PLOJ XXXVI at Dan Zimmerman’s Zimmerpalace in Glen Dale, MD.
I’m slowly clambouring over the remains of the mucous in my body. I have no knowledge as to what my body hopes for me to do with this plethora of slime. I don’t know what I could possibly do with this runny treasure. I could perhaps enable grand escapes from tight spaces or be used to loosen rings that seemed to be the right size when they went on…
Jamie Purnell came up from Raleigh, NC to play PLOJ on Saturday night. There’s my mom too and Alex Colvin, who sang us many a song about underwear.
In any case, I’m beginning to feel better, but I hate the stuffy head feeling that all my chosen cold medicines CLAIM that they’ll remove. I need legal recourse.
Heather showing off her tongue at PLOJ XXXVI in Riverdale, MD where it had recently tasted my taboule (that’s not a metaphor, perv), Rowan’s fried chicken (oh GOD good), my mom’s chili (I have cravings for this frequently), Amy’s cookies, Jen’s brownies… all sorts of delightful foods. Because it was a small PLOJ with mostly people that I knew pretty well, everyone brought food. because it wasn’t at College Perk, we didn’t have a bunch of random people passing through saying “hey! Free food!!”. We had a LOT of food. I ate it till the following Tuesday. I was pleased.
In any case – let’s see if I can pick up where I left off (having placed Heather’s entry in here, no matter what, this my voice is kind of jarring!). After getting back from California, PA – Heather and I got up early to run around and get lots of pre-PLOJ tasks done pre-PLOJ. Saturday just didn’t feel like a Saturday as we raced off to the grocery store and fought for particularly pleasing peppers and cracking good cucumbers and tantalizing tomatoes… I headbanged to death metal as I chopped everything I could get my hands on and diced things that I couldn’t and made the taboule that I really Love and other people have been simply tolerating for the last seven years.
Brennan expressing… SOMETHING… at PLOJ XXXVI in Glen Dale, MD.
PLOJ XXXVI was the first Pot Luck NOT at the College Perk in forever – almost since Heather and I left on the Trip – and I’ve always felt kind of weird having it there. I mean, it was awesome using the Perk; Chris really enjoyed having it there and I always got the impression that he was kind of honoured to be able to host it, but really – having a Pot Luck at a coffeehouse where people could buy stuff, having it at a place where there was alcohol, having it at a public place where all sorts of people could wander through… I mean, I was fine with meeting new people, but it meant we dealt with a whole lot of people who just weren’t interested in what was going on, and if you’re not playing with amplification in a public place you completely lose any sort of… I don’t know… authority to keep things running smoothly.
Erica’s been singing more recently, which is all fine and good, but even when mute I steal opportunities to luxuriate in her spectacular scalp fantasy…
So PLOJ XXXVI took place at Dan Zimmerman’s house in Riverdale, MD. Still in the College Park environs, but at a private home. It was a little tiny, but we didn’t have a LOT of people come out, so we sort of fit the space like a glove. We had a couple of friends who’d planned to come down from Pennsylvania, but they got sick. We had a friend come up from North Carolina, and he stayed healthy. We had a couple of new people show up, a bunch of old people show up – it was a very good night filled with all sorts of things but not a lot of me. Frankly, Heather and I had played out nine times over the past six days and I was exhausted. Though I enjoyed myself a lot, I was eager for Sunday and sleep.
Amy’s beautiful voice insinuated itself into most of the songs at PLOJ XXXVI.
One of the especially fun parts about having things at Dan’s house, however, was that he had all of his instruments right there. I got to play a lot of bass, a lot of banjo – I had no interest in playing mandolin, but it was there if the desire had struck me.
The night ended early, at about 1am – and we all made our way home with sleepy eyes and one another’s songs in our ears… I approved the night and we all agreed that we liked the new venue, and PLOJ XXXVII is set for February 17th. You should all make road trips.
As always, we’ve got to hit up the College Perk open mic. This past week our friend Ash showed up and proceeded to make amazing at and with us.
So Rowan mentioned that they were short-staffed at the music store where he works – the House of Musical Traditions – and I’ve been filling in, picking up some shifts here and there, selling instruments and realizing that I really don’t know very much at all.
I’m only picking up a couple of days here and there – there’s just not much out there that I don’t get bored of if I do it for more than a week – but I kind of like the work. It reminds me of the couple of months I worked at Borders. I simply enjoy being asked for something and being able to fulfil the request. I think there’s also a great amount of relaxation that comes with just being told what to do. Heather and I, what we do is almost completely self-directed – no-one is telling us what to do or how to do it, or how to do it right. At HMT, for a couple of hours I have a boss telling me what needs to get done, and there’s a checklist (sort of) and I know when the job’s finished and you can tell when you’ve done it right.
Some days it’s great and some days it’s exhausting and Thursday was one of the crazy ones. The learning curve at HMT is insane: I know my guitars pretty well, and I know how to play banjo and I know my way around the mandolin and a couple of other things. I know the names of a lot of instruments, but there are these crazy corners of the shop that I know nothing at all about and I’m occasionally overwhelmed by the sheer mountain of THINGS that exist in the store. We have a tonne of Chinese 2-string flutes and things that LOOK like sitars but AREN’T sitars and there’s like 5 different meanings for the word “zephyr”, which I always thought was a wind god.
Yesterday was a day where everything goes wrong: where people ask you over and over again about things that you keep saying you know nothing about (tuning the interior reeds of accordions? Anyone?), where you set off alarms and order food that no-one knows how to make. On top of that, everyone’s got a cold and I was crazy sleeeeepy.
From lack of sleep. Of course. Mostly from having gotten used to staying up till 7am and now trying to flip it to be conscious during those normal people hours.
On the upside, Wendy (the accordion woman) brought in some exquisite organic chocolate truffles (before she went home sick, just before all the accordion phone calls came!) and someone else brought in fruit-cake and I’m learning how to play flute, badly. I’ve become the banjo guy, which is odd – I don’t play that well, just well enough to be opinionated on the ones in the store – and I’ve learned that I really, really hate mandolins because they have teeny tiny little tuning pegs that slowly work their way into your skin as you’re tuning them and after you set up about eight of them your brain burns with G – D – A – E and dual-tuned strings and .
It’s an interesting job. I’m balancing my schedule so that it’s new and exciting and I don’t get burnt out on it, and it’s putting extra money into my bank account at a time when Heather and I aren’t travelling too much. And hey, who knew there were so many different types of Native American tri-feather hawk whistles?
I KNEW. Well. at least now I know. we have a LOT of ways of making noise. Yesterday was awful. Today was a lot of fun. I’m not going to describe it as much because both days were long, and I’m so very, very done for the night.
As with all jobs, there’s occasional silliness. This is the REALITY behind “HMT” – not House of Musical Traditions, but rather Home of Monkey vs Tyranosaur. Though really I think he’s a dimetrodon, but you know… they’re musicians…
