beautiful, funny, sad & true

First of all, you’ll be glad to know that there’s good news on the car front.  I’ll spare you some of the details, but it boils down to the fact that since the distributor fixed the problem, that means that the timing belt is okay, and that I don’t have to do Part Two of the repair Plan.  Yee haw.  I’m still broke, though, for the time being, but at least I’ll only be broke for a month, instead of clear into the new year.

So that’s good, I guess.

Had a couple of odd experiences at shows this past weekend.  At the Breanna and Justin show, we had our first heckler, of sorts.  He was drunkenly walking from table to table and chatting up the all of the ladies, whether they were with their respective guys or not.  Naturally, this included Breanna as well, which already had him on Justin’s radar screen.  In the middle of our second set, Justin started to play one of his songs, which apparently has a similar chord progression to a classic rock song, because the guy started laughing and singing the classic rock song really loudly.  Justin stopped playing and said, “Do you want to come up here and sing?”

“No, I just blahblah suck blahblah mumble mumble.”

“Y’know what?  I don’t like you very much.”

“I don’t like you either.”  This was a very awkward and tense moment.  No one, including us, had any idea what this guy was likely to do next.

Justin’s honesty and diplomacy kicked in.  “Here’s the thing.  As a musician, you spend your whole life learning how to play the guitar, how to sing, how to write songs.  Then you go and play them for people, and some people really like them.  And that’s great.  Some people don’t like them, and that’s cool too.  Not everybody has to like them.  But if you don’t like it, and you don’t want to be here, then you can go ahead and leave.”

The guy stood up and walked slowly to the front of the stage, looked at Justin angrily for a second, then turned and walked down the stairs and out of the room.  Everyone clapped for Justin, out of a sense of relief and a bit of amazement too, I think.

The rest of the show was stellar after that.  We felt energized and invigorated, and played our best.  Before that, we had some technical problems, and some sound problems, and it was an ‘off’ cello night for me, which I have occasionally.  I even have them sometimes when I play guitar, after all these years.  Incidentally, November 20th (that’s tomorrow) is the anniversary of the day that I got my very first guitar, clear back in 1985.  I’ll let you work out the math on that, and in the meantime, I’ll try to scrounge up a picture.

At the IrishBand show on Saturday, Singer and his girlfriend had an argument. That’s all I’ll say about it, partly because they seem to have worked things out, and partly because both of them are readers of this blog.  All seems to be forgiven, but it did make for an uncomfortable show, and a short one at that.

Singer called me first thing in the morning to ask me if I was still up for our musician friend’s birthday brunch, which I had to confess that I’d forgotten about.  I said yes, I’d love to go, and he and Violinist came and picked me up.  The party was a blast.  We had quiche, and bacon (Singer, a lifelong vegetarian, ate bacon for the first time!), and cheesy potatoes of some sort, and all kinds of muffins and bagels, and fruit, and chai, and the best Bloody Mary I’ve ever had in my entire life.  Violinist even stuck a piece of bacon in his, which looked repulsive, but. . .well, he seemed to enjoy it.  I wished that I had my camera with me, but at least I had my phone, so here’s a picture.

We left around 1:30 and came back to my place to do record some parts (djembe, vocals, and violin) for one of our songs.  Sounds really good so far, but it isn’t quite there yet, so we have some re-recording to do.

In other news, CincinnatiFriend is in town to defend her dissertation.  She’s actually doing that as I’m writing this, and I’m going to go and visit her after I’m done at work.  I’m super excited to see her again.  She moved a year and half ago, and I can’t believe it’s been that long.  I’m taking tomorrow off from work so that we can either go to all of her favorite haunts, or take a little day trip and catch up about everything.

Mom and Stepdad are coming to visit from Yakima on Friday, which should be fun.  They’ll be staying with me, for the first time since I’ve lived here in Portland.  This is the first time that I’ve had the right kind of living space (and the right kind of furniture) to make that possible and enjoyable for all of us.  Wish me luck.  We’re gonna do lots of cooking, and a bit of shopping, and J’s going to get to meet them.  Hopefully CincinnatiFriend and RockShowGirl will get to meet them too.

