MUSIC THERAPY: PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR STRESSFUL TIMES

Music therapy comes in so many flavors.

Listen to calming tones, or listen clanking tones.

Find live music, or play your own.

The thing with playing music is you need to practice.

But how long should you practice? That long.

There’s an old saying about guitar players:

They’ve either played twenty years, or played one year twenty years in a row.

What’s the difference? Practice. And new songs. But there are other ways.

If you know one song, it’s more than one. Play it fast, play it slow, or sing it. Now you’ve got three songs.

Unless it’s Stairway To Heaven. Then it’s still one song.

Practice that for twenty years and you’ve got something. I don’t know what you’ve got, but it’s something.

In the top pic it’s Skelly getting ready to shred on an Epiphone Jumbo. He’s been practicing himself half to death all year.

Skelly takes all requests as long as it’s a Grateful Dead song.

If you decide to join the band, you’ll have a favorite song that’s yours and yours alone.

No matter where it comes from, or when you first heard it, once you get a handle on it, it’s all yours.

You may outgrow it, ignore it, but it’s still your song.

You’ve got that song already; that’s part of music therapy. The good part.

I’ll tell you mine. Actually, it’s three songs that fit together like good beer in a nice growler.

Love Song X 3 With Beer Therapy

Me and Bobby McGee is a love song. More of a love lost song.

Written by an acknowledge master of the craft, Kris Kristofferson, it became Janis Joplin’s song.

I like Kris’ version better, but like the end better in Joplin’s version with her howl.

With Kris it’s about a guy on the road to nowhere with his girlfriend.

I like it because his girlfriend wises up and dumps him after being broke together in Baton Rouge, traveling to California from the Kentucky coat mines, and sharing life together.

I think old Kris dips into John Steinbeck country when Bobby leaves ‘somewhere near Salinas.‘

Did he let her slip away, or did she escape his loser ways once she realized he wasn’t ever going to change.

2

Peaceful Easy Feeling by The Eagles picks up Bobby McGee after she shook Kris off her tail, regretted her decision because he was the only man who made her feel like more than just another person, and meets another man because Kris is somewhere lost on the road.

The new guy wants to sleep with her in the desert with a billion stars all around? Okay, she’s dating Carl Sagan.

But old Carl can’t seem to remember Bobby. He’s got a feeling he may know her, as a lover and friend? A voice whispers to him that he may never see her again?

He may want to lay off the beer before it’s too late for him.

That peaceful easy feeling he’s got may be the beginning of the end where he lays down and never gets up. Come on, Carl.

3

Third Rate Romance picks Bobby up after her fling with Carl Sagan

She got married, unhappily so, because her new man wasn’t Kris who she’s still pining for.

Her husband doesn’t share the secrets of her soul, or stay with her outside through all kinds of weather.

So she tells her husband she needs to go out for the evening to comfort an old friend who’s feeling down.

But she’s headed for the cheating side of town in a ritzy restaurant.

She and her new fling keep the talk small when they talk at all.

The new man is an experienced womanizer who’s done it a time or two.

Not so much with Bobby.

Ready for that beer yet?

Tune Up That Guitar, Music Therapy Singer

Let’s do it together, on four.

One, two, three . . .

“Busted flat in Baton Rouge,

Headed for the trains,

Feeling nearly faded as my jeans.”

Those jeans were faded from life, not pre-faded.

If they were ripped it happened by accident, not a fashion statement.

2

“I like the way your sparkling earrings lay,

Against your skin so brown.”

Bobby, it’s a pick-up line. He liked someone else’s earrings last night.

And besides, the guy is so loaded he can’t remember your name.

Move on before it’s too late, like you did with Kris

3

“Sitting at a tiny table in a ritz restaurant.”

Ever since I first heard Third Rate Romance I’ve looked around restaurants with tiny tables to see if Bobby McGee is there.

I listen for those magical words of music therapy:

“I’ll even say I love you if you want me to.”

And here I am still wondering why my wife hates this song?

Maybe if we did a duet?

Or will I have to trade all of my tomorrows for a single yesterday?

I think that’s what Kris did when he broke up with Rita Coolidge.

Freedom’s just another word, right Kris?