FriendBurst Blog

even if the Body is not…this blog is kinda about the mystery of TALENT, or at least the PERCEPTION of talent…or the idea that I shouldn’t be the best I can  be if MY best is better than someone else’s best…*I* think I’m a pretty good guitarist AND a pretty good Bass player…I don’t have the “chops” to play RUSH or VAN HALEN on either instrument but there is a lot I CAN play…Tonight a “friend” of mine asked me to play Bass for him…I said “sure”…one of the songs he played was a Grateful Dead song…because I’m a good mimic (IMO) and because Lesh is just about my favorite Bassist, I played what *I* felt was an appropriate part…but the Singer criticized me onstage out loud, referring to my “lead” bass playing, the implication being (*I* think) that I was deliberately trying to steal HIS spotlight…well, fuck you man…had you played FOLSOM PRISON BLUES I just might have played root/five throughout the whole damn thing…boring though that would eventually be…*I* think if yer gonna play a Grateful Dead song ya need to (if possible) put yerself in Phil’s shoes…Of COURSE you won’t fill ’em, but I DO think ya gotta try…IF there’s a next time, I will say “no” if he asks me; IF I can remember what happened tonight…and how bad a drummer are you if you can’t FEEL Cream’s arrangement of CROSSROADS? If ya don’t actually KNOW the song or arrangement–SAY SO!!! It’s OK to admit ya don’t know a song…wouldn’t that be better than trying to “wing it” and screwing it up instead…The drummer guy kept playing it “inside out” for lack of a better phrase…isn’t 99.9% of all Western Music on the 2 and 4? THREE times we tried it, COUNTING it out loud…no good…and Jack Bruce is another Bass player who plays in a flamboyant way…so I was prepared to try to emulate him…I’m not trying to be an asshole now, but I’m probably being one anyway…and I don’t much care…I’m NOT exceptional, and I THINK I know what I can’t do; sometimes it’s difficult to play Music with people who are not yet at the level I think I’m at…my question is: what are THEY hearing in THEIR head when *I* am hearing a train coming off the tracks…imagine a surgeon performing a procedure and THEN asking, “Did I do that right?” Well, don’t you KNOW? Do *I* make mistakes? Hell yeah…I hear every one of ’em…Now the question you could ask ME is “why do you go to these jams?” Well, to me it’s nearly worth it to take a chance on maybe playing with people who MIGHT know what they’re doing–last night, aside from the “house” drummer, two of the other drummers were very good, 2 out of 4 ain’t bad…maybe if I had the evening to do over again, I wouldn’t…but I dunno that for a fact…ears ringing lots, but I’m OK otherwise…maybe…more sleep (at night) would have been nice…supposed to go to another jam tonight…maybe 12 hours from now I’ll want to…I can’t say anything good or bad about somebody’s jam session until I’ve tried one…