November is almost over!  I”m happy because that means I’ll be done with NaNoWriMo.  It has been fun, but it’s stressful too.  Especially when I have to balance writing 1,667 words everyday with school.  Especially when school has finals during NaNoWriMo.  Especially when I change classes during NaNoWriMo.  At present, I need 2,695 more words.  I have a pretty good idea where my novel is going from there. 

So, this week was Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving used to be my favourite holiday, but that changed this year.  I realised how it’s kind of hypocritical.  For the most part, we say, “Oh, I’m thankful for this and this and this and this.”  Then, without another though, we just gorge ourselves on food.  I think it would be a better idea to eat less on Thanksgiving so we realise how much we have all the other days of the year. 

My Thanksgiving consisted of going to Illinois, where I sat in different rooms of my aunt’s house not saying much.  It’s not that I don’t like talking.  Well…  OK, it’s not that I don’t like talking that much, I just never have anything to say.  Besides, most of what they do is watch television or talk about travelling.  I hate football (the usual showing on the television & besides, I haven’t watched television since 12 June), & I don’t know how to drive much less navigate streets and highways and whatnot.  So there really isn’t much for me to comment about if I chose to talk at all. 

I just ate food basically.

To-day, I’m doing my usual Saturday stuff as well as finishing NaNoWriMo.  Hopefully finishing.  I might go until Sunday still.  I’m going to finish before Monday though.  Monday’s the last possible day to finish.  I have APE homework too, but I’m going to wait until Sunday to do that.  It’s like dissecting speeches or something.  It’s boring.  I also get to read about grammar.  Yay.

I might also mention that I disassociated my blog with Facebook.  As well as removing links from my blog (on WordPress at least, it may vary depending on where you are reading this.  In the sense of where on the internet, not where in your house.  Though, it might vary there as well; I haven’t been to your house to know.).  I figured that it’s better to have people search me out than have me say, “Hey!  Look at me here too!”.  It’s more of a fun scavenger hunt then.  I don’t know, something like that.

So, album and film for this week.  I’m presently listening to Disc 4 of Fats Domino’s Imperial Recordings.  I don’t have Disc 1-3 though.  We found disc 4 at a HPB (Half Price Books!).  I get a lot of stuff at HPB.  My film this week is The Phantom Menace.  The first Star Wars episode.  First in canon, not first chronologically.  I know a lot of people don’t really like that one.  I kind of feel indifferent about it.  Like, yeah, it’s Star Wars, and it has some good points, but it never can be as good as the originals.  (I feel old for saying that.)  It has some merits though.  I think it does at least. 

I can talk about Black Friday, and then I’ll be done.  Black Friday is absolutely stupid.  This more than anything else provides for the hypocrasy of Thanksgiving.  People say, “Oh I’m thankful for the stuff I have.  Now, I have to go rush out in the middle of my sleep cycle to go get things for cheap.”  It’s stupid.  It how you use the things you get and what you do with them rather than how cheap you get them.  I slept in on Friday.  I didn’t want to go see stupid consumerism at work.  I have too much stuff already that I don’t use.  The CD I”m listening to now I got back over the summer, and I’m just now listening to it.  I have books that I”ve had for years that I still haven’t read.  I don’t need more things; I need time in which I can enjoy them.  Where does that lead?  Less homework.  I want less homework for Christmas.  Will I get that?  No, probably not.  So I just get more stuff over Christmas.  More stuff that I will have even less time to enjoy. 

Consumerism makes no sense to me. 

I’m off to NaNoWriMo….

On this day in 1956 – Fats Domino appeared on the Ed Sullivan show and performed his hit “Blueberry Hill.”

SOTD: Fujiya and Miyagi – Dishwasher

CAHOTD

DOTD

RCOTD

Question of the Day:

Have you ever dyed your hair? Why or why not? Any crazy colors?

Four years have not lessened the horror of what happened in New Orleans during the first week of September, 2005. Spared a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina, which veered to the east and dropped from a Category 5 to a Category 3 storm before making landfall in southeast Louisiana, the city was decimated when the levee system and federal flood protection system failed in more than 50 places. Eighty percent of the city flooded, killing more than 1800 people, leaving tens of thousands more stranded for days—trapped in attics up to their chins in toxic flood water, abandoned on highway overpasses and rooftops in the sweltering heat, packed into the storm-ravaged Superdome and Convention Center. The vision of hell unfolded in real time as global media captured the images of bodies in the street, orphaned children, and the elderly and the sick, slumped in wheel chairs, waiting for rescue and fighting to hold on.

