In the nature of rock & roll acknowledgment, it is a mistake, an egregious omission of the highest order.
A travesty.
For those like me obsessed with such matters, it is difficult to swallow. Thus, I hardly give a glance to the annual induction announcement from the institution that ostensibly is the chronicler of excellence in the genre.
I choose to ignore.
Until I can’t.
Yesterday, while putzing around my hacienda, I pulled Time Loves A Hero off the shelf.
As I was taking care of my tasks, bouncing around with a boogie beat to the syncopated rhythms, mesmerized as always with the masterful musicianship, smiling bemusedly at the astute clever lyrics, listening in wonder at the truly unique eclectic stylings, that cloud hovered.
As I am wont to do, I thought, even uttered out loud with disgust, LITTLE FEAT IS NOT IN THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME!
How can this possibly be?
How can this iconic band, comfortably in the conversation contemplating the best outfits of the Rock Era, have slipped through the cracks?
The R&RHoF inductee list is full of charlatans, unworthies. So many, to name but a few would be an injustice.
It is that time of the year when I attempt annually to wring a drop or two of blood from the turnip.
When, as JazzFest sits just over the horizon, I attempt to regale you with some tales I haven’t overtold, heralding how very very much I love Fest and New Orleans, why it has been the gravitational pull of my year for a half century.
I’ll cull my archives of daily JF reports, seeking an interlude unreported for awhile, some anecdote to give readers a sense of how this musical, cultural, gustatory fantasia is like no other.
Like the time in the mid oughts when the Film Babe and I happened to be at the stage when the irrepressible Bobby Lounge was being wheeled out in an iron lung by a woman dressed as a nurse. True. Upon exiting from it, he dazzled with his facility on the 88s and came with the funniest lyrics I’d ever heard.
Oh what the Lagniappe Stage giveth.
Like the day, I asked the Film Babe to marry me. Then after walking to the big stage to join friends for Van Morrison and advise them, one of the those message planes drove over the Fest. “Joan, will you marry me, love Charles,” the banner read. Talk about twilight zone, I had nothing to do with it. I’ve never called Joanie Joan. She’s never called me Charles.
Just some JazzFest serendipity.
Like the time we blew off our favorite band ever, the Allman Brothers, because we were at a stage with pals and the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars were smokin’ hot.
Like how you can savor some Crawfish Strudel or a Soft Shell Crab poboy, while sitting in the Gospel Tent, being overwhelmed by some unknown singer in a church choir who is the equal of Aretha.
In this preview, I’d advise what new acts I’d discovered while handicapping the Cubes — quaint nomenclature of the daily stage schedules — and promise to report in with updates as the Fest unfolds.
* * * * *
But here’s the acid reality of Two thousand and Twenty Five, 35 Fests under my belt.
For the first time since The Year of Our Lord 1990, I shall not be in attendance.*
*Two years were lost to COVID, when there were no Fests.
There are times when real life gets in the way, when the actuality of altercockerdom and its symptoms intrudes.
So it is.
One of the few blessings of being an old fart is the onset of perspective. I considered bulldozing my way through stuff I’m dealing with and going for it anyway.* But with the help of confidants and the occasional flash of mature thinking, I made the decision to sit this one out.
Understand the issues I’m facing are nettlesome, not dire. But enough that it would skew the experience.
* * * * *
So, for this year anyway, I’m taking the exit to Mystery Street.*
*Of course, being a compulsive shopper, I purchased the tee shirt with the “Exit to Mystery Street” logo pictured above.
The reference of course is to one of the actual means of egress from the festival grounds. To, ya understand, Mystery Street.
It’s where I’m standing at the moment.
Emotionally that is.
* * * * *
So, if you want a sense, a small one anyway, of what JazzFest is like, tune in to the live stream starting Thursday at wwoz.org. There’ll be too much talk, but some live performances from the smaller stages.
For a full sense of all the music, check out the Cubes.
Here’s a list of the food choices, which you will note does not include corn dogs or elephant ears.
What’s it like inside there: Oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go, nowhere to go. Inside the gates, for me anyway, there is no other reality.
* * * * *
So, for those of you who are still with me there, thanks.
Obviously I needed to get this off my chest. Kind of a therapy, don’t ya know.
I am totally comfortable with my decision, as difficult as it has been.
I’m protecting myself from some last minute knee jerk ill advised compulsion to jump in my car and go there.
One, I’ve had several friends who will be there ask my for musical tips. As I’ve said, I normally go through the schedules, checking out the acts I don’t know to discover the must sees. Such as, from years past, Las Cafeteras, Bombino, Mdou Moctar.
Not gonna do it.
And, I’m making dinner for the Film Babe and the couple who introduced us, on Wednesday evening, JF eve.
When I shall attempt to recreate dishes from my krewe’s go to JF Eve dinner spots.
As I vowed in my initial post providing reasons why I, a Bob Dylan acolyte since he crashed onto the scene in the early 60s, wasn’t a premier day viewer of the Dylan flick, I watched it a couple days ago streaming.
