One year ago today: April 3, 2023, reading the rule book.
Five years ago today: April 3, 2019, and there isn’t any.
Nine years ago today: April 3, 2015, they stole the can.
Random years ago today: April 3, 2009, Montgomery Street.
When you have not one, but two families of red cardinals, you don’t need an alarm clock. You’ll be up putting clothes in the dryer well before dawn. Then survey your back yard that has needed weeding for weeks and wonder if this is your destiny. Then you remember the world is full of tribes that live thousands of years at subsistence levels who, upon seeing a color TV suddlenly become poor and blame you for it. Yep, I was listening to Tampa radio. That sound you hear in the background is small radios in every work room tuned to the same station.
Here’s another picture tricky to view. It is the clusters of new agave spikes growing out of each “flower” The old petals and leaves have shriveled to a black tangle not unlike tea leaves. JZ says hack this plant down, but how do you do that to something with so much will to live?
A late afternoon phone call found me mostly recovered, jolted from a near unconscious sleep by a phone call. I had got bitten by the Florida tse-tse fly, or it could have been a subsonic climate change speaker, but I was fast, fast asleep. That was Bradford on the line. What do you know, for the third week in a row and who knows how many times total, old Keith can’t make it to his own jam session. So Brad starts calling around to see who can stand in, we can presume he would call me last. Turns out for all the talk, nobody has a PA system, a way to hook it up, or even any equipment but their own personal gear.
[Author’s note: below I will relate my take on the resulting gig, but I am compelled by results to go over a factor that has made a real difference for this band. Theory. It’s not that musicians hate it, but that most are indifferent because, like math, it is not all that directly applicable. So I take this moment to absolutely congratulate the Prez on following through with the study. I understand this is a leap of faith and makes promises over a future presentation few can visualize.
He understood early that this was a different approach [than other bands] but the decision to follow through was his alone, and thus so are the rewards, neener-neener. Yes, there were times where he tried to import this skill with other people and got no further with that lot than I did. One of the few advantages of my method is you can hear the theory when applied, as in “if you want to get that effect, do this when I do that” . By today, dozens of these techniques appear in every last one of our duo arrangements, a very, very difficult process to copycat.
An item you might find merry during our show is the musical terms flung around in our “stage mutter”, such as “ostinato the bass”, “more adagio”, “marcato that”, and “semiquaver”. This has brought more than a few smiles from the rare ones who spot what going on.]
Anti-rape device (& death wish),
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Gee, Brad says he found no PA or truck to move it? That’s as bad as saying they are all talk and no action. Golly, you have to bring enough gear for everybody. And let them set it to their own specs, Keith. What’s more, that gear is going to get banged around. This call came three hours before start time, so I better wake the hell up here. Bradford let it slip the fat boy may be missing the next several weeks in a row “due to work”. Folks, I know this talk is the seamy underbelly of the music trade but you know what I call it when a Florida musician disappears for a month? “Going to jail.”
There is a storm in progress, but it lets up every 15 minutes, so I gave the Prez a call. He’ll be there barring any problems, as he sincerely likes the gig and the location even if it is a fifty-mile round trip. Yep, old Bradford called all around town until he finally decided to get down to where the rubber meets the road and called the right man for the job. I’ve been wanting a reason to set up and test my old PA system. Check back later.
It is now later and we have news, which includes a reminder that this blog is more concerned with the business side of music than usual. If you want only the pretty side, go play the jukebox. Tonight was a big success but as already said, the managment will likely never hear about it. Here’s the facts, you can decide for yourself. Somebody has to be in charge, to have all the cords and cables, music stands, microphones, booms and all the gear others show up without. I’m no expert at it, but others are even worse, so it becomes my chore.
I set up the PA and after rigging things together, it worked okay. Nobody was there the first hour, then a decent crowd began showing when the Front Page (the craft brewery) closed. As they say, it’s a better class of drunk. Here’s what developed, but I can say the Prez was very pleased with the results. We played six tunes off the top of our heads, never rehearsed even once—I would say the Prez is now sold on those hours we spent on theory. Particularly great tunes we managed this way were “Don’t Rock the Juke Box” and another I already forgot. But these were full versions with the crowd singing along.
