Back to the Woodshed

I bought Tommy Igoe's Groove Essentials Playalong 1 & 2 and they are on their way. Tried to play some of the patterns off the poster this weekend and they are hard, which is depressing. I'm hoping that getting the playalong with cds will make it all make sense. I think mastering some of these grooves needs to be a prereq for me applying to go to the Drummer's Collective 5 day intensive. I think I'm giving up on that for this year...but have an eye towards doing it in 2012. And I may need that long just to prep for the audition. But no sense in going until I'm ready.

Also pulled out the Green Day playalong yesterday. I was horrified the other day at how bad my Green Day has gotten, so I went back to basics. After proper warmup and a little time to reacquaint with the patterns...it isn't as bad as I thought. But I'm definitely out of shape.

I really haven't been practicing properly for months now. I got caught up in learning So Dang Yang tunes...and then The Drain...and while both were valuable and important exercises...I really got to get back to basics. Namely independence and playing things outside what I'm used to. I think the Igoe stuff is really going to help with that. But I gotta put the time in.

Feeling better about The Drain. I had stopped practicing on my own for a few weeks. Hit it relatively hard this weekend and feel like I'm back where I was for the show at The Dane. Gotta keep at it. Also trying to add fleurishes that I had skipped when I first learned the tunes...and that's a bit of a one step forward, two steps back process.

Anyway...while it is depressing when things are hard and it makes me not want to play...I ALWAYS feel better after a strong practice session. And practicing every day or every other day for an hour or two always makes me feel better afterwards too.

I don't know why it is that it is SO hard for me to force myself to do things that ultimately make me feel better (practice, exercise). I really am an object at rest that is hard to get started moving. And then it spirals into just feeling terrible. Worthless. Stiff. Lame. Got to push a little bit every day in order to stay feeling good about myself. So hard to remember.

Opinions...Every Has One

Music snobbery seems to know no bounds. I am forever surprised by how matter of factly someone will tell you this or that band sucks...this or that musician...this or that song. I'm the first to admit that I have a pretty high tolerance for...well most things. That is to say...I don't parse things with too fine a comb. Examples...I don't care what guitar pedal you use...or probably what cymbal.

A visual:

The snob's tolerance for "good"
>_<

My tolerance for "good enough"
>__________________________ <
or maybe even
> ______________________________________________________<

And that goes for most things.

I'm not a person of subtleties. I can't see/hear them. I suppose this doesn't make me a very good musician. But as long as it doesn't bother me or those immediately around me I'm not sure it matters.

But man there are people that can tell you exactly what's wrong with Joe Blow's guitar part in measure 37 of a certain tune. How it's out of tune slightly or the effect is off or the timing's wrong or...whatever.

Now, I'm sure there are people out there who have the technical background and skill to REALLY do this. But I get alot of it from people in the general population, which just seems so much less likely that they'd have the ability to get it right. And the people who actually really HAVE that skill are probably off being famous musicians or producers and they probably don't have time to complain about shit they aren't working on.

And so it exhausts me a bit...the snobs.

If I like something and you don't...or vice versa...it doesn't mean you're right and I'm wrong. It's an opinion.

Drum Status

I haven't been putting in the time on the drums that I ought to. There was a little rush in October and November to learn The Drain set...and now I've settled into laziness. I rarely practice SSW songs anymore either. We're two years into existance and the tunes weren't complicated to begin with...and so I've felt it enough to play them with the band once a week at rehearsal. I've started to slip into that with The Drain too...and I'm really not ready to do that yet. I ought to be playing these songs every day...or at least every day that I don't have another band rehearsal...so about 4 days a week outside of rehearsal. And I ought to be working out the kinks in some of them. There's a few that I'm still barely flying by the seat of my pants to pull off and that isn't acceptable. And there's a handful yet to learn too.

And beyond band stuff, I haven't been practice general skills at all. Just total laziness. I found out that there's an audition for the Drummer Collective 5 day intensive and I immediately fell into despair. The audition requires the following:
1. Technique: Single stroke roll, double stroke roll, paradiddles: start each slowly and evenly and increase speed to fastest point.
2. Styles: Maximum of two minutes for each example: rock - funk - swing.
3. Reading: placed in integrated reading program based on a day-one evaluation by a faculty member
It's a good slap in the face. I'm not ready for that kind of audition. And so I should keep my $800 in my pocket until I AM ready. And so that presents a goal...be ready for a real audition.

