OPA!
Guitar play dates are a lot like blind dates in that they are always similarly arranged by helpful friends who have this wonderful idea and feel obliged to act as go-betweens, setting you, Party A up with Party B. Similar to blind dates, both parties on a guitar play date will survive the summit meeting if they go into it ala Palestinians and Israelis, i.e. with low expectations and if they keep reminding themselves that no matter how many awkward moments of inability to connect there are, if they just keep smiling, soon enough, the wine bottles will all be emptied, same with the dessert plates and before you can say, "Thank you! Goodnight!" both parties will part ways, making it home in time for Letterman.
I think I'm a fairly flexible guitarist. I think.
Growing up, I was the slide guitar king in my neighborhood garage bands. Later, in college, I used to do a party favorite, my Reggae version of "Stairway to Heaven" which I called "Stairway to Mount Zion" and was much funnier, if I do say so myself, than the Dread Zepellin version. (How could they have missed out on the rhyme "she's buyin'. . .a Stairway. . .to Mt. Zion"?)
Later in life, I once hit the road with a Zydeco band and that experience led me back to teaching in the Arabian Gulf when I realized that eating at Stuckey's and sleeping on couches did not add up to enough money to pay Char back the 20 I owed her nor did it even pay off with sex because as any Off-Ramp Inn musician will testify, most of one's time is spent either rehearsing or playing or packing and unpacking equipment, and when one has to be on the road by 6 AM to get to Atlanta before 2, who has time for poon?
I've backed up Jazz singers like Lisa Palumbo.
Once, I was the only feller in an otherwise all Lesbian Lilith-type band--Lesbian lead guitar players, you see, are the world over in short supply as they all live in L.A. and she's usually booked backing-up Jeff Beck.
And along the way, I've even earned, oh, maybe a couple hundred bucks at it.
But I've learned a lot about playing guitar on the fly.
This flexibility and my willingness to give most guitar play dates a whirl, maybe has never paid the bills, but it has in the past paid off in some incredibly memorable experiences and made for me some great friends (even though I might still owe them 20 bucks).
For example. Seven years ago, an Irish colleague in Saudi Arabia invited me to a regular Wednesday night Irish jam, and though the extent of my Gaelic repertoire didn't go much beyond Thin Lizzie's cover of "Whiskey in the Jar", chords are chords and white people music time signatures are extremely limited to about three, so I connected with this massive group--two violins, three penny whistles, a couple of guys beating on bodhrans, a bass player, a chubby nurse who was a master of the concertina and two-row button accordion. We ended up performing regular non-paying gigs at the Aramco compound country club, and later on one summer, I met some of these people in Galway for an afternoon of busking by the Old Long Walk.
Then there was the time I spent a year in Lafayette, Louisiana, and again, a colleague had heard I played guitar, and her group, a Cajun dance troupe called Renaissance Cadienne , needed a guitar player. So, I tried out and got the gig, and this experience not only led to my first time sitting in a real recording studio and playing on their second CD, but also playing around the state in various Cajun dance halls, restaurants and heritage villages, a slot at the New Orleans Jazz Festival (playing there was on my "Things to do Before I Die List so 'Done and Done') and best of all, during the summer of 2001, we went on this C
odofil all-expenses paid two-week tour of France playing three gigs in Paris then about 10 gigs going from one small town and village to another where we were wined and dined 24 hours a day by real, that is non-Parisian, French people. (In this photo, I'm in the lower right wearing an authentic fake 19th century Cajun shirt that sort of looks like the pirate shirt from "Seinfeld")
There have also been times when I've had these magical moments and made instant connections, when I've sat across from another player for the first time, and one of us got things going by strumming what I consider to be living room, party favorite standards like Little Feats' "Willin'" or Townes van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty" or the Kink's "Lola" or Jeff Beck's "Hi Ho Silver Lining", and at times like these, I'll get down on my little old knees and say "Thank you Lord," when my play date can join right in either because he knows the songs or at the very least he knows that there are really only about 5 chord progressions in all white people pop/rock/folk musicdom, so following along is just a matter of being in tune and knowing the key.
Like an aspiring porn actress who will do anything and anyone as long as it's not Ron Jeremy, I too have my Ron Jeremies when it comes to playing in living rooms. I will not do "Stairway to Heaven", "Hotel California", "Freebird", "Sweet Home Alabama", "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" or "Sultans of Swing". These songs, among others, I call "Revolution Niners"--you know, like the fourth side of the White Album's Revolution 9?--like leukemia or nuclear fission, or Nazis, or Esperanto, something which would have made this a better world had they never existed.
