No, that's not the name of a band that's playing Jazzfest, it's what I might have felt upon arising at 2:30 PM, an hour past my usual wake up.
I had had probably a 20 dollar night, but it felt like more as I had scooped a couple handfuls of bills out of the basket, after having seen a couple young African Americans seem to suddenly take an interest in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song that I was doing, after having stared at my basket as they walked past, and then stopped a few feet further down the sidewalk to seemingly debate something.
On the other stoop sat Lilly and her newest tenant, David.
David spends as much time sitting on his front stoop (as if to tell the world that he lives there) as he does wherever he stays in the back.
He came up to me as I was setting up and was picking up whatever little bits of trash had been left by whomever had been skeezing there.
"I don't mind them begging, but their leaving trash behind is not acceptable," said David.
"I always leave my spot spotless," I assured him, in an attempt to use word-play and to cater to his apparent issues surrounding his feeling that it is his house that people are dropping trash in front of, making that a personal thing.
Lilly has reacted similarly to graffiti having been sprayed on the front of the house, or to having eaves (?) broken off the shutters, but her main concern had been whether it had been done by the neighbors that she has been feuding with, looking for intelligence to that effect in the grafitti, type of thing. A neighbor who would throw a grapefruit in a pool might do anything; even spray "homophobe!" in colorful paint on the front of her house...
But, David, I suspect would be happier if I didn't in fact know Lilly (who would probably evict him before asking me not to play there) because then I would have to kiss his ass, like the skeezers that are being "allowed" to beg there, through his "grace," but to not leave their trash behind.
While sitting on the other stoop the entire 3 hours that I wound up playing, David was joined by Lilly for a good portion of it.
He seems to welcome, and enjoy interacting with, the skeezers who can't seem to let a resident sit on his front step without running their: "Things are pretty rough for me right now, I'll be honest with you. I'm hungry and living on the street..." skeezes on them.
It's the: "You got all this; and I ain't got nothin'" skeeze.
Barnaby used to sit with the door of his place open behind him, revealing the chandelier that hung in the front room which made for a great conversation piece: "That's a beautiful chandelier, there...Listen, things are pretty rough for me right now, I'll be honest with you...etc."
David must be at least an interesting conversationalist for Lilly to have sat for almost 2 hours with him. I'll have to try to talk to him at length at some point. You never know, I might wind up getting a job through him, or something, if I keep my mind open.
The Videos
I'm trying to work on videos while at the same time becoming sick of hearing the same song a hundred times while editing.
I have learned that it is hard to match my voice to a phrase that has already been sung in such a way as it doesn't look like I am lip-syncing. One spot where the mouth is closed when it should be open is enough to destroy the "effect" of it.
It has to be done in stretches of, like, 3 words at a time, paying attention to breathing, syllables and accentuation, and even the facial expression should match the emotion of it.
Lyrics that are "ad libbed" are especially difficult as they may have been used to exhale the last of the air in my lungs and squeezed in to fit the beat, maybe using 5 syllables over 4 beats of music type of thing.
These need to be mimicked, as if the guy in the video, also, just had the phrase pop into his head and decided to throw it in, even if it's his 84th take and he has forgotten what the song was about in the first place by then...
It will be easier to record the music first and then to actually lip sync over it, rather than try to match the output of a guy who is making things up as he goes along. I guess that's why it seems "the professionals" do it that way.
I need to take the next couple of days to lay down rhythm tracks with the metronome, play the guitar perfectly through on whole verse, and then use the "repeat" effect to extend it to multiple verses.
I shied away from this at first, thinking that it would better if different verses had slightly different accompaniment, to "move" the song along, but now realize that the static guitar part that just repeats is going to be buried under the subsequent layers of other instruments and voices and cat meows and that most people are really only paying attention to "the singer" and "the words."
I also thought that using a click track was going to make things sound more stiff and regulated, but it's possible to fall slightly behind or to anticipate slightly the next click and to make the rhythm swing despite the monotony of the click-click-click-ing.
As long as the metronome tempo is adhered to then it can be used as the glue to keep every subsequent thing together.
So, why am I sitting in front of the Uxi Duxi at 8:53 PM on a Sunday night, when I should be laying down click tracks with bare-boned rhythm guitar parts along with them, to guide a forthcoming vocal rendition? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
The Smart Phone
I got a third letter from Assurance Wireless, telling me that someone at my address already is signed up for a lifeline phone. Yeah, probably about 119 people at 3222 Canal Street are.
