A couple of things....

Well, my job at Fox Music has come to an end. It was not amicable, but i'm gonna try and avoid the bully platform here. I've spoken quite a bit about this job on here, talked of how i enjoyed it, talked of how nice Charles is. I reckon i gotta supply an explanation. As Alison pointed out this morning, the new spate of lengthy posts was gonna clue you in something was up, anyway.

I'll keep it as simple and honest as can be (one point against me, one point for me)

1) i am a pain in the butt to work with.

2) i have a love of quality work. It hurts me to settle for less.

My one bit of revenge on Charles is a humorous one. He's a lovable nut, but a nut nonetheless. For instance, let me show you a picture of a Hammond b-3 organ with it's Leslie speaker:



This set up is similar to what Ray Manzerek of the doors and Jimmy Smith play, by the way. Anyway, you'll notice this roughly 800 lb. set up consists of a bench, footpedals, a Leslie cabinet (the thing that produces that distinctive now fast/now slow yeoow/yeoow sound, an entire organ with two keyboards, and--not even visible in the photo--a triple hinged lid that closes up to protect the organ.

Charles' estimate for bringing to the shop, disassembling, taping off, repairing scratches and dents, spraying, drying, rubbing out and then returning to the floor: 2 hours.


Alright. Enough of that.

Back on honestly taking my own inventory:

I'll be forty years old this year and i'm thinking this event has finally started cluing me in to some previously unrecognized things, namely: i may not be destined to have a real job.

I started thinking about Jimmie Rodgers. You know Jimmie Rodgers: the singing brakeman, wrote T for Texas. Anyway, Jimmie worked on and off for years as a railroad man. Tuberculosis, of course, kept him from some work, but even before that--back when he was a little kid--he was running away from home and starting tent shows and stuff. Jimmie wasn't the type for a real job either, but he was the type to play some music: here's what i've heard about Jimmy Rodgers during the last few weeks of his life:

I think he died around 1935. By that time he'd been suffering with TB for ten years or so. During his final recording sessions in New York, Jimmie would have rib-cracking coughing fits that would last a half hour at a time. TB was not a pleasant way to go. He could maybe get through one take of a song. Afterwards he might have a long coughing fit or he might have to lie down on a cot in the studio until he had enough energy to get back up and start anew. Only four days before he died--and he knew he was going down, man--he finally gave up and took to his sick bed for the last time. Up until then, though, he was recording songs. He knew he wasn't going to live to receive a penny from this work or even see people enjoying what he'd done, but he did it anyway.


I can understand this drive. It makes perfect sense to me. (asphyxiating on lacquer fumes, not so much). I mentioned these feelings--both about Jimmie and about how i felt about being a poor musician as opposed to being a well-paid lacquer junkie--to a couple of poverty-stricken musician friends of mine. All they did was look incredulously at each other and say "you only now figuring that out?"