I try to browse my local craigslist musicians ads all the time just to see who’s out there and what’s going on with the local music scene. Last night I found a posting that was so funny I almost peed my pants. Here it is:
Reply to: comm-dgn3n-1220545234@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-06-13, 8:48PM PDT
Hey there; i’m an adult (aka “over 30″) who wants to find musicians who are not egomaniacal, strangely self-absorbed in their inflexible, hateful lame-ass unlistenable originals no one will ever buy a drink long enough to painfully absorb and if so, have nightmares about, and hopefully, people with chops who will sacrifice all things for music that has soul and danceability–even if its frigging metal, do you know how to groove it? Does James Brown have a place in your heart–even though you might also have a marshall stack, or a girlfriend who’s stacked, or a stack of money, or a smoke stack? WTF? I don’t know. All i can say is, getting into a band with people who don’t suck is like trying to date a hot girl and not expecting her to be freakishly stupid or intensely high maintenence. Why is this? I dont’ know. I guess people only evolve when nobody is looking. So if you are in it to get laid, and you suck, then good luck; if you understand dynamics, have a singer who is a singer and not a guy imitating a singer (especially guys who imitate like, Jack Johnson, who in my opinion, fucking blows), and i dunno, if you have a bunch of nymphomaniac rich girlfriends who hang out with all their friends and take shitloads of X and dance naked, oh shoot, now i forgot the question. Anyway, i am a trained drummer (trained to go in the box, trained to hate loud fucking guitarists, and paid money to go to music school and learn to read music which i probably should have saved for stuff like rent); i am also funny, unstupid, and have a recording thing that lets me record stuff, like, with really good microphones i have.
influences: Primus, Police, Public enemy, James brown, Soundgarden, The Who, The Replacements, Foo Fighters, The Jackson 5, The supremes, Rage Against the Machine, and the chick in the front row with the hot rack who keeps looking at me in a way that make me pretend I don’t notice.
Assholes encouraged to apply; retards, sure, because, if you are a retard, you don’t know it, so go for it; but really, if you want to just “get together and jam”, i will mock you and pretend i’m coming and then NOT come because you are a fucking hippie and must die.
Location: Walnut Creep
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Although I’ve started several bands, apparently I’ve never done it right. But now, thanks to the great correspondent’s course from the University of Andy, I know how to start one:
The University of Andy is the best place to learn this and other valuable life skills such as surviving a bear attack and holding your liquor. Andy Botwin is a brilliant educator.
I know, it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything here. Life has been rather hectic as of late. In fact, until last night I hadn’t picked up a bass in several weeks. I’ve written before about the local Thursday night jam session in my town. I haven’t attended in a long time. Besides being somewhat bored by the standard blues rock fare, I’ve been really busy on Thursday nights. First it was the Opeth show which completely rocked my world. Then I was recovering from some minor surgery. Then we were having a really tough day with the kid and I just couldn’t deal with other people after we finally got her to bed. Plus thre’s something like 3 other bassists who have been going and from what I hear they’ve all been playing at once. Four would just be ridiculous!
So that led me to organizing my own night at the studio. I took out an ad on craigslist looking for people who are into playing hard prog rock and got three solid responses. One guy played sax, drums and theramin, one played guitar, and the other played keys, guitar, bass and drums. All of us were really into King Crimson, and we busted it out last night. After some aimless noodling, we gave Red a try and it really came together after a while. It’s a tough song with a lot of parts, and I got most of the parts down but definitely need work on the opening riff and figuring out where each one starts. We also did a sick 21st Century SchitzoidMan jam, One More Red Nightmare, and a half assed attempt at Thela Hun Gingeet. We did Shine on You Crazy Diamond. We did Tom Sawyer that went into a pretty sick jam, and some freeform stuff that the sax player referred to as being rather quaalude-y.
For the most part, I played the electric upright. At one point I picked up my Fender and the guitarist said I should keep playing the upright since it creates such a different sound. I got a really killer tone from it last night too. At the other jams, I’d been going for more of a standard thumping low sustain upright bass tone, but last night I cranked up the gain, sustain and the lows and it was nice and fuzzy. The more I play that thing, the less I want to play my Fender, and I love that Fender!
I was so pumped from playing I could barely sleep when I got home. I kept tossing and turning with those riffs going through my head. I can’t wait to do it again next week.
When I first heard Primus, I thought that it would be impossible to ever attempt to play bass like Les Claypool. But when you slow it down and break down the parts, it’s not that hard to learn and master with a lot of practice. Playing that and singing at the same time is a whole different story. So below is a nice breakdown of the first song on the first Primus album, minus the Rush sample intro. And here’s a clip of the original to compare.
Odd time signatures and polyrhythms are fun to play around with. It’s not going to make people dance. It could possibly create whiplash if you’re headbanging to it. It will make your progressive music that much more progressive and interesting. Rather than try to explain it myself, I turn you over to a drummer. And not just any drummer. Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy is the perfect music geek to help demonstrate how this sometimes difficult mathy stuff works in practice.
So that big gig that I had then lost then had again…
…well, I lost it again, and this time for good. The combination of learning a new instrument and learning to play songs in a style I have little to no passion for without the benefit of a drummer to help keep me where I need to be is what did me in. There just isn’t enough time to get my shit together enough to pull off a professional performance. At first I was rather devastated by the news because I was more excited about playing in front of my town than I was about the actual music. I made peace with it quicker than I thought I would and I’m now well on my way to moving on to the next thing.
