The theme of the day is, waking up in a fog, swilling coffee and then hopping on the bike and catching the day up by being at the Uxi Duxi now (at 8 PM when they are just closing) so as to be in the same bat place at the same bat time.
Rose and Ed gave me 5 dollars, instead of the 35 that they had promised, for the bike that I sold them, plus the 5 they'd borrowed.
They had been pretty cunning:
My phone rang about 7 PM, and it was Rose, telling me "We have your money," and then asking if she could come down and give it to me. I can't really think of a reason that I would say no, unless she had called while I was in the bath and wanted 10 minutes to dry off and get dressed first.
Then, there was a knock at the door. It was both Rose and Ed. The former handed me the 5 dollars and said: "We don't have the money for the bike yet, we had to pay a grand..."
Rose and Ed
"Yeah, our rent was a grand this month..." chimed in Ed, who then asked me if I wanted the bike back.
The parallel to the time I had bought a 40 dollar TV from them and had then hit a dry spell busking (partly due to my staying in the apartment and watching a lot of TV) was evident.
They had, then, actually taken the VCR back that they were lending me to go with it and sold it to someone else.
No, they can hang on to the bike. Again, what was I going to say, that I would take the thing back and try to sell it to the next person to come along with 30 bucks?
Waking up at 7 PM was kind of a drag, but I hadn't been able to go to sleep until almost noon.
Video Excursion
I had come close to just staying up, hitting the Uxi Duxi when they opened at noon and then going on a kratom fueled video excursion.
So far, I have been able to add a fake bass to the video of myself outside the Uxi Duxi, playing and singing: "This is a terrible spot for shooting a video of any kind," with the sounds of cars speeding by being picked up by the Snowball microphone.
If I double the guitar on a separate track and then sing on another, careful to match it syllable to syllable with the video, then I can mute the offending track with the traffic noise and the result will be me sitting outside the Uxi Duxi in the apparent silence of a recording studio...one with the faint sound of water rushing through a hose going through the heating and air conditioning unit.
It boggles my mind to think about all the music videos I have seen where, for example, Madonna might be standing on a dock and singing and dancing, and there might have been the sound of some heavy machinery nearby, almost obliterating the sound of her voice, but she was able to just stay in time dancing and keep her lips synchronized with the end result being she is dancing and singing on a dock to music recorded in the silence of a studio.
Colin's Spot
Colin Mitchell said that he has a spot that he likes to go to, to practice new material or to warm up, or something. He describes it as being a spot where the acoustics are good and being somewhere along the river walk, past any place on it that I have ever forayed.
To me, once the river walk passes where it abuts the French Quarter, there isn't much of interest on it as it meanders towards the "Marigny" area, or is there?
Apparently there is a place that used to be a basketball court, or used to be an amphitheater, where Colin practices. When he isn't practicing in Starbucks in competition with the house music.
Vocals
Vocals are the main concern for me.
While I am developing a soft singing style in the vein of David Bowie, Lou Reed and even Rick Ocasek to a degree, to be used at 3 AM in the apartment, this kind of cannibalizes some of the energy of the whole project.
The "project" being aimed at capturing the best of my live sound at the Lilly Pad, so that it is recognizable to anyone who might have walked past me and asked if I "have CDs for sale," as being the exact same guy as soon as they hit "play" on their smart phones (being pumped through their car speakers).
My friend Joe Shedlo has had issues surrounding the fact that his CD that he has for sale, entitled: "God On Repeat," was recorded in a studio and featured some band that he is no longer in and which sounds nothing like a guy with a kind of John Prine voice finger picking an acoustic guitar for songs like: "It's Alright (Mama?)" by Bob Dylan, or strumming out "Wild Horses," by The Rolling Stones while sitting on a stool in front of one microphone. You can't hear the stool at all on his CD.
There was a guy standing by him one night, who had bought his CD and was in the course of telling Joe something to the effect of: "Yeah, I was expecting it to sound a lot more like you do..." to which Joe had offered the guy his money back, to which the guy reneged but asked Joe if he had any more CDs, of just him playing.
