One night, very late, very, very late in fact, I was awake watching TV. One of those wonderful Infomercials that tell you that you can make millions by sitting on your ass. Well, there I was, sitting on my ass, halfway paying attention. Well, how do you make millions sitting on your ass? I don't know, none of the infomercial made any sense. Anyway, I was in a sort of fugue- seeing the screen, hearing the words, and not absorbing any of it. Certain words would catch my attention, and my train of thought would shift.

It was quiet, it wasn't much past 4 am probably, but I was still hearing the phones. The damn phones. I always heard the phones. It comes from working at an answering service, I guess. But there, in the silence of a mid February predawn, I heard the phones. I tried to shut them out, but as usual, it was futile. I would hear the phones until the job ended, just like when I worked at a gas station, I would hear the service bell ring for months after I left the job.

In a half effort to forget the phones, I looked out the window. The moon was supposedly full, but it was cloudy out. The light that did arrive from the moon was diffuse. There were no hard shadows, as there are in the summer when the sky is clear and the moon is full. Instead of the silvery touch of a clear night, there was gray, gray and more gray. Frost had formed on parts of the window, and when I stood by it, my breath fogged the glass.

I inspected the parking lot between the buildings. I pondered going out on the porch and smoking a cigarette. The glass was staying fogged up for too long; it must be damn cold out, so forget the cigarette. All was right in the lot. Cars were where they were supposed to be, and the puddles were only a little full of water. A cat ran from the bushes near the driveway over to the Dumpster. My eyes landed on the silver and purple monstrosity known in the house as "The Leeeeeesure Van", and they narrowed. An evil thought or two flitted across the screen of my mind.

There it was, sitting sullenly in the muted moonlight. It's dingy chrome shining weakly through layers of rust, the spare tire looming blackly on the back doors. The windows, and their months of dirt, which had been smeared and wet by dew, were busily forming new runnels of road-muck down the side of the body. It was silent, for once.

The Leeeesure Van was a pin in my eye unlike any other. In the apartment, Donna and I called it "The beastly Family Moleeeesure Van". We never spoke of it without a sneer of contempt. It was hated.

It was often started up late at night, and driven somewhere, presumably the driver was making a delivery of the crystal that was so popular here. Another reason to hate it- it was associated with a speed freak/dealer.

It had a V8, dual pipes with no mufflers, a starter with bad teeth, a filthy carburetor, bad timing, and loose belts. It also had a driver with a lead foot. It was always started like this: The door would slam hollowly, then quiet for a few minutes. The accelerator cable would squeak a few times. Suddenly, it would roar to life, its RPM teetering dangerously on the red line as the driver stomped the pedal to keep it running. The RPM would drop, it would sputter and cough, then die. The process was repeated several more times, then off it would roar, down the driveway. The noise probably wouldn't have been so bad if the van wasn't parked between two buildings that created a canyon, Which made the noise echo off the walls and get louder.
Yes, thankfully, it was quiet..

My vision focused on it; I was looking it over, marveling at how much dirtier it had become, and wishing terrible wishes about it, when there was a flash from the rear, followed by a boom that shook the apartment. I peered at all the windows in the complex; no one else seemed to notice it.

A smile crept across my face. The Leeeeesure Van was catching fast, its windows breaking out, flames licking up the sides. Its evil tires were melting. It caught, and caught well. Through the holes that were once windows, I could see the upholstery flaming up… polyurethane melts, and it looks kind of cool when it does. The fire lit up the apartment complex. I saw a face in the window across the lot, it was sleepy looking. It appeared for a moment, and a look of shock crossed it, and it disappeared into the darkness of the room. I looked over it at the phone, thinking I should probably call the authorities. But a glance back at the flaming van made a grin cross my face again, and I went back to watching the fire. The phone was out of my reach anyway.

I was leaning out the open window, smoking a cig, when the fire department came, the sirens echoed painfully through the buildings, like every other noise. There were a few people standing outside in the lot, wrapped in blankets, in pajamas. They were all watching the van. The owner sat on a curb, a garden hose trained on the van, but the dribble of water did no good. It was too far-gone, and the look on the guy's face showed that he understood that. But there was another expression, under the "there goes my van" look.

Suddenly, I heard Donna's whiskey voice, slurred and incoherent from sleep, from behind me.

"What the hell is going on?" she asked, only slightly interested.

I giggled a little and nodded my head towards the lot. "It's the van. It's barbecued. Toast. Check it out".

Donna came over by the window, bummed a smoke off of me and lit it. Once she was situated, she looked out into the lot. Her eyes widened, "I'll be damned" she said, a trace of glee in her voice.

"Yeah, I was gonna come wake you guys up. I watched it blow up. I thought you might like to sleep, though. It exploded, man, I figured you guys would hear it and get up anyway, but I don't think it woke anyone up."

I went to the fridge and rooted around. . The firemen were just standing there; the van was pretty much just a smoking mass of metal with some flames here and there. There was a package of marshmallows in the fridge and I got them out, went back to the window.

I threw them at the owner. "Hey! This is the best thing your van has ever done! Eat up while it's still hot!" I yelled. Donna laughed. The firefighters gave us a dirty look and went back to talking with the police, who just arrived while I was digging in the fridge.

The owner of the Van shook his fist in rage at us. An officer walked over to him and spoke to him for a few minutes and nodded. The guy was looking panicky for some reason. Then, the officer beckoned his partner over, and the owner was handcuffed and put in the squadcar.

Donna and I stood at the window for a little while, amazed at our good fortune. Then we went to sleep. Me on the couch, her back to her room.

In the morning, we read the paper over Donnas kick-ass pancakes. In the police blotter was a blurb about the "incident", along with the finishing touch- the police and fire department had found the remnants of a portable meth lab.

Pril loves the smell of portable meth labs burning in the morning

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I got a letter from my Li’l Bro a couple of days ago. It’s always great to hear from him. I spent a lot of time drinking whisky and jamming econo with him. My band broke up right around the time I met him, which was fortuitous because I ended up with a friend I was able to spend hours with, just playing music. Sounds corny, too, but I learned a lot about playing music with him at the same time I was teaching him the fragments of theory that I understood. So the lesson there, I guess, is that if you really want to learn your instrument, try teaching someone else. I was working on learning about a six-string and he had just switched over from bass, too. It was the blind leading the blind.

In his letter, Li’l Bro describes how he broke his guitar. Fell out of a tree with it into a lake. That really sort of sums him up. He’s passionate about playing and spends all his free time writing songs. He doesn’t sing well and he knows it and doesn’t care. He doesn’t play with finesse or a lot of technical crap and he knows it, and doesn’t care. He gets better all the time, though. That’s one of the things I learned from him about playing. Play anyway. I poke all my jam night friends with that a lot now.

He’s never performed either, and also mentioned in the letter that he’s ready to take that plunge. As soon as he gets a new guitar, I guess. He’s on the opposite side of the state, and one over, or I’d call him on his shit and go to his town and drag him onstage at an open mike thing. I still might. It’s only a 10-hour or so drive. There’s no better place to learn than in front of 50 other people.

It’s probably a good thing that we live so far away from each other, even though I miss having goofy drunk jam sessions with him. When we hang out together, we get in trouble. Last time, we both went to jail. And then we wrote a song about it. Of course!

He finishes the letter with the usual, “And tell that husband of yours I’ll kick his ass at any video game!”. Which is an ongoing joke. Li’l Bro is merely an average gamer. He hasn’t met the likes of my Smart Half, the quintessential game geek. None of the Smart Half’s friends will play against him because they always lose.

ALWAYS.

LOSE.

At the last MtG tourney he played in, they were down to the top 8 and had to play the Smart Half, and all 8 declined to play him.

No. He and Smart Half have never met. But they will, because I want to see one of them go down in PS2 flames in my living room.

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Sometimes the blues sneaks up on you so fast and so easy, you can’t help but look around to see if maybe R.L. Burnside came up behind you and hit you on the head with a frying pan or something.

This article is going to be about the women of the blues, but first, I’d like to say goodbye to Paul DeLay, one of the great modern blues harp players, who passed away a couple of weeks ago from leukemia. His last show was right here in Klamath Falls, and I managed to miss it.

As I’ve mentioned before, the first blues recording was of a woman, in 1920. Her name was Mamie Smith, and the song was “Crazy Blues”, on the Okeh label. Mamie Smith was previously a Vaudeville performer. The record was a huge hit, and Columbia took note and released the same song by another singer, Mary Stafford. Columbia, by the way, asked that the writer of the song waive his publisher’s royalties (the writer was Perry Bradford), which he would not. Of course, Columbia re-recorded it anyway.

A reader wondered how blues got from the early vocal-based performances to being mostly guitar-driven. Technology, probably, at least part of it. In 1925, microphones were introduced. There’s a noticeable difference in clarity of recordings made prior to 1925 compared to post-’25.

But, more about the ladies, because that’s what this one is about, after all.

Female singers dominated the blues until around 1930. Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith are part of a core group that has come to be called Classic Blues. That link has a really great, short history of early twentieth and late nineteenth century blues, by the way, which revolves entirely around the women.

Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins. She’s one you’ve got to hear. She recorded from the ‘50s all the way up to the new century. There’s a woman who went to hell and came back to sing about it, a couple of times. Her voice oozes the blues. Etta is to vocal performance as BB is to guitar.

Koko Taylor, I’m familiar with through a friend who might as well have “hardcore Koko fan” tattooed across her forehead. When she sings Koko’s songs at our blues jams, she’s in another place. I swear she channels Koko right here to Klamath Falls, and wonder if maybe Koko might feel a little energy of hers heading in our direction in the middle of the night or something. Koko’s voice comes from her feet and blasts right through the back wall. Her version of Melissa Etheridge’s “Bring Me Some Water” will make you kneel. Koko don’t mess around, and she’s written some of the most simple yet powerful songs there are.

I have to cut this one short, but I hope I’ve given y’all a couple of good starting points. Thanks for paying attention.

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I’m swiping Joel’s idea of rating 10 songs. I’m not as cool as some of you all with your iPods and shiny dingle dangles and such. I have good ol’ Winamp. So I loaded up my Winamp with all the stuff we have, threw it on “randomize list”, and picked the first 10 songs.

1. Misfits – Go

This is just a demo version of “Nike”. I have a weird reason for liking both songs a lot more than I should. When I was a wee bairn, we lived in San Pedro, CA directly across the street from Fort MacArthur’s Nike missile site. Like, I would toddle off our porch, across the residential street and press my face against the fence and wave at the “Army guys” as I called them. That kind of across the street. Once a month, I’d be sitting on our porch and they’d open up the silos and out would come the missiles for their monthly scrubdown. The guys who manned the Nike sites were called Goonybirds. The Misfits were awesome, by the way. Did everyone see Danzig on Aqua Teen a little while ago? Tee hee that was goddamn funny.

2. Jack Bruce – Keep It Down

Of course, there is Jack Bruce on this list. The man can do no wrong in my book, but this really is a great song. The bass is right up front, that stinky Gibson sound of his I love so much. It’s kind of herky-jerky at the beginning of the song and at the end, it just scoots along.

3. Fear – Beerfight

As much as I love Fear, I’m not sure why I have this song. It isn’t a very good one. I think they kind of dragged the whole beer thing out for too long and it got tired after like the fourth song about it. “More Beer”, “Have a Beer With Fear”, those were good. Lee Ving sounds really awful, too.

4. Apocolyptica – Creeping Death

I wish I played the cello. I think it’s the most expressive of the strings, and the only one that sounds like it’s actually breathing. I’m also a fan of Burton-era Metallica. This is one of those things that go together like Red Hook and Dove Bars. It’s utterly perfect.

5. Primus – John the Fisherman

Not one of my favorite Primus songs, but a good one nonetheless. Love Les’ bassing, but I think I love the drums even more.

6. The Posies – You Avoid Parties

I love the album this came off. The whole thing, there isn’t a bad song on it. “Dear 23” is almost 20 years old and I’ve never tired of it. The thing is, it’s full of the most beautiful music and vocals with gorgeous harmonies, with the most gut-wrenching lyrics. It fools you into thinking, on first listen, that it’s happy-ass music. By the time you’re half-way through the third listen, you’re ready to go jump off a bridge to escape Ken’s pain. And I still often listen to it over and over.
7. Bob Marley – Lick Samba

Damn. I haven’t listened to this enough. It’s off a 4-disc set full of great old Bob, and all his Wailers’ stuff. It really doesn’t particularly stand out, though. Could be any Bob Marley song when you come down to it.

8. Amy Arena – Excuse Me

Came off a compilation of some kind. I vaguely remember when this was being played on the radio. Pretty decent song. Funny. I usually put this on CDs for my girlfriends who are single and moms and they love it more than I do, so that’s good. The music is some lame shit, though. Way better words.

9. The Havalinas – Not A Lot to Ask For

A funky little band that came out of members of the Cruzados and the Plugz (after being filtered through some other stuff), lucky if you can find out anything about them. I’ve been hauling this CD around for about 17 years. This song in particular is pretty cool. A sort of “get off your girlfriend’s back, you stupid fool” thing. There are better songs on the CD, but this one popped up.

10. The Replacements – We’re Comin Out

Ahhh... Who doesn’t love the Replacements? I still have this tape. Always loved how it went from frantic punk rock to the jazzy thing, “one more chance to get it wrong’, then sped back up into a kind of everybody solo! thing.

So, a short peek into some of the music that shapes how I play. More American Music next week, I promise.

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I’m taking a break for one week from the American Music series. Between trying to figure out my tax crap as (ding dong!) the local whiskey-swilling, bass playing, trouble causing Avon lady, and the research that goes into even the kind of lame American Music essays, and The Cold That Wouldn’t Go Away!, I need to give my pea-sized brain a rest.

I’m a teacher of things, so I’ve been told. I teach myself to do new things (self taught on the instruments I play) and then pass what I know on. I’ve been working with someone on guitar stuff lately. I’m only the worst guitar player there is, but I’m good at teaching other people to teach themselves to play the damn thing.

Apparently, I’ve always had an inclination to music, specifically the rhythm aspect, but I just didn’t do anything with it until I was almost 30. So, I’ve been working with someone who desperately wants to be a lead guitar player, but he has no rhythm feel. I mean, none. Zero. If you’re a lead player, it’s all fine and good to be able to shred out 32nd notes, as long as you get back to the beat when you’re supposed to. I have tried all kinds of things to help him with this, starting with “Stomp your foot”, to “Count to four” and “Just breathe!!!” and everything in between and he’s making progress, but so very slow. I’ve been working with him for a year on it. I’ve made countless CDs of music for him with songs that are heavy on rhythm so he can hear it. I have no magic to offer him and in desperation I dug through the garage and found the Zen Guitar book, which he has enjoyed as he’s read it and we talk about a lot of the concepts discussed in the book whenever we get together to jam. (Really, I highly recommend this book to anyone who plays an instrument, or is alive, for that matter.)

This is something that’s so ingrained in me that I can tell you which cylinder in your car is misfiring by standing there with the hood up and listening to it idle for a few minutes. I don’t understand how a person can have no sense of rhythm. It doesn’t compute for me. I don’t understand how people can not see that a C# is teal until you throw the add 9 in and then it’s more of a forest green, either, but I’ve pretty much stopped being amazed at that and go with the idea that I’m just wired up all screwy. You don’t see great bursts of yellow and red when your alarm goes off? Boy, are you lucky. You don’t feel soothed and fuzzy when a train goes by, with it’s clacking and ticking all perfectly timed? Wow, you’re missing out.

But back to the guy with no rhythm, I’ve never been able to figure out how to get what is in my head, and as natural as breathing, out of my mouth to explain the concepts to him. I feel it. I can’t show someone that. I know when the song is about to change, no matter what song it is I’m playing or if I’ve played it or heard it before. You can see it coming, in the breath of a hairly extended note from a guitar player or the drummer kicking off on a different beat... it’s there, there are signs, but I can’t necessarily get that through my friend’s brain.

“Friend”, I say, “Play the bass for six months, I think it will help you”. He won’t do it because he wants to play lead. I sit at a table and bang out a steady count with a pencil on the wood for him. He’s all over the place.

My singer in the old band called me the human metronome. I actually get pissed off hearing other bass players fumble around the neck and goofing off and not keeping the count for everyone else. How retarded is that? I’m very nearly offended by the noodling if it can’t get back to the one. It makes my scalp crawl and my brain itch. I laugh about this particular personality defect of mine, though, because it really must be funny to see me turning purple over something do dumb.

I don’t have a job or anything important like that so I guess where other people bitch about work and kids, I complain about stupid rhythm crap that no one but me gives a shit about. Well, I’m pretty grateful that it’s all I really have to complain about, but I wish my friend would get his beat down so we could jam without me gnashing my teeth. I don’t mean to be elitist about it, and I try to work with him to get better, but sometimes, all I want is a solid drummer and a lead player who lands in time with me and the rhythm guitar player. Hell, sometimes all I want is a really good, crunchy guitar player who can tell which cylinder is misfiring by listening to it for a few minutes.

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You knew this was coming.

What does a barreling-towards-middle-age white girl with an SUV that grew up in the more rarefied suburbs of Los Angeles during the ‘70s and ‘80s know about the blues?

Not a fucking thing.

It doesn’t matter, though.

You could argue for days- nay months- with people about what the blues is and isn’t. Or whether it matters what is and what isn’t. Or if so-and-so was blues or more like jazz, and where does one draw the line, because it blurs a lot. But it’s a thing that you have to listen to yourself, and draw your own conclusions about it.

The story of blues is a long and winding journey through American history, beginning with the first slave ship in the late 1600s, passing through the Civil War and spreading through the country slowly, very slowly, so slowly it was nearly forgotten during the Civil Rights era, when it went overseas and came back a few years later as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Cream, etc. It was almost forgotten again, but still out there, buried in the funk and the disco. In 1980 or so it reappeared again in a dingy bar in Texas, going by the name Stevie Vaughn. That was right around the same time that John Belushi had seen Curtis Salgado in Eugene, Oregon (as unlikely a place to be bit by the blues bug as any) while he was filming “Animal House”. Curtis was the inspiration behind “The Blues Brothers”. When Dan Akroyd helped open the House of Blues chain, the blues was finally mainstream.

