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| .....shot me another, well damn it won't grow old... |
I am posting the above song, before I risk screwing it up by adding either "bass guitar" which would be my acoustic run through the octave divider to lower it into the bass range, or 5-gallon-bucket-hit-with-stick drums.
Or both.
Or both, plus harmonica, backup vocals, and motor vehicle sounds.
There are little snippets of Shermans electric guitar that I threw in; because it was plugged in and I grabbed it, thinking that I would put a solo in, but then realized that it would be a good idea to at least work a solo out instead of making one up out of thin air; at least this time...
Sherman thinks that I should stick closely to my street sound, in case someone hears me on this blog and then comes out to hear me on the street and becomes disappointed when the 5 gallon bucket hit with a stick is missing from my sound.
This is also one of my "Top 20 Busking songs," and probably benefits from being a song that the Grateful Dead performed, yet I don't think they wrote.
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| Put a hat on him (Bob Weir) and it could be me... |
This is the double blessing that comes with a good cover version..
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| Or take a hat off me... |
There seems to be a little more activity about now. Maybe there will be some kind of July 4th extravaganza here, after all. There are planes flying overhead and dropping fake bombs over the Mississippi River.
Inbreeding
*John Phillips is like the father of McKenzie Phillips, who co-starred in the sitcom "One Day At A Time," alongside Valerie Bertinelli, who married Eddie Van Halen.
The group Wilson Phillips ("Hold On") is related somehow to both the same Phillips, and I believe Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Rikki Lake (the talk show host) is related to the Wilsons, and I'm not sure about Ann and Nancy Wilson of the group Heart, who wrote "Magic Man," about Charles Manson.
I just need to marry into that family and I'll be all set.
Why, Brian Wilson also knows Charles Manson, who might be looking for someone to collaborate with on some songs....
Question:
Why can I be sitting here with my headphones on, and my head bobbing to the music and some mooch will interrupt me with a tap on the shoulder, whereupon I will take the headphones off and look at him with a "This better be good" expression, only to have him ask for one of my cigarettes, while at the same time a well dressed businessman can sit one table over with an even more expensive pack of cigarettes in front of him, talking on his phone and saying things like "I faxed the quarterly earnings report to them last night and I'm waiting for them to get back to me..." and the mooch won't disturb him?
"Tears In Heaven" is a pretty good song, I woke up with it running through my mind this morning.
ReplyDeleteTrust me, people are reacting to Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, et. al., and that you're doing Grateful Dead versions of them is only registering as your not being skilled enough to do 'em "all the way good". You can take this opinion to the bank.
Speaking as a member of the public, we know a bit of Casey Jones, and that Busted On Bourbon Street thing, and they're Hmm, ok, but that's about it. We get shivers hearing "Hold The Line". Hank Williams is Heaven to us.
Stepping away from the crowd again here ... We are in an economic Depression that is not showing any sign of letting up any time soon. You're my age ... remember the mid-70s slump, when The Waltons premiered on TV, the Little House On The Prairie books were hot sellers, and all kinds of old-timey arts and crafts shit was big? As someone told me, "Back then, if you put a chicken on anything, it would sell". Well, what we're in is of a far larger magnitude than the mid-70s blip. We're in something like the fall of the British Empire from a true Empire to the place Orwell wrote about in his "Road To Wigan Pier".
intermission for Internet cussedness
In times like these, people want reeeeeeally old-time and hokey and comfortable. This is why the banjo and, God help us, the ukulele are big now. This is why PBS is running documentaries on the Carter Family.
ReplyDeleteNow, I love art-rock. I love Kraftwerk and Yes and Steely Dan and Primus and Emergency Broadcast Network and Man Or Astro-Man and a whole lot of really cool, experimental, FUN bands. Sometimes when I'm really bummed, I go on YouTube and look up Joshua Pearson's works of genius, "3.7.8" is one I particularly love. Then maybe a visit with the Eeviac Supercomputer and a little "Edutainment" to cheer me up. I love really intellectual, obscure music.
