Techno Bluegrass

I love life's little surprises. There are an abundance of those nasty little suckers, too, crawling around and ready to drop down your metaphysical collar at any turn.

Brrr!

That's what the bluegrass is all about, isn't it? Things are going as right as rain and you come home with that mood ring you been thinking about getting your honey, on account of she is always letting you go and raise cain for a weekend while she battles with field-mice. And I don't mean the kind you see in that Nutcrackly Sweet they always put on around Christmas.*

Anyhow, you waltz in there and she's expecting chocolates and some roses maybe, and you smile real big and hold out that mood ring that it costed four cartons of Marlboros, and you don't even smoke, that's how much you love her.

And then you find out that you must have read the instructions wrong, 'cause when she puts it on and she's happy, it's apposed to be green, except immeditately she smacks you upside the head and your forehead turns red and then you see stars just like on Roger Rabbitt, so you never get to see exactly how she is feeling.

One of life's little mysteries, as I was saying.

But the reason I started this whole thing was because I was just trying to fill out a grant application, which is something I don't really know how to do. People keep asking me to do it, and then I do, and then they give me some more money to write it again, which to me means I didn't get it right the first time. Then they slap me on the back and they give me more papers to fill in.

Most perplexing. I tell ya, it's like pushing a rope; it's hard to do! The difference is the rope doesn't appreciate it, and evidently these folks do, because every year about this time, here they come, and every year they have some different questions to ask.

This year the stunner was, "How is your art form unique, and what characteristics does it possess that are not readily apparent to the itinerant?"

I want to go on and type a lot more about that, but just typing that tired me "right aught", as the Dutchies up here say, and besides, that's another blog for another day. All I know is, they are calling bluegrass an "artform" (!). Sometimes when we play people actually listen. The other day we sold 3 CD's and I think we're up to 4 pairs of socks for this year so far. That's up 50% YTD. Let me see IBM do that! Oh----and when we record these days, it actually sounds like what it sounded like.

That's why I call this piece "techno bluegrass." It's almost like "Back to the Future"; technology has finally caught up to strings and voices in the thin air.
And maybe tastes are changing,too.

One thing is sure. You shouldn't trust the fate of your marriage to free gifts from Marlboro. And watch out for them mood rings. Doesn't matter what color they are--them things hurt!



* Man. They play that music even the guy that wrote it was trying to buy back, figuring he was gonna chop it up and sell it in small little pieces for like baroque commercials or something, and then these freakin' kids that weigh more than I do start prancing around up there in black leotards with those lil mouse ear costumes waving their arms around. I tell ya, it reminds me of those flying monkeys on the Wizard of Oz. Brrrr....it's enough to put a guy right off his feed.