The album project report Jan 3, 2016

Back to the 1920s   horns, piano
Because I Want You   electric guitar
Rockin' the Swing    electric guitar and piano
One Little Glance     jazz piano
Sweet as Cherry Pie    electric guitar
When I Was Ready for You    electric guitar

The Weed and the Whiskey guitars and mando, 3 part harmony

American Song      trumpet and piano

Barra de Navidad    

Song and Dance Man   piano (jaunty)

Breaking news.... Glauber slept like a normal person last night

Oh my goodness, the thrill of sleeping like other people sleep.  Feels awesome!

It was a wonderful day yesterday, though it didn't turn out the way I might have thought it would.  I had imagined going to the Northgate Jazz Club to sit in and play some originals for a new crowd.  I was very confident striding over there, felt like I had a purpose, as opposed to say the thousands of tourists sitting over their dinner or beers killing time.  I mean why compare? but yeah I do, part of the 'affliction' I suppose, though the confidence and sense of purpose I felt is more than just 'in comparison' to my perception of others.  I've got good music, I've got skills and I like to perform, so yeah, I was striding a mile to the gig.

When I got there, there was a sizeable crowd at 8pm even though the music didn't start until 9:30.  I signed up to sit in, got the lay of the land and came to the conclusion that no, this isn't for me.  I especially got it when the bass player showed up and we had a little chat.  I said that I had brought some charts and is that cool with him?  Can folks follow along?  He had a bit of a lost look, said that he was primitive but uh we'll make something happen.  Uh ok I guess, quickly realising that this wasn't what I had thought of as a jazz jam session.  And if the bass player can't or won't read a chart, there's really no way to knock out some songs that have a structure.  I considered changing the plan, doing something looser and easier to 'jam' with, but I just didn't want to.   So I went to cross my name off the list.  A British guy saw me crossing off and asked why, so I explained it to him.  His answer was perfect.  'Yeah I'm here a lot, and it's often 'higgledy piggledy' but something comes out of it'.  Higgledy Piggledy it is... I walked back through town to go with the familiar and jam with my Thai friend 'Apple' who I hadn't yet seen this trip.  Good choice!

And I did consider the notion that 'Rich, you tend to bail early, why don't you hang around and see something different?'  It's a point and I did think about it before leaving, but I looked at the audience, a big crowd by now, and I just didn't want to be there, didn't have a need to be seen or appreciated, wanted to play music but not the higgledy piggledy kind.  Maybe if I was a horn player or soloist it would have been different, but I'm pretty much a front man.  C'est la vie...

Made it to the CU where a Canadian guy named Harry was glad to see me, extremely complimentary of my music, asked if I would play a few before Apple showed up.  It was genuine so I accommodated, knocked out Happy Finnish Girls and Back to the 1920s to a lot of applause, then jammed with Apple for 90 minutes, singing harmony, playing some leads, just enjoying music with an old friend.  Beautiful!  And I even sold Harry a CD.  paid for my night haha.  Hey he kept saying great things, here ya go mate, thanks for the support.

And earlier in the day, I went to see Dr Lee at the massage place.  She is a fantastic practitioner and a nice friend.  42 years old, short, a little squat and a dynamite masseuse.  We were gonna trade a massage for a CD (awesome), but since I had just eaten, we decided that a foot massage would be best.  And ... and here's the good part... since it was slow in there at 4;30 pm, she had her 22 year old daughter come and give me a pedicure.  Now the absolute worst feature about me these days is my feet.  Toenail fungus has turned them kinda gross, and I have some embarrassment about them.  Trouble is, the medicine that might cure it has some potentially bad side effects on the liver, so I have decided to eschew that and live with the fungus.  (no more toe sucking in my sexual future alas :-)
But to have someone trim, and cut the dead skin away, and file and shape and make the best of a lousy situation was absolutely wonderful.  Daughter Lek didn't seem to mind working on my terrible digits and now they're certainly not beautiful, but they're looking more presentable and they feel better too.  Quite a gift and I gave her $5 which was more than her mom wanted me to do.  But I did. And I'm so appreciative.  Something about feeling the shame, letting it go and reaping the rewards of that process.  I wonder if that's part of why I slept well last night?  One could make the case.

Well it's 8:24am, the espresso is consumed and I can now amble off to my morning yoga class with Remco... one hour of sweating, core work, breathing and waking up this body.  Feeling extremely blessed right about now.

New Dreidel Verses

This dreidel's quite lethargic, I think it has ennui
And if you can't pronounce it, hey don't blame that on me

I made a little dreidel for those 'self hating Jews'
You get a 'shin' on every spin, Mazel tov, you lose!

I have a little dreidel, I stuck it up my rump
Now it's so full of dookey, I call it 'Donald Trump'

I need to write a dreidel verse, it's almost a vendetta
To take the time and make the rhyme (this one is fairly 'meta')

'I have a little dreidel'.... the verses are unending
But I get no reaction, my friends are all unfriending

This dreidel's worth some money, it's made from beaver pelt
But I could never sell it, who needs the Jewish gelt?