But guess what? No one will ever sing this stuff around a camp fire. Even Neil Young's sorta-folksy "Sugar Mountain" and "Horse With No Name" are too artificial, too commercial, to sound right around a camp fire. Try 'em and you'll sound like a self-important idiot. Nope, people in these times want stuff you *can* sing around a camp fire, or while hoeing the corn field, or while babysitting some kids. We're talking .., start with the Carter Family and work from there. The Carters were a big success because they were doing tried-and-true tunes that were 100's of years old. Johnny Cash started out to be a gospel singer, and so did a bunch of others from Hank Williams to Elvis.
Not saying you, or I, have to become Holy Rollers, but this old-time stuff is the shit. It sends a good clear signal that people get.
I am so pissed at this mouse pad thing; I was writing a comment and I wanted to put the & sign, talking about Me "&" My Uncle but hit the * accidently and at the same time tapped the pad with my thumb or something, accidently, and the computer interpreted it as "delete all of comment even though the guy spent 3 minutes typing it.."
ReplyDeleteI need to go into the settings and disable some stuff...
Again; I dont' know if you liked the cowboy song; cause you didn't say; and I really don't know how much the Dead "perverted" songs which would make people think that I didn't have the mustard (if that's even an expression) to match the masters versions.
Maybe listen to Big River by Johnny Cash and then by the Dead; and then "Mama Tried" by Merle Haggard (I think) and then the Dead; but make sure it is live dead, bootlegged from a concert and not studio; because the dead have just as much traffic noise as me on their studio stuff; no deadhead will ever listen to it; they only buy it for the cover art...
I am gravitating towards songs that mention New Orleans (House of the Rising Sun, City of New Orleans [Arlo Guthrie], Big River, Scenes From An Italian Restauraunt [Billy Joel], Tangled Up In Blue, Me & Bobby McGee, I Wish I was in New Orleans [Tom Waits]...Born On The Bayou, by Creedence -I think) and Baton Rouge (Big River, Me & Bobby McGee, Callin' Baton Rouge [Garth Brooks], )
Don't discount Dead heads ...it is a fact that NPR, National Public Radio is almost solely supported by pledges to "The Grateful Dead Hour" which runs for, der, one hour on Saturday mornings and garners about 90% of their revenue; you can verify that; and the show is actually sponsored, on top of being a PBR show suported "soley" upon donations...yup, Garrison Keilor and Fresh Air and even Car Talk can take their cap off to those 6 tie dyed musicians who wouldn't have gotten their start had their audience not been tripping on acid while they ironed out the bugs in what was to become thier classic formula....give them a chance, smoke a joint and realize that they are improvising....
And remember the blog post from August of 2007 when a guy came from out of nowhere and became the first of many to drop a 20 in my case and say "I appreciate the Grateful Dead"
ReplyDeleteEven musicians that they have invited up onto the stage, like Steven Stills, Boz Scaggs, Branford Marsalis, say that, once they go up there they have to throw everything they know about music out the window because they are now in "a different world"
byw, Casey Jones is to the Grateful Dead as Danny Boy is to the entire catalog of Irish/Celtic music...enough said; I've had a couple malt liquors, I'll go now...I'm starting to get loud...
I didn't even *know* NPR runs a Dead Head Hour!
ReplyDeleteI'm that much of a non-dead-head I guess!
Well, my car's been dead for weeks, we just met a guy who's an ace mechanic and in fact will be living here for a while, so when he got done with the land owner's BMW I turned him loose on my volvo, and it went quick, he did a few tests and verified that the engine's knackered. Since I have my suspicions about the tranny and in fact Volvo 850's have a reputation of being hanger queens, I'm parking it and will file a non-op registration and will part it out. I've put a bit over $3000 into the thing and while I can sell it for $1000 or so as it sits, I think I can get my money back out if I part it out. I really am better off with a mini van so I'll just get the money together and get one of those.
In the meantime, I guess I'll drive the BMW when I need to drive, the rest of the time, I have a kickass bicycle. I actually want to get a "skinny bike" I can use to ride down to the train station in San Martin and take the train up into San Jose and from there, to Sunnyvale or Palo Alto or you name it, for the day. I need to follow commuters' hours if I do that, because there are only a couple of trains in the morning and a couple in the evening, but the train is a kickass way to get around. I can even take it all the say up to San Francisco! In fact I'd like to take a week up there and just screw around.
If the Grateful Dead works out that well for you, than don't listen to me, do it.