Red Paint CD Release Party Tonight - a Culmination

Tonight, Red Paint, an Alameda, California-based four-piece rock band, takes the stage at its first ever CD Release Party. It's the culmination of everything the group has worked for since it started up in lead guitarist Shaun Reid's livingroom in October of 2006. It also features Colin Close as lead singer and rhythm guitarist, Tony Herrin on drums and me on bass. Colin writes most of our original material.

For me, it began long before 2006. Sure, I got my Fender Precision Bass Special on my birthday in 2003, but my actual first bass goes back to when I was just 18, living alone in semi-poverty in San Francisco. I had dreamed of bass playing for years, perhaps from listening to Paul McCartney's brilliant work with the Beatles and other 1960's pop music. In any case, I was strumming my guitar and trying to start a modest career as a soloist in the image of, say, Bob Dylan. It was going slowly, with open mike nights at the Coffee Gallery in San Francisco's North Beach and a few little parties and events.

In any case, I decided to take my sole item of value--my coin collection--to a pawn shop in the Tenderloin and acquire a bass. I must have read about Jazz musicians doing this, I don't know. In any case, there was a green Fender-style solid-body electric bass. I made the swap, and saw all those remarkably unworn 19th-century Indian pennies, along with my $2-1/2 gold piece, slip away forever.

I took my new possession home and plunked away on it for a while, but, without an amplifier, I wasn't much good to anyone. Sadly, not too much later, someone broke into my ground-floor apartment and stole my bass. I figured it was a message. I devoted my energies thenceforth to my college education and tried to forget about bass playing, although I did still strum and sing with my guitar over the years and spent one fun year playing bluegrass mandolin.

A 50th birthday is a milestone. I decided, in lieu of a Ferrari or an affair, to acquire the bass I always wanted. I advanced this idea to my supportive wife and she said, "Go get it!"

After some shopping around I settled on the electric bass I still play most of the time. Although I acquired two other bass guitars over the years, and have made a whole second project with the upright bass, I stand today ready to play our band's 11-song CD (all original songs) live in front of as many friends and relatives as are willing to answer an EVITE and actually show up. You can hear some of it on our Facebook page.

We recorded this music a while ago, in two different studios, but it took a while to plan the event and get the date. We are excited to offer a second set of new original songs and a few covers in our second set. For our fans, it's a chance to hear something new from the band. You really have no good excuse for not being there, unless, of course, you're reading this in Anchorage, Alaska or Peru or Poland.

I always wanted to be in a band, was drawn to bass playing since Nixon was president, and love music. What could be better than this?

Red Paint plays at High Street Station in Alameda, California on Saturday, January 21, 2012 from 7 - 10 p.m.

Bob Dylan Is 70 Today--Really?

I knew his birthday was around this time, and that it was a "milestone," but 70 and Bob Dylan don't really go together for me. Being 12 years behind Bob, my introduction to him wasn't during his skinny New York folk period but the mid-1960's folk-rock time, when "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Positively 4th Street" burst on the pop scene. I later bought those early albums, where I could hear him sing "Blowing in the Wind" and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," and "Mr. Tambourine Man."

I remember how Nashville Skyline was a huge departure -- he actually sang more melodically -- and then the New Morning LP from 1970 where he seemed to come back a little to himself. But after that, I didn't follow Dylan very closely. I just knew he was out there being Bob Dylan.

And that's important to many of us who enjoy being amateur musicians. I remember, when I was just 18 and going out to open mike nights in San Francisco, that a sign by the sign-up sheet read "Featuring Bob Dylan's understudies nightly." We strummed and we sang but we were not Bob.

I think it's probably much easier to not be a tortured genius--which he certainly is. It's easier to admire him than to be him, and today I celebrate his life and his continued writing, recording and touring.

I've always liked his Blonde on Blonde album, especially "Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat."

I went to YouTube to find Bob singing Positively 4th Street. I didn't find him--just numerous "understudies."