I now have to send them proof that nobody else in apartment A 110 is already signed up. This will require a visit to Tim, my caseworker, tomorrow morning to procure some paperwork to that point.
The "Bongo" video that I posted here last week was originally going to be sent to him alone via e-mail, as I thought he might get a kick out of it. I will have to ask him if he saw it on this blog yet.
Tim is a type C musician himself. He plays the acoustic guitar and 12 string one.
"Type C" is a term that I just made up to describe the left brained, or more "cerebral" musicians who are technically very savvy, usually like to play ragtime or stride guitar where there is basically only one way to execute the piece, and it is either played correctly or with a few mistakes -not a lot of room for "interpretation."
Whereas I might have 10 songs begun, though not finished, with titles like: "A Heart Shaped Raisin On Mars," the type C musician would have a few already composed and set in stone, but with names like: "Untitled #1," and "Untitled #2" and probably the most interesting one, "Untitled #3."
Back in 1988, I was talking to guitarist Vinnie Moore in Albany, New York, who was considering hiring me as a "lyricist" because he had all of these songs, intricate flashy technically advanced pieces, but couldn't compose lyrics to save his career. I might wish that I had pursued that, Vinnie went on to become Deep Purple's 19th guitarist, after Ritchie Blackmore left the fold.
He had just released his album, bearing the left-brained title of: "Time Odyssey" and so, yeah, he needed a word man. So does Joe ("Time Machine") Satriani, for that matter.
I just got a text from Geo, who is going to marry Mindy Lee in Jackson Square on May 7th, with the first dance song played by myself for a fee of 50 dollars (I Googled: "How much do you tip wedding musicians?") who said that he would be at the Lilly Pad about an hour and ten minutes from now, with another hit of acid to give (sell?) to me. I won't pay more than, say, 7 dollars for one. I still need kitty litter, potting soil and dish soap, not to mention weed and kratom...
On the other stoop sat Lilly and her newest tenant, David.
David spends as much time sitting on his front stoop (as if to tell the world that he lives there) as he does wherever he stays in the back.
He came up to me as I was setting up and was picking up whatever little bits of trash had been left by whomever had been skeezing there.
"I don't mind them begging, but their leaving trash behind is not acceptable," said David.
"I always leave my spot spotless," I assured him, in an attempt to use word-play and to cater to his apparent issues surrounding his feeling that it is his house that people are dropping trash in front of, making that a personal thing.
Lilly has reacted similarly to graffiti having been sprayed on the front of the house, or to having eaves (?) broken off the shutters, but her main concern had been whether it had been done by the neighbors that she has been feuding with, looking for intelligence to that effect in the grafitti, type of thing. A neighbor who would throw a grapefruit in a pool might do anything; even spray "homophobe!" in colorful paint on the front of her house...
But, David, I suspect would be happier if I didn't in fact know Lilly (who would probably evict him before asking me not to play there) because then I would have to kiss his ass, like the skeezers that are being "allowed" to beg there, through his "grace," but to not leave their trash behind.
While sitting on the other stoop the entire 3 hours that I wound up playing, David was joined by Lilly for a good portion of it.
He seems to welcome, and enjoy interacting with, the skeezers who can't seem to let a resident sit on his front step without running their: "Things are pretty rough for me right now, I'll be honest with you. I'm hungry and living on the street..." skeezes on them.
It's the: "You got all this; and I ain't got nothin'" skeeze.
Barnaby used to sit with the door of his place open behind him, revealing the chandelier that hung in the front room which made for a great conversation piece: "That's a beautiful chandelier, there...Listen, things are pretty rough for me right now, I'll be honest with you...etc."
David must be at least an interesting conversationalist for Lilly to have sat for almost 2 hours with him. I'll have to try to talk to him at length at some point. You never know, I might wind up getting a job through him, or something, if I keep my mind open.
The Videos
I'm trying to work on videos while at the same time becoming sick of hearing the same song a hundred times while editing.
I have learned that it is hard to match my voice to a phrase that has already been sung in such a way as it doesn't look like I am lip-syncing. One spot where the mouth is closed when it should be open is enough to destroy the "effect" of it.
It has to be done in stretches of, like, 3 words at a time, paying attention to breathing, syllables and accentuation, and even the facial expression should match the emotion of it.
Lyrics that are "ad libbed" are especially difficult as they may have been used to exhale the last of the air in my lungs and squeezed in to fit the beat, maybe using 5 syllables over 4 beats of music type of thing.
