10 posts tagged “music”
Onstage at Southbrook Church, Monroe, NC... with my PRS in hand...
... long blog entry tonight, so get a drink, and settle in... ready?...
... ok, the big event of Sunda was playing lead/rhythm guitar in Danielle's band at Southbrook Church... this is the church I went to with them on my first weekend in North Carolina, and if anyone had told me then that in one month I'd be playing on stage and WITH a PRS guitar, I'd have laughed... yet that's where I was today, so... backstory...
... Danielle has wanted me to be in the band for some time now, and I was resistant, not for any religious reasons but more for personal fear ones... I get very nervous over playing in public, tho once I get up there and do it I do relax... it's just the getting to that point that is the pain... but she had asked me if I would but only when I felt ready... now, last week, when I got the PRS guitar, I really felt it came into my hands for more reason than just so I would have a guitar of my own to play... so the idea was already in my mind when Danielle's regular lead guitarist was out and another new one was in, tho' Danielle worried he was a little new to playing still... so, this past Thursday I went to the rehearsal at the church with my guitar in the back of Danielle's van, with the official reason being so that I could show John any guitar parts he might need help with, as I usually help Danielle with the arranging and figuring out some of the songs they will be playing for service... but Danielle mentioned to the soundman, Alan, that she had wanted me to play, and Alan came over to me and said basically, "Go get yer guitar and get up there, and I'll set you up soundwise"... so there I found myself rehearsing with the band and hoping I was familiar enough with the songs not to make a fool of myself...
... but the rehearsal went well, and I was set for Sunday for the real show...
... jump ahead now to this morning, and up with the sun to pack and let the first waves of fear and panic hit me, lol... I think I drove Danielle a little nuts on the ride to church, as I know she was dealing with her own pre-service nerves... the breaking point came tho when she put the CD of the songs we were performing into the car's CD player, and I asked her why it sounded so much clearer than when we were rehearsing in the garage at home?... and she said, well it's a lousy CD player in the garage, and I said, but OMG, I'm hearing guitar parts I couldn't hear clearly before, things I should I have been more prepared to play... Danielle thought this was a bad thing and that I was going to have a real freakout, but I told her, No, no, this is good, it will get my mind on the music more than the nerves...
... the short run thru the set before service went well, and I was nursing a Starbuck's ice tea and blueberry muffin so I'd have something to keep me running... then before I knew it, it was time to play... the first song went well, and then the minister did a child dedication ceremony before we finished the next three songs in the list... then there was a fifth special song that Jon, Danielle and I did alone during a special offering for the church (they're trying to raise money to create a bigger room for Sunday school services)... that song was a little tough because even tho it was slow, it had to be very cleanly picked and I was using such a light touch on the strings and pick I thought I'd drop my pick... but, made it thru it, the band did awesome and Danielle really shone despite fighting an allergy head cold that was really giving her bad throat problems...
... so now that I made it through the first time up there I'm sure the next time will be easier... this was tougher to me than the open mic night just because it was more serious of a setting, but it was fun to do... and yes, the PRS did look and sound sweet up there, and sitting in the audience for the service I must confess to staring at it more than once... after the sermon, we played one repeat song from the set as the people filed out, and then it was packup time and go home...
... there are pictures of the show, thanks to Jay, and also a video of the whole thing, which once I figure out how to get it on YouTube, I'll post the link here for anyone who wants to go see it... the sound isn't the best as Jay had their small camera in hand, but I think it still turned out damn good...
... also, Saturday, June 6th was a kind of anniversary for me... it was one year ago that I left the bakery back in Cherry Hill... after 11 years of mostly hell and little pay and horrible Christmas seasons... it's been some year since that day, and the story is all laid out in the pages of this blog... but it just amazes me that I went from there, to here in North Carolina and playing guitar again... between the hand problems I was having and then selling my guitars, I really thought I'd never be playing again... but I guess I'm not done with music yet...
... last night was open mic night at the little coffee shop nearby... and yes, we went and yes, I sang alone in front of people... something I never imagined doing... if a few years back someone would have told me, You'll be in North Carolina and singing alone at a coffee shop, I'd have laughed in their face...
