General Music Chat

Yes, Craig.
The answer to your unasked, unanswered question is yes.

You the man.

George,

That's all I get?

You? My brother? My friend?

The people here that DON'T like me, used more than one sentence.

LMAO!!!


btw...

My wife is looking into going to school to be a nurse.

Shredd,

I had already thanked you and JW123 on MySpace for your critiques here, but I had to say something to you...

First of all, THANK YOU, for taking the time for such detailed comments, when you are laid up and in pain. Wow. I am so sorry for that. You just got through some carpal tunnel issues, and now the back? So sorry brother.

And I also wanted to tell you how MEANINGFUL personally, the comment was abot the tree in your yard and even putting a picture of it on here for me as encouragement.

I saved it and put it as my computer wallpaper bro!

It also means alot, because for DECADES I have used the Bible's metaphor of "pruning" as encouragement to people who are going through hard times.

The Bible explains that God prunes those He loves.

As any gardener knows, pruning is the process of cutting back parts of a plant. This is done for a few reasons, and among these is to stimulate growth and MAKE the plant produce MORE FRUIT or BETTER FRUIT!

Pruning is a painful process. When something is cut off, it is painful, and yet the result is, that the plant produces more growth and stronger growth.

For decades, I have used this analogy to encourage people who were enduring a hard spell, to let them know it is not because God hates them, that he is allowing their lives to be challenged in some way, but because he LOVES them. I would tell them that God, is like our gardener, working laboriously to produce such magnificent fruits in us as well. More often than not, the message was accepted, and they took it in stride and more importantly did not blame God for the seemingly bad things in their path, but instead began to thank Him for pruning them. It deepened their hearts a little, gave them a more positive outlook on trials in life, and usually strengthened their relationship to God.

And here you are, in effect, using the same lesson on me!

And even providing a photo to show me that you can cut something down to it's stump, but if it survives, it will only come back stronger and better than ever!

You touched my heart bro!

Thanks for allowing "Jah" to encourage me in a way that was especially meaningful to me personally, even though you likely had no idea how meaningful that would be to me!

You RAAAAWWWK brother!

Thanks Brother Bob!

And yes, I knew you and John especially would like "Train".

But surprisingly, it is also my 10 year old step-daughter's favorite original of mine now.

You can feel the blues soul of it, but I updated it with a little more modern beat, which I think worked really well, and the idea succeeded, cause I've heard from ALOT of young people already, who are diggin' it!

And who knows? Maybe that will encourage them to find out who Howlin' Wolf, Blind Willie, John Hurt, Skip James and so many other great bluesmen were!

btw...

Accepted your friend request on MySpace, and I see, that made me your first friend, which means you signed up and PROMPTLY deleted the friend you were "assigned" - Good ole' Tom - LOL

True to character Bob!

Not even MySpace will tell you who your friends are or not!

Thanks again for the kind words and checkin' out my music brother!

I've had the Myspace account for quite a while. It has sat idle for a few years. I've never done anything with it. When I first opened the account I got a bunch of friends requests from different women who by coincidence sent me a picture of the exact same butt encased in a very tight pair of cutoff jeans. It was the exact same picture of Anne, Nancy, Gladys, etc. Not that I don't like a nice butt shot, it just kind of turned me off. Now that the band I'm in is getting closer to gigging I might go and enhance the Myspace page. I know it has helped thousands of musicians. I really appreciate your accepting my very first friends request. When you become world famous (soon) I'll have you right at the top of my friends list. That'll show the world what discriminating good taste I have in my musical friends list. I also commend you on your Myspace page. I like the fact that it's very basic. You don't have a clear picture of you on there, that's cool. Your music is paramount on there. What you look like, the way you dress, is not what you're about. It's the music. It's info about you as a person. What you find important. Your Myspace page should be about your values. I've already told a few people to check your page out. It's all good my friend.

Well, we'll see if I get famous enough to get a cool nickname like "Fisherman Bob"

And yes, MySpace can be VERY useful. It can also be a pain the ass.

But if you guy decide to have a band page on MySpace, separate from your personal pages, and you want any hep designing something for it, I would be happy to take a shot at it.

