The Steel Guitar Forum

You can only fry your beans once If you fry them twice they are refried.
No matter how long you fry your beans they are just fried beans.
No matter how many times you refry your beans, they are still just refried beans.
If I fry the beans for 30 min continually they are fried beans.
If I fry the beans for 30 min total and turn the burner off at the end of 10 min and then back on for 10 min then off and then back on for 10 min would the beans be?
1. fried 2. refried 3. refried fried 4. fried refried
Yes there is a PSG lesson in this!
.

Mark, your dentist reminded me of all sorts of different highly ambitious & motivated people, athletes in particular. How DO you tell a Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Joe Montana that it's time to QUIT? And there can be some ungainly crossover/methadone effects. Supposedly there were old fat little bankers and lawyers all up and down the Eastern seaboard who's eyes just lit UP as soon as they saw Michael Jordan pull his White Rolls-Royce into the parking lot of the country club golf course! Not all that much different from the innumerable actors who can sing great – as long as you keep their microphone off.

After living as an audio engineer for nearly 40 years I've noticed it's not usually the very musically skilled, extremely knowledgeable musician that makes the big time. It's always the person that can barely play 3 chords that get rich because no one told them they can't so they took it and ran with it. Ignorance is bliss. Another thing I've noticed is it's not the guy that drove to Nashville in an air conditioned Cadillac that makes it. It's always the guy that rode a bicycle 500 miles and passed out in the streets of Nashville when he got there and some kind record producer discovered him laying there.

You can only fry your beans once If you fry them twice they are refried.
No matter how long you fry your beans they are just fried beans.
No matter how many times you refry your beans, they are still just refried beans.
If I fry the beans for 30 min continually they are fried beans.
If I fry the beans for 30 min total and turn the burner off at the end of 10 min and then back on for 10 min then off and then back on for 10 min would the beans be?
1. fried 2. refried 3. refried fried 4. fried refried
Yes there is a PSG lesson in this!

The lesson is, keep some of these handy....

I don't know what the big deal is here. The other night I was playing a solo of Four in the Morning and an elderly lady was standing next to the bandstand with a very sour look on her face. I was mashing pedals, moving the bar and doing some extreme hand techniques and when I finished she looked at me and said "You can't fool me bucko you don't sound anything like Faron Young". Was I doing good or just in over my head? I thought I had nailed it.

David Mitchell wrote:After living as an audio engineer for nearly 40 years I've noticed it's not usually the very musically skilled, extremely knowledgeable musician that makes the big time. It's always the person that can barely play 3 chords that get rich because no one told them they can't so they took it and ran with it. Ignorance is bliss. Another thing I've noticed is it's not the guy that drove to Nashville in an air conditioned Cadillac that makes it. It's always the guy that rode a bicycle 500 miles and passed out in the streets of Nashville when he got there and some kind record producer discovered him laying there.

No doubt there is much truth in what you say, but the contrarian in me has what I hope is an amusing little story...

I was in a band long time ago that had a semi-regular gig at the CPO club at the local navy base. One night in the middle of a song, an attractive lady approached the bandstand and handed me a folded note. I assumed it was a song request (probably not a phone number, but you never know...) and I gladly took it from her hand. She gave me a smile, turned and walked out of the club with some guy in a uniform with lots of stripes and medals and stuff. I opened the note when our song was over. It said “You Suck”.

Good thing she told me, otherwise I would have never known.

Good and bad are not absolutes.
Good steel playing and bad steel playing are dimensions on a scale and things can be more good, less bad or exist in an uncertain state where some measure a thing as good, yet by another it may be seen as bad.
A more useful position is to view things as being better or worse, more or less and so on.
You can also view some things as ambivalent, with no clear indication of how good or bad it is, and where the best answer may be 'it just plain depends'.

A more useful position is to view things as being better or worse, more or less and so on.
You can also view some things as ambivalent, with no clear indication of how good or bad it is, and where the best answer may be 'it just plain depends'.

True, Stuart. But the point of my story is that some (perhaps most) people do have in their own minds an absolute measure for quality, regardless of what anyone else thinks. The other 9,999 people who have approached me about my playing have been glowingly complimentary. Their stories are just not remarkable or memorable or funny, and quite possibly not as truthful.

This reminds me of something I learned in sociology class years ago. There is a thing called the Peter principle and what that says is we are good at all tasks until we rise to the level of our own incompetence. And that is why I will never be accused of over playing!

There is a standard, and it's me.

Good one, Charlie