NPR Bass Solo Contest, Part II

Those following the blog and my posts already know that I learned of a NPR bass solo contest just a week before the deadline and right during the French Open (tennis tournament) where I would be working every day and would not have the ability to record at my studio in my in-laws pool house about eighty miles from our apartment.

Only hours after I had posted my last blog Audra and I drove to her parents’ house in Highland during day light hours—normally something we avoid like the plague because of traffic. I packed up nearly all of my gear to bring back home. Miraculously, it fit all into my small car. Fortunately, there was room for Audra.

The trip as it would turn out, was essentially a waste, but we didn’t know that yet.

Sunday evening I spent setting up the studio and testing everything so that Monday when I came home from work I would be able to start recording immediately. The major goal was to keep the noise level at a minimum which is harder than it may seem.

It is necessary at this point to give a primer on guitar tube amplifiers -musicians, guitarists skip ahead.

Over-simply put, when a guitar amp is overdriven (made louder), it no longer recreates an exact copy the sound coming from the guitar pickups. The peaks of the signal waves hit the limits of the tubes and those peaks are sheered off. A smooth, round sine wave goes into the amp, a more jagged, squarish wave comes out. This adds frequencies to the sound that weren’t there originally: distortion.

In most amplified signals distortion is the enemy and must be avoided, but as musicians have discovered in the last sixty or-so years, it can be a very good thing, adding warmth, richness and intensity to the sound of a guitar, bass, organ or even harmonica; especially if you are playing rock or blues.

There are all sorts of devices, and now software, than can create/recreate this desirable distortion at many levels and in many flavors. In general however, the best, most natural sounding distortion comes from over driving a tube amplifier and the only way to get a tube amp to distort significantly is to turn it up… loud!

Since my music contains bass and most often no guitar at all, I have to fill a wider spectrum of sound. A big part of my sound is to split the signal coming from my bass into two amplifiers. One is a modern bass amp to recreate the very low and very high (string slap) sounds of a modern sounding bass. The other is a blues guitar tube amp with more midrange qualities and the ability to create that wonderful tube distortion.

The bass amp and guitar amp sides of  my bass rig respectively

The entire reason my studio is normally set up at the pool house is so I can turn-up loud and get the sound I need. It would be a real pain in the ass for my neighbors if I did this at home, especially the fastidious one in the apartment below me.

These, however, were extenuating circumstances. This contest could really be a milestone for me, not just if I win but if my music gets posted on the blog. Even just the mention of my being posted to the blog in my press kit would be huge to say nothing of the exposure. I had nowhere else I could go and record both audio and video in the small window between getting home from work and sunset. Taking off from work was not an option because of the short notice and the fact that this happened to be the first week of the French Open. Rehearsal studios often have very loud bands a wall away, ok for rehearsal but not recording. There’s no way I could swing the cost a real recording studio and going to a friend’s house would involve travel time and set up that would add pressure and take away precious daylight time or involve lugging in and setting up lighting for the video.

There was really only the one option.

The bass amp side could be recorded direct without sacrificing too much of the amp sound plugging the amp direct out into my laptop. Guitar amps, however, as a rule must be mic'd to prevent a harsh sterile sound.

There are some tricks to getting an amp to sound loud without it being as loud. A dummy load placed in-line with the speakers absorbs the energy the amp puts out decreasing the energy going to the speakers thus making them quieter.

I reasoned that if I dummy-loaded the guitar amp using my two bass speakers, placed the bass speakers face-down on our bed on top of the couch cushions, place the guitar amp up on a step stool with a thick folded furniture blanket in between the stool and the floor and swaddled the guitar amp in yet another furniture blanket. If I turned down the overall volume of the guitar as much as possible and got the song recorded within a half an hour by the time someone complained, I’d be done.  

I should have taken some pictures but I had other fish to fry at the time.

On Monday when I recorded however, I couldn’t get a perfect performance in the thirty minutes I had imposed upon myself. Playing and singing at the same time is still relatively new to me. I keep getting better at it but it’s still a rare thing when I can do both perfectly. I would try again the next day and hope my neighbors would be either absent or understanding.

On Tuesday I still was having trouble performing. The pressures were getting to me and each take was worse than the last. Finally, things seemed to be getting better when it happened. I heard pounding and yelling from the apartment below. I stopped immediately. Audra said she would go talk to the guy, explain the situation and promise this would not be the norm. He wouldn’t even listen and called my building manager who then called me.

