Who Does He Think He Isn’t?

I don’t publish comments on old posts, so I deleted this one which appeared yesterday, but I am reproducing it here for a reason. It comes from someone calling himself or herself “Sane”:

What about all the babies that have died this summer because they were left unattended in hot cars? Maybe your angels could have saved a few babies instead of murdering Assyrians?

Let’s assume your god really does exist (he doesn’t, of course). Why would you worship someone who creates tiny little helpless babies, only to let them (or worse, MAKE them) die in a hot car, or in any number of other horrible ways? What kind of a sick, twisted being would do that? What kind of a sick individual would WORSHIP someone who does that?

Instead of waiting around for help to come, try to get yourself out of the situation. In the meantime, help out others who need it, and maybe you’ll be lucky and they’ll return the favor someday. If you wait for your god to help, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

I don’t want to get heavily involved in the obvious responses to these ancient arguments, apart from noting: 1) I wait for God to help all the time, and he comes through over and over, 2) I do help others, because you can’t have the Father if you don’t love your fellow man, 3) atheists should wonder why they are so furious at a person they claim is nonexistent, and 4) the fact that you disapprove of God’s behavior does not mean he doesn’t exist.

Here’s what I have to offer. Sane, tell me about a problem you have. It has to be something a Christian God would be willing to fix; it can’t be something like, “Dope is too expensive in my neighborhood.” I’ll have people pray about it. If God fixes the problem within seven days from the time I post the request, let me direct you to some good resources where you can learn more about him. If not, go on your way.

Everybody get behind this in prayer, if you will.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Life seems to get better every day. God answers one prayer after another. Where did we get the idea that Christianity was about obeying rules or being good or going to heaven sixty years in the future? It’s about self-actualization here on earth, seeing your dreams come true moment by moment, with God at your side. Heaven, as the movie title says, can wait.

My involvement with my church keeps growing deeper. I can’t walk through the place without talking to five or six friends along the way. People stop me to compliment me on the food I cook. I talk guitar with the musicians. It’s fantastic.

Today I’m going to our monthly volunteer meeting. We have 700 volunteers, so we get together and try to get more organized. I’m not involved in the music ministry, but I’m going to show my “new” Japanese Resuporu (Les Paul!) to one of the guys. It will be great to get his input on it.

I still have no respect for Japanese acoustics, but the quality of my $500 Burny has convinced me that Japanese electrics are superior to American electrics. I’m sure you can spend $4000 and get an American guitar that is somewhat better, but then you can also spend $2000 and get a top-notch Japanese guitar that beats the $4000 job. Japanese guitars will always be a better deal, because the people at Gibson have gone completely insane. They charge so much, anyone in the world can undercut them. I wonder why American Fenders are still fairly reasonable.

I have had some frustration with the electric guitar, trying to lean how to play slowly. In bluegrass, there are no long notes on the guitar, so if you hit the string at all, you’ve hit it right. When I work on B.B. King music, however, I have to play a lot of long notes, and a lot of them involve shaping the notes as they sound, moving the pitch up and down. This takes skill, patience, and concentration. At first, I wondered if I would ever get it to work, but as with so many musical issues, it turns out the problems magically go away with practice, even when I’m not consciously working on them.

I bought a Fat Sandwich distortion pedal. I was disappointed when I tried it with the Burny Les Paul. It seemed like the distortion was very intense, no matter how the pedal was adjusted. Then I tried it with my other guitars, and the problem went away. I guess I’m getting lesson on pickups. Apparently, some pickups distort easier than others. The Japanese L8000 humbuckers in the Burny must be considerably hotter than the Texas Specials in my Strat, because they blow the Fat Sandwich up regardless of what I do. Oddly, I don’t have this problem with my Ibanez Tube Screamer.

Maybe the Fat Sandwich was a bad move, but I’ve listened to samples over the web, and I know some people have gotten wonderful sounds from it.

I’m considering going to Haiti at the end of the month. We are still doing missions. I was involved in doing the press releases right after the earthquake, but I was never told how we could get to Haiti. I assumed the church was contacting people and asking them to go, because of their special skills. It turns out anyone who is willing to spend over a grand to go can do it. I wish I had gone in January. I didn’t know it was possible.

I’d like to go, but man…Haiti in AUGUST? That almost sounds like a metaphor for hell. The weather report says Haiti is going to be about six degrees hotter than Miami this week. That means a lot, when it’s 90° here.

One of my friends has gone at least once, and she’s going this time. She’s urging me to go. She said you have to wear some kind of electrical thing to keep mosquitoes away, and you have to bring a fan to put by your bed, otherwise you can forget about sleep. There is no air-conditioning. And she said something about wearing sandals in the shower to keep the parasites off your feet.

Okay.

What about the cabanas and pina coladas? What about those? I haven’t heard anything about the important stuff yet.

In all seriousness, I am wondering if it’s a good idea. I have all sorts of unusual skills, but I don’t have a single one they need. I am not a medical professional. I am not a builder or a mechanic. I am not an engineer. I can sue people for them, I guess, if they can find a way to do it in a Florida court.

Maybe I should just send them the money and stay here.

If I go to Haiti, what do I do for a guitar? There is no way on earth I am going to lose a week of practice. You can do that with many instruments, but with the guitar, one week off means six weeks of rehab. Forget that. No way, no how.

I guess the intelligent thing would be to take an acoustic. Maybe the cheesy Tacoma Papoose I never use. The action is a horror, but I suppose that will keep my fingers working.

