for those about to rock

seems like old times / let there be rock

spent saturday night in western mass with about six hundred people i haven't seen in a couple of years celebrating the birthday of a good friend i haven't seen since october. party highlights included a neighborly visit from the friendly local police (and there's no sarcasm intended by that cliche; the cop was perfectly reasonable, avoided condescension and wished us all a good night after telling us to be sure to keep an eye on parking and the noise level), a visit from a dazed and bloodied transient who stumbled into the backyard where we were hanging out and immediately started carrying on about getting jumped by four dudes (we forced a beer and some cigarettes on the stranger and insisted he chill with us until he'd calmed down and felt it was safe to go home) and staccato car horn honking in synch with rap beats, courtesy of yours truly, at around 6 or 7 in the morning.

the problem with getting older is that the body's capacity for recuperating from a night of rock star excess continues to lessen at an exponential rate. the funk i endured as a result of saturday's activities lasted until about halfway through tuesday.

another highlight of the night was when a bunch of us got our old buddy tom on the horn. now living in texas, he's one of the mcs that performed in the hip hop orchestra i played guitar with a couple of years ago. when the portable phone made it to me, we shot the shit and floated the idea of getting together with our old producer in late august when tom comes back up north. while he's a free spirit who's liable to shift gears and plans at the drop of a hat, and granting that neither one of us was in the most lucid state of mind at the time we spoke, the mere prospect's still pretty exciting to me. i embrace situations that encourage me to think about the guitar in a non-traditional sense, which is exactly what i got to do as one of three guitarists in broktune. being a member of a creative ensemble is simultaneously liberating and prohibitive; in order to make your contribution a meaningful one, you have to train your ears to hear how all the little parts around you function together, and you have to develop a careful sense of context so that you don't corrupt the whole when you jump in.

things will be a little bit more carte blanche in the studio. i'll be able to dip into a wellspring of new equipment -- a 12 string acoustic, a slide and, by that point hopefully, a new processing pedal -- let fly with whatever comes to mind and lean on scottomatic to help make sense of everything.

posted by jomilkman @ 7:40 AM