I was finished.

Even if I was granted a temporary reprieve my emotions were ragged. If I was having trouble making it through a take before, another time would have been even harder.

Audra and I were both so upset were barely slept that night. We brainstormed solutions but each time, the restrictions of time, money, light and my increasingly frazzled nerves made every option highly impractical if not impossible.

It would be possible to submit an audio only version of the song. The contest specified video or audio was acceptable. However listening only to my tune, it is so different that one could easily assume they are hearing a guitar. It must be seen.

There was only one thing left we could do. I already had a video of the song that I had made strictly to evaluate my performance and share with my friends: you. This was the video I posted in last week’s blog and one time before that.

Originally, I was loathe to use that first video for the contest because my singing had gone off-key for a moment or two and had some slightly weak moments. Also, it was just a single boring wide shot that didn’t illustrate my unusual playing style and technique very well. Now, it was all I had. If I took that video and added some close up shots to it and did some brief vocal overdubs to fix the mistakes, it might be passable. If we shot close enough it wouldn’t be too obvious that those close-ups were shot in a completely different room city and county.

The next evening I quickly fashioned a homemade Steadicam type rig out of part of a lighting stand with a water bottle taped to the bottom and the camera mounted on top. The key principle of a Steadicam is to add mass to a camera and extend its center of gravity away from the film plane so making basic one for a small light camera is quite easy. I gave Audra a crash course on the shots that I wanted and we recorded a single take of close ups of my hands playing. The bass was unamplified and silent while I played along to the old video on my laptop.

A real Steadicam which creates dolly-smooth motion from a walking
operator and costs tens of thousands before even adding a camera.

A steady-rig I built a few years back similar to
the one I threw together this week minus the water bottle

I then placed the camera on the floor and got a take of low close-ups. I gave the illusion of camera movement by moving and positioning myself into different shots.  I edited a new version of the video with the additional footage. This was not easy as I had no time code to sync the shots to. I simply lined them up till they looked right. It took some time but the results were convincing fo the most part. The video was now much better but still, it looked too impersonal. There were no close-ups of me singing. On Thursday evening, I videoed my singing close up. I only had time for one take before I had to deliver Audra to a halfway point where her parents picked her up for a doctors appointment the next day.

Now to return home and do vocal overdubs to fix my mistakes before it got too late.

I turned the key in the ignition but it wouldn’t budge. My car occasionally has this problem but after fiddling around a bit I had always been able to make it work without much trouble.

Not this time.

In the parking lot of a Jack-In-The-Box in Pomona, for half an hour I tried working the key, spraying the lock with WD-40, attempting to loosen the stubborn tumblers with a dental tool I happened to have in my electronics tool kit and yes, pounding the snot out of the damn thing, I gave up and called a first one locksmith, then another. The second guy came and removed the lock from the ignition. He didn’t have a replacement lock but left it so that the key… any key, even a screwdriver or small coin, would start the car. I would have to fix it fully later.

If anyone wants to steal my bare-bones, no frills, 2000 Ford Focus, now’s the time.

Of course it was too late to record any singing when I got home. The next day was the deadline but I would have just enough time to record my overdubs, remix the track which needed more high-end and some other tweaks and submit the video for the contest.

The next day, around two-o-clock, I decided to double check the “Monitormix” blog for any details on the contest I may have missed. I’m glad I did. The deadline was not midnight as I thought it was, it was Five PM Pacific, just three hours away! Fortunately things at Tennis Channel were quiet and I was able to add titles, copyright and contact text to my video, re-render it and upload it with an hour to spare.

The video was not all I’d hoped it would be by a long shot but looking at it now, what’s important, the bass playing, came through nicely and if they can excuse a poor mix and some singing faux pas, I think it will make a great impression. Whether that impression will be enough to get me onto the blog for voting is up to God and the ether.

Overall, I have a good feeling about it. I’m a little wiser through all of this and I was moved and inspired by how my wonderful wife supported me, wouldn’t let be give up when things looked bleak and even went to bat for me to our irate neighbor whose balcony plants may mysteriously wither in the coming weeks (kidding).

Here is the result, the video I submitted for the contest:

I deeply appreciate everyone who supported me and offered help through this.

