Super R and his crew will be rocking the SRSS this Wednesday and next Wednesday (23rd and the 30th) for probably the last time (Shawn Killaly on drums)... well there might be a little session on December 21 but it's so close to Christmas and i have yet to nail down a drummer for that show... but alas... I can't think to far ahead. Write, drink, chuckle, sleep, wake, bike, work, bike, kid, supper, other kids, eat, skytrain and then SRSS...
Lets not get too far ahead of our protocol here... Last week it was the LFM Horn Orchestra with good old Super R on guitar, but playing it like a bass. I had a pretty good time sitting in the back finding the note of the song and letting er rip. I stomped balls on the song "Aliens" just nailing the main riff in d minor and played 'the cat came back" pretty good too. Of course the comedy of me on stage holding down a song for a horn band when they lyrics to the said song describe how the maker of the horns and his honking nearly put me in the loonie bin. Full circle indeed, now I'm playing for him... but it is easier... one can get away with hitting a lot of bad notes in the horn band... in fact you could spend a whole song trying to find the right thing to play and then after the show have people telly you that you fit in seamlessly. I brought my electric guitar and forgot to put my little recorder in so we have no footage of the show... we definitely had some good moments.
Great story in the SRSS and the LFM: The Moral is that you are not always doing somebody a favour being nice to them, and sometimes a little tough love would be the best response. As you may or may not be aware... "In the beginning... " I had this show and a band and i set out to play songs, involve people, and try to jam a bit. Well there was always one jammer that cast a threat and stormed the stage to add the same C or D or perhaps F "like" honking to stymie and overpower whatever we were doing, as well as alert any other jammers that there was no point trying because the end result is a solid constant. This went on for fucking years, cause I'm a nice person, and i didn't want to harm a friend even though the friend was seriously wounding me, my team, and our will to play. Finally i had to ban him after a series of mind boggling jam spoils... he was angry and it hung heavy in our social circles for like half a year, but then he shook it off and got his band in order learned some cool original tunes and is now a fine strong artistic branch of the SRSS collective and actually has a busier more successful band than myself.
It's a problem i have, constant through my life, i let people do whatever the hell they want and just try to make it work... I come from an insane family of non listeners... apparently I'm insane and what the TV tells you is on the money, otherwise it wouldn't be on TV right? Some people like me for that because there is a sense of freedom, and most people who write songs have exact ideas they need people to reproduce in order for them to be happy. My system can work great but to really optimize it you need to hand pick each person and set them up in a role, which is hard to do in a live show that is making turns left right and center. So long as people can play... have ears, and some chops we can roll for the most part. And you need a really good drummer... don't forget that.
Same story happened with Eric Eyes years ago... terrible improv drummer but wanted to play drums so badly and could sense i was weak and all he had to do was show up and pressure me and he would get a shot... next thing you know you are on stage sucking and you see some people you know walking out perhaps waving at you as to say by by, we came down to see you but clearly you suck, I'll never come again. So i banned Eyes with the same speech and he put something together and came back with a band and played a set, and they did pretty well. I could see it was important to him when he got off stage and he came over and asked if that was OK... yea he done good. They rehearsed and had some songs and played them... improv drumming live is not an easy thing at all... it's fun however.
For the record i still have people that meet me and say "your the guy in that crazy horn band right". If only i could move to a new town and start all over again. Then it's up to me when i meet that talented insane overzealous "want to be involved" person, i become the person who lays a rigid framework to help bring the best out of everybody... or i go soft and suffer another cycle.
Before the show last week Super Steve said to me "I see your Oregon Ducks beat up Stanford last weekend". Super Steve is a classic sports fan a man with the real Tim Russert Philosophy... You cheer for your home town. I remember reading some stories about Tim Russert and how he would phone friends in the middle of the night... should they be working on the wrong coast, because their home town had won a big game, and he was excited for them and wanted to share in their joy.
Speaking of games, i had to jet after last weeks SRSS as the Crown Royals had a game @ 9:30 in North Vancouver... our line put on a clinic racking up 7 goals... I think we won 7-5.
Anyhoo, let's rock tomorrow... did i mention that some woman from the choir i sing in came up to me after choir on Monday and asked me if i was playing with the Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn orchestra @ the railway last week... she was there and so was I.
Also if there was any confusion and you were thinking that Classical Revolution was playing this week, they are not. I had booked them but then, as the SRSS goes, things often change and it falls back to me and my crew... which works just great for me in this instance. Odd thing that on this event the Globe and Mail called the Railway club, which then emailed me, to whom i forwarded to my contact... the article has gone to press and we missed a chance to get a supper show a national nod. Another good lesson: you can't choose your audience, and you never know what a show might bring. I know it says in various places on the Internet that Classical Revolution is playing the SRSS tomorrow at the Super Robertson Supper Show, but really I can't change that now. I try to be organized and get the word out, but you can't take things down off the Internet. Not like the old days when a poster you put up on the street would survive a record 3 months and you would get excited every time you would see it thinking what a good thing you did putting it there and having it survive for so long. Now there is enough damming irrevocable evidence of my incompetence on the Internet I'm screwed. My policy was always let the truth sit, but the problem with my policy is that people aren't like me...
A Local Musician named Randy Ponzio disappeared and was found dead last week. Terrible shame, and now many hack news sources are posting youtube videos of him playing that were shot live and have levels peaking out with just plain bad sound, making him appear not as good as he really was. It just got me thinking about what you really want out there... If i died i would rather be linked to a solid version of a good song, but there are clips of me in a woman's dress hitting a cowbell... could cast a different light on my existence.
So for Randy, who i didn't really know to well, lets put this one up:
Good solid stuff and in the end he goes on to preach compassion for the kids involved in the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot. When it happened i thought about myself as a 17 year old caught up in massive disappointment and a mob mentality and how, yes it might have been possible for me to end up in a smashing frenzy. I'm not saying it would have happened for sure, but it is possible i could have got swept up in the festivities, and in the end i turned out to be a good member of society (pay taxes, donate time to neighbourhood improvement, raising 3 responsible, aware children). So perhaps vilifying kids for a moment of insanity and punishing them so severely might not be the best thing for society... given that the people who run society do a lot of pre-meditated damage and all. At the same time, anybody who came to incite riot should spend the rest of their lives in a cell with the shady bankers and war profiteers.
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