The World according to Mindsap

Most people who know me, they would know that I love music, and that I tend to listen to a wide variety of it. Music, for me, tends to either fit a mood that I currently am in, or is part of a catalyst of sorts to transfer me to a different mood of my choosing. That’s not to say that I don’t listen to music for just the sheer pleasure of listening, nor does it mean that my only thoughts on music are of how it affects my mood.

To me, music is one of the most powerful influences in my life, and based off of the popularity of music as a whole, I would say it probably affects everyone in a relatively similar fashion. So often I can turn on some music and get swept away for periods of time daydreaming, fantasizing, pondering, etc., in addition to singing along with, down to isolating and dissection segments of songs that move and affect me. I love discussing music with my family, and friends I have, since we all share a passion for listening to music, albeit various types.

I also love to play music. I have been playing guitar for a little over 10 years. Mind you, I’m not overly efficient nor technically gifted with the guitar. I have never had formal music lessons to learn how to play guitar, read music, or understand musical theory. I always tinkered around, practiced, and pretty much tried to learn how to play my music. I played in a band in the 90’s that only created music, never was keyed in on being a cover band. While that proved to be a fun experience for me, the band could never quite get its foundation set, which eventually led to my desire to move on. My ultimate goal for playing guitar and being in a band was to play on stage. I kept telling myself, just one time. That’s all I want. Just to say I did it, and live the experience.

With the dissolution of the band in the fall of 2000, and my age nearing 30, I figured my time to live out the musical dream to play on-stage was more than likely over. Now mind you, it wasn’t like I laid a lot of effort out to learn the guitar, put in long hours playing in the band, and made being a musician my career. Had I done so, I’m sure that I would have landed on-stage at some point already. But, reverting back to 2001, I decided to take a career path within the company I worked for, and moved to Sioux Falls in South Dakota. During that time, playing music took a back seat to other events going on in my life, and eventually I pretty much stopped playing music.

I have gone through a metamorphosis in my musical tastes, and can usually identify with most music types (minus country, and hard-core rap), but I was starting to hear music that just didn’t move me. It lacked feeling, and to me, seemed almost contrived. My mother would probably just say ‘your getting older now, and your going to slow down some’. She would tell me when I was younger “you won’t be listening to Metallica when your older”, you will soften out. I agree that as I have gotten older, I don’t tend to listen to the hardest metal I can find all the time, but my tastes haven’t grown away from what I used to listen to, they’ve only become more wide and variant.

All of my past musical experiences would not have prepared me for what ended being a dream coming true (sorta!).

A chance meeting in December 2006 at an unlikely event changed the course of my musical career, if you will. While I had known Bert Cole, who sang in a group in Kansas City called Double Exposure, I mostly knew him as the husband of his wife Kathy, whom I worked with everyday. At our company Christmas party in 2006, Bert and I got to talking about music. Now, we may have been on different wavelengths with the types of music we were discussing, but ultimately music is still just music. We chatted for hours that night, and he suggested that I should come over sometime and take a listen to his band. While I would have enjoyed that, I felt that it was something that would be cool, but probably never happen. A couple of months had gone by, and I had all but forgotten about it, when I ran into him at another company function. We got to talking again, and our conversation about music just seemed to flow so easy. He suggested that I come try out playing guitar for them. Mind you, I haven’t picked up my guitar but maybe 5-6 times in 7 years, and to make a long story short - I felt that I was probably not the right person for the job. I explained to him that I hadn’t played in years, and that it was probably better for him and the band to seek someone out that had more experience, and someone who is not a novice on the guitar. He was adamant about me trying out, so I agreed that I would come and show him why I wasn’t the right person for the job.

About a month had passed, and I thought maybe they had decided to take my advice since I hadn’t from him. No sooner did I have those thoughts going through my mind, when in comes Bert at my work asking if I could come to their next practice on Saturday and try out. Once more, I let him know not to expect too much, as my skill level would be nowhere near their level, and that I felt they would be better off with someone else. He said, just come try out. You never know how it will go.

