"Thank you music lovers!"




I just received word that Jack Cooke, the Norton Flash, died a few days ago. Hee died December 1, which is the same day that Carter Stanley died. Which is kind of spooky.

Tragic loss, he was truly one of the all time great old timers and they aren't minting any more of them. He was of course Ralph Stanley's bass player. He also played guitar with Bill Monroe for four years back in the golden era of the late 1950s, which people forget. jack had a great voice too, one of the best, just exactly the way a bluegrass voice should sound.

And always, hell or high water, when he played with Ralph he sang "sitting on top of the world." And always threw in the tagline above, which is among the greatest of things to say on stage.

I blogged a few years back about his very long awaited solo album, it is a great record with some fine older stuff on it too.

Jack had been the mayor of Norton, Virginia too. One of a kind! Gone but not forgotten!

A Charlie Pride for the nuevo world.

This is Timote, also known as 'El Charro Negro', the first African-American ranchera singer.


The music is pretty terrible but the concept is, clearly, brilliant.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are essentially a blackface band made novel by the fact that the musicians are all black. That is to say that they are trading very heavily on their race in the well trod example of all minstrel blackface bands as they supposedly carry on the tradition of black string band music from North Carolina. Do you have to be black to carry on the tradition of black string band music? The answer seems to be yes. Their race matters more in this emphasis than does their origins or their musicial skill. Their music is adequate and the band is fine and all, but they have become something like a sensation because of the deft way they trade on their race to authenticate their music. Their audience, overwhelmingly white, middle class, and earnest, revels in this faux authenticity bestowed on their music by their heavily laden racial emphasis. A white band trying to do the same thing, and playing such similarly run-of-the-mill music, would be ignored or maybe even ridiculed for caricature.

To give but one example, when there was a cd release for the band at the Mt Airy Fiddler's convention several years ago (their first cd, I am not sure how many they have now) the band played for a large group of entirely 100% white people and then handed out a watermelon. Imagine the reverse.

Anyway, so I have long thought. Now I see that the overwhelmingly white, middle class, and earnest History News Network blog has this post which almost exactly proves my point. In it, the Chocolate Drops are presented as authentic as they play an incredibly dull version of a (white!) song from NC supposedly in some tradition and then is contrasted with the Wiyos, who are identified as "a well-regarded white, urban group, with roots in New York and New Orleans." Why is race so heavily foregrounded in this? The Wiyos do not market themselves as a 'white' band and definitely do not traffic in racial identity as do the Chocolate Drops. Why not just say one is a competent but weak group with celebrity cred playing without inspiration while the other is a very accomplished band playing an infinitely superior version of a great song?

I know what you are thinking, and I agree entirely--it was a bit heartbreaking not to go to the Narciso Martinez festival in San Benito, Texas, this past weekend. The core conjunto festival I haven’t been to yet, though much smaller than the San Antonio festival. But it is only a matter of time, I am planning for next year. Looking at the pictures from it was a bit heartbreaking. I’ve actually seen all of those bands save for Los Donneños, surely one the best and among my favorites. Thank god for youtube in that regard. This sounds perfect.

It is hard to imagine a full life without seeing them play. I also may have to just go finally make the pilgrimage to McAllen to DiscosRyN.

Though it is hard to complain too much. One reason I didn’t make it to Texas this fall (besides those two months in California), is that I am heading to Lafayette, LA to the Blackpot festival. Still, to have seen Los Donneños at long last… But certain domestic parties would almost certainly not be sympathetic to this watertight logic.

The secret to why seltzer tastes good, discovered.

"Tasting fizz begins with a special protein that’s tethered to sour-sensing taste cells on the tongue, researchers report in the Oct. 16 Science. This protein, the enzyme carbonic anhydrase 4, splits carbon dioxide into bicarbonate ions and free protons, which stimulate the sour-sensing cells.

Scientists have long thought that the taste of carbonated beverages emerged from the physical bursting of bubbles on the tongue, says study author Charles Zuker, a neuroscientist now at Columbia University who did the work while at the University of California, San Diego. But bubbly drinks still taste distinctly carbonated when they are imbibed in a pressure chamber where bubbles don’t burst.
...

Bachmanov calls the new work “elegant.” Taste “is a very challenging system to study,” he says. “Everything is very small but very complex.”

In the bigger picture, tasting carbonation may have allowed animals to sense CO2 produced in foods that had fermented or gone bad, akin to how bitter-sensing taste cells warn of potential toxicity, says Zuker."

Aren't you glad scientists are working on this?

Midwestern readers, there is some good son jarocho in Chicago next week that you should see, several shows actually, stretching into the first week of November.

And for those of you away from God's Midwestern Acreage, you might be interested to know that this concert info leds me to discover ArteSalazar, a maker of reasonably priced custommade jaranas in Chicago.

Actually, assuming they are decently made, more than reasonably priced it seems to me, for handmade instruments. Hmmm.

I just missed my chance to send someone to check them out this past weekend when they held a demo on making jaranas, but there are sure to be future times.

I'm back in the 757 from Cali and really happy to back to my home life. As for the broader ghetto context, I am not thinking about it.

My last weekend in SF I was invited to a series of rock shows (my friend out there getting comp tickets to everything that comes to town) none of which I really wanted to attend but I had to be polite so I settled on the Melvins play with the Butthole Surfers (skipping the Jesus Lizard and also the 2 day rock fest on Treasure Island. hard to believe all of this shit was happening on one weekend).

The Melvins kicked some serious ass--they were of course heavy as it comes and also so damned tight it was a marvel. They really are still as great as ever. Listen to their newest record and see if it is not better than any previous. Why fuck with perfection?

The Buttholes are by this point tired and done and the show was a waste of time. If they had any honor they might consider ritual suicide. Or, failing that, retirement. I last saw them 22 years ago at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, the realization that that was more than 2 decades ago has definitely made me feel old. I had seen them in the mid 80s when they were great, and then the last time in 1987 when they started up the whole insane stage show with the films and on down. They are still doing the same shit, minus the girls and the flames, the music pretty dull, and at least at this show were just going through the motions. And if they could give a shit in SF where would they be any good anymore?

Of course the best music I heard over the weekend was a Norteño band playing at some Mexican bar on 16th street.

I am not even sure what this kind of music is called, it is from Mauritania and sounds pretty cool:



...if only they would finish tuning...hee hee

I have been listening to some African guitar stuff recently. I know nothing at all about African music and have barely listened to it except some great ngoni music from Mali and that Ethiopian jazz stuff from the 1940s. There is a lot more else to hear, of course, and out here in SF and Berkeley there is definitely a lot of interest in it and a lot of availability. Though I haven't seen many Africans per se, not like I always see in DC where it seems like in the city the bulk of the immigrants are African.

Anyway, I've heard some really good African street musicians out here.

I've also been listening to this collection of Congolese Rumba, which I have to say I got initially solely because of its cover. But it was a good choice.

This is a cool little session between Juan Villareal of Los Cachorros and Ramiro Cavazos from Los Donnenos, certainly one of the great all time great bajo players.



and this is even better, -perfect in fact

maybe one small way to differentiate between old time and bluegrass is that so many old time musician artists are really great artists while bluegrass art as a genre tends toward the style modulating between kitsch and socialist realism.

here is an example

Actually, I have to say that I love this one of Bill Monroe playing in the sunny glade on his way to the Gloryland. Heartbreaking, no?

These paintings definitely share a sensibility with the neo-Confederate art of that dude Mort Kuntsler


(yes I did misspell his name deliberately, to amuse myself. It isn't hard).

Now this is actual news, reported in the vernacular language of the people rather than the rarefied language of the mealy mouths on NPR:

No oral sex, says ute crash waitress


"A WOMAN accused of performing a sexual act on a man when he crashed in Darwin's rural area is outraged at the allegation and says it is "absolutely wrong".

Allyson White said the standout burn mark left by her seatbelt across her chest was proof the claims of "amorous activities'' with the driver were not true.

"I was not sucking his d*** - and it's pretty obvious that wasn't the case ... you only have to look at the mark on my chest,'' she said.

"Clearly I had my seatbelt on, so it's impossible that I'd be leaning over sucking his d*** unless he is hung like a donkey or I've got a f****** rubber neck.

"If it was true I'd just cop it sweet and think 'how embarassing, I got caught sucking someone's d***' - but it is not true and that's what is p****** me off."

thanks to CW for this, though I can't guess why he was reading Northern Territory News.

It is always kind of charming when NPR restates the well known on non-story stories, isn't it? If they didn't pretend to be reporting real news?

Here is the latest one, on narcocorridos.

The story on the corridos runs through the numbers about them. Nothing you haven't heard before, but then again, it is always worth hearing again.

The sidebar on the use of youtube by the narco gangs also provides not even a little bit of new information, since this was reported on awhile ago, but still interesting.

"October 10, 2009 - In recent years, YouTube has become the bulletin board and billboard for Mexican drug cartels seeking to threaten rivals, brag of their exploits and recruit new members. Just type "zetas," "sinaloa cartel," or "la familia michoacana" into the YouTube search window to see how these drug mafias have adeptly appropriated social media.

Often to the accompaniment of a narcocorrido, pictures flash on the screen of murdered rivals, hooded policemen, shiny smuggling vehicles, bales of marijuana, and stacks of cash. But the videos can also be gruesome, showing real-time executions with pistols or decapitations by ligatures. Under YouTube's Inappropriate Content guidelines, users can flag violent or graphic material and YouTube monitors usually remove the objectionable images within minutes. But the pictures often reappear soon afterward.

The use of the Internet by Mexican narcotics cartels is directly modeled on how jihadist terrorists use anti-western Web sites. "They'll do videos of them executing a guy, something like you see in al-Qaida," said Roberto Garcia, a veteran police detective in Laredo, Texas. Savvy narcotics investigators have learned to keep up with the drug cartels on YouTube just as the FBI uses the Internet to track the activities of terrorist groups.

"This is an amazing source of information for us," Garcia says. "It keeps us up to date, verifies stuff we already know, and gives information on murder suspects we're looking for that have already been executed."

Sitting at his supervisor's desk in police headquarters, Garcia took me on a tour through the dark world of YouTube cartel videos. He clicked on a video titled "Matando Zetas," (Killing Zetas).

"Here are four shirtless guys who've been beaten," the detective says, looking at the image of four husky, hand-cuffed and terrified men kneeling on the floor, surrounded by hooded men with assault rifles. "It looks like somebody taped Hefty trash bags on the wall to prevent blood from spilling all over the place. They're being questioned. They've been tortured. They're making 'em explain who they are, who they work for. They say they work for Zetas."

The video appears to have been posted by someone who sympathizes with the Sinaloa Cartel, which at various times and in various places has been at war with Los Zetas, a criminal organization that operates in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas.

"It's to put terror on rival gang members, to say, 'This is what happens if we catch you,'" he adds.

Garcia clicks on another video, this one of a large recruitment banner draped boldly across a public highway overpass in Ciudad Juarez. Garcia squints to read the wording.

"Grupo Zetas wants you, military or ex-military. We'll offer you good pay, food and attention to your family." Then a squad of Mexican soldiers can be seen cutting the banner down.

But can the videos be completely trusted?

"YouTube can be useful a tool for gathering intelligence about what's going on with the cartels, who's been killed, who's on a hit list," says Stephen Meiners, until recently a Latin American analyst for Stratfor, a global intelligence company based in Austin. "The problem is the videos are full of propaganda." he adds, "They can also be a forum for disinformation. They know the DEA and Mexican federal police are looking at You Tube, too." "

This amused me. I saw this magazine at the supermarket checkout aisle (the ones in Berkeley would be worth deconstructing if you couldn't already guess what kind of magazines are ubiquitous).

It is a magazine for people with food allergies that features poppy seed bagels on the cover. The story included detailed, lovingly illustrated, step-by-step instructions for making your very own poppy seed bagels.

I want to write an earnest, wounded letter they must get once a month over there at Doing Without Magazine. 'How DARE you put _________ on the cover when I am allergic?' It would be funny by the third month.

50% all around general ass kicking-ness
25% the singing
25% the production values

This was interesting to happen across. A full store dedicated to the pedal steel, right in my home state to boot. Billy Cooper's Steel Guitars

I don't have a clue how to play the pedal steel, but is there a better instrument? Ok, maybe a few, but are there a lot of better instruments?

I often think of a friend of mine who played in a fine honky tonk band for several years. My friend was the singer and guitarist, so he isn't the focus of the tale. The pedal steel player was some dude who was kind of a non-entity who disappeared for a year and then resurfaced as a professional level pedal steel player. I think he sold his soul to the devil, but do not have independent confirmation of this. (My friend thinks he just practiced a lot--sure like that ever helps!)

So I periodically think about the Pedal Steel and about selling my soul to devil. He won't give me a hand on the bajo, but maybe he likes country music. (The Devil fears Mexicans, that much is clear).

I think perhaps the best part of the Billy Cooper Pedal Steel store is not the huge array of pedal steels, it is his profession of faith (see the little tab on the upper right).

" We are so pleased to have you stop by our website. You must have a passionate interest in the steel guitar, as we do. We realize, though, that the things of this world will eventually fade away. We would like to introduce you to the One Who can give you eternal life and eternal happiness.

1.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also". Matthew 6:19-21.

2.

"The world and its desires pass away, but the (one) who does the will of God lives forever." 1 John 2:17. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:16.

3.

"That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9. "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."** Romans 10:13.

4.

..Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." 1 Corinthians 2:9.

**If you have just received Jesus Christ, we encourage you to grow with Him by reading the Bible and going to a church that preaches from the Bible and believes it to be the inspired Word of God. If you have any questions about this matter, we would feel privileged to help you in any way we can.





Sincerely in Christ,
Billy & Wanda Cooper"

Ah yes, Virginia. It is so easy to forget how things are when you are walking through the clouds of marijuana smoke in Berkeley.*




* that is literally true, but the way, people smoke openly all over the place with little consequence that I can see.

