Turn signals! You know that little arm protruding from the left side of your steering wheel? Well, in addition to controlling the lights, high-beams, and sometimes the windshield wipers (depending on the make of your vehicle) it also functions as a turn signal indicator so other drivers can have an inkling of whether you’re turning or changing lanes. Simply flick the arm up to signal a right turn or lane change or push the arm down to register your intentions to proceed left. More online driving lessons to come; you’ll have your myblogservations driver’s license in no time! Hope you don’t mind my mug shot on it.
Great band, bad crowd. An amiga of mine, we’ll call her Amanda, because, well, that’s her real name invited me to see Spoon prove that despite their goofy name they are serious about rocking. And they played such an intimate set you forgot you were at the very cold and distant venue, the House of Blues. Some fans, on the other hand, would have been more at home at a Napalm Death concert. Amanda slinked through the crowd to get a better view, because though she’s not short, she didn’t start on her high school basketball team either. A rather tall, lanky, goofy dude became quite perturbed at her humble relocation and told her “I’ll slap the perm outta your head” and “how dare you bring a black guy to this concert?” Apparently our pal missed the all black security staff on the way in. A leggy, attractive blonde identified herself as his sister and giggled “that’s my brother; he’s crazy” when Amanda appealed to her with wide, rolling eyes. Meanwhile I was fighting my way back to my seat in the balcony amid the dirty “drop dead” looks of half a row that wouldn’t budge as I fumbled by. Normally, I avoid stepping on toes, but this night I had no choice. On my way to the bathroom nearing the end of the show a petite yet leggy and pretty blonde smashed shoulders with me like a linebacker and just kept on walking and talking to her pretty friend. Whether she was any relation to the crazy racist and sis downstairs I’ll never know. Fortunately the extended performance was worth the abuse.
Maybe I’ve belabored this point, but I’ll drum the protest up again, hydrogenated oils should have no place in any pantry. For the ignorant, it’s not an issue of choice: a triple bacon burger over a salad is a choice, hydrogenated oils are cheap fillers that manufacturers with no concern for their customer’s health inject into processed food, yet they make the choice for you and it’s a low quality selection. Even worse some products marketed as healthy contain trans fats and/or high fructose corn syrup such as high fiber cereals, Nutri-Grain bars, and whole wheat breads. It makes me cringe to see products featuring the deadly duo: hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup; why should we have to live in fear of our food? Why should we have to read labels? Why should we be fed inferior food? Want to do something about it? Visit http://www.bantransfats.com/.
Showing posts with label Music and Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music and Media. Show all posts
04 November 2007
12 March 2007
Blues Power: Perkins plays on
Why I want to see Kenny Wayne Shepherd for 50 bucks: He's packing a legend!
A tall slender black man of twenty-four slides behind a piano; he intends to make it boogie. He dons a black and white suit and shades, which he sports on the tip of his nose. His pant legs rise slightly as he sits, revealing black socks, which emerge from freshly shined wingtips.
Pinetop Perkins, sits in a dark and smoky but bustling Blues bar. It’s 1937 and Perkins refuses a cigarette, but accepts a cocktail with a red plastic stirrer half in the liquid and half out. He nods and says, “Thanks, man.” In the room are the wait staff, a couple of bartenders, and a predominately black crowd, save a few poor whites and a slick record executive with too much cologne and hair tonic on. That must be why he’s sitting in the corner, his only company a dry martini.
Quiet conversation fills the bar and “cool, cat” or “yeah, daddio” drift through the air. The smoke rises to the ceilings, through the windows and doors, making its escape.
Pinetop and co. haven’t started yet, but at note one people put down their glasses and curb their conversations to make way for a hell raising performance.
Tonight Perkins and the band play red hot, as if they were Satan’s backup band on that cool January night. They smoke like the cigarettes and cigars that illuminate the dim room.
