Tag: Blues

Dickey Betts

I was never an Allman Brothers fan. I went through an At Fillmore East phase the way most guitar players do. I was a huge fan of Duane Allman’s playing on Derek and the Dominoes Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album and at some point I needed more and that brought me to At Fillmore East. Duane Allman’s playing is other worldly on that record. In between the stratospheric heroics there were the moments featuring the other guy. That other guy is Dickey Betts. When you step back and look at it closely, his playing is just as good as Allman’s. Maybe not equal (because that’s asking too much from a normal human), but close enough.

On top of being a fantastic lead player, he wrote some incredible songs. “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” is pretty much perfect. I spent a lot of time in my youth sitting in front of my cassette player trying to figure out how to play that song. Just picking up what I could. It’s a twin lead guitar instrumental that to my ear is closer to Fusion than Southern Rock. I’d play along for a while, then stare at the speakers, slack jawed, when Duane’s solos came up, then I’d play along with Dickey’s solos.

Outside of that record though, I never really had much use for The Allman Brothers. Southern Rock as a genre has its moments but generally speaking it wasn’t for me. Respect where respect is due though. Dickey Betts as a song writer, guitarist, and singer is deserving of all of the respect.

He passed away this morning at age 80. Rest in Peace, Dickey Betts. Everyone go give At Fillmore East a spin in his memory.

Happy Birthday to John Mayall

Today is John Mayall’s 90th birthday. As a guitar player, I owe this guy so much. First he hired Eric Clapton, then he hired Peter Green, then he hired Mick Taylor. I mean… he is the king of all band leaders.

90 years young, and many happy returns.

Muddy

I’ve been listening to a lot of Elmore James lately. Tonight I switched it up and went with B.B. King but the playlist I found was skewed heavy on the cheesy pseudo-soul shit and I had to switch to something else.

I went with some Muddy Waters. For some reason I always neglect Muddy Waters.

After tonight, I need to promise myself I’ll listen to more Muddy. Tonight was like rediscovering something magical. I don’t think his chops are in the same league as B.B. or Elmore, but the attitude… the passion… the fire… the sheer nerve…

Holy shit his music is good.

Dusty Hill

Dusty Hill, the bass player from ZZ Top died. I cannot say that I was ever a ZZ Top fan, but I can say that I have been thinking about them a bit lately.

ZZ Top to me was the awful cartoonish characters from the ’80s. The beards, the terrible videos, the over produced synthed up crappy songs. I had no interest at all. The small number of earlier song that I knew were okay. Tush (which Lizardfish was playing when I joined), and Cheap Sunglasses were good songs. There were a couple of others that I liked too. They were really just a blues band, which might be why I was so put off in the 80s, but I think maybe they were a little too Texas and not enough Chicago for me. I never really thought of it that way before, but that might be exactly it.

Over the last few months I have been wondering to myself if I should go and give their first few records a try. The main reason being my recent obsession with cool guitar gear. That’s kind of embarrassing to say out loud, but there it is. ZZ Top’s guitar player, Billy Gibbons, is a Les Paul guy. He’s known for playing a 1959 Standard that he named Pearly Gates (apparently after the car he was driving when he went to pick it up? Is that true?). Seymour Duncan sells a set of pick ups called Pearly Gates that are supposed to be cloned from the PAFs in Gibbons’ Les Paul. Hearing other people talk about his guitar and the gear based on his guitar, and knowing that they weren’t absurd comic characters in the 70’s, and also knowing that the band existed for over 50 years without ever having a line up change (which is pretty amazing), has been making me think that their first 2-3 records might be worth a listen.

And then yesterday it was announced that Dusty Hill died. I gave Cheap Sunglasses a spin in the car on the way to work today in his memory. There was a quote from Billy Gibbons saying that Hill wanted the band to continue without him and they will honor that request. So I guess they will finally have that line up change after all. Maybe I’ll give Tres Hombres a spin today too. Maybe it’s worth it for this Chicago (albeit via London) blues fan to dip his toe into some Texas for a bit.

Rest in Peace, Dusty Hill. Someday when my band gets back together I’ll see if they want to play Cheap Sunglasses.

Play Like Mr Johnson

I use the youtube to learn how to make new and exciting weird noises, but I don’t often use it to learn how to… you know… play.

I have no excuse for never learning how to play finger style guitar before. None except that I have no independence in the fingers in my right hand. For the lesson in the video, I can play the thumb part easy. I can play the non-thumb part easy. Can I play them both together? That would be a no.

Mr Johnson and I share a birthday. The least I can do is learn to play more like him (ie: steal from him*). Now that I’m 50, why not? I mean, Mr Johnson died at 27** so it’s really the least I could do, right?

*Is “ie” used correctly? Should it be “eg” or “re” instead? I didn’t sleep last night so I can’t do grammar.

**No one knows for sure how Robert died, but the most common theory is that he was chasing after a married woman and her husband poisoned him.

Quick Random Thoughts

I don’t know what’s up today, but I am just not feeling all that together. It’s like I’m on the edge of being pissed off all the time, but I’m just too bummed out to put in the effort being mad requires. I don’t know.

I think it’s just one of those days where your democratic society is falling apart and half of the country is applauding the on coming dictatorship as if it’s actually a good thing and there is nothing you can do about it and you can’t even emigrate to someplace where the democratic society isn’t crumbling before your very eyes because if it’s happening here it’s clearly going to happen everywhere and fuck all that.

