Unsullied and Undismayed

2012-01-18T11:27:00.002-05:00

I stumbled across this video and thought it was awesome for any number of reasons, not least because it was filmed tight where I was born (or nearby, since I was born in the hospital and not in the Zuniga service station). The area has changed a bit in the past couple of decades particularly. It is now almost exclusively Mexican, which is a very welcome development. Great food around there these days.

I also have to say, the bajo sexto-snare combo is a purely genius duet arrangement, may very well be the best of the austere arrangements, especially with these harmonies.

And the quality of the shot framing should not go unmentioned.

here is another

2011-12-19T21:50:00.002-05:00

The passing of Conjunto great Don Amadeo Flores makes it essential that I post to mourn his passing.

One of the Conjunto greats, Don Amadeo was famous not just for his playing and songs but for his especially fine tuning of the accordion.

Here is a really interesting interview where he talks about tuning accordions.

One polka he was famous for was named after his adopted hometown of Skokie, Illinois, of personal interest to Undismayed:

a nice bunch of his old Ideal Records recordings:

2011-12-19T21:47:00.002-05:00

{It doesn't seem possible that its been since April that I've posted here at Undismayed, but things have been busy, to say the least. But all systems are back to go.}

2011-04-28T09:25:00.002-04:00

If there is any question that Republicans are the stupidest and most cynical coalition of m'fers on the planet, let's take a listen what Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had to say about Obama being forced to release his birth certificate by... motherloving Republicans:

“As I’ve repeatedly stated, this issue is a distraction. Our economy is strained from out of control deficits, debt and unsustainable entitlements. The president ought to spend his time getting serious about repairing our economy, working with Republicans and focusing on the long-term sustainability of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Unfortunately his campaign politics and talk about birth certificates is distracting him from our No. 1 priority – our economy.”

Uh, what the fuck are you talking about Reince? "HIS campaign politics and talk about birth certificates"?

Isn't it just a wee bit too stupidly obvious to note that it was not Obama who has been bringing this up?

The Republican genius for twisting anything is the same as a wife beater asking "why do you make me do this?"

No, it is not a surprise that Republicans beat their wives. But it is something important to remember. Especially when they start tapping their feet in airport restroom stalls.

2011-04-27T23:09:00.004-04:00

Pregnant women use big pillows to be marginally less uncomfortable so I've suddenly been forced to pay attention to obtaining them.

There are some fucked up products out there in this genre of consumer product. Consider, for example, the "boyfriend pillow," complete with fake hand and fake shirt.

I can't actually tell if this is a joke. The other stuff that people who buy this buy on Amazon include fake turds and farting banks and other items of high hilarity in the cubicle world. But the boyfriend pillow has the faint ring of truth.

On the other hand, the girlfriend pillow features fake breasts that look like the eyes of a dead monkey in a cartoon -- and must be a joke since any self-respecting dude without a girl friend will sleep drunkenly on the couch, not cuddled with a dumbass pillow.

2011-03-10T10:19:00.002-05:00

This is an interesting account from Paulino Bernal first signed Ramon Ayala and Cornelio Reyna to Bego records, plus him talking about some great accordionists of the past.

then you'd better skip the talking and give a listen to this

2011-03-08T21:19:00.002-05:00

I just found out via my old friend with whom I used to travel to see the Sullivan Family that Brother Enoch Sullivan died. He actually died a couple of weeks ago, but the news got to me slowly.

I saw a lot of the Sullivan Family in the 1990s at the Charlotte Bluegrass festival, where they were mainstays. I went to that great festival for a decade straight. I definitely intend to get back to before I go join Brother Enoch.

here is a pretty fair live show of the Sullivan family playing some perfectly old time bluegrass

I take the passing of Brother Enoch to be a sign that I need to get to Undismayed

2010-12-17T02:14:00.002-05:00

I've had this book around forever called Soviet Prison Camp Speech: A Survivor's Glossary. I used to be into reading about Soviet prison camps, I guess influenced by Ivan Denisovich. Which is something that still haunts me.

Anyway, I regularly decided to get rid of this fucking book, not least because I don't know Russian. But then I open it, and for some reason I always open it to the same page. Which is the definition/ explanation of a phrase which translates into "Where I once had a conscience, now a cunt has grown."

used like this:
Q: "Aren't you ashamed to pad your output?"
A: "Where I once had a conscience, now a cunt has grown."

You can see how useful the phrase is.

I am thinking I should, perhaps, use it in my in-process Unsullied and Undismayed Bible Questions and Answers, but that is for consideration on another day.

Another good Soviet prison camp phrase that uses the ever-useful cunt is "a cunt makes no change!" As in

Q: Give me those boots back
A: "A cunt makes no change!"

ok, now that I've shared these cultural riches I can get rid of this book.

