The good news is that I’ve been having a pretty good time up here in Augusta. It’s the land of James Brown, I had grits and eggs for breakfast at a diner that were done right, sober is not an option, and my friend’s cousin is one of the most unique people I’ve ever met. She was born in Georgia, raised in Italy, and married a guy from Georgia 17 years ago who she recently divorced. I have to hide the smile on my face every time she speaks, with her unique amalgamation of Italian and American Southern accents, with plenty of American vulgarity and violence thrown in the mix. It is absolutely hilarious. And holy shit can she cook. I consider myself at a higher level than most cooks, but I want to pick this lady’s brain on some Italian cooking. What I do not want to do is ever piss her off. Fortunately I think she likes me so far.
The bad news is that I’ve been watching my home get beat up by this hurricane from afar. I’ve seen videos of large trees in my neighborhood being torn out of the ground, and the beaches that I live so close to and so many of my friends live at (including one that is with me here now, and her home is almost definitely destroyed) have been not only flooded, but changed forever in their shape. So far I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had some kind of damage to their home, including the people I’ve run to Georgia/South Carolina with (they're getting texts from their neighbors informing them of the trees that have fallen on their houses, flooding that's torn through their beach apartments, etc.). I won’t be going home until Sunday, but my roommate (the owner of the house) stayed nearby at her mom’s house, so I’ll find out tomorrow how her house and our belongings (which for me mostly means my studio) fared in the storm. I have a feeling that my stuff will be okay, but that pales in comparison to what has happened to our beaches. And hopefully the shop that I work at, my new job that I love that’s located near the St. Johns River, hopefully that didn’t get flooded. St. Augustine, the oldest city in the U.S., which is right below Jacksonville, is flooded like crazy. History literally being washed away. I also didn’t realize that there are people in this day and age that don’t have internet access of any kind, much less wi-fi. I’ve been trying to vote and comment on Steemit stuff all day, and I’m just now in a place where I can do it. North Georgia, no wi-fi - isn’t that how Deliverance started?
I’m posting this video in the hopes that it won’t be one of the last four studio recordings I post. Because if my stuff is flooded out, then I only have three songs to post after this until I’m out of studio recordings. I’m also posting it because the mood seems somewhat appropriate, what with a spinning plate ripping up the largest city in the U.S. as I write this. I recorded this on a whim about a year ago, just for Facebook. It was a rainy Sunday, I was drinking bourbon, and I thought it would be fun to record a piano-based song for Facebook. I don’t know a lot of cover songs on piano (I mostly just play around on my originals until I find something that sounds good), but I learned Radiohead’s “Like Spinning Plates” over ten years ago, when they put out a live album with that song. I hadn’t played it in about ten years, but turned on the video camera, my vocal mic, and my computer to record a live performance of it off the cuff. I did a quick mix of the piano and vocal, and posted that to Facebook. About a month later, I decided to flesh it out and added strings and synthesizers to it, and made a full-fledged mix out of it. So what you’re seeing here is the original live piano/vocal performance fueled by Sunday bourbon and rain, later enhanced with additional strings and Mellotron sounds that I added after the fact. This is very much my own take on the song. I play the piano like Thom Yorke does live, but other than that I made it my own. I think I said in my intro post that I hadn’t yet made a video worth posting, but screw that. It’s a little blurry, but thanks to Hurricane Matthew I’m not sure when I’ll be able to make new music and videos. So here it is.