GEAR LUST and CREATIVITY

["Rick Walker \(loop.pool\)" <GLOBAL@cruzio.com>]

d/t's comments about not getting too got up in the gear lust/imminent
arrival of a product thing are really spot on.

I remember that as I neared the end of my tenure in my last day job at a
local music store before I made the frightening and inscecure leap to being
a full time musician, that I wanted to buy my first synthesizer.
This was in the early eighties and I was able to buy this thing for 50% off
retail which made it be a whopping $600 (a fortune to me at the time).
What was out and affordable to me at the time was the lowly
KORG POLY 61.   All my knowledgeable friends said "don't buy this piece of
crap, Rick, the latest , next innovation is only six months away and will
cost the same amount".  I was head strong, though, and purchased it anyway
(I was a trapset player at the time and this was a big leap, conceptually
for me).

Well,  I wrote almost 50 pop songs in that interim period before the KORG
POLY 600 came out, several of which made it onto the first album I ever
participated in.  In retrospect, who the hell remembers the POLY 600?
or the POLY 61?    I've tried to keep this in mind whenever I get tweaked
about the arrival of a new piece of gear.  You just have to remember what
Pablo Casals did with four strings, a wooden box and a bow to keep it all 
in
perspective:   the most important thing is that we express our individual
and creative humanity on a semi-daily basis.

my two cents,  Rick Walker