2010-12-16T14:17:00.002-05:00

This is the ONLY thing that anybody should be giving anybody else for Christmas, the mother of pearl Robert E. Lee truss rod cover for your banjo. Fuck yes it exists. It is currently on Ebay.

It doesn't really even look that much like General Lee. But you can buy it for me anyway.

I think I may start making those Calvin pissing on [fill in thing here] signs for the back of trucks only make it General Lee pissing on [fill in thing here]. Do you think there is a market for such a thing? Seems like a no-brainer,

2010-12-14T01:09:00.004-05:00

It's been awhile, but nice to be back.

Especially as I make note of the eternal afterlife of blackface performance in American culture.

This time, it is to sell cupcakes: Duncan Hines new "Hip Hop Cupcakes."

the now pulled youtube video can be seen here.

I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time...

2010-10-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

note to self: hopefully this blog is not becoming only the Mexican singer death watch.

2010-10-21T23:55:00.003-04:00

It has been a while since there has been a killing of a narco singer. El Halcon de la Sierra, who was a Chalino Sanchez knock off narcocorrido singer, was just killed along with a couple of other people. He was pretty excessive with the narco imagery and apparently lived the life. I think of him as a competitor to El As de la Sierra, but not as good. This video gives you a good sense of his music and his style, such as it was. I like it, the homemade quality is very appealing. All of his songs of course sound exactly the same. And this video is a good example of something we talked about earlier here at Undismayed, the mix of banda, norteno, and even mariachi into a perfect brew:

2010-10-12T11:34:00.002-04:00

The Colonel has been a bit busy of late. But not posting since August is really shameful.

Today being the 12th anniversary of the death of the great Ruben Naranjo I thought it was essential to get back online and make note of his passing

Here he is at the 1990 Tejano Conjunto Festival:

2010-08-27T00:40:00.002-04:00

I can't really fathom this massacre of 72 people trying to migrant to the U.S. in Mexico. The numbers are starting to be at a Rwandan level of insanity, no? Drug war violence I can comprehend, but this kind of mass killing is just fucking crazed.

Especially since there recently have been discoveries of some other sites with a great many bodies as well:

"The discovery of the bodies was the largest of at least three such finds this year. In May, 55 bodies were pulled from an abandoned mine south of Mexico City, and in July, 51 bodies were discovered in a field near Monterrey, an industrial and commercial hub in northeast Mexico that had been relatively quiet until this year."

A really staggering number is that 230,000 people have fled Juárez.

2010-08-27T00:37:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine was in a part in Portland and above the bar was a jar with something floating in it that was labeled "Elk Cunt."

Nothing else need be said.

2010-08-18T13:34:00.002-04:00

Having heard way more than freaking enough about the NYC mosque non-issue, Undismayed here goes on record with the idea that no religious institutions of any kind from any religious tradition should be built anywhere in the US and all existing religious buildings should be converted into accordion practice spaces.

Now, onto the only truly sacred thing:

2010-08-16T13:26:00.003-04:00

Esteban Jordan died a couple of days ago, I just discovered. That is sad, though he has been headed that way with liver cancer for sometime. I'm glad I got to see him play a couple of years ago. Really a wild player, and his band (which included his supremely talented sons) was great.

He was also a hard-ass, no doubt about that.

Good obit in the SA paper.

In that article, Juan Tejada says :"He was the best, and he knew it. And everybody else knew it. He had a lot of soul and was the epitome of what Chicano music is and what Chicano people are.”

Jordan was working on his ultimate project when he died:

"“He was kind of a Howard Hughes kind of guy. Saluté was his little cocoon,” said Grammy-winning producer Gilbert Velasquez, recalling that Jordan kept his audiotapes in an ammo box. “He was a little out there, thinking people would steal it.”"

Here is a good obit from Austin360.com, which has some good quotes:

""I don't give a damn about the audience," he said in a 2001 interview. "I could be playing for five people or 5,000 — it doesn't make a difference. I'm still gonna kick ass. And if you ain't gonna play because there's nobody there, then get the (heck) out of my band.""

and the way he met Valerioa Longoria is incredible:

"Born in the Rio Grande Valley town of Elsa in 1939, Jordan was the smallest and sickliest of 15 children born to migrant worker parents. But he could play every instrument he got his little hands around. First was the harmonica, then a guitar. One night in a labor camp outside Lubbock, a 7-year-old Jordan was playing guitar and heard a sweet accordion sound coming from the lean-to next door. "I stuck my head out and he stuck his head out and we decided to play together," he said. And that's how Jordan met a teenage Valerio Longoria, who would go on to join Santiago Jimenez Sr. (Flaco's dad) and Narciso Martinez in the holy trinity of conjunto accordionistas."