On Saturday, September 4th I saw proof that the majesty of the blues still wields power. It was a sight to make dead bluesmen spin in their graves, trying to get out and dance. I watched the aforementioned blues piano master, Pinetop Perkins, play with a local blues combo the Nighthawks (the band’s name is inspired by the famous blues guitar player Robert Nighthawk). The ensemble and
guest Perkins kicked out the Texas hot and Alaska cool American jams to a packed house. Perkins appeared a friendly, but serious man of few words; he let
the keys do the talking. Born 91 years ago, Perkins didn’t look, act or sound it. Perkins’s relentless performance pounded the keys and tickled the ivories with well trained hands. Even the necking white trash couple and the bizarre dancing couldn’t distract. Somewhere, in the distance a cell phone rang; no one noticed.
I don’t even know how I knew. Maybe I just made that up.
Pinetop Perkins stands for an America exclusive to the first half of the twentieth century, when this country cut its teeth. America is not politicians and elections; it’s everyday people playing and enjoying blues, jazz, gospel, hip hop, and rock music. Patriotic waves swept over me, fanning the burning house’s flames which only rose higher. If the concert weren’t outdoors Perkins woul’ve set smoke detectors off. America grew up around him. Pinetop helped shape this fine nation and if anyone has a story to tell, he does. Just hearing how he got there that night would fascinate me.
Pinetop swaggered his way across the stage to his electric piano dressed in a striking emerald green suit and pearl white top hat. Lookout, ladies: he’s 91 years old and dressed to impress. He looked fresh from the 1920s. As far as I was concerned, he was. Perkins survived and endured a parade of groundbreaking generations, nearly a century of change. The roaring twenties; tumultuous thirties; fresh dressed fifties; the drugs and sex of the sixties; disco and the decadent seventies; the campiest decade, the eighties; and the fad filled nineties. He watched the popular music cycle and his peers buy into more popular musical ventures, but Mr. Perkins stands by the standards. He lifted the blues piano tradition he helped establish to legend. Pinetop lived through adversity and discrimination just to perform to people perhaps descendant from those who fought to keep him from voting or using the same public restroom. But he outlived them all, and here he was, in Northwest DC jamming with a band of Caucasians to a predominately white audience and everyone is all smiles.
Pinetop Perkins commands respect not through vocal chords, but piano chords, for American music would be incomplete without his influence on the country built around him.
A tall slender black man of twenty-four slides behind a piano; he intends to make it boogie. He dons a black and white suit and shades, which he sports on the tip of his nose. His pant legs rise slightly as he sits, revealing black socks, which emerge from freshly shined wingtips.
Pinetop Perkins, sits in a dark and smoky but bustling Blues bar. It’s 1937 and Perkins refuses a cigarette, but accepts a cocktail with a red plastic stirrer half in the liquid and half out. He nods and says, “Thanks, man.” In the room are the wait staff, a couple of bartenders, and a predominately black crowd, save a few poor whites and a slick record executive with too much cologne and hair tonic on. That must be why he’s sitting in the corner, his only company a dry martini.
Quiet conversation fills the bar and “cool, cat” or “yeah, daddio” drift through the air. The smoke rises to the ceilings, through the windows and doors, making its escape.
Pinetop and co. haven’t started yet, but at note one people put down their glasses and curb their conversations to make way for a hell raising performance.
Tonight Perkins and the band play red hot, as if they were Satan’s backup band on that cool January night. They smoke like the cigarettes and cigars that illuminate the dim room.
On Saturday, September 4th I saw proof that the majesty of the blues still wields power. It was a sight to make dead bluesmen spin in their graves, trying to get out and dance. I watched the aforementioned blues piano master, Pinetop Perkins, play with a local blues combo the Nighthawks (the band’s name is inspired by the famous blues guitar player Robert Nighthawk). The ensemble and
guest Perkins kicked out the Texas hot and Alaska cool American jams to a packed house. Perkins appeared a friendly, but serious man of few words; he let
the keys do the talking. Born 91 years ago, Perkins didn’t look, act or sound it. Perkins’s relentless performance pounded the keys and tickled the ivories with well trained hands. Even the necking white trash couple and the bizarre dancing couldn’t distract. Somewhere, in the distance a cell phone rang; no one noticed.
I don’t even know how I knew. Maybe I just made that up.