Just let me know brother

When we were reforming the band about five years ago we decided to rename it. One of the other band members suggested calling it a "fishy" name since I fish all the time. Somehow or other everybody started calling me fisherman bob and then we chose The Bluefin Tuna Band. It didn't really matter to me what we called ourselves, there's not much in a name. The only thing that matters is that you get called no matter what the name. I was in a band years ago called The Outhouse Blues Band. I thought it was a stupid name. One of the other members had a great original song called the Outhouse Blues. About a year later a bar opened up called The Outhouse. It was incredibly popular and the house band called itself The Outhouse Band (not us unfortunately). We think they stole the name from us. Anyway band names and nicknames are funny. Nothing really in them unless you can play well....

For me to ramble on would be pointless my friend and my brother.
You know what I'm a sayin.

My wife will be sending you a friend request soon from her myspace.
She loves your music, still !!
She likes to compare your southern sound to SRV.
Personally, I like yours better.

Ok Sans,

Your wife comparing me to SRV, one my all time faves, and then you, suggesting that... I can't even repeat the other thing you said, it would be sacriligious. LOL

Forget what I said about the single sentence.

That went way beyond!

I think I peed myself.

(did I just say that out loud?)


Really I was just playin' brother, but thank you. I was kind of fishing for which ones you liked best.


btw...


Got an email from the original drummer of my old group. I thought he and I were basically cool, and so when he writes me, with the title "Your new songs..." - I think he is going to congratulate me on debuting the new stuff. But instead he says something like:

"Heard your new songs... I like a few of them, I mean... they're all good, but I was wondering... what mic were you using? I use (insert mic here) and was wondering if you used some kind of compression, because it came out clean sounding. Oh and also, noticed that you got 625 song plays in 24 hours, that's a cool program you used for that!"

Man that pissed me off!!!!!!!!

In the first place, I KNOW he is spying for the bad-apple dumbass that started all this sh*t in the first place, cause they were "best buddies" and when one got pissed at me, neither of them would answer my calls, even though sometimes I was calling to see whether they were available for gigs that had come up.

But in the second place:

Software????? SERIOUSLY!!!!????

Does this guy not know me well enough? He thinks I would use software to boost song plays, and then BRAG about the song plays?

I mean, it's understandable I guess, coming from them. I suppose they would do something like that, and projected it on me, but I couldn't live with doing that, and then LYING about the counts to people as if they were real, when I knew they weren't.

And I had 855 song plays, but they don't know enough to realize that MySpace turns over the song counts around 3am EST and I had to add in the 3 hours before that got erased, when the new day starts for MySpace.

You'd think he be bright enough to realize they were real, because Day 1 was 855, Day 2 was 369, and today was 169 or something. Everyone comes the first day, and some return the 2nd day, and less the third, until it levels out at whatever will become average, until the next marketing blitz I come up with to increase them again.

Of course it was successful. I did a 10-Day coountdown and plastered MySpace and Facebook and Twitter too, with each passing day: "Only 5 Days left... come check out the 10 New Songs!!!" - It naturally peaks curiosity when it is in your face every day for 10 days, and repetitive. Like Billboards saying "Now only 5 miles for..." "Now only 3 miles for..."

I started to write him and give him a piece of my mind, but I remembered that God had spoken to my heart to forget about them, and KEEP WRITING!

I bet they think I did the songs in my friend's studio. They know the engineer of our original demos is a friend of mine. But he is a platinum producing, grammy nominated engineer and producer. He doesn't do ANYTHING for free, even for friends. He's a professional.

I guess they're trying to figure out how it was all done.

Well...

1) Get a good singer (cause they need one)
2) Write good songs
3) Record them decently
4) WORK YOUR ASS OFF PROMOTING!!!
5) WORK YOUR ASS OFF PROMOTING!!!
6) WORK YOUR ASS OFF PROMOTING!!!

Do those steps successfully, and you get song plays and comments, and everything else.


Oops... I already slipped up on the "Forget about them" part, didn't I?

LOL

Sorry for the vent!

Damn!!!!

Oh...

Sans,

Hey brother, did you read that my wife wants to go to nursing school? She is checking for schools for it. One of them was University of Phenix, but I thought that was only an online school. You can't get a nursing degree online can you?

Any advice for her?

Last we remember, they were in demand and it pays really well.

Don't know if Obamanomics has changed any of that?

Ha ha!

I tell you what...

Not long after posting my little vent to my friends here, than I checked my MySpace and had a new comment from an enlisted guy, serving over in Iraq, which said basically:

"Hey man, sorry about the old band. The new stuff is better!"