2010-08-12T08:47:00.005-04:00

I am back stateside and will commence blogging again.

I am pretty stoked to see George Jones play this weekend. He's one of the greats left I wanted to see, and his voice is supposedly still great. Though it is in a big stadium and so something of a drag, I do hate shows in these kind of venues. It is too bad because most of the places he is playing on this tour are pretty small. I've actually never been to the Ntelos Pavilion in Portsmouth so I don't know what it is like actually.

When I looked up Geroge'swebpage I see this awesome news that you can buy George Jones brand coffee, "Possum Brand". All over it, worth the purchase price for the bag alone.

2010-06-21T16:02:00.002-04:00

Since you were almost certainly wondering if songs would start being written about the gulf spill, you'll want to hear Steve Jordan's "El Corrido del Aceite", recorded back in the 1980s, you can hear it here

2010-06-08T16:45:00.002-04:00

Blogging has been light, especially given summertime + being gone+ truck accident+ various and other sundry shit.

I spent the usual enviable and long awaited weekend at the Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention playing music to the exclusion of all else save slaking my well-worn thirst when necessary. Definitely one of the high points of every year. Kick ass old time music in all directions, perfect.

The best line of the year, and perhaps of the past several years, came after I played a tune called "We'll all go to Heaven when the Devil Goes Blind." Now this is a pretty simple tune that I can play--usually. I was a bit rusty. When we finished, a friend of mine known for his sardonic sense muttered "We'll all go to Heaven when the Devil Goes Deaf." Genius.

There was one other contender for the title of best line. Overhead by our friend Tim was this one "Well it had to be 'Beverley Hills Ninja', Chris Farley never made any other ninja movies."

2010-06-01T21:31:00.004-04:00

I am a very big fan of the late and great Ruben Vela of course, love his puro valle style conjunto, and always will.

The old lady and I even had our picture made with him back in 2007 (in fact, the last time I could drag her to S.A.). (top cropped since the Colonel remains best unseen. But no mistaking my lovely wife's smile:

But even given my unquestioned devotion to Sr. Vela's music, I would balk at the $2500.00 being asked on ebay for his suits (though the cash price is negotiable) That is a per-suit price.

One is a tuxedo, one is two button. Haggar brand. (a quick search reveals that at Sears these suits run $108 new. At JC Penney they are $49.99 new (for the two button 'polyester/viscose with polyester lining,' big and tall size. Ruben Vela's were "short' size. (see above pic). Waist 32, jacket 38, inseam 29.

The suits are overpriced methinks, but the description of the auction is really quite moving:

"In loving memory of Ruben Vela, Sr., 72, who entered the Lord's heavenly kingdom on Tuesday, March 9, 2010.
He was born on May 10, 1937 in San Antonio, Mexico to Alvento and Emilia Guzman Vela. Ruben was raised in Relampago, Texas. He had lived in Santa Rosa for 48 years where he has a street named after him. He was also a Conjunto Regional Star, accordian player and in the Conjunto Hall of Fame."

I will, again, promise to post my pics of the TCF once I dig them off of my other computer, which will happen shortly.

2010-05-28T22:24:00.003-04:00

Nothing really new in either of these pieces, but they are worth the tiny amount of time it takes to check them out.

This NPR piece on Lydia Mendoza.

And this New Yorker piece on Los Tigres del Norte.

Undismayed's arch side wants to say "nothing like being between 15-50 years late to the dance, whitey" but that seems uncharitable since it is clearly a step in the right direction when people start to notice what is and has been happening in the musical world outside the well trod paths. Though the inclusion of Ry Cooder does seem in notably poor (if, regrettably, inevitable) taste.

2010-05-28T22:23:00.000-04:00

Gary Coleman is dead. He had such a short life.

2010-05-04T23:28:00.003-04:00

This is kind of nuts: Buried in this article about Eva Ybarra is the news that her home in San Antonio was robbed last month. They must have known what to look for:

" Stolen were a priceless Alberto Macias-made bajo sexto, a custom-made guitarra de golpe, a couple of bass guitars, recording equipment, jewelry, gold and personal items.

Adding to her blues, Ybarra lost her home to foreclosure. She's broke."

That last bit seems completely gratuitous, just no luck at all. It is insane that giants and pioneers of conjunto--or of any music-- can be so broke. Foreclosed on, even. It is all hard to believe. Santiago Jimenez, Sr. quit playing music for a time to be a janitor. Instead he should have been granted a full government salary just to play music.

Ybarra's recordings are ok, but she is absolutely great live. I am looking forward to seeing her next week when I finally return to (one of) the homeland(s).