Despite my admittedly haughty take at first — we of strong opinion are reluctant to dismount our high horse — I clicked “Watch Now” with an open mind.
Mostly because of the wise perspective of Joan Osborne.
Not because she’s a Louisville homie, who at her show a few years back on the Waterfront, talked about being at Waggener HS, and never imaging the possibility of performing in her town on the river in front of a throng.
And not because in her take — on Facebook by the by — she advises readers to go view other Dylan films, the very ones I mentioned in my above linked post.
What struck me is her take that, if for nothing else, the biopic provides a history lesson for younger music lovers, who might wonder why all the fuss about this guy with zero stage persona, a craggy voice, who is a defiant, vexing chameleon.
Advice that resonated with me.
The story I tell is of the day in ’77 when Bing Crosby died just a few months after Elvis. Read the rest of this entry »
A new film has just dropped, another attempt to pin down the unpindownable.
It’s about Bob Dylan. The early years.
It’s called “A Complete Unknown” and stars Timothée Chalamet, who it is said spent a half decade learning how to mime the Unwashed Phenomenon’s affectations, speak and sing with the Original Vagabond’s inflections.
Whatever.
This is not a review of that film.
Haven’t seen it.
A goodly number of my pals, long term Dylan acolytes like myself, saw it first day.
I understand the obsession.
For several reasons, I chose not to. I’m sure I’ll get around to viewing it. Though I may wait until it’s streaming.
Back when, you know, in the day, there would be more than occasional Saturdays that arrived without evening plans.
So, they began at the record store.
Karma.
ear x-Tacy.
Looking for somebody to flirt with.
Knowing some similar music obsessives would be there to chat up, maybe with knowledge of where that night’s action was.
Thumbing through the racks you’d thumbed through oh so many times before. Pulling out albums you hadn’t chosen in the past, giving them one more consideration.
How many times did I pull out the Velvet Underground Nico album, the one with the Warhol banana on the cover? A lot. Never bought it. A hole in my resumé I suppose.
Before leaving I’d always have two, three, four under my arm. If one’s good, ya know, more is better.
Soon enough, maybe even that night if no intriguing destination was to be learned of, I’d sit down to listen, hopefully savor.
Paying attention with total focus. Unless of course there’d be knock at the door. A pal dropping by, maybe with a new Moody Blues release, “I had to hear.” Probably toting some exotic herbal repast.
Anyway, often an album would get glossed over. I’d just give a quick glancing listen and if it didn’t immediately grab me, put it on the shelf. Read the rest of this entry »
How it is an integral part of the most immersive of art forms.
And there are two specific instances where movies allowed me to rediscover what are easily two of my favorite Doo Wop songs ever.
Both original artists and both are one hit wonders. Though in one case, the elegiac tune has been covered any number of times through to the now.
My favorite doo wop tune of ever is “I Love You” by the Volumes.
Oh the harmonic swoops and swirls of teen longing.
The group is from my birthtown Detroit. Though I didn’t learn of that connection until years later.
The song was released in ’62.
My remembrance is that I only heard it once, maybe twice during my high school years.
It faded into some nook and cranny of my mind.
At a point in the 70s surely, I recall a record store somewhere along the Frankfort Ave corridor. The owner prided himself on how many hundreds of oldies he had taped. Packed on reel to reel, if I remember correctly.
During a visit, somehow the Volumes tune came to mind. I hadn’t heard in who knows when, around the time of release for sure. When he found and played it, chills froze me.
I want to say literally, but not really. Figuratively, oh yeah.
One who has for all the bounty I’ve enjoyed in life been somewhat desperate of soul. An outlaw of sorts once upon a time.
Just as a descriptor, it is a sonorous word, with which I’ve been fascinated.
It’s use in two totally different tunes is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a long while. Years actually.
But, I’ve been somewhat of a missing person, if you will a desaparecido — another play on that term — when it has come to actually sitting down at the keyboard and doing what I am at this moment.
Because the reasons for putting it off are how closely I relate to some of the lyrics.
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?/ Come down from your fences, open the gate/ It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you/ You better let somebody love you/ (Let somebody love you)/ You better let somebody love you before it’s too late
So, yeah, the otherwise insufferable* Don Henley and partner Glenn Frey’s lyrics cut through like a machete.
(* Why do I use that adjective to describe the obviously talented and successful Henley. Two reasons. One, the Eagles have been famous for not liking each other for decades, taking separate limos from hotel to venue. Rubs me the wrong way. But, his arrogance caught me from the get go. The first time I heard the band, they opened for Yes at Louisville Gardens. As was often the case, much of the crowd was milling about before the headliner, not really listening. At some juncture, Henley, annoyed at the inattention, brayed into his mic, “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you know who we are? We’re the Eagles!”)
Still it’s a great damn song, a bracing use of imagery. Best rendered by the incomparable Linda Ronstadt, who stole the tune.
Damn, Linda, shred me apart why don’t ya?