Today, the people of New Orleans are still fighting—wracked by psychological trauma and the devastating Diaspora of a city destroyed, not to mention the corruption and cronyism that marred the no-bid contract recovery efforts. And just as the long, painstaking struggle to heal the deep wounds began to make headway, the city was struck again—this time by the global economic crisis that hobbled the city’s crucial tourism industry. It was an unexpected and quietly devastating blow. Today, the city is reeling from job losses, rising costs of living and a devastating escalation in violent crime. But the people who returned to claim their home are determined to preserve the city’s deep roots and extraordinary culture. Leading that fight, in many ways, is New Orleans’ tight-knit and hard-hit music community.

The birthplace of jazz and Louis Armstrong, New Orleans is a musical hot house that has incubated and nurtured the greatest traditions in jazz, blues, soul and rock and roll. From Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver, to Fats Domino and Professor Longhair, to Dr. John, the Neville Brothers and the Meters, the Marsalis family and Harry Connick, Jr., to Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Lee Dorsey and Louis Prima, to influential lesser known legends like Snooks Eaglin, Ernie K-Doe, Earl King, Guitar Slim, Willie Tee, and others—not to mention Dixieland, brass bands, Zydeco and a vibrant hip-hop scene—the problem with listing the incredible musicians of New Orleans is that you can never stop without fear of a glaring omission. Their contributions to American music seem almost infinite. Not bad for a city of less than 400,000 that sits below sea level and the poverty line.

“It’s a different place here,” says four-time Grammy Award-winning producer John Snyder, the program director for the music industry studies program at Loyola University. “It’s a certain thing in the air. I don’t know what you’d call it. A soulfulness and an earthiness. It’s got that tropical vibe, where people seem to be conserving energy all the time. It is more about conserving energy than expending energy. It’s in the music and it characterizes all efforts—academic, entrepreneurial, legal, you name it. A lot of effort has to be expended just to get to the point of doing something. It has lived in a different century every century it has been in, and it is never the future. It’s always in a historical context of culture and booze and music and architecture and dilapidated elegance. But after Katrina, everything changed.”

“The music community in New Orleans was so neighborhood based,” say Reid Wick, senior project coordinator for The Recording Academy, who helped administer MusiCares’ Hurricane Relief Fund and Music Rising’s instrument replacement program. “So much of it was learning how to play in the bars and churches of your neighborhood. After Katrina, so much of that was totally disrupted. Some entire regions of the city are vast wastelands, still—and not only poor areas. Everything from the neighborhood where you used to live, to the club you used to play on Saturday night and the church you played on Sunday morning, are just not there anymore. So when those clubs aren’t there, and those neighborhoods aren’t even there, a lot musicians are just going to be struggling and out of work.”

But even in the darkest days after the storm, the musical community worked together to help each other, and their city. They were matched with a vast outpouring of compassion and support from life-changing assistance programs like MusiCares and Music Rising. Following Katrina, the city had the sympathy of the world, and while volunteers streamed in to help rebuild, the city’s musicians found themselves in greater demand than ever before.

“The storm brought a lot of attention to the music community,” says Snyder. “It created work as well as displacement. It created new opportunities as well as destruction and loss. It is like everything else. It is not all one thing. In this situation you have to look for the good and make the best of it.”

“Many musicians were able to come back and for awhile there was actually more work than there had been in the past,” agrees Scott Aiges, director of programs, marketing and communications for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. “You had places tripping over one another to hire New Orleans musicians to help support them. But that has died off now. The number of gigs has decreased significantly and the pay scale has gone down significantly, so it is much harder to make a living as a musician—much harder. And it has always been challenging. It’s a city so famous for its music that people think musicians here have it made—but musicians by no means have their livelihoods guaranteed in New Orleans. In fact, we did a study back when I was working for the mayor’s office before the storm and musicians were making on average about $21,000 a year. So we referred to the musicians a lot of the time as the working poor. They are working very hard. They are most often parents and they struggle extremely hard to make ends meet.”

Compounding the destruction and displacement wrought by the storm and its aftermath was the long-term damage done to New Orleans’ tourism industry, a vital part of the city’s economy and the economic lifeblood of the music community. While the city’s struggles to attract visitors began to pay off a few years after the storm, they were suddenly and dramatically undercut last year by the global financial crisis.

