Musical dreams

Last night -- or technically, this morning -- I dreamed that I was invited to play bass on stage with The Grates, just for one song (I was guesting, or some-such). I got up there, plugged in, the crowd was screaming -- and then the headstock somehow sheared off, directly behind the nut.

I thought maybe I’d be able to carry on regardless, as the nut was keeping the bass strings in place -- but then they stripped out. Pah.

I went up to one of the mics and declared, “Well, the head of my bass seems to be missing. No head, no string tension; no string tension, no tuning. It’s a physics thing.”

Then I spied one of Patience’s back-up guitars, on a guitar stand back by the amps. (In reality, she does vocals, but doesn't play an instrument; in my dream, she also played guitar.) I asked if I could borrow it, and she hesitantly agreed. So I plugged it in to the bass amp, and played my basslines as single note riffs on the guitar: worked well enough.


Two underlying sources to my dream, I think: one, that I read in a concert review that they’re now travelling with a bassist: it used to be that a central aspect of their sound was that they were simply drums, guitar, and vocals -- no bass. And two, that I’m -- apparently -- missing being in a band.


--GG