... Jay, Danielle and I put in some practice time too during the past week... so we actually had a nice little set put together by Thursday... we opened with "Mama I'm Coming Home" by Ozzy Osbourne, with Jay on electric guitar (his shiny Les Paul and Marshall amp, well cranked!), me on acoustic and Danielle singing... and we rocked it... usually, during most act on open mic night, customers come and go, get their coffee or ice creams and leave... but I have to say when we started playing, people took seats and benches and stayed... so our first song we great, and Jay ripped the solo and the whole thing sounded perfect... then the three of us did "Spoke in the Wheel" by Black Label Society, and again Jay was spot on with the fills and solos, while I did rhythm and Dani sang... I don't think the people there ever heard anything like it before, and Jay got a big round of applause...
... then I backed Danielle for her set... we started with "Standing Still" by Jewel, which Dani sings very well, and it's a good strumming song for me to loosen up with too... then we did "If You Were A Sailboat" by Katie Melua, a favorite song of mine, but very soft and sometimes the coffee grinders were muting the softer parts of the song... but we made it thru and did a good job, tho later we decided we'll have to watch doing songs that are too soft... next up was "Constant Craving" by kd lang, and this was my first little bit of singing in public, as I backed Dani on the choruses... but the piece de resistance was our last song together, "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree"... we first got everyone clapping, and then when I started the guitar they recognized the song... this was our best song of the set, cause we got everyone into it... and I was beating the hell out of the guitar, cause I wanted the chorus to be heavy and to really sound out, and the other guitarist and Jay thought I was going to bust strings for sure, heck, I thought I was going to bust strings, cause that was my intention, to make it loud and heavy at any cost... and Dani belted it out perfectly, so we were feeding off each other for that song... then we pulled out "Dust In The Wind", which I was kind of messy on, as it was hard to come down from the energy of "Black Horse..." to this mellow song, hehe, but we got thru it and I think we could do it better next time...
... so we began to step down, and people were saying, That's it?... and Dani said to me, Well, we could do some of the songs we dont really have worked up yet, OR, you can sing... and I was still unsure at this point, but I said alright, and sat back down... and I did "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley, which I think I do a pretty decent job of... and the nerves sure helped my vibrato in my voice, lol... I didn't know at the time, but the guy who runs the open mic night said to Danielle that I should do stuff like this more, that I was good... I got nice applause after this song, and they wanted more, so I did "If You Could Read My Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot, which I did alright with, I think it needs work... then I did "Coconut Grove", and then I was pretty much done, hehe... so we got everyone back up for a little blues jam to close the night...
... I'm still surprised I did it, that I sang alone in front of people... all my years in bands, it was easy cause I was in the background, I just had to play my guitar, I never envied being the frontperson... so this was really something for me to overcome, and I think I did well... put it this way, I plan on going back and doing it again... I'm already thinking of songs I think I can pull off... there are some pics of the night, and when I can get to them I'll post what I can...
... first, it's been very warm here, in fact, amazingly warm for me for February... up north this is usually the worst month, but it's been near 70 here in Flowery Branch... I took both of my friend Janis' dogs out for long walks yesterday, up and down the hilly roads, past the beautiful houses and still-bare trees, past other dogs barking either out of duty or jealousy... one neighbor had a trio of small dogs he was taking for a walk, and they went wild when they saw us walking by... the man waved and smiled, and I said, "You have a chorus there!", and he laughed... and hawks, there were hawks everywhere... at one time I counted 14 circling overhead... the other week I saw 6 and thought that was a lot... back in NJ, you might catch one, maybe two... made me worry tho, as during my walk I saw some small cats in the neighborhood, and I hoped they were keeping close to houses and watching the skies...
