Coming together

We had our first official practice today. Three hours, non-stop. My fingers are killing me and it's really hard to type with my left hand. Each time I hit a key, there's about a fifty-fifty chance I'll be treated to a searing pain under the fingernail that resembles bamboo splinters being shoved underneath. I'm not kidding; this shit hurts. I can soak them in ice water to numb the pain, but that only helps temporarily and I think it hurts even worse once they thaw. This happens when I have a long, hot and sweaty jamming session. I think the weight of the callouses on my fingertips combined with the mushy flesh underneath makes the nail start to pull away from the meat of my finger.

Summary: Ouch.

Enough of my complaining, though. It was a really good practice and things seem to be coming together very quickly. I'm finding that I'm most self-conscious of and least confident in my vocals. It's hardest when you're covering a song, I think, because you're caught between trying to do justice to the original song, so you don't want to sound too different from the original singer, but at the same time you don't want to sound too much the same because then you're just doing a bad Eddie Vedder impression. And no-one wants to hear that. But is there another way to sing Yellow Ledbetter other than unintelligible mumble singing? I dunno, it doesn't seem right somehow.

As it turns out, my bandmates (Bob Barker (bass) and Rick Nelson (guitar)(and no, I'm not kidding (seriously, I'm not. Those are their names)) are well experienced and have even played with ZZ Top and some other big names that I now forget. Bob knows my dad's wife from their church, which was a funny coincidence. But they're really easy to play with and are really, really talented. They're in their sixties, and they can play with amazing speed and accuracy. Puts me to shame, but it's motivation to keep busting my ass. I think I'm gonna have to lay off the strings for a couple days, though, until my fingers heal. People say Stevie Ray Vaughan would have this problem and solved it with superglue. I'm not quite there yet, but you never know.

I'm listening to Metallica's Master of Puppets album right now. I was at Disc Jockey and it suddenly occurred to me that I've never actually owned the album or listened to it all the way through. It came out in like 1986 and I was 9 and very, VERY forbidden from listening to this kind of music. I consider that a crime, but how did my parents know that Metallica would become such an important cultural influence? Wait, what am I saying? They probably still wouldn't like me listening to this. "Chop your breakfast on a mirror." C'mon mom and dad, what's a little cocaine in the morning between friends? Yeah, okay, I guess I kinda see the point.

I bought a couple other albums: Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs, Pearl Jam - rearviewmirror, and Stevie Ray Vaughan - The Essential. Little secret between me and the Internet: I've never actually owned an SRV album until now. I've downloaded stuff from iTunes and Napster (before Big Brother Hammerfist came down) but I've never been much for buying actual albums. Darrin's influence is changing that, however, and I've found a new way to separate myself from my money. In all fairness, though, I just bought 102 songs for $58. That's like 57 cents a song. Not too bad, I don't think. It's a DOLLAR on iTunes. And for some reason, I keep paying it. Ridiculous.

The Jaguars are playing their first playoff game in years here in about 28 minutes, so I'm off to watch them and pray for victory. They've been a tough team to root for until this year. 12-4!! GO JAGS!!