“It seemed like we were really starting to see some improvement in the local economy,” says Mark Fowler, manager of Tipitina’s Music Office Co-Op in New Orleans. “The local tourism industry was really starting to get back into good shape. And then we had this big economic crash that just derailed everything. People just aren’t having conventions like they did. And a big convention isn’t just about the people in town going out and spending money—there is all the auxiliary support business, whether it is people in restaurants or cab drivers or audio-video tech guys, all the people whose work is related to that stuff. So all the people in the local economy don’t have money to go out and do stuff either. It impacts musicians on a lot of different levels.”

“The convention business drove so much of the economy of New Orleans, in particular the music industry,” says Wick. “It just hasn’t really come back to the level of what it was. It could be ten years if it ever comes back. And it is hard to track that—a restaurant that would hire a trio or a pianist, when the tourism dollars stop coming in, the first thing they are going to cut is the music budget.”

In addition, the wealth of talent in New Orleans seems to compound the problems. Though the community is surprisingly uncompetitive and supportive—just listen to the warmth and respect when musicians talk about each other during interviews on the incredible WWOZ, one of the best radio stations in the country—their sheer number drives down the fees they can command.

“Music is everywhere,” Snyder says. “Everyone is a musician. The way up North people carry briefcases, down here they carry instruments. But musicians have never made money here. People don’t like to pay for music. They might pay a little bit, but not enough to support it. If you go out in New York City and go to a jazz club, it’s going to cost you a hundred bucks for two people. Nobody would pay a hundred dollars to hear music here. If you ask for ten, you might get people to go. So there’s no money in playing music and there is no infrastructure to speak of, no publishing companies or record companies or management companies.”

“The money thing is very problematic,” says Fowler. “There are so many people competing for the same jobs. It is a buyer’s market. The pay at a lot of places is probably $25 a set, so $25 an hour, which for a day job is pretty good. But when you think about potential income, it is a job more than anything else.”

Of primary importance for those fighting to preserve and protect New Orleans’ musical traditions is to pass along an understanding of the business of making music—from marketing to publishing to legal issues—and a greater understanding of the income potential of licensing.

“One of the things we are trying to do at the Co-Op is to get people to not think just about gigs but all the other things you can do with your music,” Fowler adds. “Get stuff licensed to be used in films and advertising, television shows, more lucrative situations. That is where the bulk of the money is made these days, because there is actually money there. We’re like, ‘We all love playing gigs, but you gotta think of this other stuff.’”

Much like the musical traditions the community is trying to preserve, the recovery and relief efforts are marked by an intense level of creativity, generosity, humility and versatility. Wick’s deep ties to the hardest hit members of the community allowed him to see the need for an organization to help coordinate relief efforts, which lead to the founding of Sweet Home New Orleans.

“Sweet Home New Orleans is an umbrella organization for 14 different relief agencies,” Wick says. “There are probably 5,000 musicians in New Orleans and many of them live in a totally cash world. They’ve never had a checking account or a credit card, so they have no credit history established. With Sweet Home we tried to help with housing issues, and wound up being a case management and application service to streamline the application process for 14 different relief agencies, like MusiCares, Society of Singers, the Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the Musicians Clinic, and three of four other agencies that were springing up. We’re still going strong three or four years later.”

“Still going strong three of four years later.” It perfectly encapsulates the hope and heartbreak the community balances. How extraordinary that there is the generosity, dedication and compassion to keeps these relief efforts alive—and how painful to realize they are still so necessary so many years after the tragedy.

Today, there are still many, many ways to help the city’s citizens and musicians. From financial donations to instrument donations, there is still tremendous need and many devoted organizations to contact for a better understanding of how to contribute. But for Aiges, one answer is simple.

“Come to New Orleans,” he says. “Bare witness. Understand there is still a struggle going on, but the culture of New Orleans remains intact and it remains a tremendously joyous place to experience. Everyone who comes to New Orleans takes a little piece of it with them when they go. And the more that is spread throughout the world, the more people are aware of how special New Orleans is. And you can’t predict how that will resonate and how that will change things for the better.”

–Ari Surdoval

You can help. Click here:

Sweet Home New Orleans

Tipitina’s Foundation

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation

New Orleans Musicians Clinic

Listen to WWOZ!

Chapter 2 – Junior High, a nightmare

I don’t remember if my little molestation  incident had anything to do with it, but when I arrived at Junior High School,  I began  to stutter.  I have no memory of  how it started but when I opened my mouth,  nothing would come out and when a sound or word did come out,  I would stutter.    Of course, the other kids would laugh and I remember specifically one teacher who laughed the loudest and ridiculed me the most.  She would say things such as maybe the word you are looking for is on the ceiling and I would look up at the ceiling and everyone would laugh again.  She was tall and skinny and ugly and she always wore the same dress.  I often fantasized about sticking a fork in  her neck.    When I entered the 7th grade they put me in the 7-4’s, which was okay.  That meant average.  In  the 8th grade I went to the 8-6’s and in 9th grade, the 9-8’s.  Now I was with the dumest kids in the school. 

