The guitar playing has been going well. Even though I took a week off to go fishing the callouses on my fingers were still pretty much intact when I got back and one of the first things I did when I got back home was get a little practice in (Donna was not yet back from a trip to her parents' home).
Banging away on chords is fun, and I'm getting better at the transitions. But I have to admit that after a few weeks I started getting the itch to, you know, play something. Something other people would recognize (not that anyone is going to hear it anytime soon). So I began looking on YouTube for some famous riffs so I could at least practice these chords on songs I like. That software is great, but I don't share the same level of affection for Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead and Tom Waits that the author does. Yeah, yeah, they're all important to the canon, I get it. But still...
So I found a few videos and wrote down the chords. I can pretty much play the entirety of Hotel Yorba without screwing up too badly. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "the beginning of Chopsticks on the piano" and 10 being "Any Yngwie Malmsteen solo", Hotel Yorba is about a 2. But it's something, and it's a fun song.
But last night I go to a point where I could play something meaningful, something that all creatures of the Earth respect and love. Something that every guitarist must be able to play before ever dreaming of entering the pantheon of musical greats.
I can play the intro to Cat Scratch Fever.
Today I am a man.
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