01.00
Crimson Tourbus, Outside Hotel Acceptable, Phoenix.
About to leave for Anaheim following our first show of this tour.
The Love Pigmies were powerful, with Danny Carey driving them along. I caught all of their show, including their version of Schizoid Man.
King Crimson: an interesting set. A TC2290 broke down on the Lunar Module & lost most of one stereo side. My headphones weren't on. No setlist was put out. The pair of TC controllers were reversed. The stage lighting was too dark & I couldn't see much of anything. Despite this, and arising concerns for all the Team, overall an honourable performance. The Rhythm Buddies were very strong together. So, for a first gig, quite acceptable.
The audience were exceptionally generous & I saw no flashes. If all performance were like this, then performance would be part of my future.
A small note on business: I do not accept sponsoring by beer & cigarette firms. When we arrived in the dressing room, I noticed a poster for the event: at the top was the name Budweiser. This was not a question that had been addressed to me. This indicates how business operates and deals with what is possible & what is ideal.
Now on the Tourbus, transferring data between my new 17" and old 15" Powerbooks. Exciting, frustrating.
09.16 Hotel Professionally Acceptable, Anaheim.
Overnight drives are not, for me, restful experiences. The rhythm of my personal practice & daily cycle is disrupted. I am not & do not. Otherwise, here we are.
Adventures with computing continue --
14.12 Practising calisthenics.
I have been enjoying a re-visit to the kind of exercises that, once the preparatory years of establishing a foundational technique have passed, are unlikely to be addressed gain.
The Happy Gigster aims to deliver what they can. The professional aims to deliver whatever they are asked to deliver, whatever it takes. Non-delivery = unemployment. Delivery = success. The effortlessness of the effort, the beauty & grace of simple & efficient movement - the calisthenic - is a seeming luxury to the working player. In comparison, a Master would view delivery without grace as failure. In Mastery, the quality of the delivering is as important as the delivery itself: where we are going is how we get there.
The vocabulary & repertoire that a player is asked to perform establishes its own functional patterns, in both hands. The technical demands of a repertoire do not, necessarily, address the fine balancing of equal strength & co-ordination between the fingers; e.g. some finger combinations are called upon infrequently. The writer who set the fast running lines of LTIA IV had only moderate sympathy with the guitarist most likely to play them. If the guitarist fell short in any department - tough.
The bpm of LTIA IV has moved forward several clicks in live performance, beyond the safe margin of my proficiency level. Live always adds a few clicks to what is possible, because of the energy that becomes available in the performance event. Playing in performance comes to life on a level that our practising cannot. Practising is not real music, after all.
So how might a guitarist-hung-out-to-dry address this? The front door is one way: set the metronome & practise the lines. But I have a lot of faith in the side & back doors. Practising tangentially to a specific technical challenge yields tangential benefits. In other words, addressing specific finger combinations that I am rarely asked to use in a musical context improves the calisthenic, and a better calisthenic makes the running lines more available.
And they did last night, despite gear problems & not being able to hear much detail in the running lines, other than the long arching form. But, I was able to throw away the lines. Very satisfying. Not completely accurate, but the musical flow is more important than 100% accuracy in the notes. If the flow flows, the detail follows the flow, and finds its place.
Now to pack up & get ready for the Tourbus.
23.35 Tourbus Outside House Of Blues, Disneyland, Anaheim.
The Love Pigmies had a very strong sound in this venue, which is ideal for intimate performance. I watched their set from the balcony.
Crimson managed to discover new wrinkles where old wrinkles are well furrowed already, but with spirit & some strong playing. A generous, supportive audience. During the final encore, Red, a battery of flashes erupted. They were probably not aimed at me, but my show was killed stone dead. What a pity. After last night, performance seemed an option again.
