I was definitely not going to buy a new guitar. Even though for the past couple days I’ve been roaming the internet, looking at prices and models of electric basses, it wasn’t because I was planning to buy one. When my birthday comes around in a few months, then, sure, a nice cheap starter bass would be a wonderful present for myself. But not now. Nope, definitely not now.
Oh why do we persist in lying to ourselves so?
I had just been to the post office, mailing off the last of the tax forms. (One drawback to being self-employed: paying estimated taxes every quarter. Blah.) After months of work, the whole tax thing was finally completely done. And as it happens, the nearest post office branch is quite close to the venerable West L.A. Music.
“Well,” said I to my lying self, feeling good about the end of the whole tax thing, “when I do get a bass, I’ll definitely need a metronome with which to practice. It is a rhythm instrument, after all. Maybe I should just go get a metronome now, so that I’ll have it when the time comes.” While trying to decide this I was walking home, in the opposite direction from the music store, so that I ended up making a long tortured loop to get back to the store. Where I was definitely going to only buy a metronome. And maybe a pickup for the acoustic guitar, but that was it, for sure.
And the guy behind the counter--who happened to be their bass guitar expert--had to enter some stuff in his computer, during which I just kinda looked around, around, drums, keyboards, guitars, basses, and . . . “Hey, I’m not gonna buy today, but do you think I could maybe try out a couple of your basses?” Just so I could get a feel for a model I might like. You know. When the time comes.
Now, I’ve never played so much as a single note on a bass. But it is, really, the instrument I’ve always been drawn to. When I listen to music, it’s the bass line that my ear always follows, the bass line I always find myself humming. It’s probably true that I only bought the acoustic in order to learn the rudiments of stringed instruments before getting a bass. And being such a rank beginner, I wasn’t even considering a fretless bass because, really, you need to be an expert to play one of those. But the guy at the store, he asked what kind of bass work I was likely to want to play, and, thinking of the ne plus ultra bass work in “Come Together,” I said that I probably wanted something with a really fluid sound.
He immediately picked up a fretless bass. But it turns out that Squier (the cheap division of Fender) makes a fretless bass where, and this is just brilliant, the fret lines are painted on the neck. All the sound of a fretless bass, but there are still guides for beginners like me to follow. Dead simple—and as soon as I hit a couple notes and ran my fingers up and down the neck, well hell, I was completely hooked.
But still, I said “This is great, I’m definitely gonna want one of these in a couple months.” The clever guy, he said maybe he could drop the price a little, and went off to check. At exactly this moment, my phone happened to ring with some very good news about a meeting Marc Rosenbush had just had that went really quite remarkably well. Suddenly I was feeling, oh that most horrible of things, optimistic.
Twenty minutes later, I walked out with a bass. And an amp too, of course. And a strap. Plus that bloody metronome.
The acoustic is a complex instrument--six strings, and lots of chord-playing in infinite variations. A bass has only four strings, and you can get away with a lot by just playing one string at a time. It just sorta works for me, it makes an immediate kind of sense, in a way that the guitar still doesn’t. After only one day of practice--mostly spent endlessly repeating the various notes along the E string, trying to drill them into my brain, and keeping time with the metronome--I still don’t know much at all. But I’m having a hell of a time.
(And now I have to go down to San Diego for the weekend, and leave the bass behind. Which suddenly seems like a very great sacrifice indeed.)
Not buying a bass. Yeah, right. Tell me another one.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
In Which I Do My Bit for the Alumni Association
Went to an alumni event for Emerson College the other night, one that targeted people from the years when I attended. (1820 to 1743.) So it was fun to see some folks I had sorta-kinda known back in the day, and extra-fun to see someone I really truly did know (and acted with). Emerson, though a Boston school, has a good alumni group out here, in fact the motion picture industry sometimes refers to an “Emerson mafia” of grads spread throughout the biz, networking through events just like this one. And hey, who wouldn’t want to work his way into a mafia that doesn’t involve actually, you know, killing people? Executives from a couple of the major studios, fellow graduates, were in the room, and happy to talk to other alumni. That’s a good room to be in.
I was of course reminded of my halcyon schooldays, there in the heart of Boston’s Back Bay, right across from the Public Gardens and the Common. I went to the school sight-unseen--a friend of a friend had recommended it, and the more I heard, the more I knew that this kind of school was exactly what I wanted. Emerson has always been a hands-on place, which makes it, unfortunately, a rare commodity in the higher-ed world. I auditioned, for example, at Boston University, and was told that I couldn’t possibly expect to get into a mainstage show until my junior year. At Emerson, I was cast in a mainstage show, doing Shakespeare, before orientation week was done. Which meant that I spent all four years working like crazy, in every space they had, doing classics and new pieces, and discovering, among other things, Samuel Beckett, who became one of my theatre gods. (A thousand thanks to Ron Jenkins, who handed me a copy of “Krapp’s Last Tape” and said “Here, you should do this.”)
