April 30, 2004

Photos from JazzFest
Leroy Jones and one titled The Aftermath.

Trouble Funk
You have to understand something about New Orleans. It's not a Level place. The whole town is built on one gigantic uneven sponge. I've come to terms with that. I realize at this point that the only way I can really balance myself in this craggy town is to become unbalanced myself. This way the path becomes much more easy to navigate.

Last night was a terrible, terrible night. The Radiators at Tipitinas. I knew I was in deep vats of trouble when; a) I noticed I had been using my two week old beard as a hand napkin, and b) when someone's puke splattered on my flip flops and I did nothing about it except look down and delight in the fact that my bare foot connection to my footwear had a new frictionless slide to it. Later I saw a 400 pound man vomit a pink river for a full 10 seconds. That tripped me out pretty hard.

Coming back home to the Dive Inn, I walked into a scene that I would have expected to see in some movie if ever movies were as good as real life. There were throngs of naked people in and out of the pool. There were human statues who had taken one too many acid hits. It was raining heavily and the lightning storm happening outside was coming in through the enormous skylight, bouncing around the room, and every so often I noticed another human statue being lit up. It was like something out of a 1950's noir zombie movie. Luckily, I was armed with a hard rubber goose that I had acquired from the pool earilier. I had used it once already on a psychopathic freak (he actually had a baseball cap that had 'Freak' embroidered on it) who kept demanding to pay me money to jump in the pool and slap his girlfriends ass. He got the wrath of the goose for that one. I kept trying to pull myself away from the scene but the events that continued to unfold well into the morning hours had me paralyzed - like watching a car wreck that you can't turn away from.

But enough about that. We don't want to highlight only those dark moments. You'll get the wrong impression and we can't have that.

Wednesday night at the Ponderosa Stomp, Eddie Bo really broke the night wide open with an epic version of the Hook and Sling. Hands down the best single performance of the trip so far. If I can have half Mr. Bo's energy when I'm his age, I will be a happy man. The Ponderosa Stomp blew the roof off this place called the "Rock N' Bowl', which as the name implies, is a place where one can bowl a few lanes or catch some super heavy funk. All Star bands one after another. The MC for the lower stage was this cat named Dolomite who was pimped out in silver sequence and took about 10 minutes to introduce each act. Dolomite had adjectives for days. As the night wore on and Dolomite had more and more to drink the introductions grew longer and longer. I last saw Dolomite passed out with his silver cane on the basement floor of the Rock N' Bowl. It was a great evening.

After jump starting things again Thursday morning with Bloody Mary's and my huge double omelet power at the Saint Charles Tavern, I was back in a place where I could actually see myself powering through another day. So far so good. My strategy at JazzFest thus far has been to follow the Japanese kids. They seem to know what's really going on. I've been doing some power vinyl shopping in the last two days but I am nothing compared to these Japanese cats. They are surgical technicians. They come into the stores and grab whole sections by the handfuls. They carry duffle-bags and are on hyper-focused missions.

The predominant demographic at JazzFestival is some kinda freaked out baby boomer Viagra hippy who dances in little circles and looks lost aboard some kinda cosmic freak train. Chotchkies adorn fanciful homegrown halloween costumes and everyone seems OK with it. It's really not my place to tell someone that their feather head-dress and pink spandex combo isn't at all right. But everyone gets a free pass here. Remember the city is built on a sponge.

April 28, 2004

New Orleans: Check Your Bucket
Shit is hot down here. I'm sweating galactic rivers into my keyboard. This thing could blow at any moment. Current location: pool side at the Dive Inn. Although no one can pinpoint exactly where it is and no one seems to be in any hurry to locate it, there is a wireless access point that is allowing me to broadcast live 24/7. I've been in the Bayou for almost 24 hours now yet it seems like I've been here at least four days already. A good adventure can have that effect. So far the number of hours slept remains at three. I was hoping to catch a nap before heading back out into the fold this afternoon but now it seems unlikely. There are serious schedules to be maintained down here and I am an amateur in a crowd of true professionals. The currency at the Dive is sleep. The less you need (get) the higher you place in the standings. Wayne keeps track on a big green chalkboard. So far I'm holding my own but it's early yet and there are far more worthier contenders for 'Rookie of the Year'. This is exhausting work.