Because I wasn’t athletic, I used  to dread recesses and lunch.  I would try to hide by walking to the end of  the block and sitting behind cars so no one would notice me.   Gym class was the absolute worse.   I had a pair of shoes called white bucks made popular by Pat Boone and one boy in particuular would stand on my white bucks to make them black and dirty.  He was tall and tough and there wasn’t much I could do about it except mess up his greasy hair whenever I had a chance to do so.    It was the beginning of being called a sissy or a queer.  The operative word then was “queer”.  I can’t remember when “faggot” superseded it.    I was a dainty boy and pretty.   All the other boys had pimples and bad skin. 

It was certainly the beginning of  becoming aware of  how many men noticed me.  On the way home from school,   there was a long walk passed the steel mills where there were no houses,  only parked cars.  I don’t think a day ever passed when some man pulled over and  said, “Do you want a ride little boy.”   Maybe it was the way I moved my ass.  I don’t know.   People seem to think that  sort of thing only happens in big cities.  I noticed that instinctively men opened doors for me and pulled out my chair.

During the three years of  junior high, I had two dates with girls.  I don’t remember if I ever heard the expression peer pressure, but I clearly wanted attention.  I wanted to prove to  the other boys that I could date the prettiest girl in the school.  She was a wee bit taller than me and I really was surprised she said yes.  I can remember feeling very uncomfortable; couldn’t think of anything to say and I was afraid I would start stuttering, but I didn’t.  Everyone went to  the movies on Saturday night because there wasn’t anything else to do anyway unless you had a car.  Just before the lights went down everyone gasped when they saw who I was with.  That was enough.  She lived in the black section of town because her father owned a bar.  It was a little scary walking home. 

The second girl I took out was the school scholar.  She was a little on the plump side and very Italian looking because she was Italian.  It was easier to talk to her because we had mutual acquaintenances.  Her mother was very sweet to me.

Another remarkable episode happened that summer.  I am sure I must have heard Judy Garland sing on the radio, but I guess nothing ever jumped out at me.  In Coatesville the boys and girls in the west end were in to Elvis Presley, the boys and girls in the east end were in to Pat Boone and the blacks were in to Fats Domino.  In 1954 Judy Garland’s film,  A Star Is Born was released,  but  the album had come out long before I saw the movie.  There was one modern furniture store in town that had a music section in the front with loud speakers.  I remember walking by the store wearing a back pack.  She was singing The Man That Got Away and her sound was so hypnotic that I walked backwards into the store and bought the album.  It was on 45’s.  I knew the entire score in a week.  We had a huge mirror in our living room and I pantomimed all of the songs.  That was the beginning of a long love affair with Judy Garland that still exists today.

I have often pondered over why gay men were so overwhelmingly devoted to her.  Frank Sinatra once said she sings every song with a life and death immediacy.  That’s true but there is much more to it.  In her later years when it became so emotional for her to sing Over the Rainbow, I think that over the rainbow meant a place where she would find one good man to love and take care of her and not steal all of her money.  I think she knew she would never make it.  I don’t think I’ll make it over the rainbow either.  It’s interesting how gay men love strong women on the screen, Judy, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but not necessarily in real life. 

There were some lighter moments during these years.  Christmas was a very special time.   My brother was a real artist when it came to decorating the tree and especially the platform, complete with a train and snow.   He used a mirror to create a pond.   We exchanged gifts and I was able to get little Christmas jobs  in stores here and there to buy presents.  I enjoyed giving gifts, especially to my sister who was very pretty and feminine and I loved buying her pretty clothes like a cashmere sweater, which was considered very elegant at  that time.

On the other side of all of that, there was a boy who lived next door to me,  a couple of years younger,  who was mentally a little slow,  whose mother was the local neighborhood aging active prostitute.  The bulk of her customers were black taxi cab drivers.  They had a wrap around windowed porch.  Sometimes his mother would get drunk and entertain her clients in the living room, instead of the bedroom and the kids from the neighborhood would gather around the glass windowed porch and watch his mother getting fucked.  One evening the boy was coming home and saw all of the kids looking through the windows and he had to chase us away.  I was always ashamed that I was one of  those boys watching and I tried to make it up to him by being a closer friend.  I gave him a couple of my Christmas presents, a shirt and a scarf and I hung out with him at the playground as much as I could.  There’s always someone who is a lot worse off than you.

