Pain In The Ass

I say that I outgrew the Super Bowl. And the World Series, approved
Stanley Cup, and…. You get the picture.   I don’t mean that as a putdown to those who haven’t outgr….I mean those who are still avid sports fans.  I just can’t think of a better way to explain it. For myself, that is.  I used to enjoy some of that.  A singer songwriter needs to be current to relate to a broad range of people.  And what is repetitiously current bores me. ‘Tis a problem.

Sports History
I played some team sports in my youth. Football was my favorite.  Being well under six feet, and having the eye-hand coordination of a cave snake, basketball was never more than something my friends were into. A lot of polite cheering from me.

Baseball? Besides the aforementioned lack of skill, baseball offered too much time to daydream. A person can get hurt that way. Line drives, fast pitches and trance-like behavior is not a good mix.

I was really fast, though and was a sprinter for a while.  Two things turned me away from that activity.  My legs, although rather muscular, did not grow much after eighth grade and also, I hated running.  I switched to pole vault for a spell as I didn’t have to run very far. I liked that moment of flight, but the need for gas money helped me choose after school jobs.

Football was such fun, smashing into people and many short bursts of action. Then size became an issue and my interest waned.

Sports Snob
In college, there was only a Basketball team.  It was number three in the NCAA one year. Exciting up to a point but I became very disenchanted when it became obvious that the school’s priorities were not at all toward academics. Unless you counted rote memorization as academics. Another skill I have not nurtured.

I think I may have written a column in the college paper calling sports “right wing theater.” I was a snooty little pseudo intellectual.  I would never write that sort of thing now. Some disclosure is only fair here though. I don’t mix my political beliefs or lack of religious beliefs with friendship or business.  I have friends and associates of many persuasions. If I’m with these folks, I love them and don’t care what they believe. As long as they don’t try to get me to believe it. And since they are close to me, they don’t do that sort of thing.

Cliches Rain Like Cats and Dogs
I ignore sports these days. And Television. Did I mention television?  A lot of song writing gurus encourage those of us in this biz to watch TV and movies no matter how mindless and crappy.  They say it keeps you topical. I say it keeps you typical.  I prefer atypical.

Most people spend lots of time in front of a TV. Watching sports, reality games, sitcoms, disturbing faux news shows and whatever else the arbiters of entertainment have decided we really really want. Hard to get anybody’s attention without paying attention to this fact myself.

I try to keep my lyrics free of cliches.  But I’m not up on the most current cliches and have ignorantly written some catchy phrase I heard not knowing it originated in some sitcom, rap song or tractor anthem. Embarrassing when that happens.  I need to run my lyrics through a cliche cleansing device.  Bet I can find one on the internets, huh? There are 13.8 million articles listed in Google under “eliminating cliches.”  Why then, do they still plague our language?  Inspires me to write a lyric with nothing but cliches called, “Doing What’s Easy.”

How I Watch the Super Bowl
My oldest and dearest friends from New York surprised me while I was playing my Saturday gig.  Just dropped in unannounced.  Touchingly amazing!  So we hastily planned to get together Sunday and of course we wound up watching the, uhh, Super Bowl.  Turned out to be pretty entertaining.  I started writing down all the cliches I heard but got finger fatigue.  The play by play is, understandably, made up of nothing but phrases they have used over and over for years.  Though intensely boring, how many ways can you describe the same stuff? The same stuff always happens.  And today, I see the same comments are being made as after the last 45 years.

If repetitious language was outlawed, I’ve concluded, it would be a very a quiet and print free world. I think that’s called being blissed out in meditation. I spend an hour a day trying to get to that state. But I keep hearing the play by play in my head. Just wish there was a half time show.
Sometimes I get unintentionally spammy. It’s my poorly explained automation software. Honest. I’m trying hard to tame these beasts.  Indie musicians must weave the Web of all the social networks and specialized musician promotion sites. I’m sometimes a spider with ADD. The harder I try to integrate all my sites, help the more duplication I risk.  The risks run both ways: Turn off my fans and potential fans vs. Keep them in the dark.  But I’m dedicated to finding a middle road. Because I’m all Zen like that.