Bass Solo Contest

It was already going to be a busy week! The French Open (tennis) starts tomorrow which means no days off this week and probably long work days throughout the tournament. I have to record a simple version of a song I wrote this week for posterity before I forget it. I am feverishly trying to finish an ambitious (for me) flash photo gallery for my one of my few web design clients. I have to finish the blog you’re reading and write next week’s as well. I have just started a daily ‘Lessons Learned From the Movies’ series on my Facebook wall posts which does take up a small amount of time each day and I want to keep going for at least a month…

Then, this landed in my lap:

The NPR Blog “Monitor Mix” is sponsoring a bass solo contest!

I’m so there!

I have decided to submit for the contest a remake of the video I recently posted: “Rain Don’t Follow the Plow”. I also thought of the more virtuosic “Actually That Is a Banana In My Pocket” but, A. I don’t think I can redo a clean version in the time I have but more importantly… B. I know that a bass solo contest is going to be flooded with bass shredders that will be doing very similar things.

I need to stand out.

‘Rain’ is not technically a bass solo. It’s a song with vocals to bass accompaniment. The bass accompaniment is pretty remarkable on it’s own and there is a bass solo within the song. Solo bass/bass solo, tomāto/tomăto… I suspect the poor production assistant that has to screen all those bass solo submissions will be delighted to hear an actual song that happens to have some serious and unusual bass chops featured within in the universal appeal of the blues and lyrics that present some very NPR-friendly Americana and at least pass it on to the next level.

Like this, but better sung, played and produced.

This is the other tune I was considering… Nah, I suspect most everyone else will be doing this shred hero stuff.

The problem is…  No, no… The ‘problems are’ that, as you can see, with a deadline of  next Friday, I only have a six days to submit my entry. Right smack in the middle of the French Open.

Next; all my gear—amps, effects, recording equipment and lucky mousey cat toy— is presently at the ‘Pool House’ –my defacto studio at my in-laws’ place in Highland, 75 miles from our apartment.

Normally, I have my Tuesday/Wednesday weekend to go out to the Pool House and record a video. Now it will be a challenge just to find the time to drive out there, find a way to fit it all in my little car at the same time and get it back to my apartment.

The apartment is challenge number three: In order to record my particular sound, a certain, rather high level of volume is preferred if not required. That will be difficult in my building, nor would it be practical where I work, especially during the French Open. Unless I can find a place that’s not too far away and free, I will have to make due in my apartment.

I know all these things can be overcome in the next week. As you can see I have already made my blog shorter to save time. It’s going to be a stretch but I am energized to say the least and Audra has already shown me tremendous support!

I don’t really know what chance I have at this contest, but I'm optimistic. It’s hard to say how many entries there will be and they don’t even mention how many finalists will make it to the blog to be voted on by users. I’d say ten is a good guess. The prize is just some NPR merch but the exposure, just to be a finalist on the blog, would surely be a nice little mountain for my career to stick it's flag in. It would be a good boost, a good start. I have a good feeling about this. If nothing else it's got me in motion.

With some luck (and a new set of strings) I really think I could make the finals!

Wish me luck!  ..or send me some bass strings.

Fuddy Duddy

When my brother and I were young growing up in Upstate New York, if we heard a plane fly over, no matter how high or how far away, we would run outside and look up.

Even now in LA, if I hear something other than the all-too-common Bell helicopters the cops and TV news departments fly, I usually check it out. If there’s something really different sounding or particularly loud and large, Audra and I rush to the one of our balconies to see what it is. One of the undocumented perks of living in Hollywood is that every pilot—military or civilian—feels they have to do a Hollywood fly-over at least once in their career, resulting in an unofficial year round air show of sorts.

Yesterday, Audra told me she saw a large aircraft flying low while I was at work. After asking her some key questions and showing her pictures of several planes online, we determined she had seen an old Boeing B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ A WWII era bomber like the title plane in the movie “Memphis Belle”.

B-17s always make me think of my brother. I’m not sure how often he heads for his back yard in Eastern PA when he and his boys hear a plane, but in college he used another tactic to get his ‘plane on’: On at least one occasion, my brother stumbled from a weekend party and made his way down the hill from Geneseo State University to a small nearby airport that was home to a collection of flyable war planes including a B17-G nicknamed “Fuddy Duddy”

Fuddy Duddy Flying over Geneseo, New York

There are no locks on the hatch of a B-17G, so he climbed inside and felt his way through the surprisingly cramped aircraft in the dark and climbed gingerly, reverently, into the pilot’s seat.