So, there you have the short story. It’s easier, of course, to look at the most recent 50 years. But I’m going to show you the past. Like old country, there’s a definite root to what you now recognize as blues. Robert Johnson is probably the most famous of the real early blues players. Only two pictures of him exist. The songs he recorded were often reworked and rereleased as something else, but if you heard the originals, there was no mistaking where so many other songs came from.

Get thee a Robert Johnson album, and listen well. From then on out, you’ll hear his ghost in almost every Led Zeppelin song, nearly every song Eric Clapton has ever recorded, and in just about any other blues song you listen to.

Muddy Waters. You know what Jimi Hendrix had to say about Muddy? “The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I heard one of his records when I was a little boy, and it scared me to death”. Muddy was one of the first bluesmen to work with an electric guitar. I figure, if he scared Jimi, he’s worth hearing and there ain’t no more to say.

Ledbelly, also known as Huddy Ledbetter, did crazy blues shit on a 12-string. I have a hard time with some of this blues stuff on a 6 string. But I guess if all you have is a 12, then that’s what you play.

There are the Kings, who are not related. Albert, BB, Freddie. “Born Under a Bad Sign” is an Albert King song, and the solo on Cream’s “Strange Brew” is almost entirely swiped from Albert’s “Cross-Cut Saw”. Some folks call “Disraeli Gears” the Albert King Tribute Album.

BB, oh BB, where would we be without this man. BB is to electric blues as Parker is to jazz. If you ask the average person who they think of first when you say “The Blues”, I’d bet the answer is either BB King or Stevie Ray Vaughn. More likely BB. BB is the definition of modern blues.

And now Freddie, a Texan, and we all know everything in Texas is big. Freddie’s blues comes from guys like Lightnin Hopkins and T-Bone walker. To hear Freddie King is to hear a real nice blending of the western part of Country and Western and the blues, in the style of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Who himself influenced both genre’s on his own.

So these are some of the big guys, and you hear them whenever you turn on the classic rock station. You probably just didn’t realize you were hearing them. But there you have it.

Other people who are absolutely worth listening to are Skip James, Charlie Christian and John Lee Hooker.

I never even touched the women, but the first blues records were recorded by women. They were mostly vocal albums with a backup band. Koko Taylor- you must hear her. Bonnie Raitt, you already know her, but she’s more accomplished than a lot of people (myself included) ever realized. A red-headed blueswoman, who would have though of such a thing. Damn.

I haven’t touched Okeh records, either, but I probably will.

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Before I tackle anything else, I’m going to delve into the genre that all us rockers love to hate. No, not rap, but that’ll be coming along.

Country music. Specifically, the old timey style that has a lot in common with bluegrass. The first “country” music record to be a nationwide hit was the hoary old “Wreck of the Old ‘97”, which was about a real train wreck. It was released in 1924 and performed by a man named Vernon Dalhart. It sold 300,000 copies.

How many copies it sold was sort of important. With the introduction of radio, people didn’t see why they should spend the money on a 78 when they could hear the radio for free. The record companies had to find a way to keep themselves afloat with the new technology (same old story, isn’t it?), and one of the ways they did it was by finding new things to record. Okeh did it in ’20 with the blues, and we’ll look at Okeh in other essays, because it’s considered a blues label and this is an essay about country music.

Anyway, the A&R reps descended on the south. The same guy who recorded that blues song by Mamie Smith for Okeh in ’20 hit paydirt in Bristol, TN in 1927. His name was Ralph Peer, by the way. And what he found in Tennessee was two branches of one of the roots of our beloved rock n roll. The Carter Family AND Jimmie Rodgers.

Jimmie absorbed all the music he heard and spit it back out as his own. He incorporated blues, picking, yodel songs and jazz. What?! Yodeling?! Yeah. You can hear that style in a lot of Hank Williams Sr. songs. It was a popular style, and later, in the ‘30s, the singing cowboys used it. That’s the Western part of Country & Western. But Jimmie spent his life experimenting with music and made it HUGE before he died in ’33.

The Carter family... well, there are fourth generation Carters making music still. The music plunked itself into their genes and has yet to be diluted by any means.

Country music veered off in a lot of different directions, and it was wild. Wild like you wouldn’t believe if you hear much modern country. There were cowboy singers and Texas Swing, which itself was a mishmash of other styles.

If you want a good starting point to the dirt, get a copy of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”. I recommend this because it glues together the root of country with the tree of rock n roll, and therefore is easy to digest by us who hate country music. It’s got some of the Grand Ol’ Opry greats on it. Those guys were working up to old when it was released in ‘72, and they were still playing and touring. Some of them are in their 80s and 90s now, and still get out and play once in a while, I think. You can hear some of the oldest country music there is on that album. I suppose I’m prejudiced, because this album was on our turntable all the time in the house I grew up in, but it’s a piece of music history worth listening to. I can still sing most of the songs from memory.

I love that album.

I love the country music it represents.

Hear “Wildwood Flower” here.

and Vernon Dalhart here.

and Jimmy Rodgers here.

(Credit given to the PBS series “American Roots Music”, from which a lot of this information was absorbed, as well as my Dad, and my Father, and the people I jam with, because I pick their brains all the time.)

Part 3 upcoming, The Blues.

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This, I think, is our greatest gift to the universe. You could get all heavy and say it was our constitution or something like that, and that’d be fine, but I would still say it’s been music.

Our music comes from the dirt. It came from the slaves and the hill people and the fishermen and the first nations, and later the Okies and Arkies and the Mexicans, and it got filtered and reworked and refiltered and electrified and stripped down and added to with a dash of something here and a dash of something else. Some of it went overseas and came back so loud and incredible we almost didn’t recognize it, and so we hammered at it some more and put some glitter on it or yanked out the solos and it was ours again. Rock n Roll, the Blues, Jazz, Bluegrass, Rap, Country, Metal and Punk are wholly American inventions. And they have two roots- Blues and Country, both of which are simply the lament of the common people.

Listen, it took about 200 years for us to take what we came over here with and make it ours. Those European folk songs that belonged to the dirt over there in the 1600s turned into Elvis after he mixed it up with what the black people were doing. By the mid 1800s, we had the blues in its earliest forms. In the 1950s, American music was total anarchy, and I wish I had been alive back then to witness it. People were even excited about music. There were riots over it. Musicians were ferocious about getting heard. Bus loads of people were traveling all over the country and seeing and hearing things they hadn’t ever even imagined, learning things from each other and reincorporating it. People from rural churches with angelic voices were cutting records for the masses (no pun intended). Everyone I know who was a kid in the 50s and 60s played one instrument or another in their garage with their friends. There’s no exception. Maybe the ones you know are different. Maybe not.

When recorded music was still young, a guy who called himself the Singing Brakeman, Jimmie Rodgers, was the biggest seller. Millions of records in the 30s. When people could barely afford to feed themselves, they still picked up one of his records when they could. And they all probably went to someone’s house with a victrola with a dozen or so other friends and listened to it together. Or they sat around a radio and listened to the Grand Ol Opry and those people in the radio sang them the stories they already knew because they all were living them too. When Jimmie came to town, you better have bought your ticket quick or you weren’t going to get to see him.

Johnny Cash didn’t go to the country capital, Nashville, to make it big. He went to Memphis because the music coming out of Memphis at the time had a better feel to it, he thought. Well, Memphis has always been one of the seats of the blues, and then later the soul and R&B. There’s an awful lot of blues in Cash’s country. Johnny’s mother-in-law, Maybelle, invented one of the most widely used guitar strumming styles. It’s called the Carter Lick. You pick the melody on the two bass strings and strum the chords on the rest. I bet if you’ve played guitar for any length of time, you can do it and you might notice how handy it is.

I’m a little disappointed in what gets played on the radio now. I don’t hate it. Just disappointed. Where’s the excitement and the passion and the ferocity? Even the protests songs are weak and tired. Where’s the freakin rock n roll, man, the dirt? Where’s my American Music?

(This is part one in a group of thingies where I am going to talk about American music)

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I recently dug out a book called “Zen Guitar” that I have. I wanted to lend it to someone I know who has mighty struggles with playing guitar. He’s a guy into the details (as most jewelers and goldsmiths are, and that’s what he does), but when he goes to play his guitar, the details are his death. He gets lost in them. He also gets hung up on the whole “All these people are better players than I am. How can I possibly compete?” I keep telling him he isn’t there to compete, but to play. Play, as in “Can Bob come out to play?”. He worries what people will think of him and how he plays his guitar. I don’t recall ever feeling so self-conscious of my playing that it impeded my ability to jam with other players, so I don’t even know what to tell him to get over that. People would tell me I sucked and I just shrugged and smiled, because I knew I got better all the time. Still getting better. If we wait until we’re the best before we seek the solace of playing with other people, some of us will never leave the bedroom with whatever instrument we play.

I gave him “Zen Guitar” and ordered him to empty out before he read it and dump all his ideas about music, because it gives you an entirely new way to look at your instrument, whether it’s the guitar or the zither. It IS as easy as “Plug in, tune up, make some noise”.

