beautiful, funny, sad and true

It seems that I’m not alone; these last couple of weeks have been extremely strange and emotional for almost everyone. Unfortunately, the things that have been happening are not subjects that are appropriate for me to write about here, especially not with a certain someone slithering around. Family issues, friend issues, money issues…all seem to be par for the course at the same time. I suppose you know what they say about rain.

Let’s hope the worst is over.

Here’s a short list of some statistics for the week, though. It certainly ain’t all bad, either, by any stretch of the imagination:

• number of distressing phone calls from close friends in tears: 3
• number of best-in-my-whole-life drum recording sessions: 2
  
• number of cockroaches seen in my building: 1
• number of cockroaches seen in my apartment: ZERO
• number of days home sick from work last week: 2
• number of excellent Wes Anderson movies seen in the theater: 1
• number of excellent new anime’s I’ve watched online, for free: 4
• number of nights in which I got fewer than three hours of sleep: 3
• number of interesting and deep phone conversations, today alone: 3
• number of hilarious conversations today involving Hitler’s love life: 1

Clearly, if I’m able to incorporate Hitler–let alone his love life–back into my humor lexicon, I’m starting to feel like my usual self. I mean (with all due respect), the subjects of brain cancer and full-blown AIDS can almost always provide good fodder for comedy, but I generally have to be feeling at my tippy top in order to find humor in Hitler.

So. Moving on.

I’ve finally been feeling like writing again lately, and by that I mean writing about real and important subjects. Six months or so ago, I was poking around online, trying to find out information about all my old favorite guitarists and bands from the 80’s. I spent many hours sitting here alone, laughing out loud at the ridiculous clothes and videos, and of course, the music. But at the same time, it was a little more complicated than that, because I could still see and hear what I liked about them back in the day. Ever since that night, I’ve had the thought in the back of my mind that it would be fun to write a series of blog entries about some of those people and what my thoughts about them were, both then and now. Naturally, I would put up whatever videos I could find, so that you too could get in on the fun.

I’ve also needed to create a music-related e-mail list for a while now, so that people who are interested can keep up with my gigging and recording schedule, and this seems like the perfect time to do it.

But definitely check back here for the Eighties Röck Blög or whatever I end up calling it. I think that’ll be a fun project.

The NumberOneThing I expect from my friends is honesty. If we don’t have honesty, then to put it simply, I’m not interested in being friends.

If we’ve HAD honesty in the past, but circumstances have changed enough that it’s too difficult or not something that’s of interest to you, that makes me really sad, because I’ve already come to expect honesty from you. When you can’t (or won’t) step up and provide it now, then I’m really disappointed.

It doesn’t have to be that way. If we’ve had honesty in the past, and then lost it for a while, but then you come back around and show effort–no matter how little it is, or how difficult it may feel for a while–then that’s what close friendships are built upon, and ours can be rebuilt too. I’ve been lucky enough to experience that a few times now.

But if you’re not interested, you’re not interested. If my friendship isn’t going to be reciprocated, I’m going to put my energy to more constructive use, where it will be appreciated and reciprocated.

Tonight I played my first gig with an Irish-style band called the Fenbi International Superstars. Hilarious and fun, and the main songwriter is Mike, the former bassist for the Young Immortals. We had the packed house singing and dancing like crazy.

And it was a good thing that the show was so much fun, too, because a surprise situation happened that really pissed me off. Again. Not as much as when it happened last time, but still. . .ouch.

Tonight was the second set of recording sessions for Sarah Castro’s new band. This is the same group that I recorded the drums and electric bass parts for a month ago. Tonight was the night for electric guitars, keyboards, and a little bit of experimental weirdness.

Or so I thought.

I got home from work and had just finished loading guitars, amps, effect pedals, bag of tricks, the xylophone, and a couple of little keyboards into the car, when I got a call from Sarah. “Hey, don’t bring any instruments. There’s been sort of a change of plans. We may have to start from scratch.”

“Uhhhhhhhh. . .okay. Is there something wrong with the drums that we already did?”

“No, it’s just that–well, I don’t really know to explain it. Sean can tell you. Just come on over, and he can tell you all about it. We might be redoing drums tonight, maybe.”

So I unloaded all my stuff from the car, and I started to feel really anxious, so I called her back. “Hey, I feel like I’ve just been thrown a huge curve ball here, and I’m feeling really confused. What’s going on? What’s the new plan? Do you really need me tonight or not?”

“Yeah, just come on over, and we’ll get you some food–Do you like ahi tuna? (YES.)–and we can tell you all about it once you’re here.” I grabbed my little bag of drum sticks, just to be safe, and headed out the door. I’ll go pretty much anywhere for ahi tuna.