Friday - late February 07

The night before the tryout, I pulled out my guitar that hadn’t seen the light of day in at least 4 years. I cleaned and tuned it up, and started trying to play it. I started trying to play the stuff that I had done in my previous band, and realized how much I had forgotten both musically and physically with the guitar. This made my nervous. I was getting ready to try out the next day, and I could barely play a lick on my guitar. This looked bad.

Tryout day…

I was instructed to show up at 11:30 am, so that I could get setup, meet Twin (The leader and arranger of the rhythm section), meet the other guys and just get warmed up. Now I don’t know how your supposed to warm up when you can barely play anything, but I warmed up playing the only things I could remember playing. For the most part, everything coming out of my guitar was shit. Nothing sounded good, nor did it sound like I knew what I was doing. My nerves are starting to get a little wacky at this point, and that’s when the rest of the guys started showing up. Names went by so fast, I could barely remember them, and my nerves are through the roof at this point.

At this time, I remember the couple of times that I saw Double Exposure play, and thought to myself “man, you don’t belong here”. I’m being asked questions by some of the guys as they try to feel me out, and now I can say “My nerves are officially shot!!!”. My mind is spinning, and I don’t know whether to run, or just show them how bad I play and then run. About this time, Twin says “ok, we’re going to play a song called ‘Get Ready’.” How fitting… Get ready for some shit is what I am thinking. Twin says to me “if you don’t know what to play, just play something. Let’s see what you come up with”.

Fucking great, is what I am thinking as I shake my head and say ok. They start playing the song. I recognize it a little bit, but since I mostly listened to Hard Rock, this song was relatively foreign to me. I start playing some notes, but it’s clear within a few seconds that I am not in the same key. The whole band is going, but I’m feeling way out my league at this point. Twin recognizing this, stops the band. He asks the rest of the band to take a quick break while he shows me how to play the first part of the song. After about 15 seconds of showing me, he tells the rest of the band lets try again.

This time, I play the notes he showed me. Clearly, just by the sound, you can tell I am now at least in the right key. We get to the chorus part, he stops the band, comes over and shows me the chords. These were not easy for me. I played power chords almost exclusively playing in my last band, and my hand had a hard time adjusting to the new finger positions. We started the song up again, and we got through it mostly. Mind you, I was the weakest link in the song, but it didn’t sound too bad to my ears. Besides my guitar having crackling issues due to bad wiring internally, I felt that I had done a pretty good job playing the song considering I just learned it that day. Twin tells the band “I can work with this guy. He’s trainable”. My musical career had just been re-launched…

Before I was to get too excited, they informed me that we were going to be doing the Rhythm and Ribs festival in May, and that I needed to practice hard. This introduced extra pressure on me, considering that I work 40+ hours a week, now needed to learn a bunch of songs now, and still find time to have a life outside of these two things as well. I believe this what they call ‘burning the candle at both ends’. The heat was felt on both ends for quite some time. Twin and I got together at least twice a week for the next 9 weeks. I practiced at home as much as I could, while still keeping my schedule of studying for my computer certifications, and spending time with Ann. By the time the show was nearing, I knew most of the pieces to 11 of the 13 songs we were planning on doing that night. Mind you, notice I didn’t say I knew the songs well, or by heart. Just pieces of them. Usually the main part of the song, enough where I could either fake or turn the guitar off during the rest of the pieces.

My First Show….

Rhythm and Ribs came faster than I had wanted. I didn’t feel ready, and I felt more nervous than I had at any time in my life before. I had pulled out my BC Rich Warlock Guitar, which is a seven string that I removed the bottom string on to make it a six string). Day of the show, I am nervous about a great many things:

1) this is my first time playing in front of a crowd

2) I am playing a Heavy Metal guitar - while playing R&B music - I’m sure that looked interesting to outside observers

3) and did I say, I am playing in front of a crowd for the first time.