There was a quote in the book from Bruce Springsteen and I thought, “Ooh, what a great thing to write my thingie around", but I forgot to write it down before I passed the book along. So I will paraphrase it-

You get up there and sometimes it’s the most important thing in the world, but it’s only rock n roll. You have to find that balance.

This is the meat of my own problem with music. I’m schizophrenic about my attitude toward music. I can’t find the balance between the importance and the triviality of rock n roll, or the blues, or any of it.

And I just want to add a little note here for Cullen: Some really fantastic players have played the J. But some really, truly awful people have, too. The chunk of wood with some wires and bits of metal and a certain name on the headstock is NOT what is going to make or break you as a player. If you gave Jaco Pastorius a 20-year-old Cort with rusty strings and a warped neck, he still would have whipped anyone’s ass with it, smiling, and without breaking a sweat.

Well. All this stuff was connected, somehow. Discuss.

Pril knows the Lotus position but remembers it is only rock and roll.

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I don't know why we keep at it. Really, I don't.

People don't care about live music. They want to hear things that are on the radio, exactly like it is on the radio. Places that would be good for live music don't have it, and won't pay for it. People complain that there's nothing to do, that they're tired of the few local live bands that are here, but try to drag them out to something different and you may as well have cement shoes on. B-listers get all kinds of publicity when they come through town, and no one ever says a peep about supporting your local musicians or bands. In fact, if a local band tried to get in to the place where the out-of-town musicians play, they get laughed at.

Now here's the funny part. I could travel the 250 miles to where I used to live and ask for a lot more money than we used to get playing there, and get it. Because suddenly, I'd be part of an out-of-town band, but people who live there who have huge more amounts of talent than I do can't get a gig for more than $200 a night. And that's twisting arms.

I was part of a band here that had eight people in it. We'd play regularly- and, if it was me booking, we wouldn't have been playing this place- at a place that didn't want to pay out any dollars. But we got free food and booze. So we'd all bring our significant others and get steak dinners and drink all night. Because if they weren't going to put the money in our pocket, we'd eat it out of theirs. That didn't last long. Now, you get your penny, a cheap dinner for one and like two Budweisers. Oh and someone else's worthless opinion. Yeah, buddy, here's my bass- you get on up there and show me how it's done, mmmkay?

I have gone on before about how we play for ourselves. But if you're going to hire people to entertain your crowd, and those people have a combined 250 years experience playing, aren't their skills worth something? You pay your doctor. I mean, you'd never say to your doctor that you'll pay him a week's worth of McDonald's UnHappy Meals and six rolls of quarters. The doctor wouldn't do it. You can't tell the guy who's fixing your sink that you'll tell everyone you know how great he is and here's a bag of cans and a sandwich and expect anything less than a punch in the face.

So yeah, I don't understand why we allow people to stomp all over us. When I book, no one stomps on me or my bandmates. Maybe I'm tired of being dragged all over for a shitty attitude from the toothless bartender and the paws of a drunk on my ass for four hours, to walk out with $20 and no buzz and an hour's drive home at 3:30 AM.

I've been grouchy lately and isolating myself because I'm really tired of other people's crap and I think anyone who's been playing as long as some of the people I know deserve a lot more respect than they get.

Pril might be getting getting that "fuck the audience" attitude.....maybe...

http://fasterthantheworld.com/profile/shut_up_and_play_guitar.html

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It’s part of the Standard Bar Cover Band set list. Mustang Sally, Sweet Home Alabama, Shook Me All Night, Bad Moon On The Rise.

I went ten years playing without ever having to bother learning Mustang Sally. I still don’t know it “right”. I don’t want to learn it. I have this problem about learning songs. If it’s something I have no interest in, something that makes me change the station or run out of the store, I’m not going to go home and listen carefully to it to learn all of it’s nuances. I could give a shit about it.

I was recently asked to be in a band that’s starting up. I was looking over the list of songs they want to play. There, at about the middle, was “Sweet Home Alabama”.

“I’m not playing “Sweet Home”, guys”.

“Oh. Well, we just figured, we all know it, and it makes people dance and...”

“Yeah well I’m not playing it.”

From what I have been able to tell by talking to the bar patrons around town, no one really wants to hear that song anyway. So I don’t know why so many people insist on playing it.

There’s about a hundred other great CCR songs worth playing besides “Bad Moon On the Rise” (or “Bathroom on the Right”). “Lodi” is just a better song. “Sweet Hitchhiker” really moves. “Bad Moon”, eh? Lame.

Finally... AC/DC songs. There are some really great, fun to play AC/DC songs. “You Shook Me” is not one of them. Unless you play it like Everclear did.

I know I’m not the only person tired of hearing these songs, or sick of playing them. I MAY be the only one in this town, though. Which sort of cracks my spirit a little.

Pril begs you not to put your lighter in the air.

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Sometimes, I go a whole week and find nothing really to write about. This last one was one of those weeks. So I’m going to introduce you to The Men. These are guys who have been very important to me in terms of my growth, my style, and my attitude.

About playing bass.

John Taylor: One of the Taylors from Duran Duran. The Good Looking One. (If you have a different opinion, blast away in the comments). Yeah, I was a Duran Duran fan. Big Time. On further retrospection, though, I find I’m actually a John Taylor fan. He had a fantastically crisp tone without sounding overly treble-y. He cut a mean groove without being over-the-top. Just listen to “Planet Earth”. Tell me that song doesn’t make you want to shake your ass. I dare ya.

Jack Bruce: This is the guy playing the bass in that “Crossroads” song. You know, the one everyone says is a Clapton song. That was Cream. That was Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton. Eric Clapton’s first attempt at songwriting was with Cream. “Anyone For Tennis”. Hand me a barf bag please because it simply did not get any better than that. These guys were all ego, because they were the best there was at the time, so they had every right to call themselves “the Cream”. Of the crop.

Jack Bruce is one of those freaks called “multi-instrumentalists”. A classically trained cello player who seemed to be able to play anything you put in his hands. A clear, beautiful tenor. He played the thundering mite, a Gibson EB3, in most of the Cream songs. Jack isn’t much taller than five feet, if I remember right. I think his Warwicks are taller than him. But his bass playing was fifty fucking feet tall, loaded with unstable dynamite and someone was lighting a match nearby. Jack is still recording, still touring, and still writing incredible music.

Mike Watt: Well, I don’t know where to start with this guy. His bitchenness shines on the sea that surrounds San Pedro. His music plants itself in my head when I go home to visit. He’s been taking the weirdness of San Pedro out of the air there for over twenty years, close to thirty, and then spewing it back to the world as music. His playing is the supertankers docking at L.A. harbor, it’s the tunnels of a decommissioned military base. It’s Summerland Avenue, Averill Park, the Maritime Museum and Warehouse Number One. The gray of foggy skies and air carriers, dilapidated fishing boats and eastern orthodox cemeteries. Where everything comes in and everything leaves again.

John Doe: I didn’t really gain an appreciation for John until a couple of years ago. I’ve been an X fan since ’84 or so, but the music was a whole entity then and I didn’t spend much time listening to the parts very much. I was listening to “Hungry Wolf”, recently, and thinking, damn he was singing and playing that fuckin weird ass Bo-Diddly beat thing with the crash at the chorus. And I was duly impressed, because I can’t play and count to 4 at the same time. But I always liked his sort of dusty, lost and wandering persona, like he just got off his horse after walking the entire course of the Mississippi from Bemidji to New Orleans. Reading about X and John Doe when I was younger made me realize how important a wide and varied taste in music was.

The Guy From KC & The Sunshine Band: I don’t know this guy’s name. I’ve never looked it up. And this one is also a more recent “discovery”. Sure, I loved KC as a kid because it was fun, mindless stuff to bounce off the walls to. Who didn’t? Disco was king when I was 7, and regardless of what anyone says, disco is the perfect music for seven-year-olds. This is another “one day i was listening to the radio when...” kind of things. Yes, I was, and “Boogie Shoes” came on. I was struck by the sheer badassedness of the groove in this song and it’s absence of flash. This bass line says “Fool, you rock to this and it’s all you need”. The rest of the KC catalog is just as grabby (ok except for “Please Don’t Go”). It’s funk authority without an iota of the dreaded slap style. All you slappers out there, you WISH you could lay the shit down like this guy did.

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I was sitting around at the jam, talking to someone, and in walked probably five guys, all with the same sort of beard. I thought “Huh”. And then a woman came in behind them in an ankle-length skirt, long-sleeved shirt and a little hat, and I went “Ok, I get it now. Sort of. What the hell?”.

Maybe one of these five people was over 25, and the guys all had skater shirts on and jeans and things, so, that was odd. You see Mennonites around town a lot at the store and things like that. Well, actually, I don’t know for sure if these are Mennonites or Hutterites or what. I’ll just call them Mennonites because I know there’s a colony around here.

Anyway, so there was this group of them, and they went back to the back part of the bar, and the bartender took out three pitchers and a half-dozen glasses. My friend and I wondered to each other if that was okay. I’d never seen a Mennonite in a bar, fer pete’s sake. We decided it was probably all right, and God wouldn’t care too much, as long as they didn’t get shitfaced and rowdy.