Should be a great week.  I’ll keep you posted.

The other night I was supposed to get together with J, but she had a change of plans, so I scrounged around a bit to see what was happening in town. I called RockShowGirl to tell her about the movie Man on Wire, and how amazing it looked.  She was too exhausted to go out, having spent the last few hours running around town and then cleaning her apartment, so I went from being double-booked to being zero-booked.  The time was 7:22, and the movie started at 7:30.  ‘I can still make it to the movie,’ I thought.  ‘I don’t care if anybody else is free, I’m going.’  I grabbed my sweatshirt and my phone, jumped into the car that I’d borrowed from my neighbor for the evening, and raced over to the movie theater.  I can’t even begin to tell you how glad I am that I did.

The movie was amazing, and I recommend it to all of you.  It’s a documentary about the French guy who walked across a tightrope that he hung (secretly and illegally, I might add) between the towers of the World Trade Center.  There have been many pictures taken of that famous act, but this documentary was based on Phillipe Petit’s book.  The story and the individual characters were all fascinating and intriguing.  It’s really one of the better documentaries I’ve seen in a long time, and I watch a lot of them.  Here’s a trailer:

Incidentally, another of my recent favorite documentaries is Helvetica.  Yes, it’s about the font.  No, it’s not the least bit boring.  It’s about art and design and culture and the ways that they are perceived over time.  Go rent it.  I promise you’ll enjoy it.  But don’t take my word for it; Helvetica is sexy.

And since we’re on the subject of documentaries, I just rented and received Theremin; an Electronic Odyssey.  A friend of mine wrote a play about Leon Theremin, and it inspired me to find out more about the supremely interesting inventor.  His most famous invention is the instrument which bears his name:

You play the theremin by holding each of your hands nearer or farther from each of the corresponding wires to control the volume with your left hand and the pitch with your right.  When you touch the lower loop, the volume drops out completely, and when you bring your hand closer to the vertical wire, the higher the pitch rises.  It looks odd, and it’s very tricky to play.  You’d recognize the sound from about a million science fiction movies and quite a few staggeringly popular songs, including the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and the theme from the original series of “Star Trek.”  The most famous person associated with playing the theremin is Clara Rockmore, who was a student and protegé of Leon Theremin himself.  She was the first to play ‘serious’ music on a theremin, with astounding results.  Here she is playing her most widely-acclaimed piece, “The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns.

She’s so brilliant.  I could watch that all day.

Well, you now have your homework, and you know what to do, and now I have a favor to ask of you in return.  What are some of your favorite documentaries that you’d like to recommend to me?  Please leave a comment and let me know.

Boy, has this week gotten away from me.  Sorry it’s been such a long time between posts, but this week turned out to be as busy as last week was, but I left off at the Ray LaMontagne show.  The next night, Thursday, I took the train downtown to see a poet who shall remain nameless, because while my two friends and I were very interested in him as a person, we found his poetry to be distant and unapproachable.  In fact, my two companions fell asleep for a while during one of his longer stories.  From there, Tossed In gave me a ride to my next engagement, which was Allanah’s birthday party.  Total blast, but I heard later from Mike that it ended in vomitous tragedy.

Friday night was a slightly odd IrishBand show, which took place at a firemens’ local union hall thingy.  Something like that.  A couple of the members play a sport called hurling, and their team of guys was getting together at the end of the season to have a party and give themselves prizes and awards.  One of the guys is a musician, and is a friend of our band, so he told the guys that since it’s an Irish sport, they should invite an Irish band to play.  So they did, and we did.  My favorite part was watching how Mike would change (or mumble) the more adult lyrics to some of the songs, since there were children present.  In fact, a few of the kids came right up and sat on the steps at the edge of the stage.  A girl who looked like she was about eleven sat right in front of me and watched the cello like a hawk.  (Hawkette?  Hawkess?)  She even made cello motions with her arm at one point.  After we were done with our set, I said,  “Do you play too?  You must.”  She said that she used to, and she’d played for about a year, bu then her cello got broken when it fell over or something, and it was never replaced.  I invited her to play mine, and she accepted.  She sat down and started making sound with the thing right away.  It was very fun to watch.