Pinetop Perkins stands for an America exclusive to the first half of the twentieth century, when this country cut its teeth. America is not politicians and elections; it’s everyday people playing and enjoying blues, jazz, gospel, hip hop, and rock music. Patriotic waves swept over me, fanning the burning house’s flames which only rose higher. If the concert weren’t outdoors Perkins woul’ve set smoke detectors off. America grew up around him. Pinetop helped shape this fine nation and if anyone has a story to tell, he does. Just hearing how he got there that night would fascinate me.
Pinetop swaggered his way across the stage to his electric piano dressed in a striking emerald green suit and pearl white top hat. Lookout, ladies: he’s 91 years old and dressed to impress. He looked fresh from the 1920s. As far as I was concerned, he was. Perkins survived and endured a parade of groundbreaking generations, nearly a century of change. The roaring twenties; tumultuous thirties; fresh dressed fifties; the drugs and sex of the sixties; disco and the decadent seventies; the campiest decade, the eighties; and the fad filled nineties. He watched the popular music cycle and his peers buy into more popular musical ventures, but Mr. Perkins stands by the standards. He lifted the blues piano tradition he helped establish to legend. Pinetop lived through adversity and discrimination just to perform to people perhaps descendant from those who fought to keep him from voting or using the same public restroom. But he outlived them all, and here he was, in Northwest DC jamming with a band of Caucasians to a predominately white audience and everyone is all smiles.
Pinetop Perkins commands respect not through vocal chords, but piano chords, for American music would be incomplete without his influence on the country built around him.
02 February 2007
Cartunes
What do washed up, warmed over and heroin fried musicians do when they’re between a rock and a hard place? Sell their songs. Or someone else does. Sometimes the artist is long dead and no longer needs quick cash for 3 a.m. coke runs. It’s only a matter of time before we hear the first warbled, drawn out notes of White Zombie’s “More Human than Human” while some gas (or ethanol maybe) guzzling truck spits mud at the TV screen. I’m not complaining car commercials spoil these sleazy auto mechanic rock songs; the distortion and chugging chords of “Iron Man” made me cringe well before Nissan filled every commercial break with some Sabbath. If you’ve watched even one quarter of a football game in the last 4 months you know what I mean; “Iron Man” really does live again and he drives a Titan.
Present and future automobile advertising execs: please spare us. Your audience did nothing to deserve hearing “Black Hole Sun” again. The summer Soundgarden spewed this monotonous melody all over us was hot and miserable. Not miserable because of the heat, but because Chris Cornell and co. wouldn’t shut up about it. And that nasally back up singing when the track winds down made me want to melt like the Barbie doll in the video.
But I digress; only when a song has been beaten into our heads by the airwaves, MTV, and some butthead next to me at a stoplight is blasting the blasted tune with the windows of his ’89 Camaro down in the winter, is said song officially dead and doomed to live on as a novelty in some stupid car ad. Too bad they don’t make Camaros anymore. Mark my words, the washed out riffs of “Come as You Are” will beckon teenage girls to “Come buy a Car, hurry up, you have no choice, Nevermind that Dead Musician in the trunk.” And Courtney Love? Mitsubishi stockholder.
Present and future automobile advertising execs: please spare us. Your audience did nothing to deserve hearing “Black Hole Sun” again. The summer Soundgarden spewed this monotonous melody all over us was hot and miserable. Not miserable because of the heat, but because Chris Cornell and co. wouldn’t shut up about it. And that nasally back up singing when the track winds down made me want to melt like the Barbie doll in the video.
But I digress; only when a song has been beaten into our heads by the airwaves, MTV, and some butthead next to me at a stoplight is blasting the blasted tune with the windows of his ’89 Camaro down in the winter, is said song officially dead and doomed to live on as a novelty in some stupid car ad. Too bad they don’t make Camaros anymore. Mark my words, the washed out riffs of “Come as You Are” will beckon teenage girls to “Come buy a Car, hurry up, you have no choice, Nevermind that Dead Musician in the trunk.” And Courtney Love? Mitsubishi stockholder.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