The Wave Of The Future
Of course, the wave of the future would involve me abandoning thoughts of producing a static CD that will have a dozen or so songs etched onto it in a fixed order, etc. for sale at $9.95 each. Buying blank discs, buying an insert that has been professionally printed, burning the discs...
I need to catch the wave and ride the new technology like Tanya Huang seems to be doing.
No longer is there a huge box of 10,000 of her "latest" disc at her side.
This has been replaced by all her recordings (and she seems to have been quite busy lately -no surprise there) being available to people by them merely swiping a bar code that is linked to her website so they can then mix and match songs from what might have been separate discs, not getting stuck with the rest of the songs on the "In A Quiet Mood," compilation, when they only wanted "Metal Health," by Quiet Riot, for example.
The payments are automatic, through Paypal (or probably something Tanya has found which works better for musicians who keep a credit card slider by their side) which eliminates the "I'll tell you what, I'll give you 20 bucks for all three" type of haggling that goes on.
And, the artist can start with the offering of just one single song -his best one; as soon as that song has been produced and is "in the can," -no need to come up with a "concept," with the song to start the album, the next one to slow it down a bit, a couple intended "singles," a long slow, mood setting piece that explores deep topics for the hardcore fans, and an eponymous chorus to drive home the name of the album etc.
A physical disc that people can take home still has its appeal, though.
I'm sure Tanya will tell me to pay for my own website to be hosted somewhere that will be themusicofdaniel.com and won't have to go through the Google Blogger machine. I would hate to have my blog shut down for "unauthorized commercial use of the site" or some other fine print.
So, I had intended upon using the daylight to go on location; put my laptop and microphone and fully charged battery in my bag and find that spot that Colin was talking about, set up there and see if I could capture some vocals sung at full volume....
Then, I would be able to to everything else "through headphones" at the apartment at 3 AM. It might be cool to merge tracks done in the quietude of the late night apartment with those screamed out way down the river walk, past any point that I have ever forayed to.
Last night, I went to the Banks Meat Store.
There are 2 registers there, and I was standing in front of the "wrong" one.
Wrong, in regards to there being only one cashier working and he being at the other one.
I knew this, but, in order for me to see which flavors of American Spirit cigarettes they had, I had to stand there and gaze at their selection.
As is common at that store, a black man, who had just gotten a sandwich or something made at the deli, barged his way in front of me, squeezing himself between me and the wrong register.
This is part of a "white people go second' philosophy prevalent in that particular neighborhood.
It is common for me to be the next customer in line and to have a black guy insinuate himself and bark: "A pack of Kool sho'ts!," while throwing money on the counter in front of me.
The cashiers, who are "Arabic" of some sort, seem to coalesce with them in this pecking order at The Banks Meat Store.
.
But, this black guy, seeing a white guy at a register, had just barged his way to the front when the cashier got up off his milk crate and barked: "Next!," as he walked towards the other register.
I was there to meet him, with a now mumbling black guy holding a sandwich behind me. I wondered if he thought that I had played things that way just to trick him and to make his cutting in front of me backfire. If his mind was occupied by such a silly game, then why would he not read such things in others?
[side note: the fact that the black guy had reacted to the sight of me standing "in line" is a product of the "institutionalized" mind. Conditioned through a lifetime of standing in lines in order to avail himself to government hand-outs and such. He had just seen "the line" and reacted. A lot of institutionalized men will be slightly obsessed with the waddling forward a step or two as soon as the line "moves." It is common to be tapped on the shoulder by an institutionalized man behind you, to alert you to its existence, in order that you waddle forward a step or two to close it. You are not going to get to the head of the line any sooner, regardless of how tight the line is, but still...the tap: "The line moved..."
I guess it is important to keep the lines tight so nobody cuts in front of you because agents of charity often run out of whatever they are giving away for free.
"Last one!!"
"Damn, and I let that guy cut right in front of me, ain't life a bitch!!"]
I bought a pack of "dark blue" American Spirits after the Arabic guy, in his Arabic Spirit, had pulled down and held up to me a light blue one: "No," and a tourquoise one: "No, dark blue..."