In my senior year, 9th grade, my sister started dating a pre-med student from the right part of  town, the east end and he took an interest in me.   As I said before, in the 8th grade I was put into the 8-6’s and 9th grade, the 9-8’s.   Now I was with the dumbest kids in the school.  I used to feel sorry for the other kids in the class as though I wasn’t there,  as if I were looking through the door.  Those childhood scars — how does it go, what doesn’t kill you, will make you stronger?   This man,  this pre-med student, my sister’s boyfriend,  spent a lot of time with me that summer, reading, solving math problems, etc.  He physically took me by the hand to  the new principal of  the Senior High School and demanded that I be put  in the college preparatory section, the most difficult.  I did all right.  I maintained a C average, studying languages, literature and bloody Shakespeare.  This man ultimately married my sister, beautiful wedding.  His parents did not attend.  At an earlier time they had offered my sister money to get out of town.  It was years before they spoke to her and acknowledged the marriage, so much like my mother’s experience.  They had three great children.  One died,  one became estranged and the eldest,  her first born,  remains very close to her today and they see a great deal of each other.  That gives me a great comfort zone.  I will always be grateful to this man, who died some years ago.  When they divorced,  he cut off all communication with my family.  I never got to speak to him again.  My sister never remarried.  She became a plant person.  She talks to the plants.  Some people call it botany.  She has won all sorts of gardening awards in her neighborhood.  She lives in San Francisco and because of all the injuries she sustained earning the black belt in Aikido,  she has a prescription for medical marijuana to ease her pain and she’s stoned all the time.

Today (Thursday) Mad Tea Party heads out on an 11-day southern tour. Our first stop is Huntsville, and our next stop is New Orleans, where we have 3 gigs planned. I am so excited to go to New Orleans I decided to feature a New Orleans musician for the Thursday Hooray. It was very dificult to decide what to feature, since there is there is so much incredible music from the Crescent City, but I decided on Fats Domino. This is one of my favorite songs – it gets played in the Mad Tea van all the time, and on vinyl at the house.

Motto: “Hypnose und Hyperraum”

Anwesende: Wolfi (wählt mich!), Thomas

Über den Klon von Elvis lässt sich streiten. Aber wir streiten doch nicht, wir sind ganz brav.

DOWNLOAD

Musik von: Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Fats Domino, Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, Bonsai Garden Orchester, Dirty Dozen Brass band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Chet Baker & Stan Getz, Lofi Boheme, Dinah Washington

Fats Domino (1928-?)

E como, à semelhança deste blog, tudo tem um principio, o nome de Antoine Dominique “Fats” Domino estará para sempre associado ao inicio do Rock & Roll e da sua popularização entre a sociedade americana durante toda a década de 50.

Nascido na frenética cidade de New Orleans, nos Estados Unidos, Fats Domino cresceu ao som daquele que era o género musical dominante entre as comunidades negras da época, o Rhythm and Blues [Early R&B]. Aproveitando essa influência, e dotado de uma extraordinária habilidade com o piano, Fats Domino desenvolveu um estilo único, assente no boogie-woogie e no piano-blues, mas com uma batida mais forte e ritmicamente mais poderosa. A sua sonoridade passou a ser conhecida como Rock & Roll e a  música “The Fat Man” (de 1949) é tida para muitos como a precursora do género.

Apesar de ser difícil creditar a exacta origem do Rock & Roll, sem dúvida que Fats Domino foi um dos maiores criadores e interpretes do género, ao lado de grandes nomes como Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly e Jerry Lee Lewis, também eles pioneiros e impulsionadores do Rock & Roll.

Não sendo muito provavelmente o mais conhecido entre os seus pares, Fats Domino foi talvez um dos que mais significativamente contribuiu para a imposição do Rock & Roll enquanto género que em muito extravasa a esfera musical, prolongando-se pelo próprio estilo de vida de uma sociedade que, pós-Segunda Grande Guerra, ansiava por algo que a estimulasse novamente.

Fats Domino – “Ain’t That a Shame” [video]

Fats Domino sings the song that gave this feature its name. In his biography Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock’n'Roll, Rick Coleman claims “The Fat Man” predates any claim Elvis Presley may have to performing the first rock’n'roll song. Because so many blues and R&B performers can also lay claim to the title of Original Rock and Roller, I doubt the question will ever be settled. Shucks, my own choice would be Louis Jordan’s “Saturday Night Fish Fry.”

