Stop and go traffic from Long Beach to Oxnard!

On the heels of the busiest monday was the crappiest tuesday. Without boring details, it sucked donkey nads.

So then I go and do something stupid. I cancel a full day of work and three local gigs to play a 'showcase' in LA and a festival in Ventura with the Leadbirds. I thought we were getting paid in Ventura but after arriving for rehearsal, it appears not to be the case. But the showcase was well worth it and it went well. We played great and the bulk of the people there, a fully packed house at 'the joint' on pico blvd (bit of a dive with a stellar vip lounge), were there for us and left before the next band came on! Bam!

Fortunately for me, my friend Dennis is a gig-magnet. Like in the same way that Crosby is a chick magnet, Dennis is a gig magnet. Like for instance, I jump in his car this morning to go get breakfast and in the time it takes to get there I land two additional *paid* gigs for the weekend from random phone calls he received along the way. So I will make up all the hundreds of dollars lost this week on the coming weekend. A country gig in Bakersfield in front of thousands of people sat. night and an R&B gig in Santa Monica Sun. morning with a smokin band.

If only him and Crosby could switch traits for a day.........

The busiest Monday Evar

The pic sums up how I feel right about now.

Big day. Itemized for future reflection:

1) First of all, it was a long weekend, with 4 gigs, a concert and a rehearsal. I woke up in Santa Barbara, in quite possibly the nicest house in the universe. A beautiful morning, it was, and I got ready to take the 2 hour drive back home so I could make it to work @ 4. I found some fast drivers to hang with so the drive only took me an hour and a half.

2) Had time to go hang with Steve Miller, a photographer friend of mine, we got some lunch and bought some crap at staples.

2) Work was uneventful. It was a good day though, all my students are playing well and gearing up for the recital. I had two unexcused absences at the end of the day, so I got out of there early and still got paid for an additional hour's worth of work!

3) Salsa Time! I love playing with 'Sambrosa', our salsa band. We ran several new charts and refined them at this rehearsal. This stuff is really starting to sound tight.

4) Burglar! Our Timbale player says let's take a break, so we walk out of the studio and see a kid breaking into our Flute player, Jon's car! We yelled at him and started running after him, but he jumped on his BMX and took off. I ran after him and saw the direction he went, and pointed it out to the rest of the guys, who jumped in two different cars and went driving around the neighborhood looking for him. Talk about a rush. They never found him, which was probably good. I would hate it for that kid if we had caught him, we were riled up and ready to kick some ass. It looked like he was in mid theft, pulling stuff out of Jon's car and setting it on the ground. We were very fortunate to have come out when we did, cause the kid had Jon's very expensive watch on the ground, next to his old cellphone's battery. Jon thinks all he got was his old cell phone, which he didn't care about, but was really stoked that he didn't get away with the watch. Kid had broken the watch band somehow and set it on the ground, and didn't have time to grab it as he saw us and split.

5) Old Friend. After all that madness, We finished rehearsing and called it a night. I'm the last one to leave cause I have the keys, and my phone rings showing 'Unknown Number'. I take a chance and answer it. It turns out to be none other that -------------! An old friend that was in several bands with me. We were roommates in the past and super good friends, but he got all weird and we kicked him out of our band a little under a year ago. He was calling to talk, like one of those, 'Hey, haven't talked in a while, sorry I was a dick, how've you been' kind of phone calls. I was sincerely stoked to hear from the guy and appreciated the call. I mentioned that I needed to get his phone number, cause it didn't show up in my phone, and he's notorious for not being easy to get a hold of. He used to give people his number and it would be disconnected within a week. He says, 'yeah I'll give that to you, but any ways, I'm a new man now blah blah....' and before he has a chance to give me the digits, I drive through the no reception zone on the way to my house and the phone call gets cut off. Once I got home, I kept expecting a phone call or a voice mail or something, but no. In true ---- style, I get none of the above. So I just have to forget about it and wait till he calls back when he's ready. Oh well.

