Love Song Frustrations

I have been so busy lately that I haven't really had any time to sit down and do a review. The cds are stacking up and keep coming, but I will get to them eventually. I have a one time bass playing gig in which we will be playing love songs for couples. It will be interesting and there will be little or no practice. The guy in charge gave me a cd with the songs and lyrics written out with the chords listed. This is better than what I usually get, but the chords were wrong on a couple of the songs. This drove me up the wall a bit because I am really obsessive about getting songs right. I came home today and didn't stop until I got the songs right, first playing the bass to get roots, and then using the guitar to make sure I had the chords right. They probably think I am a freak, but it really bothers me when things are sloppy, and using the chord charts of random people just doesn't cut it. The two songs were Edwin McCain's "I Could Not Ask For More" and Bryan Adams' "Please Forgive Me". It feels like I am practicing for a wedding. There's one more practice before Friday night, when we will be playing a total of six songs. I hope it doesn't suck and I am trying to stay positive.

I finished using my free emusic downloads and will have to join to download more. The site, www.emusic.com is a great resource for downloading music from independent artists or from major artists' independent albums released before a major deal or after the deal disappeared. I got Elliott Smith's Either/Or, Josh Rouse's 1972, The Guggenheim Grotto's Waltzing Alone, and Denison Witmer's Safe Away. The drawback to using the site is the difficulty of searching for the artists with albums available on the site (of course I could have screwed that up). iTunes seems a lot easier, compared to emusic's randomly ordered lists of artists fitting a certain genre. I did find other albums which I want to purchase and with the 40 songs per month for $9.99 deal, it comes out to a quarter per song, which is a great deal.

I spent some of the weekend in Houston and didn't feel brave enough to go to the rodeo to hear music. It was really windly, so bad in fact that the sand on Galveston Beach hit my face so hard that it felt like I was getting sandblasted. Now I know how the walls feel.

Ryan