I sat in that seat once myself during a tour that my father and I took during regular museum hours. We were the only two on the tour, so getting to sit in the cockpit and explore the inside of the aircraft was a rare treat.

That particular B-17, “Fuddy Duddy” never saw combat but has been in two Hollywood movies and lived on three continents. She was built in the waning days of WWII in 1945 and served in the peacetime Philippines until 1955. In 1959 she was sold to the civilian world. Columbia Pictures was one of her first owners. She was flown to England and used in the Steve McQueen movie “The War Lover” along with two other B-17s. In 1969, under a different owner, she was filmed in Hawaii for the movie “Tora, Tora, Tora”.

Fuddy Duddy was then converted to and flown as a tanker (probably fire or pesticide) in Arizona 1981-1985 and sold to the War Plane Museum in Geneseo where she was restored to a WWII era bomber and where my brother, my father and I encountered it. This was the first time the plane had actually gone under the name “Fuddy Duddy” the name of another aircraft that served 94 missions out of Rattlesden England before being lost to a mid-air collision in December of 1944.

I was in college and living in a vacation home on the Eastern shore of Canandaigua Lake when one day I witnessed Fuddy Duddy flying a mere hundred feet over the lake with a P-38 fighter giving chase, it’s propane guns blazing. I believe the stunt was promoting the Geneseo “Wings of Eagles” Air Show.

As far as I knew, until last night, Fuddy Duddy was still parked at the National War Plane Museum in Geneseo, but after a little research online, I learned that, after a short stay at the Wings of Eagles Museum in Horseheads, NY she was sold to Martin Aviation in Orange County. Now she resides on a tarmac at the John Wayne Airport in Costa Mesa, just a mile or two from a good friend of mine.

I actually found Fuddy Duddy using Bing Maps. It was like seeing an old friend as I zoomed in and saw that distinctive wing shape emerge from the planes parked around it.

 

The knowledge that Fuddy Duddy was so close made me both happy and sad. I think it’s cool that I could go see her if I wanted to and it’s conceivable that I might even be able to talk my way into a ride-along one day. I also feel for the air enthusiasts in the Genesee Valley. That aircraft was a great source of pride. I don’t know all the circumstances under which they sold it but I know it must have been very difficult for a lot of people to see it take off and from that airstrip for the last time. It must have been harder still when it left Horsheads, New York for Southern California. It just doesn’t seem right to me that VB-17 297400/Fuddy Duddy/K*E isn’t in Upstate New York anymore.

Some days it’s hard to accept that Joel T Johnson 01-29-65 doesn’t live in Upstate NY anymore either. Due to a series of circumstances, I haven’t even visited home in two-and-a-half years!

Many years before I moved to LA, the song “Hollywood Nights” by Bob Seeger always bothered me. Especially the line “He spent all night staring down at the lights of LA, Wondering if he could ever go home”.

Of course he could go home, why couldn’t he just go home, visit, move, whatever... ‘Can’t go home’; get in your car and drive stupid!

After having lived here for a few years, I heard that song again and it hit me like a ton of scripts (Hollywood bricks). Against any prediction, I had actually moved to Hollywood and taken up with a beautiful woman. Even though she had not left me, I understood the song now, I got that line that had pissed me off so many years ago.

As a result of my decision to move, I have changed. I’m no longer Rochester Joel, or Canandaigua Joel. No matter how much I love and miss my homeland I have become someone else: California Joel; “Malibu Joelee” if you will.

My snow shovel calluses are long gone, I bristle at cold I once laughed at, my skin is somewhat tan year-round and my Rochester accent has faded considerably (though a nasal “A” still escapes me once in a while I’m told).

On more than one occasion I have even used the word ‘dude’ and I wasn’t even joking.

I miss it my old home and the people who I know there. I miss the Lillac Festival, Red Wings games and Abbott’s Custard. I miss a place where four lanes of traffic seems like a lot. I miss My hometown: Canandaigua, the lake, the courthouse, Rossi Music, Cheshire, the Company Store. I miss my wonderful parents and the house I was raised in.

I miss Wegmans dammit!

Even though I love where am and couldn’t do half as well with my job skills anywhere else right now, I have this have a fantasy of one day being bi-coastal. Not just coming home for visits but reclaiming my New Yorkerness by hangin with my Upstate bretheren for months at a time, not days.

In any case, my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary is this August and, if I have to walk there on stilts I will be there for it. I am also going to be playing some of my original music at one or more venues in the Rochester/Syracuse area; exactly where and when I don’t know yet.

