Part 26
It’s all rock and roll to me – part 26
Mosquito man plugged his guitar into the Fender Twin with a loud “crack”. ” Sorry about that” he chimed. He swizzled a few nobs and before you could say Jimi Hendrix he was tapping and strutting his fingers all over the fretboard. It was pretty standard to have a conversation while all this was going on. ” What did you do on the weekend?” (WWeeeee WWEEEE bad da do dup whhhhhaaaaaa..) “practiced 10 hours a day” (Woo woo dodo bar dup ba dup)… stupid question.
Mosquito men have long been abundant in the music industry. Eddie Van Halen, Steve Morse and Yngwie Johann Malmsteen. ‘ Mosquito’ is a private term that I give to anyone who can play an electric guitar so fast that at times it sounds like a mosquito buzzing around your ears. Malmsteen is right up there as perhaps the King and while I’m not an initiate of guitar hero heaven, I must say that Malmsteen can play astonishingly fast and yet you can distinguish each note – the man is frightening.
So I have a mosquito man of my own in my new original band. He’s just warming up while the drummer and bass player are setting up in the other corner. The drummer and bass player have come as a set and the’d been working together for a while which is great because the rhythm section is really got to hang together. Bass man and mosquito man really hit it off as they were both musical geeks and loved getting into the technical side of things… modes, techniques and fretboard speed.
The drummer was old by our standards (early 30s) and is living the Brady Bunch dream. He’s teamed up with a woman with a bunch of children and added them to his bunch of children and all up there are nine children.
The drummer and bass player had recently split from a band that had been touring around with a female lead singer and lead guitarist. Unfortunately they bought quite a lot of emotional baggage with them as I think they’d felt a bit hard done by in the previous band. They kept on banging on about constructive criticism. Crickey, what does that mean?? If you’ve got something to say, that’s just going to make things better, then just say it. For example, if something is out of tune or out of time – it’s got to be fixed. If you’ve got something to say, that’s just an opinion, then be prepared to compromise. For example, if you don’t particularly like the song, it doesn’t necessarily follow that that song will be dropped. You can’t have everybody happy 100% of the time, because everyone’s got a different needs and desires – so it’s virtually impossible.
In the early days of ‘band marriage’ I was like a wide eyed bride. This was my first original band and I promised to love, honour and learn a few interesting lessons on the way.
More to come.,
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