Driving home today, thinking about a long time ago and the various selves I have shed along the way, I spent some time thinking about one particular self I once draped over me like a blanket: the folksinger. I had no authentic identity to speak of back then, but folksinger was a good approximation, and I was Chris the musician back in Buffalo, at least as much as I was Chris the anti-war activist and Chris the philogynist.
I gave up that identity when I moved out here in 1982, though: Elissa had brisk and unkind words for me whenever I’d play or sing, and a few weeks of that was sufficient to get me to stop altogether. I never picked it all the way back up again after she left: there are enough people in my life who groan audibly when a guitar-playing singer is not Richard Thompson that I’d pretty much rather indulge in recreational dermabrasion than play at parties anymore.
Becky’s not among those people, nor am I, but between the lack of strict deadlines involved in desultory, private playing and my distractability, I go months sometimes without picking up the guitar. It’s been a year or more. The calluses are gone from my left hand.
But I resolved tonight on the way home to pull the guitar out of its case, and I did. The rabbit watched me. The guitar wasn’t too far out of tune, surprisingly. The sixth string was a note and a half low, but everything else was within a quarter tone. It took maybe a minute to get it right, and much of that was time spent figuring out there was a flat pick wedged between the strings. The harmonics in line, I strummed a soft A minor.
There was an abrupt, solid thump, and the sound of nails on hardwood as Thistle dove beneath the couch. He stomped the floor down under there a couple times for good measure.
Everybody’s a critic.
Oh, Chris, I’m so sorry.
Personally, I love A minor…
At least he didn’t piss in your guitar case.
Ron, you have to tell that story now.
Oh, Thistle.
Tell it, Ron?
Good grief, hasn’t anybody told you?
Herbivores HATE the minor keys.
You must stick with C, F, and G major,
the all-American triad of safe chordery.
If you had blundered into E minor it
would be another “Night of the Lepus.”
Translation from the Lagomorphese
As good as you are with words, why not try writing some songs? I found that doing so really changed the whole nature of my involvement with folk music. It’s a lot more engaging than just rehashing other people’s music.
I was going to say it was the A minor. Lagomorphs know foreboding when they hear it…
OK.
When I met Joe 34 years ago, it was by crashing at his place. (Remember crashing, all you ol’ hippies? The rest of you: It means sleeping a day or several on some stranger’s floor or couch; people generally knew who would be open to that.)
Another crasher was a friend of one of Joe’s housemates. Jim was an aspiring folksinger-songwriter whose main virtue was always having a joint to share. This was the guy who was babysitting another friend’s two-year-old and brought her back and handed her to me when she filled her diaper rather generously. I was the nearest female, see. (Joe won my heart, among other times, when he pitched right in to help clean the kid up.) Jim was entertaining enough, but it was mostly friendly patience that got us to sit through it all when he put on a Yes LP and talked his way through an imaginary animation based on it—“real”-time, both sides. “And then the camera zooms in on the glowing planet…”
One night Jim came back from a really bad open-mic show in San Francisco. The crowd was hostile and stingy; the guy onstage before him wouldn’t leave and had to be dragged off physically; he’d broken not one but two guitar strings; he didn’t even break even on bus fare: no tips. He was feeling sorry for himself. Can’t say I blamed him.
Jim sat down, opened his guitar case, took out his guitar and replaced a string; tuned it and started plucking desultorily at one of his own compositions.
Joe’s tortoiseshell cat Bernie came indoors via her usual route, the kitchen window. She walked into the living room, looked at everyone in turn, walked across the floor, stepped into Jim’s guitar case and pissed in it.
It was a small apartment, and it was really hard for all the rest of us to get out of the room fast enough to find a place to break down laughing, not in Jim’s face. He just sat there with his mouth open for a long long time.
Ron, if the Yes LP wasn’t “Close To The Edge”, it should have been.
Bernie!
If you blew a smoky chord on a harmonica, my old Ranger would automatically turn his nose up to the sky, purse his dog lips, and let out with a long, vibrating croon.
It was so great, just remembering it makes me smile.
A rabbit’s thumping ... that’s just about in the same league. I’d give a lot to see a video of you playing guitar and Thistle reacting.
Not a music story, but 23 years ago, my large male tomcat pissed in my baby’s diaper bag, about three weeks after she was born! I mean, he had to have CRAWLED IN THERE to do it! (And he had never done anything like that before!)
“Here’s what I think of that new small human!”
ron, that’s an amazing story….
one of our cats reacts to christmas by selecting flat wrapped boxes to pee on. [nothing says “happy holidays” like trying to salvage a pee-soaked gift.] with this cat, i don’t think she’s being critical of the holiday; i suspect she thinks the holiday is all about her, giving her great items on which to pee.
maybe thistle wants to play percussion in your clarke family living room band?
My guinea pig likes certain noises and will chuckle when he hears them. Music seems to include many of those triggers, and I’ve noticed that he especially enjoys Cher.
Maybe you can experiment and see if Thistle responds positively to any certain style of music? Although, I’m definitely not recommending that you learn Cher songs just to appease the critter.
He’s a big fan of baroque violin, actually.
