Edumication

Hey there all…how’s it goin’ in bloggerland. I would just like to start by saying I’m not much of a blogger or writer for that matter, but I’m open to trying new things. But really I failed English twice, once in high school and once in college, which probably makes you wonder how the hell I got to college in the first place. But that doesn’t even matter cause I dropped out after the first year and went to music school instead, which was much better (by the way that was a run-on sentence just now, I think). Anyway, English class never worked out because of those damn essays. It seemed like the teacher would make us write one every half hour. I felt like my head was about to pop. I said to the teacher “hey man, if you want me to be good at this stuff then don’t burn me out”. No, I’m just kidding I didn’t say that….but I wish I did. No really, you should stay in school kids, that way you don’t have to say , “Thank you for calling BevMo. How may I help you?” or “you want fries with that?”. You might even be able to be a professional blogger…..I mean writer. Anyway, since my grammar is so bad and it ended with a positive message for the kids, I would like to end this blog with a quote from the very wise and formidable, Ali G.

“Yo kids, lay of the rock. Stay in school. Big up yourself. Respek. Booyakasha!” - Ali G

BIG as TEXAS!

Bringing Your Fat Cat Down to Fighting Weight

Crevice Dixon and I were lounging around one afternoon and the conversation turned to our 7 year old Tabbycat, Tex Richardson. We remembered when he was a slim, agile lad, ready to take on any other feline that questioned his dominance over our apartment complex. “Now look at him, the sorry sack of atrophy… West, you feed him too much,” blamed Crevice. Getting defensive, I responded “It’s not that… he never leaves the house… never gets any exercise!” This was true, he just liked to sleep, eat, and get rub-downs by Crevice, but the fact is that I kept his food bowl full because I didn’t want to hear any whining. So Crevice comes up with the idea of getting Tex on a fast-track diet and an exercise program. How were we going to get him to exercise? Was there some kind of giant gerbil wheel? Could we put him on a leash and run him while riding our bikes?... pull Crevice on his skateboard? So we brainstormed for a while and came up with this 3-step program which we hope to market in a pet store near you:

1) Starve His Ass! We put him back in the food chain, fighting for survival, and we locked him out of the house with only a bowl full of water for 2 weeks. In this situation he was tangling with dogs, skunks, possums, and other cats in the concrete jungle, and we hoped that just maybe his hunting instincts would kick in again. After this drastic drop in weight, it was time for some serious cardio work…

2) Run His Ass! There is no dangling carrot bigger than fear. So we strapped a harness on him, put him in his cat carrier, grabbed my deep-sea rod and reel, and headed off to Dusty Rhodes Dog Park. As soon as we got near the park Tex started to get squirrelly. He could smell the stench of canine from 500 yards out. It was time to tie the fishing line to the harness. He knew where he was, and he was getting as antsy as a chicken knowing there’s a fox in the henhouse. So we set the cat carrier containing Tex right in the middle of the dog park and opened the carrier gate. Immediately he shot out of there, juking, zigging and zagging. We let him get about 100 yards out then I set the drag on the reel, slowing him down to a stop, deep-sea rod bending like it had a 30 pound Bluefin on board (like a Volkswagen Bug body with a Mack truck engine!). Slowly I reeled this fighting fur-ball madness in while Crevice kept the dogs off him. We repeated this method 5 times, each time setting the drag on the reel tighter, like the friction on a treadmill. Then the final step…

3) Run His Ass Harder! This step used the cat carrier, rod and reel, but this time we changed to a more challenging venue… Dog Beach. This was no giant litter box, as Tex found out. This sand was deep and was littered with many scurrying wet, frothy, sweaty, stinking dogs with lolling tongues. This step proved very challenging to Tex because not only did he have to overcome a heavy drag, he had to jump as he ran to keep from getting bogged in sand.
If Tex could talk, we know he would be thanking us. He is now in the best shape of his life… back down to fighting weight!

