually let you down. And forget Android opsys, it never behaves. One of the worst Android features is the touch screen because you cannot turn it off. There is no convenient way to pick the things up without setting off an unwanted command. I used a portable DVD player and they were expensive back then, around $140. Y’day, I compared that to the DVD player I just bought for $49. They’ve come a long way. This one has a remote and plays any disk out there. They’ve finally started mounting a USB port and including a carry case. Mind you, they still have not the brains to include a pouch for the charger, headphones, and remote—that could take another 15 years since you know what grade of people we are dealing with over there.
Around 2009 I was singing, initially with Karaoke, but eventually making the giant leap to singing and playing real bass, a process that took years. And I was also singing and playing bass to recordings—this is important in a moment, keep reading. However, I was severely limited by this combination to those tunes suitable for my skill level. I still played along to recordings, but had learned to detune the bass lines below 140 Hz so my bass would stand out better. It worked quite well since by then I was used to re-writing bass lines to “sound more like the original”. I instinctively got out my old CDs with my 2009 MP3 sets and plugged them into my new DVD.
What do you know, I can still pull off the old act. This got me thinking. It would never be an A-room show, but Polk County is full of B-rooms. And I admit that since I got back from Tennessee, I’ve put in less than ten hours on my guitar.
I long ago perfected my own methods for recording my set lists of MP3s and today will see if the new unit will play them off DVDs. One such DVD would give me all the music I could ever play. The association here is that since 2009 my set list has vastly improved by my ability to sing along. I now sing Miranda Lambert and Paul McCartney. Thanks to half of last year in Tennessee, I’ve already been singing and playing a much wider range of country music. It’s corny, playing bass and singing, but it’s a better show than what I’m capable of on guitar. Read that last sentence back to me. More importantly, I can now sort of sing harmony, even to recordings that don’t have any in the originals.
It is this change that has me planning again. If I forget quality and go for novelty, I might pull this off. Stay away from any fancy places and put on a show of playing bass and singing harmonies. I’ve also learned how to fake most lead breaks, but that’s another story. It is safe to say there is nothing like it in these parts. I would be back in familiar territory, so later today I’ll make some sample new set lists and run this through the Fishman. I now have the best equipment money can buy. I can certainly use the money.
Later, it works and it’s better than I remember. The USB port is handy, but it juts out from the side of the casing. That isn’t a great arrangement on stage. My ability to mimic singers brings a unique “live” aspect to the sound. The question now is, do I have the nerve to try this on people? Remember that Jimbos was a situation that suggested itself, and I played for tips only so there was no concern over quality and other suches. But the sound is definitely more than good enough for the trailer courts.
Even later, I began to pull music with bass lines I learned for fun. There’s a lot of material there and nobody has heard it played this way before. Ah, did I just hear somebody mention I’m against people doing their own versions, or the Hippie doing the Zydeco version? Close, but that isn’t what I said. What I really said was that before I listen to most people’s own versions, I want to hear them play it the right way first, right being the version that was the hit. I’ve caught countless people on this one. I need to make sure they aren’t doing their own because they can’t play it any other way. You heard me, Jim.
