A Cleaning Mood

I don't know why I would be waking up with a degree of depression on this Monday.

I missed going over to Howard Westra's to watch football yesterday.

I felt like I should have called him to let him know that I wasn't going to make it. We hadn't solidified any plans, but, I had managed to show up for every other Patriots game that was televised this year. This one was "the biggest game of the season," for them.

I realized, this morning, that it is more about hanging out and enjoying each other's company than it is about watching the game -that was on at Sacred Heart Apartments in the recreation room.


I'm sure Howard had just concluded that something had come up; something typical in the life of a busker; and his feelings hadn't been hurt too badly.

I had just hung around the Uxi Duxi too late into the afternoon, and then decided against rushing to get there; not having time to drop my laptop off at the apartment, and then having to tote it a mile and a half to the bus stop after the game...
Sunday Night

Darker colored pencils show up better here

So, after watching the Patriots win on the TV in the Sacred Heart recreation room, I went back to my own, where I made pasta, stayed in and drew a picture (right) and wound up falling asleep to Fiona Apple's latest album "The Idler Wheel."
I woke up in the morning in a cleaning frame of mind. I quickly put the kitchen in order and then began sweeping and mopping the hard wood floor area, the area of which I have been increasing, by sliding furniture around and moving my music recording area around a bit.

Before, the entire operation was moved as far away from the hissing of the heating and air conditioning unit as possible. Now, that I have silenced the hose for the most part, I can move the recording area back to where it is bordered on one side by the wall which has the elevator machine room on the other side of it. It was fortuitous of me to have chosen A110 as my apartment for the fact that I have at least this one wall, one the other side of which there is nobody that I can bother with my music.

Playing the guitar at full volume at 4 AM will still elicit a thump or two from the ceiling above me, if not from the elevator machine room, though.

I have thought about constructing a recording "booth" by hauling cinder blocks into my place and stacking them into walls that would use the elevator machine room wall as one, and the brick wall facing the parking lot in front of the building as another to complete a small, square room within a room. Somehow capping it off with a roof of some sort that would prevent sound from going straight up to annoy whomever is in apartment A210 above me, would be a challenge.

Then again, I could eventually get into the abandoned rectory that I have been talking about for months and use that as a studio for rehearsing and recording Fiona Apple style vocals...

As I cleaned the apartment, I listened to an album that I hadn't heard in about 30 years that used to be one of my favorites, back when I had them all on cassette.

I had thought about looking for it on "mp3juices.cc" the day before, and had been able to find and download it.

It is an album called Danger Money, by a band called "UK."

I don't really know the story of the band* or the album.

I will say that all the songs in it are in "odd" time signatures, with the measures divided into 5, 7 or maybe 13 beats; rather than the 4 or 3 that is common with 99% of other music.

In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet released "Time Out," which was a jazz album of songs written in odd time signatures -same idea.
"Take Five," being one from it in 5/4 time, for example.

*OK, I just researched, and am not surprised at what I found.
UK was known as a "supergroup."

The other bands that I was going to mention, besides the Grateful Dead, who messed around with odd time signatures, would be groups like Genesis, Yes, King Crimson and Frank Zappa.

Well, the members of UK all have experience with those very bands. Every member has played with at least one of them.

The album had the effect of putting me in a frame of mind that I haven't had since the early 80's. It also reminded me of how much of a technical exercise listening to music was for me back then; counting out the beats in the measures of music, rather than just sitting back and enjoying it...

So it is Monday night. I don't know what I will do tonight. Busking seems to be off the table. The weather is kind of nice. I need to decide if I am going to try to play every single night, if only for a couple hours, or if I'm going to try to use a few of the slow days to practice and work on other things...