I woke up later than usual
I hate waking up after 10 because I feel like I’ve lost the entire day. I got a call from Steve who was coming to pick up my amp so we could use it at the Tritone tonight. He showed up at 11 and we talked, mainly about the local scene and the new band we might be forming called Astroglide.
He was nice enough o drop me off in Center City where I went to my dad’s job to run off copies from my chord book for packets for my two new guitar students. It tickles me that people want me to teach them to play the guitar. Especially since I never had a guitar lesson. Most of my knowledge about music comes from me taking piano lessons for 7 years. I made the packets and went to Chili’s with my dad for lunch. Bad idea.
Hanging out with my Dad’s always cool, eating at Chili’s generally isn’t. While I was there I got a call from one of my students asking if we can push it back to four and if we could do both at the other students house. Fine with me, but as we were leaving Chili’s it started pouring. With no umbrella I had to walk 8 blocks with my shirt over my head.
I got there and it begins. Last time I taught guitar it didn’t work out. The young lady I had wasn’t as interested as her mother was. I was a bit (and by a bit I mean a lot) nervous. As a teacher if someone’s not learning right it’s ultimately your fault. She knows a few chords but I almost have to un-teach her cause she has some bad habits and some rhythm issues. So I show her some drills and some moveable chords to learn, just some basic stuff to get her started
My second student is a preschool teacher that basically wants to learn to play in class for her kids, easy enough. She’s actually easier because she’s never played before. We restrung her guitar and tuned it and I ran her through some similar stuff. She’s definitely gonna need a better guitar.
A few things we’re apparent from both of them. Firstly playing guitar hurts your hands a lot at first the longer you avoid the initial pain the longer it will take you to get any good. Two the mechanics of playing a lot of the basic chords and stuff is easy, the hard part is trainign your fingers to do it properly. When I was learning to play I was so determined to do it I didn’t realize how un-natural some of the movements and positions are.
After the lessons were over I moved quickly to the Tritone where I was hosting the open mic in place of my buddies The Absolute Zeros. They had a show at Silk City so here I was playing some tunes at the top of the night just like I did the night before.
The open mic started off normal enough, we had a couple of singer/songwriters followed By Zombie Dog from New York. They’re on this Band on the Run Tour showing up in different cities trying to find gigs as they go. We had some hip hop and then the comedians came in. Steve lets them basically run the show as they all go up in a row. Most of them aren’t funny. They were being heckled by a crazy drunk brunette who would have been hot aside from her nasty attitude and her constant groaping of everyone in the bar. We moved back to singer/songwriters then he walked in
Dirty Dave was his name and rippin up a stage was his game. I threw a beat on for him and he just went for it. He was screaming into the mic doin his thing, puzzling everyone in the crowd including myself. Someone explained to me that this was some underground expressionism thing they do in Germany. I had no idea what he was saying but I was mesmerized and couldn’t look away. I liked his energy and hope I see him again soon.
We ended with some more comedians and I went home and hit the sack.
No comments:
Post a Comment