By this time, I was feeling really confused, and hungry, and tired from loading a carful of instruments twice. I made a mistake with the directions on the way to the studio, and almost got hit by another car while I was turning around in a parking lot, but finally arrived at a very nice studio, located next door to the Wonder Ballroom. It was full of guitars, amps, effect pedals, electric pianos and organs, and a beautiful Allegra drum set (with surprisingly crappy cymbals! WTF?? Wish I’d brought mine…) all mic’ed up and ready to go.

Turns out that the engineer is actually a pretty well-known musician and engineer, who worked on the Shins’ newest CD, among many other things. He told me his thoughts about what we had to work with, and what we seemed to be trying to achieve, so Sarah decided to go with his suggestions. I did too, after they all got me up to speed, so we started to record some drum tracks.

We did two songs tonight. The first one has a very sparse and deceptively simple drum part, almost like a ‘looping’ pattern. After a few false starts and technical mishaps, it took about three or four tries to get a good, usable take. The second song calls for a very ‘tribal’ drum part, with big toms and dark cymbal crashes for the entire first half of the song. The second half is where I switch to regular drum sticks, and pretty much just rawk out as hard as possible. Total blast, and it took just three takes to nail it. The end of the third take had a particularly good feel to it. After the cymbals faded out, in my headphones I could hear Sarah and GuitaristJimmy in the control room, laughing and clapping at the same time. “Todd B—–, everybody!” They ran into the drum room, saying, “Oh, man, that was IT. That was the one!”

The thing about playing drums is that the more I do it, the more I want to do it. I keep thinking about creating opportunities so that I’ll be able to do it more often. I keep thinking about what I need to do to my drum kit to achieve the sound that matches what I hear in my head. I keep thinking about what kind of band matches my playing style, and would give me the opportunity to play at my best. It’s really exciting to think about that.

So now it’s looking like tomorrow is the day for keyboards and experimental weirdness. There will be guitars and amps there already, so I’m bringing the xylophone, the Omnichord, the Casio SK-1, the toy piano, the amp that’s the size of a pack of cigarettes, and the cello. I have no idea what we’ll end up using; maybe all of those things, maybe none of them.

I can’t wait for you to be able to hear some of this stuff.

I think the best thing about living in this building full of musicians is the incredible amount of diversity represented, and the caliber of the musicianship. Right now, the Portland Cello Project is rehearsing upstairs, and I’m sitting down here listening and thoroughly enjoying it.

From the apartment next to mine, I often get to hear the Pete Krebs Gypsy Jazz trio, or the Stolen Sweets (1920’s and 30’s jazz with three-part vocal harmonies).

From the apartment in front of mine, I get to hear classical flute, sometimes in duet with another flute, or with other instruments as well. Sometimes I take my cello over there and participate.

From the apartment upstairs in the front of the building, I get to hear alto sax parts from Vagabond Opera songs, as well as piano playing and singing.

From my apartment, the people in the rest of the building get to hear people like Breanna and Susie, and sometimes Stephanie.

The Portland music community is very well-represented by this one building alone.

In other news, Joan and I went out clothes shopping at a whole bunch of places yesterday. I totally scored:

black hoodie - YAY! The five-month search for a black hoodie is finally over.

two orange thermal T-shirts, each with a different ‘pattern’ of stitching and thickness. Plus, one’s medium-sized and the other is small. And it was $10 for both of them, so why the heck shouldn’t I buy both?

button-up dress shirt from J. Crew. White, green and black pinstripes. If you look from a distance, though, it just looks like a really cool green.

brown corduroy jacket, also from J. Crew. This was the score of the year. It’s a $200 jacket, on clearance for $50, then another 25 percent off, for a total of $35. $35!! For a two hundred-dollar jacket! I can wear it whenever I want to look like a university professor or something. It has patches on the elbows, and it even has a pen pocket inside.

I’m thinking of going on a picture-taking excursion here in a little while, since the weather’s so nice. I’m not going to spend such a beautiful day sitting inside. I did, however, want to fill you in on the clothing ’scores’, and say how much fun the rest of the weekend has been. Good birthday party on Friday, and good gig on Saturday.

Funny thing about the gig on Saturday was that CellistSkip, who I play with in various incarnations of both Susie’s and Stephanie’s groups, was actually in the audience (first time I’ve ever seen him in the audience) while I played the cello with Susie. She came up to me near the end of our set and said, “Skip just got here. No pressure.” I was a bit nervous at first, with one of the best cellists in town sitting right up front and watching me, but after the first cello song, he smiled and applauded, then ran up and stuffed a couple of dollar bills down behind the tailpiece. It was a hilarious and supportive thing for him to do, and I was completely relaxed after that.

Well, time to get in the shower and out the door to start the day ‘frealz, yo.’

Peace, out.