I'm still not "forgetting" just yet, am I?

Damn it!!!!!!!!!!


LOL

Craig man, that tree damn near traumatized me when I cut it. It's part of what made me really want this house.. Here's a pic of when I first moved in:



When I saw this house for the first time, I couldn't help but notice this beautiful tree. Freaking awesome. I loved it from day one. It's actually about 50-years old.

If you watch this video, you can see the aftermath of when I had to cut it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUwdoP8n ... annel_page

I was totally sick about it. As if my life wasn't already turned upside down by the economy, I had the feeling I was gonna lose my tree as well. It felt like losing a friend, I wanted to cry when I was done.. All I could do was look at it and feel horrible. But I still watered it, and drove tree food spikes in the ground, and hoped for the best.

I personally wasn't aware of the tree metaphor you're talking about, but it does make sense to me. I wasn't raised in a religious household. I've read the Bible, but I can't say I feel like I retained very much of it. I couldn't recite one passage right now. I've been told by our drummer that I think like a Buddhist, and I'm still not sure what that means.. Hahaha.. I know nothing about Buddhism. I'm glad it brightened your day to say the least.

I think the strangest part of my Reggae journey is that I do tend to tap into the religious aspects of Rastafari in my writings, even though I barely understand it, and I feel more like an interpreter than a student or preacher of it. The words and music just come to me and I relay the message.

Craig, I think you and I just have a lot in common when it comes to music and our careers. Hopefully, one of these days we'll get together and collaborate on a song. I'd love to do something with Neanderpaul as well.

Craig,

I wanted to add that you had a great marketing plan with your songs and building a buzz for them, doing the countdown and all that. That makes people want to come back and check it out.

Any younger musicians reading this should take note, not of just music but ways to market yourself and your music.

Craig for someone so religious I do notice that you hold a lot of anger toward your former bandmates. Not that it matters to me one way or the other, but when I see a musician dissing former bandmates it makes a person look pissy or whiney to me. Music is a small circle and I know you dont see it now, but there could come a day when you may want to do some music with your former bandmates again. The guy that sings with me and has been off and on for 20 years, I wouldnt give him the time of day growing up. I never dissed him but as he was developing I would always think why would anyone want to play with that guy. Now hes the best singer/frontman that Ive ever worked with.

Anyway just a couple more observations.

JW123,

You're right about burning bridges, but in this case, you may be unaware that one of the band members trademarked the band name that I CREATED, and did this BEFORE the band broke up. Not only that, but he got MySpace to delete the site I slaved over for 2 years on Trademark infringement grounds. I also have reason to believe he may have tried to copyright some of MY SONGS which were not yet registered with Library of Congress.

THIS IS UNETHICAL

No professional label or producer would work with retrobate like that, if they knew what they had pulled. He would be blackballed.

So yes I'm pissed!

I almost lost my marriage over how hard I worked, for the band I CREATED and the band members I HIRED!!!

HE STOLE!

I could go to court about it. But after this, I didn't want the band name any longer. I wanted to move on and forget I met these people.

GREED. Pure and simple.

We were half-way through an album being released, which is why they tried to FORCE me to sign over half-ownership of my songs to them. Even the songs I wrote 13 years BEFORE meeting them and hiring them!

I won't apologize for my hard feelings after what they did.

I don't think it is a sin to be hurt, and express that. VENGEANCE would be sinful. Trying to harm them back. I have not done this. Not to them, not to anyone, not ever.

And thanks for the props on the marketing bro!

Craig:
To my knowledge you can jump from LPN to RN on line.
But the initial education requiers a lot of hands on called clinicals.

Tell your dear wife to nix nursing. The job sucks and just does not pay as well as a lot of people believe.
If I had the opportunity, I would go for a Physical Therapy degree.
PTAs and PTs can make a sh*t load of cash. Most dont work night or weekends. They are very much in demand and much of the medicare reimbursement is based on therapy.
Physical Therapy is where its at in healthcare right now.
(some PTAs are making 100k a year in our area on two years of college, takes my wife and I both bustin ass to break that )

#1 Falling down.
#2 Train

Killing and knocking down trees is a really bad thing to do. One does not matter but a thousand would hurt.

It does not matter any more in any case. enough land has been reaped to secure our fate and those of you who still dwell in the darkness or those who are blinkered.

Halo. Gotta do what you gotta do. Only one tree innit,