Set Your Rum On Stun

The Velvets once again have actually rehearsed again. Well , not the full band , but pretty close.

Remember kids, this band broke up pretty hard and stayed that way for sixteen years. We have dubbed it the Rum Tour, but it should be called the All is Forgiven and Forgotten Tour.

Last night, in the shadowy studio of Live Mix, a quorum of original Velvet players plus the engine room (rhythm section) of Kai and Brian, we knocked through some tunes. It's funny, but these same four VBs are the same I saw in my mind as being the four players who would unify this band. I never knew why or how, I just had an image come into my mind one day.

Rehearsal is chaos in the form of fun. "Let's go over that one again." "What are the chords in that one section?" "Hey, you guys want to try this one?" Too fast, I need more detail and time to absorb this stuff. The players were focused and it wasn't about one person trying to dominate the music, just adding your own part without stepping on the other players.

I had one of those rare musical moments when, and this is tough to explain to people, I had become my hands. Fripp says that wherever our attention is engaged, that's where we are, regardless of our physical surroundings. At one point, the only thing that I was aware of was my hands. It wasn't a guitar, nor music, nothing but a singular presence of hands. I know that sounds wacky, but sometimes when you do something for so long, it can become more than the actual activity; it becomes a meditation. Most of the time, I feel earthbound, chained in irons and all too aware of the shortcomings in my playing.

And, no, there wasn't any rum to be found.

But that's likely to change.