Some day I may get an electric travel guitar. They’re about two feet long, and they have no headstocks. The amps are internal, and they have headphone jacks. On the other hand, I have two Asian guitars I didn’t pay a lot for. Maybe this is a good use for them.

I am trying out a Bugera amp that attenuates down to 1/10 of a watt. I did not know this amp existed when I got my 1/4-watt Vox. This amp has five advantages. 1. It plays at lower levels. 2. It has reverb. 3. It has a headphone jack. 4. It costs half as much. 5. It has a gain control. I think the Vox sounds better, but that may be because I’m not sure how to work the Bugera. Anyway, it’s a good cheap practice amp, and you can use it without pedals.

I plan to resume playing ZZ Top. I had some moral concerns, but without going into details, after prayer and so on, I have come to the tentative conclusion that it’s okay to practice the dirty songs in private, just for technique. Maybe I’m wrong. I won’t play them in church, even for practice, and I would not take part in a performance where the lyrics would be sung. We’ll see what happens.

I better get over to Guitar Center. I have to buy a case.

I am a Work in Progress

I guess I’m a bad Christian, because the Steven Slater story cracks me up every time I think about it.

I know he cursed a bunch of people and broke the law by deploying a jet’s safety chute. I know he stole two beers in the process, probably hoping to get a good start on getting plastered. I know that when the cops caught him, he was busy engaging in sodomy.

I know.

It still slays me.

Pray for both of us.

Office Space for the Lord of the Flies

I’m back. Not that I went anywhere.

Things are going well here. Guitar practice is moving right along. Church gets better and better. My friendships there keep getting stronger.

Yesterday I decided to give up working on a piece I really enjoyed. I was learning a ZZ Top tune which has a dirty title and suggestive lyrics. I figured it was okay, because I was only interested in the melody and the guitar skills, but I changed my mind.

Last week a kid came to church while I was working as an Armorbearer, and he had a joke T-shirt on, and the front of it featured the F-word, with the “u” replaced by an asterisk. I was mortified. Before I could think about it, I went up to him and asked if he had anything else he could put on. I was afraid he would give people the wrong idea about our church, and that God and the people above me in the church would be upset with me if they saw him.

I told him the shirt was inappropriate and disrespectful, and the solution we came to was exile to the overflow room, a long room to the side of the sanctuary. I got in touch with my superiors about it, and their take was that was should not run anyone off over a T-shirt, but that we should not hesitate to confront church regulars who wore offensive clothing. The regulars know better.

It seems to me that working on a dirty song is a little like wearing that T-shirt. Like the church, I’m supposed to be God’s house. I shouldn’t let garbage in through the front door.

I still have some tendinitis, and I wonder if the delay in healing has anything to do with what I chose to do with my abilities.

I have quit working on the piece, and now I’m looking for something else. It’s sad, really, because the guitar work in that tune is a joy to play, even though the song itself is fairly weak.

I started working on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Honey Bee” last night, but I discovered that Billy Gibbons has something Stevie Ray lacks. Oh well.

I enjoy working on B.B. King, but it turns out there are subtleties in his style that make it harder than ZZ Top. The timing is more varied. I learned that ZZ Top is surprisingly like souped-up bluegrass, which has 8 beats over and over, but B.B. King does whatever he wants, because he’s not as concerned with a driving rhythm.

I also learned that blues/rock has the same basic feel as bluegrass. Maybe a person who has the innards to play one type of Southern music should be able to play them all.

I’ll be looking for more stuff to work on.

I took a look at “Sharp-Dressed Man,” which has interesting guitar work, but it requires a chorus pedal. I don’t even know what that does.

I haven’t received the used Japanese Les Paul clone I Ebayed. The guy was really slow about shipping it. So much for Japanese efficiency. And I still don’t have my Blueshawk. I think the repair guy has adopted it.

I’m trying nines on one of my guitars. I may stick with them. I like the feel of tens, but it’s hard to turn down the expressiveness you get from nines, and the tone seems just as good. It seems like the electronics make up so much of the sound, the strings aren’t all that important.

I plan to have vibratos on all my guitars. So far, I’ve only used vibrato for one lick in one song, but that was enough to convince me that I needed this extra tool. It turns any song into a soundtrack for a Quentin Tarantino movie.

I have a sense that anyone who plays electric blues should be familiar with four types of guitars: Strats, Telecasters, Les Pauls, and thinline Gibsons. Maybe I’m wrong, but this seems to be a good basic vocabulary. I plan to get all those bases covered before the big day comes and I go all-out and get a top-notch instrument.

A friend of mine recommends Heritage guitars. The world’s biggest dealer is within driving distance. I have heard things about their quality control, but then I have also heard that the biggest Heritage knocker is a dealer who got ejected from their sales network, and that the quality control is actually very good. I don’t think it can be any worse than Gibson, which is getting whipped by its Chinese siblings at Epiphone.

I got a prayer request last night from reader Ruth, and I am passing it on. I hope you will take it seriously.

Steve,
I have a niece who has been extremely overweight for years. Two years ago she had the big stomach surgery to help her. That helped with her weight but she has still be a victim of increasingly worse migraines. She has been in and out of hospitals time and time again.
Currently she has been in a hospital for 10 days, on cortisone to help wean her from the many different drugs they have her on.
Today she went to the chapel to pray and was attacked by the devil, her words. The security guard helped her back to her room, he seems to be Christian and understanding. She also has a good Christian nurse with her.
My sisters and I think she has been the victim of a demon for many years, maybe more than one. With your understanding of what this is, you seem to be one to also ask to pray for her.
She has been a good Christian wife, mother and grandmother, now. We just pray she will be well and able to enjoy the grandchildren, children and very faithful husband.
Thanks for your prayers, please pass this on to your prayer partners.
Ruth H.

By the way, it will be 4 weeks tomorrow since my knee surgery and I am doing very well. Not to say there is not pain and discomfort but I am healing, walking without my cane in the house, and slowly getting back to normal. Prayers are still appreciated, however.

If you could throw in a few words for my friend Dave, I would appreciate it. He came out of the closet after his mom died, and his life is pretty tough. He used to be very hostile to God, but lately he has been more open.

Hope I’ll be able to post a good report on my guitar progress before long.

Two Requests

I have a reader prayer request. Can’t reveal the name.

Things are getting pretty tight at the homestead. I still haven’t found work. It seems that nobody wants to hire a xx year old in this job environment. Federal jobs have a cut-off age of 36. ( age discrimination, anyone? ) State jobs are not happening and regular locksmith jobs just aren’t there. I applied for an apprentice locksmith job and still no bites. I was turned down at Wal-Mart, for heavens sakes. I feel a little selfish asking for prayer when others may need it more, but I have gotten desperate .

If this should end up in your blog, please don’t use my name. It has been over ten months now without work and I am more than a little ashamed that I haven’t found anything.

I appreciate any good thoughts and prayers you may send my way.

This reader is obviously in a bad situation. I hope you will get behind him in prayer.

While you’re at it:

The short story is that my girlfriend and I are both Deputies. She was injured on duty about a year ago, and since then, the County has cut her pay nearly in half while she is waiting for surgery.

Since her pay has been cut in half, she has had trouble paying for her mortgage, her bills, etc. I pay for as much as I can, but given the circumstances, she has slid into depression. Along with the depression she suffers from (her doctor recently prescribed meds), she also has bouts of anger.

I love her more than you could ever imagine, and it’s the greatest feeling in the world to know that I met my dream girl and that I want to spend the rest of my life with her. But suffice to say, with my odd hours, her combination of problems, and just the daily goings-on of life, it feels like we are slipping apart.

I pray every day that I can find a way and make everything work out. I ask that you pray for us to be the happy couple that we deserve to be.

Thanks.

Why Does my Guitar Smell Like Squid?

God just won’t let up.

This weekend, I was slated to go to my prayer group on Saturday morning, followed by Saturday evening church. The following day, I was to cook during the first two services and then serve as an Armorbearer during the third, and then I was to serve as an Armorbearer at our mass baptism at Hollywood Beach.

On Friday night, a youth minister called and asked if I could help on Saturday with a barbecue. I agreed, but I had to cut out the prayer group and Saturday evening church. I managed to arrange all that.

I have been considering getting a new Epiphone Les Paul ’56 Reissue with P90 pickups, and I figured I might go by the Hallandale Beach Guitar Center on the way home, since it was very close to the park.

On Saturday, I got ready to head up to Greynolds Park. This is a public park in North Miami. My school took me there a few times when I was a kid. I believe my last visit had been 37 years earlier, at my sixth grade picnic.

I had a call from Mike on my cell phone, and my GPS would not find Greynolds Park, so I called Mike while I was driving and asked him to get the address off of his computer.

Mike and I grew up across the street from each other, and we both knew Greynolds Park, even though I did not recall the way to get to it.

We started talking about old times. I enjoyed that. Outside of my family, Mike is my only link to my childhood.

Miami has no hills to speak of, but there is an artificial one at the park. I guess it’s fifteen feet high. On the top, there’s a little castle made from coral rock. I seem to recall a big peace sign carved into the grass below it; maybe that was there back in the Seventies, when I last saw the place.

When kids visit the castle, they like to go to the top of the hill, lie down, and roll to the bottom.

I remembered the castle as a big structure, but when I saw it out of my truck window, I realized it was about fifteen feet across! I told Mike that if I tried to roll down the hill, it would be about two rolls.

I got to talk to him about church and his family, and I think it was a productive conversation.

The kids showed up, and I helped a pastor and his mom grill burgers, wings, hot dogs, and sausages. There was football and volleyball, and we had a great time.

At the end of the day, I got in the truck and tried to decide whether I had enough energy to look at a guitar. I decided to go ahead. I took a couple of wrong turns on the way, though, so I was maybe five minutes later than I should have been.

I got to guitar center, and they didn’t have a ’56 Reissue. While I was looking at the guitars on the wall, I heard a voice say, “Steve!” I turned around, and I saw Miguel and Joe, two guitarists from church. Miguel was looking at a Gibson Les Paul.

Total coincidence, right? Of course.

We talked guitars for a while, and they gave me some great information. I told them the reason I had come, and Joe said he and Miguel had just come from a place that had a ’56 Reissue! In fact, Joe had handed it to Miguel, even though they weren’t shopping for a guitar that cheap.

Now I know where to find it, if I want to see it!

Again, coincidence. Surely.

If you can believe that, your irrational, stubborn faith in coincidence is considerably greater than the faith it takes to be a Christian.

That night, I got an unexpected call from my aunt. Kentucky is condemning a piece of land my family owns, and my cousin is handling the legal issues. My aunt said the mediation was scheduled for today! She said they had deliberately kept it quiet (which is a major breach of professionalism for a lawyer), in order to prevent the family from getting wound up and causing problems. She said we had to come up with a price. She said I would have to be available today to take calls, and she said she would try to get me information on Sunday, which meant no church and no beach baptism.

I was pretty annoyed, but I kept thinking of something I had learned: when people do things that are completely abnormal, there is often a supernatural reason. Maybe God was in this.

Anyway, a while back, another relative tried to get control of this issue, and that relative made up a selling price which I will call “x,” and the state rejected it as ridiculous, offering something more like 0.6x. On Saturday, my aunt started telling me about recent comparable sales, from other people whose land had been condemned. Suddenly, we were talking about 3-4x! I couldn’t understand it. It made no sense, given the information we had had earlier in the year.

The same state official who refused to pay x and demanded a trial has been giving other people extravagant sums. The comps come from deals she worked on.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s very odd.

Speaking of guitars, I found a nice Japanese Les Paul clone on Ebay, and I won the auction. I am paying Chinese-Epiphone money for a Gibson-quality vintage Les Paul Custom. We’ll see if it’s any good. I plan to put a Bigsby on it, and I’ll probably take out the humbuckers and put in single-coil pickups made to fit a humbucker mount. I wouldn’t want to diddle around too much with a valuable Gibson, but for this kind of money, the Japanese guitar is a great candidate for modification.

I found out you can use a mount called a Vibramate to put a Bigsby on a guitar without drilling, so I’m going to go that route at first, to see if I like it. I’m pretty sure I’ll want to keep the Bigsby, however, because I love the one on my Epiphone.

This should be a good cheap way to learn about quality Les Pauls.

Practice is going great. I no longer have problems getting along with electric guitars. I am starting to understand how liberating amps and effects can be. I just need to settle on an arsenal of instruments and equipment.

The Chinese Epiphone continues to bring me joy. I’m getting some very good sounds out of it. I’m starting to remember things about the characteristics of different electric guitars. For one thing, the Riviera (wide, like an ES-335) has great, masculine-sounding bass, which is something I missed when I tried out a smaller ES-336 a few years back.

I had soreness in my right elbow, but I started using a thinner pick, and suddenly I’m getting much better, and I can’t believe the improvement in control. I guess I should have realized that playing bluegrass on thirteens with a 1.0-mm pick was not a great idea, for someone who had been slacking for years. I’ll have to build back up.

Billy Gibbons is my favorite guitarist. I know Stevie Ray Vaughan and Johnny Winter are considerably higher on the technique food chain, but when it comes to music that is just plain fun to listen to, he’s as good as it gets. That’s very important. In music, charisma is more important than pure ability. It’s why so many supremely capable Asian classical pianists fail to draw audiences. No one cares how brilliant you are, if you bore them.

I see it this way: Johnny Winter is to Stevie Ray Vaughan as Art Tatum is to Oscar Peterson. Billy Gibbons fits in on the next level.

It’s funny that my favorite blues guitarists are white. Oddly, all three of them sing the blues well or extremely well. Usually this is where white blues artists eat it.

If you don’t think ZZ Top is blues, listen to “La Grange” and then listen to “Boogie Chillun,” by John Lee Hooker.

That’s all I got.

Guitar Fun

I can’t say enough about Hal Leonard’s Play-Along guitar instruction books. I am still working on B.B. King’s “Sweet Sixteen,” and I’m thrilled at the way the book and the software make hardcore practice possible.

I don’t believe in wimpy music practice. If a lick is giving you trouble, you don’t practice it three times and then roll over and pick up the cable remote. You practice it dozens or hundreds of times. If the sound you make when you practice doesn’t drive other people insane, you’re not doing it right. You’re not supposed to PLAY. Practice is WORK.

I hate it when people want to listen when I practice. They always complain. “Can’t you play something that sounds good?” NO, I can’t. GET OUT. That’s my attitude. I don’t show up at your office and ask you to make me sandwiches and pie.

With the Slow Downer software that comes with the book, I can put a short part of a song on a repeating loop and practice it until I can’t take any more. It’s fantastic.

By the way, Audacity freeware will do the same thing. It won’t remove the guitar from the music, but it will do looping and speed and pitch changes easier than Slow Downer.

I can’t quit looking at guitars. I am going to have to get control of this. Covetousness wastes time and money. And it will be another couple of months before I really know what I want from a guitar.

I’ve found some interesting stuff out there. Gibson’s Japanese affiliates used to make guitars under a different name, and the quality is probably better than the US instruments. You can save a lot of money and get a neat collector piece by buying one of these things. The factories made the same guitars under other labels, too. Look for Greco, Burny, Edwards, and Tokai, among others. You can still get a new Edwards for a grand, and it will probably be better than a $3500 Gibson. How can you resist a thing like that? Smoother action, better fit and finish, same design, same quality materials, and if you’re determined to spend the full Gibson price, you can have a luthier trick out your Japanese beauty until nothing the Gibson Custom Shop makes is worthy to be on the same stage with it.

A company called XOX makes electric guitars from carbon fiber. They have better sustain than wooden guitars, and they don’t warp or crack, so they’re nearly maintenance-free. A company called Rainsong makes top-quality carbon acoustic guitars which have the same durability and stability advantages.

I love Gibson guitars, but the quality control has always been bad, and they are overpriced by a factor of at least two. I have been reluctant to try Asian instruments because of the poor quality of Japanese Martin clones. Nothing sounds worse than a Yamaha acoustic. But my Chinese Epiphone Riviera continues to amaze me. I think it’s probably much easier to make a good electric guitar, because so much depends on the electronics, and because you don’t have to worry so much about creating a perfect thin-shelled resonating cavity. I still don’t trust Asian acoustics, but my experience proves you can get a good electric guitar for almost nothing.

I think I can resist the temptation to try a $500 Epiphone Les Paul with P90s. But I’m not positive.

I’m still planning to get myself a really good electric for Elvis’s birthday. Currently, the Taylor T3B heads the list, but that could change at any minute.

I found a beautiful Gibson ES-125TDC online. There are still a lot of good ones out there, in excellent condition after forty years. This is the guitar George Thorogood uses. I’d love to get one and have a luthier fix all the Gibson glitches. One nice thing about buying a lightly used guitar right is that you can’t lose much money. In fact, you are nearly certain to make money on it, at least in numerical (not inflation-corrected) terms. My old J200 is worth maybe five times what I paid for it.

B.B. King is going well. It turns out playing the blues is very easy. Bluegrass makes both of my hands hurt, and it puts big calluses on my fingers, and it makes my elbow sore, but rock and blues music generally take much less speed, strength, and skill. There are new things I’m learning, but trust me, going from bluegrass to basic blues or basic rock is a joke, and going the other way would be like learning a whole new instrument. So bluegrass has turned out to be great preparation. And it’s not going to be hard to come up with original blues stuff. While I work on imitating the CD, I find that I don’t always like what B.B. does, so I throw in my own ideas, and they sound great.

I like the slow pace of the blues, because it gives me time to think about technique and shape the notes. As a bluegrass player, I am unable to force myself to accept sloppy playing, so I will not be happy unless I can play cleanly. Because the blues is slow, I can really polish up my technique and work on the subtleties.

The Riviera has a fantastic sound when you go up the neck and play slowly. I don’t know how it could sound or play any better. You get a lot for five hundred bucks these days.

I learned something surprising. I’m pretty sure about this. I put elevens on my Riviera because big strings sound better. Now when I try to follow the CD, I find that there are notes the guitar will not play. Apparently, when you bend a nine as far as you can, the pitch is higher than the pitch you get when you bend an eleven all the way. It’s not a question of strength. I can use two fingers to overcome the higher tension of the thicker string, and I can bend it to the limit, and it still doesn’t make the sound B.B. King’s string makes. So I may have to go down to tens.

I don’t know how much it matters. With an acoustic guitar, the strings determine how good the instrument sounds. With an electric guitar, you can fake up a good tone regardless of the string gauge. It’s cheating, but then so is using an amp.

My memory seems to be much better than it was back when I got frustrated with the piano. A few weeks back, I got the feeling that God was restoring my musical memory, and it seems to be true. I hope I can get it to work with the piano. Then I’ll be all set.

I’m wondering if I can start playing with some people from church. Suddenly, I know several excellent musicians. It would be great to see an improvement in worship music. People are playing a lot of good stuff these days, but the old songs are still the best, far and away. “Amazing Grace” is over two hundred years old, for example. Get on the web and check the publication dates of your favorite songs. You’ll see what I mean. We need people to start making music so good, it gets played on secular radio. We’ve had crossovers before, and we should be doing it all the time.

If you’re a musician, here is a tip. If your electronic tuner is more than a couple of years old, go to Guitar Center and get a $20 Korg. I got one because my Qwik Tune (fine tuner in its day) was slow and unreliable. The Korg is extremely sensitive and very fast, and it doesn’t limit you to E, A, D, G, B, and high E. You can tune your guitar any way you want. You can even use it for vocals.

I guess I’ll throw the Qwik Tune out. It’s not worth keeping or giving away. The batteries are big and expensive, and it doesn’t work well. Why would I keep it, when the 9-volt batteries cost 20% of the price of a new Korg that comes with fresh AAAs? Technological progress is funny; it generates antiques that are almost completely worthless.

My dreams are coming true. Hope yours are, too.

I Have This Situation Under Control

I have had some misgivings about studying ZZ Top in order to learn the blues. Some of their best stuff is not all that clean. “La Grange” is about a whorehouse. If that’s not bad enough, I’ve been working on “Tube Snake Boogie.”

While the songs are not optimal material, I did learn one thing from studying them: Hal Leonard’s Play-Along instruction books rock.

These books feature licensed material by popular artists, and the licks (supposedly) are accurately transcribed. A long time ago, I tried to learn some SRV stuff with a different book, and I’m just about positive the transcriptions were not merely wrong, but sometimes impossible to play. Apparently, I’m not the only one who has this problem, because these days, a lot of books are advertised as “recorded versions,” so people will know they’re not getting garbage somebody made up.

The Play-Along books come with CDs that have demo tracks plus tracks with the guitar removed. They give you software, too, so you can play the tracks any way you want. Fast. Slow. Whatever. You can loop stuff, too.

Today I blew the massive sum of $14.95 on the B.B. King book, and it’s fantastic. I’m working on “Sweet Sixteen.”

I’m learning some interesting stuff about B.B. King. Judging from the sounds he makes, he sometimes mutes strings with his pick. I know of no other way to produce the clipped notes he makes. You pick the string, bend it, and then bring the pick back and stop the vibration while the string is still bent.

If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but it works. The book doesn’t explain it; this is just me talking.

I thought the pickups on my Chinese Epiphone Riviera were not hot enough, but now that I’m doing this B.B. King stuff, they sound wonderful. Maybe I still don’t know how to work the amp. I think I’m cheating it by keeping the volume so low.

The guitar is still great.

I looked at one this morning, at the Hallandale Guitar Center. I think I got lucky with mine, because the one they had didn’t look as good. It had some revolting ripples where the neck joined the soundboard. Mine is not perfect in this area, but it’s way better than the other one.

I’m really looking forward to getting my Blueshawk back. Now that the electric guitar is finally working out for me, I want to see what it can do. The public rejected this guitar, but almost everyone who actually played one loved it.

Found another good deal on a resonator instrument.