I happened on that amazing jarana clip I just posted via this photographer from the Bay Area named Mike Melnyk who has put together this incredible 345 picture step-by-step jarana making photo essay. Definitely makes me feel like I could make one, or, more accurately, half ass something with great energy. The pictures are really interesting. I was esepcially happy to see this because I had no idea how they made these things out of a solid piece of wood, though I knew that was the style.

His other photos are really good, you'll spent some time on this site...

"The very best in conjunto Music!" as they say.

I can't see anyway to make it down there this year unless I sell some plasma, but here is the line-up so far for the 18th Annual Narciso Martinez Conjunto Festival. There are going to be shows on Friday too but they haven't scheduled them yet.

(I love that about conjunto festivals in Texas--everything is done at the last minute. You might call it lack of planning, I call it handcrafted).

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Enrique Vela 4:00-4:50 p.m.
Los Donnenes 5:00-6:05 p.m.
Amadeo Flores 6:15-7:20 p.m.
Chano Cadena 7:25-8:30 p.m.
Los Garcia Bros 9:50-11:00 p.m.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Quarto Rosas 4:00-5:00 p.m.
TexManiacs 5:10-6:10 p.m.
Eddie Lalo Torres 6:20-7:25 p.m.
Los Pobres 7:35-8:40 p.m.
Los Dos Gilbertos 8:50-10:00 p.m.

Here is the man himself, from Chulas Fronteras


I am at work on this encyclopedia article on conjunto music (due one years ago) and reading some interviews with the founding conjunto musicians like Martinez. One transcribed interview starts with a disclaimer that the interiewer "is not a fluent speaker of the Texas-Mexican dialect which Narciso Martinez speaks most easily, it is hoped that a scholar with such a language facility will interview him in the near future." I'd be interested to know exactly how this dialect differed from Spanish. I am going to ask around.

Nice version of this tune

What is it with Mexican drug lords and albino animals? Are albinos the animal kingdom equivalent of gold covered and jewel encrusted cellphones and guns? and what's with the Buddha?

Photos here

Though Verizon did do at least one right thing is sponsoring a special Los Tigres del Norte EP for its customers.

I wonder what Blakenship would think of this corporate behavior, since migrants are the biggest audience for the band.

Mistakes are sometimes called boners and as you know if you have or have had service with them, Verizon is a corporate boner from the base up to the head. So it isn't really a surprise to hear that they had sponsored a pro-mountaintop removal rally.

Though they have shown a certain welcome flaccidity by backing out and offering a weak apology.

"Verizon has been involved in a controversy since Labor Day over its $1000 sponsorship of the Friends of America rally in West Virginia. Massey coal leader Don Blankenship put on the event, which featured a free concert featuring global warming deniers like Ted Nugent and Sean Hannity, who came together, unbelievably, on a mountaintop mining site to tout the virtues of coal. But now Verizon's CEO is offering an apology to one of the green groups that expressed outrage over the cell company's sponsorship of a pro dirty energy rally.

When called out, Verizon Wireless first said they didn't know the event was so political and then didn't back out for fear of alienating the coal crowd. But yesterday the CEO of Verizon Wireless, Lowell McAdam, sent a letter to the Center for Biological Diversity, apologizing for his company's actions.

McAdams said he wanted to "set the record straight," insisting that his company does not support mountaintop removal coal mining, nor does it oppose federal energy and climate legislation. He said that Verizon Wireless "supports the goals of policy makers who are committed to reducing carbon emissions and protecting the environment."

At the event, country singer Hank Williams, Jr. and rocker and bow hunter Ted Nugent denounced plans to cut our greenhouse gas emissions, and FOX News host and radio personality Sean Hannity whipped up the crowd into a frenzy with an anti-clean energy speech.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines mountaintop removal as follows:

"Mountaintop removal/valley fill is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are removed, exposing the seams of coal. Mountaintop removal can involve removing 500 feet or more of the summit to get at buried seams of coal. The earth from the mountaintop is then dumped in the neighboring valleys."

This is worth watching if only to hear Blankenship on your own (and admire his fashion) as he attacks the government and the Chinese and "environmentalist extremist egos" and also the way he attacks global warming as "pure make believe". (The editorial comments could have been more effectively and devastatingly done, but they tried)

You may have read that it turns out that the reason the child rapist/kidnapper piece of shit who nabbed the girl off the street 18 years was busted is because he was stopped while handing out religious literature on the UC-Berkeley campus. These things are hard to make up.

Wasn't that Mormon kidnapper who grabbed the girl in southern California a few years ago also a proselytizer of some sort, with the girl dressed in a burqa or something?

Of course there is the obvious though disgusting irony that this child rapist/kidnapper piece of shit was religious. But hardly a surprise, is it?

And there is the interesting little tidbit that if you distribute religious literature on the UC-Berkeley campus, a public university, the cops stop you for questioning. Can't anybody go on a public campus and hand shit out? Isn't this the same institution defending academic freedom in the case of torture advocate John Yoo?

My thinking is that there is at least an even chance that any proselytizer you stop is a piece of shit of some variety, on a scale ranging from child rapist/kidnapper to Republican airport bathroom cocksucker, to everything in between.

But this story is especially fucked up since the police were informed about it but said they couldn't do anything about it. Probably too busy beating up Mexicans to investigate.

But this insane episode does give us some insight into California law enforcement--ID people handing out religious literature on public campuses but do not check on evolving weird encampments of feral children that have been reported by suspicious neighbors.


The San Francisco Chronicle writes:

"Erika Pratt, 25, who stayed next door two years ago, said she was continuously "freaked out" by Garrido's behavior, and that when she popped her head over the fence she saw his secret compound. There were tents, sheds and pit bull dogs, and water hoses leading from her house next door, she said.
'They never talked'

"He had little girls and women living in that back yard, and they all looked kind of the same," Pratt said. "They never talked, and they kept to themselves."

Pratt said people came and went from the property, but the core group consisted of two girls about 4 years old, one girl about 11, another girl about 15 and a young woman about 25. They were all blonde, she said.

Pratt said she had called Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies to investigate, but that officers "told me they couldn't go inside because they didn't have a warrant. So they just told him they'd keep an eye on him."

Police said Thursday that the only people living in the yard when the Garridos were arrested were Dugard and her daughters.
'A blank stare'

Haydee Perry, 35, who lives next door, said that when Phillip Garrido helped her jump-start her car a month ago, he had a young girl clinging to him in a manner that struck her as strange.

"She stayed close to him at all times," Perry said. "It wasn't normal behavior. She had a blank stare on her face. Now it seems like a cry out for help."

A Web site containing statements from Garrido and others called "Voices Revealed," talks about a turnaround that allowed him "to open doors that will honor the creator and his eternal purpose for mankind."

The site also indicates that he gave a demonstration in Pittsburg last month with a homemade box to prove "the creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wakeup call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world."

Mary Thomas, accountant at J&M auto dismantlers in Pittsburg, near where Garrido set up his revival tent, said he was "was always very professional and spoke the word of God whenever he talked.""

I am out in Cali and staying in the Mission in SF, which is of course the epicenter of things Mexican in these parts and so a damned fine place to be in all respects.

Great food in all directions and all varieties, perhaps most especially the fried and the pork varieties.

And music everywhere, wandering musicians who come into bars--mariachis, accordionists with bajo players in tow, the works. Hard to complain.

The only bad part is that I am actually working all the time so not getting to enjoy it or explore it all nearly enough.

I am staying with a friend who has his hand in a lot of things, one of which is a superior bar down the street.

Having a friend with a bar down the street is not a bad way to go. It is kind of like having a living room down the street filled with a constant party and a full array of drinks with people to serve them to you. Exactly like that, in fact.

Though it was all seeming a bit less fun last night when a disgruntled drunk who had been rousted earlier in the evening for grabbing a bartender and generally being an asshole came back at 3 am and hurled a paving stone through the window.

We didn't finish boarding the thing up until quarter to five. That kind of stomps on your buzz.

Robert Wright is getting a lot of press with his book The Evolution of God as I am sure you at least tangentially have realized. Hard to avoid juggernaut publicity campaigns these days. (what?! you missed the postcard mailings which blanketed some nether county in eastern Kentucky when my book came out?)

You can read some longish selections of each chapter at the book's impressively thorough webpage, which is a nice stopgap until his book starts showing up at thrift stores (I give it three months).

I wonder if the religious presses go through periodic waves of enthusiasm and marketing the ways the irreligious genre does. Or do they call that revivialism? If the three preconditions for a revival can be readily identified (the Boles model--or is it four? it has been awhile) then there must be a like- three or four preconditions for the opposition-to-religion set to churn out the books. Ying/Yang, Christ/Antichrist, whatever. Maybe this is the great battle of the Tribulation. Wouldn't that be a downer.

I found Wright's selections interesting but not exactly stunningly original. Or even original. But the writing is good and I bet there is something to be gleaned here.

But I think you very well might be better off reading American Gods, which said almost the same thing only better, and also has a good story to boot. Plus, it is in almost every thrift store right now. (I know Neil Gaiman is something of a clown but that book is actually pretty good).

Hitchens book (another media splash) is ok and is exactly as you would expect. I do think that his mischaracterization of Buddhism mars the book since quite literally the only example he produces as evidence is an overuse and slight misreading of Zen at War, which is a great book made even profound because of how directly it shows the complete perversion of Zen Buddhism in Imperial Japan. It happens that I was teaching this book at exactly the time I picked up Hitchens book, so what I thought was his careless misuse of it was really grating. Hitchens wants all religions to fit into his model so he has to torque Buddhism into place and uses this book to do it even if the point is exactly the opposite. But my sense is that that particular task is not only senseless, it is utterly beside the point as far as the core of Buddhist philosophy goes.

(don't worry, this is not a sign that Undismayed is not going to veer from the Mexican music path into half assed Buddhist philosophizing).

God seems to be on people's minds these days. Or is that better termed " on their feverish brains"? The issue is in the air, even around here where our mind is ever-placid and untrammeled like a winter field.

All of this was in my mind today I ran into a friend of mine today who also happens to be a Hasidic Jew. I like the guy a lot, friendly, smart, and all of that, good to see him. But I have to say, he is nuts. Completely fucking insane. And this is all a theologically based lunacy, of course. He is no less and no more batshit insane than the hardcore fundamentalist Baptists I know in much greater numbers around here, but a lunatic to be sure. And they are all nice people too, these got-damn fucking fundamentalist nuts. And not one of them has yet held a poisonous snake. Men of God! Quite!

Or at least the ones I associate with are all good people despite their eternal wandering in the thickets. I certainly can't bear witness for the fundamentalist crazy m'fers currently spanking off to pictures of Sarah Palin cradling her rifle, or to those others busy fucking dudes in airport bathrooms.

Or this moron yelling at Arlen Specter:

"In Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) faced an unruly audience that booed and jeered as he attempted to respond to accusations that the legislation pending in Congress would allow the government to deny them care, steal money from their bank accounts and obliterate private insurance.

"You can do whatever the hell you please to do," one angry man yelled at Specter. "One day God's going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damned cronies up on the Hill. And then you'll get your just desserts." '

Wait, isn't it the opposite--don't we stand before God while he sits up on a Golden Throne or something? And isn't Specter the crony while its the gays and the liberals and the people-who-want-all-old-people-to-be-unplugged the ones pulling the strings?

Though the angry man does have a good point. There is no fucking way God wants people to have health care or to be healthy. He takes care of it all. "Health care" is not just a communist idea, it is an abomination in the bright blue eyes of God's Master Plan.

He (that is, God, not the angry dude) knows the Ralph Stanley song: "Everybody Wants to Get to Heaven But Nobody Wants to Die". Time to die! She-it, God probably whispered that into Ralph's ear on his way to investing some person in a Wise County church with the Holy Spirit.

No health coverage = more people finding their seat at the Welcome Table. Specter, with his fancy-schmancy federal health care is never going to get to touch the hem of His purple raimants so fair or drink of those life-giving waters.

By now you've heard that Mike Seeger died. A really sad death, a true loss of an original, nobody else was like him or will be. He was a superb and enviable musician on any instrument he chose to play, and he singlehandedly did about as much as anyone to preserve traditional music in its pure, true form. Recorded and aided all sorts of old timers, rescued music from obscurity, inspired untold numbers of people who themselves have become great and/or obsessed. Only a genius musician could have so exactly learned all the styles he could play and also explain what was going on in them. Check out his banjo and guitar styles albums . I'd be stoked to play any ONE of these styles well.

He was also a truly nice guy. I spoke with him several times and often at some length and he was always very friendly and gracious. And, no less, he always unexpectedly remembered me the next time for no reason at all except that he was a genuinely good person. This was more than professionalism, since I had nothing to offer him (though I did send him honey), he just a regular guy in addition to being a giant among us.

A friend of mine who builds kick ass guitar (yes I play one) finally let me know he has a blog going, which is definitely worth a read. He hasn't posted on it in longer even than I have here, but there is so much interesting stuff in there about the instruments he has been making that it is worth your time.

I tried to convince my family and friends in the Great State of Wisconsin to go see Ruben Vela play this past weekend in Racine, but it does not seem like anybody realized the import of his appearance there.

Sr. Vela took the trouble to stop by Waukegan, Illinois, which is the Lake County seat (the county of my birth) in northern Illinois and now a heavily Mexicanized area. This was not remotely the case when I was young but has been increasingly the case in the past twenty years. Most of the greats who tour end up playing clubs in Waukegan, incredibly enough.

Here is a youtube video of him sitting in with some locals (embedding was disabled but here is the url.) Relatively rare to hear a conjunto great sans incredible volume.

Undismayed is still alive. Trying to keep it in under a month since I last posted. Pathetic really...

Some of the time away has been spent thinking deeply about the forthcoming Unsullied and Undismayed Bible Questions & Answers. It is in the production stages.