Highlights so far include seeing Rebirth start a set at the Maple Leaf at 3AM. That shit was like going back in time. They wrapped up at about 6AM. A few hours later, I was hanging out with Legendary Funketeer Eddie Bo at his restaurant called the Check Your Bucket. The damn kitchen was broke so we couldn't get no food but it was nice to just sit an hangout and take pictures with Eddie Bo. He's playing tonight at a Deep Funk Party called the Ponderosa Stomp. Should be good.

Alright time to go down to Uglesich's for more Poboys and Angry Shrimp. Marcia Ball after that then Band of Gold and then the late show with Eddie Bo. I'll be back with more. Hopefully some pictures to follow. Here is Uglesich's and my HQ - The Dive Inn.

April 23, 2004

Queen of Soul
Hot diggity! Give a listen to Irma Thomas' rendition of Long After Tonight Is All Over (mp3). This song rocks very much. The last minute of the track is super heavy. This will be my soundtrack and anthem for the week to come.

April 22, 2004

There's Going to be a Blackout
I'm absolutely certain that next weeks activities will make it very difficult for me to follow the Twins against Toronto and Anaheim. So this week I've been trying to front-load as many chances to see the Twinks play small ball as I can fit into the schedule. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to catch a game on the tube in this town. Thanks to a dispute between Victory Sports and my Cable Company, there has been a complete blackout of games here in the Twin Cities. Only a few select bars have used nefarious tactics and handed out large bribes to secure secret pipelines to Victory's play-by-play. I know because I spent the better part of Monday night in an intense bar-crawl trying to get the hook-up. It was a miserable failure on all accounts. The bars around by immediate hood are the worst, most loathsome dives I have passed through. One bar features the entire rear-end of a ford pick-up as its awning. Huge american flags greet you at the front door. The dregs that patronize this bar are a slovenly bunch that glare at you from their interactive trivia councils. Its got all the makings of a low-rent sports bar but apparently management has spent all their money on quasi professional Karaoke singers and video trivia and they haven't paid off the Victory Sports mob. Bottom-line: no twins. I was entertained only slightly by a guy who looked like a cross between William Hung and Louis Anderson singing Karaoke style Foo Fighters and some other terrible song that was about this guy wanting to fuck "Stacy's mom". That place should be firebombed. Another beefy guy got up and dedicated his rendition of The Chilli Peppers "Under The Bridge" to 'People who love football'. No shit. I kid you not. I'm certain that, had Anthony Keidies heard this, he would quit making music forever.

The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be that all these Twins fans grumbling about not being able to see their ball club has made things uncomfortable for Gov. Pawlenty, who is attempting to rally support for his stadium bill(s). You can't sell bacon to people who hate pigs. I'm looking for Pawlenty to step in and solve this matter fast before I have to step foot in another bar where clearly I am not wanted. Until he does though, here is a list of bars that have signed on with the mob and show Twins games.

Bunny's Bar & Grill, 5916 Excelsior Boulevard, St. Louis Park
Park Tavern Lounge & Lanes, 3401 Louisiana Avenue, St. Louis Park
Sports Page, 9014 Lyndale Avenue South, Bloomington
Loon Cafe, 500 1st Avenue North, Minneapolis
Joe Senser's, 3010 Eagandale Place, Eagan
Joe Senser's, 4217 West 80th Street, Bloomington
Joe Senser's, 2350 Cleveland Avenue, Roseville
KFAN Restaurant, 2801 Snelling Avenue, Roseville

April 21, 2004

Bohemian is Just Another Word for Clothing Optional
Out of breath and sprinting to the finish line, I'm trying hard to wrap things up here in the northland and prepare body and mind for the festivities that await next week in the Dirty South. I'm looking into connectivity so I can keep everyone who visits these pages abreast of my daily constitution while swimming through the bayous of booze, beads and brass bands. My base of operations and general HQ for the week will be the Dive Inn. From the looks of it, this reservation may go down as being my first mistake. Trying to find out if they have connectivity, I checked the link marked services, and got:

Wonderful Wayne, is ready to work out the kinks of the trip with a relaxation  massage.
            Single      65.00
            Couple  100.00

More importantly, Wayne will perform an Erotic massage. It is very sexual in nature
            Females   65.00
            Couple  100.00
            Sorry, no males

Oh boy! And if that's not enough of a bad omen, the FAQ page informs that the pool is open twenty four hours and is clothing optional. Damn what kind of loose degeneracy have I signed up for? It's just that kind of peacenik-commune openness that may force me to post daily photos of my nominees for "naked person in the pool who has no business being naked in the pool". Of course I'll set up a poll to let my readers vote on a winner.

I kept the training up this last weekend with a hit of the Rebirth Brass Band. Let me just say, you aren't listening to any funky music if you aren't listening to Rebirth. This band jams so tight. Check the music page and shake your ass. Marching bands are the new black. For more proof check out the UMASS Marching Band's cover of Radiohead's Paranoid Android (mp3).

April 19, 2004

Lazyman's Weekend
Instead of recounting all the glories and adventures of this last weekend I thought I'd let these two images do all the talking.

April 15, 2004

Tactics for Tax Evasion
I can think of a thousand things I'd rather be doing than figuring out my taxes. Putting out lit cigarettes on my tongue? Hell it's better than filling out an M1 form in triplicate. This year is an especially tough one. The tax quagmire is so large that I'm going to have to call in more troops and hand everything over to the professionals.

Every year at about this time I get the strange urge to reorganize and re-alphabetize my entire vinyl collection. Go figure. This year is no exception. I am now in the throws of an extensive 'ground-up' 12-inch restructuring program that could take me well into the month of May. My office looks like a cityscape filled with poorly constructed skyscrapers. Every towering stack (except for maybe the German Disco section) looks like it could topple at any moment. I move carefully. But the stacks bring calm in this tax season. Trying to figure out where to file "Music to Break a Lease By" (Is is 'Sixties Pop' or do I start a whole new category of 'Music to *Blank* By') is a far more soothing and focused task than figuring out my deductibles. If only I owned a record called "Music to Do Your Taxes By", could I then move on to more responsible endeavors. The hunt continues.

April 14, 2004

The Headlights Shine on Deers that Drop Doo-doo
Well how about that President of ours? Man, he really killed last night. I've completely lost the ability to speak and think about or otherwise analyze critically the message and tone of this national leader of ours. Even he looks bored with having to deliver the same rehearsed and coached talking points over and over again. He's so obviously uncomfortable up there speaking as the high ruler of the free world, that I almost feel bad for him. It's like rooting for your kid at their first piano recital. My money was on him to totally crack up last night and shit his diaper. I had visions of him fumbling a question so bad that he would take a step back from the podium collect himself for a brief second and then come back with, "OK. Fuck it - I'm outta here. Done. As of this moment - I resign!" One can hope...

The Good Doctor had this to say about Bush and the Iraqi quagmire:

"I hereby proclaim that "Fallujah" is the new replacement for the F word. As in "Dude! I got a big Fallujah on that test!" or "Fallujah this! I'm leaving!"

April 12, 2004

Training Days
I'll be heading to New Orleans for JazzFest in a couple of weeks. It will be my first time traveling in the Dirty South and from all the accounts I've heard of the festival, my time there will be an around-the-clock, non-stop musical exploration. It will be an endurance test of epic proportions. A musical marathon. And like any marathon, one needs to train. So this weekend I laced up my sneakers extra tight and went off to see as much music as I could fit into 48 hours, with an end goal of still having enough energy for Sunday Easter activities and Twins baseball/Masters Championship television viewing. I've still got a lot of work to do. After this weekend I'd give myself a strong B- for my performance. Of all the good music taken in, the surprise hit was this amazing beat box gentleman named Kenny Muhammad who opened up for Squarepusher. Check out this video of him playing with the New York Philharmonic.

