Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Playing Until Your Fingers Sieze Up

My old musical Pal Jim, and Tom, who was one third of my first band.
The fab MF7 and me at the Market
I played last weekend for hours and hours. At least three hours at the Farmer's Market on the Square in the morning on Saturday with Mikey and his manfolks, then on Sunday sweetie and I went over to the green and distant land known as Westby, about two hours due west of here in what's called the driftless area, where the glaciers did not plow everything into a pancake of farmland like it did in a big chunk of central Wisconsin.
It's a neat area, great rolling hills and lots of hippie organic farmers and artists live out there.
Too many bluegrass bands, too, but I'm not going to bludgeon that reeking, dead maggot filled horse passing as an excuse for a musical genre today.
It was fun playing with Jim. I haven't seen him since he swapped out his Catholic Priest collar for a wedding ring. We played a lot of old folk music, something I don't usually do. He kept all his hair, too, but somewhere he lost the color in it.
Tom and I played for another three hours after Jim split for that toxic wasteland that is DePere and Green Bay. I hate the Fox Valley, but he seems happy living in a thriving hotbed of simple minded bible thumping Bush loving idiots.
Tom and I played everything we ever did and a bunch of new stuff. We still play a few times a year when he comes down to Madison, and pick it up right where we left it. I loved our old duo/trio.
It's a little sad sometimes though, because our third member, Jim fell back into a bottle and sort of vanished. Last I heard he'd gotten his third or forth drunk driving ticket and had moved to Japan. I really miss his bass lines and his creative spark, or at least when he was sober.
Dirt calls, weeds need pulling. My Swiss chard is begging me to model nude, I think I'll go shoot some more plant porn.

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"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis." Ralph Waldo Emerson