Seeing Opeth the other night definitely helped me to get past it. Despite the fact that you can rarely even hear the bass doing anything distinctive (with a few notable exceptions) either live or in recordings, seeing them a year ago inspired me to pick up my bass again after years off. And seeing them last week reconfirmed for me that I should not settle for playing music that I have no passion for just because it might be convenient. It’s always fun to play, but creating your own music on your own terms takes it to the next level. These guys play incredibly unique music completely on their own terms, taking liberal helpings of progressive rock and death metal and coming out with something completely unique, powerful and mind blowing.
I think I have one guitarist who is definitely on the same wavelength and another one who could be. We’ll definitely need a drummer, and beyond that it’s pretty open. Keys would be nice, though the idea of incorporating more diverse sounds is also really appealing. I’ve recently fallen completely in love with the sound of the bassoon, thanks to some stuff I’ve seen on YouTube. I also have a friend who plays the musical saw which could add a piercing sonic layer that can cut through everything else and induce shivers in the audience.
I want to explore different time signatures and polyrhythms. I want to create dynamic, moving, sweeping sonic tapestries that break down into seemingly aimless cacophony only to reemerge into tight, technical, progressive, heavy rock, based in everything but the blues.
This Thursday night I’m going into San Francisco to see one of my favorite progressive metal bands, Opeth! These headbanging Swedes make some incredibly intense, intricate, heavy and melodic music. Even in their early days as a death metal band, their sound was far more progressive than pretty much any death metal out there. They still incorporate some of that death metal sound, but they are musically in a league of their own. Check it out:
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It’s been a real long time since I’ve done a metal monday post. In fact, ever since I’ve gotten my electric upright bass, I have been severely neglecting this blog. But today is Monday and I’ve got something new and exciting for you. It’s Ozzy Osbourne’s classic Crazy Train, done a little bit differently this time by the Bottom Line Duo.
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So last night was our dads and kids acoustic jam. It’s typically from 5:30 - 7:30 but my bus was ridiculously late and wound up not even picking me up until 5:30. I walked in the door of my house at 5:45 to my screaming daughter being carried to her room for a time out by mu flustered wife. Fifteen minutes of screaming ensued before I could get her out the door.
Now did I also mention that the temperature has been in the 90’s all week so far? Well it has, and I’ve been working mostly outside the last couple of days in preparation for our office move. So when I get home from that, I’m even more burnt than usual (and I’m usually pretty burnt after work as it is).
So we wind up getting to the jam at around 6:15 and I get set up while my daughter starts playing with her friend. Did I also mention that we’re potty training? She’s been mostly out of diapers for a week, and while she’s been really good about getting to the potty on time, this is the first time she’d need to possibly interrupt me mid-song to get there. So every chance I could, I’d ask her if she had to go. We got to play 2 songs which both sounded really good. I’m making progress on the upright and I think that it just needed some breaking in for the buzzing to stop.
So after 2 songs we got pizza from the place down the block. The girls at the pizza place either know my voice or my order because they always know it’s me when I call. I brought my daughter and her friend over to pick them up because I wasn’t going to leave a potty training kid with my buddies, even though they’ve already gone through that with their older girls. We get back with the pizza and I give my daughter her slice and then go to get some for myself. The pizza comes with these little plastic cups of Parmesan cheese, and before I could do anything, my kid has the lid off of one and is proceeding to down it like a shot. Needless to say, that doesn’t work out so well and she starts choking. A couple whacks on the back gets it dislodged, along with the entire contents of her stomach, which magically holds more contents than her size somehow. So there’s puke all over the floor. She’s crying and puking. I am completely overwhelmed at this point.
There’s even more annoyances involved which I won’t get into. Let’s just say that despite the fact that what little music I did play I played rather well, this was the worst practice ever.
BTW, below is a closer up picture of me playing the new bass.
Despite my misgivings in my previous post, last night’s jam was a hell of a lot of fun. It was the most comfortable I’ve been playing the upright yet. I got there a little late because I had family stuff I had to take care of, so I got myself all set up and the guy next to me suggests we do Heroes by David Bowie which I had brought in 2 weeks ago. He then sticks a mic in my face so I can sing it. I’m still not 100% up to speed on electric upright and I wasn’t even warmed up yet, so it was really awkward and I gave up singing halfway through the first chorus. turning it into a slow instrumental jam. I had printed out a couple of chord charts for stuff I knew I could play and sing at the same time, but I left them at work, so I just focused on playing. But at one point I went to the bathroom and this other guy was playing my bass when I came back (he was a classically trained cellist, so he did some amazing shit on it and at one point asked if I had a bow which I really wish I did just to hear what this guy could do with it) so I got behind a mic and started doing some background vocals and then sang lead on a verse and chorus. When I’m not trying to play an instrument, I can really belt it out, and this was a really fun song sing (Turn on Your Love Light - I was a deadhead for years so this one brought me right back). We did a lot of blues and early bluesy rock which led itself to great walking lines which I’m really starting to get the hang of. I really need to get disciplined about doing my scales on this thing so I really know where to go. Seeing what that cellist could do was like a kick in the ass to me.