I have been listening to a lot of Molly O'Day to get me in the proper state of mind to ask and seek such answers. Like--why did she and Wade Mainer so often try to fit too many syllables into most of the lines in a gospel tune like "Going to walk right in and make myself at home" or "Mother's Prayers Will Follow Me"?

Two incredibly great songs, by the way.

Earlier I had noted that theologically speaking it was important to use the text referred to by serpent handlers. I am further refining my approach to emphasize the kind of questions that a theology rooted in hilliblly gospel would ask and/or needs answered. Likelihood of survivability of the tribulation, for one. Wearing the armor/starry crown/"looking at these nail scars here in my hands," for two, and so one.

During this interlude I did spend some essential and very welcome time at Clifftop playing old time music. Hard to think of a better way to spend a week. I got home and played with a friend who had been at Clifftop and happened to be passing though here, and it wasn't quite the same absent the full experience of being there.

It didn't help that I took my fiddle out of the case and the neck had popped off of it, maybe helped by the torrential rain throughout the week. Or a sign from King Jesus that it is high time that my fiddling was brought to bear--or stoned to death or left for dead on a bed of snow, so cold, so cold. I'll put this question to him when I'm walking in the Crystal City. But the signs here on earth were pretty clear. Clifftop is good that way. Clarifying as well as purifying.

Even if Clifftop did give me the come to Jesus feeling on the fiddle, I did feel reasonably good with my banjo playing. Since I see the bajo and the banjo as filling a related space in some ways (this may be musicological bullshit but it is my feeling on the subject insofar as the styles operate and have developed) I think great attention to the bajo is due. Or as great as I can swing it while cranking out pages this fall.

Undismayed is heading to California, which you either do or do not know and either do or do not care about. The pickings are pretty good for conjunto/norteño music out there, as you can imagine, as they seem to be for about every kind of music, and likely more so.

But I'll be missing the Sacramento Conjunto festival (and as a result, tragically, I will be missing the Hometown Boys) because of prior commitments. Inauspicious, but so it goes. My feeling is that in a couple of months I will have some other opportunities.

What the hell, how has it been a month since I've posted to Undismayed?

Mostly I have been working my ass off on researching on the book, since I had proclaimed my intention of having a chapter drafted by this point and am still wandering in thickets. None of which is really conducive to blogging--or to learning fiddle tunes, or even going to the beach. And if you don't go to the beach here you are stuck sitting on the back deck listening to the gunfire, as we did last evening. (The shooting didn't start until 11 pm. My wife asked: how far away was that one? I reassured her it was blocks and blocks away...)

A week or so ago I did spend a long time trying here at Undismayed trying to load some video I had shot of Mexican and Columbian bands at the National Folklife festival. For whatever reason it wouldn't load and I fled in frustration. It still won't load for some reason I can only blame on secret policies shielded from Congress by Dick Cheney. I even cut the things down from 10 minutes each to a few seconds just to give a sense of the music, but that didn't seem to do the trick. I could always load them into youtube but that is just a whole other level of complexity.

Here is an example of what else I have been dealing with in my limited free time—attempting to unsnarl this terrifying pile of frames for my bees.





Coming back here a year ago I returned to a good 15 dead hives, which meant hundreds of frames to clean and refit for the new hives this year. It has been a huge task but I am essentially there.

A friend of mine visiting on the 4th looked into the garage, say this pile as well as the other stuff in there, and said "dude, you are insane." I've been hearing some variant of that remark a lot recently. Por que?

The other thing that mirrors my return here last year is, as usual, dealing with the got-damn rats. I saw a truly gargantuan rat come out of the compost pile the other night. This freaking rat was not much smaller than Wee Oscar. It makes me wonder what the swamps around here have wrought. I have found some kind of animal dropping in the garage which had better not be coming from a rat since it is so big, I am hoping maybe a raccoon.

Anyway, I set a bunch of fearsome traps in and around the compost to kill this fucking thing. I obviously didn't want to use poison on the compost heap, though that is my weapon of choice in the garage.

The traps have instead steadily killed a bird or two a day. Why these damn birds are messing with the traps I can't imagine. The first one I think was a mistake, since I think it triggered the trap accidentally with its tail and the trap ended up snapping and cutting the ass end of the bird clean off. Not a pretty way to die. The other birds though have died in the traditional way. So far no rats.

I did manage to have the trap snap closed on my finger when I was reloading it without snapping it first. I had actually just thought of the need to be careful when the crushing bird-ass-removing force of the trap came down upon my finger. It would help, perhaps, to pay attention.

One of the traps was sprung and empty today and the other was missing entirely. This portends a rat big enough to crawl away dragging a trap. A .22 is sounding much more reasonable as a control measure at this point.

We're going to have a meeting in the air



I didn't think I'd be able to turn up much on a half assed search for A.P. Carter's "Bible Questions and Answers" and I didn't. Someone out there has a copy, it will eventually emerge. All will be revealed.

It didn't take me long to see that ever motherlovin' fool out there seems to have put out there own "Bible Questions and Answers". There is, of course, even a webpage called biblequestions.org.

But those questions aren't the right ones. And who are these people to be answering their own (misguided) questions?

We are decided. We are going to create Unsullied and Undismayed's Bible Questions and Answers. Not imminently, since Undismayed has to come up with the questions and the answers. But soon.

And, of course, Unsullied and Undismayed's Bible Questions and Answers will be freely available both online and inconvenient carry-it-with-you on the doorposts of your house style. And on your gates. The Truth Knows no Jurisdiction, or something.

The beautiful thing about Bible Questions and Answers as a genre is that you get to ask them and you get to answer them. That is a hell of a format. It is, perhaps, the best format for any religious discussion.

While we compile our questions, and answer them, Undismayed will also entertain your questions, please send them in.

Incidentally, have you ever read Howard Dorgan's study of six Appalachian Baptist sub-denominations? Really a fascinating book if you are into that sort of thing. One of the interesting things to glean from the book is that certain sub-denominations base their entire theology around finely grained readings of specific translations of the bible. Usually it is the King James. Other English translations change the meaning of specific phrases and render the entire sub-denomination directionless or even non-existent. So the articles of faith of the sub-denominations list the translation that they proceed to take as the literal word of God. I'd give the precise example but I don't have that book here with me to dig it up.

I am thinking of this because it occurred to me that, in the interests of scriptural purity, in our Q&A Undismayed is only going to ask questions of, and provide answers from, whatever Bible translation it is that tells people to handle poisonous serpents. That is, the actually true one.

And, helpfully, I see that Dorgan has an excellent essay online about this exact question in the serpent handling faith, which faced annihilation when the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was published without the key line in Mark 16 telling people to handle serpents.

Dorgan tells us (it is worth reading it all):

"Articles of Faith

I. A faith practice with a weak scriptural validation, having a biblical reference that must be labeled at least "questionable," perhaps "apocryphal."

A. Identified by biblical scholars as the "Marcan Appendix," Mark 16:9-20 was deleted when the Revised Standard Version of the Bible's translation of this gospel was published (1951), just as this "long version" of Mark has been deleted in a number of translations.

B. The reason for this deletion: these verses were not included in the earliest versions of Mark, and when included were occasionally listed as having questionable legitimacy.

1. The assumption being that these verses were not written by the original author of Mark.

a. Textual evidence (vocabulary and style) suggests-to what appears to be a judgment of the majority of biblical scholars-that these verses do not match the rest of Mark.

b. The argument has been made that this segment (called the "long version") was added by a third century AD scribe to make Mark's narrative conform more with Matthew and Luke by including Christ's appearances to Mary Magdalene and the disciples; however, what motivated the inclusion of the "signs" segment?

2. Also, these verses still appear to be out of parallel, narrative-wise, with the particular ascension stories provided in the other two synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke, and particularly in Christ's mentioning of the five signs: casting out of demons, speaking in new tongues, the taking up of serpents, the drinking of deadly things, the laying on of hands to heal.

C. The most ancient versions of Mark end with 16:8 and do not include any reference to Christ's risen appearance to Mary Magdalene and to the disciples, thus also deleting the evangelical mandate "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" and all that follows relative to the "five signs," Mark 16:17-18. Cordex Sinaiticus is the only ancient Greek manuscript that contains the entire New Testament, and it does not include the Marcan Appendix.

D. In addition to the five signs passage not being included in the other two synoptic gospels, John's gospel doesn't include it either; however, in John, Acts, Corinthians I and II, and elsewhere there are statements about Apostolic actions being supported by "signs," referenced in a general way, but not by the specific five signs mentioned in Mark 16.

E. "And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs," Mark 16:20. Such a testimony for the validity of the "five signs" is not provided in other gospels or elsewhere in the New Testament.

F. When the New Revised Standard Version was published in 1989, the scholars/editors placed Mark 16:9-20 back into the main flow of Mark, but only after clearly indicating that the "Shorter Ending of Mark" closed with Mark 16:8, and after also providing a lengthy footnote noting the questionable character of Mark 16:9-20.

1. This return of the Marcan appendix may have been in response to the loud outcry that in 1951 arose from Pentecostals and other "practicing the signs" groups, condemning the Mark omissions, both of the "five signs" passage and the "Go into all the world . . ." mandate, which can be found elsewhere in the Gospels.

2. However, the act of bringing this passage back to the main flow of Mark 16 was not a great deal different from what was done in the Original Revised Standard Version, since in that rendering the full passage was included in a footnote, with all of the information about the short version there also."

I finally got around to looking at the photos from this book drawn from the Leon Kagarise Archive. I recommend it. He was the dude who took pictures of all the country and bluegrass greats at Sunset Park in Rising Sun, Maryland during the early 60s.

He also recorded 4000 hours of these shows too, which are supposed to have great sound and which must be utterly unbelievable to hear. Why they haven't been released yet I don't know.

Sunset Park was one of the little country music parks that had the biggest stars there playing on a tiny little stage about the size of a flatbed truck. I've been fortunate enough to see all the original bluegrass greats in exactly this kind of setting many times, which means I can die with a satisfied soul, but to have seen Roy Acuff, George Jones, Porter Wagoner, Johnny Cash and all the others--yeah man.

The pictures are all great and a lot of fun to see. There are a lot of photos of the Stonemans, I guess Kagarise was kind of obsessed with them. The color stock from that era makes them even better.

The only flaw I can find in the book is that Carter Stanley is identified as Ralph Stanley, which is weird since the author apparently wrote a book with Ralph (which isn't out yet --but definitely is going to be a must read. I've been wanting to read more about Carter's final days. Was it Traveling the High Way Home that has the story of him vomiting buckets of blood?).

Kagarise went and visited Sara Carter once and she gave him a pamphlet written by A.P. called "Bible Questions and Answers". I personally cannot think of a single better thing in this world than A.P. Carter's "Bible Questions and Answers".

The company that published this book is called Daniel 13. I checked out there webpage, and see they also have a book of photographs of sex machines which looks like something worth a perusal.

(Kagarise was a pious dude, I wonder how he would feel to know his photos are in this company.)

Yesterday I had an experience right out of the "hold the chicken between your knees" scene in "Five Easy Pieces." (yes, of course it is on youtube)

We were at Dairy Queen trying to buy two small cones. They were running a special deal that you could buy two small dipped cones for three bucks. (the dip, if you aren't up on DQ, is some substance the cones are dipped into that hardens into a chocolate-like shell). The counter person rang up two small cones for regular price, which came to $3.99. Expecting that the special would have been rung up by any sensible person, I mentioned that the special was two cones for three bucks. She said, those are for the dipped cones, two regular cones are $3.99. That is the price for two small plain cones.

You see where this is going.

We didn't want the dip, just the cones. The counter person could not understand the apparently quite complicated concept (My long suffering wife later called it 'abstract thinking') that the dipped cones were exactly like the regular cones only with the additional step of the dipping process. It follows also that the dipped cones were simply the plain cones that had been dipped. She didn't understand this complicated fact, nor could she be made to understand this complicated fact. She stared at me blankly and said 'I don't understand what you are saying" (This is a translation from the indigenous language of the 757).

Meanwhile, the cones had been made and the guy who made them stood there, breathing on them. He said, "do you want these plain cones?" I asked him to pretend to dip them. He refused.

Another employee did seem to grasp the small cone-to-dipped cone continuum but couldn't ring it up without voiding the original cones. The manager came over.

In an irrelevant but interesting detail, he wore an eye patch.

He refused to ring up the special. "The special is only for the dipped cones" he told me, with something approximating hatred in his voice. I tried reasoning with them that the regular cones and the dipped cones were actually the same thing, the only difference being that the dipped cones were dipped. No dice.

The phrase "the customer is always right" (learned when I myself worked at two separate ice cream stores as a 16-17 year old) blended with the reality of "discretionary spending during the worst downturn since the Great Depression" to produce a crystal vision in my brain that I would indeed be sassified. No.

Reasoning that not dipping the cones actually saved him both materials and labor costs got nowhere. The manager became belligerent. He said one substitution would mean everybody would demand substitutions. I pointed out that technically this was not a substitution but a subtraction. This didn't persuade him. I mentioned that he would have to discard the cones now thoroughly staturated by the open-mouth breathing of the cone maker. This argument equally had no weight.

I was left with no option other than to walk out. We had frozen custard instead around the corner with zero hassle.

My wife was not surprised at the exchange but she was surprised at my surprise (not to mention my need to discourse on it at great length while eating the custard). Her take is that I was asking far too much of the DQ employees to think abstractly.

I ask you, dear reader, if it is indeed abstract thought to differentiate a dipped from an undipped cone? If this is abstract thinking beyond the power of even DQ workers, can you please tell me where I sign up for the slow boat to China?

This case is interesting in all sorts of ways, not least is that it is a pioneering case under the Alien Torts Statute.

If the criminality and stupidity of mountaintop removal weren't enough here in the good ole U.S. of A, a new suit claims an Alabama coal company has employed a longstanding US policy of funneling money to third world murderers and is using your monthly electricity payment to fund death squads in Columbia.