I hate this freakin' dreidel, it never lets me win
I try to get a gimel, this dreidel's full of shin.




My buddy Harris wrote one that made me laugh out loud:

I have a friend named Glauber, an endless font of shtick
He needs to find a lady, and spin her on his dick

Keep it Flowing, dude

I seem to have writer's block of some sort or other, can't get anything new going musically, no spark.  But I guess that's OK; it will be there when it's there.  Perhaps part of the problem is the fact that I've got this laptop along on the trip so it's too easy to get lost in podcast land or Facebook land rather than delve into Glauber land.  And that's OK too, why judge, just roll.

I've been on the ground here for about 9 days and it's really nice to be back in Chiangmai.  Feels comfortable and welcoming.  The first part of the trip is about shedding the excess poundage from US living and from a long trip over the Pacific.  And once again, it's happening, thanks to a lot of walking, low food intake and some strenuous yoga on a daily basis.  I bought a 10 series card at the studio around the corner and I'm loving it.  This morning I'll go for my fifth Vinyasa session, and I can feel the results, the strengthening in my core, the increased ease of keeping up.  Mostly what I love is the fact that for that hour, I'm working as hard as I can.

Working as hard as I can is not my normal state; I suppose some people manage to do that for a great percentage of their waking hours, but it's never been my style.  Too distracted perhaps, too lazy maybe, too social, who knows?  But on the occasions when I give my all, such as on last year's Same Same recording project, it's quite gratifying.  So for one hour in the morning I'm giving all I have to give.  And when I'm playing music, I give it all, which reminds me of a little story....

A couple years ago at Holiday Market, I was playing the kids set, had a big crowd and it was rocking.  But I was feeling slightly light-headed.  I had just been down on the floor in front of the stage with my accordion, getting kids moving, dancing, playing with scarves etc, and then I came back onstage to sing the last number.  I said to Kim, who is the stage manager and a dear friend, 'Hey I'm a little faint, if I pass out you can tell the EMTs that he was feeling lightheaded before he crashed'.  It was half serious, but I did want to let her know that physically, I wasn't all there.  She said, 'you don't have to do it', and I responded, 'Yeah, like I could stop...'  And that statement was a true reflection of how it feels when I'm performing.  Total commitment, especially to kids.  Yeah, like I could stop.

And just writing that gives me a surge of good energy, which is why I need to write and tap into something deeper than surfing the internet or listening to a podcast.  The juice is inside, find it!

There is a skinny, young waitress who works the morning shift at the restaurant downstairs at the Guesthouse where I'm staying.   She's sweet.  I mentioned that wow it would be nice if the background music wasn't playing all the time, ya know, so a guy could think or something, and she turned it down, then off, which was extremely sweet of her.  (Maybe because I tip her every time I have a coffee?)  But it's so appreciated.  Background music sucks, more distraction.  I can see having this place as a writing venue for an hour in the early morning before the guests roll out of bed.  I'm always up early and this is delightful.  Ahhhhh.

Active Shooter Situation (again)

Well here we go again, 'active shooter situation', body counts, press conferences, gun control arguments, 24 hour news cycle 'breaking news'.  Is it really breaking at this point, or is it the norm?  And why is there a part of me that wants more victims, more carnage?  For some reason I was hoping that the gunmen would get away and open fire on some other innocent victims, I guess twenty isn't enough anymore.  I believe they call this 'desensitisation' and yeah, I've got it.

I checked out long ago, came to the conclusion that there is no hope for the human race.... too many of us, too much violence, too many weapons, too much savagery at our core.  So whatever the horror of the day comes across the TV screen, it's like 'whatever'.  It's a comfortable abdication of responsibility, born of hopelessness, and I'll just watch the show and pretend to grieve for the victims.  But what I'm really doing is being grateful that it ain't me yet.  And might I remind you that this stuff happens when there is food on the shelves, gas at the pumps and money in the ATMs.  How's it gonna be when those comforts aren't available anymore?  Then those assault rifles will really do some business in the streets of America.

Maybe a society that is based on weaponry, televised violence and drone warfare might have some karmic debt to pay.

What's it all about, Richie? Is it just for the moment we live?

Well I've got my feet on the ground and everything is 'fine'.  Nothing hurts, I'm not sick, so far as I know  (he said whistling past the graveyard), but there is some kind of disquiet in my soul, a feeling that I'm missing something.  And I'm quite certain that what I'm missing is a sense of centered-ness or purpose.  So I will begin today to try and reestablish that connection, through writing, through yoga and through music.  Here comes the writing...