Last night I took the Tommy Igoe Groove Essentials Vic Firth poster down off the band space wall and put it up on the living room wall...directly across from where I sit to watch tv. I have my fancy HQ Real Feel practice pad and a bass pedal set up here as well along with a metronome. I have another Vic Firth poster with rudiments already set up in this room and have found that, while I haven't been practicing them religiously, I stare at it enough that I've picked things up from it. It's a conversation piece anyway...which gets me talking and thinking about it and attempting the more obscure rudiments from time to time. It's far past time when I ought to have learned the basic styles of drumming. EN certainly gave me an introduction to all of them...but I never REALLY sat down and burned it all into my brain. The repositioning of the poster is a subtle step in the right direction.

I feel my confidence slipping...and the only cure for that in the past has been steady, hard work. It's not unlike how the only way to feel better about your body is to eat right and exercise...but feeling bad about yourself prevents you from doing those things. It's self sabotage. It's your own fault. And the only cure is to press through the discomfort and put the hours in. You can't force yourself to feel better about these things...but if you put in the work you turn around and one day you just DO feel better. I need to get my head back in the game.

The Obsession

I'm not sure that it has ever occurred to me that it might be fun to learn every song a certain artist ever performed/recorded. Well, maybe I thought it would be fun (ala Poi Dog Pondering or the Indigo Girls back in the day), but I'm sure I never thought it POSSIBLE. Until CJ came along. Now it's the central preoccupation of my life. It reminds me of a John Wesley Harding quote that goes something like "I was afraid of dying and had way too many songs." I'm afraid this will all end before we get through the catalog. And so I/we press on as quickly as possible.

Tonight we are reviewing the songs learned to date (since March 2010)...which I believe to be 43 songs (40 of which we have played live for an audience):

Alec Eiffel
Allison
Bone Machine
Break My Body
Brick Is Red
Broken Face
Cactus
Caribou
Crackity Jones
Dead
Debaser
Dig For Fire
Down To The Well
Ed Is Dead
Gigantic
Gouge Away
Here Comes Your Man
Hey
Holiday Song (The)
I Bleed
I'm Amazed
Into the White
Isla De Encanta
I've Been Tired
La La Love You
Levitate Me
Monkey Gone To Heaven
Mr Grieves
Nimrod's Son
No 13 Baby
Oh My Golly
River Euphrates
Sad Punk
Silver
Something Against You
Subbacultcha
Tame
There Goes My Gun
Tony's Theme
U-Mass
Vamos
Wave Of Mutilation
Where Is My Mind?

And that leaves 45 tunes (8 of which are non-album covers that one could technically argue aren't their songs at all, though recordings exist of them playing the tunes...excluding these leaves 37 tunes...but it's a slippery slope as there are 4 more that are technically covers as well but are either on albums or iconic to the band...further exclusion would leave 33...but I can't see that we can leave out Cecilia Ann, Head On, and In Heaven and call ourselves comprehensive...Theme from NARC being the 4th in this category). We could further restrict by saying we're only going to learn the albums and no b-sides/rarities...but that REALLY seems like cheating and I won't have it:

Ain't That Pretty at All (cover)
All Over The World
Ana
Bailey's Walk
Bam Thwok
Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons
Blown Away
Boom Chicka Boom
Born in Chicago (cover)
Build High
Cecilia Ann (album-based cover)
Dancing The Mantra Ray
Distance Equals Rate Times Time
Evil Hearted You (cover)
Hang on to Your Ego (cover)
Hang Wire
Havalina
Head On (album-based cover)
I Can't Forget (cover)
In Heaven (SORT of a cover)
Is She Weird
I've Been Waiting For You (cover)
Letter to Memphis
Lovely Day
Make Believe
Manta Ray
Motorway to Roswell
Navajo Know
Palace of the Brine
Planet of Sound
Rock A My Soul
Rock Music
Santo
Space
Stormy Weather
The Happening
The Thing
Theme from Narc (SORT of a cover)
Trompe le Monde
Velouria
Velvety Instrumental Version
Wave of Mutilation
Weird At My School
Wild Honey Pie (cover)
Winterlong (cover)

CJ, High Noon, 12/4/2010

We played Dane101's holiday celebration along with Black Crows, Pretenders, and Prince tribute bands. Isthmus gave us a back-handed pick of the week...kind of implying the tribute band thing is getting old.

