Levi Asher wrote this action poem, "What's Bothering Me," about our just-concluded (?) media war.
Hey, and I just noticed that his novel, Summer of the Mets is finally out.
categories: x-syndicate
11:17:08 PM 
say what []
Paul Ford thinks the Senate should have an RSS feed, and the House, and the Supreme Court, and the White House. I think he's right, and I like his approach to raising the subject.
categories: metablog x-syndicate
5:17:31 PM say what []
Speaking of New Orleans, I was sad to read this obituary for the legendary Earl King. (Times userid: mediajunkie, password: mediajunkie)
Most famous outside of N.O. (and best compensated for) Jimi Hendrix's cover (as "Let the Good Times Roll") of his "Come On," and for the Mardi Gras standard "Big Chief," especially the Professor Longhair version on which he sang and whistled.
Because of our annual pilgrimages, I've had the pleasure of hearing King play, at one point with Snooks Eaglin, no less. As my flight (tomorrow) nears my excitement and anticipation grow.
Plus I just noticed that if I'm willing to stake out a seat in the Jazz tent all day this Sunday I will get to hear Ornette Coleman again!
UPDATE: To make things worse, it seems that Nina Simone has died in France.
categories: x-syndicate
4:18:10 PM say what []
As always the actual face-to-face living of the Waterside conference a week or so ago overtook the electronic chronicling of same. Then I got sick. Now I'm about to head out on vacation. On return, though, I still plan to try to reassemble some of my other fond or striking memories of the event, and link to some more of the fascinating people I met or caught up with, ate and drank with, argued and chatted with, and rode around the San Francisco Bay on a Hornblower yacht with.
categories: Agent7
4:14:48 PM say what []
So I make this new category in my
categories: x-syndicate
3:18:00 PM say what []
Jeff Green wonders what we were laughing at, when we were laughing at the Sweat Hogs. All I know is that there was a time "sport shirt on the iceburg" chanted to the beat of a conga line could crack up me and my sibs without fail.
Around this time we were equally susceptible to the actually well written Odd Couple, with its analogous "Once there was a man named Jesse/a-ah a-ah ah/He wore his clothes very mess/a-ah a-ah ah" moment.
(Oh, and hey, Jeff Green has a blog.)
categories: metablog x-syndicate
3:17:57 PM say what []
Xeni Jardin asks the musical question, "[W]hat do you blog about when you can be as explicit, as extreme, and as graphic as you want to be? How far will you go - at what point will you self-censor? Do you roll your sleeves up and turn up the shock, just because you can? If I do, will you respect me the morning after?"
12:33:46 PM say what []
Just checked the weather report for New Orleans today, sunny and dry. B and I have been to Jazz Fest something like eight times in the last decade, and I think we've made it there for the last five or six in a row (it gets hard to keep track after a while). We've been lucky with the weather for at least the last three or four years, tending to come on the rainless weekend on occasions when there's rain. New Orleans weather in late April/early May is changeable, usually hot and humid, and rain is always a possibility.
So I pack shorts, aloha shirts, a straw hat, t-shirts, tevas, but also a rain slicker, a nonporous hat, sneakers, and a lot of changes of socks. If it rains you make the best of it, put on one of the ponchos advertising a local radio station or a brand of sunblock usually given out for free near the entrance, and hunker down in a tent when possible. I prefer the Jazz tent on such days, but sometimes you just have to go where the seats are. The newest tent is the Blues tent, introduced last year, and its a big one.
Not all the stages are under tents. Some are in large fields and others have smaller audience spaces, with risers set back or to one side. Not all the music is jazz. I think the name of the festival can be misleading. When people hear that B and I return to Fest again year after year, they sometimes surmise that we are jazz fanatics. We like jazz, a lot. We go to Yoshi's here in Oakland and we always pick out some vocalists or instrumentalists as must-hears at Fest every year. But it's a Jazz & Heritage festival, and besides the crafts and the all-important food booths, this also means that the music extends well beyond the boundaries of trad Dixieland and more contemporary jazz.
Pretty much anything jazz- or blues-influenced is fair game. You get gospel, zydeco and cajun (of course), reggae, r & b, rock, pop, jamband, and of course da funk. Lately there's even been some rappers in the house (and I don't just mean Buckshot Le Fonque). If there's a kind of American music you like, you can find it somewhere.
Lately we've relied more on serendipity. We may not be there the same weekend as Ornette Coleman or Los Lobos, but frankly the bigger names and more famous acts are available to us at other times of year, in dedicated venues. And even some of the venerable must-see acts we've stuck to in the past, such as the Hackberry Ramblers and the various Nevilles, Marsalises, and Batiste family bands, no longer have the power to dominate our scheduling plans or drag us away from a serendipitous find.
Yes, it's fun to look at the day ahead and scope out some picks, but the real gold of Fest is some singer you've never heard of, that local band causing a buzz, or some ancient player long overdue for recognition. I always come home with some CDs with no antecedents in my collection, and sometimes - as when I was introduced to James Booker - I come home with a whole new obsession.
categories: x-syndicate
10:18:16 AM say what []