A Curse on Facebook

Some of my fellow musicians and I have found out too late that it would make better sense to have a personal Facebook Page different from our Fan Page.  Facebook doesn’t let you change your name after you have 100 fans or friends.  Brilliant, visit this
huh? FB also suggests friends to me and then sends me a warning for trying to friend them. Thanks. May your endless eight-legged algorithms turn inward and declare themselves spamalicious. And then digest and excrete themselves into whatever web they were born on.  Hmm, that’d make a pretty good T-shirt. Need more graphics than text, though. Got that picture in your head? Sorry.

MySpace Whores

There are still way too many of us in the biz who are thinking and behaving like MySpace whores. That’s so 5 years ago.  “Hey check out my song!”   Yeah, that’s enticing.  Finding better ways to spread my music without spreading irritation is like creating a friendly virus. Like sneezing on an airplane and expecting everyone to smile and yell, “Thanks! Great Stuff!”  We who peruse the web or even live on it, are overwhelmed with requests. It’s getting worse than network TV. Except we have a spam button.

I Love You, Single Ladies!

I know Valentine’s Day is a sticky web of expectations and regrets. I like to shun such Hallmark days.  But ignoring this one is far too risky.  I’d like to write a love song to all the single ladies who cringe at the onslaught of VD. Um, the holiday, not the disease. And perhaps I will. It’s very painful for me to know I have dear friends who don’t have the love that I do.  I wish I could fix that. But it’s a perilous pursuit. Nobody loves a yenta with poor judgement. Or would I be a yento? Where’s a Yiddish dictionary when you need one?

But I did write a song for Cathy, my wife and best friend.  I have no chance of ever saying all that should be said about this amazing lady and what she brings to my life. So anything I say or write or sing is part empty. I hope one day the collection of my efforts will scratch a bit below the surface of what she is to me.  But too much is kind of spammy, isn’t it?

Digital Box Set

If you want to know which of my songs are from the Cathy collection, here they are:

• Can’t Leave My Mind
• Tattoo
• Move Me
• Sit On The Wind
• Had To Pretend
• I Need
• Safe In My Dreams

All of the above can be heard on my tune widget at the right of the page or at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/budbuckley  These are love songs that you may want to buy for your loved one or you may just wish somebody would buy one for you.  Give me their email and I’ll let them know. Honest.

I have songs from a first CD “Feel My Love” that I don’t publicize because I prefer the performance and production of the last three CDs so much more. You can find it on the same CDBaby link if you are curious and you enjoy train wrecks.

But here are the words for Cathy’s new Valentine song:

Everyday Sweetheart      ©Bud Buckley 2012

With My Everyday Sweetheart, I go right to the neat part
But that’s everything she has so I stay  busy
She gives me smiles, I feel through the miles
Keeping up with her can make me  dizzy

Loved her right from the  start,  my everyday  sweetheart
Loved her right from the start
Loved her right from the start,  my everyday  sweetheart
Loved her right from the start

You’ll never see her in lipstick or powder
Her natural beauty speaks much louder
One look and you’d never  doubt her

With My Everyday Sweetheart, I go right to the neat part
But that’s everything she has so I stay  busy
She gives me smiles, I feel through the miles
Keeping up with here can make me  dizzy

Loved her right from the  start,  my everyday  sweetheart
Loved her right from the start
Loved her right from the start,  my everyday  sweetheart
Yesterday was David Bowie’s 65th Birthday! Many Bay Area Bands in three cities (Tampa, buy information pills
St. Pete and Sarasota) paid tribute over the weekend in all three locations. That was the most fun, approved
on so many levels, that I’ve had at one of these stellar events sponsored by Sarasota Music Scene and BAAMO. And I’ve done most of them.

These were largely original bands doing covers of someone who has obviously given our art so much. As I watched young musicians showing Ziggy’s influence, it struck me that age means absolutely nothing.  It was starkly obvious. I can only hope it was noticeable to those in the crowd who use agism as a bench mark to value music.  I saw musicians who were born twenty years after Bowie had his biggest hits, covering him with conviction and taste. I saw older musicians who you might mistake for accountants or engineers, if you saw them on the street, covering with unmatched passion.

I felt deep camaraderie with every musician who played this event. The support and warmth we had for each other was sincere and deeply felt.  I never felt better about the choice as my second career.

