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"

Inchoate

I have it.  I finally found the right perspective, the right way to view, the right way to think about my musical output.  I can see from the correct place and interpret correctly.  I am a beginner. I am learning how to play the guitar and sing.  What an epiphany! So the musical outputs I publish are the sounds of a beginner learning to sing and play the guitar.  One could question the use of the word "learning" as no one is "teaching" and learning implies getting better.  I have to assume that by playing and singing I will get a little better over time.  It is in this brilliant new light, from this brilliant new perspective that I offer yet another recording from my iPhone.  It bears no title, simply the words given to it by my iPhone, "Memo-1".  What perfect language! So completely apropos!  It's not even a song, only a memo, just a brief note of little to no consequence in the organization of music.

In the memo below, I am riffing, if one were to be so generous, off of one of my favorite tunes, Stir It Up by Bob Marley and The Wailers.  Peep the guitar solo at the end (oh shit, he didn't.  yes he did.):

Memo-1

The word inchoate comes to mind.  Inchoate (from the Oxford English Dictionary): "Just begun, incipient; in an initial or early stage; hence elementary, imperfect, underdeveloped, immature."

I'd like to highlight "elementary, imperfect, underdeveloped, immature."  I like how the OED ends the definition with a period.  Nice emphasis, like you really suck, boom! period. Done.

I provide you fair reader/listener with a subaltern sample of my inchoate musical transgressions.  There may be some pain involved, you may feel pain and embarrassment listening to these inchoate transgressions.  It may hurt to hear someone you love in the throws of shame.  But are we not a species that takes great pleasure in pain?  Are not the things that hurt us the things that we love, sometimes become desperate for, the most?  Do we watch the train wreck?

Yes, we watch the train wreck and the bodies squished in the steel, and we listen to the music of a broken Ferris wheel, screeching to a halt (chocolate malts!).  Thanks to George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bridge-builder.

I wanted to mention a couple other things tonight, totally unrelated.

1. I love Cal Bears Football.  I have since I was born.  Both of my parents graduated from Cal.  My father taught me the love of Cal Bear Football (and Basketball) when I was still a babe in arms.  I remember being four years old, sitting on a Cal blanket in the pre-game afternoon sun on the sloping lawn just west of the Faculty Club.  Growing up a Cal Football fan has taught me a great deal about failure and disappointment, in many, many different varieties.  But we do have The Play, and for that I am forever grateful.

2. I love the San Francisco Baseball Giants.  I have to admit my love was renewed last September and October when the pure magic transpired and the Giants actually won the World Series.  These are the halcyon days of San Francisco.  But I am not a bandwagon jumper in the absolute.  Robby Thompson was my favorite baseball player when I was 8 years old, playing for the Albany Little League Senators, in our black uniforms with yellow trim.  I think I had a small, good-luck, stuffed-animal lobster.  I think I took it to my games.  I was good at bunting.

Love you all,
Anthony

ps - The Good Shit (If I joined AA and someone prodded me to choose a higher power, Peter Tosh's guitar solo at the end of this song would be it.)