* * * * *
Then, there’s Guy Clark with a totally different tale, also a brilliant use of the imagery.
About his relationship with an old man.
About how life evolves with its inevitable conclusion.
I know nothing about playing Moon and Forty-two.
But I look in the mirror and I’m pushing 80, an old man.
Conscious that not too far off that sumbitch is comin’.
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
Out of respect, I have been reluctant to engage artists of note on the few occasions through the decades when I’ve been in their presence.
(The exception to the rule. I could not not engage Allen Toussaint when our paths crossed in a hotel lobby. With him, there was a connection. His album producer Joe Henry is an acquaintance.)
So I kept a distance as usual in the mid 90s with Paul Simon. He was standing about ten feet away at JazzFest’s Congo Square stage with Edie Brickell one early Thursday afternoon.
It was in the period not long after the release of “Rhythm of the Saints,” which album had been a significant comfort a couple of years earlier during my lengthy recovery after being hit by a car while jogging.
The album infused by Simon’s fascination and emergence with African and Brazilian music was recorded with a majority of the musicians from those countries. It is filled with lilting melody lines and harmonies, gentle but insistent rhythms, and as always Simon’s ever-present lyrical elusiveness and undercurrent of melancholy.
One example of his poetic brilliance from “Further to Fly”:
There may come a time/ When I will lose you/ Lose you as I lose my light/ Days falling backward into velvet night/ The open palm of desire/ Wants everything/ It wants everything/ It wants soil as soft as summer/ And the strength to push like spring
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
It is the sense of the place.
More so than the righteous music I’ve heard there on several trips down.
The Delta. Birthplace of the Blues. Which of course begat the rock & roll I love so much.
Two images from my first visit more than a quarter century gone still resonate.
A desolate crossroad of two gravel/ dirt roads with fields of scrubby early season cotton plants to the horizon in every direction. The lone highway marker, a rusted tilting pole, the sign reading Joe Noe Road.
Not far away, off Highway 61, in the middle of proverbial nowhere, a siding of 50-60 rusting rail cars, abandoned.
The Delta, ever bleak, haunts, it’s mysteries lurk. Land of cotton. Seemingly forgotten, yet daily interactions say old times there not.
The goal of that first trip with pals was a blues festival in Greenville, where BB King was to play, his first visit back to perform in a long while.
Along with way, we found Charlie Patton’s grave site, saw the cabin said to be where Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation, stood alone in the middle of road in front of the Hollywood in Robinsonville, one of the places where Robert Johnson “is from.” Read the rest of this entry »
I’m a lifelong rock & roller. I love JazzFest. Here’s my latest report.
But first a quick explanation why this is so late. And thanks to those loyal readers who have actually reached out and wondered what’s up and where is it? Stuff happens. Strange week. Car tsouris. Reacclimatizing to Ohio Valley sludge and the allergies it petri dishes. Gettin’ my daily grove back after overindulgence in New Orleans. Etc, etc. It’s been a Larry David kind of week.
But here goes:
It permeates as it were mist rising from the reeds under a full moon in Atchafalaya Swamp.
Fragrant as magnolia swelter.
Foreboding as the gators and snakes that lurk in the bayou.
Mysterious as cricket and dragonfly crackles from the mossy vines.
Mystical as a summer night in the swamp ever is.
Phantom mosquitos hover.
Atmospheric. Melancholy.
Of all the acts I heard during the opening weekend of New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2024, none came close to cutting through like Dylan LeBlanc. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another:
There are many wondrous happenstances that can come when going to a concert.
One is learning the full effect of a performer you might have known only peripherally. A classic example for me is Tony Joe White.
Back in the day — I know it’s a hackneyed term, but describes that bygone era when you can’t pinpoint a year — there were several shows at Parkway Field. Which for the uninitiated is where a minor league ballpark used to sit next the Speed School by the Eastern Parkway overpass.
I heard MC5 there. Uriah Heep. Black Oak Arkansas, if memory serves.
At one of those shows, among the four acts was Tony Joe White. Whom I only knew from his singular hit, “Poke Salad Annie.” Only to be mesmerized by the deep voice and Swamp Rock chops.
He became one of my favorites. I was honored decades later to introduce him during the period when Waterfront Wednesdays would come inside during winter months at the Clifton Center.
Which venue was the site in 2014 of my favorite unknown discovery ever.
The blessing of a previously unknown act that rings my chimes to this day.
Opening for the Carolina Chocolate Drops was Birds of Chicago.
In the nature of rock & roll acknowledgment, it is a mistake, an egregious omission of the highest order.
It is that time of the year when I attempt annually to wring a drop or two of blood from the turnip.
So, for this year anyway, I’m taking the exit to Mystery Street.*
As I vowed in 
One song.
A new film has just dropped, another attempt to pin down the unpindownable.
Back when, you know, in the day, there would be more than occasional Saturdays that arrived without evening plans.
I am a desperado.
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
I’m a lifelong rock & roller. I love JazzFest. Here’s my latest report.
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another: