8/1/2012 – Tales from the Clubhouse vol XIV

Tales from the Clubhouse volume XIV

I hope “XIV” means 14. I’m a bit hazy on my roman numerals these days.

The band rehearsed Sunday night. First time we’ve played the songs on the CD since we recorded them. We had a good bash I think. “Does it Matter” sounded particularly fierce….with the boys chipping in on the choruses….Wiggy in his best Keith Richardian growl. We got through about 2/3rds of our setlist. Some rough patches for sure, most of them coming from my hollowed out voice, which is not used to having to be heard above the kind of racket Condel can make 3 feet behind me. On the way home I stopped at a Wendy’s drive-thru and tried to order chicken nuggets. My vocal chords were so ravaged I thought I was going to have to write down what I wanted and slip it underneath the window. The irony is at that hour I was surely the only sober person the poor girl at the window had dealt with in ages, and she must have thought I was under the influence of a garbage can full of chemicals.

But I digress. My $115 guitar is holding up rather well. No welts or bruises yet. There are whispers that my Carvin tube amp is about ready to blow….but I can’t tell if this is true or just because Wiggy thinks Carvin stuff is junk (“it’s mail order crap…why do you think you can’t get it in stores?”). Easy for him to say with his bazillion dollar Hiwatt screaming at me every chance it gets. I’m not a big shot recording engineer made of money like he is.

Lenny almost ran me over in the parking lot on the way in. He said it was an accident. Always believe the bass player, even when you know he’s lying. ‘Cause if the bass player bails you’re left with 3 guys just making a meaningless racket. True right now it’s 4 guys making a meaningless racket, but we’re working on it. Lenny is like most bass players. Kinda quiet. If the singer and the guitar player are like a flying flag…..desperately waiting a gust of wind so they can stretch out and say “look at me look at me!”, the bass player is the concrete in the ground that keeps the fucking flag pole from falling over.

By the way, I got Who tickets. Pete didn’t die before he got old, thankfully. He waited so I’d finally get a chance to see him. He’s 67 years old, and it might seem incongruous that he’s touring behind Quadrophenia, his work about a fucked-up teenager that he wrote nearly 40 years ago. But I don’t do incongruity when it comes to Pete Townshend. So there. I’ve got until December to decide what T-shirt to wear. I’ll probably get a new one. And then buy another there. A requirement. I hope they’re not selling Mod scooters.

So onward we go. More rehearsal in 2 weeks….time enough for my ears to stop ringing from my proximity to Wiggy’s Hiwatt. At this rate I’ll need to learn to lip-read Roger Daltrey.

In a bit..

–tf

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