Mediterranean Sundance or "Everyone Needs a Hobby"

Let's face it, OnceWereBachelors concerns itself with esoterica. It is essentially a diversion about procrastination. Or an exercise in procrastination that focuses on diversions. When you've got a wife, kid, mortgage, private school tuition, career, you want to think that you can have a sanctuary of interests, activities, collections, a sanctuary of time and place, where your wife, son, colleagues or clients can't get to you. Sometimes it's in the garage. Sometimes it's in a bar. Other times on the ocean, or beneath some expensive headphones, or a cold, dark theater in the afternoon, in front of a movie your wife or son would never watch with you. Whatever, it arguably makes you a better dad, husband, law partner, citizen.

My newest diversion is this:



There is a backstory to this tune and where it fits in my life, but its personal. When I get paid the publisher's advance to do the print version of OnceWereBachelors maybe I'll tell it, but that would be filler. For now, just let the tune speak for itself. Al Di Meola and Paco De Lucia playing "Mediterranean Sundance" at the Warfield Theater on December 5, 1980, recorded for posterity (on vinyl) as Friday Night in San Francisco. A legendary concert featuring jazz picker Di Meola, fingerstyle flamencoist De Lucia, and John MacLaughlin (another jazzbo), playing as a trio, unplugged so to speak.

No, I'm not going to watch it over and over again seeking sanctuary. I'm going to try to learn it. On the floor of my office at home. Legs crossed, Ovation roundback in lap, and beer within reach. Poring over a tablature of the tune I found off the internet at a website called Fretplay, while the CD repeats constantly, or while I study the above clip, or clips like it, on YouTube.

Thus will I repeat a ritual that has changed little (changed due only to technological improvements and disposable income) since I was a wee student. Teach myself guitar. I've done it with Social Distortion. R.E.M. Los Lobos. Stevie Ray Vaughn. This is my first jazz piece. I give myself until September to learn it.

Wish me luck. Or at least time and space.