Future "Life-Projects" #1

Well, blame The Beatles for inspiring another crappy musician. I've talked about how we don't have cable here at the Casa de Limemonkey, right? Well we still don't have that luxury, so most of the time we watch DVD's. We've been watching ER (a guilty pleasure of mine), but last week we were in between seasons 4 and 5 with nothing to do (season 5 was on it's way to us). So, for whatever reason, I decided to watch The Beatles Anthology.

I got it for Christmas a few years back, and I've seen it all before--just not in order. I liked to skip around. Well, as most of you know, I'm a big Beatles fan, but what you might not know is--I don't trust people that say they hate the fab four. Leah, however, falls into a more difficult category. Since I've known her, she's claimed to love The Beatles, but when pressed it was obvious that she knew very little about them. So together we spent last week watching The Beatles Anthology. Now that her knowledge of the Beatles is where it should be, I have no problems marrying her.

ANYWAY, when it was all said and done with--I found myself wanting to make music. Rock Band didn't cut it. So I called home, and asked about my guitar. About 5 years ago, I bought a (fairly decent) black Ibanez acoustic guitar. I enrolled in lessons out at Longview, but I had to drop them (and all but one of my other classes) because I was working full-time at Uni-Guard (and my grades were suffering). All I remember about my lessons was that the guy was creepy, and we were always in this cramped little photo-booth of a room.

I didn't practice...at all, so it's no great shock that I didn't learn how to play. I think I went to three lessons before dropping out (the last class was basically me showing up and telling him I was dropping). Then, once it became clear that playing guitar was "too hard" I gave up and filed my black beauty into my closet.


Meemoe with my guitar (on Acid+Photoshop)

Well, I want it back. I called home on Saturday and worked it out so my sister Amber is going to meet me in Columbia (the half-way point between STL-land and KC) with my guitar on Friday. Now, I know what you're thinking, "Jason! You have no money, you can't pay for lessons!" You're right, I can't. But then I remembered my dorm-mate Mitch, who used YouTube videos to learn how to play bass. Viola! I'll use the net and books to learn! So that's what I'm going to do. The internet guides I've been reading say that I need to practice for 30 minutes 5 days a week (easy, I'll just do it first thing when I wake up). I found this "most excellent" Asian kind who is like a prodigy, on YouTube...he's already taught me two riffs I'm itching to work on ("Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple and "Come As You Are" by Nirvana).

I'm working on memorizing the strings and fret positions tonight at work (actually, a lot of this stuff can be done with a pen and paper) and I'm working on learning guitar tabs. All the while STILL working on my book and STILL looking for a job.

Fantastic.

They tell me this is the main riff to "Smoke on the Water." Sweet.