"joe lee is old school" so am I-a blues lover since my teen years but jason ricci is a great talent and I surely respect that and respect the fact that walterore has the gift of gab I love his posts and the wisdom that comes from them
I just think joe lee should check with a doctor. I just listened to some modern country music that I really hate and I couldn't even get my stomach to gurgle....much less PUKE.
If not a fan then why do you care? Oh yeah...you don't like him or his music but have great respect.
RESPECT.....if you truly know what respect means then you should repect the forum owner and moderators by never making quotes that could possibly offend someones religious or non-religious beliefs.
@DirtyDeck I am sorry my friend, just a little slip of the keyboard can get a person in all sorts of trouble. I am sure you anatomy is scrupulously clean lol.
6SN7 said... @joeleebush- I appreciate your candor and honesty . I am sorry that you got ripped for opinion (20 min and I puke)
Overall, 6SN7, I think he did pretty good. When people listen to my music and my performance it usually only takes about FIVE minutes for them to start to puke and head for the door. LOL. Stay happy. Regards from.................Me.
---------- www.reverbnation.com/thejoeleebushbluesgroup www.joeleebushshow.com
Last Edited by on Oct 12, 2011 3:48 PM
@LittleVillage - That was honestly one of the dumbest, most absurd posts I've read in awhile. Maybe your confused, this is a harmonica forum, not the Fox News Forum (that's certainly where I'd expect to read that type of nonsense).
"@waltertore But I would generalise and say that even more than the 1960's live music is alive and kickin', certainly here in the uk. It may not be blues but the youngsters are up for it!! "
As for as live music being more vibrant now than in the 60's, it ain't so here in the USA. As a teenager I had more music to see than I could get to many nights of the week and it was big name greats of the blues. Now it is no name generic players paying to play most nights of the week. Do the english guys pay their bills playing several nights a week? In the 60's-early 80's that was fairly common here. They didn't sell merchandise off the stage, got paid enough to live, got hotels and meals too most times. The old blues guys drove their buses town to town and the local bands that played made as much then as a regional band now makes. Gas was well under a dollar a gallon, hotels under $50, and good meals under $10. Now it is upwards of $4 a gallon, $100 hotels, and $20 meals. You also use to get unlimited drinks at the club. the last time I played they gave me 2 drink tickets. I don't drink alcohol but took it as an insult. That would never happen back 30 years ago because it would be considered an insult.
Also most big name guys like kim wilson and his peers play far less dates here than they did 30 years ago. The pay to play, play for free, open jams, have gone from the smallest bars on sunday/monday, to the biggest on the weekends. It is tough times here in the USA for a guy trying to play for a living. Very few do. They give these skype lesson, sell stuff off the stage, do jam camps, etc, to survive. Back then no such stuff existed because there was no need for it. You did 200+ dates a year and that kept you alive. The weeknights and opening slots were for the up and coming local bands. Touring band would oftentimes fill off nights with weekday gigs in bigger cities. That made getting any kind of gig in a major music town a ton toughter than it is today. It all made for a very vibrant scene. The pay to play, open mic players of today would never make a decent stage back then. They were the paying customers back then instead of the performs today. That kept the quality of the music much higher than today. Walter ----------
PS: Jason never made much more than survival money playing nonstop and he is considered, at least in this forum, one of todays greats.
walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
Jinx and Blocker, thankyou for the apologies! I have been hosed down, dried off and smeared in antiseptic gel - you are all safe. I apologise for my part also, I guess this forum is a place where many of us subconsciously choose to vent the steam cooked up by everyday-life pressures...
I just remembered I actually had something sort of worthwhile to contribute to this conversation before things started getting messy! In relation to Walter's ponderings about the subconscious mindset of the artist/creative people, I have this to say : - I would consider myself to be something of an artist, or perhaps to put it less pretentiously, a 'creative person'. I'm young, 24. I drink alot. You might go as far as to say I have a problem. There's a few reasons for my drinking, one being that I'm generally a goodtime kind of guy, like to party, have the craic. Another, is that I had a bit of a rocky upbringing and I reckon it left me with a self-destrctive streak. Another, and this is the one I wanna touch on here, is that I have problems with confidence and sensitivity. Being drunk, or at least hungover, helps me to deal with this, to go about my day normally without fear of social situations and the like. To put it simply, it gives me balls.
