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no blues scales
Saturday, February 24 2001
In the morning, I woke up in Eva's bed and went upstairs to find Bathtubgirl and Snow gone and Eva doing a solo webcast. "I'm going to keel you!" she said, putting her hands around my neck and shaking me back and forth a few times. "You're going to get me in trouble!"
I didn't view what had happened as any big deal, certainly nothing for Bathtubgirl to get exercised about (though her capacity for getting worked up about trivial shit is legendary). "Thanks for giving me a place to sleep last night, Eva!" I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee from the French press. For a 37 year old woman, Eva looks pretty damn good. She's the oldest chick I've ever kissed.
[REDACTED]
So then I sat down at Bathtubgirl's computer and busied myself with lowering the download time of the new navigation. It was designed by a group of artist types over at Digidome Designs, but consisting as it did of a bunch of heavy JPEGs, its design didn't seem particularly web-savvy. Anyway, I spent a long time removing JPEG artifacts and saving them as GIFs. It's a mindlessly gratifying thing to do, like cleaning your teeth with a pushpin, something I do often enough to avoid floss lectures from dentists.
Eventually Bathtubgirl and Snow returned from their outing. If I know Bathtubgirl at all, they went out for breakfast and coffee somewhere and then ran some errands. Anyway, a cold dreary rain was falling and I was in no hurry to bicycle home. I sort of held out the hope that Bathtubgirl would drive me home, but she had a big important interview to give (because she actually gives big important interviews these days), so I had to find my own way home.
So I was pretty much ready for my hot bath when I came home dripping and cold. One of the things I brought with me from Bathtubgirl's was a copy of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which I've already read, but it's a good thing to grab when you're craving a bath.
Later on I was noodling around on my guitar and stumbled into an interesting riff that I immediately recorded. It's ended up being about three times as long as it needs to be, but here it is: Lemmings. Perhaps I'll make a better version some sunny day.
One thing you can be sure of regarding my rock and roll sensibility is that I never ever play a single blue note. I don't have any idea how blue notes are made, and to tell you the truth, I'm much happier that way. I do not like blues scales, blues riffs, or blues anything for that matter. The only songs I like by Led Zeppelin are those that bear no blues influence. Indeed, all the rock and roll I like best seems to have successfully separated itself from its blues roots. Do you hear any blues in REM, Sugar, Dead Can Dance, Slayer, Stereolab or Guided By Voices? No, of course not. There are some bands I just cannot listen to because the blues influences are overwhelming: The Who, the Black Crowes, most "hair metal," Kill 'em All-era Metallica, pre-Eliminator ZZ Top, most Rolling Stones, etc. The Backstreet Boys aren't especially bluesy, but they have a rather different problem which I don't have time to launch into at this point in this entry.
Walking on zodiac, all of the animals, none of the animals speak...
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