We aced the show and got a standing ovation for “Sundown” and four curtain calls. Our 9:00PM set ended at 10:30PM. Bradford, who was already set up when we arrived, could not be coaxed on stage. He later said he felt we were “holding it down” which is high compliments from that direction. While no one thing can explain the show, here are the things that were different [than the other guy’s effort] at this Wednesday jam that anyone present could have noticed.
1) It was my full PA system for the first time. No more screwing around with the other guy’s rig and the professional sound was evident. Five notches above the no-show regular, this squelches any talk that the muddy sound was my fault in any possible way.
2) We started later which lets our show catch the end of the evening when the crowd shows. The Prez is now retired and we are able to play later. Tonight we were and hour and a half over. This band can easily replace a part time job, but that is another topic.
3) The Prez is also skilfull at harmonies and the generally better quality of equipment gave us a very smooth sound that elicited much applause. He has been doing his homework with the flat-picking and harmonies, showing a high level of commitment and motivation. My guess is we’ve gained two years in the past two months.
4) A few in the crowd, most likely guitar players, were hugely impressed by this manner of duo presentation. These were the ones responsible for keeping us playing past our slot. Some of our more “ballad” tunes seemed to truly impress many women out there, it is an integrated sound which draws that kind of notice. I guessed right on the sing-a-long tunes, that was me.
5) While anybody was free to jam, nobody did, meaning outwardly this was a gig in all but name. We’ve passed any test that we can put on a full show and our sound cannot be beat by any solo act, a factor planned from the start. The stage time with this duo is now approaching 50 hours and this experience has resulted in remarkable progress.
This is now the 8th month we’ve been a duo, which is a real surprise in itself nowadays. There were disappointments but nothing like most bands experience by trying to get good off-stage. Last moment notice means I did not have the camcorder set up and this would have been a wonderful promo video. Bradford thanked us twice and mentioned something again about the next three weeks. I’m thinking. The fact is, nobody who sees our show now is going to think it is a jam session unless somebody tells them.
Yet everytime we have anybody jam with us, they love the sound. (That could be merely a revelation of how little emphasis the other bands place on theory, but still.) I love music, but I’m also not a cheerleader and this blog talks about music in the context of the entertainment business. For example, the Wednesday barmaid, if there is any break in the stage music more than a couple minutes, she will crank on the juke box with loud pseudo-rap indie and won’t turn it off until she “gets a moment”, which can be ten minutes.
She’s a strange one, I admit I know nothing about her, but yes she is the same one who cannot be relied on for any positive feedback to management. My impression is that bartending is her fallback occupation; she’d rather be someplace else. It has the outward appearance she regards music as one more thing she has to put up with. She did not notice the crowd cheering or chanting “one more” four times tonight. Nor see how we plugged the equipment back in to and kept going. I guaranty you she did not hear the crowd singing along to almost every tune, or the people walking from the billiard section asking us to turn up. She is oblivious to such things, I am not.
Ha, so what happened is Bradford waited to the end to grab his guitar, but he took time to find a couple cables in that unlit band area beside the non-stage. In that gap, she cranked the juke box LOUD and left it there long enough that Bradford’s already sparkless music would have been a downer. So while he brought three amps and three guitars (but no microphone), he never did get to play. Double ha.
I repeat, tonight left no doubt to anyone there the crappy stage sound is the way the fat boy refuses to set or even learn to set his PA. Tonight the crowd heard the same music through a properly balanced system that silences all criticism that my bass was ever “set wrong”. I had to mention that.
ADDENDUM
I’m waiting for the dryer to finish before heading downtown and caught these news tidbits. Computer gamers now consider themselves a digital elite rather than addicts. Have I been mistaking the Callery pear tree for dogwoods? Shows how bad I am at plants, and now I hear the Callery is declared an invasive species. The good media says Trump just made billions, the MSM says he just lot $58 million, we know who the public is going to believe.
There is a confusing court order from Kentucky that confirms the largest violator of civil liberties is Google, who say they have no choice but to turn private user data over to police witout a warrant. False, they could stop keeping such information in the first place. Turns out the police wanted a list of people who viewed three videos which had nothing to do with what they were investigating (money laundering). The search turned up 27,000 suspects, so did the police leave it alone? Nope, they ran illegal searches on all of them. No, this is not okay in a free country.