These need to be mimicked, as if the guy in the video, also, just had the phrase pop into his head and decided to throw it in, even if it's his 84th take and he has forgotten what the song was about in the first place by then...
It will be easier to record the music first and then to actually lip sync over it, rather than try to match the output of a guy who is making things up as he goes along. I guess that's why it seems "the professionals" do it that way.
I need to take the next couple of days to lay down rhythm tracks with the metronome, play the guitar perfectly through on whole verse, and then use the "repeat" effect to extend it to multiple verses.
I shied away from this at first, thinking that it would better if different verses had slightly different accompaniment, to "move" the song along, but now realize that the static guitar part that just repeats is going to be buried under the subsequent layers of other instruments and voices and cat meows and that most people are really only paying attention to "the singer" and "the words."
I also thought that using a click track was going to make things sound more stiff and regulated, but it's possible to fall slightly behind or to anticipate slightly the next click and to make the rhythm swing despite the monotony of the click-click-click-ing.
As long as the metronome tempo is adhered to then it can be used as the glue to keep every subsequent thing together.
So, why am I sitting in front of the Uxi Duxi at 8:53 PM on a Sunday night, when I should be laying down click tracks with bare-boned rhythm guitar parts along with them, to guide a forthcoming vocal rendition? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
The Smart Phone
I got a third letter from Assurance Wireless, telling me that someone at my address already is signed up for a lifeline phone. Yeah, probably about 119 people at 3222 Canal Street are.
I now have to send them proof that nobody else in apartment A 110 is already signed up. This will require a visit to Tim, my caseworker, tomorrow morning to procure some paperwork to that point.
The "Bongo" video that I posted here last week was originally going to be sent to him alone via e-mail, as I thought he might get a kick out of it. I will have to ask him if he saw it on this blog yet.
Tim is a type C musician himself. He plays the acoustic guitar and 12 string one.
"Type C" is a term that I just made up to describe the left brained, or more "cerebral" musicians who are technically very savvy, usually like to play ragtime or stride guitar where there is basically only one way to execute the piece, and it is either played correctly or with a few mistakes -not a lot of room for "interpretation."
Whereas I might have 10 songs begun, though not finished, with titles like: "A Heart Shaped Raisin On Mars," the type C musician would have a few already composed and set in stone, but with names like: "Untitled #1," and "Untitled #2" and probably the most interesting one, "Untitled #3."
Back in 1988, I was talking to guitarist Vinnie Moore in Albany, New York, who was considering hiring me as a "lyricist" because he had all of these songs, intricate flashy technically advanced pieces, but couldn't compose lyrics to save his career. I might wish that I had pursued that, Vinnie went on to become Deep Purple's 19th guitarist, after Ritchie Blackmore left the fold.
He had just released his album, bearing the left-brained title of: "Time Odyssey" and so, yeah, he needed a word man. So does Joe ("Time Machine") Satriani, for that matter.
I just got a text from Geo, who is going to marry Mindy Lee in Jackson Square on May 7th, with the first dance song played by myself for a fee of 50 dollars (I Googled: "How much do you tip wedding musicians?") who said that he would be at the Lilly Pad about an hour and ten minutes from now, with another hit of acid to give (sell?) to me. I won't pay more than, say, 7 dollars for one. I still need kitty litter, potting soil and dish soap, not to mention weed and kratom...
Welp, that's on my list of "things to go when visiting New Orleans" - Paint "HOMOPHOBE" in some bright color on Lily's house.
ReplyDeleteI keep forgetting that you're a filthy Trump voter, the supposedly shit-don't-stink Lily is likewise, and would probably be really happy if the South seceded again and all the filthy nigras were enslaved again, and that New Orleans in general makes Detroit look like Mayberry, R.F.D.
The graffiti was just whatever that particular "artist" sprays everywhere like a dog and hydrants type of thing...something that takes 5 minutes to read because part of the "k" goes through the hole in the "D" or whatever; it was random and didn't say homophobe that was a joke;
ReplyDeleteand Lilly seems to hate Trump with a passion; she vents against "Anglos" all the time, too. You might have her backwards.
Oh, like the guy here who paints along the CalTrain line, this sort of "thumbs up" hand but the way he draws it, it looks halfway like dog poo. It's just his thing.
ReplyDeleteSounds like I do have her backwards. She'd mean Anglo-Saxon people, AKA WASPS or white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and I agree with her, Anglo culture has been tremendously damaging to this country.