And another thing...

Starting Friday, I'm on vacation until the 10th. I don't imagine I'll be doing too much posting. You see, I plan to work on my Goldwing, which means I'll be searching high and low for the ever-elusive headlight, and I'll also be rebuilding the carburetors *shudder*. I may post, I may not. We'll see, as my dad said to me 748,602 times when I was a kid.

Love.

Bass-O-Matic

So I’m looking for a new band. Or more accurately, another band to fill the void. The two band situations I have going on right now, well, they’re not going. One is an original band that writes in the vein of Gov’t Mule, ZZ Top, and Masters of Reality. The other band, also original, writes in the vein of Jeff Buckley meets Mother Love Bone.

The latter band was a happy accident. Two of the members are from a long-defunct band that I dreamed of being the bassist for. About a year and a half ago, I got a call from the drummer asking if I’d like to join the new band he had going on, and that the vocalist was rather Buckley-esque. Well, I love Jeff Buckley, and if the drummer and guitarist were on board, it had to be good. Well, it most certainly is. But it’s also extremely tentative. There are life commitments that as of late have kinda put the kibosh on things. But I’m not complaining. The reasons are all good. Beautiful, even.

The former band is a whole lot of fun, but the drummer is in another, MUCH more successful and audience-friendly original band. Think danceable punk fronted by a woman with great pipes. The guitarist has two other bands as well, one a cover band and the other a little jazz outfit. I’ve always been a little envious of those guys because their chops are always sharp due to playing all the time. My chops, what’s left of them, are as dull as a sack of wet mice. The reason for that is I don’t really practice at all because really, what’s the point? So I can be a bedroom virtuoso (easy now)?

Of course, that is a stunningly foolish reason not to practice. You practice to learn and improve. If you’re not practicing, you’re atrophying. And great googily moogily, have I ever atrophied. I let that happen because:

1. It’s summer and I don’t want to be indoors, practicing through headphones
2. I’m lazy
3. Reiterate #2

I’ve owned a bass for 19 (zoinks!) years now, and I’d say on average, I think of selling it all off and giving it up completely every .725 years. What stops me? The thought that winter’s gonna roll around and I’ll be boooooooored. Couple that with the fact that I’m super-irrational and my lady fair brings me back to ground level, and that’s why I still have a bass. So, when I have another fit of restlessness because of a lull, I think about getting rid of it all or joining another band to keep myself from doing something foolish.

That brings me to now. I put an ad up on the internet announcing my availability. Man, the tides sure have turned recently. For as long as I can remember, bassists were THE most sought-after band member (well, maybe second to vocalists). For as long as I’ve been playing, there’s always been work for a bassist. Lately it seems that I see more “bassist available” ads than the “wanted” ones. And I’m not talking about hacks like me, either. I’m talking about guys who play electric and upright, have music degrees, etc., and amazingly, they also have to resort to the same pedestrian means I do for landing a gig.

Joining a band is not all unlike any other kind of relationship. For the sake of immediate relation, I liken it to marriage. When you look for a band, you have to decide “am I going platonic or full-on lifetime commitment here?” Because really, it’s gonna matter sometime down the line.

Platonically, you have the cover/wedding bands. You know what’s expected of you, you’re playing other people’s music, you make people dance, you bring joy and often impart nostalgia. And you get paid. End of story. Do I consider it selling out? Hell no. In my eyes, if you’re playing music, something you love dearly, then good on you for being true to yourself. I actually have a great deal of respect for wedding bands because of the vast catalog they have to memorize, ready to honor the bride’s obscure request for “Angry Young Man” by Billy Joel (the keyboardist will have perma-grin from that moment on).

Matrimonially (yes, I know that word’s a stretch), you have original bands. Now, this is where your mettle REALLY gets tested. You know from the start that you’re going to lose more money than you make. Of course, money isn’t the goal, but it’s a HUGE bonus. To at least recoup the gas money you spent on the trip to play Ed’s Hoot ‘n’ Holler in Poughkeepsie for a 30-minute set through a horrific PA, playing to pretty much just the bartender and your significant other, well, that would be appreciated. There’s a very fine line between suffering for your art and just paying your dues. If you’re good enough and stick it out long enough, there will be dividends. But the band mortality rate is VERY high for this reason.

Then there’s the personality aspect. What will be the “leaving the cap off the toothpaste” that will cause infighting? Happens all the time. It could be that I reeeeeeally think that F# adds nicer tension and that the B is too predictable. Or that I think that guitar part would bite better if it were clean rather than overdriven. Or “Why do *I* always have to watch the gear?” Or “dude, your inebriated girlfriend used up all of the drink tickets AGAIN”. The list goes on and on.

