One year ago today: February 16, 2021, fancy & equally heavy.
Five years ago today: February 16, 2017, a very scientific mix.
Nine years ago today: February 16, 2013, junkyard of the democracies.
Random years ago today: February 16, 2008, we jail you in style.
I’m outta Tennessee for a while. The lovely weather doesn’t fool me, I was in Cookesville by 8:30AM and grabbing pancakes in Sparta moments later. I was through town too early to shop the Thrift, and for some reason I was just not making good time today. Fifteen hours on the road, though I made one side trip near Macon. I kept seeing the sign for an Air & Space Museum, but it turns out to be on a military base. Nor did I enjoy the drive as much as usual, though the new van performed admirably. I listened to audio books most of the trip.
I began listening to “Drums of Change”, a farcically naïve plot of the paradise the various tribes like to imagine they lived in before the white man arrived. True, the women were treated like cattle and the tribes loved to torture captives, but overall, they were happy to have soft moccasins. First, you kill all their buffalo, then you send them Catholic priests to feed their souls. Right down to today we are reminded how the white man destroyed their great civilization that somehow never thought of domesticating any of the buffalo. Apparently some things like seeing the white man build corrals and such had so little impact they never even gave it a try.
Here is a picture of machinery in America’s heyday. This is an original auto engine hoist, designed to be bolted into a concrete base. It’s been decades since this tool has been seen, this one is just advertising. It’s just a reminder of the wonderful days when practicality and not skinflint economics was the American way. Fact is, millennial America had to get rid of these devices. Because they lasted forever.
Missing the Soddy-Daisy corner, I drove through Chattanooga and it seems they finally have the freeway paved and finished. That’s after what, four years that I know of. It works like this, all the dimwits who screwed up the entire Tennessee highway system were then hired by the State of Florida and put in charge of things. I tanked up in Dalton and Valdosta, a fill-up has gone from $40 to $62. I crossed the Florida-Georgia border just as darkness set, but what luck. There was a slight haze and a full moon.
This surprised me and the Moon was so bright you could not see the stars. My aversion to driving after dark disappeared, and I continued all the way here. Nothing about this trip is a headline, rather this was the most routine journey so far. However, I counted three separate samples of how many trucks I passed. It works out to twenty trucks per minute, so in the 600 minutes of freeway driving this trip, I passed a theoretical 12,000 truck in 745 miles.
And we hear on the news another instance of police abuse of records. American law is quirky about private records, in that if I tell a doctor or a policeman my name, that becomes their property and not mine. The police have been exposed using DNA databases to reach back into the past and charging people with ancient crimes. The event if focus is some lady in San Francisco who gave a DNA sample over a rape case was fingered (no pun intended) for a years-earlier burglary.
My stance is simple, the DNA sample was given for a one-time specific usage and should have by law been destroyed thereafter. If another sample is wanted, they should have to get another warrant. Phone records should not be used at all without a specific warrant that limits and lists what charges may be filed no matter what they find. The police cannot legally keep this data unless you give it, but they trick you into giving it. For example, the Los Angeles cops letting people off on petty crimes like “walkling your dog without a leash” if they consent to a DNA sample. Most Americans are too trusting or too naïve to spot the danger.
Useless Guadalcanal.
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How about that call from Parson? Disguised as a concern about the weight of their bass amp, the reality is despite former agreements, nobody wants to move it for me. It is so heavy, I cannot pick it up. It’s another instance of how petty bands can be, but I do the job well enough that I don’t much worry about being replaced. Is that a concern? It always is. Bands don’t come with HR departments. “Gee, Parson, I’d like to get this band back to square one with the stage presence thing. This band doesn’t have problems, it has challenges. Can I circle back to you on this one? Please let me know the asap.”
The reason bands so often react like this one is because they know I am not doing anything wrong they could point at. Which complicates things for them. At this juncture, I would point out that there is absolutely NOTHING stopping any other person from stealing the show, if that was their intent. I would welcome it as a change and a challenge, but in this instance it is my playing and if they want me on bass, losing some of their kudos comes with the territory. The question for the moment is, how is my experience going to make this backfire on them? (Such activity on their part, you know, has to be discouraged.) They now refuse to help move an amp I cannot even lift because the crowd likes my show, I mean what could go wrong?
First, take a look at my bass setup now. See the Fishman on top of the 15” custom reflex speaker? I’ll get to that, but this means I now take as much time to move my own equipment plus a quarter of the shared gear, where I used to be there for the whole move. Where before they had the comfortable and predictable sound of a 1970s bass amp, it is to be replaced by super-gear designed to throw a lush, smooth & swirling bass sound into the center of the dance crowd.
Now I play through what is essentially a concert-sound bass PA system that seems to emanate up from around knee level. And it is detached private system which they cannot adjust like they used to (it took them two gigs to figure out turning me down was not the answer). They will relearn the crowd is listening to my bass, not my volume. Once again, a band will have to deal with an audience continually asking me to turn up, which I never do. Well, make that rarely. Don't mistake this for me being cranky, all you have to do to get your share is do your own homework. That's a tertiary concern, I add, you see, once gigs begin, most bands rarely set up and rehearse again, whereas my entire system weighs less than 35 pounds and I can easily keep my playing up to snuff.
I did not design this system to compete with this band, rather it is the only other bass system I have and it was definitely configured to make my normally quiet bass playing almost a separate but integrated studio sound with the best elements copied from Carol Kaye. It surely astonishes me how little this band knows of the ways of the performing world. I want to meet this pro drummer the hired for the gig. And it is times like this I’m reminded of just how much musical equipment I’ve misplaced around here over the years. I can’t find my XLR to phono adapter.