I’ve been trying to learn some acoustic blues. I finally downloaded some lessons from a guy called Catfish Keith. His playing is wonderful. Unfortunately, he sounds pretty white when he sings. Anyway, as soon as I started working on one of his songs, I noticed one of the notes was just plain missing. I may be wrong about this, but it looks like his tablature is wrong.

This kind of thing irks me. When I wrote my cookbook, I made sure it worked. I only know of one recipe error in the whole thing, and it’s pretty obvious, so it’s not likely to hurt anyone. I don’t know why people who publish tablature can’t be more careful.

Check him out on Youtube.

I better get back to practicing. I have to leave before long. I made another Tower of Babel cake for church, and I have to bake garlic rolls for the Saturday night youth thing. That cake is a wonder.

Check out those Play-Along books. They’re a big help.

Who Are You People?

I haven’t updated in a while. What can I tell you? Life intrudes.

I seem to get more involved in church all the time, and music is also a factor. And increasingly, my Internet activities are directed toward the church these days. I set up a private forum for our Armorbearers, and I’m the administrator. We also have email accounts under our domain name.

It’s great to have a website where all the talk is centered around God, and we don’t have to worry about trolls and boors getting in. It has improved our communication tremendously. We don’t have a lot of time to get together when we’re not serving at church, so the forum allows us to get to know each other and brainstorm.

I would say “fellowship,” but that word always grates on my nerves. It makes hanging out sound like a chore. Like something you need lessons to do. And I don’t like using nouns as verbs. No one says, “My wife and I relationshipped last night.”

Jargon has a way of alienating people, and that’s the last thing Christians want to do. We’re trying to sell people the best product in existence. We don’t want to turn them off unnecessarily.

Music is going better and better. The Chinese guitar is still making me happy, although I am starting to realize the pickups are not great. I set my Strat up with elevens, and it feels wonderful and sounds great, but the same strings don’t sound as “hot” on the Riviera. I might go crazy and buy some Lollars eventually. I’m not the first one to be disappointed in this guitar’s pickups.

It’s exciting to be getting to the point where I can tell good pickups from bad ones.

The Strat has Fender Texas Special pickups, and they sound wonderful. I don’t know whether the American Roadhouse Strat was popular when it came out, but it’s awfully similar to the SRV clone they put out, and that guitar was supposed to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan’s.

I almost bought a resonator guitar. I found a fantastic Ebay deal. Luckily for me, I got outsniped. Otherwise it would be on the way.

Why do I want a resonator guitar? Because I want to take my banjo skills and apply them to the guitar. You can do this with an electric guitar, but it seems more natural with a resonator guitar. I already have the picks; I even have an old blues book. Fingerpicks can do things a flatpick can’t do, and vice-versa. There is no point in limiting myself when I already have the fundamental training.

It turns out there is a good music store in Naples. I guess that’s two hours away. They sell National Guitars. Maybe when I get a few blues numbers working, I’ll head out there and see what they have. I like the wood-body sound. They make a big guitar called the El Trovador, and the sound is wonderful. Another model, the Estralita, is also easy on the ear. There is no point in trying to find a good music store in Miami. This city is allergic to sophistication and culture. Like I always say, we don’t even have LATIN culture. If Andres Segovia lived here, he would have to work at Burger King. This is a city of Fender Squiers and cheap electric pianos.

Another discovery: Beard Guitars. They make great resonator models. They lean toward the Dobro, however. I’ve never been a big bluegrass Dobro fan. Purists would hang me for saying this, but bluegrass uses short notes, and that doesn’t work with a Dobro. Why buy an instrument with tremendous sustain, when every song you play is made up of eighth notes?

Check out this video. It shows what a Dobro can do if you don’t clip the notes.

I’ve seen some of that guy’s other videos, and he’s not a virtuoso, so presumably, he is only beginning to tap the instrument’s potential here.

To me, sustain means versatility. You can play short notes on a Dobro, but you can’t play long notes on a banjo.

I still have my old flamenco guitar. Maybe it would be a good choice for learning acoustic blues, until I’m good enough to know what to upgrade to.

I need to start writing new music down. I’m keeping up with bluegrass, mainly for the exercise, and it’s extremely easy to write tablature for it. Sometimes a new arrangement will go shooting through my head, and it’s like having a subway train go by six inches in front of my face. I have to write this stuff down.

I don’t know how often I’ll blog from now on. It’s great to be out of the political snakepit.

God’s Own Cake and the Devil’s Music

I took the Tower of Babel cake to church to get rid of it. It was a great success. Now they want more. I have piles of bananas scattered on the kitchen counter, fresh from the trees in my yard. I guess I’ll freeze what I can’t cook immediately and put the rest in cakes.

My nam wa banana tree finally produced. The bananas are very nice. They’re finger-sized bananas, but they’re not like the lemony guineos we always have in the markets in Miami. They’re very sweet, and they have a smooth texture. It’s a little like banana ice cream.

God keeps working in my life. Last week I led some of the armorbearers on the first Armorbearer Freedom Fast, and Mike joined in. Some of us were fasting to beat gluttony. I was fasting in support of the others. Mike called and said he went to a restaurant after the fast and ordered a kid’s portion. He couldn’t face a regular-size meal. In the past, it has always been hard for Mike to face regular-sized meals, but that was because they were too small. His new attitude is incredible.