Undismayed is shocked that anyone would think a coal company would employ thugs and murderers to terrorize union leaders in Columbia. In West Virginia-- sure, but in a bastion of safety and legality like Columbia?

"Relatives of dozens of slain Colombians sued an Alabama-based coal company in federal court Thursday, accusing it of making millions of dollars in payments to a paramilitary group that sowed terror in the South American country.

The suit filed in Birmingham said 67 victims of the The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, also known as AUC, included unionists, farmworkers and others. It claimed the rightwing group received payments from operatives for Drummond allegedly to assassinate top union leaders and protect the company's large coal mine and railroad in Colombia.

The lawsuit is much broader than one filed in March by the children of three slain Colombian union leaders against Drummond Co. Inc.

A similar lawsuit ended in 2007 with a verdict for Drummond, which has repeatedly denied any connection with the Colombian violence. The verdict was upheld by a federal appeals court in December.

The plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit include hundreds of parents, children and siblings of people allegedly killed by AUC, mostly in Colombia's Cesar and Magdalena provinces.

A spokesman for Drummond, Bruce Windham, was out of its Birmingham headquarters Thursday and not immediately available to return a call for comment.

Attorney Terry Collingsworth, who represents the plaintiffs, said the latest lawsuit was filed because of new information alleging that Drummond made payments to the paramilitary group, which he said "terrorized people up and down Drummond's railroad corridor."

The suit lists both the victims and their relatives with pseudonyms such as "Jane Doe" or "Peter Doe," followed by a sequence of numbers. A motion is pending seeking to allow the suit to go forward while keeping the plaintiffs anonymous.

"Many of the AUC leaders are now speaking freely about their relationship with the elites of the Colombian business community, and their direct collaboration with the Colombian military," the suit said.

The suit, like the earlier ones, was filed under the more than 200-year-old Alien Torts Claims Act, which allows foreigners to file suit in U.S. courts for alleged wrongdoing overseas.

The initial suit was the first filed against a U.S. corporation under the law to ever make it to trial."

I haven't trimmed down my own great Ruben Vela footage since some fancy new software is on the near horizon for the Wayne's film and I figured it can wait, but of course someone else has loaded some onto youtube already. Ruebn Vela is playing this on the night of his 72nd birthday.




and here is some great footage from 1988 when Vela and band were definitely sounding great. Not bad to sound the same (in the best way) for 21 years. My sources tell me that in this footage its Ruben Garza on bajo, now of Los Dos Gilbertos, which is probably the other greatest older traditional conjunto out there nowadays.

Worth noting the Ruben Vela shirts the band is wearing: "PURO PARTY"

For some reason the Sullivan Family never sounds as good on their records as they do live, but this clip captures some of their greatness. The song is not the most compelling one, but Marge's voice sounds great and Brother Enoch's fiddling is a pure thing. Really you have to see them live, outside at a bluegrass festival when Brother Enoch is unrestrained. These seemed filmed in a church.



I have a theory that Marge Sullivan was partly a model for Marge Simpson. The voice is close. The hair a dead ringer. Any takers?

Marge just recently had a five-way bypass after a huge heart attack. You can send her a get-well card here:

Margie Sullivan
c/o The Sullivan Family
P.O. Box 69
St. Stephens, AL 36569

she starts singing at 2:40 in this one:



I've been putting our 50+ hours of Wayne's footage on a harddrive and so have been saturated with this song of late.

I opened a gmail account and, as you know, google reads the emails and pitches ads based on them. As all the privacy experts say, email has no expectation of privacy anyway, so if google's machines read my emails I guess it is little different than the government sniffers reading them or whatever Russian spybot has installed itself on my computer. I have two blogs for f's sake, so I am not exactly off the grid. I am far more concerned that when you embed a youtube video in a blog it provides tracking information to google forever.

A friend of mine wrote me to tell me that gmail trolls for information. Google helpfully put an ad up about troll candles. Who knew there was a market for such a thing?

speaking of setting up today's tracking:

I don't usually link to this kind of shit since there are so many places on the web that already do (and there are so few sites that instead reward you with Mexican music, as is one of Undismayed's charges) but this collection of bad unicorn tattoos (found via Andrew Sullivan) is so fucked up it is worth looking at.

I found that it is kind of amusing but rapidly brings on a feeling akin to clinical depression.

The Nazi unicorn is perhaps the most notable in terms of gauging the state of affairs in America today, but this one caught my eye because it is just so damn true:

I haven't been posting because I've been too busy, but things have been good.

The Conjunto Festival en San Antonio was, as expected and as usual, a great damn time in all ways. The music was phenomenal, this year had some particularly good bands. All I missed was the opportunity to dance since my lovely wife was not there. The music was made for dancing.

I have some great long clips I need to figure out how to shorten so I can post some parts of them. I thought there was an editing function for the videos but haven't discovered it yet. I have one incredible 17 minute clip of Ruben Vela playing without pause when he turned 72 on Saturday night, which I think was the highlight of the festival. He was, quite simply, kicking ass. I am really stoked the sound came out because of course it was superhumanly loud. But I have this new little HD camera and it works incredibly well.

Here is a brief polka played by Los Badd Boyz del Valle at the very start of the festival, I think the 2nd band (hence the light crowd). I have never seen them before. Turns out that despite the name they were a great band. After they played this they played a medly of all of the major styles in the Valley which was a tour de force. I liked this little bit because it was an old timey sound without the full conjunto. I was standing really far back in this instance, but the sound is good.



Good times were helped by the fact that we figured out the San Antonio bus system, which allowed for greater cold beer consumption at the festival. Also capitalized on the suggestions of some locals for food on the west side. So if you are talking nonstop conjunto music, cold beer, and dozens of firstrate tamales for breakfast, what else, exactly, does one need?

know what I'm saying?






The Conjunto festival will be starting off right.

It's too simplistic to call him the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion. He's as brooding and brilliant as Miles Davis, as distrustful and temperamental as Chuck Berry and flamboyant, hedonistic and mystical as Keith Richards.

Only Jordan would have dared tell Carlos Santana how to play guitar. Flaco Jimenez poses for pictures with fans; Jordan won't.

He's not a museum piece, either. “It doesn't mean anything,” said Jordan about the tribute. “I just want to play. I'm ready to go. I'm going to do what I do and then get the hell out of there.”

He has a standing gig in San Antonio on Friday nights too, after the festival ends.

I happened on Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper's LP "Sacred Songs" at a garage sale and a great melancholy welled up in me ("so sad, the birds stopped their singing") to find that on this otherwise quite good record (with, for example, the great "Too much sinning, not enough praying" on it) they re-recorded "Walking My Lord Up Calvary's Hill sans-recitation call and response (where that "so sad..." line comes from).

Now that I write that it occurs to me that I am not sure if it counts as a full recitation actually, given the response, but definitely it exists on the same plane.

There might be better records, but there are few better fully realized records than this one, with the real version:



The spring is the season when morons dump their record collections. I picked up more than I could carry for 20 bucks for the lot of them from some guy selling off his father-in-laws possessions. Being selective from that stack (in technical terms, a shitload) I ended up with 79 keepers (George Jones, Ernest Tubb, much Merle Haggard, Buck Owens of course, and speaking of the all-time recitation king, quite a few Porter Wagoners, Cash, etc), and an equal amount of shit in good shape to sell on ebay. Plus perhaps the largest stack of Charlie Pride I have ever seen (saying a lot, since back when I packed up things to go to Korea I got of an equally large stack of Charlie Pride plus a five LP set, he is like a boomerang, refusing to leave you be. There was a goodly pile of true shit as well, of course, but this is in the nature of things.

Those of you who know me know that I tend toward voracious acquisition of music. So I was pretty sure I could not be surprised when my wife said she was getting me some Cajun solo record by a famous player that she thinks I never heard of. I rattled off a bunch of great and fairly obscure things I thought she might have come across (Varise Connor's essential and kind of rare disc, or maybe Octa Clark's fairly obscure home recordings) but she kept saying no, no.

My wife, being a genius, had managed to find a cd of solo cajun triangle by Christina Balfa. The cd is done with a good sense of humor and nails the genre (down to the faux self-serious overwritten liner notes by Dirk Powell). The playing is seriously done, which makes the whole thing even better realized. 45 minutes of solo Cajun triangle. It is listenable... but I am not sure I would say so for everyone. But next time I am in a jam I definitely will play the tunes off the album, in order.

This is off the swine flu topic, but I did come across this signature line in one of the accordion posts:

"Phil 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Including play the accordion!"

News You can Use:

For swine flu information Undismayed turns, of course, to the conjunto music discussion lists. There we learn the following:

"In this case I say let er' ride! Thanx for the concern. I JUST HOPE THE SWINE FLU IS NOT IN BEER 12 OZ!!"

and

" QUE SWINE FLU NI NADA CON UNAS CARNITAS, y TACOS
DE CHICHARRON CON FRIJOLES Y UNA DOZENA DE TAMALES CON CHILE PICOSO Y SE LE QUITA TODO

RECETA DEL DR. GONZALEZ."

I just learned that Brother Claude Ely has a website, made by his great nephew Macel Ely II.

If you are not familiar with Brother Claude, you must become so. He was a Pentecostal preacher and recording star for King records and I would argue he is the missing link between old time music and rock and roll (He obviously had wide influence on Elvis and others, as you can hear in the playing and singing and becauxe they covered his songs). Brother Claude wrote many magnificent songs. He was a pluperfect genius.

See for yourself, there are some clips on the page or be wise and go buy his essential cd. "Aint No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down" is the most well known, and rightly so. If nothing else, this song would have given Brother Claude his meeting in the air.

I heard back in the fall from the head of Dust to Digital records that there exists many more unreleased recordings of Brother Claude, a treasure trove he was trying to get to release. It is good to be alive.

Macel II is apparently writing a book about Brother Claude, which is forthcoming.

I really like his calendar of places he will be signing the book, with unknown dates, but all perfectly in order. It might not be a bad idea to begin assembling such calendars of events at time TBA and date TBA.

Hard times around here, shore nuff:

Here is an email I received from a student just now:

"I am sending this email to let you know that I will probably not be in class today. I received car damage this morning around 11am. and I am currently at the BMW Dealer getting my car sorted for them to fix it"

I just heard that old time fiddler Lee Stripling died.

Sometimes I am not sure why I listen to anything other than the Stanley Brothers. I mean, why bother? Why do I stray?

I've really been focusing on those King recordings, Sacred Songs from the Hills, and the Mercury years.

As Carter says: "this country music, folk music, bluegrass music, -- or whatever you like"






You know what I like about this is the cadence to it--still a driving tune but actually pretty damn slow. That sense has gotten lost I think.

(I'm glad to see that Ralph's webpage sucks, it shouldn't be any other way).


I can't seem to find any Roy Lee Centers footage on youtube, can that really be?

I finally got my plans squared away for the Conjunto festival in San Antonio in a month. I am very happy to be getting back to San Antonio after a couple of years away.

Here are the great Los Dos Gilbertos sounding good at the festival in 2007, the last time I was there. I always like the guy on the far right -- not a Gilberto -- who exists only to announce "LOS DOS GILBERTOS--CONJUNTO MUSIC AT ITS VERY BEST!" throughout the entire set.




The distorted quality of the sound on this video is pretty true to life. The sound at the TCF is louder than any metal show I have seen. It is kind of nuts, actually.

I'm a bit behind posting about this interesting little article and have had the window sitting open on my computer for a few days waiting to post and now that open window is threatening to destabilize world peace around here so I am posting it to liberate myself.

All a long winded way of introducing the article about the centrality of cell phone ring tones for the regional Mexican music market.

"Sensing the rising power of regional Mexican music’s fan base and keeping an eye on general Latin consumer trends (Latinos were twice as likely as non-Latinos to purchase ring tones in 2008), every major phone company has made deals with regional Mexican acts: sponsoring concert tours, offering “mobile tickets” to shows, bundling song downloads and ring tones with phone subscriptions and selling phone cards emblazoned with the faces of popular bands like Los Temerarios everywhere from Wal-Mart to weekend swap meets. (Call to collect your minutes, and a member of the band greets you.) While AT&T began sponsoring tours in 2004, only now is there unanimous agreement among phone companies that regional Mexican is central to the future of mobile music."

And inevitably, as you might expect, the Mexican fans are being gouged by the cellphone companies:

"Because fans of regional Mexican music tend to be working-class immigrants and their United States-born children, they don’t fit the typical musical consumption patterns of the digital age. They most likely don’t own a home computer, don’t use a credit card and don’t have broadband at home, all prerequisites for an iTunes account. Instead they buy prepaid phone cards with cash and use their cellphones as mobile, personal jukeboxes, often downloading ring tones from their cellular providers for about $3 each, three times the price from iTunes or Zune.

“This audience has adopted the mobile phone as their primary means of communication,” said Oliver Buckwell of the marketing agency Tribal Brands, which has set up deals between Verizon and regional Mexican acts. “It is also now their primary means of getting music.”"

You probably have noticed that all Mariachis have cellphones hanging off of their tight pants. This almost seems like part of the Mariachi uniform in the globalized era.

I will confess to having been tempted to put a Los Razos de Sacramento or Ramon Ayala ringtone on my phone, though the idea of paying for a ringtone is actually something I could never consider. Thus I dangle between these powerful opposing forces, betwixt and between.

Josh Kun, the writer of this article, wrote a book that, in a moment of watertightness, I just started reading recently and which I recommend to you, friend: Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America.

First they came for the chickens...

...next they'll come for any one who "has had drugs introduced...from Mexico in their veins" which by conservative estimates is 85% of American teenagers.

"LAS CRUCES — In all, 618 chicks, hens and roosters were euthanized following a cockfighting raid in Doña Ana County over the weekend, an official said Monday.

