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Country Band Comes to a Screeching Halt

That’s right, I’m pulling the plug, or rather my plug, from the country cover band I play in, for several reasons. One is no one seems to play in tune, and everyone is guilty here (even me), but it grates on my ears, and there’s no cure for that. Two is a drummer who should be in a rock band, because he plays so loud, and has trouble with his speeds, as in keeping it consistent. And other stuff, but nothing so noteworthy.

So the last practice was this Monday, the first in forever, and as I walk down into the basement they’re all talking, and it looks a bit somber. I’m tired, since I started back at the gym and am tired from getting up at 6 every day to make sure I get the older kid up for school. I set my stuff down and try to figure out the context, and then I have to ask what the subject is. Well, you see, we’ve heard some other bands that have played this place, and they’ve been told to cut off early and take less money, because there aren’t enough people there. Would you be willing to take less money? And at this point I don’t care, the gig is far enough from my house that getting off early would be a plus, and the money is incidental, since I have no idea what we’re going to make or what the discounted rate is for stopping. A 40 minute ride home at 2 in the morning is worse than one at midnight. So we go around the room, and it’s game on, let’s play the gig, see what happens (I predict we’re done after 2 sets). And oh, by the way, the cops like to hang out across the street and have been ticketing people leaving the bar. Now there’s a perk. Not that I’m getting loaded or anything, but I don’t need some local mountie trying to up his quota because I lost a tail light or something. So that goes around the room. And then it’s, oh, and it’s a real pain to load in your stuff, because it’s on the second floor, and you have to go up this narrow metal staircase to get there, and I’m thinking, shouldn’t we have voted after all these other things had been brought up?

Anyway, a weekend wrecking 10 to 2 gig, likely to end sooner, a 4 hour gig for which we have maybe close to 3 hours of material, but haven’t really practiced in a month or two, by a band that has a narrow following, can’t stay in tune or on time. I’m getting all choked up about leaving

2011 09 23 Uncle Wally band related Comments (0) Permalink

Whoa There Nelly!

August? Really? Two months blow by without a peep, and now what? An apologetic post talking about how you tried and all, but just couldn’t cut it?

Nah. I’ll be back soon, I swear.

2011 08 03 Uncle Wally Belchin' Comments (0) Permalink

Is the internet the answer?

You know, I’ve been struggling with this whole internet thing for some time now. Sure, we missed the boat back in the 90′s with the get rich IPO’s and stock buying and all, in the first financial boom back in the golden days. And of course I was late to blogging, spawned by the free sites like blogger.com and wordpress and all, and so any hopes of capturing an audience and turning it into a book seem to have flown the coop as well. So now the question I have before me is, is this it?

Back in the day, for example, there were a slew of search engines, all which gave varying results from a query. There was Yahoo and Google and Altavista and Netscape and a bunch of others that don’t pop into my mind right away, and more came along, like Ask and so on. But nowadays, it seems most people beat a path to Google’s doorstep.

And in a way, this is like the Walmart effect, where you hate the pace and you hate going there, but they usually have all the junk you need for your daily suburban grind, and you can get everything in one stop, even if a lot of it is junk, but it frees up your time, and you don’t have to visit a bunch of stores that takes up half the day. Google may or may not be the best search engine, but it is the Walmart of search engines.

And in this Walmart effect, you’re bound to go places you might think are good places to stop, but may not be the best place to get info. Like a health site for example. Maybe the site you’re looking for, for information about a disease or whatever, is populated more with ads than info, but shows up first because of whatever formula it uses to get its presence to the top of the search engine list. And because you already trust the search engine, or are too lazy to drill down or see what other sites offer up during a search result, you choose the top result without hesitation. And find yourself at Walmart.

So it goes for trying to find any sort of success on the internets. I cannot think in a global fashion, like the whole world is some big chess game. When I try, I lose in a few moves. Or if I really try to figure it all out, by the time I have the answer, it’s already blown by a few years ago, and there I am, chumpzilla.

So that’s part of the reason the waffle has been sluggish as of late. My current strategy, if you can call it that, is just to plow ahead and don’t think too much. I’m hoping that will be easy for me.

2011 05 17 Uncle Wally the daily grind Comments (0) Permalink

The Train Wreck Continues

I have no idea of the source of the general malaise that has overtaken me, but it definitely has put a dent in my need to write. Maybe the fact that my former desk chair went south, breaking into pieces, stopping me from swiveling has something to do with it, although I doubt it. There’s no point in looking for a cause, it has just sucked around here lately, so let’s move on.