Well.

The pitchers kept coming. Soon, they came out to the dance floor and boogied like MTV had babysat them. They were having a great time. Picture Amish people freak-dancing, and you’re close.

Sometimes it’s like being in a movie.

I’m not sure what they were celebrating. A wedding or a birthday or something. But they did get shitfaced and rowdy, and it was great to watch.

I have to write this down as one of the weirder things I’ve seen from the stage. Mennonite break-dancing to the blues.

Who knew?

Pril gets down and funky with anyone.

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My birthday lands right after Christmas. It’s the 13th day of Christmas, actually. The 12 days of Christmas start Christmas Day and end on the 6th of January. If I remember right- if my math is right, and you never can count on my math.

So I usually had to give one up, giftwise. Or I got a weakish Christmas and then a weakish birthday. Some years, we celebrated my half birthday and had a big party on July 7, rather than on my real birthday.

Once on my own, the gifts came in a weird fashion. Here’s the story of one of the best gifts I ever got.

I was in Phoenix, AZ and it was rough. I was living in a trailer that someone had added a room onto with cinderblocks. The trailer itself was one of those aluminum skinned ones, with a dining area and a sleeping area. I shared this little hovel with a half-crazy guy. We had no power. It was a cold winter that year, for Phoenix. I hopped on a bus to my friend’s house and showered there, usually, because the water was freezing cold.

The crazy guy had a little freak out right after Christmas, and my paycheck was already gone, spent on my part of the rent. It was another week before I would be able to buy groceries. There was nothing to eat in the hovel. I jumped on the bus to my friend’s house, and she didn’t have any food, either. We gathered up some cans and turned them in, and I think we had about $3 from them. We split the $3 and I ended up leaving, heading for a Catholic Church that I heard had a food bank. I didn’t know if it was open or not, but it had been about two days since I’d had anything of substance to eat and no chance of getting anything to eat unless this place was open. My half of the $3 was saved for bus fare.

I walked the seven blocks to the church, and found no one there. Well. What to do now, I wondered. I ended up just walking around and eventually I sat down on a curb somewhere and cried. I don’t often cry but I think I was pretty much at the end of my rope. My Christmas that year had been pretty awful, as befitted a truly horrible year, and things didn’t look like they were going to be getting any better.

I pulled my groundscore flannel a little tighter around myself and put my head on my arms and just cried like a baby, and hated myself for crying like that. Out in public, on a curb. What a wuss I was being. Well, damn, I had been mighty strong through that year and I couldn’t do it anymore.

After a while, I heard someone ask if I was all right. I turned around and there was an old guy behind me who really didn’t look like he was much better off than I was. I just remember telling him I was hungry and I couldn’t get any food. He helped me up and said he didn’t have much money, but he was going to make sure I got some food.

We walked about three blocks to a Circle K. There were no real grocery stores in the area, just mini-marts and liquor stores. He told me to get whatever I wanted. I got three hot dogs, a bottle of orange juice and some bananas.

My holiday feast.

I’ll tell ya what, a Corporate Death Dog has never tasted so good, never been so welcome in my gut, as it was that day. And I haven’t had such a fantastic Christmas present or Birthday present since then.

Pril did not have death dogs for dinner this Christmas. But she did make a certain editor cry with this story.

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I’ve never been one to “help” a cause by standing around with a sign. Actually, I can think of no bigger time waster than protesting with some dumbass sign. I’m a fan of going to the thing or person that needs help and busting out a check, a wad of cash or offering my time or talents somehow. Because i do have a ton of time, and there are many things I’m good at.

The Blues Society takes up a good chunk of my time. Around this time of year, it takes up more than usual. In December we hold our benefit concert. It takes a couple of months (About six, actually) of wrangling and planning to get this juggernaut underway. This year we had to switch dates at nearly the last minute. We had no word from one of the bands until nearly the last minute. We were out until the Thursday before the concert still gathering things for the raffle.

Our beneficiaries this year were the local crisis center and the food bank. Last year it was a different one, and the food bank. I don’t know yet what it will be for next year. We start looking around October for a good one. We decided the crisis center was a good one for a lot of reasons. It’s almost full this time of year. They need cash to help gather documents for the women in the center (like social security cards, driver’s licenses, etc.) because when you jam out of a bad situation, you are lucky, most of the time, to have the kid or kids and a pair of shoes. The center needs food, all year round. Blankets, towels, soap, shampoo, books, toys for the kids, sometimes important medication that got left behind, transportation fare. And of course, around Christmas, they need gifts for the kids who are there.

And the food bank, not just ours but your local one and any one in any town you may pass through on your way to visit family, the food banks always need food, and money to help gather and distribute that food.

The crisis center is full around Christmas and Thanksgiving. There is probably nothing more satisfying to an abusive asshole than to boot out his wife/girlfriend and the kid at a time when families should be together. I know there are some landlords who get a chuckle out of evicting people around Christmas, too. I had one, once.

So we hold these benefits at Christmas every year. This year, despite the hitches we had coming at us in November, everything worked out. We had GOBS of cool shit to raffle off. The bands all sounded fantastic (thanks to my smart half running the sound board, and their own talent of course). Our jam band took the first set and had a great time, and then we spent the whole night squeezing money from people.

In the end, we had an overflowing 50-gallon trash can full of food, a coffee can full of cash for the food bank, and close to $2000 for the crisis center. It was more than we raised last year, and next year, we’ll raise even more.

And all year long, we’ll play for organizations who are raising money for other things. That’s one of the things we do besides get drunk on Thursdays and talk shit to each other on stage at the jam.

Pril is tired but she got thru it and helped some people out. Good job, Pril.

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If you read last week’s column, you might be thinking, “Jesus, she’s totally a self-absorbed asshole”. Maybe you’re right.

I may be that, but I contradict myself often enough that I don’t know what to think about anything.

Let me show you what I mean. This is a paraphrased conversation held probably 4 or so years ago, between my drummer friend The Hoov and myself, over a 12-pack of something and a bottle of something else.

Hoov- All these guys just think it’s all about them. But you gotta sell the song, man. You gotta put the music first.

Me- Well, sure. The music has to be good. But you have to be enjoying yourself to get into it in the first place. Why else would you play?

Hoov- To make people happy. I play because I like to see the crowd dancing and happy and having a good time. These guys that are all into their guitar jacking off, that’s all they care about, being number one on the stage and a show-off. And god forbid if you’re a woman around here trying to be heard, these good ol’ boys just ignore you.

Me- Yeah, they do. Which is why I’ve been trying to get you and me and Tam together to lay waste to these mofos, and take ‘em all to school, but NOOOOOOO... I’m ready to go and y’all are standing around doing whatever you do besides play your instruments. Shut up and play, you know... Put the money where your mouth is and none of you, my chickie friends, are doing that.

Hoov- It’s all ego with the guys. It doesn’t matter. They always come back around and stomp on us. I just want to play and make people happy.

Me- Well, it IS all about ego.

Hoov- No way! It is not! You play so other people can have a good time!

Me- Ok so why is it so important that the audience have a good time? Why the hell are you up there trying to get these slugs to move, or even smile? I mean, who cares about them, it’s all about you or it’s all about me or whoever is there.

Hoov- ....

Me- Why? C’mon, answer me. You’re going to just refute everything you are trying to tell me when you do answer me, but i want to hear it from your mouth. Why is it so important to you that the audience has such a good time?

Hoov- But it’s not all about me!

Me- Bullshit. Why do you drag that drumset all over hell and gone, and let people pay you $25 for four hours of work for a group of people who just stare blankly at you and maybe move a bit once they’ve hit the shitfaced point?

Hoov- It’s cool when people get into the music though...

Me- Shut up! You’re dancing around the answer you don’t want to admit. Why bother making other people feel good?

Hoov – Because i dig it. It makes me feel good.

Me- AHA! See, it really IS all about you! So I call bullshit on all your complaining, and my complaining. We do it because we like it and it makes us feel good, and all the bullshit musical altruism is just so much cold puke on a paper plate. We like to make other people happy because it makes us happy, and that’s the end of that.

I probably drive my friends insane. But every time I hear of some band saying they do it for the fans, I mentally call bullshit, because they do it for themselves, to get the fans, who love them, and we all feed off each other that way.

Pril wants you to have fun so she can have fun so you can fun so she can have fun.......

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You hear that bandied around a lot when people talk about relationships. Mostly relationships with boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands/wives, or even the best friend you’ve had since like 3rd grade. You hit it off instantly, and you stay good friends, and even after you haven’t seen or heard from them in ten years, you can call them and be best friends all over again.

I know it in the context of that band I always talk about. It was really my first “official” band. And we were all friends of a sort or another. But it was the kind of thing that, from the first time we jammed together, we knew we had a good thing. We stopped, looked at each other, and went “Hot damn! Baby I need a cigarette!”.

I was some kind of glue, I guess, as far as the music went in the band. So i have been told, at least. I just played. Once in awhile, I would look over at Djeef or the Kook, with a “That was sweet” nod and smile, but I just never felt I needed to see what either of them was doing. I knew it. Whatever “IT” is, it lived in my head. It still lives there, but it doesn’t get the exercise it needs. Djeef and I would drop into counterpoint rhythms for no special reason, and Kook was right there laying something awesome on top of it. Tam would hop off the stage with the tip jar and go belly-dancing across the floor. We just did it.