When I hear my play date launch into a Revolution Niner--and it happens a lot--a whole lot, then I immediately start to wonder about Dave and Paul and whether or not I still have time to catch the Top Ten List while I drift off and begin tossing in some insipid Claptonesque leads riffs.
Last week, a Greek colleague and her husband had a pre-Christmas cocktail party--complete with Ouzo and Mousaká and Souvláki , and they have a friend, a Greek-American, who plays and sings so wouldn't it be great if you both got together?
Right off the bat, when I saw him carry in an amplifier, I let out under my breath, oh fuck! We're in a fucking living room, not Shea Stadium A-hole. I thought.Then he hooks up a nylon string guitar to his cheap-ass-can-be Korean amp and first on the list, wouldn't yknow--"Stairway to Heaven."
To be fair, I am sure he thought what-the-fuck when I tried a couple of living room crowd sing-along on the chorus songs like "The Mighty Quinn" and "Across the Universe"--he not only didn't know the songs, but he wasn't very good at recognizing chords in reverse when I played so he couldn't join in..
Anyway. After about an hour of neither of us connecting, he politely hinted that maybe we were both from different planets (musically), and he asked if I would mind if he played some Greek stuff. I do recognize chords in reverse and can usually follow along, so I said, sure, go for it, and he did.
It was a blast!
I added some minor scale riffing, double strumming single strings waaaaay up on the neck to add mandolin-like fills, and that sounded. . .OK.
All a sudden, the bottle of Ouzo appears, shots of milky white Greek firewater are downed and before you can say "pU Ine i stAsi leophorIon gh'a tin athIna", half a dozen people were on their feet, shaking their oomphy rounded, child bearing Grecian hips, twirling hankies and shouting, "Opa! Opa!"
Now, I'm thinking, (besides 'what a living room guitar playing snob I can be'), I want to learn to play this Greek stuff. How did I miss out on this wonderful music? I want a bouzooki! I want to learn the Santouri--which is also an Iranian hammer dulcimer, so that's going to work with in-laws too.
But more than all of this, what I took away from that night was: I have decided I want to visit Greece. The real Greece. Just like I once saw the real France, the one of hills and flowers and the one Van Gough saw and painted. I do not want to see the Shirley Valentine Greece--it exists and it'll cost you. But I want to see the hills and flowers and goats and fat old men getting blasted on Ouza in sidewalk tavernas before noon.
Yeah, yeah, I've been to Cyprus, but, c'mon. . .Cyprus? You might as well save your money and visit Tarpon Springs, Florida.
And you know, I also remembered this about me. Maybe I should also lighten up a little (like I haven't heard that one before as she slammed down the phone, changed the locks on her door then sought a restraining order).
Some people, some good people who would never hurt a kitten, who always call their mothers on their mother's birthdays and who donate money to charities anonymously also like singing along to "Hotel California" and "Sweet Home Alabama".
Ok. Maybe it's me. Most likely it's me. Definitely it's me.
Pierce Brosnan as Julian Noble in "The Matador": I want to retire to a beautiful little Greek island, filled with beautiful little Greeks.
I think I'm a fairly flexible guitarist. I think.
Growing up, I was the slide guitar king in my neighborhood garage bands. Later, in college, I used to do a party favorite, my Reggae version of "Stairway to Heaven" which I called "Stairway to Mount Zion" and was much funnier, if I do say so myself, than the Dread Zepellin version. (How could they have missed out on the rhyme "she's buyin'. . .a Stairway. . .to Mt. Zion"?)
Later in life, I once hit the road with a Zydeco band and that experience led me back to teaching in the Arabian Gulf when I realized that eating at Stuckey's and sleeping on couches did not add up to enough money to pay Char back the 20 I owed her nor did it even pay off with sex because as any Off-Ramp Inn musician will testify, most of one's time is spent either rehearsing or playing or packing and unpacking equipment, and when one has to be on the road by 6 AM to get to Atlanta before 2, who has time for poon?
I've backed up Jazz singers like Lisa Palumbo.
Once, I was the only feller in an otherwise all Lesbian Lilith-type band--Lesbian lead guitar players, you see, are the world over in short supply as they all live in L.A. and she's usually booked backing-up Jeff Beck.
And along the way, I've even earned, oh, maybe a couple hundred bucks at it.
