The Waiting Man

A little rehearsal/jam session with the as-yet-unnamed band formed around the 'World's Longest Album Project'. A chance to stretch out on electric guitar for the first time in a while. Fun...

Work kept me hopping until about 5.30, when I finally got out of a client's home, having discussed almost everything except which of our range of products she actually wants. This one's a long haul

Most of the time, it's nice to know some things never change... But then there's Alan Jones & his inimitable, irritating, ignoble & inflammatory ignorance ~ this time on the Boston bombing

Moron

The rain stopped some time overnight. Things are slowly drying out, including me

Revisiting old video footage of various gigs I've done with various bands over the years ~ transferring them to DVD before we consign our current DVD/VCR to the electronic graveyard. Some good songs, some bad ones, some good moments, some howlers. Nothing I'm particularly 'proud' of... these DVDs will sit in a dark corner of the Archive, quietly & deservedly gathering dust. I think the work I'm doing now, on the World's Longest Album Project is much better, personally, than what I saw on those tapes, but I'm sure I thought I was doing my best work back then too...

I certainly don't view my musical past through rose-tinted glasses. Maybe some of my former band-mates think those were the 'glory days', now that they're settled down, married, mortgaged & parented... Just don't expect me to attend any 'getting the band back together' 50th (or 40th) birthday parties...

Palindrome Day ~ Ad Emord Nilap!!

A restless night... the New Year's cold now at the stage where coughing feels like your throat being cut from the inside. Difflam lozenges helped, but didn't sit too well with my fickle digestive tract. Heartburn + Coughing = Aarrgghh...

Mixing session today for the World's Longest Album Project, not that the songs are lengthy or numerous, just that it's been written, recorded & now mixed in piecemeal fashion over the last three years or so. What's interesting is that the band now forming around these songs is playing them in different ways & feels to the recorded versions ~ perhaps a bonus live disc will be necessary when the album's released. I'm enjoying the studio time because I love playing with soundscapes (& because there's a lot of my guitars in them), but am also having fun with the evolving band at our sporadic rehearsals, mostly for the fun of playing & bouncing ideas off another guitarist, as well as our keyboard-playing singer, whose album this will (eventually) be

Dinner with visiting ex-pat friends tonight, last seen when we were in Virginia on our US trek last year. It seems strange to be saying "last year" already... it was barely three months ago!!

A couple of years ago, I "retired" from musical performance:~ fed up with the unreliability of gigs, venues, sound engineers, "organisers" &, in some cases, my fellow performers. I never gave up on music itself though & in those couple of years, recorded (IMHO) some pretty good guitar work for other people's projects & certainly never lost interest in what I considered to be good music... even though I wasn't really producing any myself ~ my guitars rested in their cases &, in one or two cases, went a bit mouldy... as did my playing skills

But I acquired a few esoteric instruments during this exile (electric kazoo, Irish bouzouki, various things to hit with sticks or fists...) & recently bought a little hand-held digital recorder which allows me to record ambient sounds, with the vague idea of how all these things can come together with the backlog of music I've accumulated over the years of being a sideman or bandmember, but not a bandleader as such...so I have about twenty pieces I refer to as my 'Homeless Songs', which have had a few abortive attempts at realisation, but so far, no definition

Having fallen in recently with a collection of players both new & familiar, but encouraging overall, I've found myself willing to go through the trials of live performance & its rigmarole again. And it hasn't taken long for me to see that not much has changed. Live performance, at the semi-professional level at least, is a fragile thing ~ subject to change of date, venue, availability of players... & in the latest case, availability of the "organiser" himself, a week out from the agreed, albeit revised, date of play. All this is ranged against the Player's desire to play, whatever the conditions, wherever & whatever the venue at whatever the cost... Until the day comes when you either can't or won't pay it any more... as happened with me those couple of years ago

But, as yet, I remain largely unperturbed by the broken chain of events &, instead, have been enjoying the feeling of creativity one gets with empathetic players who place greater importance on the playing rather than the player. At present there is a core trio of two guitarists & a singer/keyboardist & we are developing an ear for how we play together & what kind of overall 'sound' is emerging. A couple of sessions with a bass playing friend have been encouraging, but unfortunately infrequent due to everyones reliance on daytime income &... in at least two cases (one of them mine), the vicious nature of late Winter cold & 'flu strains

