FTW, 3.14.2021

A year into Covid and I get my second shot in two weeks, although I'm not chomping at the bit to run out and start doing things again, our state's governor having recently ended the mask mandate and people behaving the way they do. That and all the damn stories about old Asian people getting attacked. Haven't heard any from here, but I haven't really been anywhere for a year except a couple of doctor appointments and the little coffee shop round the corner, to buy our bags of beans. 

I'm waiting to re-up on my volunteer deputy voter registrar credential until after I've had the second shot. Repubs in the legislature have a bill, HB 1026, that would do away with the position -- one of 100-odd voter suppression bills they've proposed this session. Repubs are making noise blaming immigrants for Covid, a bullshit tactic designed to get people's minds off the $1.9 trillion relief package the US Senate just passed without a single Republican vote. In Texas, health care and infrastructure have much bigger impacts on folks' quality of life than some migrant bogeyman. We need to elect new state leadership that recognizes this. 

Against all odds (he wasn't even my third favorite in the primaries), barely a month into his administration, Biden looks like the president we needed to clean away all the rot that's accrued on our democracy since Reagan. Covid showed how unsustainable our late stage capitalist economy had grown; Biden's going full-on FDR because he had to. Unprecedented problems require radical solutions. Lots of work to do in advance of the midterms in 2022 and the national election in 2024. I'm sorry to be sitting out the municipal elections, but I'm doing the little I can to help a city council candidate. Start where you are, do what you can.

Approaching the end of the Trout Mask Replica guitar project -- since September, I've been learning the guitar parts to all the songs off Captain Beefheart's knotty masterpiece and posting YouTube videos of myself playing them -- has caused me to realize the extent to which that project has given me a sense of purpose I really needed this year. Not the greatest one I've ever had, but good enough for what we're dealing with now. I'm looking forward to attempting "Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish," which Drumbo says in his book is the only piece on the album with no touch points (places where the parts sync up). Perhaps when I'm through with the guitar parts, I'll borrow Andre's bass again and try learning some of Rockette Morton's parts. 

This week I'm mixing it up, continuing to work on Beefheart material but also playing stand-up rockaroll guitar for the first time in a year. I think my band days are probably done (although I'd play a Stoogeaphilia show if Teague was in town and everyone else was willing), but I miss the cathartic release of playing loud over drums in front of an audience. Perhaps I'll learn some Sonic's Rendezvous Band tunes -- another band I don't know anyone else local who digs (except for one bass player who loves "City Slang" so much he bought an SRB LP even though he doesn't own a turntable). Not having to "sell" the material to anybody else is liberating. Glad I kept the looper.

It's different playing lead on the heavy strings (and listening to Rory Gallagher recently made me miss putting vibrato on everything to the point where I almost got out the Strat), but aside from not being able to bend more than a half step or do vibrato on the wound G, it doesn't slow me down much, so I think I'll keep them after I'm done with the TMR stuff. Between playing, running, meditating, cooking, keeping house and helping Kat in the garden (our 16th wedding anniversary -- wax, apparently -- is in four days), I'll stay busy as long as I can.