“I gave my love a cherry that had no stone ... “
Many years ago was at the dog park with, who else?, my dog. Sunny day. The City of San Francisco, at the hectoring of dog owners, had replanted a nice patch of grass beneath the peak at Corona Heights upon or around which dogs gamboled, ran, wrestled, fetched, sniffed, humped, etc. Dog owners/partners/soul spirits talked, laughed, threw balls, picked up poo.
All was very right with the world.
Then a moderately scruffy, clearly attempting-to-keep-it-real type (ie bearded, tie-dyed, keffiyeh-bedraped) entered the park. He was carrying a long stick or tube. ‘Bout the thickness of a human arm. Dark.
Said guy found a spot in the shade. Sat down. Got arranged. Put the tube to his mouth and ...
... every dog in the park froze. I mean stopped dead, glued-to-the-spot, gravity-turned-on-high, velco-on-paws halted, ceased, abandoned whatever they were doing, stopped. Then they turned towards the guy playing the didjeridu. And attacked.
Well, they didn’t really attack. As a pack they just ran up to and surrounded the guy and barked at him furiously.
Perhaps the only time I’ve ever exactly known what my dog—as well as every other dog in the park—wanted. And more proof that music may not, in fact, have any damn effect on savage beasts, er, breasts, oh nevermind ...
Soitnly, i LOVE that.
=v= A minor? Heck, even I can play that. So, were you doing “Blackbird,” or possibly “Freebird?”
My guitar callouses are long gone too, and my nails are both too long and too short for fingerpicking. But every now and then I go up and strum a little bit, just to reassure the guitar it’s not forgotten. b, our cat, mostly just stares, head cocked. Given that she’s pretty vocal about things she dislikes, I suppose that’s a good sign.
Recorders, on the other hand, are a cat’s worst nightmare, especially the higher-toned one. Playing a soprano recorder is a very effective way to get a cat to leave a room.
Mixed reactions ensue from playing The Jingle Cats Christmas album, which consists of cat sounds remastered into holiday carols.
Re: cat piss - the awfulness of cat pee is something that my father has a long-running rant about. His favorite detail is the way a couple of metal slide boxes ended up with stripped paint as a result of having been pissed on (the slides, luckily, were okay). Either that or the one time one of the cats decided that the box of records for the yearly taxes would make a good target. I think Dad’s still hoping that he gets audited for that year!
That same Bernie cat (full name: Bernadette Devlin) had opinions about harmonica, too. Or maybe she just wanted to help. Now and then the guy I rode out here with, a friend’s brother’s friend who I haven’t seen since, would sit down and play Jim’s harmonica. FBF didn’t like cats.
You can see where this is going.
Invariably, Bernie would go jump in FBF’s lap and start mouthing the outfacing side of the harmonica. Bugged the hell out of FBF of course. I think she was trying to put the poor howling critter he had in his mouth out of its misery, myself.
Just to tie all the current events up here: The friend whose brother’s friend this was (have I lost you yet?) got an African gray parrot as a wedding gift. This bird was fairly nuts, but/and had definite musical preferences. It would scream loudly at Joan Baez; it would dance enthusiastically and right on the beat to Santana.
philogynist. Snort. Giggle. I knew your type.
My good ol’ coonhound would make like a war dog (bristling, baying, looking for the Sassenach) whenever my brother-in-law played his bagpipes. And he’s a good piper.
A minor? He no doubt thought you were going to play “Stairway,” which explains the diving and the stomping.
My dog Fluff is apparently pagan. The local public radio station used to play Handel’s Messiah every year during Thanksgiving weekend (just once, not over and over). I love the Hallelujah Chorus, so cranked up the stereo when it was time. Fluff started to howl, and she is not a howler. I turned the volume down, but she continued to howl. Once the HC was over, she settled down again.
She also dislikes the theme to NPR’s Fresh Air.
Kabbage! How the hell are ya?
I just howl at how whatsherface says, “Fresh Air.”
Here’s 2 music stories for you—they just haven’t coincided with pet stories…
A friend was starting (first 5 seconds, right at the start) a solo show of guitar, vocals and video and someone from the small crowd of mostly friends called out, “Free Bird!” So he jokingly strummed the first chord and broke a string. He says he deserved it for doing such a thing. I figure it saved him a broken string later when it mattered more.
A roommate in college (Berkeley) had himself a little part-time job helping out a private detective. One day as he was driving, following a suspected cheatin’ spouse who was notoriously hard to follow, the following happened. He was listening to classical music, and had a mini-cassette recorder going so he could make notes of what was going on. He crashed (fender-bender, no injuries) and played me back the tape of the event later, having a good laugh. You see, the music crescendos, is silent, then hits the final cadence, and he couldn’t have timed his crash any better.
The tape goes like this:
ba-Ba-BA-BOMP! rrrtpkshsh ah, Shit! BA-DUMMMMMMMM!
Fluff started to howl, and she is not a howler
My impression is that howling is not canine criticism. Seems to be more of a joining-in thing.
When I indulge in guitar-whanging, my cats settle for giving me vaguely worried looks and then sitting with their backs to me, at least thirty feet away. They like EmmyLou better than Joni (judging by rate of tail twitch).