San Francisco Roller Coaster

Ah yes, the motor home. What an adventure in itself. The most exciting story from the road about the motor home (and I do mean THEE most exciting) would be regarding a show we had in San Francisco. I can hear you chuckling already, thinking perhaps, "a motor home on the streets of SF?! That's asking for disaster!" Being very well aware of this ourselves, we made it a point to plan our routing around the city on the major streets only, and with as few of hills as possible. The first time through we were stellar, giging at a place near to Golden Gate Park meant we really did not have to deal with the difficulties of navigating the inner city.
The second time through, we were not so lucky. We were booked at the Grant and Green. As we made our approach to our destination, the streets became more and more narrow with every turn, until finally we were on Grant, just one block away. Vehicles parked on either side of the street were mere centimeters from iRVin, the mirrors clearing only because they were so high up. I made the left onto Green and double parked while the guys unloaded their gear from the trailer. They gave me the ok, asking, "where are you going to park?"
"I have no idea, but you better double check that you have EVERYthing you need because I can assure you it wont be close!"
"oh I forgot my hat"
"I need the set list"
"are you really wearing those sandals on stage?" "fine, I will change...I need to get shoes"
Now it was really time to pull away. I continued down Green, making the right onto Columbus, searching the side streets for any place to put my '50 feet of lovin'. No luck. We get all the way down to the wharf and decide we may as well just park in a 'free' lot with other (much smaller) homes, until we realize it is quite the shady set up. Finally we settle on parking in pier 29. Since iRVin takes up so many spots, a quick math equation told Anne and I that it would cost about $50/hr to leave him there! That would be our pay for the night: to heck with that. I decided it would be in the best interest of the band to stay with the RV while Anne went to the club to fulfill the manager position.
An hour and a half later, the call comes: " the band is done, you should probably head out." Back the way I came, I make the left onto Green and begin the accent. I crossed Grant, totally scraping the hitch much to the delight of the drunks outside. I pull over and the band begins loading in, against gravity. Ravi is in the trailer yelling up a storm and calling for another hand because "the walls are crashing down on me-son of a motherless goat!!!" The load is finally packed and everyone piles in. I pull away from the curb, heading in the only direction I can go: up. People on the street wave me down, yelling "buses don't even go up this hill, you should turn around". But I had checked with a map and was sure that the streets went through, although what the hill was like wasn't really represented.
We approach the top of the hill, feeling like the roller coaster ride is really going to swing into motion now.
At the point the coaster would stop going click-click-click-click, but just before you actually go over the falls, that moment of silent om, I make the right turn onto Kearny St. Again, we are on a steep incline, but we have gone over the falls, all of the band is crammed in the front 8 feet of the RV due to the effects of gravity (that and they are dying to see if I am going to clear the right turn onto the narrow street, trying to avoid those nasty obstacles...cars on either side). As we descend, it appears as if the street just drops away: the city rises up from nothing in front of us.
But alas, there is indeed a street, Vallejo, that intersects, and thankfully it is a one way in the direction we want to go, so we shouldn't have any problems, but what do I see: an SUV heading right toward me! Well I am bigger and going the correct way, so I keep coming forward and the SUV honks but begins backing until they find a place to pull over. Our nightmare is almost through, I can see Columbus just two streets away, we are approaching Grant.
Now what is going on? There is a tiny two door, maybe a CRX, parked diagonally in the road with the door standing open. Then we see the problem: a small, thin woman is being thrown against the side of the car by a smallish dude! Well, the men and women of TapWater will not stand for this sort of abuse! But before we can even get the door of the RV unlocked, she flies at him with fists of fury! A blow to the head, one to the gut and he is bent in half. Not a moment goes by and he is upright and kicking her car...oh my! What have we stumbled upon. The guys are out and trying to separate the two but they really want to kill one another. Ravi tries to explain that we don't really want to get involved in their spat, we just want to get by, but there is no talking her into moving her car. She breaks free and chases down the guy, fists first, so Ravi looks in her car and realizes that she left her keys in the ignition. Perfect. He moves the seat back and revs the engine. That stops her in her tracks, she spins and now the fists are directed at Ravi. He grabs her wrists to prevent getting whaled on, saying "Are you going to move your car NOW??!"
She pulls it a little off the road and I try to push the RV through the intersection, but by this time, traffic is REALLY backed up. I try and try to maneuver but finally rescind the wheel to Ravi to get us the rest of the way out of the mess. Now its nothing but open, San Fran road. WHEW. An unforgettable experience for sure.

A Note from the Manager

Hi. My name is anne. I have a hard job. My job is to manage TapWater -- to manage everything from the booking to the finances, from the tour to the marketing. Most importantly, I manage the people that you know as TapWater -- the five guys who make the music that transforms the world from a dry, gray place into a lush rainbow of delight. It is a tremendous amount of responsibility, but I know I am up for the task.

