Tell a Story, Sing a Song

If there are any Official Secrets to Music, these are they:

1.   Tell a Story — this simply means any story about the simple nursery song that you’ve selected for this exercise (such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, or “Jack & Jill” or “Sing a Song of Sixpence” — any story will do, including that there isn’t one, ie; a rambling exploration of random notes and measures. Usually it means a story, pure & simple, describing the song’s major points, such as the fact that the farmer lived in a dell, had a wife, many chicks, ducks, geese, horses, cattle, swine, and a couple of wild and crazy dogs with a penchant for handouts. A story like that generally begins with a beginning, goes on a while in the middle, and stops at the end. The MIDDLE part is generally about the obstruction, the pain, the misery or the angst of it all. A typical song story is “my baby done left me”, whether you hear it in blues, folk, pop, ballad, country-western, jazz or classical, it’s always about relationships of one kind or another. That’d be human/human (read as: “human over human”) and bottle/human and a whole chain of seductions that read more or less the same. The story is told verbally before the instrument is sounded. The STORY should NOT take more than 1 minute to tell, especially the “Boy Meets Girl, Girl Gets Drownded, Boy Gets Hanged sort of murder-ballad you’ll find commonly in folk music.

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Don’t Change How You Play

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ej at red house 1971 — photo by T. Jones

I’ve developed a method for playing guitar that allows you to play very sophisticated and difficult scales without having to learn new chords or retrain your fingers. You’ll use the following chords: E, Em, E7, A, Am, A7, B7, to play in almost all the keys. You will instantly be able to fake solo leads using my simple lead chart. You can’t make a mistake, there’s nothing to go wrong. Total simplicity is the key to this easy to learn guitar cheat. In addition, I’ve developed backing tracks that allow you to remain at your present undeveloped skill level while still sounding absolutely pro. You can use this for holiday gatherings, and blow the minds of friends and family with your apparent skills at blues, jazz, hip-hop, ballad, pop, dance, rock, r&b, latin, reggae, folk, bluegrass, fusion, country and more!!! Each backing track CD has an entire show of about a dozen tunes, and you’ll sound incredible on ALL of them, I guarantee it! You can order the CDs now — see the titles above to order. The CDs will be available in a few days. Download options are being explored even as we speak. Oh, I almost forgot to mention it, but I have a set of backing tracks that will make you sound like the greatest jazz and blues flute player on the planet. Coming soon, a set of backing tracks that will make you sound like the greatest blues harp player in the Western Rim of the Galaxy Milky Way (strictly a local name — we Outer Limits Folks (OLFs) refer to your galaxy as “Shnarg”. I won’t translate, for fear of reprisals.

See You At The Top!!!

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Elvis Sighting at Prosperity Ashram

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Elvis was at Club Oz last night; he sang several songs from the Angel Songbook, with which he is now very familiar. You can get his autograph most any night at Club Oz, but it’s not just Elvis — there are so many famous people here. You know, on This Side of the Veil, we get our pick of FDPs — Formerly Dead Performers. They appear here most every night, and respond well to audience requests, and at Gorby’s Place, you can hear Yma Sumac and Dave van Ronk on today’s performing schedule. You can find out more about the performances at the Ashram by living here. Meditation Pagodas are available with a $30 per month support pledge, but not many are left, the space is limited — we can only accommodate 100 avatars in each of the sims — we have two full sims atm — and work-space, healing space, meditation space, darshan space and population space are going fast. Be sure to ask about our upcoming “Come As You Were” Reincarnation Party. If you’ve never been reincarnated, you’re the only one so far. All the rest of us Bohdisattvas are on the Recycle Cycle, where all the Work is!!!

See You At The Top!!!

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World’s Worst Pop Albums???

World’s Worst Pop Albums? Easy answer, but each genre has its very own. However, I have a few examples to offer — at the very top of the list is one of my closest friends in 1966-69, Wildman Larry Fischer, who appears with Frank Zappa, his mentor and producer:

And then there was the inimitable and thoroughly “Star Quality” diva of the 1960s,

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