June 18, 2008
It's getting late is a permanent state
My semi-annual emergency-customer-feature alpha-release behind-schedule Sunday-night-code-freeze self-pitying why-don't-somebody-please-destroy-the-tech-industry so-that-I-can-be-a-fireman musical self-pity exhaustion headache blues post.
Not available on YouTube.
We move so fast today
Nothing stands in our way
We're free to act
And forced to pay
Have power over people
Understand the subtlety of body language
One up in every situation
The dumb magician
Sees behind the scenes
The strings attached to all things
This gets me that
The dumb magician
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
He might say if you were to hear him speak
That the secret of revenge is to turn the other cheek
You go away and think about it all week
Dumb magician
We move so fast today
Nothing stands in our way
We're free to act
And forced to pay
Try so hard to get your foot in the door
Get what you ask for and nothing more
It's getting late is a permanent state
The dumb magician
Sees behind the scenes
The strings attached to all things
This gets me that
The dumb magician
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up
The only way out is up...
Last time I felt this bad about my job was mid-August 2005, but I was soon distracted.
Posted by ray at 8:15 PM | Comments (5)
May 21, 2008
Humid City, and the truth behind straight edge
Loki wants everybody to know that Humid City will be back soon.
To pass the time, please enjoy the rhythmic stylings of Mike "Dancing Around the World" Long, who I think gets Minor Threat better than anybody.
Posted by ray at 8:55 PM | Comments (3)
April 18, 2008
Ashley Morris: The Liner Notes of the Album of the Soundtrack of the Movie
Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing. -- Rob, High Fidelity
If I was an artist like Greg Peters, or a photographer like dsb or Galfreaka, or had the design aesthetic of dangerblond, or had kept up with my musical training like the Hot 8, I could have created something original for Ashley. Instead, I do what most former zine editor/rock critic/college radio DJs do...I rearrange other people's art to express my feelings.
This is the mix CD that was played during the visitation at Ashley's funeral. Probably most of you didn't get to hear it, or only heard snippets. Maybe you can take this list and turn it into your own version, or I can burn a couple copies for people to pass around if anybody wants. I kinda like it. I used to be a mix tape fanatic back in the day, and it felt good to make this. Keeping it down to one CD was the hardest part.
Many thanks to Greg Peters for the vast collection of vintage funeral jazz to dig through.
Warren Zevon "Keep Me In Your Heart" The Wind
Everybody's seen Greg's video that goes with this song. It still makes the tears flow, two weeks later. This song is going away in the vault with Sigur Ros "Staralfur" and Martin Sexton's "Wasted" as songs that are so associated with pain that I don't think I can listen to them ever again.
Treme Brass Band "The Old Rugged Cross" Gimmee My Money Back
Classic jazz funeral dirge done with modern Treme flair. Plus I think Ashley is gonna be reincarnated as Uncle Lionel. Seriously. When Uncle Lionel passes, Ash is gonna sneak into his body before anybody notices and live the life for a few years (with Lionel's blessing, I'm sure).
Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys "La Toussaint" La Toussaint
La Toussaint is the Cajun French name for All Saints Day, the day we pay respects to our ancestors who have passed on. This song is beautiful and haunting.
Queen "Love Of My Life" A Night At The Opera
Requested by Hana.
Professor Longhair "Tipitina" Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens: The Big Ol' Box Of New Orleans
We had to have the most classic of all New Orleans songs by the most classic of all New Orleans musicians, and this is one of the most stellar studio versions. I never went to Tip's with Ashley, although we always talked about this show or that show. Always thought there was plenty of time.
Warren Zevon "Accidentally Like A Martyr" Excitable Boy
Looking for an older Zevon song that was funeral-appropriate, I happened on this and it was such a fucking obvious winner.
Louis Armstrong "St. James Infirmary (Gambler's Blues)" Birth of Jazz
Liam's choice, a classic version by the man who made it famous.
James Booker "Over the Rainbow" Spiders on the Keys
Recorded live at the Maple Leaf, the last place I ever saw Ashley, played by another man who lived too loud and too fast and too crazy and left the world too soon without realizing how much he was truly loved.
Lyle Lovett "If I Had a Boat" Pontiac
Requested by Hana.
Kermit Ruffins "What is New Orleans?" The Barbecue Swingers Live
Ashley Morris IS New Orleans. Kermit needs to re-record this.
Flogging Molly "If I Ever Leave This World Alive" Drunken Lullabies
This song brought me to tears in the first days of April. Check the lyrics if you don't believe me.
Cheap Trick "I Want You to Want Me" Live At Budokan
Requested by Hana.
Eddie Bo "When The Saints Go Marching In" Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album
A brilliant post-Katrina mellow-sad version.
Queen "You're My Best Friend" A Night At The Opera
My choice. Nuff said.
Davell Crawford "Gather By The River" Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album
My favorite post-Katrina gospel recording that is heavy with tragedy, brotherhood, and redemption all at the same time.
George Lewis "Just A Closer Walk With Thee" Funeral Songs (Dead Man Blues)
Supplied by Greg Peters. A 1920's recording of a classic jazz funeral dirge.
New Orleans Wanderers "Perdido Street Blues" Funeral Songs (Dead Man Blues)
Another 1920's vintage recording from Greg Peters. Ashley would have wanted at least one title with a political subtext to it. Gotta get that last dig in.
Henry 'Red' Allen "Canal Street Blues" Funeral Songs (Dead Man Blues)
The third selection from the huge library of vintage jazz Greg Peters sent me. We started Ashley's journey homeward at the funeral home on Canal Street, and we definitely had the blues.
Allen Toussaint "Tipitina And Me" Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album
A post-Katrina recording that renders the Fess classic slowed down and in a minor key, taking our happiest of happiests and producing a dirge with a hint of triumph.
Posted by ray at 12:00 AM | Comments (12)
April 12, 2008
What Is Ashley Morris?
I'll have more details and links to photos of Ashleys' funeral later this weekend, but people have been asking me to post the eulogy that I read at the service this morning.
For those of you who haven't heard the original, it's a take on Kermit Ruffins's song "What Is New Orleans?"
------
(My most heartfelt apologies to Kermit Ruffins for what I’m about to do here.)
What is Ashley Morris?
What IS Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is a fiery spirit who inspires and energizes anyone whose life he touches.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is a poet, a patriot, a teacher, scientist, comedian, cook, gadfly, bulldog and warrior.
What is Ashley Morris?
What IS Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is theology and geometry, never lacking in taste and decency even while strapped to Fortuna’s wheel, scribbling on the modern Big Chief pad he called his blog.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is the bass drum. Ashley Morris is the snare drum. Ashley Morris is the high hat. Ashley Morris is the tri-tom. And Ashley Morris never claps on 1 and 3 and hates anybody who does.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is smoked duck poor-boys from Crabby Jacks, shrimp poor-boys from Domilise’s, roast beef poor-boys with extra gravy from the Calhoun Superette, and any kinda poor-boy you wanna get on a lazy Sunday on a barstool with the afternoon sun shining in the window at the Parkway Bakery, y’all. What is Ashley Morris?
What IS Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is Krewe du Vieux. Ashley Morris is the Mystik Krewe of Pan. Ashley Morris is “Buy Us Back Chirac!” and “Bring Back Competent Corruption” and “The Cult of Lafcadio”.
Ashley Morris is at the top of Harry Shearer’s list of favorite mimes. (It’s a short list.)
What is Ashley Morris?
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is daddy to the beautiful Katerina, to the charming Annabel Lee, and to Big Rey d’Orleans Morris.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is the roller derby husband of the best blocker the game is likely to ever see, and woe be to the first jammer who thinks she’s gonna sneak by Soviet Block without a serious ass-whupping.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is an Abita ale, a wee dram of Jameson, a fine Cuban cigar, and an endless supply of stories and experiences both sacred and profane, enough to while away many a late night.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is the Saints 12th Man, the first to arrive and the last to leave in section 635, the Gentilly of ticket sections, reachable only by an arduous three-quarter mile journey by escalator, escorted by sherpas, where you WILL stand and you WILL cheer until the end of the fourth quarter regardless of whether Dem Boys are up by 6 or down by 17.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is he who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds New Orleans through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the saver of lost cities. And he will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy New Orleans. And you will know he is Ashley Morris when he lays his verbal vengeance upon thee. What is Ashley Morris?
What IS Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is Lenny Bruce and Bob Dylan and Bill Hicks. Ashley Morris is Che Guevara. Ashley Morris is Thomas Jefferson. Ashley Morris is Michael Collins. Ashley Morris is any separatist rebel patriot anywhere who ever said “Sinn Fein”, “Ourselves Alone”, or “Let ‘em freeze in the dark without any shrimp or coffee until we get some real levees up in here.” What is Ashley Morris?
What IS Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is the exposer of FMooks, and Ashley Morris is…(all together now) F Y Y F-ing F.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is a whole fried chicken from Dooky Chase’s with baked macaroni, collard greens, cornbread, and candied yams as sweet as bread pudding, eaten out of a box on the front steps of a condemned housing project on a cold drizzly January day saying, “This is the life. You know what they’re eating in Houston right now? Quiznos.”
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris is our voice. Ashley Morris is our rage. Ashley Morris is our laughter, our tears, our heart, our soul.
What is Ashley Morris?