For the last many years, Emerson has run something called The L.A. Center out here, in rented space in Toluca Lake. This is of course ground zero for the Emerson mafia, but last week they announced that they’ve bought property in Hollywood (near the Sunset Gower Studios) in order to build a permanent facility with much greater capacity. Which means the Emerson mafia should only grow, and it gives my company a great resource for new interns. We alumni have been encouraged to submit our ideas for how the new space should be constituted, and I think I’m going to do exactly that--something about the idea of finding ways to mix students from the various disciplines has a lot of appeal to me.
See, back when I was a student, the theatre department was in a building on Brimmer Street (just around the corner from the Bull and Finch, the outside of which was seen every week on Cheers). The film people were part of the mass communications department, which was in a different building, and there really wasn’t much mingling. (And none of us ever saw the communications disorders people.) I had a couple friends who managed to bridge the various departments, but I was so theatre-centric that I rarely left what we called “Brimmer World.” And as I wandered around the room at that alumni event, I saw people who graduated my year who I had really never known. Since I’m a big believer that artists should have interests that are as broad as possible, the fact that I essentially sequestered myself for four years means that I probably missed out on a lot of interesting possibilities. (I only acted in one student film that whole time, f’r instance.)
So I think I will make that suggestion. And I’m thinking that maybe I should volunteer to talk to prospective students from time to time--after all, it was a dinner held by a South Florida alum when I was just a prospect that made me realize, finally, that this was the school I wanted. That’s a favor I would really enjoy returning. And given that the school is still just as hands-on as it ever was, I can still recommend it just as heartily as ever. So if you're interested in a communications field and you believe that the best way to learn something is to get your hands dirty, here you go, here's the place for you.
There you go. Does this mean I don't have to contribute cash now when they call?
I was of course reminded of my halcyon schooldays, there in the heart of Boston’s Back Bay, right across from the Public Gardens and the Common. I went to the school sight-unseen--a friend of a friend had recommended it, and the more I heard, the more I knew that this kind of school was exactly what I wanted. Emerson has always been a hands-on place, which makes it, unfortunately, a rare commodity in the higher-ed world. I auditioned, for example, at Boston University, and was told that I couldn’t possibly expect to get into a mainstage show until my junior year. At Emerson, I was cast in a mainstage show, doing Shakespeare, before orientation week was done. Which meant that I spent all four years working like crazy, in every space they had, doing classics and new pieces, and discovering, among other things, Samuel Beckett, who became one of my theatre gods. (A thousand thanks to Ron Jenkins, who handed me a copy of “Krapp’s Last Tape” and said “Here, you should do this.”)
For the last many years, Emerson has run something called The L.A. Center out here, in rented space in Toluca Lake. This is of course ground zero for the Emerson mafia, but last week they announced that they’ve bought property in Hollywood (near the Sunset Gower Studios) in order to build a permanent facility with much greater capacity. Which means the Emerson mafia should only grow, and it gives my company a great resource for new interns. We alumni have been encouraged to submit our ideas for how the new space should be constituted, and I think I’m going to do exactly that--something about the idea of finding ways to mix students from the various disciplines has a lot of appeal to me.
See, back when I was a student, the theatre department was in a building on Brimmer Street (just around the corner from the Bull and Finch, the outside of which was seen every week on Cheers). The film people were part of the mass communications department, which was in a different building, and there really wasn’t much mingling. (And none of us ever saw the communications disorders people.) I had a couple friends who managed to bridge the various departments, but I was so theatre-centric that I rarely left what we called “Brimmer World.” And as I wandered around the room at that alumni event, I saw people who graduated my year who I had really never known. Since I’m a big believer that artists should have interests that are as broad as possible, the fact that I essentially sequestered myself for four years means that I probably missed out on a lot of interesting possibilities. (I only acted in one student film that whole time, f’r instance.)
So I think I will make that suggestion. And I’m thinking that maybe I should volunteer to talk to prospective students from time to time--after all, it was a dinner held by a South Florida alum when I was just a prospect that made me realize, finally, that this was the school I wanted. That’s a favor I would really enjoy returning. And given that the school is still just as hands-on as it ever was, I can still recommend it just as heartily as ever. So if you're interested in a communications field and you believe that the best way to learn something is to get your hands dirty, here you go, here's the place for you.
