Dave’s Good Stuff

Last night was a very interesting night at the Pool Room. After my daily dose of Buffy, I couldn’t shake the need to get a similar dose of pool. When I arrived at the Pool Room, it was fully with the intention of spending the night putting balls into pockets and drinking Rum & Cokes. Instead, I got an entirely different treat.

As I was looking around for someone I knew, the action at the far 9′ caught my eye. They guy up at bat had a confidence to his stroke that I don’t often see down there. So I sat down, intending to watch for a few minutes. Both players were very good. They were playing 9-ball, and were keeping track of who was ahead with quarters at the diamonds. I couldn’t say for sure, but I got the distinct impression that this was a Serious Game. Frankly, I was just happy to watch a couple guys who knew their way around the table… sometimes, it’s better to sit and observe, rather than try and do, and they were quite a pair to observe. Very very few balls were missed, and both had great command of the cue ball.

After about an hour and a half of watching them (so much for "a few minutes", eh?) I look up and notice a friend, Ray, had arrived. I go over and find him watching the same players I was. One of the managers by the name of Jesse comes by, and after talking with him for a while, I learn a little bit about what’s going on. These two had played against each other before last week for some decent cash. $600, to be exact. The older guy, a fellow named Mark who was in from Topeka had lost that match, and challenged the other, Josh, to a rematch. Hailing out of Florida, turns out Josh has been on the road for a while, backed by his Dad, no less. The stakes on last night’s match were a bit steeper: $1,000 on a race to a 7 game lead. That is to say, they play 9-ball until someone is 7 games ahead, and that someone takes the grand. After about 3 and a half hours, Josh finally won. They played again, this time for $500, and Josh gave Mark the 8 (which means Mark only had to sink the 8-ball to win, rather than go all the way to the 9). Josh won again, much more quickly this time. As Mark got more tired, Josh became more accustomed to the speed of the cloth and the action of the rails and came out ahead. Where he was having trouble with rail and kick shots initially, he came around. It was almost like watching championship 9-ball on ESPN. They were that good… at least they looked that good to me.

Interesting little tidbit about Josh. Not long ago he went hill-hill against Earl Strickland and came very near winning. I don’t know any details about that match, as it was related to me by Jesse. Hell, I don’t even know for a fact that it’s true. Jesse has always taken things a bit too seriously as far as I’m concerned, but I like him quite a bit, and have no reason to doubt him. He may be too serious for his own good, but he’s honest. I’ve seen Strickland play on television and from what I saw last night, I’m not surprised Josh got that far. It was obvious that he wasn’t used to the table, but his talent and skill were equally obvious. Last week I played with a guy who claimed to have seen Willie Mosconi play back in the 60’s, this week I watch a guy who’s recently played with Strickland. I really need to hit the Pool Room more often.

They left at about 11:30pm or so, and I plopped some quarters down on an 8-ball bar box to play with Ray and a few others that had arrived in the meantime. I won’t go into how I played…

Last night was a very interesting night at the table. Started out at my bud’s house as I usually do every Monday and Wednesday night. We played some Equal Offense to start off with, got tired of it and switched to Straight Pool, my game of choice anywhere, any time. I found a very cool little Straight Pool scoring app for the PalmOS that I wanted to try out. The interesting thing though, is that on the one hand, I nearly matched my all time high run of 17 with a night high of 15, while on the other hand I had three fouls in a row. In Straight Pool, three fouls in a row is a Bad Thing, costing the player (in this case, me) 18 points (one point per foul, plus 15 for going three in a row). I came back to win the match, but it was hard getting over that triple foul, mentally speaking.

Around 11:30 or so, I left his house and hit the local pool hall (appropriately called The Pool Room) and played on the 50 cent 8-ball tables against some regular locals. Once I hit those 8-ball tables, my playing got much more consistent, and though I didn’t win every game, I didn’t lose on my own mistakes. I don’t mind losing, as long as the other player actually wins, rather than me handing the game over.

I like playing up there. Good folk, they are, at least when you’re at the table with them. I really like the crowd. It’s a tad on the rough side, which gives it a hard and gritty feel that I just lose myself in. The more I play with them, the more I want to play with them. There’s nothing in the world quite like blues in both ears, a rum & coke in one hand, a pool stick in the other, and a rack of balls out in front. No siree, that there’s the life.