... last evening was soft and warm, and before the sun set, the full Moon was already in the sky above the trees... I went out later, after dark and after dinner, to watch it for a while... the backyard here is so dark, but last night the lawn was laced with the shadows of trees and strips of moonlight... Venus was so bright that I would wager if the Moon were gone it would have cast some shadows of its own... Orion and Canis Major were climbing high in the south... it was so peaceful to just sit out there and take it all in... seeing Orion always takes me back to my hometown, and all those years ago when I first fell in love with astronomy... when I first recognized Orion from the charts in my books, and realized that, from there, the whole night sky was open to me... and now here I am looking at it from another state, so many years later...
... I've been reading a lot of short stories lately... some of my friend's upcoming assignments for her students involve short stories they've read throughout the school year, so the reading gets me acquainted and ready for when the grading begins... Janis also picked me up a book the last time she was at the Mall of Georgia, a collection of short stories by Carol Shields, an author completely new to me... so I've had a lot of reading on my plate between that and the usual poetry books I have stacked near where I nest to write...
... I'm also trying to break into doing some freelance work through Elance... it's a site where writers can sign up and bid on writing jobs of all kinds, and my friend helped me get setup there... so now it's a matter of getting my foot in the door, and building a reputation and some clients there... and hopefully, some money too... though I need to tack up my grammar skills even tighter, so I'm also studying up on that on the side so I can take some skills tests through the site...
... ok, music... here's what's been on my iPod the past few days...
"Trademark" - Eric Johnson
"November Rain" - Guns N Roses
"Fade to Black" - Metallica
"Dirty Movies" - Van Halen
"Lullabye" - Concrete Blonde
"Fall On Me" - REM
"Sorry Again" - Velocity Girl
"Take Me Away" - Blue Oyster Cult
"- Human" - Metallica
"Tier" - Rammstein
"Time's Up" - Saga
"When You Were Mine" - The Church
"Antenna" - The Church
"Turn It On Again" - Genesis
"The Rain Must Fall" - Yanni
(This last one is a must-hear, especially the live Acropolis version, with the long bass solo, the bassist just kills on it!)
... and now it's warm again today... lots of birds out back, and I'm trying to look around online and get to know the birds around here... tho I recognize the cardinals and blue jays and woodpeckers... it's nice to hear the birdsong this morning, during this lull in winter on this quiet weekend...
I had an odd thing happen this weekend, tho first, some backstory... recently I put my electric guitar for sale on CraigsList... it's a black Hamer Flying V I bought several years ago, right before my hands went south from injuries at the bakery... after that, I couldn't play without my hands going numb within a few minutes, so that pretty much ended my guitar playing... all this time the guitar has sat on a stand or in the closet, so I figured I'd sell it and get some good out of it, and let somebody have it who would put it to use... finally Saturday someone bought it... the odd thing was tho, earlier in the day I had been cleaning out some things in the closet, and I came across some old pictures, and one of them was of my very first band, back when I was about 12 or so... I had my very first electric guitar back then... I kept the picture out so that I could look at it again later... the odd thing was, after the guy came and picked up the guitar, I went later to the bedroom and my desk in there to find the picture, and it was gone... just vanished... I looked everywhere, on the floor and all over... it was just gone... it just seemed odd, that when I sell my final electric guitar, the only memory I have of my first electric guitar and band vanishes... almost like a chapter of my life ending and just disappearing... it was weird... hopefully I'll find the picture stuck somewhere... but it was weird...
Other than that, it's been a slow weekend, very hot during the day for October... the trees are just beginning to edge into color, and the clear nights have been lovely, with the crescent Moon, Jupiter and Venus lurking around among the treetops to the south and west...
Writing's been a little slow, as my mind has been on other things... but I've still got some new poems to post soon... I had my first submission to the Kenyon Review rejected, but I sent them some more... see what they think of that batch... I've been reading a novel called "Thunder Head" by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, and watching a surprising amount of House episodes on TV... and I guess that's about all the new news from here...
"I think that the time when music could change the world is past," he told reporters. "I think it would be very naive to think that in this day and age."
Young added: "I think the world today is a different place, and that it's time for science and physics and spirituality to make a difference in this world and to try to save the planet."