I'm staring at myself in the desk mirror of my $12 guesthouse room on Moonmuang Soi 2.  Temples are pretty grey by now, hair is dark and thinning on top, body is becoming more tan and hopefully less paunchy.  It's the same body I've been carrying around Eugene this year, but over here I'm much more stressed out about it.  It probably doesn't help that the folks who know me are making comments about how I've gained weight, in a good natured way, but nope I don't like my body at the moment.  And why is that, Richard?  Because I won't be attractive to any lovelies I might encounter? Won't be able to seduce them with my good looks and charm?  Am I still acting primarily out of that mindset?  Apparently so.  Just a bit shallow perhaps, maybe a bit ridiculous for a 62 year old guy whose orientation to the boy-girl world is that of someone thirty years younger.  But that's the case and I'll probably never shake it.  In fact, what I want to do is just drop the weight and preen about like the cock of the walk.  

But maybe it's not simply a matter of attracting the honey.  Maybe it's just that it feels so good to not be carrying around excess baggage in the form of 15 pounds of unwanted belly fat.  So much nicer to look in the mirror and see a trim, tanned hombre, which is likely to be the case within a month or so.  Working on getting that 'Asia body' to be staring back at me in the mirror.  So I've been walking a lot, eating light and hoping that the pounds start melting away like they always seem to do over here.  And I wonder if it would be possible to keep that form when returning to the states, land of TV, cars, refrigerators and bread.  I haven't managed it yet, and it would be a wonderful thing to get hold of this time around.  I know I can do it, though past evidence wouldn't suggest it.  

OK, any other purely self-absorbed thoughts I should discuss?  Sure why not.  It's that idea of getting the instant gratification from 'likes' on Facebook which can turn a guy into a distracted, hummingbird of flit flit nothingness.  What a world we have created with everyone snapping pictures of themselves, posting them online and awaiting the validation.  I see the tourists in their (our) endless search for content, thought it's usually skin thin and basically worthless, even when the folks back home think you're such an adventurer.  It seems like a conspiracy to get us to not think anymore, not delve anymore, not go deep anymore.   And all the while our likes and clicks are being catalogued into the great Facebook in the sky which sends us more of what we seem to desire.  My friend 'Mad Mike' is the first one I've seen to call it 'Face-ism' and yeah, I think he's on to something, because the new world order fascist model has a great foothold with us as willing contributors to our own imprisonment. Yup, I can feel myself slipping into that mind controlled system day by click click day.  So hopefully this recommitment to writing will serve as an antidote to the steady slide of mediocrity and powerlessness.  And yes, I'll post it on Facebook, because I like absurdity as well as the next guy, maybe more.

And now that I've been writing for some minutes, I can feel the cobwebs starting to clear, the synapses beginning to reconnect, it's not that hard, I just have to sit down and start, then watch the story unfold.  Ditto with yoga, ditto with music, sit down and let it roll.  But of course now that I've shared a paragraph on Facebook, there is a part of me that wants to see who appreciates it.  I had to shut it down to resist the temptation, but it's not working so well...  my mind wants that endorphin or whatever the hell it is that we receive when we get a 'like' or a comment.  Ah yes, the modern age.  Better grab a guitar now and see what i can come up with... 

Broken String Theory, and 'She's a Lady...(boy)'

'Broken String Theory'.... I was playing a gig that wasn't going well. Very chaotic onstage and off, just not feelin' it, and then I broke a string in the middle of a song... had to switch guitars... something was just 'off'. (first broken string in Asia) That night, the thought crossed my mind, 'Maybe it's time to go home'. Wrote an email to explore that possibility... Yup we're on the same page... time to reconnect ... It's been a challenge to be in love and on the other side of the world from one's partner... Changed my ticket for a week from today. (give or take). Valentine's Day in Eugene... Hey, who says I'm not romantic? (OK it took me 60 years... but whatever....)

  Rich Glauber... 'crisis intervention specialist'.... There have now been three times when I have inserted myself into a voices-raised conflict between a westerner and a local. I'm drawn to tying to help out in those situations. The first two were in Chiang Mai when I tried to mediate a couple of disputes at the guest house between customers and staff. Last night was something different. I was awakened by a shout in the middle of the night right outside my door. It was that special kind of sound that a guy will make when he's very upset and confused. It was followed by the yelled question 'ARE YOU A LADY BOY? YOU SAID YOU WERE A LADY!!' followed by 'I WANT THE TOURIST POLICE HERE RIGHT NOW'. and then, 'YOU'RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!' The owner's of the guest house come out, there are some voices raised in Khmer, and the young Brit is insisting on getting his money back. 'SHE SAID SHE WAS A LADY!.... I want the police here right away! and then shouting at the owners... 'I'll pay extra for the room if you get my money back from her. She said she was a lady'. (and they couldn't understand him cuz it was too fast and too upset. (oh but they got the picture).

Enter Glauber, 'eminence gris' who has slipped on a pair of pants and a tee shirt. I talk to the kid, 'Uh, you don't want the police here... it won't go well for you.' 'WHY NOT?" Look you made a mistake, you're not the first, it happens... cut your losses, you learned something, let her go on her way, relax'. Within thirty seconds, the kid is apologizing to the owners, asking forgiveness, bowing and scraping... All in a day's work (in Sihanoukville). Ah these kids today...