for those about to rock

wired

i brought in my 12-string guit to work so that i could leave straight from here for western mass and maybe, MAYBE do some recording this weekend. with all the yang i've talked around here about playing guitar and music appreciation and all that jazz, it wasn't long before i was browbeaten into giving an impromptu performance down one of the wings of the office in front of about ten coworkers.

it's bad enough that i haven't played in front of any kind of audience in about two years, let alone in front of an audience without a couple of beers under my belt since high school. beyond that, too, there was the fact that i was using an acoustic 12-string, which begs the kind of solo singer/songwriter acoustic repertoire i don't really have, and, considering that i can't sing worth snot, i wasn't exactly eager to indulge my listeners with what little i do know in that department, aware that five straight 3-chord verses of "sweet home alabama" would lose its novelty pretty damn quick without vocals. so i sat there, all nerves, awkardly playing a couple of verses or choruses of requests shouted in my direction and cutting them off before i felt they got stale. i don't know; maybe i would have dazzled them if i kept on chugging on the same three chords over and over again. maybe i'm too self-aware. bottom line is that i didn't really settle in until i started making up some chords patterns and tinkering around with them using single note fills. by then, i think there were maybe two people hanging around anyways, and they weren't paying all that much attention to begin with.

reminds me of what tom morello once said about "bedroom guitarists" who can rock righteously all by their lonesome but who shit the bed when it comes to playing live. it's not that i'm calling myself that, but today reminded me of a little thing i picked up when i was playing out regularly a couple of years ago: that in order to play well live, you have to KEEP playing live.

posted by jomilkman @ 1:49 PM