With some people I jam with, damn it is some hard work. I just want to scream at them, “why do you make this so fucking hard?!”. Instead of the feeling of fluidity, you’re slogging through Oklahoma mud in Vans slip-ons just trying to get to the end of a song with these people. This is not the property of beginning players. I’ve jammed with people who’ve been playing for 40 years and it feels like this. The ones who perpetrate it the most seem to be the ones who think they’re the center of attention, and nothing else in the music matters except what they’re playing.

Let me just stop and say to anyone who thinks like this about their playing (and I am talking to guitar players mostly, here, but they certainly don’t have the monopoly on aural masturbation)- You suck. Your attitude sucks. Your playing sucks. Your tone is awful. No one likes you. You need to turn down, down, down yeah there… I know you can’t hear yourself and frankly that’s the whole idea, because none of us want to hear you, either.

I really hate feeling like that about other people who play music. I mentally beat myself when I catch myself thinking things like that, because music is supposed to self-expression, and fun, and a time to get up and get down wit yo bad self and all. But there’s a line, i think, between sharing your joy with the world and playing to hear yourself play, damn everyone else.

I wandered away again. That happens. It does sort of tie in with the chemistry between musicians, though. When four people can sit down and sort of muddle for 5 minutes, trying to figure out what to play, then all the sudden (without discussion) they all start on the right count, with the right notes, and blast out a song, that’s fucking incredible and when you find the other people that you can do that with, you hold them close and jealously guard that relationship. Woe to he or she that dares to try to steal it away. To lose it means all the work of finding it all over again, or struggling along with tweezing it out of someone else who may or may not ever GET IT.

One of these days I think I’ll discuss the ones who do try to get in the way of that chemistry. Band girlfriends/boyfriends. Because sometimes, the music is #1 and you have to settle for coming in a distant second if you want to be with a musician. You either understand that and work with it, or you don’t and find yourself angry and hurt all the time. Some musicians are balanced, relatively normal people. Some are completely off their noggins, in a fucking scary way. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of in-between, that I’ve experienced.

Pril loves everyone she has ever jammed with because she knows deep down, the are nice people..sometimes

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The little festivals held in towns all year long, the berry festivals, the logging festivals, the rain festivals, biker runs, the what have you, are totally a blast to play at.

You have a built-in crowd, more people than you would playing in a bar or a club. Hundreds, maybe a thousand if the stage is in a good place. The closest many of us will ever get to playing a big venue or even (in our wildest dreams) a stadium of some kind. The rush is awesome. I would wander around the crowd and it never seemed like that many people, until I got onstage and looked out at them.

Damn, there’s a lot of people out there.

I get so jacked up playing something like that. I almost can’t breathe. I almost can’t keep whatever is in my gut in my gut. I can barely talk. I forget everything I’m supposed to play until the first note of the first song, then it all comes back, and so fast that I can barely get my fingers where they’re supposed to be.

There’s simply nothing like it that I ever experienced. I jones for it. I like goofing at the jams, and playing with a band in a little dive, but I’m a screaming fool for a festival.

I started playing when I was 27, and I kick myself all the time for not starting earlier. The simple fact is that I didn’t have the patience to learn an instrument when I was younger. Personality defect, I guess. We all got ‘em. Mine was, and still is, that I have the attention span of your average housefly. I’ve had to teach myself patience, as well as music theory and how to play this stringed beast, and that’s been hard and I’ve struggled and cursed and bitched and thrown things, and then played a festival and felt like a million-dollar rockstar and the whole mess has been worth it.

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And there was this one venue owner, who was a real piece of work. We played at his stinking hole one weekend.

I was stuck at work by people who didn’t understand “I talked to Mark earlier about leaving at 3 because I have to be in Florence (90 miles away) by 7, and have to go home and scrape off the paint and shower before I get there”. So there is apparently a big chunk of stuff from this story missing because I got kept excruciatingly late painting and arrived at the venue at 8:50, 10 minutes before we were supposed to start. Felony speeding can get you there fast, as long as you don’t get caught…

We agreed to a cheaper price if he did the advertising. Strike one. No advertising was done, and our name was spelled wrong on the marquee.

We were using part of the house system. Which was barricaded into this cupboard by something like chicken screen. To operate it, one had to use chopsticks. Luckily these were in heavy supply. You found whatever button you needed to press by peering in with a flashlight, and then you jammed the chopstick in at the correct angle.

While playing, he sent his lackeys up, who spoke only the brokenest Chinglish, to complain about this or that. They would come up and wave their arms and say who knows what while we were playing. So we were sort of having a hard time with that.

Then someone in the audience, who apparently wasn’t paying attention and didn’t realize there was an actual band on stage, went and put money in the jukebox and played a couple of songs. So Tam cursed loudly at them and we continued.

We got charged for our food. At least there was a band house, somewhere, we were supposed to stay in.

That was the first night. I didn’t bother looking for the band house because I was beat from working so I plunked $80 down and stayed at the hotel next door. Best thing I ever did, probably.

I got to see the “band house” the next morning. Two bedrooms, four beds, one bathroom, a TV on a table and a fridge completely covered in the graffiti of all the other bands that had come through and gotten screwed by this guy.

The next day, we all just drank beer most of the day and then went walking around Florence, putting up hand-drawn-on-the-spot flyers for that night, and handing them to people. You don’t see that much in these towns. I never saw a person on the street handing out flyers for a local band.

That night, our second night, we get told “No soros”. Nick and Jeff had done their respective solos the night before, to a frenzied two-dozen or so people. Well, fuck that. It’s part of what we do. You hire us, you get the soros. That gig went off fairly well.

At 10 til stoptime, the guy came up and said we could stop playing because there were only five or so people in the place. So we did. Then it was time to get paid.

That bastard.

“You stop early, I no pay you all amount”.

What?

“I prorate. You stop early”.

“I pay you ($100 less than agreed upon amount)”.

When I’m speechless, I’m truly speechless. I almost always have something to say, but I couldn’t believe this guy was about to try to do this to us. He wants to dock us the equivalent of $10 a minute for doing what he asked us to. So Djeef tried reasoning with him. It didn’t work.

Tam does her frilled lizard act. Great to watch this. It’s like the fabled Elven glamour skill. She’s smiling and happy one second, and the next, you have a pissed off 10-foot tall belly-dancer in huge platform shoes bearing down on you like a hungry dragon, and there you are with Rooster sauce all over you. When reason fails, we let the dragon out.

We got our full pay. We never played there again. Karma did it’s job, and the stinking hole was closed soon after.

Pril no longer eats Kung Pow Chicken.

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Posted by Pril Stevenson at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

I have a couple of basses, and I love both of them. But one is a 40-year-old hollowbody and one is a 10-year-old solid. The hollowbody is fractious and temperamental, but beautiful. The 10-year-old, like all 10-year-olds, is indestructable.

This is an Ibanez GSR100 I picked up at a pawn shop in 2001 for $95. When Ibanez was still making them, they were the bottom of the line. You could buy one new for about $120-$150. Let me tell you about this amazing little bass…

I didn’t have a case for it until about a week ago. It has slept overnight in the car many times, through unbearable humidity, bone chilling cold, and merciless heat. It’s been dropped more times than I can count. It has slid down walls and crashed onto the floor, with a loud and alarming “CRACK!”.

I get it onstage and tune it. I guess I have the tuner in hand just for show, because it’s rarely more than a half-step out on the low E. Even last week, when it was dropped from the stage onto its face, and the bar went deathly quiet at the sound, I picked it up, plugged it into the tuner, and.. well… it wasn’t out of tune.

Believe it.

Out of paranoia induced by people like Cullen who insist on proper care and feeding, I have taken it to shops for “tune-ups”. That’s where they set the intonation, adjust the neck, reset the action, etc. When I go pick it up, the guy usually says “It was fine. I tightened your tone knob for you”.

No shit. I pay them anyway for their trouble.

I can’t remember the last time I ran a polishing rag over it. Maybe that one night we spilled a pitcher of beer on it.

And, ok, the strings. Everyone who plays this bass loves my strings. They stop playing, cuddle the bass up close and tell me it’s coming home with them. Then I grab it and beat them to death with it, plug it into a tuner, and it’s still in tune. But I digress. I use only DR flatwound strings on this bass.

The current set has been on since about two weeks after I got the thing. So, six years. Give or take. And I mean they have been ON THE BASS. Haven’t taken them off for any reason, just loosen them occasionally to clean the fretboard up. Two reasons, really. One, they sound fine. I don’t like the high tinny bits you get from new strings anyway. Two, the fuckers cost almost $70 a set, and I have to order them. That’s a good pair of shoes. That’s 70 Wendy’s junior bacon cheeseburgers. That’s my tab at jam night. I just never think to buy new strings for it. Even though I head into the guitar shop and pick up 3 sets of classical acoustic and 3 sets of whatever medium electric strings are available. Some things I just don’t think about. But the bass strings. They MUST be DR flats.

