The Night Shift

[Gator]

Go with Peewee 'Cat. ( my opinion)

[WildcatOne]

That would make sense for sure, Gate. It would. My choice was based on what I feel in my heart for my friends over the logic of taking a big leap forward both in the music business in general and in my own personal music career in Houston. I'll have to live with it, hopefully with no regrets. It won't be the easy choice, as I realize the compromises I will deal with both on and off stage. I would make more than I spend if I went with Pee Wee. As it is, I'll still have a tax-day bonanza at the end of my fiscal reports...apparently the Citykings show a net profit of 2 dollars for 2006...I owe a quarter... I have the 2 gigs today (CKs at 2, Pee Wee at and I'm going to get started here in a few minutes. I appreciate the input from you and everybody about this; it has been a very memorable and strange week. Cheers, WC1

[Gator]

What ever is best for You 'Cat..........

There is a time for that.

[WildcatOne]

It's not like I'm a religious freak or anything. I don't go to church anymore (I believe my home is my church...freedom of religion and freedom of speech), although I was raised in an extremely devout environment and I spent a year in a seminary. I didn't go into the priesthood because I realized I couldn't live with poverty, chastity and obedience. I was telling my wife the other day, that's how it all worked out, anyway, but at least I have kids now <g>...I am not going to the O'Reilly Nationals at Houston Raceway Park this coming weekend. Not because rain is predicted or because JFR isn't going or because Eric Medlen died. If the race is postponed or rescheduled, I'll still not go. I have the money to go sitting right here...rock 'n roll money I made playing with Pee Wee Bowen...I decided that this is what I'm going to give up for Lent. I'll give the money to Kyle and Nick (I mean Chris). That the next event after this tragedy of unspeakable magnitude is going to be here made me stop and think a little more than if it were going to be in Vegas or Seattle, ya know. Every year during Lent, I give something up. Lunch. Dinner. Dessert. And I fix it for everybody and then I don't eat it. I did that for the last 5 years. Last year I lost 25 lbs that I needed to lose, but I tried it this year and it hurt...I'm already down to the right weight, and I was not hibernating; living off my fat content...I was starving...and that's not the idea. The idea is to offer up something in atonement and hope for karma. Giving up Friday night to me is something very significant and meaningful. Hopefully it will count for this year. I also would like to further set myself up for a good flaming by saying I don't want anything changed in drag racing after this catastrophe has occurred. Nothing should change. Keep going faster and quicker and don't shorten the tracks, reduce engine size or nitro percentage, gear ratios or install limiters, etc...none of that. Yeah, check into making the cockpits safer. The idea to put SAFER guardwalls after half-track to the turnoff sounds good to me. But I am not in favor of inhibiting the performance of the cars and calling it in the interest of safety. Once in a while, somebody is going to die or get seriously injured. It's not a safe sport. Everybody who knows it knows that. The inherent risks are part of the process of achieving the rewards, even if the rewards are aesthetic. Move on. Let the good times roll. All the way. My 2 cents...Citykings booked at SugarHill Wednesday, April 18, to finish their tracks for the compilation CD. Randolph on vocals...Life is good...WC1

[Billy Mac]

No flames from "this" part of the Peanut Gallery, Cat, you pretty much nailed it.......there are times when NO amount of safety precautions are going to help.......
I WILL, however, go out on a limb and make the suggestion that, seeing as how the two lanes are timed individually, why not put a center divider railing between the lanes.........that way.....in the event of a mishap the vehicle would have a LOT less area to make contact with both walls....they may bounce between the two closer boundries like a pin ball....but the likelyhood of a "head-on" collision would be minimized, as it would be more of a "glancing blow" type of deal.

