I fell asleep last night dreaming of melodic angles. Not the best way to pass out on a Sunday night, but they would not leave the outskirts of my thinking, even when I tried to think of baseball scores, sheep, and the gal from the elevator.
These days, time becomes compressed into the chunks allocated to whatever is Going On, Supposed To Be Done, and I Would Do If I Weren't So Damned Busy. TV has a lot to say about this, too. This is why I don't have a blog, despite having my name registered in both .com and .net, plus being on several social networks where I do very little other than log in occasionally to see if I have anything to really say. It's all about distractions, these days more than ever: Phone calls. Email. Household duties. Vacation aspirations. Work. Working late. Band. That novel that's becoming that life's work. Songwriting. Photography. Brinking. And somehow, in the 24 hours (give or take 29 seconds) we give ourselves to do whatever in a day, I have to make some of it fit. Which brings me to the source of the angles.
Yesterday morning, I realized I hadn't rehearsed any of the homework we'd agreed to as a band, so I went downstairs around 10:30am, plugged in the bass, and began to play along with The Allman Brothers (Whipping Post... 23 minutes? Not if I can help it), Skynyrd (Gimme Three Steps, and change a line to suit my shirt tastes), The Beatles (Revolution, which nobody but me seems to understand the peculiarity of the verses: 10, 8, 10, 8, and Back In the USSR, a song that was always a cool favorite during my under-ten years because it started with a plane landing... can you beat that? Also, I thought it was a Beach Boys song), ZZ Top (Cheap Sunglasses, which is another deceptively-simple track from a band who apparently doesn't believe in standard blues), and Aerosmith (Big Ten Inch Record, and why not?).
Air On Angles
All classic rock stuff, sure, but it's fun to play. No apologies. It also explains why the band doesn't seem to be all that nuts about playing originals that don't sound like they're from the seventies. Anyway, I worked on these dazzling numbers until they sparkled, because that's what woodshedding does for you, if you're dedicated to taking a big chunk of time away from the rest of your Pressing Affairs to plunk and zoom away. Well, I am that devoted to not looking like a slack jackal. The rest of the band, as I found when they arrived at 2pm, is not quite so ardently slavish to the craft. This is a problem for bands, although much can be deservedly said about improvisation. People who aren't in bands should know what it takes to deliver those zesty tunes to you in a manner polished enough to suit your discriminating ears at the local watering hole: hours of playing the same chords progressions thoroughly until it seems natural to your fingers, instinctually developing an inexplicable telepathy with the other members of the band so you Know When We're Changing Tempo, and making sure the strange turnaround doesn't sound so difficultly mysterious to play as you shouldn't ever notice unless you're a player too. And then you have to have that sunny personality to connect with your audience when you're onstage, otherwise a gig can turn into a strange hour or two of Show and Tell: interesting at best, a good excuse to stay at the bar at worst.
That brings me to a thought about bands and drinking, something that's dappled the edges of my consciousness for years, but I might as well have it out now. When we, as a musical entity, are hired to play at an establishment of imbibery, the owner of the place is looking to get a crowd who will drink, maybe eat, and stick around as they spend money. A good time is what these bars tend to advertise, and live music goes a long way towards getting the patrons to grease themselves up, especially if we're playing OMG That's My Favorite Song!!! So, if the best we can assume of the crowd is a casual, fleeting interest in what's happening onstage, would it be a better arrangement if, upon entry into the club, we just assured them that we'll do an above-average job as long as they keep up their end of the participatory contract and drink like frat boys on Friday, otherwise it's all originals they've never heard of until their bar tabs start bloating? Maybe that's a discussion for another day. Moving on, then...
So we start with a couple of new originals at rehearsal, and one of them has potential to be pretty good, one sounds like the other in a different key (well, the guitarist's capo is two frets down from the other, and capos are a bass player's natural enemy, sort of like single-engine planes and groupies with moms waiting outside the hotel),
That brings me to a thought about bands and drinking, something that's dappled the edges of my consciousness for years, but I might as well have it out now. When we, as a musical entity, are hired to play at an establishment of imbibery, the owner of the place is looking to get a crowd who will drink, maybe eat, and stick around as they spend money. A good time is what these bars tend to advertise, and live music goes a long way towards getting the patrons to grease themselves up, especially if we're playing OMG That's My Favorite Song!!! So, if the best we can assume of the crowd is a casual, fleeting interest in what's happening onstage, would it be a better arrangement if, upon entry into the club, we just assured them that we'll do an above-average job as long as they keep up their end of the participatory contract and drink like frat boys on Friday, otherwise it's all originals they've never heard of until their bar tabs start bloating? Maybe that's a discussion for another day. Moving on, then...
