Barry Williams

            On Monday morning my arm wasn’t as sore as the day before but it was still pretty sore. 

            I worked out the chords for verses 8 to 11 of “L'année à lenvers” (The Year in Reverse) by Boris Vian. There’s one verse left but it’s repeated once and then the final line is repeated three times. I should have it done tomorrow. 

            I continued collecting images to use in a photo montage video for “Notre Derniere Chance” (Our Final Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg. I gathered a lot of covers of Paris Match and Paris Jour. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it went out of tune a few times. 

            I weighed 86.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I finished cleaning the toilet and the bathroom floor. Tomorrow I’ll sweep and mop the apartment and then on Wednesday I might buy the primer to start painting the bathroom. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was so hot I felt like I was riding in slow motion. A woman stepped in front of me on the Bloor bike lane and stopped to look at her phone. I called “Watch out watch out watch out!” She looked up, stepped out of the way and said, “Sorry sorry sorry!” 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 17:45, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since July 29.

            I was caught up with my journal at 18:30. 

            I worked on the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia”. The concert video continues to drag behind the studio audio and so every few words I have to delete some of it to bring it forward. In the fifth verse I managed to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for “wrappers for” and “spies, stifles thought to ”, and “stop a psychic phone tap”. That’s the end of the fifth verse. There’s one verse and one extended chorus left. 

            In my “2024-10-10 Song Practice” Movie Maker project I deleted everything that comes before “How to Say Goodbye to You”. I started a “How to Say Goodbye to You (Kramer) Movie Maker project. I isolated and published the song and then uploaded it to YouTube. 

            Now I won’t be singing it during song practice and I’ll be alternately adding “J’suis Snob” and “I’m a Snob” to my daily rehearsals. I reviewed my song practice performances of “Eliza” and “Hair by Eliza” from September 1 to 8. On September 1 and 7 I played “Eliza” on my Gibson Les Paul Studio. On September 1 the take at 2:30 in part D got fumbled 2 minutes in but I just worked through my mistakes without trying to do a good take. On September 7 the take at 55:15 was okay but the Gibson sounded rattly. On September 3 and 5 I played it on my Martin acoustic. On September 3 the take at 39:00 got fumbled but I didn’t retake. On September 5 the take at 49:15 wasn’t bad but I fumbled and kept on going. On September 2 and 8 I played “Hair by Eliza” on my Gibson. On September 2 the take at 4:45 in part B was okay but the Gibson sounded rattly. On September 8 the take at 112:30 didn’t sound bad but it was rattly because of low action. On September 4 and 6 I played them on my Martin. On September 4 the take at 51:15 was the best so far. On September 6 the take at 44:15 wasn’t bad. 

            It was too hot to cook but I’d already thawed out two steaks so I had to grill them in the oven. Instead of boiling a potato I put some oven fry potato wedges in for the second half hour. I had them with a beer while watching episode 6 of The Brady Bunch. 

            The boys are starting to resent having to carry all the boxes of the girls’ things to their room from storage. They are also overwhelmed by all the feminine things that are now in the bathroom and find the girls too bossy so they stop helping them and take shelter in the clubhouse they built in the back yard. Their father Mike declares that from now on everybody has to share. But then the girls move into the boys’ clubhouse, begin to decorate, and the boys resent it. Even Mike says the boys should be able to have the clubhouse to themselves. Carol argues that the girls would share their dollhouse. Mike says if the boys wanted to play with the dollhouse he’d take them to a psychiatrist and Carol starts to cry. Later Carol decides to work with the girls and build their own clubhouse next to the boys’ clubhouse. Mike and the boys are watching with amusement as they fumble the job but when the girls fail miserably they step in to build a clubhouse for them. When it’s done it looks great but then the boys’ clubhouse collapses because Bobby took the nails for the girls’ clubhouse from the boys’ clubhouse. Now the boys say they will share the girls’ clubhouse but the girls don’t want to share and so there’s more fighting. 

            Greg Brady was played by Barry Williams, who grew up next door to Peter Graves of Mission Impossible and was inspired by him to become an actor. He worked with a coach and finally landed a role in an educational film called “Why Johnny Can Read”. He made his TV debut in Dragnet 1967. He had a romantic relationship with his TV sister Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia Brady while the show was still being filmed. He got interested in singing when the Brady Bunch producers tried to cash in on the Brady Bunch as a musical group. After the show was canceled he got seriously into musical theatre. He made his Broadway debut in the musical Romance Romance in 1988. In 1992 he wrote Growing Up Brady, which spent more than three months on the New York Times Best Seller list. He had a celebrity boxing match with Danny Bonaduce of The Partridge Family and lost. In 2010 he co-starred in Megapiranha. In 2023 he sang two songs at The Grand Old Opry. He had a big crush on Florence Henderson, his TV mother on The Brady Bunch.