Five Dollars and Rock 'n' Roll Music

So yesterday, John Spaulding, a manager at the office I work at, walks by my office door with a list of some sort in his hand, pauses, looks at the list, then walks into my office. He puts the list down on my desk and says, "Five bucks. Sign here." Seeing my confusion, he said, "When we meet our shipping deadline, Larry gives everyone a five-dollar bonus." So I signed, and he handed me a five-dollar bill and walked out of my office. I thought that was hilarious. A five-dollar bonus? I mean, I know five bucks is a lot to some people, but people with full-time jobs? I know, if I saw five dollars lying on the ground, I'd pick it up, and it will pay for lunch or something, but it just seemed very odd to go out of your way to send a manager around handing five dollars to all the employees at this company.

In other news, I played with some of the best musicians I've ever played with last night. They were all old guys who knew and played mostly classic rock and blues. We jammed for about 2 hours, playing and singing "Rocky Mountain Way" (Joe Walsh), "Drive My Car" (The Beatles), "La Grange" (ZZ Top), "All Along the Watchtower" (Hendrix/U2 version, not Dylan), some jazz-blues (or is it blues-jazz? we didn't do any free-form jazz odyssies, though, much less in front of a festival crowd) stuff we just sort of made up on the spot (no lyrics with those, clearly...we didn't "freestyle", nor did we "flow"), and much, much more. I got to sing melody on "Rocky Mountain Way" and "All Along the Watchtower" because the tacit band leader didn't know the words (he sang harmony on the chorus of "Rocky Mountain Way", it was awesome). It was probably the most fun I've ever had playing music. Some days everything just comes together: the other musicians, the style of music, your chops that day, improvisational inspiration, and a general quality of rock-and-roll. Too bad I just found them the day before I leave Sweetwater, ne'er to return. And, before the drummer showed up, I got to play drums for a while, too, which I never get to do. There are few things in this world like the camaraderie of a bunch of musicians who know their instruments jamming together, looking around at each other, encouraging each in turn to take his shot at some rocking solos or something, reveling in the beauty of the music -- I'm just glad I got to be a part of it for a little while.