... and I have to say I agree with him... it's something I've believed for a long, long time... I always thought it was naive when I would hear musicians or artists claim music, or a song, could change the world... or even a poem... I love poetry, and treasure it in my life... but I have never believed it would have the power to change the world... there are just too many people in the world who don't care about music or art or poetry... often they can be the ones in power...
I believe art, music and poetry are here to improve the quality of our lives, to inspire us and help us express ourselves... it doesn't make them any less important, to say that they can't change the world... I think thru them tho, the desire to change the world can be expressed and felt... but work is needed to do the real changing... work, and sacrifice and caring... music especially today is very weak... very corporate... it's lost a lot of its direction... you can thank MTV and the record industry for that... it's hard to find good new music that really means something.
Well, if you know me at all, you know short poems always get me off... so the New Year's been off to a good start for me, it seems... I can't remember the last time I wrote a poem while actually walking home, but I did this morning, the one about the truck passing me by... I just hooked a wish on it's tail-lights as it carried on... tho Virginia or ANYPLACE warm right now would be fine...
I have to say a part of me thought my boss would let me go after the holidays, almost as a kind of "Hah, I got one more Christmas at least!"... but, seems I'm still there for now... tho now comes the long slow haul of the post-Christmas season... when people pay their credit cards instead of buying bread, and their heating bills instead of buying muffins... I give my boss credit tho, he finally raised our prices... we're still competitive with the other bakeries around, but we waited a long time... since summer the costs of flour, butter, cheese and a lot of our other ingredients have gone up tremendously... heck, at Christmas we were paying more than $60 a case for American cheese, and we were using 5 to 6 cases a day to make pepperoni breads and the other specialty breads we make... so cost was hitting my boss hard this season... tho it wasn't a spectacular holiday for us, seems we did alright...
Reading-wise, I just finished a Star Trek novel, one of my guilty pleasures... tho anymore the stories suck... I used to buy every one that came out, but lately I'm more choosy cause I think the franchise has tanked out... it's hard finding good new sci fi books to read these days... and if you've read my blog before, you know I hate when you pick up a book and it's part 1 of 4, or part 1 or 7... I'm tired of series... I wish more writers would write good one-book stories... I say that, but then I'm kind of being a hypocrite, cause my next book is Dune Messiah - I want to reread that series a bit to refresh myself on it... poetry-wise, I've been reading all kinds of things - Bukowski, various Chinese and Japanese writers, David Ignatow, Ted Hughes... just picking up different books each night and settling in...
I do most of my writing on the floor these days... lemme esh-playne... I do have a very nice desk that I love a lot... but so does my cat, Sock... usually when I go in the bedroom at night to read and work, as soon as I turn on the desk lamp, he settles himself very warmly under it, and thus I lose my desk... so, being the animal lover I am, I started settling to work on the floor, leaning one of those chair pillow things with the armrests on it against the bed... I even got one of those breakfast-in-bed trays to write on, and I plug in another desk lamp that I set beside me... it's actually very comfortable... I get the incense burning, and my music is there if I want to listen a bit... so it works nicely... at least til spring and summer come and I can settle on the balcony again in the evening...
Hmmm, how about a little taste of what's been on my iPod these work mornings...
"Seventh Wave" - Devin Townsend Band
"Just An Old Fashioned Love Song" - Three Dog Night
"Southern Cross" - Crosby, Stills and Nash
"Better Man" - Pearl Jam
"Instinct" - Arch Enemy
"She's Right On Time" - Billy Joel
"Mr. Natural" - The Hellecasters
"The New Black" - Strapping Young Lad
"Me and I" - ABBA
"Hallelujah" - Jeff Buckley
"Shame on the Night" - Dio
"The Ship Song" - Concrete Blonde
"Ghostflowers" - Otep
"Run Like Hell" - Pink Floyd
"Jump In The Fire" - Metallica
"Milkman's Son" - Ugly Kid Joe
"Iron Tusk" - Mastodon
"Mayor of Simpleton" - XTC
"Say Something" - James
"The Confessor" - Joe Walsh
Again, a Happy New Year to all my friends... sorry for my rudeness with missing emails and not leaving comments much lately... thank you for remaining my friends.