2010-05-04T22:50:00.005-04:00

Speed drawing for Christ

This record was a pretty good find> "Evangelist Paul Turner sings: Songs I Draw By and others". I found it at a new, excessively Christian thrift store in Norfolk where all of the employees wandered around with unnerving grins plastered across their faces, including the just-out-of-prison dude with the large cross tattoo on the side of his neck.

It is worth zeroing in on the drawing he has made, especially the lifesaver cross.

Evangelist Paul Turner is from Roanoke, Virginia. On the back of the LP he details how he was drawn to the revival crusade. God gave evangelist Paul Turner another gift: "He also have me a chalk drawing ministry. In each revival service I do a drawing that corresponds with a hymn which takes about 10 minutes." he notes that "most of the songs on this record are songs used in connection with chalk drawings."

The music is the country-studio band type.

A lazy search for the whereabouts of Brother Paul via googling "Evangelist Paul Turner" now brings up the first choice of a blog called "Reverend Bitch, Sir, "The journey of an inner city open and proud gay pastor."

But oh, oh! add in Roanoke and you get to a whole discussion of the wide open field of chalk drawing ministry. Here is a sample of some fine fine work by a preacher in Collinsville, Virginia:

Clearly there is something going on with this type of ministry.

Evangelist Paul Turner signs his name with Mark 11:24. I looked this up, (hoping, I will admit, for something more of the serpent handling flavor) and found this:

"Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

Oh, Lord, I do desire so very many things.

2010-04-27T21:06:00.002-04:00

"EL Sube y Baja" has been a favorite in these parts recently and this is a good version of it.

These guys have posted tons of videos of all classic and great norteño, all worth consuming the next hour of your time.

2010-04-15T22:59:00.002-04:00

In case you ever felt righteous about eating agave syrup as an alternative to sugar, turns out that it is worse than high fructose corn syrup and maybe even close to toxic. Or at least according to this guy .

And I was just feeling a bit self-satisfied this past weekend about my margaritas sweetened with just a bit of agave...

2010-04-01T00:24:00.000-04:00

“We’re not a gang — we’re a union."

Drug gang assasins are really a sensitive lot:

'We are very good people,” said his colleague Nicolas Sosa, and it is hard to tell if he is joking. Slick and muscled, with patterns shaved into his beard and wearing a tight white t-shirt and cowboy boots, Sosa’s looks are marred only by his nose, which is bent to one side. “I am here because I killed two cops,” he said. “I was mad — they stopped me and took my money, and I had a gun.”

Sosa and Saenz are two senior members of the Artist Assassins, a drug gang working in Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in the world. The 600 Artist Assassins and 1,200 Mexicles, another local gang, are employed by the Sinaloa Cartel — run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the country’s most wanted man — to control the drug traffic passing through Juárez.

But the Artist Assassins and the Mexicles are in the middle of a war with the Aztecas. With 7,000 members the Aztecas are the most powerful drug gang in Juárez and work for the rival Juárez Cartel. The leaders of these cartels are businessmen in hiding and the gangs act as their enforcers on the streets. “The Aztecas have a very different way of thinking to us,” Sosa said. “We live and work very closely. We have values: respect, and the liberty to choose. They don’t. They kill our families, our friends, our kids.
“We’re not a gang — we’re a union. The difference is you can get out if you want to. You don’t have to stay.”

2010-03-31T21:00:00.003-04:00

The failing economy basically means that any source of revenue starts to look good. Cue the legal pot campaign in California. Letting no crisis go to waste in this regard is something that should be applauded. Once stoned Californians start wiping their asses with dollar bills, which is sure to happen when marijuana is taxed, other states will also legalize pot and then the area of freedom will be that much larger. Or there will just be more weed around and we will still all be slaves, more likely.

Of course all we will get in Virginia as a result of this crisis atmosphere is legalized discrimination against gay people, which is continuing with great vigor ever since the Christian fundamentalist nutjobs took recent control of the state. And I am pretty sure that is not going to be helping out state coffers. It can't be coincidental that the state has begun obsessively re-running the "Virginia is for lovers" ads, with their variously and heavy handed Aryan insinuations.

But here is another interesting idea--officially recognize the value or "cultural merits" of something even though it is illegal. That opens up so many possibilities of things I can think of with cultural merit. Kind of a winking approach to the question of legality.

"HONOLULU — Illegal cockfighting would be recognized for its cultural merits under a resolution advancing in the Hawaii Legislature.

The House Tourism, Culture and International Affairs Committee passed the resolution Monday on a 4-2 vote, sending it to the House Judiciary Committee. The resolution doesn't have the force of law and wouldn't legalize cockfighting, which is prohibited in all 50 states.