I worked at church on Sunday, and when I left at nearly 4 p.m., I hadn’t eaten anything except a piece of cake. I didn’t want more food, but I made myself stop at Five Guys. I got a bacon cheeseburger, Cajun fries, and a large Coke. I ate two thirds of the burger and a third of the fries. I drank half of the Coke. I threw everything else out. I didn’t want it. Today I went to breakfast with my dad, and I left a fourth of my nova bagel on the plate. Not bad. My Armorbearer friend who was fasting because of his weight said he tried to eat something he usually enjoys, and it made him sick, so he couldn’t do it.

Fasting works. My pants and belts do not lie. We are getting supernatural results. And my dad is witnessing all of it, which is also great. One day, we’ll get him.

Church continues to amaze me. I keep meeting extraordinary people there. One of the new Armorbearers is a drummer. His name is Travis. I started talking to him yesterday. I asked him if the drums were his only instruments. He said he played TWELVE, and he listed them. And he said he played them WELL, so apparently it’s not like Prince, who claims he can play forty but probably includes instruments that made noises because he accidentally sat on them in the studio.

I know everyone thinks Prince is a genius. When I see him do something that indicates talent, I will agree. So far, all I’ve seen are weak pop tunes. And he holds a purple guitar sometimes. Wait. I think it’s white. Anyway, I haven’t heard any solos yet.

Travis got a full scholarship to college, based on his ability. That’s what he does now. He said it was largely based on his sight-reading skills. He actually knows who my trombone-virtuoso cousin is, which is astonishing.

So now we have two professional musicians in the group, and they’re not three-chord wonders or rappers. They are real musicians.

The other musician, Zachary, is trying to find a hundred-watt tube amp he can afford. He said he would consider building one, if he had the skills. I used to build temperature and current controls for diode lasers in college, and I have a ton of tools. He sent me links to some sites that have amp plans. Interesting.

One of the guys bought a Bushmaster AR-15. He brought it in for us to look at. We were handing it around and admiring it in a back room. I said, “You know, church has CHANGED since I was a kid.” That cracked Travis up.

My music is going really well. The bluegrass is coming up to speed. My left hand has only had five weeks to get strong, and that’s not enough. When I use a capo (makes fretting easier), I get a taste of what my playing will be like in another month or two. I plan to continue playing bluegrass, simply because it’s great for my technique and it’s wasteful to throw away a whole genre you’ve already learned.

I was suffering with online blues lessons, but I couldn’t take it any more. I got a ZZ Top book, and I started working on “Tube Snake Boogie.” I realize this is not good music for a Christian to work on, but hear me out. The guitar stuff is all blues-based, and it’s HOT. It will get me into electric blues via the side door, and it will help me get familiar with my instruments and amps. I don’t plan to sing this filth in the sanctuary.

I struggled for a week, but today I got it working. I put new strings on my flamenco guitar (like a classical guitar, with a cutaway and a different sound), and I started using it for practice. This is much easier on me than my dreadnought and heavy hollowbody. It allows me to practice pretty painlessly. I actually got through the first page and a half.

I may get hollered at for saying it, but so far, as I expected, this stuff is a complete joke compared to bluegrass. True, you have to go up the neck more, but so what? I’m using elevens, and the guitar’s action is very light. I’m playing at half the speed of bluegrass (or less), the strings are kinder to my hands, and the licks are child’s play. The only real problems are getting used to playing over pickups and coping with the light strings. When you’re used to blasting thirteens at maybe eight notes a second, you can barely feel elevens.

When I used to try to play Stevie Ray Vaughan material, it was difficult, but then he played very fast, and he didn’t cheat by using his left hand to play the notes. He did it just like a bluegrass guitarist.

I’ve noticed that some rock guitarists play runs that seem very fast, but their right hands aren’t keeping up with the notes. Evidently, you can effectively double your speed by hammering on and pulling off and bending the strings with your left hand, between right-hand notes. I wonder how many of these guys could cope with bluegrass. I know some of them have been there; Steve Morse does both styles.

I had a feeling this would turn out to be easy, simply because I know the kind of people who play rock. They are not known for being industrious. Rock guitar isn’t about artistry and sacrifice. It’s about looking cool and attracting shallow women so you can fornicate. That’s what got Pete Townshend started. I know there must be many rock guitarists who woodshed all the time and aren’t afraid of difficult material, but a lot of this stuff appears to be based on using two fingers, the way you might when you’re stoned in the back of a tour bus. And everyone loves nines, and I don’t think that’s totally based on professionalism. It just might have something to do with lack of character, in some cases.

When you play an electric guitar, the gadgetry does a whole lot of the work. It’s pretty cushy compared to killing yourself to get music out of an acoustic.

I look forward to getting a grip on this form of music, and then I want to do a reverse Ray Charles. I want to use bluesy sounds to make music for God. I know you’re supposed to go the other way, ripping off gospel and using it to play secular music. I don’t see why I can’t turn the tables.

I’m glad I held onto that flamenco guitar.

Tisha B’Av is about to start, so if you’re fasting in sympathy with Israel and the Jews, it’s time to get on it.

Life is wonderful.

Should be Followed With a Flood of Coffee

The Tower of Babel cake is a success, with qualifications.

It has a little too much nutmeg in it, and I have to be careful to make sure the next one cooks through and isn’t too wet. Other than that, it is a tour de force. Terrifying. Everything goes together perfectly. It’s so good, I am getting rid of it. Tonight I’m dividing it up at church.

It’s so rich, a slice about one and a quarter inches thick at the big end is all you need. But you will eat a second slice anyway.

…And it Confused Their Tongues

I just learned that I do not know how to frost a cake. Nonetheless, this may be the best thing I have ever eaten in my life. I call it the Tower of Babel cake, because no man should have this much power!