I have been rehearsing my songs and will be posting a video of my efforts with a different song each week. This first video you may have already seen on Facebook. It is a little humbling for me to watch as there are still many things to work on but that’s the reason I am making these.

I don’t know if my old friend “Fuddy Duddy will ever fly the skies of New York like I know I will, but here’s hopin’.

Hmmm. Maybe writing a song about her will help grease my way into at least riding along on a flight!

The Mechanics and Maintenance of Motivation

Greetings floggers.

Read on to get the reference.

Yesterday during my hill climb, I paused at the top, as I always do, to sit on the bench and enjoy the view and—let’s be honest—to catch my breath.

A family walked up behind me. A four-year-old child asked his parents “what’s he doing?”. The mom was doing her best to indulge this question-asking period with out letting on that it annoyed her.

It was clear it was beginning to annoy her.

“He’s relaxing and enjoying the view,” she said.

I turned instinctually because I recognized the voice. I found myself looking point blank at Nicole Sullivan from Mad TV. On the trail, or anywhere around here you don’t have to recognize a celebrity to know they are one some level. All you need is the look.

The look is different that what you might get if you glanced casually and a mere mortal. A celebrity—even if he was only had one line in that made-for-TV-movie eight years ago—will look back with an expectation of recognition. They may be dreading it, hoping for it, or both, but the look of expectation is there. Ms. Sullivan had that look as if she had let out some secret just by answering her son’s question.

Nicole playing "Antonia" on Mad TV

I pretended not to recognize her but between my instinctual glance and ‘the look’ everyone involved knew I had. Except the four-year-old who was only aware of his Mom’s general discomfort in public but not enough to stop him from asking every question he could think of.

“What are those dogs doing down there?”

“Making puppies.”

My hill-climbs have been only two or three times a week lately. I could partly blame a pulled muscle in my calf but I’m also finding it hard to get myself out there in the mornings. I’m not where I was at the height of my boot camp experiment, but then I knew I wouldn’t be. I have come to accept that I am a swinging pendulum, a hunter that sprints and rests instead of making the steady progress of a farmer.

I have known this about myself for years but I always thought of it as a character flaw, something about myself that I had to fix, change. I don’t deny that I can use improvement in many areas but in the past when I worked against the grain of my personality I always seemed to end up where I started and frustrated to boot. I felt I had failed and effectively gave up allowing myself to go months without exercise or picking up my bass and singing even. Now I try to work with my nature instead of against it. I get more done and end up liking myself more.

Always a plus.

Like being on a swing, if you kick at the right moment you'll go higher but at the same time it’s obsurd to try to remain at the apex of the swing. Being ‘up’ is caused by the momentum and the back-and-forth is caused the gravity of my personality. To get anywhere, I have to work with it and except the to-and-fro.

Six steps forward, four back. Even if I’m not doing as much, I’m further ahead than when I started with some better habits in place.

Another way to look at it is to think of a combustion engine, starting with a single cylinder, two-stroke engine. The piston is forced down by a burst of energy as the fuel mixture combusts then it returns back up to expel the exhaust. The momentum of the crankshaft keeps the piston moving even though the actual power occurs only through roughly one quarter of the cycle. With a single cylinder engine the toque (turning power) is relatively low and it’s easier to stall.

A four cylinder engine with, it’s pistons firing one after the other in succession, is under direct power at more points throughout the rotation of the crankshaft even if it’s a four-stroke engine (the piston moving up and down twice between firings).

Perhaps my cylinders could be different partitions of my life and my goals. While my exercise piston is in the power section of its stroke, perhaps the music recording is expelling exhaust, and yet another part of my life is drawing fuel and preparing to fire.

Obviously, any endeavor requires a certain amount of consistency and unlike an engine, different areas of life don’t have timing chains linking them together with optimum efficiency. I’ve found I simply can’t be ‘on’ all the time but there is a season to every purpose and I can maintain forward momentum if I work in concert with my own cyclical nature. In fact, I find that if I work hard on, say, a certain exercise on the bass, then put the instrument away altogether for a week or so, when I return to it the exercise comes together like magic.

The trick is not to let the engine stall. This is where I often fall off my game.

Engines, like fire, need three things: fuel, air and ignition. To work this analogy further to death: Having dreams like hearing my music on the radio or being booked at a festival, can be thought of as the fuel. Having urgent and specific goals, like weighing under 200 pounds by July 17^th, can be thought of as air.