The birds were euthanized to eliminate cockfighting breeding lines and because many likely had been given medications from Mexico, said Curtis Childress, animal control supervisor for Doña Ana County.

"The laws on drugs in Mexico are different from the laws in the United States, so the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) is not going to allow us to put a bird back into the population that has had drugs introduced to it from Mexico and then that bird ends up back in the food chain," he said. "Those birds we'd never turn over to the shelter and allow them to adopt them out.""

It sounds like they shelter, utilizing a Nazi-era innovation, gassed the birds with a truck's exhaust:

"Beth Vesco-Mock, animal shelter director, said she received an order from the sheriff's department to euthanize all the birds. She said shelter staff euthanized them in two waves — one group of 358 animals Saturday night and a second group of 47 Sunday morning.

Childress said additional euthanasias were conducted on the properties using the emergency rescue vehicle, including all of the birds taken at the Koogle Road site.

Owners of the animals first relinquished ownership to county authorities, which is why the county had authority to kill the birds, Childress said. Once they were in county's control, as with other species of animals, it was up to officials' to decide their fate, he said.

Childress said some owners opted not to give all of their birds to authorities.

Childress said his department isn't singling out cockfighting but is simply enforcing animal abuse laws on the books.

"Our job is to deal with any issue that involves a violation of law," he said. "We work many hoarding cases. We work cockfighting cases, dog fighting cases and cruelty cases.""

I'm a gentleman, as you no doubt understand. So my delicate sensibilities were a bit disturbed this morning when I sat down to eat breakfast, opened the paper, and read there on page 2 that Farrah Fawcett has anal cancer. That freaking phrase just really gnawed into my brain in a way the constant parade of violence and shooting in the local paper generally does not.

Just what the fuck is "anal cancer"? Isn't there a polite term for this? Is anal cancer the new colon cancer? Why not "rectal cancer"? Aren't rectums and anuses the same thing? (Similar in the way that Mitch McConnell and George Allen are similar?)

And why drag poor Farrah through the mud? Doesn't she deserve to expire with some dignity and not to get fucked up the ass by the media in this way (choice of phrase deliberate, if a bit obvious...)

Newsweek, the anal cancer of weekly newsmagazines, informs us that anal cancer is on the rise:

"But on Sept. 29, less than a month after the emotional reunion, Fawcett received devastating news: she had anal cancer. The diagnosis reunited her with on-and-off boyfriend, actor Ryan O'Neal, the father of her 22-year-old son, Redmond. He was Fawcett's constant companion as she went through chemotherapy treatments and radiation in late 2006. She was declared cancer-free in February; but, after a routine checkup this May, the 60-year-old learned the cancer had returned.

Anal cancer is relatively rare: the American Cancer Society estimates that 4,650 cases will be diagnosed this year. But the organization says the number is rising. Fawcett falls into the demographic most affected by the disease: she's in her early 60s and female. (Women are slightly more susceptible to anal cancer than men.)

The cancer develops in the tissues of the anus, either in the anal canal or opening. It can cause bleeding, itching, pain or discharge."

Heartwarming that Ryan and Farrah reunited over anal cancer, isn't it? But I just realized that that Newsweek story is 2 years old. Where have I been during the past two years of Farrah's anal cancer?

Deborah Kotz in U.S. News helpfully tells us today that we will be able to watch the film version of Farrah's battle with anal cancer:

"I hope Farrah Fawcett will recover fully from this latest complication. I'm eager to see the documentary she's working on about her treatment experience. The fact that she has documented and shared her fight with cancer suggests that she, too, recognizes the importance of the teaching moment."

"eager"?

This seems like it is too perfect a story to be true, especially the quotes, but it is from the Detroit News, and that is a "newspaper".
I think the fact that his house is referred to as an "urban Appalachia" is what gives it the true ring.

"When selecting the best raccoon carcass for the special holiday roast, both the connoisseur and the curious should remember this simple guideline: Look for the paw.

"The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.
While economic times are tough across Michigan as its people slog through a difficult and protracted deindustrialization, Beasley remains upbeat.

Where one man sees a vacant lot, Beasley sees a buffet.

"Starvation is cheap," he says as he prepares an afternoon lunch of barbecue coon and red pop at his west side home.

His little Cape Cod is an urban Appalachia of coon dogs and funny smells. The interior paint has the faded sepia tones of an old man's teeth; the wallpaper is as flaky and dry as an old woman's hand.

Beasley peers out his living room window. A sushi cooking show plays on the television. The neighborhood outside is a wreck of ruined houses and weedy lots.

"Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do."

A licensed hunter and furrier, Beasley says he hunts coons and rabbit and squirrel for a clientele who hail mainly from the South, where the wild critters are considered something of a delicacy.

Though the flesh is not USDA inspected, if it is thoroughly cooked, there is small chance of contracting rabies from the meat, and distemper and Parvo cannot be passed onto humans, experts say.

Doing for yourself, eating what's natural, that was Creation's intention, Beasley believes. He says he learned that growing up in Three Creeks, Ark.

"Coon or rabbit. God put them there to eat. When men get hold of animals he blows them up and then he blows up. Fill 'em so full of chemicals and steroids it ruins the people. It makes them sick. Like the pigs on the farm. They's 3 months old and weighing 400 pounds. They's all blowed up. And the chil'ren who eat it, they's all blowed up. Don't make no sense."

I came across this announcement. I'll be in Chicago the day after this so I will, unfortunately, miss the chance to hear the musical clay pot. For free.

The Carnatica Brothers will perform Wednesday April 8, 7 pm at Preston Bradley Hall in Chicago. K.N. Shashikiran, who plays ghatam (a South Indian musical clay pot) and C.P. Ganesh, who plays Chitravina (a twenty-one stringed fretless Indian lute) are cousins who perform as a vocal duo under the name the Carnatica Brothers.

They have become leading figures of South Indian classical (Carnatic) vocal music over their young career. They will be accompanied by percussionist Tanjore Murugabhoopathi on Mridangam (a barrel shaped traditional South Indian drum) and child prodigy musician Sandeep N. Bharadwaj on violin.

Chicago Cultural Center, 78 East Washington Street. Admission is free.

Undismayed has not died, but has been coiled in the shadows waiting to strike, or something like that.

I know some people headed to England and they are staying at a hotel called The Spread Eagle Hotel. Seems like a nice place... though I would have guessed it only rented by the hour. Badabum!

I like the contact email for the hotel: spreadeagle@hshotels.co.uk.

Boy, you travel abroad and it is high hi-larity the way those foreigners misuse English, isn't it?

On the home today I gassed up in the hood because I was almost on empty and the gas was just too cheap to pass up. Technically I was on the edge of the hood (dividing line train tracks in sight), as to stop at the gas station in the heart of the hood is literally to take your life if you hands (though there has been only one actual murder there, we did hear several shots on Monday evening as we sat quietly at home). The edge of the hood, on the hood side, is still the hood, but I figured it was safer.

Anyway, there is a (small) point to this story. I was standing there at the pump thinking vaguely of what I would do if I got car jacked (which has happened just across the street) especially since my child was there in the back seat. The makings of a Denzel Washington film. D.

So, these thoughts are running through my mind when a guy comes striding up to me with great vigor yelling "hey, hey." My heart leaped, as you might imagine. He was tugging at something in his waistband. I was thinking oh fuck, this can't actually be happening, how can this be happening?

Turns out he was a harmless dude with some porn dvds to sell me, stuck in his underwear waistband, whipped out with a flourish.

Curious on several levels-- perhaps first and foremost, why would I want to touch these things? And why sneak around and peddle porn at gas stations when it is sold all over the place, all the time?

There weren't any other takers at the station.

That shooting in Alabama is obviously screwed up, 10 dead. Terrible it is when some crazy goes crazy.

Then there is this quote:

"“It is truly one of the most horrific things that anyone in law enforcement can remember in Alabama,” said Col. J. Christopher Murphy, the director of the state’s Public Safety Department. “We’re still getting victims coming in.”"

it may seem mean spirited to ask, but don't you just have this feeling that there are more horrific things in Alabama to be remembered than some lone nut gunman's shooting spree? Terrorist racist violence directed by the highest state authorities? Church bombings?

Every time one of these old timers passes on I start thinking about how I need to see the ones still living. I can remember writing almost the same thing a year and a half ago when Porter Wagoner died.

So as I was pondering the demise of Hank Locklin (who I never saw play) it occured to me that I had better go see Conway Twitty. I have been listening to a lot of Conway Twitty. He seemed to have recorded something like a hundred thousand records (plus the duets). I even have been sporting a Conway Twitty hairstyle many of these days, especially before I get around to cutting my hair back a bit (not by choice, I was given the hair of Conway Twitty and I wear it proudly).

But now I look him up and find that he has actually been dead for 16 years. Maybe this is something I should have known. Oh cruel world! Now I will never see him.

(You never miss your mother until she's gone!)

And now the terrible truth--Conway was called home and in his stead the forces of darkness have made CONWAY TWITTY: THE MAN, THE MUSIC, THE LEGEND, THE MUSICAL.

This is it, friends, End Times. Trials, Troubles, Tribulations.

His early rockabilly stuff is great, but hard to beat the classics. His voice is sounding a bit raw here:


or this, from 1971

I was sad to hear that Hank Locklin died today. 91 years old.

Of course, I thought he was long since dead, as much as I thought about such things, so to find out that he was actually alive and still making music, and that he has tragically died, well, that is sad-making.

Hank Locklin's webpage has this friendly reminder on the bottom: "Remember: It is a mark of distinction to have a Hank Locklin record in your home!"

(It is interesting to note that his webpage is marginally less crappy than most people of his generation. Many of the old greats have been saddled with terrible webpages that have layers of useless animation before you can get to the aborted core of the thing, I must think it all results from incompetent management agencies.)

I've always really liked Locklin's music. Solid country, good songs, and a certain tone to his voice which was good. He was no ET, of course, but there was and is only one ET.

That said, Locklin's hit "Send me the pillow that you dream on" is surely a great song, and his version of "Fifty Miles of Elbow Room" was also very fine.

But is seems to me that Hank Locklin was put here on God's Green Earth to sing "Rio Grande Waltz." I love that song. Sing it all the time, in fact.

One thing I particularly love is that throughout the song Locklin always calls the river "River Rio Grande."

Another dude I have been listening to recently is Wally Gonzalez

I don't know what it is, but LP pickings in thrift stores of late have been superb, particularly of late 50s through early 70s country and bluegrass (with mid-60s being the best represented). Since this is great music it is hard to complain. It helps too that I am a big fan of both Conway Twitty and Porter Wagoner, since both of those dudes seem to have recorded 100s of albums. But maybe the stuff that has been most interesting to me are some early Hank Williams, Jr. records like "I've got a right to cry" and "Eleven Roses." I think his later stuff is pure shite, but these are really good.

I'm happy the pickings have been good because CHKD, which has dozens on thrift stores around here, has jacked prices up to $1.98. Maybe a buck is relative 'jacking' considering the total cost, but it seems like an outrage to me to charge more than a buck at a thrift store.

I have a couple theories why there are suddenly a ton of good picks across the region in all 7 cities. One, I think that a certain era of country listener is starting to die off and their kids just dump wholesale record collections in the thrift stores (they have tended to come in big clumps). My other theory is that the foreclosure crisis is forcing people to quickly dump their stuff that might otherwise be sold.

Or perhaps there are many good records around because End Times are nigh, that is my other theory.

Also, the Conjunto Festival in San Antonio has released its schedule. As usual, it promises to be an ideal weekend.

GUADALUPE CULTURAL ARTS CENTER
28TH ANNUAL
TEJANO CONJUNTO FESTIVAL EN SAN ANTONIO 2009
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE


Tuesday, May 5/Guadalupe Theatre/9-11am/Free Admission for Senior Citizens

Seniors Conjunto Dance

Featuring Conjunto Music Hall of Famers
El Pavo Grande Salvador García and
Eddie “Lalo” Torres y Anita Paíz y su Conjunto


Wednesday, May 6/Guadalupe Theatre/7-9pm/Free Admission

Best of the Tejano Conjunto Festival CD Release Party

20th Anniversary of
The Best of the 8th Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival 1989

The Best of the 27th Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival 2008


Thursday, May 7/Rosedale Park/6-11pm/$12 per person*

6:00 Los Hermanos De León
7:00 Los Badd Boyz del Valle
8:00 Sunny Sauceda
9:00 Joel Guzmán & Sarah Fox
Special Tribute to Esteban Jordán
10:00 Esteban Jordán y su Rio Jordán


Friday, May 8/Rosedale Park/7pm-12am/$13 per person*

Puro Conjunto Pesado

7:00 Bene Medina y el Conjunto Águila
8:00 Los Monarcas de Pete y Mario Díaz
9:00 Ricky Naranjo y Los Gamblers
10:00 Cuatro Rosas
11:00 Los Dos Gilbertos


Saturday, May 9/Rosedale Park/2pm-12am/$15 per person*

Puro Conjunto Pesado

2:00 Conjunto Heritage Taller/Conjunto Palo Alto
3:00 Chano Cadena y su Conjunto
4:00 Ricardo Guzmán y Los Tres Aces
5:00 Conjunto Borrego de Jesse Borrego Sr. y Jr.
6:00 Johnny “El Brujo” Cruz and the Texas Chain Gang
7:00 Los Cuatro Vientos de Jimmy Bejarano
8:00 Eva Ybarra y su Conjunto
9:00 Oscar Hernández and the Tuff Band
10:00 Rubén Vela y su Conjunto
11:00 Mingo Saldívar y sus Tremendos Cuatro Espadas



* 3-Day Pass Pre-Sale: $25 for GCAC Members, $30 for Non-GCAC Members
At the door: $30 GCAC Members, $35 Non-Members



Workshops in the Button Accordion and Bajo Sexto, with a special session
On Accordion Tuning, Maintenance & Repair, will be offered on May 7-9
(Thursday-Saturday) at the Guadalupe Theatre. These workshops will be
conducted by conjunto greats Oscar Hernández and Jesús “Chucho” Perales.
For registration information (days, times, prices, etc.), call 210.271.3151 or visit
www.guadalupeculturalarts.org

I haven't been posting recently, but I have been listening to a lot of Gilberto Perez polkas:

This is a bizarre story. It seems made up to give bloggers something to say:

Apparently a chimp made crazed by Lyme disease just ripped the face off of a woman in Conneticut . That is an unusual sequence of things in a single sentence, surely a winner. "Lyme disease" "ripped the face off" no making things up.

