The Musical Stylings of Jonny Q

For the last week or so, I’ve been fighting some sort of virus that Amanda has already battled through - no fun. So of course, no voice and no energy means no music. No problem. I’m on the mend.

I bought a workbook the other day to help me with writer’s block. t’s published by the Berklee school of Music and is basically a collection of exercises in harmony and chord structure. Theory-wise, it’s a good review of the material I learned in Sarah Stoycos’s great class at Centre, but I don’t really want theory to enter the writing process overtly. I like it more for the exercises, like where you take rhythm patterns from one song you like and play it with a chord progression from another. Stuff like that can get the creative juices flowing.

Amanda and I did go to Boone, and did see Neil, if not the Carry-Ons. They were the third band of three to go on, and the first band hadn’t gone on by 11, so we left. Amanda was already having the first symptoms of what would later become this great sick-fest. It was great to see Neil. We only got to talk for a couple hours, but he seems to be doing really well and reminiscing old times was almost as fun as living them. Hopefully we’ll catch up again soon. They’ll be back in Boone in April, I think.

Chris is coming to Raleigh this weekend for a prospective PhD student thing. A Grandma’s Genius reunion in the works? Who knows?

Finally, let me plug MusicMatch On Demand. I hate paying for music as much as the next guy, but if I’m going to do it, this is a tolerable model. I pay $7 a month ($5/month if I paid for a year up front), and have access from any PC to their entire on-demand library. It’s not comprehensive by any means, but it’s definitely got enough stuff to keep me entertained. In fact, it was the only place I’ve been able to find the one song that will forever define our NOLA honeymoon, “Squeeze that Thang” by Rockin’ Sidney. Plus, Although it sucks that you can’t save the streams to hard drive (or portable player, for that matter), that’s nothing a decent stream recorder can’t (or hasn’t) fixed.

P.S. Guster’s new album is coming out in the early summer! Hurry up, BnL.

The last time I saw my friend Neil was probably early in the Fall semester of my freshman year at Centre - 1999. We were at Vanderbilt visiting another friend I haven’t seen in too long (my fault), Nick. It was a brief visit, and the first one in quite a while before it. All in all, Neil and I were tight from eighth grade through probably tenth. He moved to Chattanooga, and we saw each other sporadically after that.

About a year ago, I got news that Neil was in a ska-punk band out of Nashville (now Atlanta) called The Carry-Ons. I still haven’t talked to him since that time at Vandy. Tonight, they’re playing a three-band bill at a place in Boone, about an hour and a half away.

Needless to say, this won’t be my or Amanda’s scene. She quilts and I unironically cover WHAM!, but it’s definitely worth three hours in the car into the mountains and the worry of what to wear to say hey to an old friend and see some music. Plus, Boone’s a hippie college town filled with bluegrass and folk music, so as long as we pass for college students, we’ll be all right. I’ll wear leather bracelets just to be safe.