Here’s another well-worn number from the Fats files.

For those of you following the plot, I’ve been apprenticing at the local community radio station here in Austin, KOOP, with the goal of getting my own show.

Competition is tough, there are a lot of talented programmers out there, with great ideas for their shows. I was able to get into the studio today (with the very cool John Erler of Master Pancake Theater), and broadcast live a short, 30 minute version of my show, “From the Other Side of the Mirror”. The concept behind the show is explained at the beginning.

So please beg my indulgence, here is it, captured from the live stream. Let me know what you think, if you’d listen to something like this.

Thanks to everyone for your support. I know who you are.

Dateline Alaska: where people come to forget about their romantic pasts and shake off the Devil that haunts them.

Today I answered some fan mail….

Little kid: Sarah, is Alaska safe?

Sarah: If you act like Sarah Palin when you visit Alaska, you should be fine.

Also today, I proved my eco-credentials.

As my contribution to saving the Alaskan polar bears, I have now gone without a hair straightening iron for 48 hours.

The big news today is that Todd no longer lives with me.

I discovered his Googling habits. And that led me to Second Life – where I caught his avatar being whipped by three Thai transvestites while being locked in a basement.

That fuckin’ jungle juice drinking Alaskan donkey herder.

He was always asking me to whip him every time he was stupid or misbehaved. Little did I know he was being unfaithfully stupid.

I thought his story about being mugged by a one-legged hooker last week was bogus. Why would a one-legged hooker mug him for his housekeeping money?. He only gets $10 a week.

He certainly possess an enviable superabundance of imagination regarding making stuff up, and his devotion to the gratification of his sexual appetites is commendable I suppose.

But Todd now calls a fishing shack home.

I’m fine with that. He was getting fatter than Fat Albert having sex with the two Fat ladies while listening to Fats Domino anyway.

I’m thinking I’ll get myself a real rock ‘n’ roll boyfriend now. Someone like Billy Ray Cyrus.

How long is considered normal to grieve a husband?

Yours, while saying bye bye. Or something………..whatever.

Sarah

p.s. Five kids, unemployed and a belly full of cookies. Crisis what crisis?

Check out my new website – it will make you feel smarter, for less than .27 cents a day: The Sarah Palin Experience

Next American City has a song for your city. For pure blunt representation and overt advertisement, I’ll Fats talkin’ about all the pretty ladies in my hometown any day. The Beatles did a decent job too. Though I’d certainly love a mention from Johnny Cash, or have Elliott Smith come off a suicidal ledge (temporarily, RIP) to walk into the sun in my city.

Of course, New York City is tough to beat.

Häromdagen skrev jag en krönika på Rebelmusic om kopplingen mellan reggae och de förenta staterna. Faktum är att även om USA har dåliga reggaegener, så har landet haft stort inflytande över den jamaicanska musikens utveckling, och reggaen härstammar i ett krokigt nerstigande led från tidig amerikansk r&b och storbandsjazz.

Amerikansk r&b dök upp på Jamaica på 50-talet genom handelsresande och säsongsarbetare. De som hade radio kunde också lyssna på favoriter som Nat ”King” Cole, Fats Domino och Clyde McPhatter genom amerikanska radiostationer. När populariteten började dala i USA och delvis övergå till rock n’ roll, bestämde sig de jamaicanska herrarna Prince Buster, Clement Dodd och Duke Reid för att producera sin egen r&b.

Den jamaicanska versionen påminde en hel del om sin amerikanska motsvarighet. Men upphovsmännen valde att också använda influenser från latin och mento (tidig jamaicansk musik som bygger på afrikanska rytmer) samt sångteknik och klassiska melodier från England och Irland. Eftersom flera av dåtidens musiker var jazzskolade andades dessutom vissa låtar swing och bebop.

Klassiker från den här perioden är exempelvis Boogie in My Bones med Laurel Aitken, Donna med The Blues Busters och Easy Snappin’ med Theophilius Beckford. Det finns även ett antal instrumentala rökare från The Blues Blasters och Duke’s Group.

Rocksteadyns intåg
Rocksteady-perioden i den jamaicanska musikhistorien var kort – 1966 till 1968. Men genren har haft ett enormt inflytande på hela reggaens utveckling. Under den här perioden fick basen och trummorna en ännu mer framträdande roll. Rocksteadyn är cool, lugn och melodiös, och tempot är långsamt.