But I've learned a lot about playing guitar on the fly.
This flexibility and my willingness to give most guitar play dates a whirl, maybe has never paid the bills, but it has in the past paid off in some incredibly memorable experiences and made for me some great friends (even though I might still owe them 20 bucks).
For example. Seven years ago, an Irish colleague in Saudi Arabia invited me to a regular Wednesday night Irish jam, and though the extent of my Gaelic repertoire didn't go much beyond Thin Lizzie's cover of "Whiskey in the Jar", chords are chords and white people music time signatures are extremely limited to about three, so I connected with this massive group--two violins, three penny whistles, a couple of guys beating on bodhrans, a bass player, a chubby nurse who was a master of the concertina and two-row button accordion. We ended up performing regular non-paying gigs at the Aramco compound country club, and later on one summer, I met some of these people in Galway for an afternoon of busking by the Old Long Walk.
Then there was the time I spent a year in Lafayette, Louisiana, and again, a colleague had heard I played guitar, and her group, a Cajun dance troupe called Renaissance Cadienne , needed a guitar player. So, I tried out and got the gig, and this experience not only led to my first time sitting in a real recording studio and playing on their second CD, but also playing around the state in various Cajun dance halls, restaurants and heritage villages, a slot at the New Orleans Jazz Festival (playing there was on my "Things to do Before I Die List so 'Done and Done') and best of all, during the summer of 2001, we went on this C
odofil all-expenses paid two-week tour of France playing three gigs in Paris then about 10 gigs going from one small town and village to another where we were wined and dined 24 hours a day by real, that is non-Parisian, French people. (In this photo, I'm in the lower right wearing an authentic fake 19th century Cajun shirt that sort of looks like the pirate shirt from "Seinfeld")There have also been times when I've had these magical moments and made instant connections, when I've sat across from another player for the first time, and one of us got things going by strumming what I consider to be living room, party favorite standards like Little Feats' "Willin'" or Townes van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty" or the Kink's "Lola" or Jeff Beck's "Hi Ho Silver Lining", and at times like these, I'll get down on my little old knees and say "Thank you Lord," when my play date can join right in either because he knows the songs or at the very least he knows that there are really only about 5 chord progressions in all white people pop/rock/folk musicdom, so following along is just a matter of being in tune and knowing the key.
Like an aspiring porn actress who will do anything and anyone as long as it's not Ron Jeremy, I too have my Ron Jeremies when it comes to playing in living rooms. I will not do "Stairway to Heaven", "Hotel California", "Freebird", "Sweet Home Alabama", "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" or "Sultans of Swing". These songs, among others, I call "Revolution Niners"--you know, like the fourth side of the White Album's Revolution 9?--like leukemia or nuclear fission, or Nazis, or Esperanto, something which would have made this a better world had they never existed.
When I hear my play date launch into a Revolution Niner--and it happens a lot--a whole lot, then I immediately start to wonder about Dave and Paul and whether or not I still have time to catch the Top Ten List while I drift off and begin tossing in some insipid Claptonesque leads riffs.
Last week, a Greek colleague and her husband had a pre-Christmas cocktail party--complete with Ouzo and Mousaká and Souvláki , and they have a friend, a Greek-American, who plays and sings so wouldn't it be great if you both got together?
Right off the bat, when I saw him carry in an amplifier, I let out under my breath, oh fuck! We're in a fucking living room, not Shea Stadium A-hole. I thought.Then he hooks up a nylon string guitar to his cheap-ass-can-be Korean amp and first on the list, wouldn't yknow--"Stairway to Heaven."
To be fair, I am sure he thought what-the-fuck when I tried a couple of living room crowd sing-along on the chorus songs like "The Mighty Quinn" and "Across the Universe"--he not only didn't know the songs, but he wasn't very good at recognizing chords in reverse when I played so he couldn't join in..
Anyway. After about an hour of neither of us connecting, he politely hinted that maybe we were both from different planets (musically), and he asked if I would mind if he played some Greek stuff. I do recognize chords in reverse and can usually follow along, so I said, sure, go for it, and he did.
It was a blast!
I added some minor scale riffing, double strumming single strings waaaaay up on the neck to add mandolin-like fills, and that sounded. . .OK.
All a sudden, the bottle of Ouzo appears, shots of milky white Greek firewater are downed and before you can say "pU Ine i stAsi leophorIon gh'a tin athIna", half a dozen people were on their feet, shaking their oomphy rounded, child bearing Grecian hips, twirling hankies and shouting, "Opa! Opa!"