Ashley Morris IS New Orleans.
And Ashley Morris is my friend. Ashley Morris will always be my friend.
And I will always miss him. Forever.
Posted by ray at 2:09 AM | Comments (17)
April 5, 2008
Later, homey. Not goodbye. See ya later. I promise.
I knew Ashley by reputation in the months after the storm. The first words I ever saw by him were:
You do not want to fuck with pissed off New Orleanians. We're the murder capital, bitches. We will rain that shit down on you.
and I thought this might be a man I need to get to know better. And we got acquainted at Geek Dinner I the first night I moved back to New Orleans after 25 years in exile.
But I think the day Ashley Morris and I became friends was during the first Rising Tide planning party at Dangerblond's house. The group hadn't yet thought up the "all agenda items must be addressed before the wine is opened" rule at that meeting, and conversation had degraded into a confused meandering mess, so I got up to go to the kitchen for a break from the madness and Ashley followed me. He dug in the fridge and pulled out an Abita Restoration Ale for himself, and dug out one of my giant bottles of sparkling water and held it out to me by the neck of the bottle, as if to say, "here, you look like you need this". There was something in his manner, like an understanding. There was none of that awkwardness of the drinker around the teetotaler that those of us in recovery are used to dealing with. He just treated me like a normal guy and hefted the bottle towards me knowing it was my drink of choice. He treated me just like a drinking buddy, with no acknowledgement or sense of the difference between what he drank and what I had to drink, not knowing how much I had yearned for the past three years to have somebody treat me unselfconciously like just another drinking buddy.
And so we sat in the kitchen, he with his beer and I with my fizzy water, and we shared our very first of many "JEEZUS, what a clusterfuck this is" rants with each other. We like to rant. We like to curse. We got along great.
I knew I had found a true friend.
We did a lot of stuff together. Not nearly as much as I would have liked. We both had kids to raise, we both worked long hours and had to leave town regularly to work. We both jokingly called ourselves "roller derby widowers" when our wives were at practice leaving us home to watch the kids.
But the memories we do have feel legendary to me. We ate Dooky Chase's takeout on the steps of the Lafitte Projects, in the rain, and no Michelin 4-star white tablecloth crap from out in the world could ever top that experience.
He took me to my first ever Thursday night Kermit show at Vaughan's.
We spent a Mardi Gras day hefting kids up and down ladders, sharing food with total strangers, swapping my gumbo for some pork ribs on the neutral ground on Napoleon, and crashing out on my couch listening to the Treme brass band, feeling fat and happy with the world and with the feeling that many happy Mardi Gras lay ahead of us. The corner of Napoleon and Prytania is our standard spot; it's going to feel empty next year.
I helped him get his first tattoo. I didn't think it would be his last.
We fried turkeys together. We joked about the gay porn that was a running gag in the blog circles, and half-joked about our moral unsuitability to teach at a Catholic girls school.
When I lost my friend Evan to suicide, and I needed to get out of the house and scream and cry and rant at somebody, there was only one person I could call, and it was Ashley, and he dragged himself to Carrollton Station after midnight on a weeknight and stood me rounds of O'Doul's while I stood him rounds of Abita and Jameson, and he patiently let me tell stories and laugh and cry and yell about a guy he'd never even met before. Because he was that kind of friend.
The last time I saw him, two Sundays ago, we spent a chilly afternoon at the Maple Leaf, planning a crawfish boil for the high school volunteers coming down from Maine in a few weeks, and drinking and kvetching and flirting with the bartender, as if two 40-something overweight happily-married geezers from the neighborhood had anything but harmless flirting to offer to a hottie with a pierced navel who liked to flirt back at middle-aged men. When I got home I stunk like cigar smoke. I hate cigars. But with Ashley, I didn't care.
When I broke the bad news about Ashley to my kids, they were both upset, but Liam is taking it kind of hard. He idolized Ashley ("Big Ashley", we called him, to distinguish him from all the girl Ashleys we know). Both he and Ashley were drummers and hockey goalies. Liam bought himself a bad-ass skateboard for his birthday last week:
decorated with a picture of a Mardi Gras Indian Spy Boy, and I said, "Man, you gotta show that to Big Ashley, he'd love it." But he never got the chance. He's still got the hockey stick Ash gave us, an adult size one so that I could do slapshot practice with the kid in the driveway. And he had his NOCCA jazz auditions today, electing to play "St. James Infirmary" as his prepared piece. Last night he couldn't play it, said the song reminded him of the words and the words reminded him of Ashley and he got sad. I told him, "Just remember, buddy, that song is the blues. It's supposed to be a sad song. It's a song they play at jazz funerals, and Big Ashley is gonna have a jazz funeral, so if you feel sad when you play it, then play it sad and that will make it sound even better." Reports are that he blew the judges away at his audition today. That was Ashley pulling strings to keep that reed from squeaking, I bet.
Last night I remembered something from Wednesday. Somewhere in the middle of the day Wednesday, the day Ashley died, before I knew he was gone, I got a weird tight pain in my chest. It started on the left, and slowly spread across my breastbone. I spent a tense 15 minutes trying to decide if it was just something I did to myself at the gym, or if it was something more serious.
Now I know. It was Ashley. He was on his way Home, and he stopped by where I was working and punched me real hard in the chest, just to be funny, just to let me know that I can't go around thinking that he's not going to be making things happen down here on Earth just because he's up there with Zevon and Shavers and Satchmo. He's gonna show up here and pull some strings here and there when he feels like it. Like my grandmother does with cardinals. Like she did with the 2004 Red Sox the year she died and they swept the Cardinals in the World Series in four games.
Watch them Saints this year. You'll see.
His earthly self is going to St. Louis #3 some time next week, the cemetery right behind the Fairgrounds. His soul is going to a righteous place somewhere else. But I have no doubt that every year when Jazz Fest rolls around, if you hang close to that end of the neighborhood, you'll hear an extra drumline coming from somewhere and maybe the whiff of Jameson and a Cubano. You won't be able to see him, but you'll know he's there, drumming like mad and laughing his ass off.
Posted by ray at 3:35 AM | Comments (27)
March 17, 2008
The Flogging of the Green
The Irish Channel Republican Army wishes you and yours a Happy St. Pat's, even if you're only faking the Irish bit.
Sinn Fein, yanqui motherfuckers.
Posted by ray at 1:59 PM | Comments (2)
February 27, 2008
Why I love Miss Syl
Because Miss Syl finds things like this:
(Although ironically Ian used to literally dance himself into a seizure when he was alive, but you can't tell kids anything these days.)
Apologies for only being able to communicate by song and video lately. My real writing is going into NuPac until The Wire runs out.
Posted by ray at 2:08 PM | Comments (3)
February 19, 2008
Me neither, H
When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up
How do you move in a world of fog
That's always changing things
Makes me wish that I could be a dog
When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever wanna be that way
I don't wanna grow up
Seems like folks turn into things
That they'd never want
The only thing to live for
Is today
I'm gonna put a hole in my TV set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
And I don't wanna grow up
I don't wnna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't wanna grow up
Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinking all night
And I don't wanna grow up
I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old Tomb
On Grand Street
When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up
Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get me a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float a broom
Fall in and get married then boom
How the hell did I get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up
Posted by ray at 11:39 PM | Comments (3)
February 12, 2008
I tell you the truth but you don't believe me
Back in the day I used to think this song was about being an amphetamine addict and proud of it. Lately, though, I think it's about being an over-employed full-time/sometimes single parent wannabe rescue hero biting off more than I can handle and not knowing how to say "enough".
Either way, the feedback helps keep me awake when the bugs absolutely positively must be fixed by morning for me to save face.
Bring me an 8-ball, some valium and a pint of Jameson and I'll be your special friend.
The sun comes up another day begins
And I don't even worry about the state I'm in
Head so heavy and I'm looking thin
But when the sun goes down I'm gonna start again
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
You never understand me
You never understand me, yeah, uh-huh
Posted by ray at 11:26 PM | Comments (8)
December 22, 2007
Mrs. Cora Foster's house is gone
I've blogged about gutting Mrs. Cora's house. I've blogged about driving by it a year later seeing it slowly decay. And I've blogged about thinking about trying one more time to get into her house and see if we can salvage some important and historic family heirlooms.
And now it's all gone.
And of course I didn't do any of the things I planned to do. I got the phone numbers for the Foster daughters, but I didn't get around to calling. Every day I planned to call and every day it fell through the cracks and I just didn't do it. Just like I came up with the idea and registered a domain name for the Care Forgot project and then never did anything with it.
Today I feel like I'm all talk.
I feel like those guys in Do The Right Thing who sit on the corner all day long and talk and bitch about the Koreans who run the convenience store across the street and talk about how they should open their own store, til one of them stands up and says "'I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that.' You ain't gonna do a goddamn thing! I tell you what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go across the street and give them damn Koreans some more o' my money."
I possibly had it in my power to do something for somebody, and I didn't do anything.
Merry Christmas.
Posted by ray at 4:31 PM | Comments (7)
December 20, 2007
Time has come
I've been doing lots of late-night writing these days, cranking out my third short story and up to three chapters in a potential novel, but my muse refuses to come out at home. Not sure if she hates kids or pets or unfolded laundry; regardless, I must coax her out with beverages, usually triple espressos.