This is done (regularly) with an attitude of: "How the hell am I supposed to know what 'dark blue' means, that is an English word, do I look like I want to speak English?!?"
Then I told him I needed a lighter.
"One, or two?" he asked.
I started to answer: "Just one," but then remembered that they sold both one and two dollar lighters. The one dollar ones are pieces of crap and the flints wear out or break on them before the fluid is half gone, usually.
He had already started to bark: "You want a one dollar or a two dollar one?!?" cutting me off, after I had said: "Just one."
I then cut him off with: "A two dollar one."
He produced a red lighter from somewhere and then slapped it down on the counter in front of me.
He then drifted over to nearby the second cashier, who was then setting up, probably so he could placate the irritable black man with the sandwich, who had been deprived of a chance to make a white guy go behind him. My cashier mumbled something to his contemporary.
I picked up the red lighter, which felt light. There is a noticeable difference in weight between a lighter that is full of fluid and an empty one. One learns this through the experience of picking lighters off the ground in the French Quarter.
I rotated the dial that strikes the flint.
There is a noticeable stiffness in the wheel of a brand new Bic lighter and on the first couple of lights, there is a certain friction as you can feel the striker wearing the high points off the flint or something.
I then looked closely at the red lighter to see that it had the tell tale scratches and dull finish of a lighter that has been slid across counters, or has been in a pocket with a set of keys, or in a tray in a car that is swerving its way through traffic.
The little smirks on both the cashier's Arabic faces after whatever had passed between them vanished after I asked: "Could I get a different color?"
"What, what is wrong with this?" asked "my" cashier.
"Red is very unlucky for me. The last time I had a red lighter, my girl left me and my dog died," I said, giving him my best "What's so complicated about just swapping this for (a new) one of a different color?" look.
I had him in a spot. It would have been hard for him to realistically try to assert "I gave you red; you take what color is given you, at the Banks Meat Store!!" before cussing me out in Arabic, or try to stand upon some other reasoning. I hadn't even flicked the red lighter once to test it, so it was still "brand new," right?
As he mumbled in Arabic and went to the rack of new lighters, I threw in: "Give me a dark blue one," not being able to resist poking fun at his apparent struggles, when it comes to shades of blue.
He actually smiled in a way that kind of said: "I'll have to give you some credit, you're not as dumb as you look," as he handed me the brown (not dark blue) lighter.
It had a shiny, unmarred surface, a stiff flicker wheel and was heavy with a full load of fluid. "I pick these things up off the street all the time and can tell if they're good usually before I even flick them; you don't know who you're dealing with, sand nigger!" I didn't voice.
This Just In
A girl just walked past me and, as a great example of the technology that I'm talking about above, asked me to "bring me up," which I did by typing Youtube and the searching Tyjai and "Glitter and Gold."
And, bam, there she is, on my blog.
"Do something for me," she added before walking off.
If putting her video on Street Musician Daniel doesn't do something for her, than I don't know what would...
"Help us," added the young black man she was with.
From Gilroy, California to London, England the word is out. Just don't ever forget the little people in your life, Tyjai.
While I'm At It
While I'm at it, here is one of my almost nightly sights/sounds on the way to the Lilly Pad. At this spot about 3 blocks short of Lilly's house and on Royal Street, I usually give a nod of the head or a wave to Samantha Pearl.
Samantha once gave me a guitar pick. It was about 4 years ago when I was still playing on Decatur Street as well as the Lilly Pad, and when I drank.
It had been a green pick, I remember.
I also remember her kind of waving me away in the sense of "Here's a pick, now get out of here..."
She had been in the middle of telling some tourist how she (Samantha) could be found on Facebook, yadda yadda and Youtube yadda yadda. She seemed more interested in marketing herself than advertising herself by playing just then.
Even now, (I didn't see her for about 2 years, until just recently)she yells back at anyone who might yell: "You sound good," with directions on where to find her and how to like her and subscribe to her and, yadda yadda.
