happy as a clam & full bulla

been playing piano all day. james asked me to practice his repertoire, so i'm finally up to bat, maybe, or at least in the box. yes, i've heard the songs so many, many times, my brain's filled w/them; i got the changes for the most part tho did need to review a few augmentations & not-as-standard turnarounds & will continue to practice cause it's a whole load of fun!... then he'll give a listen & suggest what kinds of parts he'd rather hear than others, like have me go here instead of there & so on... i'm so happy getting to pull out the piano licks i've heard over the many yrs, trying to make them fit w/the recordings. scott's guitar parts and james's harmonica & vocals already are in place, so i just gotta find my space & rather than clutter things up, augment what's already there. i feel pleased that the piano will add even more oomph! ... in practicing today, i'm glad that for decades my american music diet has been pretty clean. it's not fogged & filtered & f***ed up by sounds that came much later, sounds, i believe,  messed up melodically by psychedelics. that's long been my opinion -- around the time the beatles debuted,  melodies changed & got uglier as psychedelics hit the streets in a major way... i have a theory about the bakersfield sound, too: the original electrified "country" music of the late '50s to mid-60s was pricklier & faster than that coming out of nashville bc a lot of bakersfield honky-tonkers were not just working hard in the fields  & living in the hellish summer heat, which'd drive most anyone kinda nuts, but were on bop pills; the sound now coming from bakersfield is still hard-edged, tho now not honky-tonk but ugly rock & country-rock, to my ears, & similarly influenced by a population still suffering & sweltering as well as doing a lot of speed... and of course the melodies got uglier & less melodious & i blame hard drugs, yes i do.

anyways, these are just some of my theories. with that and $3, you can get a six-inch sub from subway.

here's the origin of the title of this post. don't you just love idioms? http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/as-happy-as-a-clam.html

well, off to the gym for me... may you be clam-happy but not crappy or even clammy...