But supporters say it would recognize cockfighting's long history in Hawaii and among Filipino migrants who cherish it. They also say cockfighting is widespread on the islands, and legitimizing it could boost the economy."

"Animal rights groups oppose the measure, saying cockfighting is a cruel blood sport.

Before passing the resolution, representatives amended it to include a line saying they don't support gambling or gaffs — sharp knives tied to game birds' legs."

alas, it was shelved.

The whole thing could be seen as something of a gaff...sorry...

2010-03-21T21:12:00.002-04:00

Ruben Vela just died and his records are not going cheaply.

This mint, unplayed original Elvis single is a better bet than the stock market. Currently it is at 10 grand, up two grand since I looked at it yesterday.

Undismayed is waiting for the very last second to put in a bid...

2010-03-18T22:37:00.002-04:00

Speaking of overdubs, I have been thinking about them recently in the context of Hank Williams and Chalino Sanchez, who I think are arguably the most overdubbed of all performers. This is, admittedly, a completely invented supposition, but it has the ring of truth.

There are a stunning number of overdubs of both of their material in all genres. These two happen to have almost perfectly malleable styles that can be reborn in a new body for a new life (to paraphrase a song overdubbed for Hank). That is really not something to be overlooked, the ability to meet all markets. Maybe Dylan is one of the few others who could do that without effort. But that was selling the songs, with Hank and Chalino we are talking about the same performances deftly remade into new songs entirely.

Hank's home recordings of the "me and my guitar" era are even remade into fingerpopping kinds of songs with some seriously appalling overdubs (such as "fool about you"). Chalino songs are repackaged on everything from norteño to mariachi. They are all great.

Both of these masters died at the height of their popularity and in their singing prime, so there was a compelling need to find more stuff to sell in the waiting markets.

For Hank it is easy to figure out which were the original recordings because you can hear them and also there are some obsessive discographers out there. For Chalino it is something like trying to figure out which of the gospels came first.

(or do they know that? I can never remember. A good one to save for Undismayed Bible Questions and Answers. No, I have not forgotten about that important work. I am in the interrogative stage.)

2010-03-18T21:10:00.003-04:00

I've been listening to these newer narcocorrido singers, an even more intense permutation of the form. It isn't really my thing but it is good to keep on top of these things, especially the harsher lyrics.

The lyrics, what little I can grab from them, are fairly nasty.

Anyway, I was struck by his combination of both accordion and a banda sound, which is unusual, and had developed this whole theory about the need to really push the envelope by playing all the styles at the exact same time.

But then tonight I was listening to Los Alegres de Teran and on "El dinero es redondo" they have accordion, full mariachi accompaniment, and what really sounds like an organ (though it must be the accordion). Oh well, maybe not so unusual Though it occurs to me that some of this could have been later overdubs even though it didn't sound like it.

2010-03-18T01:34:00.002-04:00

I am starting to think that the McAllen (TX) Monitor might be the best newspaper in America.

Check out how thoroughly it covers this story of Ramon Ayala's apology and reemergence.

We also get some good detail about the origins of the concert at the druglord's house:

"In early December, Ayala got a call from his promoter at Monterrey Representantes Artísticos SERCA, who said there was work in Puebla, Pue., for a birthday party or quinceañera on Dec. 10. Ayala said he couldn’t make it because he had to be in Odessa, Texas, for another concert the next day.

That was no problem, said promoter Servando Cano. There were plane tickets from Reynosa to Puebla, then back the next morning, which would allow Ayala and the band to get to Odessa in time for the concert.

Ayala did not say who was paying for the tickets.

He agreed to go.

“I thought that we were going to play on a big stage in a ballroom, but when I realized that was not happening, there was no way out and we decided to go ahead with the commitment and played,” Ayala said in Spanish. Two other famous groups were there: Cadetes de Linares and Grupo Torrente.

Ayala was in a small room playing for one man and a woman; More than 20 women arrived later during the performance, he said.

In total there were 28 musicians in three bands playing for about 25 people, Ayala said.

When he was playing his last song of the night, the lights suddenly went off.

Everyone started running, Ayala said. The bands dropped to the floor.

“Then we started hearing the gunfire. We thought that was the end for us, but thank God we are still here,” Ayala said. “We were able to squeeze into a hallway and two grenades were thrown in that direction and made everything tremble.”

Ayala was caught in the middle of a Mexican navy operation intended to capture Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the head of the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel. It is not confirmed if Beltrán Leyva was Ayala’s sole audience. Ayala said he did not know who the man was.

Three gunmen were killed and 11 others suspected of working for the Beltrán Leyva cartel were arrested that night.

