Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

I had another fun session with the jazzbos on Sunday. This time it was just a 4-piece group -- no singers and no sax player. It looks like the group may stabilize in this form, and it also looks like they may have decided that I'm not all that bad a bass player and can stick around. We played tunes in a number of different styles, from standards to guitar-hero fusion stuff. I even got to call a tune, and picked Goodbye Pork Pie Hat by Charles Mingus.

I purchased something very cool off the net this week. I had been thinking that I should scan my copies of the Real Book into the computer so that I could just call up charts whenever I wanted. Once I realized that this would be 1200-1500 pages of scanning, I got to thinking that -- if this was such a good idea -- someone must have done it already. I did some searching on eBay, and was soon in possession of what I'm calling the Big Fake CD. It contains the entire contents of TWELVE popular fake books, including all of the Real Books. If anyone is interested in a copy, let me know.

I've been totally depressed by this war. All wars are stupid and this one seems especially so. My heart aches for those kids over there for what they are having to go through. I believe that the real tragedy of war is not that young men (and women) have to die, but that they have to kill. How do you come back to a civilian life knowing that you killed someone, regardless of the reason? It must be incredibly painful and difficult for them.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we were blessed with three days of beautiful Spring-almost-Summer weather, including that rarest of occurrences here in the Northwest: two perfectly clear weekend days! I took advantage of it on Saturday to mow all the grass for the first time this season. For those who don't know, "mowing the grass" is a fairly large endeavor at our place, and takes me about four hours on our riding mower, while June spends several hours edging with her DR trimmer.

Sick

I don't know what it was, but I've been sick for two days, and just started feeling better today. It might be pre-war jitters or a bug I picked up, but I felt really awful on Monday and Tuesday. June helped me by preparing simple foods for me -- mainly rice and juice -- and being wonderfully understanding (as always).

Sunday's session with the jazz group was great fun, as were the previous two sessions. This time, a second female vocalist joined us for a few numbers. I'm not sure whether this particular configuration of the group will endure, but individually they're all terrific players who could pretty much play with whatever kind of group they wanted to. In this last session, I felt like I was starting to get a little deeper musical connection with some the players, starting to tune in to their direction a little better rather than just playing down the changes.

A callback

I got a callback last weekend to rehearse again with the same jazz group I mentioned in my last posting, this time rehearsing at the keyboardist's home. As before, I had a great time. This time, we were joined by a vocalist, so that added a nice new dimension to the music, as well. I really enjoy playing behind vocalists, particularly female vocalists. The accompaniment style is quite different -- the backing musicians need to rein in their tendency to play off each other so much, and must do their best to help the vocalist be the center of attention when she's singing. There are opportunities to do some riffing between vocal phrases, but that can be overdone, too (if you've ever heard Willie Nelson's band live you've heard one of the most egregious examples of a bored old band riffing furiously between each vocal phrase).

I'm going back for another rehearsal with the jazz group this weekend. I went ahead and picked up copies of the fake books they use (mostly the old Berklee-era Real Books) and a nice heavy music stand. Maybe if I just keep showing up, I'll get the gig by default!

Audition

I had a great time this weekend. I've been looking for a group to play with since I got my new amp about a month ago. I answered an ad in Willamette Week, and on Sunday I auditioned for a jazz group. As luck would have it, the drummer lives nearby in Molalla, and that's where the audition was. The group was all good players -- keys, guitar, sax, and drums -- and I think I did a reasonable job of keeping up. We played jazz standards, some funk, and at least one original piece. One thing that was a new experience was that the drummer played electronic drums. They recorded everything I played, presumably so they could take a close listen to my playing afterward.

I have not heard back from them yet, but in any event, I had a great time and I hope I get to do more playing like that. If this doesn't work out, I'll answer some more ads.

Gas war

This week I reached a milestone of sorts. I paid $1.99 per gallon for gasoline. This is exactly 10 times the least I ever paid for gasoline. One day some time in the mid 60s, I heard on the radio about a gas station in Topeka that was in a "gas war" (hmm... it seems that term could also be used for the impending conflict in Iraq) with the station across the street, and had lowered its price to 19.9 cents a gallon. At that time, gas was normally in the 24-25 cent range, so it seemed worth it to drive an hour to Topeka to fill up the tank of my 1956 Chevy, which got about 8 miles to the gallon.

I'm not really all that upset about the prices we pay today, actually. If you look at the price of gas over time vs. inflation, I think it's remained pretty steady, with some temporary jumps up and down over the years. Of course, the price of petroleum-derived energy is probably one of the component that drive inflation so I may just be ignoring the obvious.

Uwajimaya

I wrote a couple of new tunes over the last week, just bass and drum-machine so far. The title of the first one was suggested by June: Uwajimaya. We had spent an afternoon shopping at the wonderful pan-Asian market in Beaverton by the same name, so I guess the mood stuck with me. It's amazing to see people from many cultures shopping there, and to see so many foods that I have no clue what they are. I can usually recognize chocolate, especially if there is a picture of it on the label, so I bought a Crunky bar, just because the name sounded cool. The second tune I wrote is called Galanga, a bit of produce June bought there.

Birthday presents!

It's my birthday today, so I'm taking a day off from work, just goofing off.

June gave me terrific birthday presents: Three bass-themed T-shirts, a CD of "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" (she gave me the book as a gift several years ago, too), two bass-related books -- The Fender Bass, an Illustrated History and How the Fender Bass Changed the World. Yes, I'm a die-hard Gibson player, but these books are very interesting to any bass player.

Another gift is one I bought for myself with June's encouragement a few weeks ago: a brand-new SWR Workingman's 15 bass amp. It sounds great, and has inspired me start practicing again regularly. My next step is to find a music group to play with and get those creative juices moving again.

As of February 1st, MP3.com is allowing only three songs per user for free. I went ahead and signed up for the premium service on my MP3 page so that I could post more songs, but I allowed Paul Bass's page to default to the 3-song maximum. I'll rotate some of his songs through there from time to time, and if there is enough interest, I'll go ahead and expand it to the premium service later.