[WildcatOne]

Friday and Saturday night, I played a two-night stand with the Pee Wee Bowen Band in Galveston, downtown at Club 21. The band is booked into that club every 6 weeks for the forseeable future. Our keyboard player is out of town for a while, so instead of the usual 7-piece lineup (guitar, bass, drums, Pee Wee on vocals, keyboards, sax and trombone), we went in as a 6-piece. Without the keyboards to hold down the middle of the sound, I had to "comp" the whole weekend...I played solid chords using all 6 strings and the lead guitar solos I took were mostly "double-stops", where I would play 2 or 3 strings within the framework of a guitar solo. I had to really put my head into those gigs because I'm learning not only the material the band plays, but they play in keys that are completely different from anything I've done in the past. As a rock 'n roll and blues player, I've always locked in to the standard chords of E, A, D and G...this is a professional show band, and they play songs that accomodate the horn section...they play in F, B-flat, C-sharp, A-flat, keys that are not all that easy to play in on a guitar, let alone construct solos in...but I pulled it off with reckless abandon...the reason being that the place was packed to well over twice its capacity both nights for the entire eight sets. It was wall-to-wall people, mostly beautiful women who let go of all their inhibitions once we tore into our repertoire of Soul and old Rock 'n Roll classics...I can only remember playing a couple of gigs in my life that came close to the crowd response we received at Club 21 this weekend. They howled, screamed, yelled and hollered for every single song we did. On many occasions, the whole crowd roared for us. The women took over the section where the band was playing, and they danced expressively and completely came unglued as the night progressed. I had a half-dozen of 'em right in my grille, not quite two inches away from me, performing simulated...uh...acts...in rhythym with the music. Pee Wee had 'em climbing up on him while he was singing. Dude has a 6-octave vocal range and he was putting 1000% into every song, the band pumped it out full-force behind him. We play to the back wall, and you have a solid mass of people right in front of you, actually getting into our band space and you can't see past the first 20 people packed into your area, so what happens? You turn up. Then you turn up again. And again. Until by the time you've played 3 songs, you're at 120db or more, and the louder it gets, the more they dance and scream for more. The band sounded full and strong through all of it; it's instinctive to keep fiddling with the volume so it all can be heard, but this time, I went totally deaf. Totally. I still am. I don't know what to do about it. It is like being in my own world. I hear muffled voices around me when people are talking to me, but no words. It's scary. I have visual images remaining in my head that are stronger than the sounds I am hearing over them, but it's all residual echoes of a gig that turned into a mass orgy right in front of us. This is a challenging and exciting gig. Today I have Citykings at 4:30 over at Rand's house. We're playing next weekend at the St. Arnold's Brewery in the afternoon, and that night I'm playing with Pee Wee. Our studio session is locked in for Wednesday night to finish "Apple of my Eye". I'm busy with the music and it's all been more successful than I ever imagined it could be, but I'm going deaf at the point when I need to hear better than I ever have. Earplugs aren't the answer because they change everything with regards to how you fit into the mix. That's no joke. I'm toughing it out but it is obvious to Pee Wee and my band buds that I'm deaf and it's a concern. I can't hear Pee Wee telling me what song we're going to do. I'm lost in that respect. It's frustrating but if anybody knows how I can get over this, he does. I'm going to ask him. The horn guys are a real kick. They're a whole different kind of musician than the string guys are, and they crack me up. Herb is 71 and I like hanging out with him. He has a whole dictionary of one-liners and wisecracks. I said "Well, I have to go tune up my guitar. I can't start the next set without being in tune..." He said "Hey, why mess up a perfect record now?" He's a great guy and a real pro, and I've learned a lot from him. We set an all-time band record for tips this weekend. We got $216 in tips for both nights. That added $36 to each of our pay totals...nice...but wow...what a gig that was. Gotta run, back later. What impressed me the most about the band was how they take it all in stride. This happens all the time. It's just what they do. It's a show. It's a job. It's what we get paid for and we do it and earn it and they book us back to do it again. No biggie, no problem...on to the next one...Cheers, WC1

[draglist]

