Re: Let's cause a scene!

[Dave Stagner <dave@spnz.org>]

On Mon, 2003-06-02 at 12:48, mark wrote:
> 
> Is part of our problem that we tend to be a solitary bunch?  

I don't think it's that we're solitary so much as we're non-mainstream.
It can be very difficult for those of us who want something more out of
other musicians than Clapton licks, Lynrd Skynrd covers, or bop
standards to find *anyone* else to play with - or venues for regular
gigging. Even when we can find other freak musicians, they tend to be
unreliable people who don't return phone calls, fail to show up, etc. 

I'm lucky to have at least one musical companion, a drummer i work with
once a week or so doing mostly pure improvisation. The other day, after
a particularly oblique 12-bar rattled to a halt, i told him "THIS is why
i'm not welcome at blues jams!" And he loves my looping, and encourages
me to do it even when i feel more like plugging straight into an amp.
Now, he's a drummer and entirely nontechnical (he doesn't even own a
computer), but last time we played, he asked me to explain to him how
the looper works, just so he could wrap his head around it. 

But i'm rambling... basically, my point is that i'm not a weird musician
because i loop - i loop because i'm a weird musician.  I'm perfectly
capable of driving your average Stevie Ray Vaughn wannabe to outright
hostility armed with nothing more than an acoustic guitar. Looping is
just another tool for me, right along with feedback and alternate
tunings and whole-tone scales. As long as i keep trying to surprise
myself with new sounds, i'm going to be stuck playing by myself, or with
the very few other musicians who actually dig what i play.

I suspect many of you are in the same boat. Do you play alone because
you like it that way, or because no one else will play with you?
-- 
-dave

"Who provides the profits - these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 
1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them - in taxation... 

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill."

 --Major General Smedley Butler, "War Is a Racket"