“When the gunfire was over, (the authorities) started asking us who we were,” Ayala said. “I told them I was Ramon Ayala. Some of them recognized who we were, so I thought they were going to let us go, but they didn’t.”"

One reason the Monitor is so good is that it includes links to the pdfs of "state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, and U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, both of whom sent letters to Mexican Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez on behalf of Ayala" I can't remember ever seeing that in a paper.

Nobody ever writes about Los Cadetes de Linares, who also played. They are a great band, and stretching back for decades have been great. Several years ago I bought a cd of theirs at the Mexican flea market in Richmond on Jefferson Davis Highway and the guy selling it told me I would hate it since it was old. Nope.

Anyway, here is one of their classics, though I think it was a Los Alegres de Teran song,

2010-03-18T01:32:00.003-04:00

so enough of that fucking foolishness.

This is so unbelievably great. I can't imagine a worse video, but of that is to be expected and par for the course with this kind of thing. And here Santiago is truly kicking some ass and then you see the audience and it is sparse.

2010-03-18T01:21:00.002-04:00

Longtime readers of Undismayed (extinct though they are, but whatever) would remember that this blog actually sprung up as an obsessive response to 9-11 and other things political and then slowly evolved into this hodgepodge of passive reportage about the deaths of conjunto and country musicians. Or so it feels.

But this recent kerfuffle over Israel does make me want to step back and just say what the fuck? I can't think of a more mind numbing topic than the goddamn settlements. But what can the Israelis possibly be thinking? Why give Biden a swirly? Don't they know that HRC wants to take over and drive the Jews into the sea? And why can't they see clearly that it is time to fucking cut and run and stop this foolishness? Time to let the religious kooks know that Israel was founded by socialists not f'ing religious kooks. This game is over, they lost for any number of reasons, but is it really a loss to leave the fetid West Bank? Why constantly make the wrong decision? arrgh.

2010-03-15T12:06:00.004-04:00

I just heard that the great Ruben Vela died last week. Very sad to hear, he was one of the early original conjunto greats still playing. He started playing when he was 12.

As we posted here last spring, he was still tearing it up when he turned 72 at the Tejano Conjunto festival last year and clearly was still in his prime to the end.

Somewhere I have a picture of me and the old lady standing with the great Ruben Vela in San Antonio, but as yet I haven't unearthed it.

2010-03-10T01:45:00.001-05:00

I am determined to play this got-damn tune

2010-03-10T01:25:00.002-05:00

Last week I watched Mike Seeger's characteristically amazing and effortless and generally all around kick ass demonstration of a huge array of different guitar styles on this dvd and it really struck me what a loss it was that he died. You can listen to it and hear it but watching him break it down so elementally is something else.
The totality of his mastery really was complete and the totality of the loss even more.

Then this morning very randomly I read this section in Dylan's Chronicle where he describes seeing Mike Seeger play one night and describes being blown away. Dylan said Mike "Radiated telepathy." and said it about as well as it could be said: "in order to be as good as that, you'd just about have to be him, and nobody else." (p. 71). Mike was so good that Dylan decided that he should write his own songs. That makes sense.

2010-03-10T01:22:00.001-05:00

I think it is cheating to use a Negro Modelo bottle, they have a wide base

2010-02-11T10:21:00.004-05:00

I smell a rat

The long suffering old lady smelled something unpleasant in a corner of the kitchen and one whiff told me of course it was a dead rat. No mistaking that smell.

Or, more precisely, a motherfucking dead rat. I hate these fucking things. And, I must say, I hate that it falls to me to have to be the one to deal with them. But I am the dude in the house, which means I kills them and I gets to cut open the walls to take out their got-damn stinking corpses.

Allow me to note that I removed said rat while the old lady was in New Orleans. She smelled it and then left town for five days. You get the split screen effect-- one person happily sitting in the sun eating a fried oyster po boy, the more downtrodden person removing a dead rat from a wall while it rains outside...

The temperature plunged and that seems to have encourage rodents to move into the living area, otherwise known as the killing zone. Mother Maybelle and I had scared up a rodent the week before in the boiler room, she chased it and the thing moved so fast I couldn't be sure what it was. I told the old lady a mouse but of course that was bullshit because mice and little and cute and anything of any size is a fucking rat. Rat! It is one thing to have them in garage, where I kill them in a lackidasical fashion, but in the house I must adopt a zero tolerance policy and kill everything that moves, twice, generation to generation and onto their children's children.

So I invested in some of the higher strength rat poison, can't even remember the name, raptor or razor or something. The A list stuff, about twice as much as the other shit that promises to kill thing. It definitely worked because it killed this bastard almost overnight and he was fucking big.