Now, is this sensitivity thing a trait common in most artists? Could this be another reason that artistic types seem to fall by the wayside with booze et all? Maybe its the reason that most drinkers drink? Your thoughts please :)
(P.s I also have some ideas about how this sort of thing relates to creativity and blessed inspiration that I think I'll put aside until we discuss this first one!)
Last Edited by on Oct 12, 2011 4:57 PM
I'll just share my observation gleaned from playing 4 nites/wk. in lounge acts (I don't do it anymore): duh, entertainment venues are party places!
The people are there to have fun & party. They might only do it one nite/wk., more or less. But, you're workin' there and around it every nite. You're surrounded by drunk women, booze, drugs. Where's the mystery? There are complex issues surrounding personality types, but I still believe most of the problem is the environment.
@joelee you are mentioned in LW biography blues with @ feelin` a great tribute I grew up in the 60s with John R WLAC thats why I am old school but jason can kick ass with blowin` harp
Jason just posted this on his fb about an hour ago. Thought I'd pass along the update...
"Still in limbo, awaiting plea bargin, for sure: wont leave indiana for at least 4 years will never tour europe again, will do 6 months of house arrest, and more than likely will not be allowed to play any venue seruing booze 4 at least two years. Ive been denied by my 5th treatment center despite funding from music cares mostly because of my dual diagnosis (bipolar/addict) , awaiting word from yet a 6th place now and subsequential approval from the prosecution. Thanx 4 all ur support. Still no computer access. Im sending this via a 20 dollar cell. Still heart broken and feeling alone but waiting to see what happens instead of making more dumb choices. Love jason"
i am seeing all sorts of danger signs here. i hope he's smart enough to be going to aa/na meetings right now instead of sitting on the ol' pitty pot. he needs to be getting active in a recovery and NOT waiting for a treatment center. what he needs is to start developing a local support group. and unless he is still actively using, he doesnt really need the treatment center. he used to go to meetings. he should know the drill.
Jason seems active on facebook. He was there on sunday about 10:40 AM east coast USA time. I think that is the best place to communicate to him. ---------- Emile "Diggs" D'Amico a Legend In His Own Mind How you doin'
@ eharp The treatment center could be court ordered. You seem to have been down the road of recovery. You probably already know that relapse is part of a lot of addicted peoples recovery. Sometimes there are multiple relapses. As Adam said earlier, Jason had quite a few years of being clean. He had a program he worked in order to maintain that. No addict knows if the program they are working today is enough to keep them clean tomorrow. As JoeLee says, it is one day at a time. Since Jason has taken the the steps to live clean and sober in the past, I trust that if he so chooses he will do whatever it takes to create a program he can work that will let him thrive. It won't be the program he had, but if he wants what he has lost, he can make the choices that will give him back his life. This is his walk, his life. I believe Jason will do what is right for Jason. You know, some people are grateful for their relapses because it led them to an even better life. Some songs have more verses than others. I can't wait to here his next verse!
true. every addict has a relapse in them waiting to happen. the question, though, is if they have another recovery in them? relapse is should not be considered as a part of recovery. relapse is the opposite of recovery. the only think a relapse may do is give one some first hand experience of what they were told about at meetings.
no one but jason knows how many days he strung together. no on. addicts aint the most honest of people. addicts are chameleons and get pretty good at hiding things and putting up fronts.
having a few years of being clean is, also, not recovery. it is abstinence. going to meetings, working the steps, giving back that which has been freely given to you, doing service work- these are things of recovery. i dont think jason's life on the road gave him a chance to do these things.
there are probably different restrictions in indiana concerning treatment centers. where i live, if you got insurance or the means to pay for it, you are in.
if he is waiting to do a plea bargain, i would think the judge hasnt given out any sentence at all and jason's attempt at getting into a center is either for his own sake or an attempt at leniency with the judge or both.
Just a thought. Has anyone thought about contacting Jerry Portnoy and seeing if he would ask Eric Clapton if he'd be willing to get Jason in the Crossroads programme?