So we start with a couple of new originals at rehearsal, and one of them has potential to be pretty good, one sounds like the other in a different key (well, the guitarist's capo is two frets down from the other, and capos are a bass player's natural enemy, sort of like single-engine planes and groupies with moms waiting outside the hotel),
and one song is a great idea if everyone hears The Big Picture first. That does not happen, and so we start skipping along this Great Idea with no pre-viz, and it just thuds. The drummer's not interested in a song that doesn't sound like a form of rock, and the keyboardist just aggressively pounds away, and I'm thinking it could really do us a world of good, or a rehearsal of efficiency, if we'd sit down and listen to stuff before we start to hammer away on it. Oh well; so much for the next hit single. And then our lead singer has to leave, and the rest of the band switches into Rock mode, and we plod through the same three songs again, only because the guy who wrote these songs tends to be the guy who calls the set, and I can sense disquiet. Meanwhile, my fingers are really working away, and the four Rockstar Energy Drinks I've been consuming instead of a normal lunch have been turning hyperactivity into hyperawareness and a bright golden stream of urine, and we shift gears.
We start playing some of the standards we've already learned, which makes this more of a practice than a rehearsal, I suppose. One Way Out, Come Together, Hey Joe... I never thought I'd find myself singing any of these songs, back when I first started playing guitar. Other people's songs were, well, theirs. Not mine. Plus it seemed like a lot work to learn all those other chords when my songs were chock full of ones I'd carefully chosen (read: accidentally found), and I was perfectly capable of writing what I wanted to sing instead of trying to figure out what someone meant by 'he got monkey finger, he shoot coca-cola.' I'm starting to figure it out, but that doesn't make it right, John. But my songs, hm. They're not classic rock territory, and it's difficult to find like-minded players who will learn somebody else's originals...
We start playing some of the standards we've already learned, which makes this more of a practice than a rehearsal, I suppose. One Way Out, Come Together, Hey Joe... I never thought I'd find myself singing any of these songs, back when I first started playing guitar. Other people's songs were, well, theirs. Not mine. Plus it seemed like a lot work to learn all those other chords when my songs were chock full of ones I'd carefully chosen (read: accidentally found), and I was perfectly capable of writing what I wanted to sing instead of trying to figure out what someone meant by 'he got monkey finger, he shoot coca-cola.' I'm starting to figure it out, but that doesn't make it right, John. But my songs, hm. They're not classic rock territory, and it's difficult to find like-minded players who will learn somebody else's originals...
makes me wonder how Springsteen ever got his band to go along with the idea.
My mother calls me occasionally with suggestions for cover tunes: The Night Chicago Died was offered up this morning, in fact. She and Dad recently saw us play one night until 1am, and they were justifiably impressed. Not a conceited statement, because we were On that night, and we stayed On for two hours. Plenty of bar tabs that night, too. It's a powerful source of pride to see your parents at a table, grooving along to what you do for something other than mere money, and you can tell they're not enjoying it out of a parental obligation because everyone else in the joint is in that same space. And you still feel like their kid, but you're louder than they'd ever have approved back when you were still two doors down from their room a million years ago, and that feels pretty great for reasons that don't have ready names. The memory shoots back from the last century to last year to last evening, and I'm back to the angles.
My fingers, so accustomed to being let loose on their own after a certain amount of time in a practice, really developed a sentience and didn't take a lot of orders from my cognitive brain after the first five hours. This left me plenty of time to try to make up words to a couple of originals we've been banging out this month, although I really had my heart set on Cheap Sunglasses and Lazy. We go on until about 6pm. and then the final smoke break commences, and the pallid moon rises above the stark trees as we talk about women and military service, one of which I have no experience and one of which I have no formal training. No music discussion, which is a curious thing to me. Then, one by one, they all leave (our drummer is always the last to leave, preferring a conversation to top off the evening like a snifter of brandy and a good cigar),
My mother calls me occasionally with suggestions for cover tunes: The Night Chicago Died was offered up this morning, in fact. She and Dad recently saw us play one night until 1am, and they were justifiably impressed. Not a conceited statement, because we were On that night, and we stayed On for two hours. Plenty of bar tabs that night, too. It's a powerful source of pride to see your parents at a table, grooving along to what you do for something other than mere money, and you can tell they're not enjoying it out of a parental obligation because everyone else in the joint is in that same space. And you still feel like their kid, but you're louder than they'd ever have approved back when you were still two doors down from their room a million years ago, and that feels pretty great for reasons that don't have ready names. The memory shoots back from the last century to last year to last evening, and I'm back to the angles.
