I'm retiring

I'm retiring. From performing and writing music, and from writing.  I'm done, exhauseted. I want to sleep and eat and watch the San Francisco Giants.  However, I am not retiring from promoting The Show!  I'm going to keep promoting that bitch voraciously.   You can't keep me off those bases. I'm going to steal second and third. And The Show! is going to pop.

But as far as my own music is concerned, I'm done. I played Second Sundays on Sunday and sucked.  I tried to play Bob Dylan's, "Like a Rolling Stone," Bob Marley's, "Stir It Up," and Bruce Springsteen's, "I'm On Fire".  I absolutely butchered Like a Rolling Stone.  I took a friendly cow and slaughtered it, thrashed about with my voice off key, off pitch, in the wrong neighborhood, samurai'ing the friendly cow, sliced lower intestines and blood everywhere.

Yes, you could argue Bob Dylan does the same thing, but I am not Bob Dylan.  Mine was just bad.  It was kindof of a self-fulling prophecy. No, let me re-phrase that. I didn't practice enough.  I didn't prepare enough.  And yes, it's both ambitious and insane to play what many believe to be the greatest rock song ever.  But you gotta do it, right? Wrong.  At least learn to play the chords right, and sing in key, and not suck.  The other two songs got progressively better.  I'm On Fire was okay, and Stir It Up was decent.  With Stir It Up, I didn't try to sound like Bob Marley, and I actually thought I sang well.  I love that song so much.  I just love that song.

And I'm done as a writer. It's too hard, and I can't deal with any type of critical feedback. I'm soft, like the belly of a whale.  Writing is too hard. You have to do TWO drafts.  That's just too hard.  Call me what you like, but I'm retiring.

I've had a great run.  I've been published in the Albany Patch.  You can actually link to my articles just over there, to the right, on this page.  And I've got another article in the hopper, all ready to go.  Just waiting on my editor to give it the green light. I'm hoping before 2013.

Musically, I'm an award winning performer at Second Sundays.  They love me there. I'm absolutely critical to the ongoing success of Second Sundays.  They gave me the Best Supporting Performer award. In all seriousness, I got a small, plastic, director's bull horn, non-amplified. That was the award.  It said my name on it and it said Best Supporting Actor or Performer, I don't remember which. But the point is I've had great success.  It's time to hang up the cleats.

I may come out of retirement at some point.  But right now, I'm done.  I'm just too tired to play music.  And writing is just too hard, any writer will tell you that.

I love you, from the depths of my failures,
Anthony

I love this soooooooooooooooooooo much:

Bob Marley - "Stir It Up"