These are dedicated to everybody who works from their home and literally open the doors to members of the general public in order to chase a dream…Caveat Lector.
“With Friends Like Friends, Who Needs Enemies?”200K
‘It’s “With Friends Like Guitarists (Drummers too!), Who Needs Enemies?”‘ JCA
I was minding my own business when the Divine Inevitable happened once again.
Around 2014, I reconnected with my Childhood HomieHood Cellie whom I’ll call (200K). 200K and I spent the 1980’s in the now-urban-Hellscape known as King of Prussia, PA ( I actually love the place). 200K is responsible for botching my “friendy” quote in the beginning and then having it printed on T-Shirts. He and I could easily be brothers. He has a great wife and kids and lovely home too. A lucky dude. Plus, our wives get along well. We also get along very well in short bursts. I genuinely love hanging around him in short bursts. And I also enjoy playing in a band with him. The thing is, 200K happens to be eccentric. Haha. I’m not going into his persona here, but he is notorious in our circles. He kind of makes me look like a Benedictine monk in comparison. Except that I still have a full head of hair, unlike him. He’s the one who could technically do a “Friar Tuck” as a stage prank if you can imagine it.
He’s perhaps the very best drummer you’ve never heard of. He’s always just in time. Dude is also one of the smartest Tech Bros around.
Side note: The arrogant tech billionaires at Open AI, Nvidia, and XAi are each peanut gallery rejects in comparison, IMO. They can join Teller, Ulam, Oppenheimer, Fauci & Mengele in Hell for being the poster boys for the AI/Informed Consent/Atomic Dry Hump Of the World campaign. Didn’t any of their Grandmothers ever tell them not to play with shit? Mine did…
I digress.
We were doing a mostly Rush/Progressive Rock “Side Piece” Projeckt together. And literally, together were able to nail most songs we attempted note for note. It happens that he looks like Tony Soprano and I appear like a Diametrically-Challenged Alex Lifeson. We were able to take on entire albums from Moving Pictures to Dark Side of the Moon. For some reason, we could move right into those mindsets and capture the musical contexts & moods together. Not easy, but definitely No-Sucky-Sucky. I was hoping to eventually get to Genesis Foxtrot…
Anyway, we were working for over a year and were in the process of assembling some additional members to perhaps help us “fly some Pegasi over the Philly scene” according to 200K.
Except that…
Several years prior, he fell out of the sky and lived. They “Frankensteined” his ass back into existence, which is miraculous. What’s even more miraculous is that he could still lay it down, several years afterwards. But this sort of thing tends to cause some issues when you are Franken-Peart 2.0. You could say that he definitely suffers for his Art. So inevitably, things sort of fell apart over time with our “Side Piece” Projeckt and well, it remains complicated. Shout out.
This brings us to the who’s who whom inspired this diatribe in the first place…
Around 2021, I received a call from a local bassist we’ll call Peanut Butter Guy (PBG). PBG brought a small amp job over and we hit it off. I accepted an invitation to join him and his drummer friend (Townie) for a Friday night jam. Sounded like fun. I was missing working the (incredible) music project with 200K.
Townie and PBG go back a very long way and both are very good players. We ran through a bunch of Classic Rock/Heavy Styles and felt that we had some potential with this power trio concept. They made me sing which was painful, to say the least! It was also fun and I came to learn that I could in fact do two things at once. I never knew this about myself…
“I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on.”
— Major Charles Emerson Winchester III
As it turned out, things eventually fell apart since we are dealing with other’s habits. It wasn’t overtly negative at this point, but let’s just say that a few things got in the way which made it harder and harder to play together. One of the things Townie mentioned to me on the way out was that he felt that his chance to ‘make it’ with good musicians was ending since this didn’t work out.
Townie and I managed to stay in touch for about a year or so afterwards. I lost touch with Peanut Butter Guy. The following occurs within that time period. I have a metric shitload to think and say about Townie. I am going to leave most of it to the Reader’s imagination.
Townie also has a half brother we’ll call (Hairband Curator). HC apparently played “second fiddle” to a now very well known (Tele-Shredder) who was in the same 80’s band which shares a moniker with yours truly. It also appears that Tele-Shredder didn’t include Hairband Curator in his meteoric ride to the top. It should be noted that HC is an excellent guitarist. Hmmmm….