I like to walk from the house up to Oak Street with my laptop. Did the usual midnight shuffle tonight when Rue shut down, down to Zotz which keeps later hours...alas, Zotz is keeping pussy advent hours, so I decided to take a chance on Carrollton Station. It was loud, so I doubled back down Dublin thinking to see what the Maple Leaf was like.
Halfway between Willow and Plum, I see a young man peek at me around the fence on the corner. A few seconds later he peeks around the corner again. As I get closer he disappears. As I arrive at Plum and think about crossing, I see him standing a half a block down. He sees me and starts toward me at double time. Me a big fucking target, obviously carrying a computer, likely a wallet, and it's that time of night when the hunting is good looking for all the drunk college students at the edge of the herd. I already knew that the closest populated area was back on Willow, so I turned around and double-timed it back. A look over my shoulder and the guy is now slowly hovering around the opposite corner.
Sometimes I hate this fucking city. I hate always looking over my shoulder like that. I hate having to mistrust people by default at certain times of night or certain situations. I hate that a Lusher middle school kid was robbed at gunpoint at Freret & Lowerline at 7:30 in the fucking morning and the school downplayed the incident, and now I worry when my kids are on their way home from school, and I don't like them out after dark. And we live in a safe neighborhood.
So Carrollton Station it is, because the crocs are out on Plum tonight. And I gotta tell you, if there's no live band playing and you don't mind loud classic rock, this is a great place to isolate. Endless supply of O'Doul's, and even wifi. And even though you have to put up with the odd Boston or Stevie Nicks swill, right now I am wallowing joyfully in the full eleven minute version of the motherfucking Chambers Brothers.
Now the time has come
There's no place to run
I might get burned up by the sun
But I had my fun
I've been loved and put aside
I've been crushed by the tumbling tide
And my soul has been psychedelicized
P.S. That was the abridged Sullivan Show version. Here's the acid-drenched original LP version:
Posted by ray at 12:54 AM | Comments (4)
December 7, 2007
Mrs. Cora Foster's house
Mrs. Cora Foster's house, slow-mo demolition in progress.
August 2006, right after salvaging some family heirlooms and giving up on gutting halfway through due to the structural unsoundness:
October 2007, I drove by to see what it looked like. Of all the houses I've done, this was one of the special ones because of the history involved:
Karen said she saw Mrs. Cora's daughters approving the demolition a couple of months ago, so I wasn't sure it would still be there, but this is what it looks like today:
The foliage is coming back, somebody has ripped the porch roof half off, and somebody pushed the front window right out of the frame. I thought about climbing in and looking around, but I didn't have a mold mask with me (the mold is still really bad), and something about that open window said "crackhead" to me.
Apparently the city's demolition plan is to let vandals and crackheads and the elements take these houses apart over a series of decades, so that we can all grow old watching it while we pass around Klonopin and Zoloft in candy dishes.
I harbor this fantasy that one day I will happen to drive by and they'll be knocking it down, and that back closet will be ripped open by a backhoe, that closet that we could never search well because it was on the other side of a collapsing floor and a head-high ramshackle pile of moldy rotting bedroom furniture. And the demo contractors will listen to me explain what might be in that rubble, and instead of having me arrested, they'll let me dig through the pile and I'll find all that documentation on Buddy Bolden and Honore Dutrey from the Smithsonian that we never found.
And I harbor this other fantasy that one day Karen says "Ray, whatcha doin' today?" and we just fucking go over there with some masks and trespass and go Katrina-spelunking and take one last crack at finding it now that the house is a little bit drier.
If I'd had a mask, I might have been tempted today, but it's not a safe house to be alone in. At this point, I imagine it's haunted. Buddy Bolden was a crazy motherfucker at the end, and they're making a movie about him now so his ghost is probably on the prowl.
Posted by ray at 5:48 PM | Comments (5)
December 6, 2007
Guided
Good days are not a guarantee. They are a blessing.
Single-parenting it for a few days. Brother-in-law in town, thinking of staying. He and I and the boy and the girl dined at Vincents. Talked about movies old and new, skateboarding, pranks, music famous and obscure, sazeracs properly and improperly made, homework done and homework still to-do, and ex-girlfriends, recent and long-ago.
On the drive home the boy said "If you re-arrange the letters in Food Mart, you get Doom Fart." Ten minutes later we were still laughing and he said "I feel smart!" and we laughed some more.
By the time we got home we all agreed that "The Official Ironmen Rally Song" rules the fucking universe.
Everybody should have more good days.
bitter fish in crude oil sea
you don't have to bother me
you just have to join in on this song
crawling people on your knees
don't take this so seriously
You just have to hum it all day long
to dine alone
to build a private zone
or trigger a synapse
and free us from our traps
you won't see me turn my back
with my head against my stack
spitting teeth and breaking open skin
official ironmen you are free
champions officially
but you won't catch me on an open chin
to dine alone
to build a private zone
or trigger a synapse
and free us from our traps
save your knock-out punches for the freaks
happy little babies with red cheeks
you will rock them gently out of sync
confirmations through the wire
spitting gas into the fire
am i also worthy of a drink?
to dine alone
to build a private zone
or trigger a synapse
and free us from our traps
Posted by ray at 7:12 PM | Comments (10)
November 28, 2007
This one time at band camp...
Exactly two people are going to kill me for this, but I got a scanner and like Ashley I just can't help myself.
Franklin band trip to Orlando, 1980.
The hottie on the right in the red shorts is Robin Kemp of Every Poet Needs A Patio. It would figure that the only photo taken inside the Magic Kingdom that survived was an ass shot:
The surprised young man on the band bus with the fashionable afro and Sonny Rollins glued to his ear is Delfeayo Marsalis:
Posted by ray at 7:12 PM | Comments (10)
October 24, 2007
Control
[Minor spoilers ahead for people who don't know anything at all about Joy Division.]
The other night I got to see Control, the new biopic about Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis, who took his own life in 1980 at the age of 23, thus sealing his status as an eternal rock legend.
I first learned about Joy Division from reading about his death in Creem Magazine, the summer after my 16th birthday. In fact, most of the cool music I first learned about was music that I only read about and never heard. I knew gobs about obscure bands like Joy Division and Panther Burns and Siouxsie and the Banshees and Gang of Four and the Alley Cats just because I'd read about them, because Robert Christgau had an opinion about them, and I rarely heard them because it was stuff that it was hard to hear at the time even on WTUL, and I didn't have much of a budget for buying music, especially expensive imports. But the short Creem blurb about Joy Division, their music, and Ian's death, accompanied by this haunting photo, really stuck with me. It felt like the Quadrophenia thing I talked about the other day, but taken to a much darker place, a place I hadn't been to yet but could see from here.
In college, I became one of those kids who lived in the Joy Division world a little too deeply. When I was 19 I used to say, in all seriousness, that I hoped I didn't live to see 30 and that I would make sure I didn't. I was moody, I was depressed. (And chicks dug it, at least a few of them, which was an added bonus. Mysterious moody bad boy. Until they would get sick of my morose shit and dump me, which then further fed the beast.)
Seeing Control was a big deal for me. And on the heels of last week's Quadrophenia epiphany, on the eve of my teetering sobriety anniversary, it affected me deeply.
From a pure film critic point of view, you could probably pick it apart for a lackluster ending, for the lack of depth of character of the other band members.
None of that matters to me. Greg Peters has called this, with a hint of derision, "The Passion of the Christ", but for me, in trying to newly process my memories of my life as a 19-year-old vaguely suicidal alcoholic, it really was exactly that. I needed to see inside Ian's head. I needed to understand. I needed to know why.
And why, as it turns out, was a simple garden variety love triangle. Ian got married too young, before his art and his importance had flourished, and he fell out of love with the mother of his child and in love with somebody who would have been his soulmate if only he had waited a few more years to meet her. And his epilepsy and other health problems prevented him from dealing emotionally with the complications of living in the fucked up situation he had place himself in. And one night, in a moment of great pain and pressure and confusion and weakness, he hung himself.
So when you see the movie and re-listen to the music in the context of what was going on in his life, you realize that what he did was pour his feelings and his doubts and his regrets into his songs. Literally. Literally in the extreme. When he writes in "Love Will Tear Us Apart":
When routine bites hard,
And ambitions are low,
And resentment rides high
But emotions won't grow,
And we're changing our ways,
Taking different roads,
Then love, love will tear us apart againWhy is the bedroom so cold?
Turned away on your side.
Is my timing that flawed,
Our respect run so dry?
Yet there's still this appeal
That we've kept through our lives
And love, love will tear us apart again
he is writing about his wife, and he knows his wife knows he is writing about her, and she knows that the whole world knows that he is writing about her. But he wrote and recorded it anyway.
As art, it is a profound piece of work.
As a way to treat a person you love...it seems morally questionable. Is inflicting pain like this somehow justified if great music or literature or art is the result?
Yet, if you strip out all the interpersonal relationship complications and all the regret and pain from Ian's lyrics, you're not left with fucking much else besides "dance dance dance dance dance to the radio". If all that emotional raw material was not available to him as a lyricist, then likely nobody would have ever heard of Joy Division, nobody would have ever made a movie about them, and I wouldn't be writing a blog post trying to explain why this is all so personally important.
So what the fuck does all this have to do with me?