My fingers, so accustomed to being let loose on their own after a certain amount of time in a practice, really developed a sentience and didn't take a lot of orders from my cognitive brain after the first five hours. This left me plenty of time to try to make up words to a couple of originals we've been banging out this month, although I really had my heart set on Cheap Sunglasses and Lazy. We go on until about 6pm. and then the final smoke break commences, and the pallid moon rises above the stark trees as we talk about women and military service, one of which I have no experience and one of which I have no formal training. No music discussion, which is a curious thing to me. Then, one by one, they all leave (our drummer is always the last to leave, preferring a conversation to top off the evening like a snifter of brandy and a good cigar),
and I go upstairs to eat a turkey pot pie and check out the recent Battlestar Galactica episode. While I'm watching, my fingers start to take over my brain, showing me patterns of a bass fretboard, descending scales of songs we've never tried to play, down two, one, two, two, skip the a lower string and go down one, up three, triangles of motion from where the music manifests into thunder and melody, up two more and then an octave skip to the first string where it all starts anew. This restless mental rehearsal continues to play out in the fringe of my head until about 2am when I finally decide to lay down and die for the night. Still the movement dances: two-one-two, down a string and start on the seventh fret, up two and down two then back to the previous string, and only when I can't think about anything else does my brain shut off, short-circuited and a whiff of smoke. Ghosts of this are still playing out their Arthur Murray School of Patterns as I write this. Here is the modern bass player's dilemma. Here we go again.
REACTIONSAscending | Descending
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
band would be too strong s word for our little conglomeration....i have spent years with exactly your expressed attitude about cover songs, why learn them when i have discovered my own language....well it sure is harder to find folks who like that rather than "lets all play friend of the devil"....
Thursday, 12 February 2009
That was always the problem for me: getting into a room with a bunch of skilled players and then finding out nobody knew any common songs. Why they couldn't all learn my catalog before dropping by was always a puzzler. The strange thing is, a lot of the incredibly gifted players I've run across don't seem to have much of a yen for writing actual songs, just whatever part of the puzzle in which they specialize. This often leads to a lack of homeworkery. Bloody Americans.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
I love it when a band slips in cool cover tunes. Not classic rock standards, but songs I've heard before but can't immediately put my finger on. Good songs.
(Assumes wheezy old fart voice) Back when I was your age we didn't have all these digital multitrack gizmos. You'd come up with a song and write out a chord chart and then leave it up to the band to hash out the rest of the arrangement. Politics and personalities reared their ugly heads and the song that sounded so good in your kitchen at 3:00AM ends up totally different. What can you do?
A good band is such a fragile, beautiful thing.
(Assumes wheezy old fart voice) Back when I was your age we didn't have all these digital multitrack gizmos. You'd come up with a song and write out a chord chart and then leave it up to the band to hash out the rest of the arrangement. Politics and personalities reared their ugly heads and the song that sounded so good in your kitchen at 3:00AM ends up totally different. What can you do?
A good band is such a fragile, beautiful thing.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
No shit. We don't use digital multitrack whatzits too often, mainliy because I'm the only one geek enough to run one. I'm also the only one to use chord charts, but that's because I end up being the one to remind everyone else how the more complicated tunes are played whenever there's an oopsie. Otherwise, we just use our overcrowded minds to remember stuff and hope everyone's paying attention. And no song ever sounds like your demo once you give it to a band. Not ever.
Saturday, 14 February 2009
I really liked this when I read it in the jury doket, it's good to identify and yes, all of that, all of it!
Monday, 16 March 2009
A few years ago, Hagen and some other friends of ours got together at a lake house in Northeast Georgia my late father and I built. It's my house now if I kick my mother out of it, but kicking her would involve touching her even if shoe-leather kept our flesh apart.
I don't think I was drinking, but whiskey flows like water in that house. And lightning has yet to strike it for all the drugs eaten neneath its roof. So we decided to get on the telephone and harass a friend of ours in D.C. But he wasn't home, Hagen quick-like cracked out a snazzy little melody and some offensive lyrics to leave on our pals answering machine. All I can remember clearly are the lines "Supan, Supan/Who's the homo now?"
Supan being ourr D.C. buddy. We laughed ourselves into levitation.
Anyway, just before this recently past Christmas, Hagen and me and a bunch of other old friends got a long and dead-serious note from Supan to let us know that he was intending to begin living life (outwardly at least) as a woman. Wasn't gay, not planning to have the dick lopped off, just wanted to live as a woman. Kind of surprsising, because he looks an awful lot like Popeye.
Span, Supan/Who's the homo now?
Just another rock and roll story for yez.
I don't think I was drinking, but whiskey flows like water in that house. And lightning has yet to strike it for all the drugs eaten neneath its roof. So we decided to get on the telephone and harass a friend of ours in D.C. But he wasn't home, Hagen quick-like cracked out a snazzy little melody and some offensive lyrics to leave on our pals answering machine. All I can remember clearly are the lines "Supan, Supan/Who's the homo now?"
Supan being ourr D.C. buddy. We laughed ourselves into levitation.
Anyway, just before this recently past Christmas, Hagen and me and a bunch of other old friends got a long and dead-serious note from Supan to let us know that he was intending to begin living life (outwardly at least) as a woman. Wasn't gay, not planning to have the dick lopped off, just wanted to live as a woman. Kind of surprsising, because he looks an awful lot like Popeye.
Span, Supan/Who's the homo now?
Just another rock and roll story for yez.
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