I played some guitar. It helped a little while I was doing it, but once I was done the feeling of existential dread came right back. We watched the new Pixar movie, Soul, and it was really good but the overall theme is one of existential dread so it kinda just compounded whatever crappy feeling I’m crappily feeling right now. Crap.

It’s 6:37 PM and I still have to do 27 minutes of exercise to hit my activity app goal. I don’t want to do it. I’m feeling too low. Then again, if I don’t do it I’ll feel worse.

Fuck those fucking nazis who are imploding my country. Fuck trump and his cult of toadies.

Fuck.

At least I have a triple batch of Tewksbury Tweets to binge eat while society comes unglued.

12 Bar

I’m sitting outside the kids’ band practice, waiting for them to wrap up.

The guitar teacher in the next room is teaching his student to play a 12 bar blues in E.

I just sit here thinking about the entire world of musical possibilities that are opening up to that kid right now. I bet he has no idea.

Welcome to a much larger universe, my friend.

Feeling a Little Blue

I dropped off the kids at their dad’s this morning. Jen and I won’t see them again until after they start school. My step son is going to have his first day of middle school this week and I’m not going to be able to help build him up if he’s feeling nervous. I mean, the kid is as sharp as a razor, he’s going to excel in middle school. But he’s nervous the way every kid is when they move up a school. I just feel bad that I can’t be there to help him along. Next year his sister will start high school. Maybe I can come through for her then, but that doesn’t make me feel any better today. Oh well.

On Call

I’m on call as of 40 minutes ago. There are three on call scenarios. Lives, for when customers start using our software for real, updates for when customers who are already live take a new release, and off hours coverage for holidays and weekends where any customer who has a problem calls you. We get paid for updates and off hours, but we only get comp time for lives. Off hours is a living hell of pain and suffering. See most of my entries from January 1, 2013 for more. Lives almost never result in calls. We are there if we are needed, but we are rarely if ever needed. Updates are a relatively new thing for us. They are a shorter time span and they almost never result in calls.

I’m on update coverage starting at 10:00am Eastern time today, through start of business at 9:00am tomorrow. While the updates I’ve covered have generally been quiet and easy for me, the one exception was a very large customer in Canada who had a really rough go of their last update.

Guess who I’m covering today. Go on, guess…

Lets hope this time goes better for them, and me, than last time. Fingers crossed.

A Crappy Couple of Weeks

You know what?  These last two weeks or so have pretty much sucked.  Christmas and Christmas Eve celebrations have been the only bright spots in an otherwise ugly period of time.

First I got sick with what was probably the flu.  Immediately after that, my wife got sick with what appeared to be the same bug.  We still had a lot of Christmas shopping and prepping to go but we spent most of the week prior to the holiday in a nyquil induced haze of uselessness.  Entire days were spent in bed trying to sleep through the illnesses.

Near the end of last week Jen started improving.  A day or so later I started to slowly improve.  We scrambled through the end of the Christmas shopping, and started getting ready for the Christmas Eve party, but for the most part it was just a struggle to keep ourselves up and at ’em.  Once I started to feel a tiny bit better, Jen started feeling worse.  Oh great.  Christmas Eve came and she fought her way through the cooking and hosting like a trooper.  Christmas day she did the same, all while getting sicker and sicker.  We both felt like Santa was at less than his best this year.  Jen took care of all of it, and I am dazzled by the success she had, but I feel like I could have been more helpful, and if we hadn’t lost that week to the flu we could have made some of the kids’ last minute gift wishes come true.  That was a big part of the problem this year, the kids took their sweet time putting together a wish list and in the end my step son was still asking for things as late as 12/23, and then come Christmas morning he was expecting to get those things.  He tried to act like he wasn’t disappointed, but we could tell he was a little bit.  Next year I need to do a better job getting a list to Santa out of them both as early as humanly possible.  I might have them start taking notes on ideas for next year, tonight.

Don’t get me wrong, Christmas was a big success.  Everyone was happy.  I just feel like I should have contributed more, and I failed to surprise Jen at all.  She got great stuff.  It’s just that everything she got was on her wish list.  I didn’t manage to wow her with anything.  As for the kids, the last paragraph makes it sound like they got socks and underwear and nothing else.  That’s not true.  They got new iPads!  They got awesome games.  They got books that they are going to love.  They got a lot of great stuff.  I just wanted to do better by them and I couldn’t because I spent the week leading up to Christmas as a flu riddled basket case.

So maybe you’re asking, this is all in the past.  Why is that fat red head saying that he’s still having a bad week?  Well for me, New Years is ruined because of work.  I’m on call all day, and they are guaranteed to work my fat ass off all day and night.  It’s going to suck.  I still have a lingering cold and cough.  Not bad, but it is still there.  As for Jen?  Oh nothing.  Just fricken walking pneumonia, that’s all.  She kept getting sicker so she went to the doctor yesterday and got the news.  Pneumonia!  Are you serious?  How bad does that suck!  She feels really sick and she is just miserable about it.  I feel miserable because I’m here at work and not at home rubbing her feet and cooking her some Campbell Chicken Noodle Soup.  I should be home with her right now, but instead I am here working.  I hate it.

So what it comes down to is this.  This week and last week have sucked in many ways.  I am hopeful that things will start turning around soon, but the next few days still may be a continuance of the current suck fest.

Send some get well wishes to my beautiful bride.  She’s an angel and she needs to feel better soon.