The crankshaft and flywheel can be compared to habits. Even if the fuel and air are taken away briefly or I’m not firing on all my cylinders, my habits can keep me going for a short time before my dreams and goals, my fuel and air, return.

The ignition spark is harder to quantify and therefore harder to achieve consistently. It is that voodoo world of motivation that baffles me at times. Some people are driven by an overwhelming sense of inadequacy or a void in their life, some by a painful experience. Some people are especially driven by impressing members of the opposite (or same) sex. I cannot say these are prominent factors for me nor is a great desire for material gain. I am generally a pretty happy guy which can be kind-of a detractor in the “Type-A” department.

Like an engine, ignition doesn’t just occur once. I have to remind myself why I sacrifice having a ‘normal’ life, why I scrimp and save, why I have never allowed my day gigs to become satisfying full-fledged careers. I have to remind myself of my dreams, my spark, everyday. Not just to read them on a list but to imagine the feeling of being on a stage before a crowd a people that actually paid to see me. I vividly imagine when a case of my CDs are delivered to my door, the excitement of opening that box and pulling out the first disc and holding it in my hand.

I’m a fairly passionate person so I don’t have to dig deep to find my spark but also in keeping with us passionate types I have to work extra hard to maintain it throughout my cycles.

When it comes loosing weight and being in good health, I am motivated by a fear of making my young wife a widow someday and not wanting my appearance or apparent age to be a reason for someone not to give my music a chance.

When it comes to music I feel I have something unique, God given, and frankly, pretty awesome to share with the world. Once in a while I listen to my mixes and even scratch tracks of ideas and I think: this stuff could be really good if I can produce it professionally within my budget. Someone out there needs to hear this. There is someone who has yet to hear their favorite music: mine. Even if it’s just one pimply faced kid in Idaho, or a bored homemaker in Harrogate, UK, or a hip graphic artist in Stockholm, or a street vendor in Bangkok, I owe it to them to get this music from my head to their ears.

I’m not immune to a thirst for a little glory and recognition either. My goal posts have changed a lot since I was a teenager but I still want to be known for something I created. I want to hear the name “Canandaigua” (my hometown) mentioned by people in the music industry who’ve never been there. I want to inspire bass players everywhere that they don’t always have to be content supporting the endless guitar solo of popular music, that they can step to the front of the stage and find a unique voice in the bass that no one has heard before.

I want a Wikipedia entry dammit!

Delusional maybe? That’s one way of putting it, but the folks in this town who make it through this cut throat and cynical industry have a healthy dose of delusion. They might have a reasonable plan of action but they must have unreasonable expectations.

You know; dreamers.

Dreams of recognition, the delusions of glory and even higher ambitions of doing something noble tend to split the scene pretty early on though. When the chips are down and I am looking for reasons to quit, it’s anger and the fear of humiliation that keep me going.

A few years ago, I was on the road with a band traveling literally to every corner of the country. I was not making much money, playing my own music or even music that I loved but I was happy that I was finally a full-time musician. Then, out of the blue they fired me. “We need a ‘real’ singer” they said. I asked for a period in which I could work harder at it and have a chance to improve since this was the first time they mentioned it. They had already made up their minds, and my replacement had already been hired.

Few things in my life have angered me more. Even now it is difficult to write about it without getting nasty. Audra was even more livid than I was. In the sleepless weeks that followed, I thought of one thing: seeing to it that that band becomes famous, not for their performances but for being the idiots that fired Joel T. Johnson because they didn’t think he could sing.

I bought a book and CD on voice training and started working hard at singing. I started treating it like a serious craft and confronting the psychological blocks and fears about singing I had developed in Jr. high school. I am still on that journey but I am ten times the singer I was then. I can sing higher, stronger, longer and with better tone and more nuance.

That’s just stage one though. My singing skills won’t be rubbing anyone’s nose in it if I have not achieved some level of notoriety.

Being fired like that may have been one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Doubters are worth their weight in gold too. Friends and acquaintances alike who simply, and even reasonably, don’t think I stand a chance. Some are vocal about it, some you can just tell. Most are well-meaning but they all keep me going. I can’t let them be right.

“Behind every successful man is an amazed mother-in-law.”

This blog itself offers me a way to place myself on the line, to make myself accountable. It’s easy to sweep a challenging goal under the carpet if nobody knew it was there to begin with.

