Musical Interlude

O.K. folks. Now for something completely different. Some original music.

I've been playing guitar since 1987, and it's still my favorite hobby. I even bought a cheap accoustic guitar over at the Iraqi bazaar. More about that place some other time. Don't get too much free time to play, but I can usually be found sitting on my front steps once or twice a week playing The Eagles, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Miller, Rush, Led Zeppelin - even some obscure stuff like Michael Reno Harrell or Cat Stephens.

In terms of my own writing, my favorite stuff is Texas Country/Americana music and blues. But I think it would be excessively charitable to say that I have a mediocre singing voice. Hence most of what I record, when I do record, is instrumentals.

Of course, I couldn't lug a 4-track recorder over here, so the best I can do is post a few songs that I did back in Texas. My brother*, who's 10 times better as a musician and 100 times better as a producer, is being kind enough to throw a few onto the Internet for me to share.

The following is a brief little jazzy number I wrote from scratch and recorded all in the space of about 3 hours on a Saturday afternoon about 3 years ago. The recording was rough, but not bad. However, shortly before I came over here, my brother cleaned the recording up, jazzed up the drums somewhat, threw in some bass and extra rythmn guitar, and it sounds a whole lot better.

I never did come up with a perfect name for it, so I'm sticking to my working title, "Slinky." I'm not sure why, but it's kind of smooth, cool and jazzy. In a word...Slinkyesque.

Hope you like it. I'll try to do some more later on.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=795352&content=music

(To play the song, click the arrow next to the title)

*My Brother's songs. Much of it's HeavyMetal, which I'm not that into, but the coolest stuff there are his more traditional rock songs. The ones that I think are real gems and recommend are "The Other Side" and "Soaring" (That's me on the second guitar in the intro).

Snow, rain and...mud.

It snowed here in Baghdad this week - a very unusual event. Not that it isn't cold. It's been bitterly chilly at night for the last month. As for rain, we'd only had a little drizzle here, once in October and once in December. But we knew something was coming before too long.

It was still dark when I came back from breakfast, but about an hour later, we got the word that there was snow. So I went outside to have a look. The flakes were coming down, rather large to me - I pin that one on the pollution. But it was undoubtedly snow. Of course, it was cold enough for it, but the ground was just too warm to let anything stick. So the white flakes drifted down until they hit the ground, where they instantly withered into water.

An Air Force buddy of mine was nearby and he snapped a picture. You can't really see the snow. Digital cameras lack the shutter speed to really capture it. If you look close, you might barely catch a white fuzzy streak. But take it from me, it is snowing.

Here's another look:

Iraq has a pretty notorious rainy season, from what I've heard. When it starts, it can be miserable for several weeks. So far this year, we've avoided that stuff. But it looks like it may be creeping up on us. After the sun rose and the air warmed up a little, the snow was replaced by rain. Certainly not an old-fashioned Texas gullywasher, but a good drenching that turned everything into mud.

A tree reflected in a pool of rainwater. Because everything here is sand, when it rains, it pools up in these sickly looking puddles. They look like someone took a handful of yellow pigment and dumpted it into a vat of chocolate.

In a few well-trafficked areas, KBR has put down some sidewalks, or repaired the old ones from the Ba'athis party days. But since 90 percent of the base is sidewalk free, they soon vanish beneath the mud as soldiers and contractors can carry several pounds of the muddy mess congealed on their boots.

When I first got here, you'll remember I complained bitterly about the gravel that they threw everywhere. To them it was gravel; to me it looked like a hell of a lot of good shrapnel, should a rocket land nearby. But once it started raining, I appreciated the gravel like never before. As you can see here, the gravel paths become the only walkway for many parts of the base. Here, a soldier walks back to Dodge City North. The sun is out by this time, but the mud is nonetheless ubiquitous.

This is the walkway through Dodge City. Now if I were in charge, they would use a bunch of old recycled pallets, maybe nail a few boards on top of them. But they chose gravel, and the going can be really tough, as your feet sink in a way similar to walking on sand.

