Woody and me

I own a bass.

A bass guitar that for the last two years has given me identity as a man of music. An intrument that has allowed me to see the underbelly of a culture I might not normally be privy to. People, especially musicians themselves, treat you differently when they think you’re a kindred spirit; I don’t think this is a deliberate judgment on their behalf; it’s closer to a sense unity between canards than an act of discrimination to those that “can’t wail.”

Case in point: A popular Indy bar – Melbourne. Sitting at a bar after a rather lively show, the bass player of the band that has just finished its set sits on the wooden stool adjacent to me and orders a pint:

“Hey man, badass show tonight.” I compliment the longhair.
“Thanks,” replies the skeleton dressed in Iggy Pop memorabilia.
“No, man, I mean it. You guys played a mean set.”
“Yeah, well, what would you know about it, Narc?” He enquires in a rather agitated tone; presumably he believes I bought my ACDC shirt over Ebay. I did, but he doesn’t know that. In defense I quickly retort, “Hey, I’m just like you, man, I play bass too.”
A moment or two passes. The pale rocker looks me over, presumably grading my rock ‘n’ roll presence. I must score at least in the lower percentile of his criteria, because he says to me, “sorry, chief, I’m a little jumpy lots of posers out here gets under my skin, you know? Than again, it could be the speed kickin’ in, you never can tell.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I reply and run for door as fast as my girlish legs will carry me, but not before raising my first in the air and yelling “rock ‘n’ roll.”

What the Skeletor look-alike doesn’t know is I can’t play a lick on the guitar. I do own a bass, this much is true, but outside of a few relatively simple Nirvana songs, I can’t play a thing. Well, that's not entirely true, I can play Summer Lovin' from Grease, but that’s got more to do wearing leather pants than it does rock ‘n’ roll.

Like all slackers of my generation, I started out with noble intentions: the desire to learn, evolve and eventually create my own art, but soon got distracted by the latest installment in the NBA Live series, and left the guitar in the corner to collect dust, where it’s done so since sometime in early 2004.

What can be learnt from this little espisode? That the identity of a musician is only a superficial thing? Maybe, but then again I was posing as a musician so does that make me even more superficial? Maybe so. I have thought about taking another crack at learning the bass, but that would take far too long and cost millions of lives in the process. No, I thought it better to take a page out the Bill and Ted's book of learning and instead of exhausting countless hours making my fingers bleed, I decided to travel through time and learn from some of the greats long past.

It's amazing, but in only a few months of jumping through the circuits of time (yes, just like Bill Espreston Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan) I found myself jamming with folk legend , Woody Guthrie. Don't believe me, here's the evidence...and for the seceret to time travel just originate Pi to its 1,000,000,000 place and divide by two - it's that simple, and fun to boot.

Excelsior!