Good Were the Parts We Played in Our Game

Last night I got down my acoustic and played a few songs with a splinted finger on my fretting hand:

1. Sweet Jane
2. Blackbird
3. The Ballad of Geraldine

“Sweet Jane” was a cover song played by Ten Dollar Helmet, the band I joined right after My New Invention broke up. “Sweet Jane” was usually led by electric guitarist Mark Grozkreuz. To this day, I have never heard the original track. Mark drifted out of the band in 2002 and I replaced him on guitar. Up until then I had been enjoying the low-key novelty of a bass guitar role.

Fast forward to 2007. With my broken finger, I had to try new chord fingerings. After a while, without thinking too much, I gravitated toward Paul’s White Album spotlight number, “Blackbird.” This has always been a prestige piece, a S.M.A.R.T. goal for many guitarists (I will have to defer to Matt on the exact definition), but it turns out the difficulty is not much higher without use of a left middle finger. After a couple of tries, “Blackbird” was definitely on my broken-finger setlist.

Encouraged by my disovery of one splint-friendly song, I found another: Donovan’s “Ballad of Geraldine.” A sissy song? Yeah, pretty much. But “oh, we could go to the land of your choice” in a storm. I’ve always liked this one. No false shame knocking on my door.