Sunday 22nd of April, 2001
The script for Almost Famous was delivered with Sight and Sound this month, and I find myself reading it.
I get practising early, and come up with an instrumental section for one of my newer songs, which doesn't yet have atitle or formalised lyrics. It kind of needs an istrumetnal bit, though, structurally. Last year in Edinburgh, I though I had it, but was working on something that was in block chords (like the solo from Little Games), but because of its chords (Emaj7, Eb7b9, G#m7 to begin with) didn't lend itself comforatbly to that sort of a treatment. This is more like arpeggios, using open strings wherever possible to navigate up and down the neck. It's a lot more complex than I originally wanted, but that's alright.
I interrupt its development to go to the gym, and when I get back to it after lunch find that I've forgotten whole bits and have to readdress them. Also, I realise that I need twice as much per chord as I thought. So back to it, and I'll need to practise v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Oh well, it's a sort of upwards and onwards thing.
I can recommend Almost Famous or the script thereof, anyway. The end's a bit pat, perhaps, considering some of the film's selling power is derived from the idea that it's a True Story (the film's writer/director Cameron Crowe was a teenage writer for Rolling Stone like the lead character), and Real Life doesn't really work like that. Or maybe it did, and I'm just being cynical. Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs, apparantly. Those bits - the Lester Bangs bits - ring true, as does some of the industry stuff. A lot of the things to do with plot and characterisation are less convincing, as though the story was an excuse to fit in the unconnected things Crowe remembers or has researched.
Perhaps it would be less noticeable if I had actually seen the film (perhaps Pa has it on DVD).
Keep worrying away at the guitar solo.
Change sheets, do housework, the usual stuff.
As I am opening the cupboard to get a cup for my cocoa, a cup falls, hits the stove, breaks and rebounds, deeply cutting my left thumb. Well, not hospitalisation deep, but ooh-blood-where's-the-plasters deep. Iodine in motion. Hopefully it won't cause too much annoyance guitar-playing-wise - after all it relies on my being able to press the thumb against the back of the neck.
Am trying to finish Interesting Times and am telling myself that I must read a book not written by Terry Pratchett at some point.