Good times... sometimes

Sometimes it's a really positive thing to have a really crappy jam/rehearsal. Yesterday arvo we got together for a few hours to play some music, dodging some heavy rainfalls. I guess our own individual expectations were pretty high after last Sundays' get-together, which was, for lack of a better way to describe it, magic! Pure magic.

Yeah... for the first 30 minutes or so yesterday, we just couldn't seem to get our $hite together! It was actually quite frustrating at first... the harder we tried the worse it sounded!

I mean, for me individually, I wasn't happy with my bass sound, I couldn't seem to lock into J's drumming, and my singing had forgotten to turn up... I couldn't seem to find any 'control' of my voice at all! It was really quite funny. But not at the time...

But it wasn't just me. Each of us seemed to be battling our own personal performance demons in one way or another, for that first half-an-hour or so.

Twas a good reality check.


(Just a random pic off Flickr!)

I think it was Harvey's benign influence on us all, perhaps?

So, we took a 10 minute break, relaxed a bit, all acknowledged we were playing like crap and it sounded horrid - and got back into it.

Then it clicked. Then it sounded wonderful. We all gelled, things clicked into place, and all was well in our little musical world once again. Yeah, I think we were just trying too hard!

We started actually loosening up so much we really did 'jam', rather than just run down songs. That was a great development for us. I mean, we do jam / make-things-up-as-we-go-along , but it's normally within a song structure or something. Yesterday, once we relaxed, we were just kinda really starting to play off each other, bouncing ideas off each other, lots of fun interplay. Lots of space and feel. Lovely stuff.

My singing is our main downfall. I love to sing, don't get me wrong. I'm an average singer - but I'm not a great one. I'm passable... but because I haven't done much singing for years, I've lost a lot of 'control' in my voice. It's something I need to do a lot of work on, to get that flexibility and control back again. I'm not beating myself up over it. It's just being realistic.

And yes... my new guitar sounded like a million dollars! [giggles]. It makes it so easy to play when you've got a nice instrument to work with. It's fun swapping between bass and guitar. I enjoy the different aspects of playing the two instruments. Keeps me on my toes. I enjoy playing the guitar (it kinda comes easy to me), but I lourve playing bass.

And hey... we're all doing it to have some fun. That's the bottom line. And it's definitely a lot of happy fun.

---

And now, time for something completely different...

The pharmacist's directions

Upon arriving home, a husband was met at the door by his sobbing wife.

Tearfully she explained, "It's the pharmacist. He insulted me terribly this morning on the phone."

Immediately, the husband drove downtown to confront the druggist and demand an apology.

Before he could say more than a word or two, the druggist told him, "Now, just a minute, listen to my side of the story."

"This morning the alarm failed to go off, so I was late getting up. I went without breakfast and hurried out to the car, only to realize that I locked the house with both house and car keys inside.

"I had to break a window to get my keys. In doing so I tore my suit and had to go upstairs and change.

"Then, driving a little too fast, I got a speeding ticket. When I was about three blocks from the store, I got a flat tire.

"Being late, my usual parking place had been taken and I had to drive around to find another one.

"When I finally got to the store, there were a bunch of people impatiently waiting for me to open up.

"I got the store opened and started waiting on these people and all the time the dang phone was ringing off the hook."

He continued, "Then I had to break a roll of nickels against the cash register drawer to make change, and they spilled all over the floor. I got down on my hands and knees to pick up the nickels. The phone was still ringing.

"When I came up, I cracked my head on the open cash drawer which made me stagger back against a showcase with a bunch of perfume bottles on it. All of them hit the floor and broke. Meanwhile, the phone is still ringing with no let up, and I finally got to answer it. It was your wife.

"She wanted to know how to use a rectal thermometer... and believe me Mister, as God is my witness, all I did was tell her."

(Thanx for this, Dee)

Peas be with ewe

---

Subscribe to this Blog