Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Before I Continue...

A recent picture of me,
taken today (July 24, 2024)
Brian Joseph Johns
Hi again. Before I really get started today, I just want to clear up a few things. First of all, I really considered dumping the most recent A Lady's Prerogative story Lost Riff as the result of a lot of harassment.

I actually had decided that today, I was going to offline it, and then consider running it through the proverbial digital shredder (which mixes up all the ones and zeros so that I'm not tempted to later come back and revive the story).

The truth is that having been a professional musician myself at one point in life (I've done many, many things in life), gigging in many places throughout Canada, my country of origin as the piano and keyboard player for The Act, that I've known many guitar players over the course of my life, and had a great many friendships with such instrumentalists as well.

Working with people creatively in a band (as much as working in any creative field) can be one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of a (young?) musician's life, and will provide endless nostalgia as you close-in on and enjoy your retirement years.

Egos are usually swollen and often fragile, and most members of bands focus on finding and defining themselves, while tripping over theirs and others' egos along the way. I'm the keyboard player so I should do this... and you're the guitar player and you should do this, and neither of us should step on each other's toes. Then the singer comes in and everything you've agreed upon is out the window for their needs, after all, their instrument is a part of their body and you don't want that getting damaged. All this when our toes are the biggest part of our anatomy because toes in this case really are a stand-in for ego.

If I could go back in time and do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I'd have encouraged the band to focus on being a sixth person who wakes up only when all five of us are there. All the writing and everything produced by us would have been together, as a group, and credited that way. However, in those times we were younger and much more naive, and struggling to get a feel for the world as much so as we were for ourselves and our own quirks.

Regardless, chickening out on this story because some malicious people want to steal it or claim credit for it is just plain nonsense. I owe a lot of gratitude to those musicians with whom I'm jammed, and played in a band, and I'm not going to back down on this one, because I think those guitarists I've played with, worked with and listened to deserve it, as much so as the people who've known guitarists themselves deserve the same. They know who they are, most of them. Those who don't certainly soon will.

Its a great chance too for Barris to get a taste of Mila's life obsession as an artist, all while she's ironing out the wrinkles of their lives and getting organized before their marriage. What a great time for Barris to become obsessed with a (supernatural) musical instrument...

Alright, I'd better get to it. See you soon...

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