 

2011 05 16 Uncle Wally the daily grind Comments (0) Permalink

So Much For April

No excuses here, it’s painfully obvious that my brain has gone south, probably in pursuit of warmer weather, since in these parts, winter refuses to let go. Don’t believe me? Well then you could have seen for yourself yesterday when I was lugging broken willow branches out to the curb whilst being pelted with snow flurries. Or yesterday afternoon, as the flurries came down in sheets, only to stop for a moment, and then resume again. There’s no accumulation, and today it’s a balmy 43 degrees at the moment, but still, it’s like a punch to the nuts, and it’s still stinging.

2011 04 18 Uncle Wally Belchin' Comments (0) Permalink

Senior Nightmare

In about an hour or so my mother will be dropping by so I can play bad cop. She moved out to an apartment, and we trusted her to maintain her finances on a budget, figuring her mind is still there, no biggie. But apparently she’s been running fast and loose with the checkbook, something I only looked into recently. Oh sure, she would call once and again and say she needed a few bucks, and I’d drop some into her account. But then she bounced a half dozen checks, which her bank is kind enough to charge almost 40 bucks per check, and I looked into things a bit further.

Maybe she still thinks she’s living off the money her mom left her, maybe her mind is going south; in any event, I get to be the one to break the bad news to her, to tell her this wanton spending has to stop, I get to be the bad guy.

Lucky me.

2011 03 31 Uncle Wally the daily grind Comments (0) Permalink

Monday Morning Bus Stop

This past weekend was the Odyssey of the Mind State Tournament, and that’ll probably be the next post, since it’ll be a long one. This morning, still dragging, and we’re at the end of the driveway waiting for the bus. Across the street I hear this muffled hollering, and it’s the dad yelling at his younger girl to wear a hat and gloves. It’s a sunny day, cold at the moment, but not too bad considering that we’re the last stop on the bus line, and the school is less than a quarter of a mile away.

Anyway, this hollering is muffled, and I look over, and he’s standing behind the glass front door shouting. He doesn’t open the door, and I don’t know why, since that might make the communication go a bit easier. So it goes on for a bit, and the girl walks toward the garage, and then you hear the same hollering, louder, because now he’s brought out a hat, and you can tell from the hollering as it increases in sound and then lowers that he’s walked back into the house, and then again he comes out and you can hear “And put these on” or something to that effect, and again the voice lowers.

And it’s not like he’s got a lot going on, his schedule is pretty loose. If you talk to him, he’s a good guy for the most part, but some shit he does drives me nuts. Sometimes he’ll come out to the bus stop, well, his driveway, he won’t cross over, because for one then he’d have to talk to us, and two, the bus door open s on their side, so you can tell what a major inconvenience it would be to either talk or walk across the street. And chances are I wouldn’t talk to him, not much anyway, because while I’ve been out to the bus stop every freaking morning for who knows how long, this is like the first time he’s shown any effort. Oh, on the first day of school he would stand on his sidewalk near the front door, and watch all the rest of the parents and kids, oh, 50 feet away or so, getting ready. So no, fuck him, I won’t talk to him, since apparently I’m not worth his time either. Just for the record, when the mom is home from work, she walks across the street and we yak it up.

He doesn’t leave for work until around 9:30 on average, and is home on or before 5. Tough hours, I’m sure. And I’m sure he works hard, because he comes home for lunch all the time for an hour and change. My guess is he cares more for the grass on his lawn than his kids, because he seems to spend way more time on that than with his kids, unless you count dragging the older girl off all the time to softball, which who knows if she even likes it, or if he’s pushing her in that direction because he needs his sports, and wants to live vicariously.

Like I said, he can be a nice guy, but for the most part, he’s not worth the time. And just for the record, this is the same guy who, when the big anthrax scare was going around, he would get his mail with his gloves on, and then take the mail into the house. So the gloves wouldn’t have helped at all. But that’s a containment kind of joke.

Ah well.

2011 03 28 Uncle Wally parenting Comments (0) Permalink

Odyssey Looming

Roughly 48 hours from now, the elder boy and his pals will be running through their performance in Binghamton, and then a few hours later undertaking the spontaneous part of the program. Hopefully he will have fun, but I am upset about the amount of effort he put into the project.

The team itself seems to be fragmenting a bit, the long haul so far beginning to take its toll. The last meeting barely held together, the kids are distracted, but hey, that’s the way it goes. I really hope they do well, but I am not sure if they will, since they have an early start time in a land far far away, and haven’t really practiced the routine much since their last victory.