They had been pretty cunning:
My phone rang about 7 PM, and it was Rose, telling me "We have your money," and then asking if she could come down and give it to me. I can't really think of a reason that I would say no, unless she had called while I was in the bath and wanted 10 minutes to dry off and get dressed first.
Then, there was a knock at the door. It was both Rose and Ed. The former handed me the 5 dollars and said: "We don't have the money for the bike yet, we had to pay a grand..."
"Yeah, our rent was a grand this month..." chimed in Ed, who then asked me if I wanted the bike back.
The parallel to the time I had bought a 40 dollar TV from them and had then hit a dry spell busking (partly due to my staying in the apartment and watching a lot of TV) was evident.
They had, then, actually taken the VCR back that they were lending me to go with it and sold it to someone else.
No, they can hang on to the bike. Again, what was I going to say, that I would take the thing back and try to sell it to the next person to come along with 30 bucks?
Waking up at 7 PM was kind of a drag, but I hadn't been able to go to sleep until almost noon.
Video Excursion
I had come close to just staying up, hitting the Uxi Duxi when they opened at noon and then going on a kratom fueled video excursion.
So far, I have been able to add a fake bass to the video of myself outside the Uxi Duxi, playing and singing: "This is a terrible spot for shooting a video of any kind," with the sounds of cars speeding by being picked up by the Snowball microphone.
If I double the guitar on a separate track and then sing on another, careful to match it syllable to syllable with the video, then I can mute the offending track with the traffic noise and the result will be me sitting outside the Uxi Duxi in the apparent silence of a recording studio...one with the faint sound of water rushing through a hose going through the heating and air conditioning unit.
 |
| Officer, will you hold my phone real quick, I have an idea...? |
Colin's Spot
Colin Mitchell said that he has a spot that he likes to go to, to practice new material or to warm up, or something. He describes it as being a spot where the acoustics are good and being somewhere along the river walk, past any place on it that I have ever forayed.
To me, once the river walk passes where it abuts the French Quarter, there isn't much of interest on it as it meanders towards the "Marigny" area, or is there?
Apparently there is a place that used to be a basketball court, or used to be an amphitheater, where Colin practices. When he isn't practicing in Starbucks in competition with the house music.
Vocals
Vocals are the main concern for me.
While I am developing a soft singing style in the vein of David Bowie, Lou Reed and even Rick Ocasek to a degree, to be used at 3 AM in the apartment, this kind of cannibalizes some of the energy of the whole project.
The "project" being aimed at capturing the best of my live sound at the Lilly Pad, so that it is recognizable to anyone who might have walked past me and asked if I "have CDs for sale," as being the exact same guy as soon as they hit "play" on their smart phones (being pumped through their car speakers).
My friend Joe Shedlo has had issues surrounding the fact that his CD that he has for sale, entitled: "God On Repeat," was recorded in a studio and featured some band that he is no longer in and which sounds nothing like a guy with a kind of John Prine voice finger picking an acoustic guitar for songs like: "It's Alright (Mama?)" by Bob Dylan, or strumming out "Wild Horses," by The Rolling Stones while sitting on a stool in front of one microphone. You can't hear the stool at all on his CD.
There was a guy standing by him one night, who had bought his CD and was in the course of telling Joe something to the effect of: "Yeah, I was expecting it to sound a lot more like you do..." to which Joe had offered the guy his money back, to which the guy reneged but asked Joe if he had any more CDs, of just him playing.
 |
| Joe Shedlo |
The Wave Of The Future
Of course, the wave of the future would involve me abandoning thoughts of producing a static CD that will have a dozen or so songs etched onto it in a fixed order, etc. for sale at $9.95 each. Buying blank discs, buying an insert that has been professionally printed, burning the discs...
I need to catch the wave and ride the new technology like Tanya Huang seems to be doing.
No longer is there a huge box of 10,000 of her "latest" disc at her side.
This has been replaced by all her recordings (and she seems to have been quite busy lately -no surprise there) being available to people by them merely swiping a bar code that is linked to her website so they can then mix and match songs from what might have been separate discs, not getting stuck with the rest of the songs on the "In A Quiet Mood," compilation, when they only wanted "Metal Health," by Quiet Riot, for example.