I’m a solo act most of the time but I’ve fallen in love with working in a band for special projects and I know there are not only more on the way (Elton John Tribute, anyone?) but Jax Resto and I have cooked up a few ideas of our own.  We’re writing and will be recording and so we will be performing as BudahRest as material is honed into shape. For these tribute sets, we are Bud and His Buds. We should be looking for a beer sponsorship, no?
We had video shot by the talented crew from Tampa Bay Video  and it is a couple of weeks off from editing completion but you will see it here.

In the meantime the lesson is, age means nothing. Get  over it.
“Everybody’s in showbiz, help It doesn’t matter who you are, dosage
” sing The Kinks. We may all be artists depending on our definition of art. Last week, I posted a Facebook question on my personal page asking if people have experienced losing a great idea in their sleep.  And how to capture those thoughts without waking and seriously damaging your relationship.  Lot’s of helpful feedback, all of which seemed to pretty much ignore the person I sleep with. Cathy, my wife and therefore the person I do sleep with, says I should just do whatever I need to do.  I believe she means it. Now. I don’t really want to find out how many nights it would take for her to change her mind. It’s pushing it to expect her to cheerfully endure countless nights of me turning on the lights and typing or muttering and humming into my iPad. I  might be begging to wake up with that gadget inserted roughly into some orifice.

The mates of artists are special people or they move on, leaving the artist with even more things to write, paint, dance, act, sing, create about. But leaving them ALONE none the less. Those of us with mates who endure our out of the mainstream-ness are luckier than we realize.
Let me list the artistic transgressiions I’ve either witnessed with my friends or have actually inflicted on my wife and family:

• Not hearing important stuff being said to me because I’m composing something in my head or have headphones on.  I’m always composing in my head with invisible earphones on. Lately my wife asks, “Can I talk?” which is so incredibly respectful, it makes me feel guilty. Especially when I’m in the middle of something and can only bark out, “Not yet!” so as not to lose the thread. I love her so much.
• Not being able to make various social occasions because of a gig or rehearsal. This is usually met with quiet understanding. I think. Sometimes I’m reminded of it later. I feel like I’ve neglected something important. Like several relationships. I need a best seller to justify this behavior. I must be such a pain in the ass.
• Talking WAY too much about the art and the biz.  I am often reminded of this. Especially if I mention that somebody else is boring or repetitious. Ouch! I must be such a pain in the ass.
• Making the same noises over and over for hours. You can only sound proof your studio so much without reducing it’s size. And the size of your savings. Or borrowing limit. If I try to please I’ll stop practicing or stop searching for the perfect note, chord or phrase. Not good. I must be such a pain in the ass.
• Forgetting to bring stuff to a gig and making that emergency call. I once forgot my change of clothes on a hot summer day. I was 40 minutes away. In sweat stained boater shorts and T-shirt. Cathy rescued me. I bought her dinner but I didn’t buy a free pass from her to do it again or to ever let me forget about it. I must be such a pain in the ass.
• Talking bandmates, collaborators, colleagues “off the ledge” at the expense of quality mate time. Playing with fire here. You better be prepared to spend an equal amount of quality time with the person who counts the most. I love her so much.
• Spending too much money on tools of the trade. I’m self sustaining but I know many who dip into household funds. You better come up with a best seller or scale it back. YOU  must be such a pain in the ass.
• Making and then bitching about bad business decisions. Keep it to yourself or invite unending criticism. Don’t turn your mate into the pain in the ass you already are.
• Forgetting to tend to routine tasks like car maintenance, doctor’s appointment, cleaning up after myself or even cleaning myself. Get an iPhone. Enter EVERYthing in the calendar and put alarms on each item.  You know here the pain resides.
• Annoying the neighbors.  Um, so what. They either have been or will eventually be just as annoying. Everybody has the ability to cause the pain we’er talking about.
• Networking on a night out. Sometimes I’m encouraged to do this. Other times, I’m just a pain in the ass.  I haven’t learned the rules on this one yet. I’m always in jeopardy of making the wrong call here.
• Getting impatient when she doesn’t understand what the hell I’m talking about. Serious, egregious error. This deserves a classification. Maybe pain up the ass or just asshole. Maybe another body part or organ is involved here.

After looking that list over I really can’t understand why she puts up with me. So I asked. She pointed out that we are all artists and should learn to give each other enough slack to express ourselves however we choose. I love her so much.

I don’t think I could live with me. But I have little choice. No matter how many out of body experiences I have, I’m coming back. Until I don’t.