I ran scales for a while before work, and did some reading on the way they break down across the fretboard. If I had to pick one thing I want to really focus on this year, improving my lead playing would be it. I'm tired of hearing it in my head and having to hunt for it on the fretboard. I want it to be a seamless transition. I've picked up a lot of books on scale theory over the years, and somehow I've never managed to get through them. I'm thinking maybe I'll set this up like a college class or something. Not sure. Don't recall if I've actually put this in here yet, but at the end of my year of playing, I'm going to apply to Berklee School of Music in Boston. There, I said it. Tomorrow's the birthday. The Big 3-0. The last two weeks have had some progress in them, but not enough for my taste. Tomorrow, it starts for real.
So, the new Springsteen disc is amazing. There's enough of a mixture of his upbeat rockers, his ballads, and his message songs to make this his best record since The Rising . And speaking of that record... Buying The Boss the day it comes out always takes me back to a specific moment in life. It was July 30th, 2002, the year after 9/11, the year after someone on the streets of New York told Springsteen "we need you now." I had driven to Oshkosh, WI to visit some friends, when I remembered that Springsteen's disc was scheduled to come out that day. I drove downtown to The Exclusive Company, but had to park a few blocks back. At the time, there wasn't much going on downtown, but when I got out of the car, I could hear this music coming from up the block somewhere. The closer I got to Exclusive, the more it began to dawn on me, they had set up a giant set of speakers in their upstairs windows, and were blasting the new album out into the streets....
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