The payments are automatic, through Paypal (or probably something Tanya has found which works better for musicians who keep a credit card slider by their side) which eliminates the "I'll tell you what, I'll give you 20 bucks for all three" type of haggling that goes on.
And, the artist can start with the offering of just one single song -his best one; as soon as that song has been produced and is "in the can," -no need to come up with a "concept," with the song to start the album, the next one to slow it down a bit, a couple intended "singles," a long slow, mood setting piece that explores deep topics for the hardcore fans, and an eponymous chorus to drive home the name of the album etc.
"What's your best song?"Just get one of the intended singles well recorded and then find a way to make it pay somewhere on the Internet...Yes, this is all just dawning upon me.
A physical disc that people can take home still has its appeal, though.
I'm sure Tanya will tell me to pay for my own website to be hosted somewhere that will be themusicofdaniel.com and won't have to go through the Google Blogger machine. I would hate to have my blog shut down for "unauthorized commercial use of the site" or some other fine print.
So, I had intended upon using the daylight to go on location; put my laptop and microphone and fully charged battery in my bag and find that spot that Colin was talking about, set up there and see if I could capture some vocals sung at full volume....
Then, I would be able to to everything else "through headphones" at the apartment at 3 AM. It might be cool to merge tracks done in the quietude of the late night apartment with those screamed out way down the river walk, past any point that I have ever forayed to.
Last night, I went to the Banks Meat Store.
Wrong, in regards to there being only one cashier working and he being at the other one.
I knew this, but, in order for me to see which flavors of American Spirit cigarettes they had, I had to stand there and gaze at their selection.
As is common at that store, a black man, who had just gotten a sandwich or something made at the deli, barged his way in front of me, squeezing himself between me and the wrong register.
This is part of a "white people go second' philosophy prevalent in that particular neighborhood.
It is common for me to be the next customer in line and to have a black guy insinuate himself and bark: "A pack of Kool sho'ts!," while throwing money on the counter in front of me.
The cashiers, who are "Arabic" of some sort, seem to coalesce with them in this pecking order at The Banks Meat Store.
.
But, this black guy, seeing a white guy at a register, had just barged his way to the front when the cashier got up off his milk crate and barked: "Next!," as he walked towards the other register.
I was there to meet him, with a now mumbling black guy holding a sandwich behind me. I wondered if he thought that I had played things that way just to trick him and to make his cutting in front of me backfire. If his mind was occupied by such a silly game, then why would he not read such things in others?
[side note: the fact that the black guy had reacted to the sight of me standing "in line" is a product of the "institutionalized" mind. Conditioned through a lifetime of standing in lines in order to avail himself to government hand-outs and such. He had just seen "the line" and reacted. A lot of institutionalized men will be slightly obsessed with the waddling forward a step or two as soon as the line "moves." It is common to be tapped on the shoulder by an institutionalized man behind you, to alert you to its existence, in order that you waddle forward a step or two to close it. You are not going to get to the head of the line any sooner, regardless of how tight the line is, but still...the tap: "The line moved..."
I guess it is important to keep the lines tight so nobody cuts in front of you because agents of charity often run out of whatever they are giving away for free.
"Last one!!"
"Damn, and I let that guy cut right in front of me, ain't life a bitch!!"]
 |
| A "white slice" who knows his place, |
| at The Banks Meat Store |
I bought a pack of "dark blue" American Spirits after the Arabic guy, in his Arabic Spirit, had pulled down and held up to me a light blue one: "No," and a tourquoise one: "No, dark blue..."
This is done (regularly) with an attitude of: "How the hell am I supposed to know what 'dark blue' means, that is an English word, do I look like I want to speak English?!?"
Then I told him I needed a lighter.
"One, or two?" he asked.
I started to answer: "Just one," but then remembered that they sold both one and two dollar lighters. The one dollar ones are pieces of crap and the flints wear out or break on them before the fluid is half gone, usually.
