ghosts and second-guessers

decades ago my friends ruben and manuel made a blazers (r.i.p awesome east-LA band) christmas cassette tape. it was a load-of-fun-listen. since i've always loved singing close harmonies so darn much, i took the tape and another blank tape (you used to be able to do this), plugged in my cheap mike, pushed play on the blazers xmas tape & record on the blank, and made a new recording that added my vocal harmonies to their recording. undoubtedly there's still so much obsessively rewarding experimentation that goes w audio recording, all digital now, much ai-assisted. but in those days it was so basic, so immediately, tangibly rewarding: stand farther back from the mike & sing so the harmonies don't overpower the main vocals. bounce your voice off the wall for reverb. sing into the wall heater to get fuzz. record the instruments in an old bathroom to get a cool echo. yes, it always was engrossing fun to experiment, for me, in that dark wood-paneled parlor room in that large craftsman home in which i once lived in that long-ago life that i don't much recall... manuel always had such a beautiful voice; the christmas tape, all rollicking rock-n-roll good-cheer, seemed to be begging for a backup, plus, you know: the fun aspect.... my then-bro-in-law, at that time in his life a major ass, listened and sneered something like, "yeah, i bet you wish you could play with them"... i was only a bit crushed bc i knew it sounded good, & in the next decades, i got to play with manuel many times as a member of the big manny band, one of the biggest thrills of my life, & with ruben, too, most often at the yearly chango jams in memory of manuel/big manny... anyways, at that time with bro-in-law i did have a fraud-twinge, like mebbe i was an impostore of sorts. & i feel slightly like that now, adjusting this flyer, but the difference now is that i feel so much more solid about my one-man band. i'm doing it now, fully doing it, more than i ever did, & it feels so powerful, singing, playing keys, kicking the drum. truly, i feel like a badass when i do it. like i'm sposed to do it. and i am good at it. so here is the flyer, & der you go.