I tried to pick him up with chopsticks but he was too damn heavy, so it had to be pliers. His body was longer than a chopstick and with his tail he was longer than two chopsticks.

The whole time I was doing this I was thinking "Motherfucker! Motherfucker!" I hate doing this.

Anyway, the rat is long gone, along with the smell, and the wall is all fixed now. This spot is, perfectly enough, directly below the area where the kitchen ceiling came down last fall, so once the new roof is on in three days time (or so goes the current plan) I will fix the ceiling and never have to deal with it again until another fucking rat expires behind the wall.

2010-01-22T12:45:00.004-05:00

Our friends at Burro Hall sent us this news that Mexico has had so much success stomping out the illegal drug trade the only thing left to outlaw are the songs about it.

"A new proposal by Mexico's ruling party could result in musicians being sent to prison for performing songs that glorify drug trafficking.

The proposed legislation would mean sentences of up to three years for people performing or producing songs or films that glamorise criminals.

"Society sees drug ballads as nice, pleasant, inconsequential and harmless – but they are the opposite," Oscar Martin Arce, a National Action party MP, told the Associated Press.

The ballads – known as narcocorridos – often describe drug trafficking and violence and are popular among some norteño bands.

After some killings, gangs pipe narcocorridos and threatening messages into police radio scanners.

Martin said his party's proposal, presented to congress on Wednesday, was also intended to combat low-budget films praising druglords. It remained unclear when it would be voted on.

"We cannot accept it as normal. We cannot exalt these people because they themselves are distributing these materials among youths to lead them into a lifestyle where the bad guy wins," Martin said."

I am sure you all understand how well it works for the government to ban stuff--it makes kids absolutely hate it.

And it is well known that people only do drugs because they like narcocorridos. That is why English speaking American teenagers consume mountains of drugs-- the wild popularity of El As de la Sierra across the suburbs.

Since this is going to mean the end of narcocorridos, I am going to sell my stock in ostrich-shouldered suit manufacturers. That market is going to dry right up.

The article erroneously states that Los Tigres del Norte did not play in the fall because of a narcocorrido when it was actually the bitingly political song "La Granja" that they were forbidden to play

The bottom of that page has this link to some footage of a Mexican jailbreak. Mexico should consider outlawing jailbreaks.

And as long as I am spending my time watching these, you should too. This one of anti-drug violence in Brazil is interesting.

2010-01-21T21:03:00.000-05:00

"I don't know whether I can play it or not, I'll try anything once"

2010-01-10T21:20:00.004-05:00

another one of those "kids these days"

I frequent this Vietnamese restaurant around here, have been going there for years, decent and cheap food. There has always been this nice little kid who worked there, son or nephew of the owner or whatever. I haven't seen him in a while, probably a couple of years, but he was working there tonight-- with a prominent gang tattoo on his neck.

The side of the neck tattoo is always is such a good idea.

I think what I appreciated most is that he speaks in one of the thickest Southern accents you will hear, a great incongruity all around.

I should mention that to him-- "great incongruity"-- and then have this Vietnamese/Good Old Boy/Gang Banger just kick the shit out of the middle aged honky....

only he still is about the nicest kid on the planet, even gave me change out of his pocket so I wouldn't have to break a bill, so no worries there.

unless me lent me the change to make me his bitch?

2010-01-10T14:34:00.003-05:00

True, I am old, and only getting more so, and I was a clueless and complete asshole in my youth, as my friends will attest, but just this week I have had a couple of experiences that gave me pause. or, actually, made me wonder what de fuck is up with kids these days.

A former student of mine recently got back in touch. He knocked up his girlfriend. I asked him if he was to marry the soon to be mom and he said "oh, I'm not the marrying kind." While I suppose this is better than getting divorced in a few years, the complete carelessness of the whole thing is something else.

The second moment, at least as grave, was when playing some music and in between tunes this young dude would text his girlfriend. During the tunes, his motherloving phone would vibrate. Seriously, what the fucks? This was about an anti-old timey a thing as could possibly be done, no?

Now you might think that knocking up some chick is worse than texting during a jam session, but I am not so sure about that. Texting while playing music, or even referring to a phone is, functionally and metaphysically, an abortion.

2010-01-08T12:44:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure what to make about the new security measures or even what to think about the full body scanners, though a scrambled viewing of one of them doesn't necessarily seem to me to be invasive of privacy in the way that (unscrambled) surveillance cameras following your movements all over the place clearly are. We are constantly under watch already.

I believe very strongly in the right to privacy and am even a crank on this subject. I agree that one obvious solution is to find an effective technological solution that allows a full scan without making it individually identifiable.