Again, I don’t make music to get even or prove myself to anyone but those things can sure help when I feel like giving up, when my pendulum is on its down-swing.

I need to keep all these motivators handy in my tool belt and use them at the appropriate moments: reading my goals every day, remembering my lofty artistic ambitions as well as vividly imagining the social and material rewards, narrowing my eyes at those who’ve cast me off and keeping myself accountable to you, my readers and blog followers.

Would that be “blollowers?” How ‘bout “floggers?”

Perhaps the next time I run into Nicole Sullivan I be giving her the look… even if it’s just because Jocquin Phoenix had started going gray it was harder to tell us apart.

My Life in LA, Part III, My Neighborhood

I have lived in my where I am for the past eleven years. Mann’s Chinese Theater (originally Grauman’s) , The Kodak Theater and the Walk of fame are a mile away in one direction with the Hollywood Bowl just a bit farther, the Sunset Strip and the spots where John Belushi and River Phoenix drew their last breath are a mile or so in the other. The houses that “Halloween” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” were filmed at are just a few blocks away (practically across the street from each other). The famous Route 66, though only a historic designation of Santa Monica Boulevard anymore, passes a block to the south on its final leg to the ocean. The building manager where I live quit his job because he got a better gig playing “Al” on “Home Improvement” (long before I moved in).

It’s a place like any other; people live and work, kids go to school, garbage is collected, shopkeepers display their wares and do psychic palm readings… Written, financed, produced, and distributed is entertainment that is experienced every minute of every day around the globe.

We live in Hollywood: ‘Tinsel Town’ La La Land, Hollyweird, Hollyhood…  All, and none, of what you’ve heard, is true. It is the center of the entertainment world, even though all but one of the major studio lots are located somewhere else. It’s a mecca of modern-day mythology. Dreams become concepts then images on a screen and eventually become real in the flesh; at least if you consider some out-of-work actor dressed as Superman or Chewbacca and taking pictures with tourists on Hollywood Boulevard ‘real’. Those lines of reality and fantasy are deliberately blurred a bit round these parts; it’s what we do.

 

Tourists

I can’t even tell you the number of times I have been walking down the street to have a car stop and ask me how to get to the Hollywood Sign. These are difficult directions to give because you can’t “go to” the Hollywood Sign, just to places where you can see it, and some better than others.

The truth is, secretly, I am a tourists too, along with many of the folks who have lived here for years. Even though we all follow the secret code of acting cool and detached, we get a kick out of seeing a celeb or driving past the tell-tale signs of a film location with its long line white trucks and trailors, road cones and the obligatory semi-retired LAPD motorcycle cop who has a screenplay of his own.

Everyone does.

Yes, everyone.

It’s interesting to wonder what band has their tour bus parked outside of Guitar Center today. It’s fun to be watching a movie and see a location that you know, or the reverse; to be watching life and see something from a movie you know. I love that when they pave Hollywood Boulevard they add crushed glass to the asphalt so that it sparkles. I enjoy seeing some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen buying eggs and frozen pizza at the store.

 I did not take this awesome picture, I don't know who did

All shallow pursuits I’ll grant you. Bookshelves and deep thoughts can be anywhere, but there’s only one place in the world quite like this.

Music Stores

As a teenager back in Upstate New York, when I first got my driver’s license there was no question about where my first solo flight would take me; I picked up a couple friends and we made the pilgrimage to ‘The Great, Great’, “House of Guitars” in Rochester, NY (Irondequoit really). Where I live now—on my block—there are six, seven, eight… nine music shops! This includes two major chains, two stores for companies that ‘have no stores’ (Carvin and Boogie), a quaint shop that only deals in wind instruments, a guitar repair shop and everything in between. Sadly, there used to be more, including a tux rental/dry cleaner that had a used record shop in the back past the pressing machines and a funky used equipment place that could have doubled as a museum.

There’s also the Sunset Grill right next to Guitar Center… yes, the Sunset Grill from the song.  The original has been torn down and rebuilt since Don Henley hung out there, but there are still music celebrities purported to be sighted there.

