Jolt Country

SOMEONE TELL ME SOME TRUTH.

This weekend I went to many places, and I already suspect I've been deigned a scumbag by at least one person who got details, so with great reluctance I confess that I went to a dueling piano bar with the GROOM TO BE and various other assorteds.

(It's with great reluctance that I confess anything, though.)

When I was in middle school, I was in the jazz band. (I actually had to learn the tenor saxophone for that. I signed up and listed "oboe" as instrument I could play, and the director of the jazz band broke into my social circle to inform me that "there are no oboes in jazz band".)

When I was in middle school, I was in the jazz band. I remember the high schoolers playing a show and lining up to take solos in a song that they were playing indefinitely -- they were just going up there and riffing it! Ad-lib solos. It BLEW MY MIND that they could do that. How did they know what to play before they started?!? What the --?!

And then I became a high school jazz band student, and I learned that you can, naturally, memorize the key and chord changes of a song, mentally map what notes are available to you, and instantly produce a melody from that subset of notes. It was one of my favorite things to do, although I should admit that at that point I had not engaged in either of my current favorite hobbies: text game writing and grudge-fucking.

No, kidding! Spontaneously producing a solo was awesome, and one of the few things, in the band, I felt I was good at. I was certainly not good at reading notes from the sheet music and playing them that way.

Anyway, I am endlessly blathering on about all this because I can sort of understand how a dueling piano dude would need to be talented and also practice for several hours a day, but goddamn, how do they know so many songs? HOW do they DO IT?!

Help!

Most of them songs got three chords. They may never have played them before, but any song with three or four chords, a reasonably talented musician can play without ever having practiced it, as long as they know how the song goes.

Is it pretty much guaranteed that they know all Billy Joel songs?

That seems a reasonable assumption. At least the stuff before "We Didn't Start The Fire".

I doubt "Angry Young Man" would be included in that Billy Joel list.

I think we really did good things with this thread. I hope it rockets to the top of Google's search results.

"An Innocent Man" should also be one they can probably scrape by not knowing.

True story: when I was in my GIFTED class as a little kid (yeah, I know, amazing, isn't it?) they wanted us to bring in a song that most represented us. We had to get the lyrics for it. My aunt sent a couple issues of "Music Lyrics Magazine," so I was pretty much restricted to those, and anything I could pull off Hall and Oates's H20 (the only album I owned).

And -- thinking of this for the first time in years -- it AMAZES me that there was a for-sale magazine with NOTHING BUT LYRICS. That would have been early 80s. I mean, who could imagine paying for that shit now. When I search for lyrics on the Internet, I sometimes use Google's cache of the infinite number of lyrics sites, to prevent them from getting ad revenue.

So, there was nothing good in Lyrics Magazine. I grabbed one of my dad's albums and recalled "An Innocent Man." I told my parents that I was going to use that one.

Here are some sample lyrics:

Some people sleep all alone every night
Instead of taking a lover to bed
Some people find that it's easier to hate
Than to wait anymore

Yeah, that would have been good for a child of 7 to read before class, I guess?

Anyway, I ended up picking "Let It Be" from that lyrics magazine, under the guise that I just let shit roll off my back. Which I guess was true by the time I turned 34, seeing how I active resisted e-murdering "Professor" Steve Breslin for some dumb shit he wrote about Meretzky on the text game newsgroup last night. It took 25 years, but I did finally become "chill"!

Innocent Man is one of my all time favorite Billy Joel albums, though, yeah, um those lyrics would probably not be apropriate for a 7 year old to share with class. But I can think of probably well over 10 more Billy Joel songs that would have been much worse.

'My Life'
"They will tell you you can't sleep alone in a strange place, then they'll tell you you can't sleep with somebody else, ah but sooner or later you wake in your own space, either way it's okay, you wake up with yourself..."

'Christy Lee'
"She didn't need another lover, all she wanted was the sax!"

'Only The Good Die Young'
"You Catholic girls start much too late, but sooner or later it comes down to fate, I might as well be the one"

'Big Shot'
"And the spoon up your nose, and when you wake up in the morning with your head on fire and your eyes to bloody to see, go and cry in your coffee, don't come bitchin' to me"

'Keepin' The Faith'
"My old mans Trojans, and his Old Spice aftershave, I thought I was the Duke of Earl when I made it with a redhead girl in a Chevorolet"

'Capatain Jack'
"you just sit at home and masterbate"

'Easy Money'
"Take me to the tables, take me dice, run me like the numbers..."

'Stiletto'
"She says she wants affection, while she's searching for the vain, she's so good with her stiletto, you don't even mind the pain"

'Sometimes a Fantasy'
"I know it's awful hard to try and make love long distance, but I really need stimulation, though it was only my imagination"

Of all the concerts I have been to, the only concert I have ever seen bras get tossed on the stage was Billy Joel.

When I was in middle school they wanted us to keep a journal and I could never think of anything to write in it. So one day I was reading 'poems for the John' and came up with this little gem.


Jack be nimble
Jack be quick
jack jump over the candle stick
Alas he didn't make the flame
and now he's known as Aunty Mame

pretty heady stuff for a twelve year old.

THE
TOO YOUNG
AARDVARK

Aunty Mame? Let me tell you about MAME, my friend, the Multi-Arcade-Machine Emulator! It all began when I was,