Sorry about the hearing loss, Cat. Hope you can get that worked out. It's clear to me that you and all live musicians do it for the sheer love of the music. What an amazing about of work and talent you put on the line for a few hundred bucks. Man, I sure wish I was there. The ladies sure do like the bands... I think it goes back to the old Alpha Male thing, and when you guys are on, you are the UBER Alpha Males in the room, clearly in charge and setting the tone. Our anthropology and the deep, ingrained vibes we humans respond to from music are a potent combination that have made live musicians the alpha males of choice for ladies for decades. It takes a big man to resist that kind of temptation. bp

[WildcatOne]

What you said is so true, BP...it took me a long time to make the separation in my mind and in my life between John Bockelman, the graphic artist and quiet, mild-mannered family man and drag racing fan and WildcatOne, Johnny B, and as Pee Wee calls me, Big Bad John, show-band protagonist, multi-instrumentalist rock 'n roll warrior. After a couple of decades of being out there tearing places down and having a train-wreck life, I found myself being followed by a young, beautiful lady named Debby...she latched onto me and I have always known that this is the one for me. She knows what I do and she knows what this music does to people, but she trusts me and that has made me finally step back and see what is really going on with all that. I came up with a system: The musician works for me. I send him out there to do those gigs. When it's over, I turn his channel off and take over again. When he was running my life, it was a complete disaster. The guy made me miserable and I was constantly working to repair the damage he caused. The only way I survived this long (out of hundreds of guys who were doing this 30 years ago, I'm one of a handful who are still at it...the rest either died, did time and got out of it, or quit once they either got married or blacklisted) was to take control and disassemble myself and put myself back together again as two separate people. The guy at home works a job and supports his family and takes care of everybody. The musician plays the gigs and lets it all hang out when it's happening, but after it's over, the husband and father goes home, sober and quietly. It has worked out splendidly that way. Debby hung in there with me while I fixed the complicated duplex machinery of my personality. With all the crazy stuff that goes on in my life and around me, this is the happiest and most well-adjusted I've ever been. Thanks for an insightful and meaningful post, BP. It hit home on several levels. Now all I need to do is hear again and it'll all be good...WC1

[WildcatOne]

Last night the Citykings went to SugarHill Studios to finish up the tracks on the song they asked us to do for their upcoming compilation CD for their 60th anniversary. The double-CD set will feature all the Top-40 hits that were done from the 50s and 60s. It'll have 40 songs on it. I found out a book will also be published when the CD comes out. We did around 10 tracks in 2 1/2 hours. Randolph did the lead vocal, I brought my Les Paul, intending to redo the lead guitar track, but after I got there and I heard what Andy had done with the track I did the first time (he used a track I did that wasn't put on the rough mix they gave us the last time we were there), I didn't remember doing the track and neither did anybody else, but it was fine so I decided to keep it...Andy loved our version of the song, "Apple of my Eye", originally done by Roy Head and the Traits in 1966. It went to #36 on the national charts. As I said a while back, we completely re-wrote the music but we were required to keep the lyrics...that was tough, because the lyrics are about as psycho and blatantly sexual as anything I've ever heard. We started out with me singing it, and I didn't like it...I told my wife, I don't think I can relate to this song, babe. It's just a little too overtly sexual and macho. She said, well, what are the lyrics? I recited them to her..."Back it up, baby...yeah, that's what I like...mmm-mmm! You're lookin' GOOD! Heh heh heh..." She said "Well, you've said that to me lots of times. Do the song, man..." I gotta hand it to Debby. She's a good sport. But we decided Randolph should sing it because he gets funky with it, and he isn't featured as a vocalist on any of our other recordings. He did fine...I would have liked to have had him do, say, 3 takes, but he did one and it got kept. I think he needed to loosen up a little, but we moved on...I added a Hammond B-3 organ track to the song and we all contributed a wall of backup vocal tracks to the song (Andy thought up a great background vocal arrangement and we went with it) so now the tracking is finished. We go back in June for final mixing and mastering. It'll go on the compilation CD, but we get to keep it for our next band CD as well. Life is good. WC1

[draglist]

Can't wait to hear the new CD, Cat. bp