Dessutom hade 60-talets soul ett betydande inflytande på rocksteadyn. I boken Reggae: The Rough Guide, av Steve Barrow och Peter Dalton, menar reggaeradiostjärnan och selectorn David Rodigan att soulsångaren Curtis Mayfield är ”godfather of reggae”. Och det stämmer nog rätt väl. Lyssna på klassiska jamaicanska falsettsångare som Slim Smith, Ken Parker och Pat Kelly, så är det tydligt varifrån de hämtat en stor del av sin inspiration.

Rocksteadyn och dess rytmer byggdes till stor del kring dessa Curtis Mayfield-imitatörer och därför kan soulens – och inte minst Curtis Mayfields – bidrag till rocksteadymusiken inte överskattas.

Reggae, rocksteady och jamaicansk r&b delar en gemensam  kärlek  till amerikansk musik. Relationen har varat i över ett halvt sekel, och ännu brinner lågan. Nutida dancehallstjärnor som Mavado och Sean Paul för traditionen vidare genom framgångsrika jamaicansk-amerikanska samarbeten.

Recently a few of us who were Los Angeles teenagers during the 50’s and 60’s era were talking about our back-in-the-day experiences.  One memory we all had in common was of  the Dolores Drive-In Restaurant at the corner of  Wilshire  and La Cienega. That drive-in (called DL’s by all of us in the “in-crowd”) was a popular hangout with local teenagers because of its carhops, JJ Burgers and Suzie Q’s (fries) and it remained popular for thirty years.  Each of us became nostalgic for the evenings at DL’s when we sat in our cars (one was a ‘57 T-Bird,  another was a ‘66 Pontiac GTO, another was a ‘63 Jaguar XKE convertible, and mine was a midnight blue ‘65 Mustang .  Too many of those “magic moment” experiences to relate in a blog, but you can imagine some of them by thinking back to your similar coming-of-age experiences when you listened to doo wop music, swooned over Johnny Mathis songs, knew every word to songs sung by Sam Cooke, Dion and the Belmonts, Fats Domino, Clyde Mc Phatter, the Drifters and so many more artists whose music has influenced us throughout our lives.  We marveled at how listening to their songs today can instantly transport us back to our “age of innocence”… and it happens after hearing just the first few notes of a song!

A few people asked for the songs I played on the Stagger Lee demo show and exact titles, so here they are in play order:

1. Mississippi John Hurt – Stack O’Lee

2. Duke Ellington – Stack O’Lee Blues

3. Woody Guthrie – Stackolee

4. Fats Domino – Stagger Lee

5. Wilson Pickett – Stagger Lee

6. The Clash – Wrong em’ Boyo

7. The Trojans – Stack-A-Lee

Here’s the link to listen to the show

For those of you following the plot, I’ve been apprenticing at the local community radio station here in Austin, KOOP, with the goal of getting my own show.

Competition is tough, there are a lot of talented programmers out there, with great ideas for their shows. I was able to get into the studio tonight, and stream a short, 30 minute version of my show, “From the Other Side of the Mirror”. The concept behind the show is explained at the beginning.

So please beg my indulgence, here is it, captured from the live stream. Let me know what you think, if you’d listen to something like this.

Thanks to everyone for your support. I know who you are.

1. The Kalin Twins : When
2. Fats Domino : Walking To New Orleans
3. Buddy Holly : Heartbeat
4. Eddie Cochran : Three Steps To Heaven
5. The Shirelles : Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
6. Richie Valens : Donna
7. Fabian : Turn Me Loose
8. Paul Anka : You Are My Destiny
9. Roy Orbison : Only The Lonely
10. Ricky Nelson : Poor Little Fool

Focused and broad, with generous cherry, tobacco and peppery toast flavors mingling well on the long, deftly balanced finish

GateHouse — I know what you’re thinking: “Jeff, bread is stupid. It is chewy and grainy and sometimes there is entirely too much crust for my comfort. Moreover, I find myself more displeased each time I am confronted with toast. And do not even GET ME STARTED ON SESAME SEEDS, or I will punch each and every member of this litter of baby chicks in the beak right now.” OK, you probably don’t think things in pointlessly lengthy paragraphs, but I’m the one with the word count.

The point is: bread sucks. I know it, you know it, and most crucially, the Colonel knows it. And it’s a good thing he defected to our country from North Korea, because now the Colonel, though he continues to have to spend his days guarding his Secret Recipe with the jealous, flinty-eyed suspicion of the caged jaguar, has found time to address the issue of bread’s unceasing sucktasticness by coming up with the absolutely ingenious idea of taking the sandwich, disconnecting the bread entirely and replacing it with two seasoned greasy chicken flanks dripping with deliciousness and probably goo.