Because I've been wrestling with these very issues for a long time. Some of you may remember that I did a big purge of some archives of my blog a year or so ago because I wrote some things there that hurt some people that I love very much, not expecting that they would ever read them. And so certain topics and certain people are no longer discussed here, because the risk is too great.
I have coworkers who have found my blog. My wife's coworkers and derby friends read it. My parents and possibly my brothers and for all I know my kids friends from school read this stuff. So my blog slowly constricts down to that which is safe, which is inoffensive, non-worrisome, and family-hour friendly. Circe said to me a few years ago, "your blog is just brochure-ware now...you post about bands you like and movies you saw and you link to funny pictures you found on the internet, but you don't actually say anything any more. Your blog is just a brochure of Ray". As if I were a hotel chain now, and this is just an inoffensive and inviting protrayal about what a fun and interesting guy Ray is. Hotel Ray is kid-friendly, serves crawfish ettoufee in the main restaurant, has Mission of Burma karaoke every Tuesday, and shows all the Red Sox games in the Sporty Sport bar on the mezzanine.
But it's just a blog, right? I mean, who cares? But the same conflict holds true for any kind of writing, and that is where I am really struggling. I want to be a writer. Published and all. I have one published work under my belt, a humorous little memoir about working as a float grunt during Mardi Gras in the 70's, which was published right after the storm by Chin Music Press. That story worked because I am pretty good at telling true stories in a funny and entertaining and only slightly embellished way. I want to write more; I've got a short story in progress, and a short speculative fiction novel taking shape in my head. But I write best when I write what I know, when I base my writing, at least loosely, on things that have actually happened to me or to people I know.
But other than a handful of humorous anecdotes, the really important, real literature-worthy things that I've experienced, are things that must remain private.
I can't do what Augusten Burroughs did in Running With Scissors or Dry. I can't just let fly on everybody I know, burn every bridge, and let the chips fall where they may. There are people involved, people I love, people I don't want to hurt. I want to write painful stories, but those stories are painful for other people too, not just me.
So I don't write anything interesting. I'm crap for making stuff up completely out of whole cloth. I can't do pure fiction the way somebody like Stephen King or William Gibson can. There has to be some of me in there or the words just don't come.
I don't know the way out of this conunudrum. I wrestle with emotional issues as significant as Ian Curtis...different ones, to be sure, but just as significant...but I am bound by duty to family and friends, and by rules of social and workplace decorum not to write about them.
I think I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll find my fiction voice one of these days. But right now it's fucking hard.
In the meantime, I am going to try, try really hard, to not let this blog be brochureware all the damn time.
[P.S. I feel I must add that if you read the above and try to infer anything about my marriage or my relationship with any of my family members or friends or any of my past relationships...if you think you know what specific people or events or experiences I am referring to...you're wrong. You just read my blog. None of you really know me. Not all of me.]
Posted by ray at 12:30 AM | Comments (12)
October 23, 2007
Cora Foster's house fourteen months on
I happened to be riding my bike around Hollygrove checking out the progress in the neighborhood (a few blocks are back, but most of it is deserted), and I swung by Mrs. Cora Foster's house on Monticello just to see what things looked like.
I'm still so sad and so angry.
We partially gutted this house and salvaged a lot of personal belongings out of it on the first anniversary of the storm, along with some Rising Tide volunteers and the Arabi Wrecking Krewe, and a few weeks later some volunteer rollergirls organized by Brian Denzer cleared the lot of weeds and overgrowth. There's a blog entry about it here, and Scout from First Draft put together a great video of it here:
Back then we were so full of energy and optimism. Volunteers filled the city, the Road Home program was just getting rolling, and we knew it would just be a matter of time before we would be getting people back into their houses.
Fourteen months later, for this part of Hollygrove, I have nothing but despair.
Two lots have been cleared around the Foster house. Most of the rest are gutted houses, untouched by rebuilders. Within a two block radius of her house, you can see one house occupied, and one gutted with an occupied FEMA trailer in the yard. The rest of the neighborhood, at least up at the top end by Monticello, is just gutted and abandoned.
If you look inside, it looks pretty much how we left it on that day in 2006. You can see the hole in the living room floor where we almost dropped the fridge, and the hole in the hallway where Oyster fell through (both events captured in Scout's video).:
I talked to Sheik from the AWK last spring, and he was discouraged. Said of the almost 100 houses he had done, only one person had moved back in, and a few of the houses had been demolished (against owner's wishes), including Al "Carnival Time" Johnson's house.
I wonder how Mrs. Cora is doing, up in Detroit. It saddens me to think that she may never see New Orleans again, and if she does, it won't ever look like home.
All of my recent pictures of Mrs. Cora's house, taken last month, are in a flickr set here.
I've been taking a library of recent photos of all of the houses I've gutted in the past fourteen months, and I'll post a summary later in the week.
Posted by ray at 8:06 AM | Comments (6)
October 12, 2007
Culchah and fundraising out da wazoo
Other than the film festival and the ALCS series vying for your time tomorrow, there are two very worthy and badass events taking place that should keep your feetses and your belly happy all day and all night.
Tomorrow from 3pm til, at Vaughn's in the Bywater, a benefit for the Jena 6 featuring Kermit Ruffins, Treme Brass Band, John Boutte, Craig Klein, Bob French, and a whole bunch of others. $20 for a truly great cause. See Maitri for all the details.
Later in the evening, the Ashe Cultural Arts Center hosts a Special Building Benefit Concert, with music by Rebirth Brass Band, the Mardi Gras Indian Collective, Rev. Lois DeJean and the Johnson Extension, Jo Cool Davis, Mother Tongue, Ashé Drum Circle, and the New Orleans Renaissance Society. $25 donation gets you all that and dinner.
Enjoy. And enjoy the fun stuff on my blog while you can, 'cause I'm loading up my Flickr with some anger and misery and expect some pretty depressing posts once the weekend is over.
Posted by ray at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2007
The downside of telecommuting
The church a block away from here always plays a lovely tune on their church bell speakers at noon. You can hear it all over the neighborhood; it reminds me of when I was a kid, living only a block away from St. Andrews in Algiers, hearing their church bells every day. It's so cute and quaint and comforting..
Except for today.
They're playing goddamn "Kumbayah".
Posted by ray at 11:41 AM | Comments (7)
September 20, 2007
The Origin of Species
Greg calls it "The Passion of the Christ". You might as well subtitle it "So THAT's why Ray turned out so fucked up".
Control debuts in the US October 10.
Posted by ray at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2007
DVD coinkidinks
We're finally back on Netflix after taking a break for a couple of years, and the first two movies out of the gate both have weirdness to them.
Terminator 2: Has anybody ever noticed that the predicted Judgement Day when the world is destroyed by nuclear war is August 29, 1997? Fucken weird.
You're Gonna Miss Me: This 2005 documentary about the life of Roky Erickson and about his younger brother Sumner's struggle to get him the psychiatric care he needs is f-ing brilliant. You get to see a lot of footage of Roky's decline while under the care of his anti-doctor mother, and then a brief glimpse of the new Roky near the end.
The weirdness is in the Epilogue special features. There is footage from Roky's re-debut at the 2005 Austin City Limits fest, and Cassidy and I are in several crowd shots. And not in a "I know I was standing right about here" kind of way, but in a "holy shit, that's me and Cass!" kind of way. We were directly in front of Roky against the front of the stage; I blogged it here.
And then the other weirdness is in the same epilogue. They show Roky getting ice cream at the Amy's on 6th Street, the same ice cream place where I ran into him in August 2005. I don't remember cameras being there that night but there is a guy visible very very briefly in the background who kinda sorta might be me.
I'll be in Austin next week, and I'm going to Amy's to get the Roky special. I'll let you know how good it is.
Posted by ray at 9:15 AM | Comments (5)
August 15, 2007
Front-loading the regrettable humor
Oyster has some angst over thinking Katrina was so goddamn funny on August 24, 2005. (I mean, at the time it was, though, right?)
But he passes up Triple-Bonus 80's cred points by missing a chance to riff on Dean and the Weenies.
May I not be overwhelmed with remorse ten days from now.
Posted by ray at 1:19 PM | Comments (1)
August 6, 2007
I'm so sad
Posted by ray at 11:42 PM | Comments (6)
June 1, 2007
Stuff to do this weekend
Freret Street Festival. Four stages. Plus Food. Saturday.
Help Lisa find her marbles by moving stuff out of her house and doing some light gutting. Email schroeder915 at yahoo dot com if you want to help. Sunday.
Carrollton bike ride with Recovery Czar Ed Blakely. Starts at St. Charles & Carrollton at 2:00pm Sunday. Ends at Palmer Park.
Myself, I'll try to make one or two or these, but most of the weekend I'll be packing up Napoleon getting ready for the move to Willow.
No, not this Willow:
This Willow:
Posted by ray at 11:30 AM | Comments (12)
May 6, 2007
Fest
I missed the first weekend of the fest due to illness, and most of the second weekend due to just bunches o' shit, but today, after a morning tour of the state of our misery with my high school friend Eric and his lovely wife Pyper (they were suitably appalled), I finally got my Fest on in a proper manner.
