Archive for April, 2010
Stories from the Compound
Posted in True Story... on April 23, 2010 by justaminuteguitar
My name is Bert. And one time I got a chance to play in a band that was way over my head.This is the story. It’s the saddest story I can think of, and it happens to me. So some of the names are changed, so that nobody knows who I am.
This neat lady was the bass player in this very neat band in Boston, in the late eighties. Let’s call them the Elves. They were very cool and they were famous. And she had some time off, like a month or something, from her Elves duties, and she thought she would write some songs and make an album.
Somehow, me…I knew this neat lady, because I was known, a little bit, in Boston, for being kind of a hanger-on to this other pretty odd, but beautiful, and also very popular band. I was their manager.
And they were so popular, this pretty odd, but beautiful, and also very popular band, that people thought I was actually crafty, a hard-worker, somehow imbued with the qualities of the people around me who were “making things happen.”
I wasn’t.
Anyway, through an interesting connection, somehow, somehow, when the neat lady bass player with the time off from the Elves was looking for a bass player, my name came up.
Now I want to try to give you a comparison as to how famous, or, how should I say it, totally cool this neat lady bass player was who was the bass player for the Elves.
It was as if the bass player for Nirvana was making a solo album, and I got the chance to be the bass player on that album. What’s that guy’s name, Krist Novoselic? Imagine yourselves being offered to play bass for Krist Novoselic’s solo album. Only, I cannot tell you how much cooler the neat lady bass player is. She still is!
Now, here’s the other thing, I also want you to imagine, that the reason you get this offer is because of the theory that anybody can play bass.
I had a very good friend that was now a member of this band, let’s say she played the French horn in the band. She was very enthusiastic and had confidence in me, and she got me into the band. She said, Bert can play the bass. And she said to me, you can play the bass, right? I said, yes, I can play the bass.
I was the bass player. I played the bass. I was showed some bass tricks by this neat lady from the Elves, and it was cool. Imagine it, you guys. It was very, very cool. She would write songs and I would go to her apartment and she would show me the songs and show me the bass. There was no problem, you see. My bass playing was being approved, like every night, in small, one-on-one sessions, and in a larger, practice-space, band-like settings.
Oh, and let me mention this. There were three rotating drummers in this band, due to, I don’t know what. But three very, very, very cool drummers. And I was partnered up with them. Because a drummer and a bass player make what is known as a rhythm section. These guys would smile at me and say stuff like, great, or good job!
And, the music that was being made, by us, US! Because I was a part of it! Was really pretty great.
We would practice in this band, and we were going to make demos and then we were going to make a record.
And, honestly, it was fun, but I wasn’t so super-into it. I had my own band going on by now, and I was getting a little cocky. I was part of a very cool bunch of little projects, and I was writing songs. People thought I was cool and I thought I was cool.
Then we went into the studio to record the demos. A very kind of famous, underground studio. Very cool.
We are recording, and we are all doing our parts and it is kind of professional and, I don’t know…it was going well. Well.
And I lived, right around the block from this famous underground Boston-ish recording studio. So when there was a break, I went home and had a sandwich.
And when I had that sandwich, everything was all right. Everything. The sandwich was all right. I was all right. And the world was all right.
But when I got back to the studio, the neat lady bass player was working on her vocals. And she was having, kind of a problem. She was talking to the engineer through her headphones.
“What is going on with the bass? It’s off, Randall. It’s, something’s totally…no, I cannot…try it again. No, no, something’s completely wrong. Well, let’s just try and turn it down.” They try that.
“No, oh no, no way. Just, just turn it off. Turn it completely off.”
The bass, she said. Turn it completely off.
And that was it for me. She redid the parts, most of them anyway. And I wasn’t in the band anymore.
I went home and sulked for a while, but then I thought I should go back, maybe it was all a dream.
I didn’t get to be back in the band. But I did get to hang around the studio while they recorded, feeling humiliated, but somehow unwilling to let go. I got to look up some words in the dictionary. She was looking for a good G word to fit into a song. I cannot remember the word I found, but I believe it was a good contribution.
Ladies and Gentlemen, that one, I have never gotten over. It has shaped every move I have made since. Every word I say, everything I do, everything I eat, everything thing I, I don’t know what… everything.
But, come on, she was the bass player in the Elves. One of the coolest bands, to this day, ever. Of course she was going to discover that I was, in no way, going to stack up to what she thought the bass player in her band should sound like. But how come I could not have figured that out? I could’ve saved myself a lot of humiliation.
Not everyone, it turns out, can play the bass.
Gibson Les Paul Standard 490R/498T
Posted in Hostage/Porn/Wanted on April 23, 2010 by justaminuteguitarFind out more right here.