"Travis’s owner, Sandra Herold, 70, had raised him almost as one of her own children, but found herself lunging at him with a butcher knife on Monday to protect Ms. Nash, said Capt. Conklin, who gave the following account."

The owner's attack with a butcher knife is also kind of insane.

Why do fools keep chimps and why are they allowed to keep chimps (except Michael Jackson). Now, someone with a sense of humor must be able to make this into a joke about Michael Jackson and his chimp, and his face coming off,... you see where I'm going with this? The stuff of comedy, the bright side of this woman losing her face.

from the AP story we get these further details:

"In recordings of calls to 911 dispatchers released Tuesday, Travis' grunts can be heard as a frantic Herold cries that her pet is "eating" Nash and must be killed. The attack lasted about 12 minutes.

"The chimp killed my friend!" says a sobbing Herold, who was hiding in her vehicle. "Send the police with a gun. With a gun!"

The dispatcher later asks, "Who's killing your friend?"

"My chimpanzee!" she cries. "He ripped her apart! Shoot him, shoot him!"

After police arrive, one officer radios back: "There's a man down. He doesn't look good," he says, referring to Nash. "We've got to get this guy out of here. He's got no face.""

If you have a chimp, shouldn't you own a gun? That seems like common sense. This exchange clearly shows the owner to be both an idiot and a lunatic.

"Don Mecca, a family friend from Colchester, N.Y., said Herold, whose daughter died several years ago in a car accident, fed the chimp steak, lobster, ice cream and Italian food."

It seems only fair that the state of Conneticut sees to it that her face be ripped off in retribution.

"Police said that Travis was agitated earlier Monday and that Herold had given him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in some tea. Police said the drug had not been prescribed for the 14-year-old chimp.

In humans, Xanax can cause memory loss, lack of coordination, reduced sex drive and other side effects. It can also lead to aggression in people who were unstable to begin with, said Dr. Emil Coccaro, chief of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Center."

"Xanax could have made him worse," if human studies are any indication, Coccaro said.

Stephen Rene Tello, executive director of Primarily Primates, a sanctuary for chimps in Texas, said it is difficult to say what effect Xanax would have on a chimp, but he noted that chimps and humans have similar physiology.

Investigators said they were also told that Travis had Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness with flu-like symptoms that can lead to arthritis and meningitis in humans."

The idea that Lyme disease is the culprit is pretty frigging rich. Methinks the NYTimes ran with that idea to cover up the clear reality that Xanax will make you rip somebody's face off.

This whole sordid business all brings to mind that story from years ago (that for whatever reason I remember clearly) when a pet chimp ripped off a man's foot and his scrotom at the chimp's own birthday party.

" A man was critically injured and two animals shot dead at a chimps' tea party in California.

St James Davis, 62, had his nose ripped off, and his testicles and foot severed, after he took a chimp out of its cage at an animal refuge so it could eat a piece of birthday cake.

Mr Davis and his wife, LaDonna, 64, had visited the Animal Haven Ranch in Caliente on Thursday to celebrate the birthday of Moe, a chimp they had kept as a pet before he was removed for biting a woman's finger.

As the couple stood outside Moe's enclosure, Buddy and Ollie, two male chimps from an adjoining cage, jumped on Mr Davis. After Buddy was shot, Ollie dragged Mr Davis down the road. Doctors said most of Mr Davis's face had been chewed off. His wife was bitten on the hand.

Workers at the refuge shot and killed the two chimps and recaptured two others who broke out of their cages."

It is told with a bit more wit here.

The testicles and the foot. Those are the details that you will remember. Until they come for you, too.

I don't know if you have spent much time listening to Indian or Hindustani slide guitar music, but it is pretty cool. Actually, you'd have no idea just from hearing it that it's played on a guitar rather than a veena.

I always thought it was the sole province of Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, since he invented the instrument, but I gather that there are some others out there. If you go to that Bhatt website (or directly here) you can see a picture of his "Mohan Veena".

I just started to think about this music again because somehow I stumbled on this Mohna Veena for sale on ebay. I actually have no idea how I got to that particular page, call it the hand of destiny. A bit out of my range, to say the least, but cool that it is available.

Someday I'd like to get serious about Indian music, what incredible stuff it is. For now I have a sitar gathering dust. I did practice it for a time but the extensive tuning required at any one session ususally drove me back to the banjo. You don't even need to tune one of those damn things.

Surrounded by Ascension Technologists, teaching of the Mystery Schools

I have had enough of dumbfucks today. Good reason to have a blog, to air these feelings...only reason to have a blog...or two...

One variant of dumbfuck is really common around here in the 757--the white gangbanger. Perhaps more pathetic than anything else. Is there anything stupider than some pasty white dude holding up his hugely baggy pants with one hand with a stiff brimmed baseball hat directed to the 3 o'clock position? And no, it is not just that I am old, this is an uniquely fucking idiotic look.

The second breed of dumbfuck I am dwelling on at the moment is the first time ebay buyer. These time consuming shitstains almost invariably pay too much for something, have a hard time figuring out how to pay, email questions constantly, need reassurance and handpatting, and then want a freaking refund. Always a hassle. And, worse yet, there is almost certainly a guarantee that I myself have already spent their goddamn illspent money! What flows in must flow out. The wind blows forward and the dust blows back. One red bean stuck in the bottom of a tin can.

And finally, (feeling better now) is there a dumberfuck than a yoga instructor? Or at least, a yoga instructor who feels compelled to write a description of her "practice". To wit~ (I've highlighted particular inanities)

"Breathwork/Bio-energy Facilitator & Creative Spiritual Life Coach Yoga & Meditation Teacher XXXX has studied and continues to study with a variety of teachers of Yoga, Alchemy, and the teaching of the Mystery Schools. She has been studying and teaching yoga since 1993. She has degree in Liberal Arts with focus on Philosophy, Religion, and Spiritual Studies. She has a strong private practice and teaches within the community. XXXX’s approach to teaching and guiding comes from her exploration and personal practice. She has a unique, playful and articulate way of guiding people into the understanding of the process of transforming from the inside out. XXXX teaches by example as she understands that we can not take anyone into places we have not personally gone. She began her studies of yoga, breath, and meditation in the early 1990’s with Kathleen Barratt at the Subtle Energy Institute in Virginia Beach, VA. She is recognized as an advanced teacher in facilitating and teaching Breathwork and meditation with groups and individuals, and she continues her studies through the Subtle Energy Institute. She has completed her training in Basics through Level One in Bio-energy as taught by Margaret and Mietek Wirkus. She is a certified teacher of the KaliRayTriYoga Method of Hatha Yoga. Basics through Level 2. She started studying with TriYoga in 1996. ..... spiritual mentoring, creative life coaching and she is an Ascension Technologist. Her certifications are with.... Bio-energy - Mystery School Studies, Personal Process and Spiritual Counseling : Conscious Living: Healing the Mind, Empowering the Spirit ` chakra series for the Soul BluePrint. Suzanna Kennedy ~ Certified in Divine Human Upgrades. Ascension Technologist. Anchor your Soul And Divine BluePrint On A Personal Note: It is a passion for me to support others in seeking what they desire to create in life and to discover what attitudes and beliefs are not in alignment with that desire. It is a creative and exploratory process that allows us to align ourselves with the soul’s purpose. I have explored the concept of living from intention, and I know its importance in supporting, shaping, and transforming consciousness. I teach what I practice, and I realize that my life is a work in progress. I continue to study, explore and share with other teachers and truth-seeking beings. I am a student of life, continually striving to obtain spiritual awareness through relationships and through my intense personal desire for happiness, health, wellness, wellbeing, freedom and joy. I am heart-fully dedicated to providing a warm and inviting environment for students to discover consciousness through the body. We honor the union of body, mind and spirit as a sanctuary to which we turn for peace and equanimity and a deeper connection to the authentic Self."

p.s. Undismayed provides that much needed deeper connection to the authentic Self.

I was having my mind blown listening to Mingus at Antibes tonight, which I haven't listened to in at least a decade and which is an unbelievably kick ass piece of work that you should direct yourself to stat. (take a break from the norteño polkas for a day).

Poking around about Mingus I come across that his papers are now at the Library of Congress (since 2005, but I haven't been paying attention) so that is a tempting thing to go wade into sometime. Here's the finding aid for it.

I had some qualms about the stimulus bill, but now that I hear what Huckabee has to say I think we need two of these damn things:

Huckabee: Stimulus is 'anti-religious'
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee warned supporters Tuesday that the $828 billion stimulus package is “anti-religious.”

In an e-mail that was also posted on his blog ahead of the Senate’s passage, Huckabee wrote: “The dust is settling on the ‘bipartisan’ stimulus bill and one thing is clear: It is anti-religious.”

The former Republican presidential candidate pointed to a provision in both the House and Senate versions banning higher education funds in the bill from being used on a “school or department of divinity.”

Huckabee's incredible powers of insight do not fail him:

“You would think the ACLU drafted this bill,” Huckabee said. “For all of the talk about bipartisanship, this Congress is blatantly liberal.”

One note and one question to the rightwing twits in this country.

The Note: the Party of God lost the last election. Got its ass handed to it. Totally and utterly got the stiff-arm re-j. This means the commie libs are in control, like it or not Turns out real Americans didn't want the Taliban using federal tax money to set up Baptist madrassas.

The question: why the fuck should the people who won the election be bipartisan with the rump extremist element left behind in Congress? Bipartisanship is just another word for getting cornholed. There was zero talk of bipartisanship when the Party of God was dismantling the rule of law in America and all of the various other legacies of the Bush years. I am not alone in noting that suddenly these craven piles of shit are demanding (yes, actually demanding) bipartisan consideration. Obama is too "articulate" to say it straight, but here it is: go fuck yourselves!

Then Huckabee rounds it out with a howler:

'“This is the opening round of the Democrats’ campaign for big government,” he wrote. “We cannot afford to sit round one out, because if we do, they will only become more emboldened and their grab for power more audacious and damaging to our country and our freedoms.”"

I of course get most of my essential Mexican news via Burro Hall, but I see he is off chasing butterflies.

For some reason, this story and photo appeared in the Virginian Pilot. The picture really captures it:

Yup, that is Hijo de Santo, the son of Lucha Libre great El Santo, receiving communion on the 25th anniversary of his father's death. 25 years and not one mask shall fall.

That is a great picture. There is a majesty to wearing the mask at all venues.

In Mexico City there was a display we saw in a subway station of incredible photographs by Lourdes Grobet of the masked ones in all manner of settings, with particularly saturated colors, also made into a book. I see he has one coming out of Lucha Libre family photographs, an essential one I am sure.

The Catholic Church really earns the 'catholic' label since there is room enough for all from the masked wrestlers as well as the Holocaust-denying reinstated priests.

Migra Corridos

A friend of mine just told me about this secret project of the US border patrol to produce corridos to warn Mexican migrants about the dangers of the crossing.

You can read some of the lyrics here.

This type of hamfisted propaganda planting is in keeping with the Bush-era federal government paying for stories in the media. These songs are intended for the Mexican market so it is outward directed propaganda, which is allowed under the law. But that doesn't make it good.

I actually think that government sponsorship of music as a form of propaganda is not inherently bad if two conditions were met.

One, that the support for the music was not kept secret.

And two, that the music didn't suck. This music sucks.

The El Paso Times has an article about it that includes links to MP3s of the songs. Go give them a listen and see what you think.

(Something like Woody Guthrie's songs in support of salmon-killing dam building in the Pacific Northwest, that was a legit expenditure of federal propaganda funds. "E-lect-tri-ci-i-tee")

As you know, Undismayed loves norteño music and we listen to this shit all the time. So we know good norteño and this ain't it. It doesn't quite make you want to wander into the desert to have yourself cooked, but it does not even make the grade as good low grade norteño music.

To begin with, they sound like midi versions of songs. The accordion playing is terrible. I wonder why the Border Patrol couldn't find some decent musicians to record? There are innumerable good musicians on the US side of the line, for f'sake. Shake a stick on either side of the border and you'll find a good musician. And over there, over in Mexico, how about offering a free ride north in exchange for a decent song or two?

(At least this might be a good sign that we aren't yet fully in 1984. Remember in that book the machine produced songs were always a huge hit with the proles.)

Jimminy Christmas, does anybody that Obama knows pay taxes?

here is the latest.

Where is the change we can we believe, Mr President Barry, sir?

Since Killefer was the head of McKinsey in DC, doesn't this mean we should nationalize that entity and use its money to feed the pandas in the national zoo?

Though I have to say that the Daschle tax evasion is particularly disgusting just because of the size of it. He should be made an example through public disgrace. This case is yet another example that only the chumps out here in Real America pay taxes.

This makes me want to cling to my gun.

What good is it to throw out the lapdogs of corporate tax cheats to bring in actual tax cheats? Can we expect a political tax cheat to raise the taxes on windfall profits and to punish general corporate malfeasance?

We need some fucking heads to roll in this sinking pathetic corrupt country and instead we are stonewalled in Congress by the party that got freaking trounced in the election, and we are concurrently getting a parade of fucking criminals lining up to send more of our tax money to the banks. It is demoralizing, isn't it, to live in the Third World?

Thinking of the coming of the End Time, I thought I would post this picture of an important book in the genre that I treasure:



I love that cover font, which was dated by a good decade at minimum by the time this came out.

