The Bass Geek

Sounds passable at least, and the price is hard to beat, at least for novelty’s sake.

I forgot to mention that we tried watching “Nightwatch” this weekend, and the power went out during the viewing. The movie hadn’t been making sense up to that point anyway, though, so we didn’t feel bad for the interruption.

If you’re otherwise disengaged and in Fountain Square this evening, there’s a free show from British singer/songwriter Newton Faulkner at Radio Radio. As it’s free and sponsored by a local radio station, I’d expect it to be packed soon, so arrive early if interested.

My wife brought home the movie “Once” this weekend for viewing, based on her listening to a copy of the film’s soundtrack. Great songs on that, so I wanted to like the movie.

And I did, until about halfway through the film. And that’s when my suspension of disbelief went right out the window. They want me to believe that a pair of musicians who’d only just met could recruit another three musicians they’d never worked with, pair up with an initially disinterested engineer and an expensive recording studio they’d never worked in before, and somehow manage to produce a bunch of great songs?

I should have probably just relaxed and enjoyed the show more (I did like the way they worked in the songs without it becoming overtly a “musical” in the traditional sense), but the tech geek in me just wouldn’t let it go. Feh.

I managed to catch a preview of “The Orphanage” last night - it was a beautiful mix of Brothers Grimm-style fairy tale and a parent’s worst nightmare. A couple of the plot points were telegraphed way in advance, and I thought Del Toro Juan Antonio Bayona strung along some of the suspense strictly for a “GOTCHA!” moment near the end, but it was otherwise magnificently filmed and rendered. Highly recommend.

That, of course, leaves the weekend free for music. And there’s quite a bit happening in Fountain Square, if I do toot my neighborhood’s horn a bit. Big Car Gallery hosts Lovely Houses, Brooks Ritter and Jascha for $5 from 7 to 9pm tonight (BRING THE KIDS!), and Sam’s Saloon has Will Stockwell and Deacon Sean and the Bar Brawlers. Tomorrow, Sam’s features Mike Milligan and Steam Shovel. Also, I believe tonight is Cognizant Coffee’s open mic night, but don’t blame me if you show up and they want you to put your darn-fool guitar away ’cause I got the date wrong. Enjoy!

Even after this weekend’s football debacle, I knew that the universe would somehow correct itself and make things right. And so it has - and once again we owe it all to the Internet. This Wired report has some of the original MST3K cast coming together for what appears to be riffery of a more refined sort (in that they gave up the jumpsuits, you know) as “Cinematic Titanic,” riffing away on terrible movies ’til there ain’t no more crappy frames left. Toss in some RiffTrax, and it seems like the entire cast of the old show is active once again in satirizing crappy movies. It’s a good thing, too, as my videotapes of the series are still in boxes, and I don’t have a functional VCR anymore. I still retain, however, my original fan club materials and stickers. I want those buried with me.

One can only hope, however, that it doesn’t return to the Mike vs. Joel wars of the mid-90s. We lost a lot of good soldiers then.

A friend sent me this link to the blog of Robbie Fulks, renowned singer/songwriter/wit-about-the-nation. Specifically, he referenced to me this passage:

I should explain that bass players are an odd species. You might guess that with about twenty-eight notes to play in a three-minute song, and without the ego-nourishing plaudits lavished on soloists, the bass player personality might be typified by a Gary Cooperesque easygoing humility and can-do stoicism, but not so. Bassists are the screwiest of all musicians, excepting only female singers, if you can call them musicians. Drummers are the subjects of all the stock jokes, but if there’s one person in your band who has a hair-trigger chemical imbalance, holds strange and unalterable opinions, pores over obnoxious magazines whose titles incorporate the name of his instrument, and demands constant catering to, it’s almost always the bassist. He will wear you out by talking long into the night about speaker cabinet dimensions, string gauges and alloys, and coming advances in direct-box electronics, and if you excuse yourself to go to sleep, he will start in eight hours later at the point in the sentence where he left off.

I was dodging Fulks’ descriptive bullets like the Matrix until he got to the part about the magazines. It’s about then that I had to take my 16 years of “Bass Player” back issues and head out the door. I’d try and differ with him about the other points, but I’ve got no idea who he’s played with, and I believe there’s more than enough weird musicians in general to back up an opinion like this about any instrument. So take it for what you will.

Luckily, this weekend’s victories of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the DePauw Tigers have filled me with victorious spirits, and the whole shebang was pushed over the edge by a much-delayed viewing of “300.” I think I tried to lead my pug to eternal glory over the backyard at some point, but I might be mistaken. The replacement copies of my bass book also came in, so I’m going to dedicate a few blog posts in the coming days to instrument actually named in my blog.