I guess it’s like putting Gucci on a homeless person, using DRs on a cheap bass, but this baby has treated me right, so it only gets the best strings.

I know people who treat their guitars like fine china. I’m hard on my shit, no matter what it is, and it better measure up to what I put it through. I would be asking for trouble if I bought a $1500 bass. It would bust up on its first night out and I’d be out $1500 and still playing the Ibanez.

What made me buy the bass in the first place? It has a sticker on the back that says “Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck”.

Posted by Pril Stevenson at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

It’s 10:17 pm. 30 degrees. We just got done making noise out in the garage. Excellent noise. It was ass cold in the garage. It’s your average garage- cinderblock walls, high ceiling, big gaps between the ends of the door. Black Widows. Boxes of stuff that I bet act as insulation on at least one side.

It’s just going to get colder for a while. It sort of gets to be an issue with the guitar after an hour or so. The shit just goes out of tune. My bass, wonderful creature that it is, seems to NEVER go out of tune, no matter how cold it is, how hot it is, how hard I play it. The only thing that makes it move is if it gets physically hit on one of the tuning pegs.

But we keep playing. We keep thrashing out noise. We have a stack of blank tapes and a whole lot of time. We have a bottle of Black Velvet down there right now, and there’s beer in the fridge. The heater does the best it can, but we still stop and hold our little piggies in front of it to get the feeling back into them occasionally.

At night during the winter here it gets down to the teens. We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing. Physical discomfort isn’t going to stop us. That’s how bad we want it.

Pril wants it bad and writes daily here.

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Posted by Michele Christopher at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

There have been some interviews here, so I wanted to throw my own in. I interview regular people, my friends.

Natalie is the other half of a project we put together that was borne purely out of frustration with many of the musicians where we live. She’s a fantastic singer, and can hold her own on bass and drums. She can probably waste me on the guitar. You can go listen to an album she recorded with a band in SoCal here -

1. Do you daydream about being interviewed for your favorite music-related magazine? Like, run the interview through your head...

Never really thought about it much because I don't read too many magazines. Maybe Entertainment Tonight or something like that, but, it really would matter how the interview went.....I'd be making more money than the interviewer and I could say whatever I wanted...hahaha!

2. If you could hear any song, RIGHT NOW, what would it be?

I Wanna Be Sedated....can't sleep lol!

3. Have you ever been "surprised" by shitty weather on the way to or from a gig, in a substandard vehicle full of everyone else's equipment?

Ah yes, I remember being in So. Cal. in this van that barely ran, sitting on the hump between the 2 front seats, no other room because of equipment, in a dress and heels, trying not to fall backward. This was extremely difficult as there was a hole in the exhaust and we were all getting high on the fumes, the fog came in and then it started to rain. We had to keep the windows down so that we didn't die from the car exhaust. Cold and wet, we finally had to pull over because the van was choking on god knows what, and we were too high from the fumes and lost, as well. Got the piece of crap running, finally made it to the gig, on time no less, but, no one was looking forward to the ride home.

4. What's the absolute most retarded thing you've seen from the stage? The retard can be a fellow band member or someone in the audience.

One night while playing a gig in Idyllwild, Ca., the waitress walked up to me and said "Billy wants to play now". I said "And…" She said "Just ask Billy to come up and play". Ok, whatever, I thought. "Ok, Billy, it's time for you to play" and Billy proceeded to come up to the drums and sit down and just started rippin on the drums. This is cool I thought. When does someone ever play well that you call up from the audience. Not very often. Anyway, he says "Do you guys know Sunshine of Your Love?" Oh, hell yes. So we rocked it. We had people standing right up in front of our faces screaming and singing and shit, it was awsome. A total rock and roll moment. The harmonies were perfect and nobody screwed up the lyrics. It was cool. I was really impressed by how well this Billy guy knew this song on the drums and so, of course, I had to look out into the audience with that "Wow, he's really good" look on my face. So we rocked and everybody cheered and we got off the stage and somebody walked up to me and said "Did you know that was the drummer for Steppenwolf?" I, of course, said "oh bullshit!!" And they said "No really, he comes in here once in awhile". Then I got thinking about it and while we were setting up he came in, sat at the front table and bought the whole band a drink. Hmmmm....I thought.....holy crap.....that was the drummer from Steppenwolf!!!. You can imagine how embarrassed I was. I felt like a true moron. The only one in the place that didn't know who he was and I was singing with him! I appologized immediately, over and over. Although, I think he got a real kick out of it! He autographed the snare and accepted my apology, I still felt like an idiot, but it was so cool! So my real retard moment on stage was accomplished by me you could say!!

5. How do you feel about people who pester you to play "Freebird" or "Sweet Home Alabama"?

Sad. It's sad dude, let it die for gods sake. It can't be any better than it was the last 50 times you heard it played badly. It's just sad.

Lastly...

6. Pine cones are taking over the planet! Like tribbles, but with pointy bits! WHAT DO YOU DO?!

I can't believe I hang around with you .......

Pril knows lots of interesting people and writes daily here.

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Posted by Michele Christopher at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

The final gig we played together as a band on the coast was at a friend's party. A party in lovely Bandon, where we stepped out the back door and were on the beach. This was a combination birthday/clean health party. It was being given for a friend who was turning 30, and had just gotten a clean bill of health from her doctor. For the past two years she had been struggling with Non-Hodgkins' lymphoma, and was just released from treatment from it because there was no sign of it anymore.

We were to start playing at 9. So I met Djeef and his soulmate down there and we got our stuff unloaded and set up. That was about 7. We were usually the first people at a gig out of the band. So we sat down and had some drinks with everyone and went out by the bonfire and got social. About 8, one of us got up and went looking to see if Tam and the Kook had arrived. No luck. So Djeef and I goofed on some metal rhythm stuff, like Breadfan and Jump in the Fire. We both had a nice buzz going. This was because of the sheer amount of alcohol at the place. Someone had made a giant cooler full of Jungle Juice. Now, Jungle Juice seems to be different no matter where you are, but at this party, it was a bunch of liquor that was mixed with a bunch of fruit and left to marinate for a couple of days. There was also beer and whiskey and herbage. So, yeah, we had the smilies.

At 8:30 we started calling them. Because they had the PA... and where the hell were they? No answer no answer no answer then "we're at the store, we'll be there in a couple of minutes". A few minutes went by, and then it was 8:50, 8:55... no Tam and Kook.

Djeef and i just continued drinking, because really, what the hell else were we gonna do? All that alcohol being handed to us, we couldn't turn it down. So we drank pretty steadily, and then around 10:30, the two roll in. Like it's 7 and they're on time and we're the freaks for bothering them.

Djeef and I were too drunk to really be angry. We all got the PA set up. A tape was thrown in the boombox and the record button hit. Apparently, all four of us were loaded like fright trains. I have a tape of this gig, and I will honestly say it's hard to tell the rhythm section could barely stand up while we were playing. Some songs were just very slow, but it wasn't a train wreck at all.

We played for about 45 minutes, and then someone yells "The cops are here!" We stopped, right in the middle of the solo for "Comfortably Numb",. which actually had been going surprisingly well, because we were... comfortably numb by then. Someone pussed out and told the cops the band would only be playing for another 10 minutes. Total letdown, and then i was pissed, because if the Two hadn't been late, we'd have gotten our full time in. And I don't think i said much of a civil word to the Two for the rest of the night. I went back to drinking though, and my Li'l Bro and I headed out to the bonfire again and nursed our pints. Djeef retired to his truck with his soulmate after a while. Sometime around 3, I staggered out to the trailer i was going to sleep in, showed Li'l Bro his bed, and then I fell into mine and was out.

As usual, i was the first awake. At probably 6 am. I go out, look around. Take a jumpstart from my pint, and there's Li'l Bro out talking to the cops. "That dipshit," I thought. I knew he was still probably wasted, and he probably never went to sleep. I went over and got the stinkeye from the cops and told them Rude was cool, he wasn't out to rob anyone, and in fact had probably been out wandering the neighborhood and gotten lost. Someone had called the police about someone wandering the neighborhood, though, and that's why they were there. I put my arm around his shoulder and said, "Now really, sir, he's completely harmless" and started walking away. They weren't done, though. So like 20 minutes later, i finally get to take off, which was good because i was about to pee my pants.

That was in April of 2005. That August, Angie was dead. The lymphoma came back.

Pril remembers every time she plays.

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Posted by Michele Christopher at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

When we first moved out here to the dry side, I was really bummed out because I was going to have to find people to play with, and there didn’t appear to be much of a live music scene to start the searching. Plenty of crappy karaoke, but not much in the way of “go out on a Friday and see a band”. I even went into one of the local guitar stores (we actually have three) and asked if there was a board or something somewhere. The guy asked what I played and then answered that there were plenty of bass players around town. That was a year ago, and he annoyed me, and it’s only been in the last couple of months that I’ve gone into his store for anything. He’s much nicer to me now, though.

Then, searching online for something, anything of interest in the area, I came across a thing in the entertainment section of the paper that mentioned a blues jam. So the Smart Half and I moseyed on down to it one Thursday, and moseyed back out pretty quickly. It just didn’t look very happ’nin’.

