Happy Earth Day (free caffeine!!!!!!)

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz mmmmm teaaaaaa...

Happy Earth Day!  Public service announcement for people who have a Pavlovian reaction to freebies: free coffee or tea today at Starbucks if you bring in your own mug.  I plan on having my third free cuppa on the way home from my church gig this evening.  As a musician, I'm conditioned to take advantage of free food or drink whenever I can. 

So, Arthur and I recorded "Hard Times" last night, and it was the most fun I've had recording so far.  This is because A) I like collaborating, B) Arthur is fun to work with, and C) I went into it knowing it was not going to be a polished performance.  In a perfect world, I'd have enough time to make it perfect.  In the world where I live and move and have my being, there was enough time to get the notes figured out by late afternoon yesterday.  So some of the notes went away (where do they go?  and where do the wrong ones come from?) when it came down to recording with Arthur. 

Then there's the fact that I worked from a recording with a full band.  Ray floats all over the beat with his bluesy fills, because the drummer and bassist are laying down the beat.  With more time, I could have made my left hand a little more independent to make the time steadier.  Would also love to have made a more dynamic arrangement (the horns take care of it on the recording, but I didn't think about that until too late), and gotten more of the articulations in the right hand (oh, and more of the notes... heh). 

So that's my self-critique.  I had a lot more fun, given that I had no illusions that I might be able to create a polished performance.  Score for this week: Katgut 1, Perfectionazi 0.