But before you even get to that point, you have to find a band, then audition. This process has been simplified a little by the dawn of the internet. Really, there’s no reason for a band to not have MP3s anymore. The tools are out there, many of them very cheap if not free altogether. So, you get to listen right at your computer instead of trudging into town on a Tuesday night at 11:45 to hear the potential band, or bring all your gear to an audition to recognize immediately that there’s no way in hell you’re joining this band.

The part I’m having difficulty with is telling someone yes or no. How do you tell someone that the song they sent you, the one they wrote from the pit of the heart is just, well, trite? Or what they consider “rocking/melodic” is actually pretty boring and limp? I dunno. Email also tells a lot about where a person is coming from. I can’t help it. I’m a stickler for grammar. Nobody’s perfect, least of all me. But I can’t help but assume that someone who misspells every other word and has egregious syntax errors will be a really BAD drummer. But then there’s Tommy Lee, so go figure.

Auditions are funny because there are actually two happening simultaneously—I’m auditioning the band and they’re auditioning me. I hate auditions. But, such is life and this is how it’s done.

Stay tuned.

Monday Morning Funny

I'm still a little foggy from the weekend, so I'll let someone else do the thinking for me today. My mother just sent this to me:

Three Surgeons

Three surgeons are having a conversation. One of them said, "I'm the best surgeon in Texas. A concert pianist lost 7 fingers in an accident, I reattached them, and 8 months later he performed a private concert for the Queen of England."

One of the others said. "That's nothing. A young man lost both arms and legs in an accident, I reattached them, and two years later he won a gold medal in field events in the Olympics."

The third surgeon said, "You guys are amateurs. Several years ago a cowboy who was high on cocaine and alcohol rode a horse head-on into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the horse's ass and a cowboy hat. Now he's president of the United States!"?


Ahhhhh. That's good stuff. Thanks, Ma.

What Has Two Thumbs and Sawdust For Brains? THIS GUY.

In my usual rush out the door this morning, I grabbed both mine and my lady fair’s cell phones. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be too big a deal. But in this case, it is. You see, to save a couple bucks, we decided to go completely cellular and dump the house’s land line. So far, it’s worked out okay. There’s a juggling act involved because you do NOT want to go above your minutes limit, because sweet Jesus, cha-CHING. But it seemed to make more sense than having two phone services.

But now my lady is completely incommunicado and it’s my fault. It’s her day off, and she had a lot of phone stuff to do, naturally. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. Sorry, Butterbean.

What’s ignernt mean?

Five Questions

Q. At what age do you go from being just a guy checking out a beautiful woman to a lecherous, leering pervert? Just for looking in the same manner the former did?
A. Thirty-three, evidently.

Q. Does the world really need to hear Free’s “All Right Now” ever again?
A. No, it most certainly does not. Ditto “I Will Survive”. Seriously now.

Q. Just what will the planet be like when we just flat-out can’t afford to fill our cars anymore?
A. Surly as a crystal meth’d-up pack of badgers on a 6-day bender. But cleaner.

Q. How many jills are in a pint?
A. Four.

Q. What’s it all mean, Mr. Natural?
A. How the hell should I know?

Let the healing begin...

Honey, I Shrunk The Season

August 17th already. Crikey. Right on cue, the daylight hours are getting abbreviated, the actual sunlight has that look, and the back-to-school sales are in full swing. I’m already hallucinating the aroma of new sneakers.

This happens to me every year. The first week of really, REALLY good weather at the beginning of summer (curse you, June!), I get simultaneously excited and melancholy, because I already know the season I adore so much is but a blip on the chronological radar screen. Summer in New England, in my opinion, is just too short. Summer seemed to last forever when I was a kid. Well, it just doesn’t anymore. Of course, this year it pretty much started a month late, and every year for the past couple years it seems to just crap out in mid-August. August was typically associated with super-hot days. Now it’s associated with September jumping the gun.

I probably determine when summer begins and ends by the temperature of the pond water. Admittedly, I’m a little lame in this department anyway. I grew up on the Jersey shore where the water temperature was tolerable at the end of May, and by late June it was bath water. Not so here. When ocean water that’s 62 degrees is considered “unseasonably warm”, well, it becomes abundantly clear to me that I just wasn’t cut out for this place. The other determinants are when I can ride my motorcycle comfortably, hear the nocturnal chirp of the peepers, finally lose my jacket, drive with the windows down (I love that), and walk barefoot (I love that even more). Plus, there’s just something about the sun still being out at 8:30 that’s pure magic to me.