Part of me wonders if I've grown beyond the accumulated grievance & anguish built up over twenty-odd years of playing at the not-quite-successful level & have achieved a Zen-kind of acceptance of the inevitable circumstances... while another part of me waits, watches & prepares for the day when I, once again, have my fill, spit my dummy, take my playthings & go home in a huff... or a minute & a huff

Somewhere at the back of all this is the part of me that wants to assemble a true 'solo' project in my glacially-growing digital "sketchpad" studio here at home. Confidence & capability have yet to be installed in sufficient levels for this to happen, but the Event Horizon is slowly contracting...

Always providing, of course, that some petty bulls#%t doesn't send me spiralling over the edge & result in me breaking expensive guitars across someones worthless brains... As long as I remember to grab the steel Resonator guitar first... The worst it would suffer would be a skull-shaped dent

I made a rather low-key & brief return to live performance last Thursday night

The gig will go on my list of 'Strangest Places To Play Guitar'... a campaign launch for a Labor Party candidate in an upcoming Western Suburbs local Council election. The electorate has a high Asian population, so all the speeches were being translated more or less simultaneously ~ two sentences in English, then Chinese, then two more... & the other entertainment on the night ranged from an Asian Mario Lanza to an accordion & Chinese flute duo who specialised in what sounded like South China Sea Shanties. Odd choice, but great players

And us ~ a singing keyboardist, a singing guitarist & me... a guitar colourist, as I described myself to someone after the five song gig was done in front of a polite, but probably slightly bemused audience

Actually, that 'someone' I described myself to is a guy I met the previous weekend & deserves an entry of/on his own, which I don't have time for right now, as dinner is in several stages of preparation

More tomorrow, maybe

I would like to attend, but will settle for being quite interested in the outcomes of this lecture...

If what I see in this world is mostly the result of my imagination, then my subconscious mind really hates me!!

Spending a few hours in a recording studio today, as the World's Longest Album project begins to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Today will be spent playing & re-playing guitar parts & solos recorded so long ago I'll have to re-learn them first.

So... a day of fretwankery beckons.

A wet, wild'n'windy day in Sydney... perfect for not going anywhere.

Except over to Guitar Factory in Gladesville to pick up two parts of the String Section...



... Specifically the electric & main six-string, which have been reset, re-tuned & slightly re-jigged after a long period of inactivity. I also had the strings on my new bouzouki changed around to better suit my style of play. I had to wait half an hour for that to be done, so wandered around the shop for a while coveting, dreaming, plotting, drooling, wishing & hoping amongst their collection of amplifiers, effects & myriad shapes & sizes of things with strings. In the end, I had to retire to the car & wait... who would have thought Aladdin's Cave could be so overwhelming.

Now home, to prepare the 'Manor for visitors tomorrow evening...

A friend of mine ~ my musical foil in a previous life ~ has suggested I make a calendar of 13 of my best photos to gauge interest in the passion that looks set to supplant music in my life.

He claims to have an objective view of my work, not tainted by the burden of prejudice, nor the inevitable dilemma of somehow expecting to make some semblance of living from one's talent in the face of overwhelming competition & indifference.

I wish I could believe it ~ both him & the possibilities, but history & my experiences therein leave me cynical, pessimistic & unmotivated. My 'career' in music has shown how talent & proficiency are no guarantees of recognition, let alone viability. It's far more important to have the self-belief, desire & ability to market & promote oneself loudly, ruthlessly & without shame. This goes against not only my style of playing but, by extension, my personality as a whole &, as an aside, is also a contributing reason for my desire to leave the Sales industry behind me, as I no longer have the stomach to even pretend that I'm suited to it... if I ever was.

In a nutshell, my inner conflict is this: I want to make a living from something I'm not only good at, but also enjoy doing. Until a couple of years ago that meant music. Now it includes photography... assuming that others think I'm good at it ~ I've only my own opinion... However, having had my dreams/aspirations of a sufficiently successful career in music dashed by year after year of it failing to eventuate ~ & my enthusiasm for it waning, most likely, as a result, I'm not at the stage in my photographic endeavours to risk killing the enthusiasm with futile expectations of self-sufficiency at least, success at best. So I'm reluctant to do anything with my photos, other than post them on Flickr, in order to preserve the innocent fun & enjoyment I get from a hobby/passion with no agenda attached. I may harbour fantasies of one day being Ian Wallace, but as long as it remains an unattached fantasy, there's no more harm in it than when I dreamed of being Eric Clapton when I first started playing guitar... before 25 years of experience & expectation were ultimately foiled & frustrated.

Gunshyness... lack of self-confidence... pessimism... call it what you will. I have it.

Probably the last post for the year, given what the next 24 hours holds... more on that next year.

In summary:~ ( A year of losses & gains, both intentional & not so. )

Dear Diary,

Well, what a week it's been! I ( took some photos with my phone... ), intensified the job hunt, went to see Shakespeare revved up, trimmed down & torn apart by Greg Fleet amongst others & was lucky that being front-row centre didn't attract the players' attention. Some others were attacked, commandeered, saturated... All in the name of good fun... & good theatre of course.

In the last three days I've played Daytripper on a cello ~ badly, Knockin' On Heaven's Door on a mandolin ~ okayly, Smells Like Teen Spirit on a ukulele & toy organ ~ weirdly, done an E-Bow guitar & mandolin solo duet(??) on Hearts & Flowers ~ with difficulty, a Wurlitzer organ-style version of Down On The Corner ~ begrudgingly (I hate Creedence Clearwater Revival) & written my first bit of original music for about a year. I've also played hambone, kazoo, sung a little, provided oral sound-effects & been recorded collapsing to the floor... at least one time too many.

Enough, dear Diary... I'm tired, sore & starving. Was it like this for Leonardo Da Vinci?!?!

At what point does "Can you show me how you play that bit on the guitar?" go beyond sharing technique with a fellow guitarist & become 'Conducting Guitar Lessons'?

Is it when you spend 2 hours showing the person 'that bit' because they still don't get it... or is it after the fourth similar-length session when that person starts picking your brain for other tricks'n'licks?

I think I have my first pupil... The other question is ~ should I be charging for my time? Especially since these 'lessons' are being conducted in Debtor's Prison.

But then anyone who's foolhardy enough to try following my left-handed-upside-down-different-tuning playing technique has their work cut out for them already. Maybe that's why it takes him so long to play things I think are pretty simple... It's not that he's a bad guitarist, just that our approaches & styles are different.

Edit: And, a couple of weeks ago I had a bit of a rant & wail about modern 'journalism'. I'm not sure if Sam DeBrito agrees with me or not, but we seem to be on the same page... somewhere...

In case you don't like Rugby League, just to remind you there are other things to do on a Sunday night in October...

They say the neon lights are bright on in the Broadway Café

For the few curious... a better-balanced view of my Status Quo Vadis. Little steps taken forward...

( Musical Notes )

( Debtors Prison )

Edit: And here's the score in Texas at the moment ~ one of the best photo galleries I've seen. Wish I was there with my camera!!

... to keep the petroleum industry ticking over. I've driven about 200 kms today, never leaving the confines of this town. It's a big city.

( I've been ev'rywhere man... )

Back to work tomorrow for a rest.

Last semi-pro gig done. Music 'career' now on hold indefinitely.

The new-improved-and-streamlined RockChikz band performed well ~ despite carelessly losing a keyboard player 6 days before the gig. I have hopes for them. High ones.

After ferrying a still decidedly post-op RonBassBeast back to his abode, I pointed OBluV8 homeward along the motorways & ate up the kilometres to the soothing strains of '10,000 Days', my current driving album of choice.

A gentle day today & a viewing, finally, of IronMan at the local cineplex. Good fun. Good cast. Looking forward to I.J.&.T.K.O.T.C.S. some time in the next few days...

Now ~ the heater & a slightly-above-room-temperature bottle of Shiraz d'Origine Inconnue await my attention.