Over the years, I’ve had any number of “to-dos”, and ticked most of them off in due enough time.<\/p>\n
Some of the “to-dos” that have been ageing longest on the shelf involve guitar parts I need to learn.<\/p>\n
Granted, I no longer play in bands; my last real attempt at it was back around 2001, and we never came close to playing out.\u00a0 But I still occasionally sit down and try to learn something new.\u00a0 And the things I try, most often, are the ones that have been ageing on that “to-do” list for the longest.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, I more or less picked up “1952 Vincent Black Lightning<\/a>” by Richard Thompson.\u00a0 And when I say “more or less”, I mean I can either play it really well but just a little slow, or I can play it at speed but about as sloppy as a Bolivian heart\/lung transplant.<\/p>\n (It occurs to me that I’ll probably get an irate email form someone, sooner than later, saying “Hey, I am Bolivia’s leading heart\/lung transplant surgeon, and I have a 100% success rate over 1,700 surgeries” – or, worse, “Hey, I’m on my way to La Paz with my father to get him a transplant – what are you trying to say?”\u00a0 It’s a dumb, possibly ill-informed joke, although I do know my Google Fu well enough to at least check.\u00a0 Whew<\/a> . I’m not insulting the Bolivian transplant industry.\u00a0 Good times).<\/p>\n But one that’s been on my to-do list for two decades – through three careers, two children, an entire marriage, five moves and five presidents – has been “Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns ‘n Roses.\u00a0 For whatever reason – not playing in glam-metal bands at first, then being too busy, and then being even more too busy – I just never got around to learning it.\u00a0 And when I say “never got around to”, I mean I took the occasional swat at it over the years, and gave up. Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, you can find people who can show you how to play just about anything.\u00a0 I solved the problem that’d always vexed me with the song (what position of “D” Slash used), and…<\/p>\n …voila!\u00a0 I can play it!<\/p>\n Well, more or less.\u00a0 I can play it slowly pretty well (for now), as I’m still getting the whole lick into “muscle memory” (which isn’t something I’ve done in a while, and lemme tell ya it’s a lot easier when you’re 18).\u00a0 Up to speed?\u00a0 Well, I’m about as sloppy as a Bolivian hear…<\/p>\n …er, pretty sloppy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the years, I’ve had any number of “to-dos”, and ticked most of them off in due enough time. Some of the “to-dos” that have been ageing longest on the shelf involve guitar parts I need to learn. Granted, I no longer play in bands; my last real attempt at it was back around 2001, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nUntil this weekend.<\/p>\n