The band members start showing up one by one throughout the evening, while band after band is playing on the stage we will be on. I am watching the other bands, but to be honest, I don’t remember hearing a thing. My mind is wandering constantly, and I am trying to do everything I can to keep the nerves calm. I had a couple of stiff drinks that night, hoping that would help ease the nerves, but it didn’t touch them. Finally, I get word that the band that is currently playing, is the last one before we play. I thought my nerves had hit their peak, but apparently not. It ratcheted up another notch or two, and I was definitely feeling it. Band members kept asking me “you alright ” or “you nervous”. They knew, and so did I.

The jazz band has just stopped playing. We are on next. While they are moving their equipment off, we are moving ours on. The sound guy asks me “which amp you want to use?”. I asked him which one he would prefer. To which he replied “well its your choice, but this Fender amp sounds great. Use it”. So I agreed. I plugged my guitar into the amp, turned it on, and started playing a few chords. Now, if I was playing some heavy metal, the amp was setup to play that perfectly. Wanting to tone down the sound and make it more clear, I set about to change settings on an amp I am not familiar with - while slightly doing this in the dark. All the while, Twin’s talking about something - don’t know what he said, but he kept on talking. I also noticed, that even though the stage was pretty big, fitting 12 people on it is a bit of a chore.

Now I hear what Twin is saying. He wants to tune so that we can get started. We start tuning, and even though I have fiddled with the amp, its a little crunchier than I would have liked for the type of music we were getting ready to play. I try to change some more settings, but Twin is ready to get the show on the road. Now I thought I had hit the ceiling with how nervous one can be, but obviously I was wrong about that. My hand is shaking, my body was tense, and I was clinching my jaw, holding on for dear life. That’s when I heard the “start us off Frost” come from Twin.

The drumsticks knock together 4 times, and we’re off……..

At least 25 minutes of time must have passed while I was Autopilot. I have no idea what had happened during the last 25 minutes since we started, but when I came out of the fog and took myself off of autopilot, I was astonished by what I heard.

First - I had made it through the first half of the set already. Hopefully I did alright, but I won’t know after the show is over since Ann taped it for me.

Second - I know I had fiddled with my amp, but it was way too heavy sounding for the music we were playing. I found out later through Twin and some others in the band, that I killed the speaker on the second chord of the first song. Glad I was on autopilot then.

We were getting ready to get into the part of the set I didn’t know as well. I was still nervous, but since I could see a light at the end of the tunnel, I was gunning to get us there. After a few more songs, we were told we had room for one more song, but then we needed to shut it down for the night. I was hopeful that we would finish out with something I knew better, but we didn’t. I stumbled through the last song, and was ready to get my ass out of there. While the rest of the band celebrated, I was lost as to how I felt about the whole experience.

My dad, Ann, and a friend of mine, Dan, were there that night as well. I went to them afterwards to see what they thought. Dan was diplomatic and easy going and said it was pretty good. Ann, she was pretty much the same way, although she stated that there were some songs that sucked. My dad, first thing he said, “not exactly the music I thought you would be playing on stage”. He’s right. I would never in a million years think my first gig would be with a R&B band. I was exposing myself to things outside my element, my comfort zone. I didn’t how I felt about that.

I drove home and watched the tape before going to sleep. There were good parts, there were bad parts, but ultimately it was done. In the back of my mind I kept wondering “is this for me?”, “are they going to keep me in the band?”, “do I want to continue playing in the band?”, and “where’s the high you are supposed to feel after a show?”. I felt no high after the show, in fact, I felt kind of dull and numb to it. For a brief moment, I had determined that I was going to quit…

But I persisted. We played a few more shows after that, and time has come along since then. It is almost a year since that tryout in Twin’s garage, and with his help and direction, my guitar playing has gotten much better. I am by no means perfect, but he pushes me just right, and is a very patient teacher. We have some shows coming up soon, and while I don’t have time to be a full-time musician, I am definitely excited about the upcoming gigs. I’m ready to get back on-stage at the Rhythm and Ribs show this year, this time to feel the experience - this time “I am ready”.