I’ve been here twenty years now, and have seen all the different types of weather this area has to offer. However, I seemingly insist on staying, so I honestly have no right to complain about it. Bah, who am I kidding---I probably will. I’ll try to save it for later though. For the time being, I’ll continue to wring out as much as I absolutely can out of summer, and then somehow try to (cringe) “embrace” fall and winter.

'Winging It

Greetings.

It’s now time to bring everyone up to speed on what I’ve been doing for the past several months. At the top of the list is my latest acquisition, my 1977 Honda GL1000 Goldwing. Now I know what you’re thinking:

“Aw jeez, he bought one of those two-wheeled couches…a Wingebago.”

Au contraire. This is one of the very first Goldwings. The original came out in ’75, and it was basically just a standard motorcycle with a large engine in it. What happened was that over time, people realized they could seriously load the thing up and go on long trips. Along comes Craig Vetter, the guy who pretty much invented and revolutionized aftermarket fairings, and it was all over. Honda started putting factory fairings on the Goldwings in 1980, and they have become the two-wheeled behemoths you see today. But the bike itself is an engineering marvel. It has a water-cooled flat four, so it’s pretty much like having a Subaru engine in a motorcycle frame.

I bought my '77 in early July, with my only knowledge coming from what I could glean from the internet. I’ve been riding an ’85 Honda Interceptor for the past 7 years, and although it’s a great bike, it’s proven to be woefully inadequate for two-up riding. My lady fair and I would have to stop quite often to get the circulation going in our legs. So, it was time to look into something more appropriate.

I'd been entertaining the idea of getting a ‘Wing for a couple years now, and the more I looked at them, the more I enjoyed the simplicity and rarity of the first 4 years they were made. The new ones, man. Oy. They definitely have their demographic, but it sure as hell isn’t me. After much extensive research and soul-searching, I found one somewhat locally. It had the requisite Vetter fairing, severely knackered panniers, and a rear trunk, and of course the obligatory "carbs could use a cleaning".

Lesson #1: 99.9% of sellers are completely full of crap.

My original intention was to refurbish the bike and repaint it, completely outfitted with the all the touring garb. But that idea lasted two days. I decided to return it to bone-stock and bring it back to its original glory that it hadn’t seen since 1978. I'm new to the Goldwing thing and I learn something new every day, I tell ya. When I decided to remove the fairing and other various attachments from my bike, I discovered that there were a myriad of parts I needed to replace. The nature of the Vetter fairings is that in order to install them, you need to remove a few things like the turn signals and their stalks (sometimes cutting them off entirely). I guess in some cases, you can use the stock headlight in the Vetter and simply put it back in the stock bucket when you take the fairing off. That wasn't the case with mine, however. I had to source a headlight from a salvage yard, and I bought OEM front turn signal stalks because no one, and I mean NO one, has them. Fortunately, they weren't too expensive. I bought new turn signals for the front, and I lucked out on EBay and actually won an auction for used rear signals with stalks.

It’s not easy bringing an antique back to stock specs. I’m currently in the middle of a pissing match with one of my used parts suppliers, as he keeps sending me parts that he swears are for that bike. They, um, aren’t. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't see a faired 'Wing as a great bike with a bonus fairing. I’d see it as something to run away from. Finding parts for a 29-year-old bike gets expensive!

You’ll hear me talk about it often and you can bet there will be updates as it’s a slow, ongoing process. The picture you see is a factory-fresh ’76. That’s what mine will look like when I’m done with it.

Funk of Forty-Thousand Years

Somehow, I thought my “reintroduction” post today would be more cerebral than it’s going to be, but I have to get this off my chest. Think of it as another Public Service Announcement.

The Courtesy Flush. I tell ya, the world would be a MUCH better place if people would employ this simple act. Seriously. It’d probably make a good dent in the sales of Lysol and incense, but man, we’re talking about people’s lives here.

How many times have you walked into a bathroom/restroom/water closet/loo, only to be knocked perilously close to unconsciousness due to one’s lack of adherence to the procedure? For me, the answer is “more times than I care to remember”. Frankly, it makes me run out of there and re-think just how badly I needed to go in there in the first place.

So friends, behold, embrace, endorse the Courtesy Flush. Billions of olfactory glands (and stomachs) throughout the world will thank you.

Sincerely,

Your Host (courteously flushing since ’84)

I Hath Returned

Greetings, everyone.

I'm going to take a crack at keeping a web log again. I haven't posted/reported anything since February, so there are a variety of things to fill you all in on. However, I haven't the time to do that just yet. What I will do is post all the previous entries I posted before I fell off the face of the cyber earth.

Stay tuned.