(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

Gigged last night in the West End. Quite a laugh, actually. The Keyboard player's ex-wife turned up. A few years older than me, but still hugely fit. Legs that go on for ever, slender, elegant: another ex-model approaching fifty. Thankfully she didn't have a double-first in Classics, else all was lost. As is, I hope I managed not to monopolise her company, in that selfish way to which chaps have a tendency. I hope I didn't show undue preference.
Dammit, the Bass player rather liked her too: however I don't compete: mainly because I have difficulty in recognising when competition stops and life begins. I don't like the 'win at all costs' mentality: but that's my default setting. I've only managed to compete in a disinterested fashion when playing games with the young. I don't care if I make a bad move in a game of chess with nasty small aggressive godchild-who-pulls-the-wings-from-flies if he can understand and captalise upon it. However, losing to an equal is not tolerable. Why this should be I don't know. I prefer the company of equals to the semi-formed.
I conclude that competing with young humans is essentially didactic. We inform and show, re-enforcing the lessons with the competition, and most normal folk have this didactic urge when faced with the young. To compete properly would be a form of bullying, and not proper.
The same is not true of Bass players, however: but I still don't compete. Is it, I opine, something to do with the pecking order within the band itself? Unless your Bassist is actually Jaco....six strings normally trump four.

Thought of a new Anarcho-Syndicalist bandname as well: 'Test-card Bolognese'.
Shame the A-S ideals and me parted company some years previous: I'm sure I could have talked up that sort of name enough to have gotten a couple of decent musicians involved. (Yeah, and probably a drummer from the Baader-Meinhof Red-Army faction.  Perhaps not, but even so...)