Looking back on this post after writing it, I think I should warn you that I kinda sorta free-associated my way through it. I had a plan, but it didn’t survive contact with the enemy keyboard. I blame the tobacco withdrawal symptoms.

It wasn’t unusual for me, a hippie-freak, child of the Sixties to get deeply into music during my youth. But I don’t seem to be able to outgrow the obsession, despite receiving quite a bit of feedback from the real world that I could likely find a more productive way to spend my time.

I’ve banged on guitars since I was fourteen years old, have been in a half a dozen bands, starting with one that played only one gig, in a roadhouse on the Old Beaumont Highway when I was seventeen. The drummer was my best friend from high school, Mark Magaziner. His dad was a big band drummer, and Mark was damn good.

(He was the only person I’ve ever known to cook down marijuana and inject it. Mark turned me on to both acid and weed. He charged me twice the going rate until I got hip to what he was doing. He got so heavily into drugs, both dealing and using, when I was living with him, that he once grabbed the kitchen salt-shaker out of my hand in a panic as I was about to sprinkle something on my french fries. I still don’t know what was in the shaker. But that’s another story.)

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Me, I barely knew how to play a dozen chords when we did that gig.

We sucked so bad that the manager threw us out halfway through the first set. But we did know how to play ‘House of the Rising Sun’ semi-good.

I, of course, wasn’t allowed to sing in the band. Our singer was named Darlene, a very sweet blonde biker chick with a clear, pure voice. Darlene’s boyfriend got us the gig.

The boyfriend’s name was Ronnie. He could be an asshole, but he was our buddy and was always nice to us. (Nice like Bradley is, you know?) He got to be pretty good friends with my Dad, who kept running into him at gun shows for the next 30 years. Somewhere in there, according to my Dad, he went to the Huntsville Obedience Training School for awhile when he was discovered swimming north across the Rio Grande with too much weed strapped to his back. But that’s another story.

Ronnie became a minor legend in our circles, but not for the Rio Grande thing.

Supposedly, he bailed out of the Bandidos, which was, and still is, the baddest biker gang on the East Coast. They were so bad that they ran off the Hell’s Angels when the Angels checked into the White House Motel on South Main Street, (where my mom was a waitress at the time) planning to recruit in Houston, maybe lure some ‘Didos and Gypsy Jokers to their side. The Angels checked out abruptly a few days later and didn’t come back. But that’s another story.

Anyhow, the ‘Didos were pissed at Ronnie, so they came by his house one afternoon, looking for him so they could, presumably, kick his ass. Ronnie was gone at the time, so they gave Darlene a hard time. Ronnie didn’t like that.

Ronnie knew they were having a camp-out outside of town on some private land that weekend. So, along about dusk, he set up at the edge of the clearing where they were partying. And opened up on them with a semi-automatic rifle. Supposedly, he deliberately shot low and didn’t kill anybody.

The Bandidos didn’t come around his house any more, and they surely didn’t fuck with Darlene any more.

But that’s another story.

Anyhow…

Mostly, I’ve sat in my living-room over the years and caterwauled and strummed and picked and finger-picked. It shatters me that I have the soul of a hard-times bluesman, but, unfortunately, the voice of Lee Marvin. And I’m not nearly as talented a guitarist as I wish I was.

I’ve amassed a tremendous amount of musical equipment and technical knowledge. I’ve spent endless hours tweaking settings and installing and researching and practicing.

However, as a result of this vastly unfair problem with my voice, not to mention a few other quirks and flaws in my character, I haven’t cranked out much in the way of finished musical product.

My goal this year is to change that. I plan to do an album between now and next Yule. Just getting that on the record. It’s okay with me if the album sucks, as long as I get it done.

You may have heard of Auto-Tune, which has been used in countless pop and not-so-pop records for the past 8 years to correct flawed vocals. Quite a few Britneys and Justins owe their entire careers to Auto-Tune. It detects the pitch of a monophonic recording and can be set to pull notes, with varying degrees of fierceness, into tune. It also does what’s known as the ‘Cher Effect’, which first showed up in her mega-hit ‘Believe’. (Another method was probably used to get this effect on that song. But that’s another story. The effect is forever associated with Auto-Tune.)

I think it still sounds cool, and I heard it just this week in, believe it or not, a brawny new C&W song. It is, however, considered a complete musical cliche by now.

Melodyne does the ultra-Jedi version of what Auto-Tune does. It makes sound completely, controllably elastic. You can move any note to any position and preserve its formant, which means that it still sounds natural. You can also time stretch it, or speed it up or slow it down. You can exaggerate or minimize vibrato. Again, with complete control.

I just got my copy this past week. It’s usually insanely expensive, but I got a killer deal with the academic discount that I receive because I work for a university.

I guess we’ll see how magical it is on Lee Marvin’s voice. Another cool thing Melodyne can do is move an entire track up or down, therefore creating a harmonized track. I can become my own back-up singers.

I can become a chick singer!

I now, finally, have the hardware, software, and technical skills to be the drummer, bass-player, rhythm guitar player, lead guitar player, keyboardist, lead singer, backup-singers, and recording engineer, of my own personal band.

I get a geek buzz out of playing with the toys and beating the electrons into submission. And I’m really looking forward to being able to sing in tune, regardless of how much cheating is required.

I’m gonna do those things this year. It won’t be handsome, I suspect. Because this is hard stuff to do well.

However, my complete life experience, onward from the beginning times when me and Mark and Darlene were banging it out in Mark’s garage is this:

Sometimes, sitting alone in my living-room and making the best sound I can, has kept me alive, when I might not have survived otherwise. That’s the truth, and I think we’ve all had those nights and gotten through them in our own special ways.

I’ve gone through long periods in my life when I lost sight and memory of where the joy lives.

For me, one place that joy comes from is being with friends and loved ones and making real music with them. Even better is playing music in front of real people.

I realize that much of what I’ve written lately keeps circling back to the importance of friends and of loved ones. We need time alone, and we sometimes need to create by ourselves, but too much of that curdles our spirits.

This isn’t a subtle theme for me, and it isn’t deep or original or insightful. Like the ‘Cher Effect’, it’s a cliche.

But — (Really Bad Metaphor Alert) — This is the year when I’m finally in shape to begin to get my life in tune. And its so infinitely much better to harmonize with others than to fake it all alone.

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….Does that wrap this one up? How come I didn’t use the ‘But that’s another story’ tag line to end it? I mean, I did plan to. But it just veered off into the ditch and then started wallowing around in the sentiment and making funny chuffling noises, so what could I do?

Next time, I’ll be all logical and hard-edged and focussed and structured and…. and no chuffling noises or sentiment. But I’ll still probably like you a little bit somewhere toward the end. Because you are actually sacred, you know. Like the trees…..

I don’t miss the tobacco at all. But all this extra oxygen is messing with my brain….

….Also, I know I should be ashamed of the gratuitous babe pic, but I really am a big Cher fan. That makes it okay, right?