I'm with the band....
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As faithful readers of the MOG Gazette (hey, guys!) recently learned, I am once again brandishing a bass guitar and leaving a thin spray of spittle on defenseless microphones, in company with a similarly unpromising phalanx of past-their-prime would-be rockers. We don't have a name yet. I proposed The Locals, but that suggestion has been met so far with a very meaningful silence. I may have to ask Misstee to prepare a list of proposed names. We'll be playing one show only (assuming we are permitted to complete it) in mid-August, at our Charming Village's annual day-long festival. We will be across the street from the dunk tank, which we will with luck escape....
So, for the last month or so, the four of us have been convening at the church hall, first to see what we sounded like together (hmmm, ragged-but-right mountain harmonies, adequate musicianship and sometimes better, all of us too old and tired to be proper egomaniacs - in all, not bad), then to inch our way toward a set list. The way it seems to be shaking down at the moment is that each of us (we're hoping the fifth guy, our putative drummer, gets back from his temporary job posting in Pittsburgh before too long) gets to control a proportionate amount of the set list. As we plan on an hour-long set, that gives me 15 minutes.
The other side of this gentlemen's agreement is that we are all required to be good sports about what the others have chosen - not so difficult, as we are all pretty much gentlemen. As a result I find myself doing things to which my 20-year-old self would have preferred ritual disembowelment. Such as singing the lead in "Teach Your Children." (I have made my piece with the song, maybe because I hadn't heard it in a couple of decades, but the lyrics are still saccharine and dopey.) Or having anything to do with anything the Marshall Tucker Band has ever recorded. (Sorry, Pimp, I'm guessing you dig 'em, but they come off as Allmans wannabes to these ears.) And we do a totally bitchin "Free Bird" on which our rather good accordionist (ah, our secret weapon!) rocks out with abandon. It's both funny and balls out.
Now, clearly, while I could in theory insist upon a Jobim medley, the Bonzo Dogs' "Hunting Tigers Out In Indiah" or something from Synchro System-era King Sunny Ade, none of these choices would play to our strengths as a band. Moreover, they would expose me as the snotty little elitist that I am, not to mention greatly increasing the odds of a spontaneous audience uprising with the potential for significant casualties. So I am working to fit my tastes with those of my bandmates, which is truthfully a healthy exercise. You might be surprised at how good "Up On The Roof" sounds with an accordion. And of course there is the song I hope you've been playing, Ry Cooder's sublime Tex-Mex version of the Jim Reeves classic, with the squeezebox stylings of the immortal Flaco Jimenez.
The fact is, we're all having a great time playing. There's no "Glory Days," I-coulda-been-a-rock-star pathos to this project, no ambition, no agenda beyond putting together a solid hour of music that other people are likely to enjoy. I've done far stupider things in my life. Lots of 'em, in fact.
Locating MOG account...
Comments (23)
How about The Tide is High by The Paragons. Even a rock band can get that one. I personally think those mountain harmonies need a good Phil Baugh song like Clossing Time or Brand New World to get them crying in their beer.
Good luck
Ooh, that's a good one. I'm bringin' it tomorrow night. Thanks. friend....
It sounds fun. Some rock obscurities that you love might convince the audience that you guys wrote them, and that will add to your prestige.
Your current astute choice for avatar looks at us with ironic bemusement, but only when I look it enlarged on your page, I see mild disapproval. Any idea who drew it?
Sadly, Spike, I think the last thing anyone in our audience will be expecting - or even wanting - from us is originality. Our currency is the familiar.
The new avatar is one of Ronald Searle's superb illustrations from the Molesworth series of books that came out in the Fifties. He kind of comes off as an all-knowing know-nothing. That endears him to me.
woo hoo
but no Marshall Tucker Band?
humph
NOW i'm mad :)
I'll see what I can do, man....
it's all good
most ALL southern RAWK was required listening back in the day :)
Were you a Wet Willie fan? They made some outlandishly good music back then....
absofrigginlutely
that there be a middle georgia band
jimmy hall is still all over macon ga
groovy stuff
Ronald Searle? My parents had one of his St. Trinian's books in the fifties. I thought it was him but couldn't remember his first name.
Cooder & Jimenez rescue that Reeves hit splendidly.
You could call yourself The Snotty Elitests but I'm guessing that's a 'meaningful silence' name. Pretty Much Gentlemen? The Temporary Substitutes? The Accordian Kings? The Day Jobbers? Can I put in a request for 'Louie Louie'? I'm just suggesting because The Boss, bless 'im, on the final number at Glastonbury, dropped in about 12 bars and it sounded really good. Just the kind of relentless riff the kids need. I'll be there in spirit to cheer you on.
Pimp, I just knew it....
Spike, the Molesworth books (there were four in all) have been collected in a single edition and can be found with a little digging (they've gotta be available on-line at abebooks). It is a volume well worth having, not only for Searle's illustrations but also for the Geoffrey Willans text. At the very least, the books make one both frustrated and immensely relieved at having missed the English public (private) school system. Oddly enough, my wife used to work for a woman who was in one of the St. Trinians movies as a child actress. She'd grown up to become, first, the nanny to Peter Cook's children and then, as a hotelier, a professional Friend To The Stars. As interesting and uninteresting a woman as her CV suggests.
Jonh, actually I'm loving Pretty Much Gentlemen. I doubt it will fly, but it's worth a shot. Do you think the words to "Louie Louie" are online? (By the way, there's a pizza joint nearby with that name - I'd never considered the ethnic implications of that song title before, but Springsteen, growing up where he did, no doubt did.)
I wouldn't be a bit surprised at how good "Up On The Roof" sounds with an accordion.
Deedee - You, I'm sure, get it.
Just: please, please, please no Jimmy Buffet.
"not to mention greatly increasing the odds of a spontaneous audience uprising with the potential for significant casualties."
That line made me chuckle. Hope you show is completely rockin'.
I like the name "Meaningful Silence," so one could say "People don't pay enough attention to Meaningful Silence."
Nicki, there are only two lines I refuse to cross. No Jimmy Buffett and no America. (By the way, I used to know a couple of people who have had business dealings with Parrot Boy. Both described him as a megalomaniac and a control freak. I'm sure I don't believe them...)
ZZT, thanks for the words of encouragement. At least we're pretty sure we'll enjoy us....
Misstackett, that's a great name. When I was in high school my best friend and I, certain that we would be famous rock and rollers one day, named our band Hard Labor just so that we could entitle our greatest hits album "Ten Years of Hard Labor"....
Well, I can name ONE Mogger with the initials DM who will be in the audience, barring any more fractured bones.
That new avatar (a world-shaking event, in your case) is so tantalizingly familiar yet it escapes my mental grasp.
Loved the Ry Cooder.
We'll dedicate "Stacey's Mom" to you and yours.....
Oh, the provenance of the new avatar is explained above. Spike was curious too....
"All-knowing Know-Nothing". Now I have a new response when my wife marvels at my memory besides "I am a fount of useless information". Thanks.