We grabbed food and meandered around, saw a little of Allen Toussaint doing Allen Toussaint's "Working In a Coal Mine", and then headed over in the direction of the Jazz Tent since Eric wanted to see Branford and I thought an all-star Alvin Batiste spectacular sounded like fun. The preceding trumpeter Jeremy Davenport played a brilliant set which he said was dedicated to "the late great Alvin Batiste", and I thought, "the who? he's still alive, obviously, but did a relative of his die or something?"
Sadly, I was behind the times. Alvin Batiste died of a heart attack early this morning, just hours before his show. The loss is tremendous, and the Alvin Batiste show became instead a wake. They waived any rules about clogging the aisles and let half the festival cram into the tent to hear Alvin's son read an impassioned eulogy, and then Alvin's current and former students perform an overwhelmingly passionate performance. Branford Marsalis and Stephanie and Marlon Jordan were the ones I recognized. This one will go down in Jazz Fest history, and Mr. Bat, you will be missed.
Most of the rest of the fest we spent wandering from food to food and from shady spot to shady spot, just listening to whatever music was nearby wherever we happened to be comfortable, including Soul Rebels and Dottie Peoples.
The number of actual published authors I ran into outnumbered the local bloggers I saw by about, oh, two.
We checked out a little of Harry Connick's Closing of the Fest, where he performed Allen Toussaint's "Working In a Coal Mine". I love Harry in principle, and he seemed tickled about having the place of honor, but in that environment, in that spot, I want my Nevilles, dammit. Sigh.
Food post later. I need a shower and a nap.
Posted by ray at 7:24 PM | Comments (17)
April 27, 2007
Kidd Jordan wrecking on WTUL
Last September, the Arabi Wrecking Krewe spent a hot Saturday afternoon gutting the house of local free jazz legend and musical patriarch Kidd Jordan. (Some gutting pictures are here.)
Schroeder came along to pitch in and also to collect audio samples for his WTUL show, Community Gumbo, and on Saturday morning's show he'll be running a feature about Kidd and the day we wrecked his house. Tune in to 91.5FM at 9:00am, or catch the online audio archive later.
Kidd also plays at the Jazz Fest on Sunday at the WWOZ Jazz Tent at 12:35. If you're a fan of really out jazz along the lines of later Coltrane, Peter Brotzmann, John Zorn, Evan Parker, or Joe McPhee, you won't want to miss this. Jordan's biggest fans are all in Europe so catching a hometown show from him is a rare treat.
Posted by ray at 10:14 PM | Comments (2)
April 18, 2007
It ain't all bad
In fact lots of times it's pretty damn good.
I know I tend to bitch and moan a lot, and even though my lunch at Mandina's did fall through at the last minute, I had a damn fine weekend.
Friday French Quarter Festival and riding the Triumph around the city all afternoon with Cassidy.
Saturday brunch at Elizabeth's (Eggs Florentine...creamed spinach, potatoes, poached eggs and hollandaise with the best fried oysters I've had all season), then Gina's birthday dinner at Manale's (way more oysters at the oyster bar than we paid for, then I had the ribeye which was splendiferous).
Sunday, I took Liam over to the weekly music workshop at Tipitina's, where he got to jam onstage with the New Orleans Saxophone Quartet, and where I got confirmation that he knows enough about the sax to play along with the big folks, with a little coaching:
and then found out much to my surprise that he fucking jams on the drums when somebody asks him to "just lay down a groove":
We celebrated his jazz debut by hitting opening day at Hansen's (strawberry with condensed milk for me...it's a tradition) and right after I took this picture:
the crowds who'd been in line behind me came out looking all sadfaced, and we find out that the ancient motor on the custom sno-bliz machine had burnt out, and they were closing. I got the last sno-ball. Judge Hansen says he'll hopefully have it fixed by next Thursday so cross your fingers. Sorry. It was a really good sno-ball, too. Heh heh.
Posted by ray at 12:22 AM | Comments (9)
April 13, 2007
Bleakly
I pretty much shot my wad about the whole Blakely foot-in-mouth thing on various email lists, and now I've got nothing left for the blog.
For some thoughtful analysis that's free of the "mommy, he called me a bad word" rhetoric, see this brilliance from Celcus over at Some Came Running (via Adrastos).
It's been a shit week for me and lots of people I know, but today I have the day off, I'm having lunch at Mandina's, then biking to the French Quarter Fest, so shit week begone.
Nothing to do til then but listen to The Weddoes. Probably deeply relevant to at least one or two of you. Enjoy.
Posted by ray at 10:04 AM | Comments (7)
April 7, 2007
Young at heart
Housegutting today with retirees from New York. Mostly it was charming, including brunch afterwards at Elizabeth's in the Bywater (grillades and grits and OMFG the biscuits), and nothing at all like this video. I'm just saying.
(My kids find better stuff on YouTube than I do now.)
Posted by ray at 10:10 PM | Comments (5)
March 12, 2007
Soft Boys
There are songs that I was obsessed with two decades ago, but the intervening years of funk obsession and jazz diversions and sometimes outright hating rock'n'roll while at the same time killing the 80's layer of my brain cells have completely erased any memory of them from my consciousness.
Which is why Radio Blog Club is so cool, because sometimes quite by accident you'll run across one of them.
There are probably still cracks in the walls at KTRU from me playing this really fucking loud late at night during my Wednesday radio show.
Posted by ray at 4:45 PM | Comments (8)
February 27, 2007
No voice at all
If somebody sees me shaking my fat white butt to Rebirth in the middle of the day, so be it.
If the only way I can stay awake late at night on I-10 is to play air guitar to "Marquee Moon" over and over right out in plain sight of anybody I pass, well, then, I do what it takes.
But no matter how much I want to, and no matter how private it is up here in my third floor office, I should never, ever, ever, ever try to sing along with Al Green. I annoy even myself. God I'm embarrassing.
Posted by ray at 2:25 PM | Comments (3)
December 21, 2006
Code Monkey not crazy, just proud
Posted by ray at 10:11 AM | Comments (15)
December 13, 2006
Trombone Shorty on Studio 60
I read about this in this morning's T-P, and I'd never heard of the show (I don't watch much TV) but obviously Trombone Shorty is the man.
Go here, and click on the link on the right to watch the video.
If this doesn't make you cry, you have no soul.
Posted by ray at 9:09 AM | Comments (3)
December 11, 2006
New toy!
Jeffrey finds Radio Blog Club.
There is only one song I could possibly use to kick this off.
Posted by ray at 2:11 PM | Comments (7)
November 27, 2006
You never can tell with neighbors
I'm up in my third floor home office with the windows open. Lovely day. And I have no idea which neighbor it is, but somebody who lives in the condos next door likes to play Jah Wobble at maximum volume.
Nice.
Posted by ray at 12:47 PM | Comments (6)
November 12, 2006
The Rock
WRNO has always been the rock of New Orleans, but where you found it on the dial has been a matter of some dispute.
For years it was 99 FM. In fact when I was a kid I heard some DJ claim that Toto's song "99" was written about them.
Somewhere around 1980 or so, some wingnut in marketing decided that if you rounded 99.5 off to a whole number, you got 100, so it became "FM100 WRNO", but it was still The Rock of New Orleans.
And during my long exile, digital tuners were invented so finally the fully-qualified 99.5 could become the official moniker.
And it's been playing the same four songs all this time. When I was in junior high, it was always Boston, Foreigner, Zeppelin, AC/DC. In high school, I discovered WTUL, where I got a big education in the Ramones, the Cramps, Echo & the Bunnymen, and Joy Division, while 'RNO was still playing Boston, Foreigner, Zeppelin, AC/DC. Interspersed with a little Zebra.
I'd come home from college during the 80's, my mind all full of Sonic Youth and Pere Ubu and Mission of Burma, and I'd tune in 'RNO and I'd be irate. "It's still goddamn Boston, Foreigner, Zeppelin, AC/DC! What the fuck is with these people?"
And as I got older, I learned to accept that some things don't change. That New Orleans is a backwater in a lot of ways, it's got a strong mullet heritage, and that every mullet town needs a mullet radio station to keep the memory alive. Teenage parties at the levee, drinking Miller ponies while the stereo in somebody's Mustang blasted Boston, Foreigner, Zeppelin, AC/DC, until the police would chase us away.
I even started to like Boston a little bit. I always loathed that band so much back then, that nowadays whenever I hear Boston, it makes me nostalgic for those happy days when I was really fucking hating Boston.
WRNO finally goes over to an all-talk format tomorrow, and 40 years of The Rock comes to an end. I was gutting houses with some Tulane students all day today, and they had RNO cranked real loud, they knew all the songs, all the words, and I thought how weird it is that I'm out here with a bunch of kids half my age, who think the music of my youth, music made before they were born, music that is as old to them as Elvis is to me, is worth listening to.
And it was all mother fucking Boston, Foreigner, Zeppelin, AC/DC.
Tonight in the car, I got a little snippet of Little Steven's Underground Garage. Not typical 'RNO, but to my ears a more fitting way to go out.
I spent half my life hating it, but I'm going to miss it.
Posted by ray at 10:12 PM | Comments (17)
November 1, 2006
Peectures
I don't have so much to say this week. I have lots of new flickr sets though.
Liam is playing inline hockey these days. He's got this gladiator streak in him, and when he found out that every kid on the team gets to wear more gear than a baseball catcher, he fell in love with the game. When he found out that the goalie gets to wear even more gear...
