Above The City

Alarm is set for 10:59. Because NPR no longer wakes me up, I set the alarm to nothing but static so that I'm so alarmed that I have to wake up. Well I didn't have to work today so I snoozed it. Then 10minutes later I turned it off completely and ended up sleeping till 12:20. It's funny with me because during school, I'd always wonder how I ever woke up at such a late time and in summer I wonder how I ever woke up at such an early time for school. Anyway, I had to go to Kohls and return some shirts and on the way, I got the idea that I should go to all the music stores in Corpus and check out their classical guitars. I'm very content with my guitar. It's better than 98% of guitars available in Corpus. But it's always interesting to go check out other guitars. Sadly, I don't remember the names of the guitars I tried.

Music Mart: I didn't expect much from this store. First off, it's run by a bunch of assholes who don't like people to touch their instruments. Second, they don't really carry a wide selection of guitars. Picked up a guitar and messed around on it. Gross. The treble tone felt so weak. Just the over-all feel for the wood felt gross. I always feel like I have a time limit there. Like after 10 minutes of playing they'll demand you to buy it.

Guitar Center: Ohhhh Guitar Center. While it is the music store I go to most, I can't stand it. There is always that 40year old mexican with his guitar turned up real loud playing real bluesy solos. Always the little douche bag kid with his hair in his face playing in drop D. Another kid doing non stop shredding. The people that work there are always pretty friendly though. I ran into my old friend Justin because he works there which is pretty awesome. I get in there and there is only one other guy in there. That one guy happened to be an old friend from high school named Chris Agulair. I think I picked up a Rodriguez of some sort to play. It felt ok. Guitar Center has always had OK guitars. Some older guy walked in there and I knew he was trouble instantly. Chris was praising me and he got in the conversation and eventually he was saying he could teach me a couple things. He was very nice about everything. He said I was amazing and all that stuff but said that he wanted to teach me something so I could play it better than his ablities could. Really? Can I just practice and check out these guitars? So he goes on to do a chord progression. I think it was like a i ii V vii i in c# minor. Then he and another guy got talking about music. Talking about what careers there are with music and how if I learn 1 Bach piece, people from all over the world will want to hear me. What? Then it somehow got into Obama and Bush. It was pretty much a disaster. I bought some strings and took off.

Sound Vibrations: I've had mixed experiences with this place. Only been there a handful of times. When I was younger I went in and started playing and I sware one of the workers tried picking a fight with me. Then another time my freshman year of college I was playing and a worker stood and watched me play. But then again, my girlfriend at the time was wearing a dress so he might have just been looking for an excuse to be around. Sound Vibes usually has the best guitars. I remember playing a super sweet Paco that one time my freshman year of college. I've heard that they have an acoustic room with a super nice classical guitar. I walked in today for the first time in a year or so and asked if I could go in. They kind of gave me a weird look. Someone has to be in there with you at all times so it was super awkward. I knew he wasn't going to let me play the nice guitar right away so I got a decent one first to show that I actually know what I'm doing. After about 5-10 minutes I casually went "Oh wow...can I try that one?" and by this point he was super super super nice to me. Forgot the name but it was supposidley this rare brazillian wood. I was pretty excited. It was worth $5000. My guitar is worth $3100. This guys guitar I've played on in the past was worth $5000 and it was from Argentina. To this day, I have never played on a guitar as good as that one. So I was expecting to be blown away. Results? Eh. Great. Great feel and everything but it didn't live up to it. The worker there was asking me how much different it was than the others and trying to convince me to buy it. I wouldn't pay more than $2500 for it. The whole time I was just thinking, wow, this would be at least 3 g's cheaper in a country outside of the US. He was a super nice guy. Asking me lots of questions just about where I started, how I got into classical, what I'm doing now and for the future. But then he asked a question that immediately made me want to leave. He asked if I knew how to play Flight Of The Bumble Bee. Then went on to tell me how there is this guy on youtube that can play it at 380bpm. I. Don't. Give. A. Fuck. Does that make him good? Does shredding make him a guitar god? No. I'm not even going to get into that whole deal because I have before in a myspace blog(November 14, 2008). After I got out, they guy gave me his card and introduced me to all the employees there. They were all really nice people.

Took a couple wrong turns on my way back home but it was a nice drive. I have 12 days left. 12 days left of living in Texas. Maybe for good. It's a really wild thing to think about. This sounds cheesy but fuck, this is a huge turing point in my life. A new chapter. A whole new experience. In this month of August, my life is going to go through so many changes in every aspect. My life has already changed so much in 2009 and now it's going to go in a whole other direction. As of late, I've been listening to a lot of Lawrence Arms and Smoke Or Fire lately. Also this one song by Smoking Popes called "Megan." It's currently my myspace song. But Bad Astronaut does an excellent cover of it as well.


Bad Astronaut-Megan(Smoking Popes Cover)

Somebody came and took my hand
I finally had to go
But Megan I just want you to know
That I waited as long as I could