Last month on 1st Thursday, I explored a theory proposed by some Brits that offered that playing gigs extends your life. I’m sure you all remember that after minutes of the extensive research and based on my own gig experiences that this theory was…..what’s the phrase I am looking for…… bull something or other.
Well, dear readers, with a month to think about it and not to mention another deadline, I’ve been reconsidering. What if the Brits from last month were actually on to something and my narrow mindedness and my personal semi amateur gig experiences biased my research. Being an analytical sort and still very much interested in the extended years being offered, I decided to create an experiment to see if playing a flurry of gigs would make me feel better with the assumption that feeling better is part of this life extension thing. Also, I was thinking that I could objectively monitor and measure this life extension fairly easily on my FitBit.
With the DOE (design of experiment) in place, the next step was to perform the experiment, which shouldn’t take you too much short term memory to remember requires playing a lot of gigs and which by logical progression will require procuring these gigs. This could be a problem for me as I never was very proficient in doing that but I have decided to go for it.
It is too late in the year to get booked at farmers markets and I have already determined that these gigs wouldn’t work for this life extension experiment so I was looking for less strenuous gigs. Glancing at my calendar I saw that this being Tres de Mayo that Cinco de Mayo was only two days away. Many of you are aware that Cinco de Mayo is a special day for me as the remembrance of when the Mexican Army defeated the French at Puebla in 1862 and in honoring that event Grupo Modelo created an American holiday around this day. Could I use this 1st weekend in May to get some gigs and maybe extend my life by five or six months in the process?
Obviously, Mariachi bands rather than Bluegrass bands are the first choice to hire for Cinco de Mayo but I also discovered in my research that there were more Mexican restaurants than Mariachi bands in my Santa Clara County part of Kentucky. In fact way more joints than bands. With this opportunity identified, I postulated that the difference between Mariachi and Bluegrass is mostly a marketing distinction that with some creativity such as swapping the trumpets out for a banjo and sneaking in a mandolin for one of the fiddles, I could pull this off. My marketing team swung into action and dubbed the hybrid, Mariachi Grass.
I thought Mariachi Grass was a pretty original idea until I took to Google for some Spanish translations for lyrics and found these on YouTube. The first is a two banjo version of Rocky Top and the second is Blue Moon of Kentucky.
https://youtu.be/J_xVCO9pSLE and https://youtu.be/KaNbUNKu6uA
I was able to book gigs for Friday and Saturday night and matinees on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. This will tell me once and for all if playing gigs will extend my life. Another benefit of this foray into Mariachi Grass is the availability of my favorite antioxidant at these Mexican restaurants. You know I’m talking Tequila here. Combing the healthy effects of a few tequilas with four gigs, I hoping for a whole extra year. I’m going to start keeping a log so I know how much time I’m gaining.
If you can’t find any of my gigs this weekend, you might try visiting my friends this Sunday at Hoover School in San Jose, where the Santa Clara Valley Fiddlers are having their monthly jam. There will be a workshop and performance by Charlie Walden and Patt Plunkett.
I’ll let you know the results of my experiment next time of maybe over a beer at Vern’s in June.
