me and the Church

‘Church’ is capitalized because I’m talking about the Catholic Church. It was without question the dominant social institution of my youth.

Mom and Dad were both devout Catholics. They both went to Catholic schools for their entire education. When I and my siblings went to school, it was to the local Catholic school at St Joseph’s in Cupertino. That was where we went to mass every Sunday.

At a certain age, I don’t remember exactly when maybe aged 10 or 11, I resisted going on Sunday. I remember my father telling me I should be able to dedicate an hour a week to god. I had no philosophic reason to not go. I just didn’t wanna. I don’t remember that I was ever excused.

In the early 1960s, the Church held a big conference called Vatican II. When it was over, many of the rules around going to church that I had grown up with were liberalized. Priests were allowed to say Mass in the local language. No longer did we have to fast before taking communion.

Mom and Dad bought into the liberalization completely. We started going to Mass in different places, not necessarily consecrated churches. One time we celebrated Mass at a park. Just out on the lawn with about 20 people and a priest. I found it interesting to experience the Liturgy stripped down to its essentials. Along with everything else going on in the world, it led me to a questioning of the established institution of the Church.

Around the same time, there was a lot of interest in music with guitars. We were avid watchers of the Hootenanny TV show which featured just about everyone playing guitars and singing. Then, of course, there were The Beatles.

So, somewhere in that time frame, the idea of music for a Mass using guitars was born. At St. Joseph’s, there was established a ‘guitar Mass’ led by a charismatic man who played guitar and sang.

As I recall, the songs were not liturgical, per se. ‘Blowing in the Wind’ and ‘Today’ were favorites.

My interest in the guitar was not due to the guitar Mass, or anyone on Hootenanny. It was The Beatles. Nevertheless, the guitar Mass was an acceptable outlet for my rudimentary playing at age 15. Mom and Dad had an acoustic guitar for some reason that I commandeered. I think Dad thought he was going to learn to play at one point but he never did. Come to think of it, I don’t know why we had that guitar. It was just there and I started playing it. I didn’t have to lobby for a guitar to play. Fate!

So, now I’m in high school. And by the way, I had run up against the limitations of the Catholic education in 6th grade and moved into the much more academically demanding local public schools. We were still very active in the church, though. The annual fall festival run by the Parish had always been fun and there was a youth group for high schoolers run by a Brother.

(Even now I’m not sure of the distinction between a Brother and a lay person. Brother Gary was not a priest but he had made some kind of commitment to the Brotherly order. For us, he was a fun guy who could be serious too. I learned a lot from him.)

Any American male in the 1967 -1971 time frame – my high school years – thought a lot about the draft. The Vietnam war was raging and quite aside from the prospect of coming home in a body bag, I felt strongly that there were better things to do with my life than to become a soldier and go to Vietnam. I enjoyed being in the Parish youth group but I had a lot of different ideas about faith and spirituality. I recognized the institution of the Church as just another power structure. I was planning on going to college, which included a deferment, but I was thinking longer term. I was laying the groundwork for a Conscientious Objector status with the draft board by staying active in this recognized religious organization.

In the end it didn’t matter because the draft was reconfigured to a lottery. I got a high enough number so the likelihood of my being drafted was very small.

There was never any particular moment when I ‘decided’ I wasn’t going to go to church any more. I graduated high school and went away to college. No one was bugging me to go to church every Sunday so I didn’t. I was playing guitar in a rock band! That was my new religion.

Over the years, I’ve been to Mass a few times. It all seems silly to me but I did it because I was with Mom and Dad and I respected their needs.

I have one more story. When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, we were studying the Sacraments. One of the Sacraments is the Confession. Confession involved going down to the Church on a Saturday, waiting in the pews for a turn in the confessional, then entering the confessional and facing the priest through a screen. You could hear but not see the priest. It was all pretty intimidating plus it took a big bite out of a perfectly good Saturday afternoon. There was a formula of what to say, of course, followed by a recitation of whatever sins you had committed in the past week. You had to say something so there was some invention every Saturday.

So, one day my nun teacher handed out these little cards to the class. On them was printed something called the ‘Act of Contrition’. My teacher explained that it was for times when you couldn’t get to confession. You could just say the prayer and god would hear you and take care of it. Balance the books, as it were.

Well, even at my young age, I saw it immediately. Why go through the operator when you could direct dial? It was the beginning of the end of me and the Church.

numbers

Just stuff in my head this morning:

66 years old.

94 days of shelter in place if I don’t count the one day I worked, now 17 days ago.