After almost a year since my last post, I was beginning to wonder what I would do with my website/blog. I have lots of areas in my life that I have thoughts on and would love to share them, but ultimately I wanted to keep the majority of the site focused on one type of theme as opposed to random ramblings. That’s not to say that I won’t diversify my topics, nor go on wild tangents that would appear out of character from the normal of this site, but I will try to make it more streamlined into a few categories.

The series of topics will range from technology reviews, ideas, and areas I am currently learning about (typically relating to the area of PC’s, servers, network-related, software, but could encompass other items such as home/auto electronics), to politics, how to live greener (I know this is a newly overused term right now, but I wanted to say it in print ), personal feelings, music, to things I find to be just utterly stupid and moronic.

Overall, I think the new direction of the website will be exciting and one you will enjoy reading. I am looking for writers that would like to contribute to the site, so if this sounds like you, please send me an email with some writing ideas and I will get back to you.

On Monday December 18th, 2006 I finally reached another milestone in my bowling career. What started out as a way to get together and connect with my Dad a little over 10 years ago, a metamorphasis of my bowling style (from throwing no hook to throwing a curve ball), several bowling balls and assorted gadgets over the years, an attempt to learn how to adjust to different lane conditions, etc., finally culminated in one night of perfection. Below is my half-witted attempt to story form the game and emotions I felt from the seventh frame on:

‘They say “the 7th strike is one of the hardest to get in the 300 game”, or so I’d heard before. To me, all strikes seem hard to get. That’s not to say that I haven’t had runs of strikes before, in fact I have had several runs before, they just aren’t always easy to come by. So many nights I have placed the ball down directly where it should go, land in the pocket as it should, yet not give the desired strike outcome. My mind always starts to get a little antsy by the time I’ve rolled 6 strikes in a row, with the possibility to bowl a 300 being there. Usually, it wanders to areas that don’t make the slightest bit of sense - such as song lyrics I’ve heard before, places that I have visited before, drinks I’ve drank, etc. You get the picture, not where my mind should be.

Tonight, my level of focus seemed unwavering, and my level of calm was intact. My initial thought was, ‘You’ve been here before and never shot a 300, you’ve already got a great game going, just finish out a good game.’ So I wandered down to the lane when it was my turn, picked my ball up, and proceeded to focus not on the game, but to worry about the ball I was getting ready to throw. I made sure the ball was correctly positioned in my cradle, focused on my lane arrow, took a small breath, and proceeded to start my bowling motion. The ball went exactly where I wanted to throw it, landed precisely in the pocket, and another strike was tallied to my score. The 7th (and supposedly one of the hardest) frame was done.

By now, I know I am only 5 strikes away from completing this game. The rest of the league usually starts paying attention to people who have that many strikes. The place and people seem to get a little quieter when the bowler approaches, and usually everyone starts to ignore and leave them alone. This is where it becomes very difficult to keep your focus.

Sitting with my Dad, Ann, and Steve (my bowling teammates), I can see it in their faces that they know its possible. They appear to want to talk to me, but they are trying to be coy. It’s a game that I have been part of when bowlers on my teams have gone after the perfect game, and its one that is being played with me now. I try to settle my nerves. For me the 7th frame wasn’t that hard, but I could tell by the sweat forming in my hands that this next frame is going to be more difficult. I try not to look at the scoreboard, however that is almost impossible considering the screens are pretty good size, in plain view, and all over the bowling center. I notice that even though I am bowling a good game, we are currently losing our game. This makes the pressure that much more intense.

