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Category: Uncategorized (Page 26 of 45)

Big Mac.

December 15, 2010 / / 0 Comments

He was in the right place, and finally, must’a bin the right time. Dr. John has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s better known in New Orleans, and more familiar to baby boomers with his piano banging and gravelly voice singing.

Dr. John

Dr. John at the New Orleans Jazz Festival 2007

“I was in the right place,” he wailed, “but it musta bin the wrong time,” – except the word time sounded more like tam. The song was his biggest hit, topping out at Number 9 on the Billboard chart back in 1973, but my personal favorite was Such a Night, sounding like “sech a night,” which the Doctor recalled as a time to “steal away, under the moonlight. And here I am, with my best friend Jim, tryin’ to steal her away from him.”

It was catchy. If I don’t do-it, you know somebody else will…

I was playing the song as a deejay then, and I knew that songwriters received royalty payments based on the number of times the songs blared out of a radio. Once a year, ASCAP (who wrote the checks) required deejays to write down every song played over several days, so songwriters could get paid.

Dr. John had his record on my turntable every other hour. I figured I had to make up for other deejays who didn’t appreciate him quite as much.

It turns out, Malcom John Rebennack – his real name, although friends call him “Mac” – didn’t need my help. He’d had several albums produced before he landed a spot on my program, and played with Eric Clapton and plenty of others. I believed him to be a struggling New Orleans artist who could benefit from a boost to the ol’ check-a-roo.

Never fudged for any other musician on the ASCAP list, and can’t really explain why I did for Mac Rebennack. I don’t always agree with the Hall of Fame inductees, but I’m glad there was a spot for Dr. John.

He probably had a New Orleans-style party, and I bet it was “sech a night…”

The Book.

December 13, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Will it be around in another twenty years? People talk about their electronic readers and send me clipped newspaper articles about the demise of books and bookstores. For those of us who love books, the idea is laughable.

It isn’t just stick-in-the-mud thinking here. I’m all for technology, even if I can’t drive and phone at the same time. Give me gigabytes on flash drives. Upload your digital photos to me. Text yo’ daddy.

A digital representation of a book, though – isn’t a book. Kindle me this: for the price of your black and white screen, plastic-housed text presenter, you could have purchased a first edition, leather-bound, marble-papered classic, dating to a time before the US Civil War.

Granted, you probably won’t drag it into bed with you and snuggle under the quilt to read it. That’s what those glow-in-the-dark Kindle-Nook-iPad eReaders are for. In fact, since they don’t have a cover or a dustjacket, you can download those bodice-ripping romance novels you’ve pined for all these years, but had too much pride to carry around. On the Kindle, no one knows what you’re skimming.

Books – if they do disappear – will never completely vanish. They’ll be preserved just like the vintage models kept up by old car buffs who gather with their restored British sportscars and Detroit muscle cars. We booklovers will park our volumes on Sunday afternoons in the Burger Street parking lot, cranking up the classical music while sitting in canvas director’s chairs.

“Ah!” we’ll say, as we wander around the asphalt lot. “Look at the leather spine on that beauty! Unrestored, too! They just don’t make books like that anymore…”

And words will never hurt me.

December 11, 2010 / / 0 Comments

There are two types of people in the world, those who respond to taunts by chanting “Sticks and stones may break my bones, etc” – and those who just answer back with a punch in the nose.

McAlester, Oklahoma is given to fisticuffs.

Westboro Shouters

Westboro at McAlester (Courtesy Tulsa World)

My adopted home town was the site of a military funeral some months back, at which the aberrant Westboro Baptist Church made an appearance. They are the Kansas knuckleheads who claim each fallen US soldier represents retribution from their god, and each death – they claim – is payback for homosexual behavior in the United States.

There was a loud counter-protest in McAlester that day, and in the ensuing ruckus, someone slashed all the tires on all the Westboro vehicles. Sort of a punch in the nose for their disrespectful shouts. Later, when the group discovered the flats and called around for repairs, no one – not a single McAlester service business – would install a patch. Finally, the group bought all new tires at a store that agreed to a sale, just to get the placard-bearing ying-yangs back on the highway and out of town.

Today, the group tried a protest at the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards, once the wife of vice-presidential hopeful John Edwards. A group of counter-protesters out-shouted the five Westboros in a steady rain.

The so-called church group arrived at the Edwards protest direct from McAlester, where they had staged a second set of shenanigans. Their return appearance was to protest the poor reception they received earlier, but mostly, to protest the tire-slashings. This time, they had to shout over the roaring of motorcycle engines at one location, and at a second designated shout-spot, no one showed up all.

This time, McAlester kept its fists in pocket. With a group of law-enforcement protection, the Westboro banana-heads lamented the fact that no one was there to heckle back, and then slunk out of town.

No doubt McAlester has made an impression on the group, and although vandalism should not be condoned, I’m secretly smirking at the idea of my home town sticking up for itself against a pack of loud-mouthed bullies.

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