out

our blues society board member elections are next weekend. I'm stepping down as secretary. I just don't have the organizational skills for it. I tried valiantly for three years. I am going to try to stay on as a board member at large and just do stuff.

In all honesty, I'm pretty bored with playing blues. Maybe if it wasn't the same blues I've been playing since we've been here i'd feel better about it. But since I'm just a bass player I don't have much say in what we play. And certain people insist that we play just like the recording. Ok well I haven't ever heard the recordings for about 80% of what we play and I'm not going to go and listen to stuff I don't particularly like just so I can make some purist happy. I don't even practice blues stuff when I'm home. I don't listen to it driving around. I go out of my way NOT to play it at home, actually.

I usually get to play with anyone new who shows up at the jam. Especially if its a new drummer. Some people would get all bent about that, but I don't mind. I see it as "someone has to keep the time" and since I do that very well, I always get to play with the new people. Also, I've been told that I wing it really well. Except on something like "Loan Me A Dime", which I've probably heard four times in my life and played once. That's my sticking point. If I haven't heard a song very many times, I can't even wing very well. I have to be able to have the song in my head all the way through. MOST blues is pretty easy to wing it on though.

And slow blues... let's not go there. Snore blues.

Last week, due to the weather, we had a pretty small turnout. One of the players suggested that we just throw a CD in and play along with it. I said I wasn't going to do that. It's one thing to sit at home and practice that way, but to get on stage and do it is so damn lame. It just stinks of karaoke somehow, or even worse, lip-synching. Plus, on a lot of recordings, the pitch is different than what our instruments are playing, even if we're all tuned and in the same key. I just think that's cheesy and usually sounds like shit. How the hell does someone play for 30 years and not hear that?

I'm really weird, I guess, about a bunch of stuff. I hate it when people tune on stage (through their amps). I hate it when people play stupid shit between songs (drummers are really bad about that). Both of those things just seem inconsiderate. No one wants to hear that shit. NO ONE. When we had our Christmas benefit, I asked that we please tell everyone to not tune on stage, because this was a big thing and it should be at least semi-professional. One guy said "oh, my guitar is cold when I get there and the only time I can tune is on stage." Bullshit, I called. Get there earlier and use a fucking tuner, jackass.