A couple of weeks back, the Carries kicked those sissy bitch Rinkwraith's asses. Some guy behind me was really taken with Little Miss Ruffit. "Yo, Ruffit, kick some ass, baby". Dangerblond says to me, "Ray, do you know that guy?" and I said "No, but I imagine I'll get to know him soon"...
Liam had to pick a historic figure to do a report on at school, and since he'd heard me talking about Buddy Bolden a few weeks back when we wrecked Ms. Cora's house, he decided to do his on Bolden. So we got to go around the city taking pictures of some of the places in Bolden's life, many of which still exist and are sadly not marked with any kind of historic plaque or anything. He's buried in an unmarked grave in Holt Cemetery, which is where people who are too poor to be interred in above-ground tombs go to be buried in the ground. It's a neat place...sad in a way to see it in such disrepair, but fascinating to how people without a lot of money honor their deceased...
Pictures from Voodoo Music and Halloween when I get some time.
Posted by ray at 6:26 AM | Comments (10)
October 28, 2006
Musicians Bringing Musicians Home benefit at Tip's
November 6, you can catch a fantastic benefit at Tipitina's sponsored by the Future of Music Coalition, and benefiting the Arabi Wrecking Krewe, the Tip's Foundation, and the New Orleans Musicians Clinic.
Lineup includes Steve Earle, Mike Mills (REM), Allison Moorer, Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Boots Riley, Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney), and (of course) Bonerama. With special guest Al "Carnival Time" Johnson.
Tickets available at tipitinas.com.
Spread the word and we hope to see you there.
Posted by ray at 10:39 PM | Comments (1)
October 2, 2006
Wrecking opportunities Wednesday through Sunday
There are several opportunities to get your wreck on this week. This is short notice on all of these, complicated by the fact that the Arabi Wrecking Krewe's web site is currently down, so please pass the word as much as possible.
Wednesday, October 4: The Arabi Wrecking Krewe will be helping pianist and music historian David Bodinghouse try to salvage artifacts from his house. This job is time-critical since David is going on an extended European tour soon.
Thursday, October 5: The AWK will return to sax player, band leader, and Jazz Fest regular Al Belletto's house at 3138 Toledano.
Saturday, October 7: The AWK will be doing a full gut of Jacques Gauthier's house.
Sunday October 8: Various bloggers with AWK support will take on day two at Gentilly Girl's house, 2918 Annette St in Gentilly. We cleared all the stuff from the main house last time, so this time we'll do the stuff in the apartment, the big appliances, and start on the sheetrock and plaster. We are hoping to be able to use the Arabi Wrecking Krewe equipment like last time.
If you can help at Gentilly Girl's house, please sign up on the ThinkNOLA Wiki.
For the other AWK jobs, contact Brian da Fiyaman: west270 at netzero dot net.
Posted by ray at 9:26 PM | Comments (4)
September 6, 2006
Wrecking Mrs. Jones's place
I'll have more on last weekend's Wrecking Krewe adventures at Kidd Jordan's house when I get a free moment to breathe, but I wanted to let everyone know that this Friday at 9am, the Arabi Wrecking Krewe will take up day two of gutting the Gentilly house of trumpeter Leroy Jones's mother.
After a very brief stint in the Jazz Studies Program at Loyola University's Conservatory of Music, Jones joined the musicians union and went on to pursue his career as a professional musician. He has played with nearly all the famous jazz bands in town, and has performed at festivals and clubs throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, Japan and Australia.The past decade Jones has been a member of the Harry Connick, Jr. Orchestra, performed on numerous recordings with various artists, leads one of the Preservation Hall Jazz Bands and has two critically acclaimed solo releases, "Mo' Cream From The Crop" and "Props for Pops" on the Sony/Columbia label. Jones continues to travel and record the world over.
If you want to help out, email Sheik at sheik@arabiwreckingkrewe.com. No experience or equipment necessary. It's great fun and it's good for the soul.
Posted by ray at 9:05 PM | Comments (4)
August 30, 2006
Wrecking opportunity this weekend
The Arabi Wrecking Krewe is rounding up volunteers for a house gutting this Saturday. We'll be doing the N.O. East home of master sax player Kidd Jordan:
Edward 'Kidd' Jordan is probably the single most under documented jazz musician of his generation. A fact that is even more remarkable when you consider that he is also one of the busiest working musicians in the world. The list of bands and artists he has performed with reads like a 40-year Grammy program....from Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder to Aretha Franklin and the Supremes. And the list of jazz musicians he has performed with goes even wider....from Ed Blackwell and Ellis Marsalis, to Ornette Coleman, Cannonball Adderley and Cecil Taylor. Fortunately, this fact has not lost on his appreciative European audiences and was recognized by the French government with a knighthood for his contribution to the European performing arts.
The man has a brass band classic named after him ("Kidd Jordan's Second Line") and he just needs help with his house.
If you're available this Saturday, contact Sheik from the AWK at sheik@arabiwreckingkrewe.com, or email me (address in the "About Me" page) and I'll hook you up. No experience or equipment necessary.
Pass the word.
[photo by John Rogers]
Posted by ray at 7:27 PM | Comments (1)
June 6, 2006
And Billy Preston makes three
Billy Preston, 59, dead of kidney failure.
I remember a little DJ gig I had at the Rat & the Raven in Noe Valley in the late 80's. The retro-70's funk thing was starting to come back with P-Funk and James Brown and all the De La Soul samples and stuff, but I swear I was the first person to get tattooed S.F. biker chicks reacquainted with shaking their butts to the Billy Preston records I'd recently found in the dollar bin.
"Will it go round in circles?
Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?"
Too much soul has left the building too fast.
Posted by ray at 12:56 PM | Comments (1)
May 26, 2006
Desmond Dekker, RIP
Desmond Dekker, 64, died today of a heart attack.
Another giant, and this one is even more personal. My son's middle name is Desmond, named after both Desmond Dekker and Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Dekker to me was second only to Otis Redding in the way he could move me to tears with a simple melody. I used to sing (badly) "Poor Me Israelites" to my kids at bedtime. And when I was in the car alone where nobody could hear me, I'd sing along (badly) to "Tips of My Fingers" at the top of my lungs, and whatever was bothering me that day, it would feel slightly better.
And it fucking sucks because my CDs are all in storage and my reggae stuff isn't on my laptop, so I can't even listen to him to say goodbye. I can't even sing along (badly) because I have nothing to sing along with.
If you don't know Desmond, and you have half a mind to buy a CD this weekend, go out now and buy Intensified. Or if you're an iTunes kid, search for "Poor Me Israelites", "Wise Man", "Tips of My Fingers", or "007".
And please let's not have that Rule of Threes this week. I'm in no mood to lose Willie or Dr. John or Don Walser this week, I've got too much else to worry about.
Posted by ray at 3:36 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2006
Clifford Antone, RIP
I guess I really am living in my own world these days, since it's after midnight and I just heard about this.
I saw countless shows at Antone's over the years, both at the Guadalupe location next to Ruby's BBQ, then later when he moved down to 5th Street. Many many sweaty nights of Maceo or Guy Forsyth or the Old 97's.
A giant has ascended.
Posted by ray at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
Oh my God, they killed....Chef?
Point...
NEW YORK - Isaac Hayes has quit “South Park,” where he voices Chef, saying he can no longer stomach its take on religion.
Counterpoint...
“South Park” co-creator Matt Stone responded sharply in an interview with The Associated Press Monday, saying, “This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology... He has no problem — and he’s cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians.”
Much as I would love to side with the creator of Hot Buttered Soul on this one, I have to finally come down in the "Fuck Scientology" camp.
Posted by ray at 5:10 PM | Comments (8)
January 23, 2006
Exercise your music muscle
Virgin Digital has this cool little visual quiz up.
See how many bands you can find in this picture here. They're all visual puns. Supposedly there are 72 of them.
My answers are in the comments. I've only got 19 so far.
Posted by ray at 2:00 PM | Comments (31)
December 28, 2005
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
I got a lot of cool stuff for Christmas this year. But nothing as good as the music that everyone in my family knew I needed to have. Music that is at once uplifting and bittersweet.
Yeah, it's all New Orleans music. Duh.
The Benny Grunch 12 Yats of Christmas CD is mostly novelty tunes. Things that are hilarious to a native, but probably meaningless to anybody else.
"...A dozen Manuel's tamales,
Eleven Schwegmann bags,
Tenneco Refinery,
Lower Ninth Ward,
Ate by ya mama's,
Seventeenth Street Canal,
Dix pack o' Sixie,
Frrrriiiiieeeeeed Onion Riiiiiiiiings,
Before ya drive me nuts,
Three French Breads,
Tujague's recipe,
For the crawfish they caught in Arabi"
The whole Benny Grunch phenom happened long after I moved away, so it didn't have a huge pull on me like it did other people who had to hear "The 12 Yats of Christmas" on the radio every frickin' year, but any guy that can write a song lamenting the closing of the old Bridge Bowl in Algiers...that guy gets it, y'know?
But the other two items are heartbreaking in the way that they recall what was lost, they way they focus your grief for the New Orleans of old and fear of the New Orleans that may come.
Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens is the four-disc box set that was designed by Chuck Taggart of The Gumbo Pages. I hinted around last Christmas that I wanted it, but I didn't get it. This Christmas, the family just knew. It is superbly packaged, immaculately researched, and thorough in both breadth and depth, capturing every nook and cranny of New Orleans music old and new, from Sidney Bechet to Galactic, from piano professors to Cajuns to pub rockers to New Orleans-style klezmer. The music, the book, the pictures are a joyous, raucous, soulful feast for the senses.
And taking it all in now, after what has transpired...your heart breaks right in two. Just splits right down the middle.
So much of it is gone. So much of what remains is in tatters.
Which is where the third gift comes in. Our New Orleans is the jazz funeral to end all jazz funerals. A benefit CD recorded in the weeks after the storm, featuring probably the greatest collection of living Louisiana artists ever assembled. Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Buckwheat Zydeco, the Wild Magnolias...
There is a small thread of hope here, but honestly, there is mostly grief, and pain, and loss. It's still too early to party.
Allen Toussaint plays "Tipitina" in a minor key and the angels weep. Davell Crawford does what all of us have been thinking, taking a gospel song about the river and the water and making it a song of sorrow rather than baptism and renewal. The Dirty Dozen's "Feet Don't Fail Me Now" is no longer about dancing, it's about fleeing your home.
Everything about this CD is perfect. I've cried twice listening to it. I'm feeling a little teary right now just talking about it. Even the title. Our New Orleans. Not the media's New Orleans, or the tourists' New Orleans, or the politicians' New Orleans. Our New Orleans. The one we loved, and lost, and will rebuild.
Posted by ray at 11:44 PM | Comments (3)
September 26, 2005
Legendary K.O.: George Bush Don't Like Black People
The motherfucking bomb:
George Bush Don't Like Black People
"Five days in this motherfuckin' attic
Can't use the cell phone I keep gettin' static
Dyin' 'cause they lyin' stead of tellin' us the truth
Of the day the helicopters got my neighbors off the roof
Screwed 'cause they said they're coming back for us too
That was three days ago I don't see no rescue
See a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do"
Posted by ray at 1:21 PM | Comments (1)
Bam a lam
In our family, we make up song lyrics all the time, especially in times of great stress. Yesterday wandering through the ACL dust bowl, punch drunk from the heat, we kept giggling our way through this one:
"Whoa black boogies
Bam a lam
Whoa black boogies
Bam a lam""
Which version varied from person to person. Leadbelly? Ram Jam? Myself, I had Nick Cave stuck in my head.
The heat and the dust were awful. By sundown Zilker Park looked like lower Manhattan on 9/11. A thick cloud of dust over everything, crowds of people with bandanas over their faces, coughing and spitting and pretending to have a good time.
Cass and Gina saw the Bravery and Arcade Fire, and then I joined them later for the Decemberists (only the Magnetic Fields can stoke my geek love any higher), a little Bob Mould (just the Husker Du songs), a little Wilco, Franz Ferdinand, and Tortoise (who were much more aggressive live than I expected).
Then I left them early while they checked out yet-another Coldplay clone called, uh, Coldplay.
The record heat and the dust made this more of a death march than previous years. Honestly, if they keep having it in September, I'm not completely sure I'm going to keep going back. I understand that they don't want to have it in October because the weather is so unpredictable. But in mid-September, the weather is all too predictable, and it's guaranteed to suck. New Orleans manages to hold Jazz Fest in April, and tell me April in New Orleans isn't a volatile weather season.
I say move it or lose it. The festival should be a weekend of fun, not a test of human endurance.
Pictures on the Flickr page, as usual.
Posted by ray at 8:47 AM | Comments (3)
September 24, 2005
ACL second day: It's a cold night for alligators
"I gave you the warning
But you never heeded it
How can you say you miss my loving
When you never needed it
You're gonna wake up wondering
Find yourself all alone
But what's gonna stop me, baby
I'm not coming home
I'm not coming home"
Day two of ACL. As Gregg pointed out, much to Cassidy's dismay, Tegan and Sara cancelled. But the other highlight of the day would turn out to be transcendant.
We saw bits and pieces of Aqualung (OK, this Coldplay shit has got to stop...how about a moratorium on pianos for a few years), Shields of Faith (my soul was saved), The Frames (who fucking ROCKED), Death Cab for Cutie (I'm noticing a theme here of bands who would sound great at night in a club, but who are completely out of their element playing on the surface of the sun), some replacement gospel band for the AWOL Betty Lavette (who we dubbed the Gospel Family Doofus Hour), Jet (see Death Cab...although they did do their Beatles-y song AND their Stones-y song AND their White Stripes-y song), and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (Cassidy was mortified to see dad shaking his ass, but there were clearly lots of NOLA refugees there and it was a hell of a party).
And then there was Roky.
I saw Roky in one of his ill-advised nights out about ten years ago, at Antone's, when he was clearly not in possession of all his faculties. They did three songs, Roky only sang, he didn't seem to know where he was, and he meandered off in the middle of the set, confused, never to return. It was painful to watch. It was sad to see such a brilliant mind wandering in the wasteland of mental illness.
Well, tonight was not that Roky Erickson.
"I told you I'd come back....
I don't look like him, but I am him.
Don't you recognize the voice, Jim?
I promised to see you die, and I will."
It was fantastic. Cassidy and I got there early enough to be front row center right in front of him. And when he came out, after being introduced by Kinky Friedman himself, it was paparazzi mayhem. There were over twenty media cameras in front of the barricades and more cameras going nuts in the audience. Roky smiled the whole time. Played guitar and sang the whole time. Joked between songs. They played a full hour. The audience sang along with every word. Roky songs. Elevators songs.
It was fucking glorious.
Lots and lots of pictures on the flickr page.
Posted by ray at 9:59 PM | Comments (5)
September 23, 2005
ACL first day
I picked Cassidy up from school today and we headed straight to the festival. This was kind of a practice run, since most of our favorite bands aren't playing til tomorrow. It was hot, like last year, with a few passing clouds from the outermost edge of Rita, and every once in a while a strong wind gust. Hopefully we'll get at least a few sprinkles tomorrow to tamp down on the dust storms.
I tried not to think about hurricanes today, I really did. Every once in a while, though, the wind would blow while I was sitting in my chair looking east and I'd get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, thinking about the Ninth Ward filling up with water again and tornados tearing through Cajun country, just over the horizon past the beautiful sunset reflecting off the Frost Bank building.
Music we saw: Morgan Heritage, Lucinda Williams, Thievery Corporation, Spoon, and Keane. Nothing too special, although Cass really liked Keane, who struck me as one of those overly-earnest post-Coldplay Brit pop bands. They were nice enough.
Food: Quail and andouille gumbo from Prejean's (apparently it took the Prejean's crew 26 hours to drive over here from Lafayette), bratwurst, veggie burger from Waterloo, ice cream from Amy's, and a total of 11 pints of water between the two of us.
Back in the car after dark, I couldn't pick up 870 AM out of New Orleans. They've been broadcasting from Baton Rouge since Katrina, probably just lost power. Radio silence never gives you a good feeling, though.
Tomorrow we'll take the Triumph, weather permitting. The day is bookended by Tegan & Sara in the morning and Roky Erickson at night. Everything in between is up for grabs, but sweet Jesus let it not be so damn hot.
Pictures in the flickr page.
Posted by ray at 9:30 PM | Comments (5)
September 17, 2005
Second Music and Food Benefit at Nubian Queen Lola's, Sept 18
I'm going. Depending on what the kids have going on we might all be there.
They need volunteers and donations to help put on the event, call the number below.
From austinhelpingneworleans.org:
A few hundred Austinites filled the rainy backyard of Lola Stephens‚ East Austin soul food restaurant last Sunday for a live concert, contributing more than $2,500 in tips to the 20 New Orleans musicians who are currently living at the Austin Convention Center. Lola and her family and friends have scheduled a follow-up backyard benefit BBQ and concert this Sunday, Sept. 18, from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., at her restaurant, Nubian Queen Lo-La’s Cajun, Soul Food, and BBQ Kitchen, at 1815 Rosewood (corner of Chicon).Austin-based Jupiter Band Instruments made a major donation of brass and woodwind instruments, and several other Austin musicians have donated their own instruments. RockNRoll Rentals provided an entire sound system and installed it behind Lola’s purple and yellow restaurant. The Austin City Manager’s office arranged a Capital Metro bus to transport people from the Convention Center to and from Lola’s place less than a mile east of I-35. And many other Austin businesses and individuals generously donated goods, cash, services, and time.
Lola prepared a full Louisiana menu—including seafood jambalaya, red beans and rice, and Louisiana-style sweet potatoes and green beans, with ingredients donated by Quality Seafood Market, Boggy Creek Farm, Texas Sausage Company, and other local businesses and families.
Lola’s wish list for the Sept. 18 BBQ includes: five cases of chicken quarters; a case each of ranch-style beans and BBQ sauce which she will doctor; a 25-pound sack of rice; a half case of peaches in syrup; two trays of bread; bottled water and non-alcoholic drinks; cash for other purchases; and a new or used tuba and other instruments to match with musicians who lost their instruments in the flood.
Volunteers who would like to participate in the next benefit are asked to call Lola at 512-542-9269, or Dean Graber at 512-203-4033.