It is, of course, impossible to believe that I would be clever enough to dream this up on my own, but for non-believers, may I introduce you and your slowly choking arteries to the Double Down Sandwich, although please note that we are expanding the definition of the word “sandwich” into heretofore unimagined physics realms.

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• Fats Domino – The Fat Man.mp3
• Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band – Atlantic City.mp3

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Yo, Ding Dong, man, Ding Dong. Ding Dong, yo.

The Double Down Sandwich includes two kinds of cheese — when one thinks of places that really have a handle on select cheese pairings, one thinks pretty immediately of Kentucky Fried Chicken — bacon, the Colonel’s sauce and, in lieu of stupid bread for jerks, two chicken breasts, deep-fried to conveniently accelerate your body’s inevitable decline into a final uselessness. And it also comes in a combo with fries and probably a Diet Coke, in case you’re a little worried about making it all the way through the afternoon on just 35,000 calories. (Ha! I kid about the calorie numbers, which I just made up, because KFC won’t release the actual ones until the sandwich is offered nationally!)

Yeah, you hear that, Hearts of America? That’s the Colonel telling you to kiss his drumsticks, because he refuses to participate in your media’s stupid “National Obesity Epidemic.” Go back to Sweden, hippies. (Incidentally, I have absolutely no concept of the jealousy levels of the average caged jaguar; now that I think about it, I suspect they’re not much different than those of the free-range one.)

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More Columns About Buildings And Food (Note: No Buildings)

• Ladies and gentlemen, a Cheeseburger In A Can
• The Gospel of Deep-Fried Pepsi
• Snickers Charged: Caffeine = good. Caffeine + nougat = A MIRACLE.
  

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Reportedly, the $6.99 sandwich-type object will contain more than an entire day’s worth of the recommended allowance for fat, cholesterol, sodium and protein, although bear in mind those recommendations come from “the government,” and they’re just trying to get you out of the way so they can kill your grandma.

Now I know what you’re thinking, again, because all I do is apparently read your mind: “Jeff, tell me where I can get this sandwich this very instant or I will burn your house down.” OK, fine, chill, jeez, Sadly, the sandwich is only in “test markets” so far, which are Providence and Omaha. So sure, it might take a little while for the sandwich to come to your town, but on the plus side there will soon be a tremendous surplus of available real estate in Providence and Omaha.

Luckily, for me, this may answer a number of parenting issues, because this is true: My five-year-old son despises bread with the kind of pure, relentless opposition he usually reserves for any adult who’s telling him to just GET IN THE CAR ALREADY. He has never in his life eaten bread, which, needless to say, throws a pretty severe wrench into any plans you might have for sandwich construction. So every day, before sending him off to school, I pack him lunch meat in a Ziploc baggie, sans bread, and send him off on his merry way. It’s a sandwich without bread. You may be thinking this is a ridiculous and even embarrassing situation, but for coming up with this compromise I regard myself as a minor wizard. That said, I will not be feeding him KFC’s Double Down Sandwich, because I would like him very much to live to see 6.

Well, that’s surprising. The big story of this week was the results of our CCTV End User Survey – carried out in conjunction with CCTV in Focus – which revealed that almost half of CCTV end users don’t know if their systems comply with Home Office guidelines. Heck.

Also this week we featured a story on the state of commercial crime in South Africa, and the methods being used to combat it. Nice work!

And Andy Drane is to step down from the Security Industry Authority at the end of September. Brian Sims looks back at his career.

Madstock, the Madness-skafest, took place in July – and AP Security were working there. This article has already had a few comments from gig attendees – see what they have to say. And say something yourself, if you so desire.

Our Song About Security this week comes from Mr Fats Domino. Contrary to popular belief, this is not his actual name – it’s a stage moniker. It was bestowed upon him due to his habit of dipping his dominoes in lard before entering major dominoes tournaments. He said it was done simply ‘for luck’ – but fellow competitors claimed it was cheating.

Here is a cat keen to eat a fish in a tank.

It’s a public holiday here in England on Monday, so the Daily Digest service will resume on Tuesday. See you then!

www.info4security.com, www.ifsec.co.uk

Via the WFMU blo: Fats Domino/Doug Kershaw, “Don’t Mess With My Popeyes“

Meet Me on the Corner

RENAISSANCE dedicated this CD to the legacy of their musical

forefathers Sam Cooke, Clyde McPhatter, Frankie Lymon,

Ray Charles, “Fats” Domino and so many, many more.