We’ll see.

2011 03 24 Uncle Wally Belchin' Comments (0) Permalink

Really Slipping Lately

I intend to write every day, but it doesn’t happen, and hasn’t been happening lately. I’d blame myself, since I’m the one at fault, but that seems to easy. There must be a scapegoat somewhere.

Anyway, yesterday the country band performed at a jamboree at a VFW in Spencerport, a gig which last year was my first with the band, and even though it went horribly wrong last year, this year was worse. I am still fighting a nagging cold, a cold that reared up on its hindlegs yesterday, making me feel slightly warm under the skin, just warm enough to be aware that I am still sick, but not enough to experience symptoms. I loaded everything in the car, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be needing everything, since the singer always changes her mind on setlists and the order of songs.

I get there when I am supposed to, at 1:30, since we’re playing from 2 to 3, or thereabouts, and get all my gear inside with 3 trips. The bass player walks up and asks if I’ll be needing my amp, since he’s sure there are amps inside, but this aspect of the gig never entered my head, since no one said anything beforehand. I get the stuff in past the crowds and into a back room, and the stage area is pretty crowded, and it looks like everything is more in place than last year, so I am now assuming I lugged my amo in for nothing, and will be using the old guy’s Fender.

The band in front finally finishes, and I am now putting my gear in place, after asking if it’s okay to use his amp (“Yeah, I have it on standby now”), and I get the guitar on the stand and the pedal board in place and start checking everything, but nothing sounds right, this Fender, like all of Fenders, has a volume knob that goes from off to loud in the space of a centimeter, and I can’t get the sound I want at the volume I want, but you know what? It’s too late now because the singer is looking at me and I start the first song.

A song that goes well until the ending, because half of the band thought it went this long and half thought it went this long, and now everyone looks stupid, but that’s a theme that will carry throughout the hour, and there is not stopping us now. While I continue to worry about my rising body temperature, and the disorientation of the cold that is now settling in, I now also have to worry about missing chords, missing notes, and blowing solos, all of which happens in every song to some degree or another. Also, the bulk of the crowd is older, and not too fond of this newer country music, so there’s an issue there. The last song is an acoustic number with just me and the singer, and I get through it, but the guitar was  a bit out of tune, although there is nothing I can do about it, but a sense of relief comes on, and I get my stuff off stage as fast as possible.

It’s a bit of an ordeal to get out of the place, takes three trips, and a ton of “excuse me please,” but out I am, and headed home. I know I played poorly, but I couldn’t hear the fiddle player, the bass player I only heard when he hit a wrong note (and that was a few times). The drummer sped up as always, the singer missed a few notes she had to stretch for, leaving the keyboard player as probably the best performer that night. Or afternoon, or whatever.

Anyway, that’s show business.

2011 03 14 Uncle Wally band related Comments (0) Permalink

It’a All So Easy

Sure, write everyday, piece of cake, or so I thought, and now reality smacks me in the face like the right hand of Tyson. What’s happened in over a week? First off, I had a birthday, and am now in a new demographic, having crested the top of the hill, and am now looking down the slope. While I don’t put too much stock in celebrating birthdays, there are moments, which people now refer to as “senior moments,” which I suppose will go away in a week or so. You know, that stark realization that the clock is ticking, you’re not getting any younger, and well, all that jazz.

Secondly, the passage through the whole Odyssey of the Mind tournament has ended. Well, the first part anyway. Seems the lads I am “coaching” placed first in their division, and so now in a few weeks we head down to Binghamton for the State tournament. Should they win there, it’s off to Maryland, a land I hate, so I’d guess they’ll win and propel me into that neck of the woods.

The rock band played a gig, and also a benefit gig. The first went well, although the cold I had (and still have) made it less than fun. I also learned that if you stand next to the door to the patio in Abilene, the sound bounces off the metal surface with a vengeance, and the first few songs were painful until I got the earplugs in. For the benefit gig, earplugs went in right away, but it didn’t matter, since the sound on stage was so loud, and the monitors so loud, and a low frequency hum so loud (like the stage sound feeding through the monitors), that the whole gig sounds in my head like listening to a jet engine in a tunnel. I couldn’t hear anything, it was all one big blur. And that’s not fun at all.

Now I’m just struggling to get rid of this cold, I haven’t been to the gym much, but will go today, the country band has a gig this Sunday, and that will probably be a train wreck based on last night’s practice, and what else? Who knows.

Time will tell, eh?

2011 03 08 Uncle Wally Belchin' Comments (0) Permalink