188 lbs.

Jane arranged a Zoom call for the family yesterday and put together a trivia game. My favorite was, how many descendants do Bernard and Nancy Wood have? 24!

20. Dollars I paid for an on-line guitar lesson. What do you call it when it’s not a one on one lesson but it’s not a class either? Kind of an automated class with videos. But I’m annoyed at some of the terminology so I haven’t finished it.

One. Banana with my one (so far) cup of tea this morning. It would be great if I could make this my breakfast, but I will almost certainly go up and have a bowl of cereal as soon as I’m done with this post. I’ve been trying to keep it smaller (the bowl of cereal not the post).

guitars

After two weeks without posting there is so much to write about I hardly know how to start. I’m going to talk about my visit to Norman’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana last week.

Sepi and I went to Southern California to visit family and friends. That’s another story. I happened to see a little video thing by a guy named Mark at Norman’s a few weeks ago and thought it would time to see if my 1989 Telecaster Custom shop had any value. Here’s a picture of me playing it at Vince’s in 2011.

That’s Franco playing my Washburn bass in the background. Here’s his story.

I was prepared for a big guitar store, but Sepi was gobsmacked. She took about a hundred pictures. Here’s a view of part of the store.

It didn’t take long for the expert at Norman’s (Mark) to tell me the Tele was worth about what I paid for it. Of course I would have to give a significant discount if he were to buy it for the store. I’ll hang onto it . . .

Well, naturally, as long as I was here I was going to look around. The first thing I spotted was an Epiphone Century just like Peter’s except in better condition.

Then I looked for an example of the late ’60’s ES-335 I used to own. Yep, they had one.

Now I’m thinking of other guitars I used to own. My high school friend Bruce Johnson sold me a Gibson Melody Maker that I used for a while. No pictures of this exist and even my memory is a little cloudy but I’m pretty sure it looked like this.

None of these guitars spoke to me now. I was thinking of leaving and took one more turn around the shop. There were some archtops I hadn’t noticed before. One was a Gibson ES-150 from the early 1950’s.

Looked, played, and sounded very nice. Sepi suggested that if I liked it more that the Tele, I could work a trade.

Aieee! I hadn’t thought of that. I called Mark over and he said I needed to talk to Norman who was busy at the moment. More agonizing while Sepi encouraged me. I already had a very similar guitar although not a vintage Gibson. What a dilemma!

In the end I decided to let it go. I think I can sell the Tele myself for a lot more. I don’t want to be a guitar collector, just a guitar player. Time to go practice!

Burt Bacharach

Yesterday we had what we call an outside event at Davies. Davies ‘Symphony Hall’ was of course built for the San Francisco Symphony but other entities use it when they can. It’s a beautiful hall and prestigious. In the last six weeks, we’ve had our usual spring spate of graduation ceremonies squeezed in amongst the symphony rehearsals and concerts.

Last night’s outside event was Burt Bacharach. We last had Burt a couple of years ago when he appeared with the Symphony accompanying him. This concert was promoted by SF Jazz and was Burt with his band only. Burt is particularly interesting because Hal toured with him for 12 years and talks often about the great education he got from it.

When I say squeezed in, I really mean it. Yesterday the orchestra was on stage rehearsing Rite of Spring until 12:30. Large orchestra with lots of percussion. As soon as they were released, the hands fell on the stage removing stands and chairs and rearranging risers while the sound crew unloaded their truck and began to install the PA. Actually, we have an in-house PA now that is good so there was no rolling in of large speaker boxes and tedious stacking and raising them on motors.That’s all permanent now. What Hal and his guys did have to do was bring in the mixing consoles, Front Of House and monitor, run the snakes, connect everything, build the mic stands and wire the stage: mics, monitors, keyboards. All in 2 hours.

Instead of being on the sound crew as I have many times in the past, I’ve recently moved up to Head Carpenter/Stage Manager for most of these outside events. I was wrestling risers, bringing in and setting up the backline. Besides the grand piano for Burt, the band had a drummer, a bass player, a violinist, a sax guy and a trumpet guy, three singers, and three keyboard players (five keyboards). The keyboards too the most time.

So I was busy too. A little later in the afternoon, after the sound check was underway, the production manager came to me and asked who was on the crew that could do stage moves. Well, that would be me. So, she says, one of the singers plays acoustic guitar for two of the numbers on the show. They didn’t want the guitar sitting on stage so I was the one to bring it on, along with a stool, at the proper time – twice.