He had already started to bark: "You want a one dollar or a two dollar one?!?" cutting me off, after I had said: "Just one."
I then cut him off with: "A two dollar one."
He produced a red lighter from somewhere and then slapped it down on the counter in front of me.
He then drifted over to nearby the second cashier, who was then setting up, probably so he could placate the irritable black man with the sandwich, who had been deprived of a chance to make a white guy go behind him. My cashier mumbled something to his contemporary.
I picked up the red lighter, which felt light. There is a noticeable difference in weight between a lighter that is full of fluid and an empty one. One learns this through the experience of picking lighters off the ground in the French Quarter.
 |
| Oddly enough, Mohammad had an entirely different experience |
| than I. Maybe it's just me... |
I rotated the dial that strikes the flint.
There is a noticeable stiffness in the wheel of a brand new Bic lighter and on the first couple of lights, there is a certain friction as you can feel the striker wearing the high points off the flint or something.
I then looked closely at the red lighter to see that it had the tell tale scratches and dull finish of a lighter that has been slid across counters, or has been in a pocket with a set of keys, or in a tray in a car that is swerving its way through traffic.
The little smirks on both the cashier's Arabic faces after whatever had passed between them vanished after I asked: "Could I get a different color?"
"What, what is wrong with this?" asked "my" cashier.
"Red is very unlucky for me. The last time I had a red lighter, my girl left me and my dog died," I said, giving him my best "What's so complicated about just swapping this for (a new) one of a different color?" look.
 |
| Fix guitar before you run out of money... |
As he mumbled in Arabic and went to the rack of new lighters, I threw in: "Give me a dark blue one," not being able to resist poking fun at his apparent struggles, when it comes to shades of blue.
He actually smiled in a way that kind of said: "I'll have to give you some credit, you're not as dumb as you look," as he handed me the brown (not dark blue) lighter.
It had a shiny, unmarred surface, a stiff flicker wheel and was heavy with a full load of fluid. "I pick these things up off the street all the time and can tell if they're good usually before I even flick them; you don't know who you're dealing with, sand nigger!" I didn't voice.
This Just In
A girl just walked past me and, as a great example of the technology that I'm talking about above, asked me to "bring me up," which I did by typing Youtube and the searching Tyjai and "Glitter and Gold."
And, bam, there she is, on my blog.
"Do something for me," she added before walking off.
If putting her video on Street Musician Daniel doesn't do something for her, than I don't know what would...
"Help us," added the young black man she was with.
From Gilroy, California to London, England the word is out. Just don't ever forget the little people in your life, Tyjai.
While I'm At It
While I'm at it, here is one of my almost nightly sights/sounds on the way to the Lilly Pad. At this spot about 3 blocks short of Lilly's house and on Royal Street, I usually give a nod of the head or a wave to Samantha Pearl.
It had been a green pick, I remember.
I also remember her kind of waving me away in the sense of "Here's a pick, now get out of here..."
She had been in the middle of telling some tourist how she (Samantha) could be found on Facebook, yadda yadda and Youtube yadda yadda. She seemed more interested in marketing herself than advertising herself by playing just then.
Even now, (I didn't see her for about 2 years, until just recently)she yells back at anyone who might yell: "You sound good," with directions on where to find her and how to like her and subscribe to her and, yadda yadda.
Wait a minute, how do low lifes like Rose and Ed come up with $1000 for rent? Most of the people out here in California where there are jobs can't come up with that.
ReplyDeleteThey get about 2 grand a month between them, somehow, some way, they are both as disabled as a body can be, I'm pretty sure of that...yup, 2 grand...
ReplyDeleteOK that makes sense. If they'd each put in 15 or 20 years in the regular civilian economy, that's about what they'd each get on SS. Although I guess it's SSDI for them.
ReplyDeleteThat's beginning to look like a lot better career than electronics. Just smoke, drink, get in fights, get all fucked up by age 40 and sit back for the rest of my life, disabled, getting paid the same amount I get now for working, just sitting on my ass and being a skeezer.
But I guess I value my health and general lack of lung cancer too much to go that route.