What And Quit Show Business? Part 2

Last Night: Rock Minus One
We had another in a series of good rehearsals last night. Nick didn't make it. He's in Santa Cruz. He just decided not to return on Monday. It was Caesar Chavez Day here in California. Nick works for the city sewer department. City workers got the day off. Angry tax payers, however, continued to flush bodily wastes into our great city's pipelines.
Nick is The Dude in real life. The Dude, of course, is the character played by Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. Nick doesn't smoke weed or drink White Russians, yet he approaches all life decisions with The Dude's stoner ethos. Nick doesn't wear a watch. He rarely answers the phone. And if he's not feeling it, he just doesn't play. When he was in The Bittermen Blues Band, he once left the club right in the middle of a show. Another time, the band members realized mid-song that the harmonica had dropped out. They found Nick hiding behind an amp.
Drew, Kenton and I rocked it up anyway. We learned a new song, "Walking The Dog." The band's name is KDOG, so we're trying to add more dog-influenced material. I'm lobbying for AC/DC's "Givin' The Dog a Bone." We also rehearsed Gov't Mule's "Bad Little Doggie," which is Kenton's all-time favorite song. It's even the on-hold song at his advertising agency.
We still haven't got "Bad Little Doggie" down. This fact no longer driving me crazy. But two months ago, I was ready to kill Kenton and quit the band over this song.
Bad Little KDOGGIE!
I didn't want to learn "Bad Little Doggie." Kenton begged me to learn "Bad Little Doggie" for at least two years. My objections were based on the fact that "Bad Little Doggie" is filled with actual notes that have to be played in the right order. We can sort of fake our way through most of our songs, most of which contain anywhere from one to three chords. If somebody forgets the beginning, the end or even entire parts of the middle, it's hard to notice that anything is wrong. Nick sometimes plays entire songs in the wrong key. We frequently forget the words and simply ad-lib entire new passages and plot lines. Any audience members who are paying attention are befuddled when songs they thought they knew by heart suddenly sprout new verses and choruses. ("I had now idea 'La Grange' was about government farm subsidies. I guess that's the mark of a classic - the more you listen, the more you discover.")
"Bad Little Doggie" is filled with different sections, abrupt rhythmic shifts, key center changes, tricky riffs, accents, and drum parts that have to be played with machine-like precision or the song falls apart. Plus, the guitar solo filled me with dread, since I'd have to at least pay homage to Warren Haynes' great licks on the original recording.
We had one advantage: Dru liked the song and could sing it as well as Warren Haynes.
"Bad Little Doggie" definitely rocks, but it rides on a funny, off-kilter drum groove that is impossible to dance to - another strike against it.
"C'mon, Kenton," I'd say. "That song is going to clear the dance floor. You're not thinking about the audience. You're just thinking about what you want to play."
Last fall, I gave in, as all must when confronting the glacier like power of Kenton's will. I created a one-song iPOD playlist that repeated "Bad Little Doggie" to infinity. I listened to this song non-stop for a month, slowly working out the riffs and parts. I counted all the bars and made a guitar chart.
"You'd been have your parts down in this song when we start rehearsing it," I'd tell Kenton
"Oh, I've got it down," he'd say. "I've listen to this song more than anyone. I've been playing along with it for five years."
I already knew what would happen: Kenton would show up at rehearsal and have no idea what was going on with the song.
The prediction came true.
He didn't know where the open drum fill came in. He played busy fills when we was supposed to be quiet. Each new section seemed to catch him off guard. It was like he was hearing the song for the first time. I'd go totally berserk at each rehearsal, screaming "you're wasting everyone's time. Rehearsal is not the place to learn your part of the song! You're supposed to show up knowing it.! Why the fuck am I standing here teaching you your own fucking favorite song?"
Kenton would yell at Nick for some minor fluff, then turn around the blow his part so badly, we'd have to start over.
After one extremely tense rehearsal in November, I told Nick: "You know, I knew this was going to happen. So why am I so damn mad and out of control?"
I could've drawn up a drum chart for Kenton. I could've made time to listen to the song with him and work out the parts. I didn't. My thinking was, "He's the guy who needs to make a chart and listen to the song. He's the guy with the $35,000 drum set and the personal road crew who brags about being a pro drummer since he was four! It's time for him to back that shit up!"
Kenton took me to a Gov't Mule show at the Fillmore at San Francisco in November. With his typical generosity, he paid for the tickets and drove.
We had a great time. But Kenton felt compelled to rip on the drummer for the opening act. "He's mediocre," Kenton observed. Kenton worships Gov't Mule's drummer, Matt Abts. All other drummers are deemed unworthy in comparison to Matt.
Kenton is always policing other drummers. "Eh, this not guy's showing me anything," he'll say.
"Yeah, all this guy can do is know when the songs start and stop, playing steady grooves and rock like a champion," I'll shoot back, the veins bulging out of my forehead like tree trunks.
Kenton's antics are infuriating, but they're innocent. He's a good friend. He's not mean or dark or angry. That's my department.
I enjoyed rubbing Kenton's face in "Bad Little Doggie" a little too much. This didn't improve our performance of the song. All it did was screw up my attitude and make rehearsal extremely tense. Nick and Dru stood around looking uncomfortable, like little kids when mommy and daddy are fighting. ("Mommy still loves daddy, but if daddy doesn't start refilling the ice trays, mommy is going to find a brand new daddy to come live with us. Won't that be fun?")
On the plus side, these outbursts did distract from the fact that I wasn't playing "Bad Little Doggie" too well, either.
Example: for two months I have been faking my way through the guitar break, even at shows. I was trying to learn the basics. Two days ago, I sat down with the recording yet again to get the guitar break down note for note. I was startled to realize that the guitar break is actually in a totally different key. How could I miss a tiny detail like that? The song is in E. I'd been playing a guitar solo in E. Drew played the bass part in E. I started to transcribe Warren's licks. As soon as I got the first phrase down, I played it a few times and thought, "Hey - this doesn't sound very good over an E pedal tone in the bass." At last night's rehearsal, I finally understood that the key center of the song shifts to F sharp minor for the solo. This little detail escaped me! Like Kenton, I'd listened to "Bad Little Doggie" a million times with really hearing much of it.
This is called "eating humble pie." My serving of humble pie came with humble ice cream. It doesn't taste particularly good, probably because it's low fat.
Even with this new knowledge, we're still mangling "Bad Little Doggie." The good news is that parts of it sounded really good. And I'm not particularly upset about the bad parts. Not any more.
I know understand that "Bad Little Doggie" is hard song with lots of what musicologists refer to as "notes." (Notes are those little golf-club shaped marks you see in your church hymnal on Sunday. You're supposed to "sing" these notes, as opposed to standing there thinking about how many hot women actually go to Church.) Many of these "notes" are extremely close together in "Bad Little Doggie," possibly due to a printing error. That's just the way it is.
I didn't blow up once last night. Why? Because I have finally realized that being in a bad rock band still beats playing golf, watching TV and also watching golf on TV.
It took a long time to achieve this fragile peace. Stay tuned for more of my infantile emotional displays as I relate the story of KDOG's gig at the Momo Lounge in honor of Melissa's surprise 40th birthday party! Thrill as we damage the hearing of party goers and sell up to one official KDOG t-shirt! Feel a sense of relief as sage advice from Philip the Swiss/German sound engineer turns things around just as all seems lost!