I actually had the weekend completely free, so I spent the majority of it sleeping, doing laundry, and watching episodes of Six Feet Under.  I hadn’t ever seen it until J loaned me the DVD’s, and now I’m completely hooked on the show.  In fact, we watched a couple of episodes together on Saturday night.  After she left, I watched two more, and then two more the next afternoon.

Monday was supposed to be a recording session with Breanna, but she had to re-schedule because she and Justin weren’t feeling well.  I offered the time slot to IrishBand’s singer instead, because we have a few high-profile gigs coming up, and we’re trying to get some music and promotional material posted on SpaceBelongingToMe by then.  We had dinner first, of pasta with alfredo sauce and smoked salmon, and then Mike recorded a new acoustic guitar track.  I then showed him how to run the recording software, and he manned the computer while I recorded a cello track, an accordion track, and a glockenspiel track.  We still need to add vocals, violin and percussion, but it sounds really great so far.

Last night was the Breeders show here in town, which JBJ and I went to for free, thanks to the tickets provided by the radio station that airs his music show.  We arrived during the second band, and were lucky enough to find a seat in the balcony.  There are only two rows of seats in the entire place, so we were very fortunate.  We weren’t impressed with the band that was playing when we arrived, which is to say that we talked with each other rather than listening to them.  They were called PaperCut or something, or maybe they were the PenguinSomethings band whose name I never knew.  I dunno.  Then the Breeders came out, and they sounded good, but I’m not gonna lie; we found our attention waning during their set as well.  We did get to hear them play “Cannonball”, though, which was really cool, then we decided to leave after listening to a couple more songs.

Tonight I’m home for a bit before meeting RockShowGirl, whose name may sound like one of those clever pseudonymic blogisms that I love so much, but it’s actually a variation on her name from SocialNetworkingSite, so it seemed apropos.  Anyway, she just went through a very strange and sudden break-up last weekend, which she’s still reeling from, so I want to go talk to her and cheer her up.  It seems like a movie might be in order.

Tomorrow’s a Breanna and Justin gig, and then Saturday is an IrishBand gig, so there’s still plenty on my schedule.  Next week may very well be even busier, because CincinnatiFriend is coming for a visit, and then Mom and Stepdad will be staying here the following weekend.

Phew.

Sorry for these many days of absence, and thank you again for reading all of this.  Now it’s time to eat something and figure out what RockShowGirl and I are doing tonight.

Wednesday night I was invited to see Ray LaMontagne with my friend Jeannie, who had an extra ticket.  I’m not super familiar with Ray’s music, but I do have one of his CD’s, and I enjoy it, and I’m certainly not going to pass up a chance to see him live.

We started the night by going to dinner.  We had a few choices for happy hour places, one of which was Kenny & Zuke’s.  We started there, and a quick perusal of the menu revealed that it was a total meat-a-thon.  We asked the waitress what their vegetarian choices were, and she checked over the menu and replied, “Well, there’s. . .an egg-salad sandwich. . .and, uhhh. . .tuna fish. . .?”  We thanked her and decided to go elsewhere.  We walked around the corner to Saucebox, which neither of us had been to before, but we both now agree that for happy hour it’s one of the best deals in town.  We’ll definitely be going back.

The show was awesome.  Leona Naess was the opening act, and she and her band were multi-talented and excellent.  She still seems fairly new to the game, but it’ll be interesting to see where she goes from here, and how she progresses.

Ray and his band took the stage and absolutely owned the audience the entire time, despite hardly saying a word until about three-quarters of the way through the show, when he talked about the sense of relief he felt after the election, and how he felt like partying and celebrating instead of singing his quiet, introspective, sad songs.  It was very endearing and funny.

I wasn’t terribly impressed with his band, though.  They were each good players individually, but it seemed to me that they just sort of plodded through every song, without many dynamic changes.  I would have liked to hear much more from the piano player especially, and the two or three times he finally got to take a solo, the audience really appreciated him.  The guitarist was unexciting (as are the overwhelming majority of rock guitarists), but he was absolutely stellar when he sat down to play the pedal steel.  Don’t know what a pedal steel is?  You’ll recognize the sound, for sure.  Here’s a video.  (No, this isn’t the guy from the show.  I couldn’t find a video of him.)  See if you can figure out what song he’s playing:

I will say, to be fair to Ray’s band, that they are phenomenal at playing quietly and keeping the energy level high while ‘holding back’, if you see what I mean.  A standout song for me was “Shelter”, which I was able to find a video of from his show in NYC a month ago.  Notice the awesome pedal steel solo, too.