You might notice that I only own volume 2. I do see a nice copy of Vol 1 for sale, all 511 pages of it, even signed by the author Raymond Ouellette. My birthday is indeed coming up very soon...

Did you read the New Yorker piece about doomsayers and apocalypse seekers and semi-survivalists? A topic close to my heart, of course.

It fulfilled its assigned task, which was to make them all look like clowns. But it felt stitched together. The connections drawn between those forecasting/anticipating/seeking the apocalypse and the Vermont free staters didn't make much sense to me and this article definitely misses the boat on the looming end times.

Part of me thinks that some or most of the secular end time people just hate what they perceive the general tawdriness and tackiness of modern American life and so wish for its destruction to prove they have superior taste. Jim Kunstler seems to fall into this category a bit, as a reading of his blog Clusterfuck Nation telegraphs.

He does get up a good head of steam, but is given to the "air quotes" a "lot", which I "think" is the updated version OF ALL CAPITALS, WHICH ONLY CRAZY ASSHOLES USED TO USE* BUT WHICH HAVE BEEN RETIRED BECAUSE THE "WEB" AND IT MAKES IT SEEM LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING or something of that nature.

I will read Kunstler's novel about the post-apocalypse and report back.

Kunstler, a man so-assured-of-the-end, doesn't even own a decent gun (he has a 16 gauge, which which will be very effective in killing pigeons in the New Days, and he is "applying for a handgun permit.") If nothing else, this shows the man to be on the clueless end of things. Since he thinks end times are nigh, he might consider moving to Virginia to stock up. Here, my brother, you are only limited to a handgun a month.

Since the times are indeed in the shitter, and likely to decline for a bit, perhaps we should shelve the longing for Mad Max and maybe return to Murray Bookchin?




------
*this is true--one way to judge someones decline is to track when their published works began to rely heavily on all caps. Tom Watson was most assuredly one, Watterson was too, though to a lesser extent

I may be missing something, but I was struck by the bootlicking interviews that Nicholson Baker gave about the genius of John Updike since he died. I always thought Baker despised Updike, and that his book U and I was an archly ironic and deapan deconstruction of Updike. But I read it over 10 years ago so maybe I misremembered or was wrong in the first place. Or maybe I just hate Baker these days. His books have gotten progressively worse and unforgivably stupid. He is tracking along with Philip Roth in terms of rather a sordid decline to irrelevance, but Roth has far further to fall and Baker is moving quicker. He'll hit bottom sooner, unless he is already there.

As if a webpage and two blogs and a baker's dozen of email addresses I can't remember the passwords for aren't enough, I've started a myspace page: Mare's Nest.

(No, this doesn't mean that I am suddenly 15. In fact, I am headed rather alarmingly into no-looking-back-now-for-fucking-real old age in just a week or so.)

It is a long story why it was time for this, but it boils down to the need to post a couple of tunes because I was invited to be part of a music project that I will name only when and if it all goes through, and/or if you buy a cold drink and ask politely. Anyway, you can freely listen...

LOS DONNENOSpolka(UNA TARDE EN GARZA AYALA )

seriously, how is anyone supposed to get anything done in this world?

Change we can believe in


I remember when I forgot to pay $34,000 in taxes.

It was when I took a job, with a PhD, that didn't pay that as the annual salary.

WASHINGTON — Timothy F. Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for Treasury secretary, failed to pay more than $34,000 in federal taxes over several years early this decade, and also faces questions about the employment papers of a former household employee, suddenly complicating what had seemed to be an easy confirmation process in the Senate.

And this motherfucker is going to fix up the mess made by the other motherfuckers he fucks mothers with?

Combine this with Obama trotting religious zealots Christian fanatics around his Big Day and it is starting to look like Washington.

But really Geithner is not to blame. See, the Obama people point out that people who work in international organizations just plumb fergit to pay taxes. Thankfully the IRS waives the fees.

"Mr. Geithner fully paid his state and federal income taxes. In failing to pay his payroll taxes, he in effect kept the money the I.M.F. had contributed toward his liability. However, Mr. Geithner’s accountant told him he was exempt from self-employment taxes, according to Obama transition officials.

As Obama officials pointed out, and I.R.S. documents attest, the failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes is common among Americans who work for international organizations, including foreign embassies. A 2007 I.R.S. notice reported that up to half of such employees incorrectly file their tax returns.

The I.R.S. waived penalties for Mr. Geithner in 2006, according to an account provided by the transition office and the Senate committee. A three-year statute of limitations had precluded the agency from auditing the 2001 and 2002 tax returns, a committee aide said."

Like the times the IRS waives your fees when you are late paying taxes. Or when you just just plumb fergit to pay taxes. Everybody does it!

But it gets better after the jump. This dude, like all rich motherfuckers, just doesn't want to pay taxes at all. That is for little people.

"Mr. Geithner volunteered to amend the earlier returns and pay the taxes and interest, a total of $25,970, after Mr. Obama indicated that he wanted to nominate him for the Treasury job, according to the account. Mr. Obama announced the nomination in Chicago on Nov. 24, three days after the issue had come to Mr. Geithner’s attention.

That chronology raises the question, however, of why Mr. Geithner did not voluntarily correct the earlier nonpayment of self-employment taxes after the 2006 I.R.S. audit identified the problem for 2003 and 2004.

Late Tuesday, Republican and Democratic sources were still predicting that Mr. Geithner would be confirmed. Before the tax disclosures, the toughest questions he was expected to face were over his role in the government’s bailout program for financial institutions.

The Senate Finance Committee has known about the tax matters since Dec. 5, and staff members have reviewed Mr. Geithner’s tax records and interviewed three of his accountants and an I.M.F. representative.

Mr. Geithner met with committee staff members on Dec. 19 to answer questions about the taxes on his I.M.F. income and about other relatively minor issues the staff had found. Those issues, for which Mr. Geithner recently paid $4,334 in back taxes and $1,232 in interest, include his mistaken claim of the dependent care credit on his income taxes for the costs of sleep-away camps in three years. The Geithners have two teenage children."

I love that last bit. I mean, who wouldn't think sleep away camp for teenagers was day care?

"Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, called the matter “a lot to do about nothing.” '

Will the same be said of you in April 15?

Vernon Oxford

the sync is a bit off -- but holy shit his voice sounds good.

Gone but not forgotten

It has been a good year for Richmond and for Norfolk in terms of murders. Fewer people are being killed in each city, even though if you read the paper the deaths do seem really common. But in fact there are only about 2-3 per month in each city... (rates for the Hampton Roads cities are here).

Style Weekly, the free reader in Richmond (which is actually a decent rag, compared with the free reader in Norfolk called Portfolio, which fellates the equine family, as the saying goes) has published a list of the 32 killed people It is a terrible thing to read, this list of the mostly young dead.

I don't think it dishonors the dead to list a couple of notable names:
LaMoan Hart, 20 years old, killed Sept 26

and my favorite:
Marijuana Thompson, age 31, killed Nov. 6.

Still, he (she?) had 31 good years with the name Marijuana.

I am wondering why there are not more people calling for massive crushing reaction against the cheats and swindlers (that is, the rich elites and their lapdogs in the Republican party) who have so thoroughly fucked things up for us all.

I am thinking this because today I received my current retirement statement and, whoa now, 40-fucking% of it is flat out gone.

I was prepared for some decline, maybe even upwards of 25-30%, no problem (and saw one last quarter) but 40% actually pisses me off. That's a lot of scratch. 40% seems more than unreasonable. It is f'ing insane.

Why is no one calling for actual retribution? Fucking payback? Revenge is sweet, and all of that? Let's get something for our 40%. let's at least be given the pleasure of seeing the rich suffer!

Why are Americans such sheep that we accept this recession and losses when they are largely manmade by poor decisions? And meanwhile the "deciders" from Bush on down are prancing about without a care (ok, except that German billionaire dude who stepped in front of the train).

Let's at least feel better by impoverishing some of these thieves. And let's spread the wealth around with a bit of vigor.

Obama's $1000 tax break? Fuck you. I elected you to destroy capitalism in this country and redistribute wealth, like you promised Joe the Plumber. Start redistributing now. Keep the campaign promise.

What we need now are Huey Long style Share Our Wealth clubs.

One way I will feel better is to see some investment bank CEO marched out his house at gunpoint while crack mothers smear their shit all over his possessions. That seems sensible, and kind of amusing in a 40% kind of way.

(note: perhaps largely of interest to an academic. i.e. not to you)

an amusing rant

In Need of a Bailout

In case you were wondering how truly fucking pathetic the historian's job market is, check out this report about the "very good indeed" numbers coming out of the American Historical Association:

"The total number of positions listed with the AHA (which includes all full-time positions and fellowships paying $28,000 or more per year) rose a modest 2.8 percent, to 1,057 openings. This is the largest number of positions ever advertised with the AHA in a single year, and marks a 24 percent increase in openings since the last economic contraction between 2001 and 2003. The largest growth in job openings occurred in the public history section of our job listings, which grew by 27.9 percent over the prior year. But there was also modest growth in advertisements from most regions of the country. Admittedly, the numbers are fairly small—an increase of seven positions in both New England and the Mid-Atlantic regions, and four new jobs in the states around the Great Lakes. But given that they were growing from the highest numbers on record, any growth seems very good indeed. "

That is 28 grand for positions that require a PhD in history.

That is a full $20,000 below the median U.S. income, though it is higher than minimum wage.

The average time to get a History PhD is 8.5 years.

By any reasonable calculation, a historian would be better off in virtually any unskilled or semi-skilled position that requires no education whatsoever and save the eight years for doing whatever it is all other Americans do for 8.5 years of their rapidly fleeting lives.

Since at least half of the people in this country eat sand (when there is no crawdad) in order to stay alive, this cannot be a promising sign for the pale-skinned, stoop shouldered academics bringing home half the bacon.

A young wanna-be historian would be better advised to become a drug mule for the Mexican cartel than to go to graduate school. A few trips of swallowed condoms and presto, $28,000!

I think Freakonomics established that even low level crack dealers earn at least minimum wage

Prior to the collapse of the American economy, there were Wall Street cheats who used 28 grand merely to wipe their asses after particularly spectacular blowouts.

Since academics are supposed to be smart (I won't even claim they are common sensical) shouldn't somebody perk up and, like, occupy a building, or write a very stern memo or even an article in an unread specialist journal, or ignite themselves Vietnamese Buddhist style in the quad to stop the madness?

LOS DONNENOS LAS TRES MUJERES

another great

LOS DONNENOS (ABRAZA MIS PENAS)

Kind of sad I haven't posted here in a month, but a couple of Donneños videos surely makes up for it?

Great song. Better camera angle.

On Cornhole

these are actual for-sale classifieds in the local paper:



"Cornhole" is the local name for a game where you throw bean bags filled with corn into a board with a hole on it. (This is basically Bozo Buckets, for those of you who grew up with Bozo the Clown. (Maybe that was only in the WGN viewing area?))

Charming regionalism, no? Apparently, the rocket scientists who live here decided that "Cornhole" was a good name for this favorite childhood game. And why not? After all, what else would 'cornhole' possibly refer to?

But CORNHOLE CHRISTMAS! for pete's sake? There are places where they just might shoot you for saying that.

The Reason for the Season

Like any reasonable person, I hate Christmas for a wide variety of reasons, but mostly for the perfectly rational reason that I always want to mail a letter on Christmas day but never can because of the Taliban-like stranglehold that the organized fundamentalist Christmas interest has on our once proud, freedom loving, mail sending nation.

One thing I do like about Christmas though is Christmas music. I can't really explain it, since so much of it sucks so utterly, but a big part of it is definitely because all the country greats (everyone from Ray Price to Ferlin Husky) has felt compelled to record Christmas records that have some really fine music on them.

Some of these are quite great (Buck Owens deserves special note). And, it helps that Christmas records have virtually no value. People dump them all the time and nobody seems to buy them. The flea market guy I sell records to refuses to consider anything with Christmas in it (except for Elvis). The records are easy to find in thrift stores (in the South particularly) for a buck. Consequently, over the years I have amassed a stupidly large number of these records, a couple of linear feet of them actually. I have to start listening to them in early December just to get through them. I am going to weed aggressively this year.

(I'll also be getting rid of about 25 Jimmy Swaggart records, let me know if you are interested, you get an instant Golden Gospel Piano collection!).

Rarely does a day go by that I don't consider thanking the Prince of Peace himself for putting Ernest Tubb here on God's green earth to sing "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer." Or at least thank the lucky stars. That is one song that is yearly rotation around here, not just in the season.

So I dusted off the Christmas collection to start putting it through its paces and thought that there are a couple of other gems in there worth mentioning. To anticipate your question, there is one conjunto christmas recording I know of, I have a tape of it but can't find it and actually have no way to play tapes anymore since I sold my truck over a year ago). "Christmas in Zitherland," Steel Guitar Christmas" and "Christmas Vibes" (as in vibaphone) all of their cherished place.

I did have a thought of perfect clarity: The Star Wars Christmas LP from 1980 should have been grounds for George Lucas to lose his American citizenship:



It has a song with this chorus: 'R2D2 we wish you a Merry christmas. R2D2 we love, it's true. R2D2 we wish you a Merry christmas. R2D2 We hope our little message gets to you.'

My understanding of christmas theology is a bit dimmer than my knowledge of Star Wars theology, but I am glad that both can converge on the view of R2D2 as cyberchrist.

For some reason that only Lucas' swiss bankers can explain, as soon as this record came on my child, who has never heard of R2D2 or Star Wars, immediately went into whirling dervish mode.

Christmas comes but once a year, but that other Colonel, Colonel Sanders, has out at least two records.

I can't imagine why anyone would break into a house around here.

I have a new next door neighbor. He is in the Navy and works at the Navy brig (the same one where they held Hamdan). One of the first things he said to me is that he would definitely shoot to kill any intruder.

