Globex Corporation Newsletter

OK, there's a lot of reasons for me not to want to leave the RC. I've got a lot of good friends here and I've found myself in some quite unique situations. Keep your minds out of the gutter, people! Last night as I was shampooing carpet (just a few days after The Simpsons episode where Bart gets a fake ID and when trying to decide what to do with it, Nelson replies, "We could rent a carpet shampooer!") when Mike called. He asked me if I wanted to attend a Jam at the Firehouse. I was almost out of energy when he called, but the possibility of playing music really put a little life back into me. When I got there I found out it was a Celtic jam. So I was playing the part of that great Irish harmonica player, Little Seamus O'Walter. OK, there's nobody by such a name as far as I know, but I have always been able to fit in what I do to most types of music. I found myself playing off of the pennywhistle player which made for some interesting sounds.

Anyway, I was enjoying a beer when I started looking around at the musicians and what they played. There was one of those Irish drum thingies that I can't remember the name of, a bazooki, a fiddle, two pennywhistles, 3 bagpipers (bagpipes, in RCSD! Whoda thunk it!), Mike was playing bass. Never before have I played somewhere when there wasn't a guitar. How cool is that? No guitars! If I ever host an open mic, I'm going to stipulate a couple of times a year that we do a show with no guitars.

It was one of the things I always liked about Ben Folds Five (besides that they were a trio). No guitar. They recorded some early tracks with electric guitar, but decided having no guitars would make them unique. Good choice. It's not that I have anything against guitars, there's two back at my place, but go to any open mic and the guitar players think they own the place.

Me, I'd rather be the oddball, that harp player. Oddly, though, I seem to have more impact on people when I play guitar alone. That's when I'm solo, of course. If I'm duoing it up, I like having a good guitarist around, and I'm lucky enough to be associated with two of them right now. For a little while more, anyway.

BOJ