So, it’s 2022 and I had just finished building the GR1.6’s and a Vibe. I was excited to promote them and get them into some player’s hands. Townie and I were on social media so he hooked me up with his half brother HC on Facebook. Naturally, we started a private conversation. It turns out that we are all local to one another since he lives in South Jersey. I am familiar with the area since I lived in Willingboro through the 70’s and early 80’s. Plus, my step brother keeps his boat at Hawk Island Marina in Riverside. Small world.
After some friendly banter over several months, I invited HC over to my place to demo my new amplifiers. I suggested that if he liked the GR1.6 and/or Vibe that he would be welcome to use them on the new upcoming album with his fantastic bassist. No strings attached. I explained that I wanted to get an amp onto a high quality recording ASAP. He could take one home that day if he liked and I’d pick it back up when he’s finished with it since I visited my Step Brother in the area fairly often. It took several attempts but we were finally able to schedule a visit. The day arrived and he made it most of the way to my place on the PA Turnpike but had to turn around. It seems he got himself into a slight road “tizzy” which lead to a minor fender-bender with another vehicle and then headed back home. Well, shit happens.
Keep in mind that Townie was not invited because I wanted to keep it mainly business & have HC’s undivided attention. I didn’t want to have to divide my attention between them, etc.
So, Hairband Curator and I rescheduled for a few weeks later. As per last time, I didn’t invite Townie but he soon found out that HC was coming over and invited himself along. He showed up about an hour before his half-brother did. I believe that Townie really viewed this as an opportunity to jam with his brother. It wasn’t that for me. However, I decided to be a good host and would (hopefully) enjoy a jam after we were finished up what I had in mind.
Side note: Townie appears to have a habit of inviting and parking himself into a variety of band/music situations. At this same time, he had also infiltrated a local 4 Piece (Bar Band) whose leader visited my shop once. He became their “hang around groupie” and further inserted himself into their cadre by eventually also playing “second fiddle” to Bar Band’s original drummer. It appears a “half-eaten apple” also doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Back to HC’s demo. We spent a couple of hours upstairs in my Guitar Room demoing amps along with several of HC’s very nice guitars. Townie spent most of that time moping around, often interjecting, and exuding some outward attitude with both of us. HC exuded some reciprocal attitude in response as well as pointing some of that 1980’s hair band “competition” attitude my way too. Which amuses me. Lots of us know how to operate a guitars too. HA! However, it seems that I now found myself smack dab in the middle of a family drama and I did my very best to downplay it. I was beginning to regret letting them in at this point but hadn’t given up yet. Townie became outwardly mildly annoyed at times and periodically mentioned that he wanted to jam. HC was more reserved but did noticeably direct some of that 80’s ego at me at corresponding times, however.
Plus, we weren’t exactly having the best of luck with several of my guitar cables. It seemed that 3-4 of them would cut out with HC’s guitars but not with mine. Weird! I exclusively use Switchcraft jacks on all my guitars so perhaps the G&H shorting tips on these cables didn’t like the Chinesium jacks on his? IDK. I did find that (1) of my cables did fail outright but all the others were absolutely fine. It seemed that HC was impressed with a couple of the amps but not the cables, understandably.
Ultimately, after several hours Townie’s Tude’ got us all into the basement for some of his much anticipated BIG Bro’ Jam Session. It went OK for about an hour or so, until Townie “accidentally” smashed a glass full of beverage onto the floor. It’s hard to say. He stopped, defiantly acknowledged it, and began playing again. When we ended that tune, I motioned for him and suggested the way towards the paper towel roll to clean it up with. Townie shot another defiant look my way and began playing drums again. By this time, I had enough of these two. I proceeded to clean up the mess and started putting the gear away.
They went on to jam for another 20 minutes while I cleaned up. They eventually got the hint and stopped. As they began to pack up their gear, Townie mentioned that they were going to be meeting his daughter for dinner. Was this an invite? I think not. By this time, they had been at my place for about 6.0+ hours. It was around 3:30PM at this time. Townie then asked if it would be ok to hang around another hour or so until his daughter got off work. Then stated:
“We just want to kill a little more time until my (daughter) gets off work so we can meet her at Applebees…” Townie
In case anybody hasn’t figured it out yet, I’m writing a book about crossing “The Abyss”.
Damn the Lowlifes…
JCA