It is my turn again to bowl again. The noise level drops a bit, or am I imagining it? I swear it decreased some. My hands are sweating and the air machine is only temporarily taking care of it. I am feeling a bit more tense, but I am trying to keep it together. I focus on my lane mark, start my approach, and laid the ball down in the wrong spot. It would appear at first glance that my flirtation with the perfect game came crashing down with one wrong stroke, however the ball glided over to what is called the ‘Brooklyn’ side and the pins came crashing down. Another frame down, another strike, 4 more to go.

Now I know that Ann, Dad, and Steve are talking, but to be honest I couldn’t tell you one thing they said. Its like being in a heavy fog, you can see yourself but nothing else around you. Time again to bowl again, that didn’t seem to take as long to get to my turn this time. How long was it? I saunter up to the lane, grab my ball, and prepare to throw the next ball. My palms have slowed down on the sweating bit, but I feel no less pressure. I know that I got a little lucky in the 8th frame, and that luck like that will run out. I get up on the lane, take a bigger breath, focus on my mark, and throw the ball. Right place.. Right speed… Right in the pocket… Strike 9

Side note - we are still losing the game. I realize that I am going to have to strike out in order to win, and even then we might lose. Dad, Ann, and Steve talking - what were they saying? I need a drink, but shouldn’t have one. Need to remain clear headed, need to remain calm. How about a muscle relaxer..? Probably not a good idea. Breathe damnit! Everyone on my team has shot, and it’s my turn again. Damnit, can’t I just sit here for a moment. Their last bowler decides not to shoot until after I am done. The game is close, and striking out doesn’t guarantee us a victory. All the prying eyes from the league are working their way ever so quietly to see if I shoot the 300 or blow it. I walk up to the lane and put my hand by the air dryer. My hand is definitly sweating again. Got to keep my cool. I pick up my ball, try to ignore everyone behind me, ignore the scoreboard, just shoot the damn ball.

I throw the first ball in the 10th frame. I hit my mark, had the right speed, and it hits the pocket. Strike! I turn around to throw the next one. I see everyone watching, so I keep my gaze pointing to the ground. Now a new development - my ears are turning red and burning up. Just what I fucking needed, sweating hands and hot ears!!! What the hell is wrong with me…?

I pick up my ball and proceed to get ready to throw. I keep telling myself, just relax god damnit! Throw the ball like you have a thousand times before. I throw the ball out there, missed my mark barely, but the ball continues to carry. It hits the pocket.. Looks like the 7 pin is going to stand up.. NO!!! then it drops.. YES!!!

One ball away, one strike away.. I can smell it. Who lit the goddamn lighter under my ears??? Feels like they are going to explode. I heard all that applause.. Everyone is watching.. Ok, the only thing I need to do is throw a good ball. If I throw a 8,9, or a strike, I get a ring. I can live with that.

… I stand at the line. I focus on my mark. I am breathing damnit! I just got to throw the same ball as I just did. “Do you feel the way you hate, do you hate the way you feel…” What the hell is Bush doing in my head??? Breathe more, focus!!! Has everyone else stopped bowling??? I don’t hear anyone..

… I ready myself to throw the ball. The mark is in site. The throw is off mark, god damnit I threw it to the outside. Just give me an 8 or a 9!!! I also threw it a little slower than normal… C’mon baby just hit the pocket. It starts its curve toward the pocket… picks up speed.. slams in the pocket… its done!!! Holy Shit!!! They all fell.. Do I fall to the ground like a Bjorn Borg moment? Do I scream? Do I cry? I have no idea! Just turn around and get to Dad and Ann and it will be alright after that. Love you guys!!!

The next 15 minutes were a blur of congratulations from other bowlers. Thank you for your support!!! Needless to say this was one my happiest moments in life. My only regret is that my Mom and my brother weren’t there to share it with me in person, hopefully in the future there will another time and they will be there!

This is my first post to state that I am up and running. More to come later!