I'm sure Jerry has heard of Jason and I'm sure he'd want to help.
eharp, As a person who is 12 years sober without meetings, I disagree with you. I am glad meetings work for some people, but I do not think it is the only road to recovery.
i never said it was the only road, michael. i said it is a thing of recovery. and, if you belong to na, you may remember that there is nothing more useful than 1 addict helping another. (this is a paraphrase from the na handbook.) tis the same for aa.
staying sober w/o meetings may mean you aint an alcoholic, too, micheal. just something to think about. i dont judge anybody's recovery. or lack of same.
my brother is a recovered alcoholic,spent 28 days drying out and beat it because he wanted to-the bad thing about alcohol or the problem I had with ativan and xanax,it releases inhibitions but is only a temporary crutch-its a mind game you have to fight to win
Here is his latest post, jason is fighting battles that most of us could never imagine.. fwiw, my few interactions with him have been like walter tore said the old greats were like, he acted bigger than life on stage, and then would turn around and be a nice and friendly guy to anyone who wanted to talk to him, sharing any information on harmonica anybody wanted to know about. from all i can tell, jason is an incredibly sensitive person, and can get online at times, so anything positive anybody can contribute might, rather than negative things, might just help
repeat: from facebook, a post by jason Still in limbo, awaiting plea bargin, for sure: wont leave indiana for at least 4 years will never tour europe again, will do 6 months of house arrest, and more than likely will not be allowed to play any venue seruing booze 4 at least two years. Ive been denied by my 5th treatment center despite funding from music cares mostly because of my dual diagnosis (bipolar/addict) , awaiting word from yet a 6th place now and subsequential approval from the prosecution. Thanx 4 all ur support. Still no computer access. Im sending this via a 20 dollar cell. Still heart broken and feeling alone but waiting to see what happens instead of making more dumb choices. Love jason
Last Edited by on Oct 17, 2011 6:32 AM
It may be that the incredibly sensitive Jason is one of the cloaks that he used to get people to like/help him in the midst of his disorder, which turned out to be unfortunate for some who were pulled into his inner circle. Perhaps the best thing to do is reserve all judgement, watch him from a distance, not interact and wait to see how well he does all on his own. Tough love concept. Hope he gets it together. ---------- The Iceman
Last Edited by on Oct 17, 2011 6:05 AM
my point was that hurtful comments, or even comments that might be interpreted as such, should be avoided. it is the best way to respect what jason has given the harmonica world, and the fact that he is hurting
My first college roommate was an alcoholic. (A couple others were too, but he's the one who stood out.) We were freshman and he was from Hong Kong. He found a bartender who was from Hong Kong too, who gave him drinks for free. He had a history of family alcoholism but he chose to drink anyway. He'd come back to the dorms is such bad shape that he couldn't make it to the room. We'd try to get him to the room so he wouldn't get written up for sleeping in the TV lounge. He'd argue and say it wasn't time for bed yet, so we'd stay up and watch him sitting on the stairs, so drunk that he's periodically slide down to the next one. Eventually we'd walk him down and lay him on his side in his bed and get a chance to sleep. As the semester progressed his girly posters got replaced one by one with alcohol ads from the backs of magazines. He failed out at the end of the semester. He might have been better off if we'd left him in the TV lounge. The unwritten code was us against them. We helped him hide his alcoholism from the RA's. In retrospect,...
I have no idea if he ever got things straightened out. Sometimes helping some keep away from rock bottom is just enabling. Jason seems to have hit rock bottom. There are two types of requests that you get from people with substance abuse problems. They both sound like calls for help, but some are calls for help to hide the problem, others are calls for help to beat the problem. It sounds like Jason is asking for the right kind of help now. Good for him. He's got a better chance to make it if he wants to get better. I wish him well.
For what it's worth, I stayed away from alcohol and recreational drugs. I ended up addicted to doctor prescribed Xanax instead. ---------- Nate Facebook Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
I have to disagree with Iceman about the sensitive, generous Jason being only a cloak for addictive behaviour.
I know that Jason well, and knew him during much of his long sobriety and those genuine qualities never faltered or showed any signed of being used to manipulate people. And that's the period that is being referred to by other posters.
Later when he relapsed, of course I was on guard against that very quality being misused. Which it never was, at least in his dealings with me.
Don't believe I said "being only a cloak for addictive behavior", Winslow.
Please see "in the midst of his disorder" in my original statement. That is what I am referring to in my post.
It is well known that those in the throes of addictive behavior may very well use charm, love and graciousness as a tool, hurting those that are closest and trusting, as this is part of the destructive spiral of addiction.
Anyways, all misinterpretations of comments aside, we all wish him a successful road to recovery, and that is what is most important. ---------- The Iceman