There you go. Does this mean I don't have to contribute cash now when they call?
Friday, April 04, 2008
Hey Mikey! and Other Myths
Stories Persist
So I was talking to my brother last night, and somehow we got onto the subject of Pop Rocks. These, of course, are the fizzy candies that make little sizzling sounds on your tongue. They were introduced to the public when I was 10 years old, and I was a little surprised that Adam even knew what they were, because that meant they were still around--seeing as he's 18-plus years younger than I. I was even more surprised that he knew the Mikey story.
As reported here on Snopes, the Mikey story is completely false. The kid from the LIFE cereal commercials ("He likes it! Hey Mikey!") most emphatically did not die from eating a combination of Pop Rocks and soda pop, indeed he is still really most sincerely alive, and I knew the story had been debunked when I was a kid, lo those many, many (many!) years ago. Which is why it was amazing to find that the story still circulates, that my 20-years-younger brother was just as familiar with it as I had been.
Even Older
I shouldn't have been surprised. In the theatre, there are people who still get nervous if you whistle inside a theatre space. Sometimes they don't know why, but they've been told they should and so, actors in particular being big bundles of hypochondria and paranoia, they start to thrum and hum. The reason for it all is simple: back in the day (way back in the day), the people who worked the riggings in a theatre--the ones raising and lowering backdrops and set pieces--were former sailors, and they communicated with each other using, yes, whistles. So that if one were to casually whistle a jaunty tune inside a theatre, he or she was somewhat likely to have a sandbag dropped on his or her no-longer-whistling head.
We haven't had sailors in the flies for eons. We still avoid the whistling thing.
Something in a Name
It can get even stranger. I've told the Macbeth story before, but there's a variation on it: I have now met not one but two unrelated people whose last name just happens to be, really truly, Macbeth. So of course I had to ask the question: when inside a theatre, how do they introduce themselves? And yes, they are indeed reduced to having to say something like "Hi, I'm Mary the Scottish play."
I'm sure there are popular myths that are even older. (Black cat crossing your path, perhaps? I'll bet that one's got centuries on it.) But really, when I think about it, sure these things are nonsense--but they add some whimsy to life. They may be aggravating to the Mikeys of the world, and anyone who shares a name with the Scottish play, but there's never enough whimsy in life. And so, knowing I am in error, here's to poor dead Mikey, may he fizz in peace.
So I was talking to my brother last night, and somehow we got onto the subject of Pop Rocks. These, of course, are the fizzy candies that make little sizzling sounds on your tongue. They were introduced to the public when I was 10 years old, and I was a little surprised that Adam even knew what they were, because that meant they were still around--seeing as he's 18-plus years younger than I. I was even more surprised that he knew the Mikey story.
As reported here on Snopes, the Mikey story is completely false. The kid from the LIFE cereal commercials ("He likes it! Hey Mikey!") most emphatically did not die from eating a combination of Pop Rocks and soda pop, indeed he is still really most sincerely alive, and I knew the story had been debunked when I was a kid, lo those many, many (many!) years ago. Which is why it was amazing to find that the story still circulates, that my 20-years-younger brother was just as familiar with it as I had been.
Even Older
I shouldn't have been surprised. In the theatre, there are people who still get nervous if you whistle inside a theatre space. Sometimes they don't know why, but they've been told they should and so, actors in particular being big bundles of hypochondria and paranoia, they start to thrum and hum. The reason for it all is simple: back in the day (way back in the day), the people who worked the riggings in a theatre--the ones raising and lowering backdrops and set pieces--were former sailors, and they communicated with each other using, yes, whistles. So that if one were to casually whistle a jaunty tune inside a theatre, he or she was somewhat likely to have a sandbag dropped on his or her no-longer-whistling head.
We haven't had sailors in the flies for eons. We still avoid the whistling thing.
Something in a Name
It can get even stranger. I've told the Macbeth story before, but there's a variation on it: I have now met not one but two unrelated people whose last name just happens to be, really truly, Macbeth. So of course I had to ask the question: when inside a theatre, how do they introduce themselves? And yes, they are indeed reduced to having to say something like "Hi, I'm Mary the Scottish play."
I'm sure there are popular myths that are even older. (Black cat crossing your path, perhaps? I'll bet that one's got centuries on it.) But really, when I think about it, sure these things are nonsense--but they add some whimsy to life. They may be aggravating to the Mikeys of the world, and anyone who shares a name with the Scottish play, but there's never enough whimsy in life. And so, knowing I am in error, here's to poor dead Mikey, may he fizz in peace.
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