What's the best music documentary or concert film you've seen?
Well, I've got a few that are favorites, but recently I'd have to say Rammstein's "Volkerball"... the main show is from a concert in Nimes, France, and it is just amazing... I get so wound up every time I watch it... I've been a fan of their music for about 4 years now, and the show they put on is incredible, with the fire and pyrotechnics and even a little bit of theater in there as well... so right now that's my favorite concert film.
A little quote here from Jay Jay French, guitarist for Twisted Sister, in an article in Guitar World magazine, about a show they played in July called Rocklahoma... it's where about 2 dozen 80s bands got together for a festival...
"We've managed to be so successful because we give the people what they want. I mean, who's kidding who? Any band that's been around 20, 30 years, nobody wants to hear or see anything new from them. They want you to look a certain way and play a certain way. So when you come see Twisted Sister, we give you 1984. Period. If it makes you happy, it makes us happy."
I have to say I agree with Mr. French... I think a lot of bands who've been around a long time just don't put out good "new" music anymore... I think such bands had their era where they peaked and wrote the best stuff of their careers, and I think it gets to be a drag when they try to keep making new records... I do understand the need to create new music, and I'm sure for a lot of these bands playing the same old stuff over and over gets dull... but I really believe it's what most of their fans want... heck, I'm a big Paul McCartney/Wings fans, but I think he should have stopped making new albums a while ago... I think such bands should just tour for the joy of it, play the songs the fans love, and leave it at that... I think it's the rare, very rare, band that can keep making new albums that have anything great on them... even Pearl Jam and Dave Matthews are reaching this level, in my opinion... it's almost like you've eaten the main course already, and loved it, but they still keep trying to shove filler down yer throat.
(and FYI, I'm not a Twisted Sister fan... I only wear makeup 'cause it feels good... same reason I wear women's underwear too... lol :P )
I don't know if I've said it on here yet or not, but I think the iPod is the greatest thing since the cell phone... and I am not a paid spokesman...
... I've got the 8 gig one, and I use it every day, I love it for work when I'm baking on my own in the early morn... I've got dozens of my favorite albums and songs on it, but I've also got one special playlist I use in the morning... which aptly enough I've entitled, "Mourning" - since it rhymes with morning, and since it's what I feel like doing these days when I have to get up so early to go to work...
... since I don't do those online surveys a lot of people post, and since I have no cute pictures or poems to post, I thought I'd share some of the songs on this mix list... I keep about 60-70 songs on it, and I change them around almost daily to keep 'em fresh... but here's a sample of what I listened to this morning...
"I Feel Love" - The Blue Man Group & Venus Hum
"Don't Wanna Wait Anymore" - The Tubes
"Cannibal" - Static X
"On An Island" - David Gilmour
"No Leaf Clover" - Metallica
"Killing Loneliness" - HIM
"Interstate Love Song" - Stone Temple Pilots
"Sea of Madness" - Iron Maiden
"Space Truckin'" - Deep Purple
"Hayfever" - Trashcan Sinatras
"Soul Meets Body" - Death Cab for Cutie
"We're All Alone" - Rita Coolidge
"Kiss Is On My List" - Hall & Oates
"Million Miles Away" - The Plimsouls
"Chemistry" - Rush
"Tuesday Afternoon" - The Moody Blues
"S.A.T.O." - Ozzy Osbourne
"Stars" - Hum
"Blueberry" - Lita Ford
"Blue and Yellow" - The Used
Sadly I've been wasting my money lately on new CDs that suck... the new Rush CD was really lousy, I thought... same with the new Megadeth... the latter are a band I've loved for a long time, many of the bands I was in would jam to some of their songs for warmups, but anymore their music just feels forced and posed... I don't know, either I'm getting old or else most new music just sucks...
... and finally, in bee knews, saw my first honeybee of the season in the bakery of all places... was flying around while I was baking the other morning... it was kind of oddly shaped too, the thorax was bigger than the abdomen, made it look muscular... I let it settle on a piece of paper and then took it to the back door so it could go free... but that's still been the only bee I've seen so far this spring.