(He also said they still have "the cage" they built for Hamdan, which makes me wonder).

My neighbor on the other side, who moved in in August and who is also in the Navy, had said essentially the same thing about shooting intruders during my first conversation with him.

Neither of these guys was particularly being a tough guy either, it was all rather matter of fact.

I don't mind. The more intruders that get shot, the fewer will bother me.

My neighbor two houses over was mugged at gun point a couple of days ago, and had his nose broken by by being hit with the gun. Two blocks away, walking to the 7-Eleven. 757!

I have been sick as a dog for the past week, so I haven't been able to post anything. I had intended to mark Thanksgiving by putting up the cover of this fine LP from Conjunto Michoacan:

This story in the Washington Post about the killing of journalists in Ciudad Juarez has this fine if caustic observation:

""No longer do they just threaten us," Torres said. "Now they act."

Torres said he does not know who killed his ace reporter. "Many people assume he was killed by the narcos, but I am not so sure," he said. "He was killed by organized crime, I will say that. In Mexico, organized crime can mean the traffickers, the police, the government, or the people in the office buildings."

The story describes the death this way:

"Rodríguez, 40, was killed Nov. 13 in front of his home by a single gunman. He was shot 10 times while warming up his car, directly in front of his 8-year-old daughter, as he was about to drive her to school in the morning."

Now, please understand that I am not speaking ill of the dead when I ask this, but I do have to wonder: who warms up their car in Mexico? Even if it was an engine with a carburetor? (from the picture it looked like some piece of shite little Nissan) This is on the border, not the top of Popocatepetl.

This fine Hitchens piece speaking squarely about what a terrible choice Hillary Clinton is a typically great column. I have never liked the Clintons, and Hitchens reminds me of so many aspects of their totalizing sleaze that I had forgotten. There really was nothing to low for the Clintons, who had to take illegal money from the Red Chinese because they didn't inspire quite the way Barry did/does.

I do wish he had made another choice, this election was (rhetorically anyway) supposed to be about eliminating this m'fer* from sitting on America's face.



*family friendly blogging

Sometimes when I want to be reminded that there is a bright spot in the universe, I take a look to see what is happening in San Antonio. Try to comprehend that this is simply the next week


(...then try to figure out why the old lady, unsurpassingly lovely as she is, is unconvinced of the wisdom of relocating to San Antonio:

Arturo's Sports Bar & Grill 3310 S. Zarzamora St., (210) 923-0177

Los Humildes, La Mission Colombiana de Florencio Cuellar, 8 Fri.

Benny Medina, Lupito Saenz/Conjunto Sabinal, 6 Sun.

Eddie "Lalo" Torres, Larry Garcia/Experiencia, 8 Wed.

Back Canteen 650 VFW Blvd., (210) 534-5022

Los Camaroneros de Fred Saldaña, 8 Fri.

Benny Medina, Conjunto Aguila, 8 Sat.

Cattleman Square Tavern 904 W. Houston St., (210) 227-9616

Los Tovares, 9:30 Sat.

Cool Arrows 1025 Nogalitos St., (210) 227-5130

Los Dos Gilbertos, 8 Sat.

El Ojo de Agua 2908 Mission Road, (210) 921-4930

Los Alegres de Ruben Tellez, 8 Sat.

Gil's Tejano Bar & Grill 1228 E. Durango Blvd., (210) 534-4141

Los Tovares, 7:30 Fri.

Lerma's1602 N. Zarzamora St., (210) 884-8810

Santos Sosa, Flavio Longoria, El Pavo Real, 8 Sat.

Henry Zimmerle, Hermanos DeLeon, El Pavo Real, 6:30 Sun.

Maria's Café 1105 Nogalitos St., (210) 227-7005

Santos Soza/Sus Estrellas, 4 Fri.

Pan Am Plaza 1419 Commercial Ave., (210) 922-6968

Grupo Instante, noon, Los Enmascarados, 9 Sat.

Los Escorpiones, Los Tamalipecos, noon Sun.

Reptilez Sports Bar 5418 Old Hwy. 90, (210) 433-5552

Los Camaroneros de Fred Saldaña, 5 Sun.

Royal Palace Ballroom 3506 S.W. Military Drive, (210) 924-5651

Santiago Jimenez Jr., 1 Fri.

Conjunto 5X, 1 Sun.

Henry Zimmerle, Juan Ramos, noon Mon.

Los Robles, 1 Tues.

Martin Pesina, 2, Henry Zimmerle, 8 Wed.

VFW Post 4700 2219 Frio City Road, (210) 923-7007

Los Alegres de Ruben Tellez, 6:30 Fri.

Solucion de Mike Villanueva, 5 Sun.

VFW Post 9186 650 VFW Blvd., (210) 532-9191

Conjunto Solucion, 4 Sun.

This is something quite essential, I've never heard this stuff: a page of duets of Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash from 1969, all free. Some great songs on here too. The 'Careless Love" is great, and the Jimmie Rodgers song. Nice to be alive.

On the suggestion of a friend I looked up this incredible label called Sublime Frequencies and about all I can say is 'holy shit'. These look like some amazing collections of music, most of it from the outer limits of Asia. This isn't traditional stuff for ethnomusicologists, but instead a bunch of insane pop relics fractured through Asian sensibilities.

I have one LP of Tawainese surf rock my parents once brought back from Asia for some reason I never quite understood. I knew there had to be a lot more out there.

Too bad I am so woefully underpaid. But I do have two kidneys.

I am trying to get my head wrapped around the figure of 50,000 people losing their jobs at Citibank. Isn't that, like, a whole shitload of people? And this is the bank that was going to buy Wachovia a couple of weeks ago. Are any of these bastards solvent?

I also have been wondering why nobody has been talking about the price gouging and oil futures speculation that had us all bent over the oil barrel just a couple of months ago. It is like everybody instantly forgets how wrongly screwed we were all getting for a time. People who blamed speculators were called kooks, but obviously something unseemly was afoot. Now gas is so damn cheap I just leave my truck running all the time. Gas is as cheap as I can remember, I paid $1.82 a gallon yesterday and have heard of $1.50 gas around, which is wild. How is possible that prices were almost three bucks a gallon more and it was just market fluctuations? I don't believe it at all.

If I was really paranoid I would see it as a last gasp to run up prices by financiers and other shitbags who knew the extent of the rottenness at the core of the system, all before the whole system finally hit the skids and toppled down.

Oh wait, I am really paranoid.

As soon as I wrote "heroic" in that last post, I started to think back about the myriad ways the Bush administrations have taken the term "hero" crammed it up the rectum of the body politic.

One reason (of so many) I am happy the Republicans were swept out of office is that it might just stem the tide toward fascistic hero worship that has been so omnipresent in the U.S. since 2001, and perhaps a bit more balance will be restored.

The one thing that really chaps my sack (as Barbara Bush as been heard to say) has been when the airlines have made such a show of recognizing the "heroes" who are on the plane flying in uniform. I am sure you have seen this as well. It has not been uncommon at all for enlisted dudes flying in uniform to be invited to first class and given free drinks. I have seen this many times. I was on a flight two weeks ago and the stewardess got on the horn so the plane could recognize the heroes. Everybody clapped. At the end of the summer, I was waiting to board a plan in Baltimore when they handed out flags to everyone and asked people to stand and clap as the soldiers walked off the plane. I overheard the inevitable exchange "why are we clapping?" "They're heroes".

I of course appreciate the sacrifice of the people going to fucking Iraq and to Afghanistan, and am a believer in service and so on. But does this make every m'fer in uniform into a hero who deserves applause? Must we collectively worship volunteer soldiers, or can we just appreciate what they do and not get so carried away? It seems almost too obvious to note, but yet everybody sheepishly follows.

I won't even bother to dwell on the fact that when these heroes return to the U.S. they are all treated shabbily and nobody does a goddamn thing for them.

What about the old timer sitting there quietly who has performed open heart surgery on X number of people, saving their lives by using a great skill? On any average plan there must be a bunch of people who deserve a free drink. Geez, what about the fire fighters and all the others who the nation was so impressed by for five minutes before re-consigning them to the forgetten service personnel roster?

And, of course, heroes who preserve music from oblivion.

I happened on the website of this guy Alec Dempster, who is a hell of a visual artist and also a recorder of traditional music in Veracruz (where he lives). Hard to beat that combination.

I bought one of the cds he produced when I was down in Veracruz a couple of years ago, it is a superb collection of music from Santiago Tuxtla and San Andrés Tuxtla. I just discovered that there are a bunch more recordings he has done and even a cd of his own playing. You should go order all of them, like this one of Son Jarocho fiddling of rare tunes on a traditional cedar fiddle. (you can get them all from cd.baby so you might as well just get them all).

Check out his artwork on his webpage. Needless to say this guy gets it, at least to these eyes. And saving this music and making it available is a heroic task. I'd like to buy him a beer.

Undismayed has been a bit remiss. The election soaked up a lot of focus, to be sure, and then so did everything else.

And November is the start of the cockfighting season in Virginia.
(it is true, cockfighting has its own season. Even though it's a felony now in the Commonwealth.) I've been so busy around here that I failed even to consider that law enforcement in Virginia is figuring out ways to sidestep this silly new felony crime.

Even though the election is over I am still obsessed with Sarah Palin. Or, perhaps a better description is that I am filled with astonishment of her renewable stupidity and I continue to fear the danger she represents to us all. She isn't going away, and she is young, so we are gonna be a-stuck with her for a long, long time. I wish she was a John Edwards type, tainted forever because of the loss, but the difference is nobody liked that philandering fuckwit to begin with, and Palin has much of the idiot vote passionately in love with her.

Maybe enough of them will stick their heads in the ovens in the Great Depression II, but I doubt it.

The Washington Post has a discussion of Michelle Obama's dress at the Grant Park rally, which was striking and bizarre, and a reader posted this great line:
"I thought that the dress was an appropriate piece of end-of-the-election symbolism. After a long campaign full of high-flying idealism, the First Lady-elect showed that it was finally time to come down to Earth. In her case, it looked like she was re-entering the Earth's atmosphere pelvis-first."

Wow, this is even a better sign that there is hope alive:

There is this new and incredible Hank Williams collection of never-before released recordings from the Mother's Best Flour sessions of 1951. This is an excellent collection you should definitely get. I can't stop listening to it.

Hank sings some songs you've heard before on this set, which sound clear and flawless. Even better there are also a bunch he never recorded before. A cool version of "On Top of Old Smokey" (yes really, it is great) and his "When the Saints go Marching In" show that Hank could make any song better than any song has ever been. This is not a excessive statement, this is true.

And he sings here a bunch of songs better known from the early bluegrass era: such a fine song as "Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet, which I think of as pure Stanley Brothers, though others did record it. "Lonely Tombs". "When the Fire Comes Down". Songs you can never hear too much like "Where the Soul Never Dies" Hank definitely was hearing the good stuff around him. I was especially stoked to see that he sings a bunch of superb Bailes Brothers songs. Oh yes, just perfect. His voice sounds as good as it ever has.

It is hard to stress sufficiently just how great this music is.

The end of the election is good in all ways.

Undismayed relishes the return of the rule of law, for one.

But even more importantly, it's a strong signal that this country just possibly might not limp along angry, declining, and pathetic if not actually fail. It is possible to think that things might actually improve and even be good.


Longtime readers of Undismayed know that we had some questions about choosing Obama among all other possible contenders, but we came around, and time has proven that he is a man of fine character and he has earned his respect over the past several months. His election is a huge win for the country at large in all of the ways that all commentators are talking about, of course, so I won't exercise them here.

We were helped around by the obvious sign that the Republican party needed to experience (at least one) crushing and total loss. I see this as the long awaited revenge for the incompetence that has brought us the failure to prevent the September 11 attacks and every fucking thing since. That total Republican crushing alone is reason to rejoice in Obama's win.

Also completely joy-making is anything that can be done to eliminate Sarah Palin from public life, to extirpate her brand of faux populism, to restrain the authoritarian mindset she appeals to, and to wipe that shit gobbling stupidity off of our collective shoes. This is just the first stage in the relentless campaign to keep her and all of the other neo-fascists out of the public domain, and to pummel them into senselessness if they dare to venture forth to take power. Leave Alaska and other marginal places for these motherfuckers and teach them to stay out of the rest of the country. Do you think if Palin/McCain won that they would have given a speech like Obama signaling that they were sensitive to the needs of their opponents?

Finally, at long last, we are rid of baby boomer leaders. That generation, obsessed over the divides of decades ago, have contributed almost nothing but bullshit to our political culture. The divides brought by the reactionary wing of the Republican party had too many easy targets among the self-righteous and power worshipping Clintonies. it's nice to see them all shown to be vacuous and useless in the face of a politician from the Colonel's generation. Finally we can stop arguing about fucking Vietnam as the flashpoint and maybe focus on the crisis we are actually in. The fact that Johnny Mac's attempt to run on his record and his attempt to ressurect boogieman Ayers failed is a clear sign that the country is finally moving beyond it.

That Obama emerged at this moment is critical--not just educated, but smart, savvy, technologically aware, and comfortable not bowing down before the goddamned religious nuts who are trying to make this fine secular country into Taliban Afghanistan.

Obama has plenty of flaws and much to learn, but he has the capacity to learn at least and my guess is that he will lead as deftly as he campaigned. And if he doesn't, well, we'll happy to rant about it...

I just discovered the Los Tucanes de Tijuana URL is expired, here is your chance to squat on it...and potentially make make tens or even dozens of dollars

here they are with a classic

Looking for something to do? Why not hang some of these posters in your town?

This is a great site, well made, right spirit, good graphics, generally seem to get it.

yet another huge digital collection of music:

Black Gospel Music Restoration Project

A friend of mine who reads the Italian paper La Repubblica came across this video of Eddie Adcock getting brain surgery and playing banjo while he is doing it:


Maybe if I get brain surgery I'll be able to play bluegrass.