So far I’ve just eaten scraps I had to trim off. I have to wait until it chills to give it a definitive test drive.

Beware the Frosting of the Pharisees.

Here is what I am baking right now.

Two cakes, made from banana nut bread. The bottom one is also a pineapple upside-down cake. Stack them and cover them with carrot cake icing. Decorate with mandarin orange slices soaked in Grand Marnier.

Is that scary, or what? Don’t even try to tell me these wacky ideas don’t come from God.

Fast Over

This morning, my church’s Armorbearers ended a two-day fast. I wrote about it earlier.

Man, do I feel better. Some people say they feel closer to God during a fast. I feel farther away. I get a headache. I feel depressed. It’s pretty bad. I always look forward to the renewed sensation of his presence that comes when I finally eat.

Last night, I felt a powerful sensation of faith as I ended the day in prayer, but that’s not the same as feeling God’s presence. Imagine you’re in prison. This is the difference between a visit and receiving a care package. The care package is great, but you still want the visit.

I hope this fast accomplished things. The person who got it going is a fellow AB with a bad weight problem. I would really like to see him get free. I would like to see the others get free, too, and I would like a renewal of my own weight-loss miracle, as well as better discipline to handle things like lust and covetousness.

The fast was not fun. On the first day, I noticed it was hard to practice the guitar because my hands were weak. On the second day, I decided to skip practice. My arm was sore anyway, so it needed the rest. I had a nutritious Pop Tart breakfast today, but I am still not 100%.

Through an interesting set of circumstances, I learned about a great Christian singer yesterday. Her name is Grace Williams. I won’t bother you with the details, but I came across her on TV, and it turned out I had an unopened Grace Williams CD in my house, so I played it.

It’s wonderful stuff. As music per se, I would not call it great art, but as music intended to help you get in touch with God, it’s first-rate. It’s what Enya might have done, had she been a Christian.

Grace Williams says she startled her family by praying and singing in tongues at a very early age, and she says this is the “new song” the Bible mentions prophetically. I was startled. I have had the same idea run through my mind. Ever since our church’s Rendezvous conference a while back, I have had the ability to sing in the Spirit. It’s very strange. When I’m at church, I just open my mouth, and I automatically get harmony. Very helpful, since I can never learn all the words to the songs they play. It brings a powerful sense of peace and God’s presence.

Here is what Psalm 40 says:

1 I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

3 And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.

We tend to dash right by language like that, assuming it’s just intended to be flowery and poetic, but it has to have a real meaning. God does not flap his lips just to hear his head roar. His word does not return to him void. Every word means something. If the Psalms say there is a new song that will convert people and make them believers, it has to be true, and I very much doubt that David was referring to the Psalms themselves. Nobody every listened to Psalm 40 and “feared” because of it and “trusted in the Lord.” It’s a fine psalm, but it’s not that fine. If God led David to say this about Psalm 40, God exaggerated, and he does not do that.

I’m assuming David wrote this psalm, because he wrote so many. I don’t know that he wrote this one. Whoever it was, God spoke through him.

The rabbi of a nearby Messianic synagogue wants to go shooting with us and get our help in forming an armorbearer squad. Pretty cool. Hope that happens in a week or two.

Life is good. I can’t wait for lunch.

Pass the Perrier

My big mouth has gotten me in real trouble.

Last year, after a two-day fast, I found I had been delivered from overeating. I lost between 25 and 30 pounds, with virtually no effort. I kept telling everyone at my church, hoping I could get them to try to get the same kind of miracle.

This week, a friend called me up and said he was sick of his weight problem. I told him what I knew, and I suggested he pick a couple of days to fast and pray. And a horrible realization came over me. I was going to have to fast with him.

Arrgghh.

I notified my pastor, purely for selfish reasons. I knew people would hear about the fast, and if it worked, they would want the same thing. Then I’d have to fast with THEM. I figured if I notified the pastor, he would spread the word, and we would get people on board now instead of later, saving me fasts. Instead, his text response went like this: “I’m in!”

Okay.

I let the Armorbearers know, figuring some of them might have bad habits they wanted to drop. Now I have a total of five people (me included) doing the fast. We quit eating last night, and we won’t eat again (except for communion) until Friday morning. We are allowed ZERO calories. Our pastor has to quit at 6 p.m. on Thursday due to social obligations.

Each of us has to pray in the Spirit for at least three consecutive minutes both days. We have to spend at least half an hour alone with God on each day, confessing that overeating (or whatever we’re trying to beat) is a sin, and that we can’t defeat it on our own, and that we repent and want his help.

I hope this works. Although that would pretty much guarantee more fasts in the future.

I went to our private forum and posted this:

Romans 6:5-14 (New King James Version)

5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

I think God is more willing to bless people who have self-control. Giving good stuff to people who can’t control themselves is like giving loaded pistols to three-year-olds. I got free of gluttony, and suddenly, I found myself cooking in a big commercial kitchen and getting lots of recognition for it. My guess is that God is more likely to give good spouses to people who have conquered lust, and that he is more likely to give prosperity to people who have beaten covetousness and greed. If these ideas are right, fasting is pretty important.

Wish us luck, and get on the bandwagon if you want.

Scope Advice

One of the Armorbearers at my church is very gung-ho about shooting and other AB stuff. In fact, if he were any more gung-ho, I would suggest he change his radio call sign to “Francis.”

See the movie Stripes if you don’t get the joke.

He wants advice on scoping an AR-15 rifle. I don’t know what to tell him. I assume he will want something useful for self-defense, not varminting.

Help a bruhhh out.