Tune in next week!
Posted in News on April 15, 2010 by justaminuteguitarWe’re still working on the season finale.
So be sure to tune in next week!
*the voice over says “this week” that’s my fault. It will be next week.
Episode 11 – the used guitar market.
Posted in For Sale, Music Lesson, Tips and Tricks, Video on April 9, 2010 by justaminuteguitarKage & m/Dub discuss the upcoming end of season 1, the used guitar market, and of course… the chord of the week!
Chord of the Week – A7
Posted in Music Lesson, Tips and Tricks on April 9, 2010 by justaminuteguitarPut your heart and soul into this.
Stories from the Compound
Posted in True Story... on April 9, 2010 by justaminuteguitar
Well it seems like only yesterday but it was nearly 20 years ago that I had the opportunity to meet one of the greatest voices of Rock n Roll.
It was a typical rainy day in the city as the crew and equipment arrived for the day’s shoot. Being a huge fan of Led Zeppelin, you can just imagine how excited I was to work on a video for Robert Plant. When Mr. Plant arrived everyone was excited to start the day’s filming. It was a pretty simple shoot and nothing out of the ordinary happened until the director shouted, “that’s a wrap.” It was then that Mr. Plant did the unthinkable, he actually took the time to thank everyone for their days work, not with a “thanks everyone”, but he actually thanked everyone individually. Like I said the shoot itself was uneventful but to this day Robert Plant is still touring and making great music, but the bottom line is Mr Plant is one class act.
The music video was for the song “Ship of Fools” off of Plants’ “Now and Zen” album.
Kay Vintage Electric Guitar Single Pickup
Posted in Hostage/Porn/Wanted on April 9, 2010 by justaminuteguitarFind out more here
Episode 10
Posted in Music Lesson, Tips and Tricks, Video on April 2, 2010 by justaminuteguitarCome see what a little practice can do for one’s confidence level.
Chord of the Week – G7
Posted in Music Lesson, Tips and Tricks on April 2, 2010 by justaminuteguitarWe are confident about your ability to learn this week’s chord…. the G7
Stories From the Compound – 1st Press Photos
Posted in Stories on April 2, 2010 by justaminuteguitar
My first press photo
Several years ago I was in a soft rock cover band, aptly named “Soft Supply.” We were direct descendants of the bad hair, bad sing-along choruses, bad over-reverbed guitar solos of the 1980’s cheese-ball soft rock world. Our heroes: Well, of course “Air Supply”. We also dipped our quill in the ink of “Journey”, “Chicago”, “REO Speedwagon (whatever that is)”, and a smattering of one-hit jackasses like Dan Hill (“Sometimes When We Touch”) and Melrose Place’s Jack Wagner (“All I Need”). To sum it up, we were cheese.
And with every band, a press photo had to be acquired. (For what purpose, I could never figure out since we never had a website, nor promoted any of our gigs, or, for that matter, tried to do anything to get the band noticed — and we were rewarded for our nonchalance — A write-up in 2003’s LA Weekly’s best of issue. Classic.)
Back to the band photo. We decided to create the homage to the zillions of other band press photos — keeping the cheese factor in mind. So we headed off to downtown Los Angeles (at the time, a ghost town) and found a graffiti laden brick wall. It was perfect, as if a troupe of art directors had created a set for us. Like something out of a bad Night Ranger video, like there’s any other kind. So we donned our wigs, slipped into our Member’s Only jackets and stuck a pose. The photographer could barely control her laughter.
Until we saw them…
Yes, walking up the garbage-filled street was another band with their photographer. An, no, they didn’t have silly wigs and faux rock and roll clothing. They were for real — long, feathered locks, impossibly tight jeans, rocker earrings. It was like “Stryper” and “Creed” had a baby. Their tasselled leather jackets clicked along with their boot heels stepping through broken glass.
And we were at ‘their’ wall. I imagined a Mexican-band-stand-off to unfold. We would beat them using our working knowledge of the lesser-known album cuts from Phil Collins and a few soft-rock kicks to the face. As they got closer and we got a better look at them, we thought better of battling the real rock band. They weren’t a bunch of doughy, 30-somethings trying to recapture their youth. They were animals — malnourished, street-toughened, gasoline for blood and razor blades for eyes. Or something like that. But there was no way we were going to tussle with these chaps, so we quickly ran to our Geo Metros and Honda Accords and sped out of there. Let them have the wall, we laughed as we drove past them, already in a rockin’ pose, they’re missing the irony of the whole thing. And we turned up the “Christopher Cross” on the car radio.
-s/k