That’s all really normal stuff. As they (the PM and the singer) were finishing up telling me all this, they said, can you tune the guitar? They had an electronic tuner so I said sure. They didn’t ask me if I was a musician or knew anything about guitars or anything, just, can you tune it. OK. When the sound check was done, I took the guitar offstage and tuned it up.

The first number was about a half hour into the show so we got started and I went over and checked the tuning but then I started thinking. The singer never said anything else to me after that initial orientation. As far as I know he never picked up the guitar to check the tuning before he went on stage. Wow! That seems really odd to me.

The handoffs went fine and the guitar was in tune. After the show I was working with one of the keyboard guys putting things away and I mentioned it to him. He said, ‘Yeah, last week we were in LA and the guitar came out all out of tune.’ He was kind of laughing about it but I was stunned. These guys are all really good musicians but evidently they have a blind spot on this. The numbers were basically solo pieces for the guitar. Pretty exposed.

Well, they’re gone now and tonight we have somebody named Ben Gribbard. It’s a similar deal: the orchestra is on stage until 3:30, then we come in and put in the show again. 8 o’clock start, I don’t know when the sound check is. Maybe 5 or 5:30. Hal was able to leave the mixers in so that part doesn’t need to be done again. It’ll still be a panic.

By the way, Burt Bacharach was born in 1928. He’s older than my father. He’s little guy and bent over but still going out there on stage, playing the piano, talking to the audience. I didn’t think to ask how much they’re touring but there’s no end date. Rumor is that the Symphony is having him back next year. He did two hours last night on stage without a break. Amazing. He told the audience there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing.

music

In recent years, when people have asked me about what I might do with my time when I retire, one of the answers I usually give is, ‘Play music.’

For those who don’t know, I was consumed by music as a teenager. I learned to play guitar and played in a band in high school. My local JC, DeAnza College, had a very good jazz program and, rather by accident, I ended up there for three years. My last year was primarily to take advantage of the opportunity I had to play bass with the #1 band. It was a hot band and I was stretched to the max. Many of the musicians in that band went on to careers in music but I decided to work in the theatre and have the freedom to ‘play’ music when and where I wanted.

As it worked out, I played very little music for the ensuing 25 years. Work and family took precedence.

About a dozen years ago I started to come out again, mostly playing rock and roll with Tom Kent and his bands. When I got back to the Bay Area, I enrolled in the jazz band at the local JC, Skyline College. I played bass for two years then guitar the third year.

Then . . . then I had jobs keep coming up on Monday nights so I quit. But last fall I started again. On guitar, on the theory that a missing guitar player in a big band is no loss whereas a missing bass player is more serious.

I needn’t have worried. They had three bass players and another guitar player; they hardly noticed when I’m there.

Actually, everyone was very nice and welcomed me back. Many of the current band members were there for my first go ’round but my contributions this time were minimal.

But what I noticed was that I wasn’t practicing the material. I looked at it and worked at it long enough to get through it, but I didn’t work it to get any better. In fact, the second half of last semester I don’t think I picked up the guitar at all except on Monday night for rehearsal.

I decided to write about this when today, with no need to go to work, I got up and did my laundry and the dishes, then wrote a nice blog post, then . . . farted around the house: read some, tried to take a nap, ate lunch, read some more, did a crossword, had a cup of tea.

Now I’m writing this. Why don’t I play the guitar? Or the bass? They’re all here, hanging on the wall, begging to be played. I don’t know.I’ve got tons of resources: books, music, backing tracks. It’s making me reassess my stated retirement plans. And wonder about all my motivations.

Well, I signed up for another semester of band so I’ll keep trying. It starts in a couple of weeks.

holidaze 2

Well I went tonight. It was fine. It was a totally different scene: at Eddie’s home instead of a public space, kids all over the place. I asked twice but he told me not to bring anything and there was lots of good food. The vast majority were relatives and neighbors but a few IA people were there so naturally I talked shop with them. I did talk to a few other people tho’.

Later the guitars, ukes and other instruments came out and Christmas carols and other songs were sung. Eddie gave me Diana’s guitar to play along with. I did for a while until my fingers started hurting from the big strings.

Sarah came by so I was able to be with her a little. She found the cookies in the back of the kitchen which I hadn’t noticed and made some nice designs. I had forgotten it was billed as a cookie party.

All in all, I did OK. I told a couple of people about Zach and they said things like, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ and ‘I can’t imagine . . .’ I’d probably say the same things if I were in their shoes. The horror is so great there really is nothing to say.

Tag Archives: guitar

me and the Church

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holidaze 2

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