Now, I'm thinking, (besides 'what a living room guitar playing snob I can be'), I want to learn to play this Greek stuff. How did I miss out on this wonderful music? I want a bouzooki! I want to learn the Santouri--which is also an Iranian hammer dulcimer, so that's going to work with in-laws too.
But more than all of this, what I took away from that night was: I have decided I want to visit Greece. The real Greece. Just like I once saw the real France, the one of hills and flowers and the one Van Gough saw and painted. I do not want to see the Shirley Valentine Greece--it exists and it'll cost you. But I want to see the hills and flowers and goats and fat old men getting blasted on Ouza in sidewalk tavernas before noon.
Yeah, yeah, I've been to Cyprus, but, c'mon. . .Cyprus? You might as well save your money and visit Tarpon Springs, Florida.
And you know, I also remembered this about me. Maybe I should also lighten up a little (like I haven't heard that one before as she slammed down the phone, changed the locks on her door then sought a restraining order).
Some people, some good people who would never hurt a kitten, who always call their mothers on their mother's birthdays and who donate money to charities anonymously also like singing along to "Hotel California" and "Sweet Home Alabama".
Ok. Maybe it's me. Most likely it's me. Definitely it's me.
Pierce Brosnan as Julian Noble in "The Matador": I want to retire to a beautiful little Greek island, filled with beautiful little Greeks.
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6 Comments:
As one of those who's enjoyed the huge hospitality of mighty fine musicians, I have to say that the burden belongs to the lesser talent to recognize that hospitality and not abuse it. (Yah, and I feel this way about playing pool and many other things.)
And really, when you treat a talent and a skill as something precious, you get a lot of those Greek music extravaganzas and no one has to feel like they're a snob. I mean, think of it. I was telling A. and Will (who played with - damn. I always forget. Ray Charles. That's it.) about how we'd sing along (okay, a version of singing) with Mike. And as kind of an aside, I added that he played in Chick Corea's band and then I noticed them looking at each other. Now, how the hell would I know Chick Corea was so good? And so, one assumes, was Mike. But we admired him so much on his own and he gave us, in return, a free musical experience.
It's a good recipe.
I LOOOOOOVE 'Hi Ho Silver Lining.' It ought to be revived.
Chick Corea? Ray Charles? I know this about Booda--she's not easily impressed by names, but, me, I'm wowwed.
Suppose I'd started off with "Never on a Sunday"? Maybe that's as much an anathema to Greeks as Stairway to Heaven. I haven't any idea who the Greek Gram Parsons is.
Yeah, "Hi Ho Silver Lining" somehow survives to this days as a football chant for the winning side. A real pub crowd pleaser though Jeff Beck won't talk about it; I think he's afraid it'll wind up being his legacy, sort of like Anthony Burgess trying all his life to distance himself from "A Clockword Orange".
I'm still recovering from my decade previous with a guitar guy. I very nearly had post post traumatic stress reading this. However, I will say that I enjoy 'Palestinians and Israelis' as a verb stand-in for the lowering of expectations. Also, I enjoyed the puffy shirt. And the bit with the Greeks.
Thanks Hat. Again--beautiful piano piece. What else you got?
I think that people who live in So. California should be forgiven for knowing people who know people because you can't help it.
Actually, every where you live, there's someone who's somebody and that, too, just CAN'T be helped.
ANYWAY. I'm going on and on because I re-read stuff and noticed I wrote "I mean, think of it." And I might have meant it in the most 'think of it!!' way, but it reads just like: 'when you think about it.' which is exactly the thing to say when you want my lip to curl. Sometimes, the patience runs thin.
When you think about it is invariably invoked when it's something that should have been thought about before you even had your coffee.
See, it should follow the same rules as the play/sing-along dates.
So, if you wanted to play with Jeff Beck, you'd have to drop HiHo from your repertoire. Seriously. Do you blame him for wanting it to evaporate?
"Do you blame him for wanting it to evaporate?"
No. I wouldn't Except for the solo. First- remember, that was 1966. (When was Blow Up? Beck's in that)
I am sure A. and your other guitar playing friends would back me on this: the re-phrasing of the melody lines and idiosyncratic articulation of individual notes have a lot in common with Charlie Parker and are the things that make Jeff Beck Jeff Beck, not your run-of-the-mill 60s Brit blues guitar diety like Page, Clapton or even Richard Thompson.
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