So Ray and the band finished up their set and left the stage.  After a couple of minutes, he and the bass player came back out to do a heartbreaking version of the song “Jolene”, which an audience member had been loudly and drunkenly requesting before almost every other song of the night.  Incidentally, he didn’t even yell ‘THANK YOU’ after Ray finally played it, by which I think we were all a bit surprised and disappointed.

After he finished that song, the audience gave him a standing ovation, and then stayed on their feet to put their coats on and leave.  Probably a third of the audience started streaming out of the theater.  I told Jeannie, “That can’t be it.  The house lights aren’t even on yet.”   After a wait of almost ten minutes, the lights came back up and the band walked back out onstage.  The remaining crowd roared, and Jeannie and I took the opportunity to run down to the front.  We sat down in the aisle as he and the piano player started the introductory chords to John Lennon’s “Imagine.”  It was breathtaking, and those were the best two encore songs I’ve ever seen.

Great show, and just another great night in an incredibly full week.  More to come.

OneYearAgo

One of the things you experience as a cellist (aside from people constantly telling you how much they love it, and how it’s the sexiest instrument EVER) is the myriad of jokes about the case.  Every time I leave home with it, I get comments.

For tonight’s gig, I rode the bus because my Honda’s alternator is on its last legs, and I’ll be left stranded if I drive it too much.  So I got on the bus and the conversation instantly went like this:

Driver:  “I’m pretty sure that’s not a body in there.”

Me:  “Heh.  Yeah, it’d be a pretty small body.”

Driver:  “Well, you could’ve chopped it up into a bunch of little pieces.”

Me:  (awkwardly)   “Ha ha. . .okay, I’m just gonna go. . .uhh. . .sit over here.”

Luckily, one of the passengers struck up a conversation, asking if I’ve ever seen the movie August Rush, which apparently includes a cellist as part of the story.  I haven’t seen it, but I told him that it sounds really great, and that I’ll check it out.

My all-time favorite odd cello-related conversation took place a couple of months ago, when I had the cello in the back of the car, on my way to a gig down in Salem, and I stopped at CarapaceGasStation to fill up the tank.  The back seats were folded down, and the cello case was clearly visible through the window.  This being Oregon, where it’s illegal for us to pump our own gas, I opened the sunroof to tell the attendant to ‘fill it up with Plus, please.’  While he was doing that, he looked in the back window and noticed the cello case.  “Hey,” he said, “you got a body in there?  Looks like a pregnant woman.”

Me:  (nonchalantly; heard it a hundred times before)  “Nope, it’s a cello.”

Attendant:  “Oh. . .heh heh. . .cause it looks like you killed my wife and crammed her in there.”

Me:  “. . .”  (silent. . .don’t know what to say.)

The attendant flitted between the various cars that were having their gas tanks filled, and when mine was done, he handed me my debit card and receipt through the open sunroof and called out, uncomfortably loudly, “Thanks a lot, sir.  GOOD LUCK DRIVING AROUND WITH MY DEAD, PREGNANT WIFE.” I laughed and gave him a half-hearted salute as I closed the sunroof and drove off into the twilight.

Luckily I got a ride home from the gig tonight, so I didn’t have to suffer the slings and the arrows of lame cello case humor.  And since we’re on the subject, here are some lame cello jokes that I just scrounged up from the Interweb:

Q: What’s the difference between a cello and a coffin?
A: The coffin has the dead person on the inside.

Q: Why did the cellist marry the accordion player?
A: Upward mobility.  [Note:  I’m both a cellist AND an accordion player!]

Q: Did you hear about the cellist who played in tune?
A: Neither did I.

Q: How can you tell when a cellist is playing out of tune?
A: The bow is moving.

Ah, praise the Lord for the gift of laughter.