Of course, the gravel isn't everywhere, and eventually, you have to cross a muddy space. Then, when you return to the gravel, it sticks to your muddy boots and you began to throw off rocks at each swing of your leg. This tends to make those around you unfriendly, as small rocks begin to ricochet off their ankles.

The building above is where we take our showers. It's a 2 minute walk through mud and cold, and it isn't fun under normal circumstances. On bitter nights like this, you're often tempted just say "screw it" and pull out the old baby wipes. It just isn't worth it to slog out into the mud and cold, go take a shower that may or may not be hot, slog back through the mud to your trailer, and change into your uniform.

At least we do have showers. My boss spent a year in Fallujah back in 2004, and for the first six months, all he had was two bottles of water a day. He often had to make the choice between drinking or bathing, and well, drinking usually won. Of course, none of our troops live that primitively these days. Even the most remote FOBs have tent showers, if nothing else.

The alleyway next to my trailer. After passing through this mess, I usually wrap my boots up in plastic and place them just inside the door. Can't leave them outside, because they'd get wet and probably freeze.

But hey, bad as this is, this is paradise to the sort of conditions that American soldiers went through at Bastogne, Chosin and Fredricksburg. Times change. Back then, they slept in miserable, unheated tents placed on the ground. Today, we sleep in tiny, but comfortable trailers raised a foot off the ground. And we have heaters. Or at least devices that blow luke-warm air and are called heaters.

Back then, they kept warm by heating their hands over makeshift fires. Today, I get into work and shake off the chill by warming my hands over an overheated computer server.

Such are the times...

It is a miserable mess, but there's a silver lining in everything. The bad guys don't seem to like the rain either. Digging holes for roadside bombs is a little difficult. Your homemade explosive powder gets wet. And as the temperature sinks below freezing, I keep getting this odd picture in my mind: a parody of the movie "A Christmas Story," where one insurgent is daring the other insurgent to stick his tongue on the metal shell of their anti-tank mine, to see if it will stick.

Some random photos

For today's post, a few random photos which don't fit an overall theme, but which I thought I should nonetheless share:

The palace compound, seen from the balcony.

The Al-Doura Refinery on fire off in the distance after an attack. This is an important source of revenue for the Iraqi people, yet some folks will target any infrastructure, from bridges to power lines, to water treatment plants, because in their twisted view of Islam, starving and penniless Iraqi people are better than prosperous Iraqi people.

That's an Apache helicopter patroling above.

Just a random street scene here on base.

During World War II, American servicemen started tagging abandoned building with paint in this unusual fashion, featuring a bald guy looking over a ledge,

adding the words "Kilroy Was Here."

This is probably a couple of years old and heavily faded, but it's good to see some old traditions are still kept up. This is painted on one of the bunkers that we're supposed to jump into whenever things start exploding. Not sure why they put windows on this one, though.

And below is the insurgent "Killroy was here." Not sure what it says, but it probably means "Yankees must die." Of course, back in the 1860s, my great-great grandfather serving in the Confederate Army was probably saying the same thing, so eventually these guys might come around like we did. Unless they're referring to Major League Baseball, in which case I heartily agree with the sentiment.

Below are some various Hummvees, including my favorite,

the Hummvee pickup truck (closest). I need one of these back home.

This is me standing next to the impact point for the rocket which perforated my trailer a while back. Most of the impact was absorbed by the retaining wall. Score: Concrete 1, rocket 0. For all those people who criticize Halliburton and KBR (the folks who put this here and saved my trailer from much greater destruction), I say these were tax dollars well-spent.




A closer view.


This is another impact point across the road from my place. (I don't give locations because then the bad guys might figure out whether or not they're falling short, overshooting, or just right). Not sure which attack caused this, but it was probably in November or so. That was the last attack we had here that I can recall, and I'd been by this area before and hadn't noticed this.