6) Whew. Now I'm so tired that my entire body aches. I think I'll sleep in tomorrow.

A picture of 'geek' in his native habitat.

The word blog is an ugly word, and it's a hype word. I don't think it will stand the test of time. Kind of like when I was a kid, everyone 'pegged' their jeans and that was the cool thing to do. I think the word 'blog' will go the way of pegged jeans. In a few years it will fall out of style as a cute word and it will never come back.
It's such a silly word, like so silly that people smile and say it funny when it's spoken out loud, you know?
It's a contraction from 'web log' but that's lame. Like you don't shorten
'captain's log' to 'clog' or 'nslog' right? You don't shorten 'am not' to 'Ain't' right? Ok, scratch that. And 'Vlog' for 'Video Blog', no. You can't even say pronounce that.
How long it will take for the word 'blog' to go completely out of style? I say 4 years tops.
And i'll start here. This is not a 'blog', it's my 'Online Journal'.
Ok?
Blogosphere my ass.

Does showing up late make me a pro?

I was late to my regular Fri. night jazz gig last night. And I mean REALLY late. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I showed up at 7 when downbeat was supposed to be at 6:30 (Or as I call it, pulling a 'HammBone').

After catching much grief, the guys' idea of a punishment was to make me drink whiskey. So, uh, like I would learn my lesson? I think I'll be late again next week....

In my rush to get there, I STILL didn't have my freakin guitar strap. It fell off my bass twice tonight, once during a solo. There just happened to be 3 groups of people paying attention and shouting me on during my solo, the only time in the evening that anyone was paying attention to me, and the freakin strap comes off! So I propped my foot against the top of my bass amp so I that could rest the bass on my thigh, and played another chorus. And I did surprisingly mediocre. I think it was one of those situations where everything goes wrong and you perform well under the pressure?

The drummer's girlfriend came down and watched our last two sets with her hot roomate. Nice. Our trumpet player is cool but he seriously lacks the 'old entertain the ladies' skill and I think he scared them away. I hope they come back next week.

Something good came out of the evening. I Landed a gig for Sat night, and gigs for all thursdays and fridays in Oct, at two different venues.

So apparently that's how the pro's do it, showing up late.

I heard that 'Jazz' is French for 'F-ck'

I played a Jazz gig at Grappolo's in downtown San Luis Obispo tonight and it went as well as it could, considering. I didn't bring my upright because I can't get a good sound in the tiny, concrete club. It feeds back like a mofo.

But I show up and realize that I had forgotten my strap. Dammit. I thought I was all pro and Sh@t. I've normally got everything I could ever need in my gig bag, including a fifth of Bushmills. So I had to perilously rig the shoulder strap from my gig bag as a guitar strap. It was cool, as long as I didn't move. It fell off during 'St. Thomas' and I finished the tune sitting down awkwardly.

I played one particular solo that lit up the whole room. Way to blow up my stupid ego, drunk kids.

Boy am I glad summer's over though. Now that Cal Poly is back in there is an assload of gorgeous women in town now. But with that comes the usual crap, drunken kids wandering in the middle of the street, long lines at coffee shops and liquor stores, no parking, not recognizing people on the street....
Wow. I'm not a bitter local or anything..... Really.

The picture has nothing to do with this post, except that there is an alien playing my bass.

Do you ever think out loud?

As I even thought of posting this shameless self promotion, I said out loud, "How sad, I'm promoting myself on my own blog". Well, I didn't say ALL that out loud, but I caught myself saying 'Sad'. So this is it right here:

We have a new website up for the Crosby Loggins and the Leadbirds band, and it's freakin slick. You'd think we were pros or something. It sure made me think this band is cool, and I've never thought THAT before.

Crosby Loggins and the Leadbirds

Welcome

I always come home after an eventful gig or rehearsal with stoopid stories and no one to listen. This will be my much needed outlet for my pent-up cereberal garbage. Boring? yes. At least I'm not the guy posting "Guess what happened in my cubicle today!" crap.