Tell that to the people. Cause they love it.

Pretty full house. CJ walked away with $280...or $70 a person. Other than shows with guarantees...I think that's the most I've ever brought home...especially for what was for us a short set.

I was in the groove, and other than my voice cracking at the start of Gigantic, I can't say I'm unhappy in any way with my performance. Nailed vocal on Bone Machine. Dig for Fire got off to a rough start, but we pulled it together. EH had various drum equipment tragedies...and I feel for him...but I didn't notice it affecting his performance at all. (EDIT: Future me here back-filling important detail. I used someone else's Aguilar AG500 and GS412 bass amp stack at this show...which was really expensive, powerful, and nice...but not as nice in my opinion as the Ampeg BA600 combo amp I would use six months later.)

I had plenty of sleep the night before, a slice of pizza around 9pm, and way too much beer. Not a model show health-wise, but it worked out alright.

Black Crows and Prince smoked the stage. Dare I say, though they were perfectly good musically, the Pretenders group was the weakest link? I think they were maybe a bad match for the rest of us genre-wise. Of course, I thought that would be true of the Black Crows and really...they kicked ass. But I could also just be a bitter old bitch and being petty. In any case...there was no drama and I didn't even feel self-conscious...which is many steps forward in life. Time truly does heal all wounds...even the self-inflicted dumb ass ones.

But enough sub-text. CJ is hitting the wood shed over the holidays to reinforce the 43 song list of knowns. We shan't be booking again until the new year.

Set list (from memory...might need to correct):
Debaser
Bone Machine
Wave of Mutilation
Alec Eiffel
Nimrod's Son
Here Comes Your Man
Dig for Fire
Allison
Gigantic [dropped last two times through outtro for time]
Hey [voluntarily dropped this from set so that Prince band would have more time]
Monkey Gone to Heaven
Where is my mind?
Gouge Away

Learning By Ear

Our goddaughter's dad is taking guitar lessons and learning to play songs by ear. It reminded me that I AM capable of this. I've learned most of the Pixies songs by starting with bass or guitar tab and correcting it to what I think is right. It seems a little like cheating, but I feel like correcting the tab and memorizing the songs...plus trying to master the vocal parts while playing...is challenge and reward enough. Plus, at the breakneck pace we've gone at, it would have just taken me too long to learn everything by ear. I did purposely learn the very first Pixies song I learned to play by ear...Nimrod's Son...mostly to convince myself that I still could do it and that I still knew how to play the bass.

But I'm coming to the end of the line with the Pixies songs. To be certain, I've still got half the catalog...around 40 songs...to learn. But I've gone ahead and have gotten tab for most all of those and am even beginning to work through correcting the tab. I won't be memorizing the remaining songs any time soon, but I'm setting myself up to have written music for all of them so that when the band decides to add a new song that I can just whip out the music and start memorizing the song.

All that's left to write out (though many still need correcting or compressing...ie taking a 4 page tab and converting it to its basic repeated parts that can be printed on a single sheet) are the songs for which I can't find any tab at all. Not bass nor guitar tab.

These are the remaining tunes.
Boom Chicka Boom (early rarity, not actually sure if this is a cover or an original)
Video is from one of their first shows (October 31, 1986), I believe the very first.


Theme from Narc (sort of a cover, its an interpretation of a video game song)


Ain't That Pretty At All (Warren Zevon cover)


Born in Chicago (Paul Butterfield Band cover...this is your basic blues tune, so all I REALLY need to do is figure out what key it's in and then it'll fall into place)


Best get crackin'!

The Steinberger

This is the kind of thing that only a true geek cares about. In this post I tried to put up a photo of all of Kim Deal's basses. I couldn't find a photo of one, the Steinberger headless, and that kind of drove me nuts. I finally figured out today that the weird white bass she is playing in the Brixton Academy gig videos from 1991 is indeed the Steinberger.
I finally saw a wide enough shot to see that this bass is headless.