Posted on Sep 16, 2005 at 04:58 PM
Posted by ray at 11:24 AM | Comments (1)
September 11, 2005
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown RIP
From the Austin American-Statesman:
BATON ROUGE, La. — Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, the singer and guitarist who built a 50-year career playing blues, country, jazz and Cajun music, died Saturday in his hometown of Orange, Texas, where he had gone to escape Hurricane Katrina. He was 81.Brown, who had been battling lung cancer and heart disease, was in ill health for the past year, said Rick Cady, his booking agent.
Cady said the musician was with his family at his brother's house when he died. Brown's home in Slidell, La., a bedroom community of New Orleans, was destroyed by Katrina, Cady said.
"He was completely devastated," Cady said. "I'm sure he was heartbroken, both literally and figuratively. He evacuated successfully before the hurricane hit, but I'm sure it weighed heavily on his soul."
Posted by ray at 8:50 PM | Comments (1)
September 8, 2005
New Orleans musicians relocated to Austin
""I don't believe in accidents. We're here for a reason," he said. "The Great Spirit took the gumbo from New Orleans and poured it all over Texas."
We've got Cyril Neville, the Iguanas, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Basin Street Records, and members of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Irma Thomas' band residing in Austin now.
Read about it here in the Statesman.
Percussionist Cyril Neville of New Orleans' first family of soul said the decision to move to Austin, where he and his family waited out two previous hurricanes, was an easy one."Some of my fondest memories of playing music are in Austin, going back to the Meters playing Soap Creek and then the Neville Brothers at Liberty Lunch," said the new South Austinite, who wasted no time feeling at home, jamming at Antone's on Monday night with Papa Mali and the house blues band. "Austin's the only city I know of where I could pick up the same vibe as New Orleans. You don't have to instruct the musicians here or tell them what key the song is in."
Maybe ACL can be a little more funkified this year.
Posted by ray at 8:55 AM | Comments (2)
September 5, 2005
Strange Fruit in New Orleans
From Cari comes this story of one professor making explicit the connection that many of us have not yet fully made in our own minds.
Posted by ray at 8:20 PM | Comments (0)
Second Line for New Orleans
Jette is raising money through Second Line t-shirts.
You wanna look good, look like you care, and look like a native all at the same time? Get one.
Very very nice.
Posted by ray at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)
September 4, 2005
Possible Alex Chilton good news
They're tracking him here:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/alexchilton/
Apparently the owner of Molly's in the Quarter saw him in the bar as recently as Wednesday.
Cross your fingers.
Posted by ray at 7:38 PM | Comments (1)
September 3, 2005
Looka musician status clearinghouse; Alex Chilton missing
Chuck is trying to maintain a list of the status of New Orleans musicians here (scroll down a bit). If you have any updates you can post them in the comments.
Many many musicians are thankfully safe.
However, Alex Chilton, of Big Star, refused to leave his home in the Ninth Ward and friends have not heard from him since the storm.
The loss of Chilton would be a blow to the music world of immense proportions.
Posted by ray at 8:42 AM | Comments (2)
September 2, 2005
Irma Thomas is safe
From The Gumbo Pages:
Hello Jef,I am doing as well as expected under the conditions. I am in Gonzales, LA with my husband's Aunt. You may send some money to help my daughter who lost everything. She is out here with my sister-in-law untill she can get fare to go to California, until we can get back into New Orleans.
I am doing okay for now but I don't know how long it will be before I can get help from FEMA. Thanks for being concerned.
You may send help to:
P.O. Box 1274
Gonzales, LA 70707-1274Tell all of my Fans I thank them.
Love,
Irma
Posted by ray at 9:23 AM | Comments (0)
September 1, 2005
Chuck on KCSN
After years of swapping emails and blog comments, and me stealing all his best recipes, I finally talked to Chuck Taggart of The Gumbo Pages on the phone tonight. We've both had good reports about loved ones in the past few hours, so it was nice to hear his voice and exchange news. "Hey, bra!" Nice to hear somebody tawk rite.
Right now he's tearing it up on KCSN with a lot of New Orleans music. "They All Axe For You" was playing while I was on hold.
While we mourn, we need to hang on to the New Orleans that is a celebration of life. New Orleans as it always was, and always will be.
And motherfuck that rat-bastard Dennis Hastert.
New Orleans will rise again.
Posted by ray at 9:30 PM | Comments (6)
More good news. It's been good the past hour.
MSNBC reports that Fats Domino is safe, was helicoptered out.
My mom calls, and my step-dad's brother Alan is safe in Baton Rouge. We were afraid he might have tried to ride out the storm at his house in Bay St. Louis, which was flattened.
Some of my crazy Yat relatives snuck back into Marrero today and all of that side of the family still have homes. Didn't even get any water in them, and it's unlikely they'll be looted because their neighbors are patrolling with shotguns. Badass!
Brother Mark's family has got the boys enrolled in a school in the Houston area, and have a lead on a 2-bedroom apartment that they can move into in a couple of weeks. We're still hoping to get them in to visit us in Austin soon. Word is that residents with ID will have a 12 hour window to get essentials out of their homes in Jefferson Parish on Monday, so Mark will be heading down there. Hopefully with Bill's crazy friends who own guns.
No word from Austin CERT on whether they will call us up. I have left my number with the Austin Red Cross to volunteer. They say they have enough volunteers for this week, but are taking messages to make a list for people to call in the coming weeks.
The past hour has lightened my load considerably.
Donate, people. Donate. This will take months, years, and many are still hurting. But right now I feel very fortunate.
Posted by ray at 8:33 PM | Comments (1)
Fats Domino, other New Orleans musicians missing
Missing: Fats Domino, Irma Thomas, and Ernie K-Doe's widow
Stuck at the Superdome: Allen Toussaint
Safe: The Neville family.
Fats lived in the Ninth Ward. I have always wanted to drive past his house, apparently it was wackier than Graceland.
From Looka. I hope to hell it's not true.
'Fats' Domino Missing in New OrleansBefore NBC, MTV, or anyone else puts on a telethon to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, they might want to explore some ancillary issues. To wit: New Orleans is a city famous for its famous musicians, but many of them are missing. Missing with a capital M.
To begin with, one of the city's most important legends, Antoine "Fats" Domino, has not been heard from since Monday afternoon. Domino's rollicking boogie-woogie piano and deep soul voice are not only part of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame but responsible for dozens of hits like "Blue Monday," "Ain't That a Shame," "Blueberry Hill" and "I'm Walking (Yes, Indeed, I'm Talking)."
Domino, 76, lives with his wife Rosemary and daughter in a three story pink-roofed house in New Orleans' 9th ward, which is now underwater. On Monday afternoon, Domino told his manager, Al Embry of Nashville, that he would "ride out the storm" at home. Embry is now frantic.
Calls have been made to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco's office and to various police officials and though there's lots of sympathetic response, the whereabouts of Domino and his family remain a mystery.
In the meantime, another important Louisiana musician who probably hasn't been asked to be in any telethons is the also legendary Allen Toussaint. Another Rock Hall member, Toussaint wrote Patti Labelle's hit "Lady Marmalade" and Dr. John's "Right Place, Wrong Time." His arrangements and orchestrations for hundreds of hit records, including his own instrumentals "Whipped Cream" and "Java" are American staples. (He also arranged Paul Simon's hit, "Kodachrome.")
Last night, Toussaint was one of the 25,000 people holed up at the New Orleans Superdome hoping to get on a bus for Houston's Astrodome. I know this because he got a message out to his daughter, who relayed to it through friends.
Also not heard from by friends through last night: New Orleans's "Queen of Soul," Irma Thomas, who was the original singer of what became the Rolling Stones' hit, "Time is On My Side."
Let's hope and pray it is, because while the Stones roll through the U.S. on their $450-a-ticket tour, Thomas is missing in action. Her club, The Lion's Den is underwater, as are all the famous music hot spots of the city.
Similarly, friends are looking for Antoinette K-Doe, widow of New Orleans wild performer Ernie K-Doe. The K-Does have a famous nightspot of their own on N. Claiborne Avenue, called the Mother-in-Law Lounge, in honor of Ernie's immortal hit, "The Mother-in-Law Song." Ernie K-Doe, who received a 1998 Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, died in 2001 atage 65.
Dry and safe, but in not much better shape, is the famous Neville family of New Orleans. Aaron Neville and many members of the family evacuated on Monday to Memphis, where they are now staying in a hotel. But most of the Nevilles' homes are destroyed, reports their niece and my colleague at "A Current Affair," Arthel Neville. She went down to her hometown yesterday and called me from a boat that was trying to get near town.
"This isn't like having two feet of water in your basement," she said, holding back tears. "Everything is destroyed. I am just so lucky to have been born here and to have had the experience of New Orleans."
She confirmed that there had been rumors of dead bodies floating around her Uncle Aaron's house yesterday. So far the Nevilles are unannounced to participate in Friday's TV show.
Posted by ray at 10:35 AM | Comments (2)
August 21, 2005
Biscuit memories
The Pedazo Chunk memorial for Biscuit the other night was a very lovely affair. My Big Boys years were spent in Houston, so I didn't know the Austin old-timers very well, but there were still plenty of people there that I knew. I took Cassidy with me and we hung out for the first hour. Fox 7 News was there, and by the time we left, there were well over 100 people milling about and hordes of people still walking up. I wouldn't be surprised if several hundred people passed through over