Then, a friend of a fellow blogger, who I’d met, told me he had gone to the jam and they desperately needed bass players. So the next week I called him up and checked to see if he wanted to go. Smart Half didn’t, and I was having a sort of “I’m not worthy” attack and didn’t really want to go alone. He didn’t want to go. So I dicked around the house a little bit, and then threw the Harmony into the truck and headed down. Kind of late. I was used to kind of crummy treatment at some of the coast blues jams and in a way expected it again. Granted, when I was going to the coast jams, I really, seriously had no idea what I was doing on my bass. Not a clue. But I kept going back and irritating them. It’s how I got better, really.

I set my bass down and ordered a beer and as soon as I returned to the jam area, I was set upon by a small, enthusiastic blond woman.

“What you got in the case?” she asked.
“My bass”, says I, like, ‘duh’.
“Oooh! I thought it was a guitar!”

Well, the case is weird looking, looks like a BIG version of something an SG comes in.

She introduced herself and said that, because it was kind of late, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to get a spot for me.

So I just hung out and watched people, I guess. I don’t really remember.

So I went the next week, and I got there early. The small, enthusiastic blond woman was the president of the blues society and she was really happy to have another bass player around.

I lived within walking distance (a couple of blocks) so I went ahead and started drinking and had a nice buzz by the time it was my turn. I had that weird little moment of “aaack” I always get when I’m about to get onstage, and felt really self-conscious about jamming with these people. I hadn’t really done any blues stuff for about five years. Suddenly I was very drunk, too.

“oh shit” I thought to myself. “These people know how to play this. I’m wasted…”

Then someone called “Stormy Monday” in G. And for a couple of seconds I was totally retarded, and then the theory class hit me upside the back of my head like a cast iron pan.

“G. GCD. Stormy Monday has that stupid sharp thing going on, too. Chamberlain always played it.”

And then I was off. And I nailed that stupid song. I had never been able to get it on the coast. But it was there, and it went from my memory to my fingers flawlessly and I couldn’t fucking believe it.

I played four or five more songs before they did a switch and then I got something even better- compliments. None of this “You ain’t too bad of a geetar player fer bein a girl” shit (to which I usually answer “it’s a bass, dipshit”). I hate THOSE compliments, because they imply that they had low expectations because of my gender. Real compliments. “Nice playing”. “Good job keepin it down”. “Wow it’s nice playing with you”.

And our jams are like that. We try to encourage each other and get new people up and encourage them. Cos even if you suck the first time we hear you, if you show up at the next one, chances are you’ve made progress, and that’s all you can really ask, I guess. Make progress. Get better. I still get better every time I play, and I use a lot of that theory knowledge.

Digression: I’ll probably do a writing on “that theory knowledge” one of these days.

Even though I’m not much of a blues fan, unless you count Cream as blues, I go back every week, because I have to. I don’t have to because I’m a blues society board member. I don’t have to because I’m in a band. I have to because I have to keep playing and the blues is a fantastic thing to reteach yourself stuff.

Pril jams in Jefferson and writes daily at Nth of Pril

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Posted by Michele Christopher at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

I say the title with tongue firmly in cheek…

In small towns you sometimes feel like you’re in a parade or something. After you spend about five years in a place with less than 30,000 people, you run into this thing where no matter where you go, you see someone you know. You drive down the road and wave at your friends, and no point in bringing your hand back into the car, because in another 30 seconds someone else you know will be coming down the road.

This is magnified by 100 if you’re in a band and do a lot of playing.

Just before I moved, I couldn’t go anywhere without running into a friend, or an acquaintance, or even just some stranger who had to come up and say “Hey aren’t you in that band that played last week at (insert name of some local bar)?”. It wasn’t just around town. I’d go to the outlying towns to visit friends and people who I had no idea who they were would come up and talk to me. It’s a really small dose of fame, I guess, maybe what it’s like. I have no idea, of course, what being famous is all about. Even the miniscule dose was weird feeling.

I’ve been in this new town for a year, and it’s already happening. I waved at three people the other day goin down the road. People come up to me at the jams and want me to teach them how to play the bass. I tell them they’d be insane to let me and direct them to the local music store or one of the other guys who plays bass. Because I have no idea what I’m doing on this 4-stringed thing. I just play.

Which is why I sort of trip out about having “fans” come talk to me when I’m stoned in the beer cooler trying to decide on Mickey’s or Henry’s. What else could you call them? It’s nice on the ego to think of them as “fans”, anyway. And a little creepy, probably.

But here’s why fans are so cool. They let you do this kind of thing to them:

Posted by Michele Christopher at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

Most surprises are pretty cool. But some of them aren't. Here we go…

The old band never had a manager. We all went out and put the squeeze on any place with a stage to let us play, that would pay us what we asked. There are a lot of suckers out there…

So basically one person would get a line on a weekend, then call us all to make sure no one else had anything going on, and then they'd call back and book it. Then someone else might do it for another weekend. Blahbitty-blah blah blah.

Our guitar player (we'll call him the Kook, for the same reason we have a Djeef) grabbed a fine one. One of his relatives was in the Eagles, and needed a band to play at the annual charity dinner and golf tournament. Fat wad of cash for a tiny amount of time.

My hair was bright blue at the time.

So I have no idea what the Eagles are or anything like that. I just loaded the stuff up the night it was all going on, found the place, and hopped out. Looked around.

We played at this thing and the youngest person there was probably 50. It was one of the only gigs we played that the Kook was hatless for, because they made him take it off, because you weren't allowed to wear hats in the club.

When we realized what it was, we had to retune the setlist AGAIN. We ended up with maybe 10 songs that might be acceptable. And we had to fill an hour. We dragged those songs out as long as we could, and then after a while the Eagles took flight (very slowly and politely, of course) and it was just the help standing around watching us. So we did some crunchy songs for them, finished out the hour and went home.

Yeah that's boring. But I cant remember exactly what we did after we finished there. It was a 20 minute drive home. O, I probably got pulled over, because I ALWAYS got pulled over.

Posted by Pril Stevenson at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

One of the things I love about playing in crummy little bars, and I'm a people watcher so this is just perfect for me, is the crowd out on the floor. I'm there to make them dance. They are there to make me laugh. Fine guy alerts. Drunk chick alerts. Angry venue owner alerts. Someone's getting busted outside alerts. All that. Then the one night when one of the bikers in the local club came in to tell us one of theirs was just killed a block away in a wreck. That's altogether something else. "This next set's for Frankie! Goodbye, my friend!"

Continue reading "Entertain and Be Entertained" »

Posted by Michele Christopher at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

It's hard to figure out what to write for this. It's something that has to be experienced and the experiences are sometimes hard to put on paper.

So I asked my Smart Half what I should write for the next one, and he immediately said "the Tavern".

The tavern was 12 miles up a winding road on the banks of the Coos-Millicoma river. It was the gathering spot for the local community, and every Wednesday the place would fill up, packed wall to wall with the locals, and everyone who could play was packed into a corner. The floors were plank, it was heated by a woodstove. It was built in the late 1920s. People would spill out onto the highway and drink and smoke. The only ventilation was "open the doors and windows and maybe we can catch a breeze". Some folks would arrive on their boats, and tie up at the dock. You'd be dripping sweat after one or two songs, in the middle of December, with all the doors and windows open just to let the smoke and steam out.

Continue reading "The Tavern" »

Posted by Michele Christopher at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

First of all I just want to introduce you all to my world. And I'm not going to do it nice and easy. No, because I never do anything nice and easy, just like Ike and Tina.

My world revolves around playing music. Just about any kind of music you can throw at me, I'll take a stab at playing. I may not like it. I may hate it so much you see me leaning off the side of the stage throwing up in some woman's faux Prada purse, but I'll keep playing until I can't stand it anymore. Or I drop from exhaustion. Or someone kicks me off stage.

Continue reading "Shit meets the fan in rural Oregon" »

Posted by Michele Christopher at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

Ladies and Gentlemen.... Michele's off to get the Turtle and the sites ours for the next few days.... I'll do what I can to retain your interest, but I don't think that'll be an issue based on what we have coming up from our guest writers... So, without further ado, I present pril and the Most Rock n Roll Moment Ever.....
-finn

I've been playing music in bars around Southern Oregon for about ten years, entertaining drunk fishermen and loggers and whoever else wanders in to these out of the way, small bars. Often on a backroad in the middle of nowhere, 50 miles from Here and There. Some of the best times i had were in a band out in Coos Bay. The drummer, we'll call him Djeef, and i were best buds, and still are, and we worked some painting jobs together and tried to get on this pipelining job together (another adventure in itself) and we were a formidable rhythm section. We were rock stars. "World famous locally", was our motto.

He had come out of the SF speed/thrash metal scene, and my influences lay squarely in the 80s LA punk scene. So you can maybe see how we might have meshed. Perfectly. We could be drunk as shit after sharing a bottle of Beam and a 12-pack of Henry's, but when it came time to play, we nailed it. Sometimes between sets we'd get up and jam through For Whom The Bell Tolls or Hungry Wolf. If we felt really brave, we'd throw in a chunk of Death Angel's "Ultraviolence".

Continue reading "most rock n roll moment ever by
pril" »

Posted by A Guest Author at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It