Well, I have sent off an mp3 of a song that I did in my studio to Jacob Scardino, who is planning upon collaborating on it.
I left a 2 and a half minute gap in the middle of it, where he can place a solo of some sort. He is a huge Frank Zappa fan, and the song is one I attempted to write in his style.
The words actually came from the blurb in a Hustler magazine that introduced the photos of "Madelyn," who was posing in a bathtub full of suds.
It's called "Sensuous Bubble Baths," and is going to be a copy write infringement nightmare should I ever try to publish it, because it is plagiarized shamelessly.
But, I look forward to hearing what kind of part he adds to it.
Then I can always go back and fix my parts. Each part I played was only the 3rd or 4th run through for me. But I had the advantage of already having written and recorded it 30 years ago. It was strange listening to the "finished product" as I walked around my apartment, sort of like it would be if someone had found the old cassette and mailed it to me.
I guess the good news it that I have regained the level of musicianship that I had back then.
I think I was making my best recordings in the late 1980's, after I had become a practicing fool, and before pot smoking caught up with me.
Just as I did in college -determined that I couldn't do calculus stoned but could make great grades in my poetry class and, so, dropped all my math courses and switched to an English major- I kind of did with music, with 12 chord classical progressions being the calculus in the equation, with Grateful Dead songs being analogous to the poetry.
The Road To Massachusetts Paved With Platelets
So, I can go tomorrow to hopefully grab another fifty bucks from the plasma place. I could have gone today but was still feeling the aftereffects of Friday's donation. I am 55 years old. Even though that is the new 35, one more day of recovery can't hurt.
As far as busking, yeah, the opportunity is there and I suppose I could go out there and put in a couple Sunday night hours. It promises to be quite dead out there. The Essence Festival has wrapped up, and as I recall, last year nobody stayed around to enjoy any post festival activities. But, one never knows.
The fifty bucks that I got on Friday went towards catching up on Harold the cat's feeding, with the purchase of a 3.15 pound bag of dry food, with a couple cans of what seems to be one of his favorite delicacy, Fancy Feast Salmon Florentine thrown in as a way of making up for that one terrible night when all I had to feed him was canned tuna.
All the while I was reading about the dust bowl, the Grapes of Wrath era, and could get a sense of how exasperated parents must have felt back then to have to send their children to bed hungry.
Batteries for my spotlight, a new harmonica and strings should come out of the next fifty bucks, and then it will be time to think about how I'm going to travel.
I'm hoping that I can catch the traveling bug through the experience and then start spending a lot more time away from New Orleans, coming here only when the getting is good and marking my calendar with other places and events to hit at various times of the year.
Perhaps, after I have spent some time in Massachusetts, instead of returning here, I could go to Burlington, Vermont during August, after mailing some money to my neighbor, Wayne, for cat food and contacting Tim my caseworker to let him know that I haven't gone for good and to please not clean my apartment out and rent it to someone else.
He mentioned something like nine months as being the maximum amount of time that I would want to be away before any kind of action like that might be pondered.
Making enough out there to stay in hotels, like Colin Mitchell does, would be "killer." He talked about making three hundred bucks in a few hours in Central Park, New York.
When I was homeless in Mobile, Alabama I went to nearby Fairhope when they had their annual Artwalk and made 85 bucks in one afternoon. That is in March, but there are similar events that can be Googled. Perhaps I can come up with an itinerary.
Having success at one location might grease the wheels and allow me to travel quite comfortably, and I might wonder why I hadn't done that kind of thing sooner.
I even know a few good busking spots in California, where all I might need is a rabbit to make good money...
,
 |
| Fairhope Arts and Crafts Festival |
The words actually came from the blurb in a Hustler magazine that introduced the photos of "Madelyn," who was posing in a bathtub full of suds.
It's called "Sensuous Bubble Baths," and is going to be a copy write infringement nightmare should I ever try to publish it, because it is plagiarized shamelessly.
But, I look forward to hearing what kind of part he adds to it.
Then I can always go back and fix my parts. Each part I played was only the 3rd or 4th run through for me. But I had the advantage of already having written and recorded it 30 years ago. It was strange listening to the "finished product" as I walked around my apartment, sort of like it would be if someone had found the old cassette and mailed it to me.
I guess the good news it that I have regained the level of musicianship that I had back then.
I think I was making my best recordings in the late 1980's, after I had become a practicing fool, and before pot smoking caught up with me.
Just as I did in college -determined that I couldn't do calculus stoned but could make great grades in my poetry class and, so, dropped all my math courses and switched to an English major- I kind of did with music, with 12 chord classical progressions being the calculus in the equation, with Grateful Dead songs being analogous to the poetry.
The Road To Massachusetts Paved With Platelets
So, I can go tomorrow to hopefully grab another fifty bucks from the plasma place. I could have gone today but was still feeling the aftereffects of Friday's donation. I am 55 years old. Even though that is the new 35, one more day of recovery can't hurt.
As far as busking, yeah, the opportunity is there and I suppose I could go out there and put in a couple Sunday night hours. It promises to be quite dead out there. The Essence Festival has wrapped up, and as I recall, last year nobody stayed around to enjoy any post festival activities. But, one never knows.
The fifty bucks that I got on Friday went towards catching up on Harold the cat's feeding, with the purchase of a 3.15 pound bag of dry food, with a couple cans of what seems to be one of his favorite delicacy, Fancy Feast Salmon Florentine thrown in as a way of making up for that one terrible night when all I had to feed him was canned tuna.
All the while I was reading about the dust bowl, the Grapes of Wrath era, and could get a sense of how exasperated parents must have felt back then to have to send their children to bed hungry.
I'm hoping that I can catch the traveling bug through the experience and then start spending a lot more time away from New Orleans, coming here only when the getting is good and marking my calendar with other places and events to hit at various times of the year.
Perhaps, after I have spent some time in Massachusetts, instead of returning here, I could go to Burlington, Vermont during August, after mailing some money to my neighbor, Wayne, for cat food and contacting Tim my caseworker to let him know that I haven't gone for good and to please not clean my apartment out and rent it to someone else.
He mentioned something like nine months as being the maximum amount of time that I would want to be away before any kind of action like that might be pondered.
Making enough out there to stay in hotels, like Colin Mitchell does, would be "killer." He talked about making three hundred bucks in a few hours in Central Park, New York.
When I was homeless in Mobile, Alabama I went to nearby Fairhope when they had their annual Artwalk and made 85 bucks in one afternoon. That is in March, but there are similar events that can be Googled. Perhaps I can come up with an itinerary.
Having success at one location might grease the wheels and allow me to travel quite comfortably, and I might wonder why I hadn't done that kind of thing sooner.
I even know a few good busking spots in California, where all I might need is a rabbit to make good money...
,
Seriously you get any kind of animal ...
ReplyDeleteThere's an old bum who hangs out in front of the Pho place next to Caffe Frascati, and I've asked him if he can "play anything" and he's just said, "The radio, that's all" lol.
His main talent is for hocking a loogie in a slimy aerial arc, to right on the sidewalk where someone's sure to step on it.
I mean, what can you expect of the guy? Like about 99% of people, he has no special talent. He might be an ace at, say, double-entry bookkeeping as done in the age before computers. Or he might be a whiz at slinging an airless paint spraying rig around, painting a house in the same time it takes 3 Mexicans. But those things don't help him on the street.
So he has a cat and a dog. And some blinky LED lights which you can find around here if you keep your eyes open. And he just sits, asking for spare change, until he has enough for the night. I dunno maybe he's making enough to stay in a skeezy hotel each night, which is far more than I make.