Lately I’ve been playing their 7′ bar boxes, though I would much prefer playing on their 9′ tables. Two things keep me away from the 9′ers though… not only are they usually all taken by that time of night, they *really* need to be re-covered. The cloth has huge rips and gashes in it on all but one of the tables. Besides, at 50 cents a pop, the 7′ bar boxes are much cheaper than the 9′ at $6.50/hr. Two of their 4 9′ tables have decent cloth, and one of those has snooker railes on it. Wanna work on your aim? Hit a 15-ball rack around on a snooker table. Those pockets are about as unforgiving as you can imagine. If you’re off by just a few millimeters, it ain’t going in.

You may remember me mentioning something about wanting to put together a CD with some grooves to play, while I’m busy playing pool. I’ve finished the first draft. Bear in mind that I’ve drawn from a somewhat limited CD collection, so several artists are repeated, repeatedly. That said, the track list goes something like this…

ZZ Top - Jesus Just Left Chicago
Jonny Lang - Lie To Me
Kenny Wayne Shepherd - (Let Me Up) I’ve Had Enough
Colin James - Just Came Back
Jonny Lang - Rack ‘Em Up
Creed - One
Jonny Lang - Still Rainin’
Ian Moore - Muddy Jesus
Kenny Wayne Shepherd - One Foot On The Path
Jonny Lang - The Levee
Big Head Todd And The Monsters - Broken Hearted Savior
Jonny Lang - There’s Gotta Be A Change
Colin James - T for Trouble
Kenny Wayne Shepherd - Was
Ian Moore - Ain’t Feeling No Pain
Kenny Wayne Shepherd - What’s Goin’ Down
Jonny Lang - Before You Hit The Ground
Stevie Ray Vaughan - The Sky Is Crying
Jimi Hendrix - Red House

Omar just sent me a CD with his own choice of choice "ear-candy for when prowling the perimeter of a pool table, cue-in-hand, suds in belly." I gotta tell ya, the boy is phat with musical talent and taste.

I’m putting together a CD full of guitar-driven, dirty blues. Everything from ZZ-Top’s "Jesus Just Left Chicago" to Colin James’ "Just Came Back". I’m having a hard time of it though. There are SO MANY songs that I want to include, so many that deserve a place, but as anyone experienced (even a little) with building music compilations, there’s only so much room to work with, be it on DAT, tape, or CD. Now, a player that would just play the raw .mp3’s would be ideal, but most CD and DVD players will only play music via audio disc or DVD. So I’m limited to about 80 minutes on a 700MB disc.

The impetus for this is have some music to listen to while playing pool at my bud’s house. When the idea came to mind to *make* a CD, the only choice was, of course, the aforementioned "guitar-drive, dirty blues." No other music is as perfectly "Pool" as blues. While that is, of course, my own opinion, I’m going to go ahead and present it here as fact. Just so you know.

Now, the problem is finding those songs that most perfectly embody "Pool" to me. The idea being to come up with music that is inspiring, driven and just throws me naturally into the best rhythm. Something to help reach that elusive "Dead Stroke". To do that as it pertains to pool requires blues tunes that I really really like. It can’t be just any music that I really really like (I have wide, quite eclectic taste in music), it’s gotta be blues. Only blues has the proper "feel". Given that, I’m not limiting myself to the classic STRICT blues format (I-IV-V chord changes). I’m open to any new-fangled, mesquite-flavored jamming that would more appropriately fall under the "Blues/Rock throw in a little Soul" category. SRV, KWS, Lang, Duarte and even a little Big Head Todd and the Monsters are all welcome ("One" by Creed is a shoe-in, but that’s only b/c our favorite local pool hall plays it so much, it’s sorta worked it’s way in by virtue of association). I’m sure there are other artists out there that I don’t know about which would be perfect, but alas… I don’t know about them.

I guess, what with my criteria being wholly personal and subjective, there’s no easy way to describe what I’m doing. Basically, if a song has a groove so fat you could land a damn Boeing 777 in it, then it’s a likely candidate.

Happy day, I got me some input from Omar!