The Russians Are C… Oh Never Mind, They’re Already Here

The though there is a smattering of ethnic groups and a large Hispanic presence everywhere in LA, our neighborhood might be called Russia Town or Little Moscow but it doesn’t seem like the Russians care what it’s called. To them it’s just Hollywood, the place where they settled after the fall of the Soviet Union. They arrived at a time when everyone else was moving out of Hollywood. What did they care, they didn’t have to wait in line to get toilet paper anymore, it’s all good. The Russians may not have a strong allegiance to their mother country but they have a strong and tight community amongst themselves. The local park is always filled with old men playing chess and backgammon. Entire families will take up the better part of an apartment building.

Perhaps living under communism for years creates a general distrust but I have to say, I’ve never found them to be particularly friendly, especially the older ones, even for a big city. I once walked into a Russian Bakery just to experience the flavors of my neighborhood. Immediately, I felt eyes upon me like I was a skinny guy walking into a biker bar wearing a grey suit, high water pants and a red bow tie.

Not only was it obvious that I was an outsider (even before I spoke), it was clear I was not exactly welcome. I never went back. Another time I saw a nicely dressed old man pissing in the street like it was nothing.

On the East side of Hollywood is Thai Town and Little Armenia. Little Ethiopia is not far to the south and even closer is a rather large orthodox Jewish community.

Crime

Crime in Hollywood seems to be more myth and reality in the minds of those who don’t live here. Folks from my wife’s conservative hometown, just an hour or so away, react with horror when they learn we live where we do. Perhaps they think we have to dodge bullets on our way to the store and pass through lines of prostitutes to get to our front door. Like anywhere in LA, manicured suburban lawns, twenty million dollar mansions, and run down apartment buildings on the LAPDs frequent flyer program are all a stone’s throw from one another. Crime is a reality everywhere, yet I have only been robbed once in my time here and that was by someone I knew (or so I thought). By contrast, my house in Rochester, NY was robbed (by intruders) twice in my first five years there.

Drugs

As everyone knows, it’s nearly as easy to find meth in rural Iowa as I would presume it to be here in Hollywood. One difference worth noting is that social attitudes about marijuana are considerably more relaxed in Southern California. So far, we are still in prohibition and people are arrested for possession all the time, but from what I’ve seen the taboo stigma the pot has in the East is much diminished here when it exists at all.

Prostitution

Things have been cleaned up considerably in the last ten years but I’m sure with a keen eye one could find a ‘date’ if one looked hard enough. Here’s a general rule one might find handy around here: If you want a girl prostitute, Sunset Boulevard is a safe bet. If you’re on Santa Monica Boulevard chances are you going to get a boy prostitute (no matter how much like a girl or a woman he looks).

Clubs

There are more clubs, strip clubs and bars in Hollywood than you can shake a stick at. Since, outside playing music, I don’t do very much of that brand of stick shaking (blame age, prudishness and, most importantly, broke-ishness) you’ll have to consult someone else’s blog for that intel. It is interesting that, when I am coming home at 2AM from a music gig outside of Hollywood, instead of finding quiet streets, I find a rush hour that rivals a Friday at 5:30PM.

Restaurants

Because it so competitive, it’s not hard to find great food for very little money and anything in the world is available if you know how to find it; from vegan to steakhouse, from Thai food to Tunisian, from five star restaurants to two dollar burger taco stands and nearly any national franchise you can imagine. Some our favs just in our hood, Moun of Tunis (Tunisian complete with belly dancers), Canter’s Deli (a deli/diner that makes you feel like you just went back to the seventies when most of their present servers were hired), Zankou Chicken (Mediterranean rotisserie), Toi (“Rockin’ Thai”), El Compadre (Mexican), Pinks Hots, Inn-N-Out (burgers), Fatburger, Gate of India, Sunset Thai, Palms (Thai).

Expense

It’s not cheap living here, but it’s not Manhattan either. Rent for a two bedroom in a decent building runs from $1,300 to $2,000. A gallon of organic milk will run you almost $7 and it costs a couple to a few hundred bucks a year just to register a modest car. Gas is at its priciest here, around 20 cents higher than the national average. Salaries are generally higher too though so there’s just more money going through my fingers it seems.

Home Sweet Home

We like it here. Sure it’s not perfect but where is? There’s a nice park across the street with tennis courts and nice farmer’s market every Monday. I’m six miles from where I work, I’m right near a bigger park less than a mile away where I run and walk up a 1,300Ft mountain several times a week. We’re minutes from the beach. It’s pretty neat to me that people come from around the world to buy souvenirs, take pictures, to live and follow their dreams where I live. And that right there is probably my favorite part of living where I do; I know that I am in the company of dreamers.