For Easter there was trip to the Minnesota Zoo. Some new arrivals were on display for persons of all ages to ogle and manhandle. My favorite part of the zoo is the decent into the nocturnal animal cave. The decent into the cave has that classic Zoo/Science Museum vibe. You know the one, where it gets all kinda dark and the ambient museum music (mixed with nature sounds) comes out of little speakers and a gentle narrator walks you through the mysteries of time, space and beast? Man, that never gets old. Pure nostalgia. Speaking of nostalgia, I miss the old Minnesota Zoo identity with the old moose logo. I wonder why they got rid of that.

April 8, 2004

Getting Ready for Rice
I'll be making my special Krusty's blueberry pancakes this morning in the shape of Dr. Rice's head. I've been working on a wire mold for my Condi-Cakes ever since she agreed to testify in front of the commission. Why there isn't a cable television station dedicated to following Dr. Rice around 24/7 I do not know.

Two primers on the Rice hearings: One from the NYT and another from americanprogress.org. Also McSweeney's Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush.

Thurston Moore on Kurt Cobain
A reasoned piece in the NYT by guitar wiz Moore on the death of Cobain and the continuing life of the music he loved.

You wouldn't know it now by looking at MTV, with its scorn-metal buffoons and Disney-damaged pop idols, but the underground scene Kurt came from is more creative and exciting than it's ever been. From radical pop to sensorial noise-action to the subterranean forays in drone-folk-psyche-improv, all the music Kurt adored is very much alive and being played by amazing artists he didn't live to see, artists who recognize Kurt as a significant and honorable muse.

April 7, 2004

Twins Baseball
My sleeping patterns get all twisted around when the baseball season starts. Already, the first two Twins games have spilled over into extra innings. Thankfully both have ended with victories for the home team but I'm not sure how long I can keep up this pace. Twenty-six innings of baseball in as many hours starts to wreak havoc with your ability to speak cogently with the general population. It's especially bad when you've listened intently to John Gordon's play-by-play on 'CCO. It's really addictive. I wonder if he talks like that at home or out in public. WCCO should shoot television advertisements with John Gordon engaged in mundane human interaction speaking as he does when Shannon Stewart hits one out of the park in the bottom of the 11th.

The weather in the Twin Cities has been warming up considerably. This weekend I moved the 150 pound tube technology Solid State stereo onto the screened-in porch. It's heaven. Last night I was out on the porch listening to the game stretched out on the couch. I had a freshly poured Sidecar in my hand and a bag of carmel corn from Candyland at arms reach. The cats were lazily bathing themselves in the pale orange glow of the setting sun. All was good. All was as it should be - peaceful.

April 5, 2004

The Comma Will Save Us All
This weekend while rummaging around antique stores in Saint Paul, I picked up a 1962 copy of The New York Times Style Book for Writers and Editors. I hope to use the edition along with Strunk and White to bring my grammar and spelling on these pages up from the deep depths of awful to the shallow waters of just bad. The process could be a slow one.

There's a lot of good information packed in these pages. For instance, I had forgotten that words like Linotype, Tabasco, Technicolor and Teleprompter are all trademarked brand names and not simply generic nouns used to describe things (see also: Kleenex and FedEx). But my favorite part of the book is this little grammar nugget explaining the proper use of the comma:

"The absence of commas in His brother George was best man means that the bridegroom has more than one brother. If there is only one brother, George should be set off by commas. Thus a monogamous society must be well supplied with commas: His wife, Nancy, was not there.

That's right folks. Really the only thing that's holding the moral fabric of our country together, preventing a collapse into which thousands experiment loosely with polygamist policies, is our often overlooked friend, the comma. I think armed with that knowledge, we can all agree that the comma shall be sacrosanct and used with gleeful abandon. It is our moral duty.

And while you are contemplating the comma, you should also meditate on this other nugget that I gleaned from a different book find:

"Only those who can appreciate the least palatable of vegetable roots know the meaning of life"
Discourses on Vegetable Roots - Hung Tzu-ch'eng