Friday, September 30, 2011

Rock 'n roll fantasy (or something)

Some of the happiest moments of my life have come while playing music. I was never a particularly good musician, but for the few years I was the drummer in a garage band with some friends (back in the '90s) I could at least keep a beat. I was never motivated enough to devote the time it would take to be really good at it, but it was about having fun, not about being able to quit our day jobs. Also, lugging a full drum kit to gigs is a pain.

That doesn't stop me from having little fantasies about having a band where I'd be good enough and motivated enough, typically while I'm brushing my teeth. Nothing makes songs pop to mind like being at the bathroom sink with that toothbrush in my mouth.

Let's not dwell on that statement.

A recurrent thought I've had when ruminating in this fantasy music world is having a cover band where we'd do reinterpretations of songs that are kind of cheesy but also pretty good. What I've worked out in my mind is a medley of Journey's "Separate Ways", transitioning from the bridge of that into Loverboy's "Working For the Weekend", and then after a verse and chorus of that moving to Night Ranger's "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" (with the keyboard riff from "Separate Ways" as a coda). But the thing is: It would be done to an up-tempo ska beat, at the meter of the Dead Kennedys "Holiday In Cambodia".

("Holiday In Cambodia", by the way, gets paired up with Judas Priest's "Breakin' the Law" in a separate medley my theoretical cover band does in its set, but that's another story.)

I've ran through the whole thing, arrangements and all, in my mind (although I don't know how to write music so I cannot actually work that part out). The thing is: I grasp that no other musicians would be likely to think that's a good idea. Further, I fail to see how that would find an audience (especially in the sort of bars where cover bands play). But that doesn't stop my mind from thinking of it. Over and over.

This is why I need to watch TV; it occupies my brain so these things don't come in there. Or at least so they don't come back.

I just need to install a TV next to the bathroom sink. There isn't room for a drum kit...

~

Being good at playing music is not requisite to enjoy it; it's merely requisite for anyone else to enjoy it.

1 comment:

  1. That sounds really cool - I love all those bands. Journey/Foreigner/Night Ranger are on tour but I decided to skip it, since I have the albums anyway and I'm getting too old to care about concerts. But you're the next mashup king on YouTube! Many artists make their living at it in clubs. Links for you:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28music%29
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlFdjOa5TEo
    http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_to_mash_up_your_music

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