The perks of my job are several. First, every day is different. Because we do not have help from anyone in the industry, we have to create our own path. We find our own way, learning how to create something from nothing, how to best promote ourselves, where to play, how to play, and how to maximize and leverage every moment of our work. I also love that I get to develop a deep sense of courage. I have become comfortable with high risk and uncertainty, and I trust in myself and my team that we can make it to the next level. Everything is a thick learning experience, teaching us what we need to know to move forward. It's awesome. And of course, I love working with some of the most talented musicians to walk the planet -- I love to hear their music, and help them achieve their goals. It is highly, highly satisfying.

The hardest part of my job is to keep everyone motivated. This can be quite challenging considering the obstacles we are up against. We do not make enough money to live or pay our bills, and we often live in unlivable situations -- cramming 6 or 7 people into a 34' motorhome for months on end. We do not get to spend enough time with our friends and family, we cannot afford to take vacations, or buy ourselves anything nice. We are lucky if we can pay our car insurance on time, or buy groceries for the week. And on top of that, we are in an industry where almost everyone is jaded, where no one acts as a community, where there are unbeatable odds. The market is oversaturated with bands and no one wants to pay you for your work. Every way you turn, people tell you "no." They tell us daily we are wasting our time, that we are chasing something impossible that cannot be achieved. They tell us that we cannot make it.

Sounds troublesome, doesn't it? It can be, but really, at the end of the day, all those things do not matter. They don't matter because we are working for what we believe in. Every day we spend our time creating the life that we know is possible for ourselves, for our fans, for our community. We know in the marrow of our bones that we have that something special that only comes along once in a lifetime. And when you look at it like that, the only thing that matters is that we do what is necessary to give this gift back to world so that it may fulfill the purpose that Life has intended.

It's Not That I Didn't Think That It Couldn't Be Done

OK, so I am very frustrated at this point because I doublehandedly handcrafted a wonderful blogg for all of you guys out there in handcrafted bloggerland and like a big, giant, clumsy, lameoid, who never ever, ever listens to our illustrious manager the first time (don't tell her I said that) I unwittingly somehow erased quite possibly the most beautiful piece of written work ever created in the history of Ravi and maybe the infinate existence of space and time. No, I'm not kidding...it was that good. I must have spent like several painstaking miutes unleashing the pictures in my brain in articulated fashion so delicately composed that you couldn't help but feel like you were there with me. To tell you the truth, I felt like I was there with you. So when our wonderful beautiful superockshred manager who gos by the humble Anne Tropeano said "draft your blog in word first then cut and paste it into your blog field, I completly ignored her wise words of caution, throwing care to the wind without a second thought and let my fingers dance across the keyboard only to lose everything that I had toiled so excruciatingly to create. My masterpiece had vanished. Ohhh the pain! Ohhhhhh the suffering dissapointment at my ignorant carelessness which had yielded such despair. So that's it. You don't get it. Maybe I'll write that story for your yearning eyes and wondering brain at some previously undisclosed place in time, however not today, not now and maybe never..... but I probably will. Of course did I go into word and draft this blog and cut and paste it this time? HECK NO!
-Ravi

Gordon BEER-sch

Hey y'all! Marc here...just wanted to give a shout out to the amazing people at Gordon Biersch in Mission Valley! We had such a good time at the beer festival this past Sunday--and free beer -- need I say more! By the way, the pomegranate martinis rock too. Thanks to everyone for their incredible support too! We loved it!

Bananas Grapes Tomatoes Orange Peels.....Barbie Dolls and Red Hot Wheels!!!

Always on the Sunnyside!

Well, not always on the sunnyside. I woke up this morning feeling cranky, blaming myself and others for all the obstacles in my life. Then one thing occurred to me and I said to myself, "Self, that isn't you talking, that's the old Wes rearing his cranky, cynical, irritated head. It's a beautiful day and there are so many great possibilities and so many cool people to meet." Of course this is the "transformed" Wes talking now, and I give thanks to my band manager, Anne Tropeano, for showing me the way to finding enlightenment.

Anne registered the band members for a seminar called The Landmark Forum (www.landmarkeducation.com). Although I attended to appease Anne, I came out different person showing signs of optimism, true compassion, courage and emotion. It is brilliant how Landmark's curriculum is structured. They give you the tools and knowhow to perform self-development, and if you meet any stumbling blocks after the weekend, you can call most times to get coaching from their professional staff. Usually I am skeptical of these self-development programs, but Landmark's curriculum was the first to make perfect logical sense to me and to show me things that I had never seen before.

So many people have had varying degrees of positive experiences from Landmark Education that you can be certain that you will hear about it again and again. Check it out if you think your life or society needs a new coat of paint.