Again, I’m often embarrassed to dip this far back in the archive, but I feel the need to point out that today isn’t the first time Frizz has stuffed his pants with ice cream.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been in a real “rock-a-billy” mood lately. Maybe it’s the impending holidays, and my subconcious is anticipating when I’ll break out all my Brian Setzer Christmas records, but something has just made me want to listen to some good old fashioned rock and roll. I’m talking about the Stray Cats,  Reverend Horton Heat, and everyone like them.

I got so excited about it, I thought I’d break out my upright bass and brush up on my “doghouse slap” technique. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, listen to the bass players on the artists I mentioned above, or even the old Elvis Sun Records sessions, or the great Milt Hinton. Hear that sharp “click” sound? Thats not the drums, its actually what happens when you slap an upright bass and pull the strings so hard they slap against the fingerboard with a crack that splits the heavens. The technique is really difficult, and wreaks murder on your hands. I had dabbled with it back when I was in jazz school, but not really spent time on it, mostly because it hurts like fire.

So, I pulled my old Doghouse (that’s what cool jazz cats call their basses) out of the closet and started playing some slap lines. Within about 10 minutes, I remembered the basic technique. I looked down at my hands to see if I had a blister yet (when you’re dealing with upright bass and don’t have massive callouses, it can happen that fast). Looked good, so I thought I’d go try some of the more complicated triple-slaps. Within about 16 bars or so, I was actually able to pull them off — not very consistently — but I could just barely do it, and I was pretty proud of myself. Until I looked down at my hands and realized I had just stripped off more than a few layers of skin, and my fingers were now bleeding profusely onto my bass.

So, yeah… drawing just got a lot harder.

But man, was it worth it.