A month!!

It's been almost a month since I posted here. What the hell?

Well, to begin with, the computer I was posting on is now in 4 large pieces about 45 minutes from here. (All I wanted was for him to install Windows and repartition the hard drive). So, THAT'S slowed down the posting a little bit.

The wonderful Bass Clarinet from my last post will take 3x as much as I paid for it to repair it. The good news is I can sell it for 3x the repair bill.

My band, Black Storm Alice, has a pretty good chance of at least making the Play In for the Main Stage at 80-35. We'll see.

And I still came here with way more stuff to write about, but forgetting in right now.

Crap.

So I bought a bass clarinet...

Ever since I came back from Paris, and heard "Epistrophy" by Eric Dolphy, I've had a pretty crazy dream: to some day retire to Paris and spend my days playing under the Eiffel Tower. The bass clarinet has always sounded like one of the most beautiful instruments: the lows especially vibrate parts of me I didn't know I had.

There's just one problem: bass clarinets are expensive. Bass clarinets in playable condition even moreso.

When I started this quest, I put an add in craigslist just looking for one. Brandi from The Music Box contacted me. She told me she was actually a bass clarinet major at Iowa State! We talked about exchanging bass clarinet lessons for bass lessons, but she didn't have any bass clarinets in stock. She did eventually sell me a nice alto sax that I played with for a while. It wasn't the same. Eventually I stopped hearing from her and I'd pretty much given up.

Then, yesterday, I stopped into Mister Money to do a little pedal shopping, when I saw an entire shelf of BAND INSTRUMENTS real cheap! It's like Harold Hill had to leave town and sell everything for a bus ticket! Best of all, not ONE but TWO bass clarinets!! The other had a case and was $299.00, but the other, a Bundy, was marked at $99!! I went to the counter and pointed out some dings and rust, and they sold it to me for $70!!!!!!



Well, the next thing is to get a reed. I went straight to Uptempo Music in Beaverdale. When I brought it in, Dave was like, "Wow, a bass clarinet!" then while I was showing him, he looked at the price tag.

"You did NOT pay 99 dollars for this"
"I didn't. I paid $70."

I also told him they had a much nicer Vito in a case for $300. I think he's gonna go get that one.

I bought a reed,and then talked about what few repairs it would need to be playable. He mentioned that the person who does his band instrument repairs was actually a BASS CLARINET MAJOR in college! Guess who??

Next I took it to Polk City, where my Ladyfriend gave it a fresh cleaning and she and her daughter (who play Alto Sax) took turns playing it! Yes! It works!

More on this story as it develops...

Rock and Bowl: A modest proposal.

So, I'm waiting for my coffee to cool and my Genuine Counterfeit PreEmbargo Cubans to arrive by UPS from my friends at JR Cigars, and I remembered something I brought up earlier in the week that needs more fleshing out.

One of the biggest complaints about the Des Moines music scenes is...okay the biggest complaint is there's a lot of sucky bands and too few venues. AFTER that, though, the biggest complaint is that bands are always tearing each other down and there's no comraderie. Overall, the scene suffers. Just take a look at the typical Craigslist bullshit that flares up from time to time.

Okay. The English have Soccer. There's all kinds of great stories of legendary British bands having a bit of footie for fun. Hip Hop has basketball. Death Metal bands have Dungeons and Dragons nights--okay, I can't back that one up...

This is all a bit too athletic for most bands I know. However, they all like to drink beer and hate golf. This leads to BOWLING! It's not all that athletic, but has enough individual and team competition to keep it interesting. You keep score, but noone takes it too seriously (unless your name is Walter Sobchak). And you can rent EVERYTHING neccessary so no intial cost is necessary. Plus there's that vintage thing for all those ironic hipsters out there.

Bands on Board so Far:
------------------------
Black Storm Alice
Porkins' Ghost
Superchief (at least one of them)

Spread the word! I'll make brackets and everything! Each band will be a team. This is just for fun for now. Maybe in the future, we can get some sponsors and have a championship or something. This would be a great opportunity to hang out and/or network in a mellow, not-so-loud, non-competitive environment.

I'm looking for feedback here, so I'm publicizing this post. We'll see what happens.

How Rock is Made

So another Black Storm Alice rehearsal last night. We've been adding new songs to the repetoire, and having mixed results. At the end of a frustrating bit, I just hit one loud note on the bass that just got everyone's attention (probably due to the Boss MT2 Metal Zone distortion pedal.). I looked at the drummer and we just took off: hammering this riff that just appeared out of the air. Soon, the guitarist caught on and Hanna started singing something I found out later was an ode to my Fender ball cap. 5 minutes later we all came to a stop like we wrote it that way. And in a way, we did.

I used to dream about being one of those songwriters who would sit in a little room at a piano, playing ditties and writing black dots on a piece of paper. Apparently, that is not me. My music comes in loud riffs that pummel you until your nose bleeds, but you like it. Sort of like getting your ass kicked by a really hot girl in a skin-tight pvc catsuit.

I fuckin' love playing the bass and being in a band. I can't wait to show you what we do.

I promise I'll make the next post clever and/or funny, but I just needed to get this off my chest.

P.S. The only bad thing is, I didn't record it. Next time, record everything!

My Bands

I'm in two bands.

The first, is Porkins' Ghost. http://www.myspace.com/porkinsghost
The band consists of my friend Dave on drums and me on bass. We play primarily improv space rock, for lack of a better word. We play in a huge building at his place way out in Western Iowa near Stuart. We did have one show, at the Vaudeville Mews, on May 15, 2009. We were also featured on an UnderTheMic compilation. We'd like to play more, but various commitments have kept us busy and not rocking. We'll be back, though.

The second is Black Storm Alice. http://www.reverbnation.com/blackstormalice
This is a more traditional Classic Rock Cover Band. It consists of Doug Diaz on drums, Doug Ulenhopp on guitar, Hanna Jones on vocals and me on bass. Like I said, pretty straight ahead rock, but I have managed to drag some improv jams out of them every once in a while. This probably has more potential for shows, since it's a more conventional type band, but we have yet to play a gig.

I would love to play more, but my work schedule won't allow it. It is opening up more lately, so I can get to some jams. My dream, as usual, is to make a living at this, but I don't know.

Oh, dear. I promised not to be boring, but you've probably stopped reading by now. Oh well.

Here we go again.

Thanks to Cam at his incredibly cool blog , and the beautiful weather, I'm experiencing a bit of a blog renaissance. Yes, I post a lot of stuff at my facebook (under LorenzInez) and my twitter (twitter.com/revduke67), but there's stuff that I like to write about and share that I don't feel comfortable sharing with EVERYONNNNE! and can take more than 140 characters to talk about.

Some of it will be funny. Some of it may sound like whining. Some of it may seem weird.

Let's put it this way, if you are offended by the picture at the top of this blog, you should probably leave now.

But I promise to not be boring.