Put another way, if a terrorist is going to hid explosives under his nutsack, we do need a way to find it. Hopefully a machine that can sense it. Otherwise we are going to be asking security personnel to do the nutsack inspections and they aren't even unionized.

All the squawking makes me want to look up if people freaked out about metal detectors when they were rolled out.

If anything should depress us, it is that there are metal detectors at schools in the U.S. of A, lots of schools, a sign of a seriously demented society that needs these to prevent shootings.

One thing I think is complete bullshit is the weak argument that people who have fundamentalist religious concerns (Islamic, Jewish, presumably some others as well) have concerns about being viewed through this technology. The argument, made here by privacy expert Jeffrey Rosen, essentially means the decision to wear a burqa holds the rest of us hostage.

Well, Lift the nut sack you religious zealots, and keep your laws off of my body. I have no problem with anyone believing whatever they want, but if they are going to be moving through society they can also do the minimum.

I do have a graceful solution. Maybe we should just forget about terrorism and declare war on all fundamentalisms--take them all out, all fundamentalists across the board, and then essentially all of our problems could be resolved as the adults left make decisions rooted in rational thought. WWJD?

(I think my use of italics in this post officially pushes it into ranting territory)

2010-01-08T11:38:00.002-05:00

I am not sure what to make of the fact that one of ladies at the local post office is suddenly sporting the exact Sarah Palin hairdo. Maybe it means nothing, but it did kind of freak me out. Or maybe more accurate to say that it fascinated me. I really didn't have any deep thoughts other than uhhh, what the fuck? It is like wearing Marge Simpson's haircut or something, it is so ridiculous.

She (the mail lady, not former Gov. Palin) is also sporting one of those insane strip mall-tans that create the lines around her neck and make her look kind of reptilian.

It is all kind of intense, the tan combined with the Sarah Palin hair.

This lady is actually very nice. All the ladies at the post office are my pals since I usually am there all the got-damn time mailing ebay sales off. Recently I am a bit out of the loop though they are always happy to see me (or pretend*). I haven't been selling anything in the last few months because I've been working too much. It is long since time I quit this "working" nonsense and got back to the essentials of ebay sales, for shit's sake.

One thing that I have long been obsessed with, and probably even blogged about years ago, is her tendency to refuse to use the plural of "cents." It is not because she speaks ebonics, either. And it is way more pronounced than any ebonics speaker in my vicinity (which be my vicinity, by the way). It is so stridently done that it must be a deliberate choice to fuck with people. Why else would you say "that will be 25 dollars and 13 cent"? "seven dollars and 56 cent"? "your change is 78 cent."

So you combine the Sarah Palin hair, the tan, and the "cent"--and you see what I miss about going to the post office.

*how are they going to feel when future President Palin puts me in a Death Camp?

2010-01-07T21:22:00.004-05:00

Speaking of TV, we dutifully got rid of our old tv last spring when it no longer got channels because of the digital switch over (right, tragically no cable) and we got a new one, which is admittedly pretty sweet the way it lightens up the wheeling a.v. cart, and looks its best at moments like when he just watched Baile Norteño on it the other day. Actually, I watched it, the long suffering old lady hid in the other room. Baile Norteño is worth watching if only to demonstrate how the unbelievably shitty music videos of twenty+ years ago are still being produced for the Mexican markets. Also, the English descriptions of these things are always brilliant because they are inaccurate to flat-out wrong, and because who the hell are they directed toward? Me?

But the point of this is to say that here we have this fancy new TV and even a new antenna , and the wonder of the digital signal is that if you don't get it perfectly you don't get it at all. Gone are the days of fuzzy tv signals, we don't get jack now and we can't even find out the numerous ways that WAVY-TV 10 is on our side.

So fuck the whole 3-D tv thing until they improve the antennas. We need Congressional hearings.

2010-01-07T20:57:00.002-05:00

Even by the bootlicking standards of the major press outfits, this roll-out of the Google phone has reached an impressive level of saturation. Why the hell is this? I don't even give the remotest shit about this but could not escape "news" of its many innovative features at each and every of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy news outlets that I listen to and/or read. I would expect this from my local paper--which, after all, only prints press releases or AP stories--but the reputable places with actual reporters really should be ashamed. Since when does a news-free product launch get covered as news?

And as long as I am ranting about the obvious (and be honest, you have missed the ranting with all of this smoke and mirrors about Mexican music), isn't this arrival of 3-D just flat out irritating? If Avatar is so advanced (more on that in a second) then why is it possible that at the same moment this supposedly revolutionary film was released any asshole with 10 grand can buy a TV that supplies it? Doesn't this essentially mean Avatar and the 3-D are product tie-ins for the fancy-panted set, like those Darth Maul glasses at Burger King?

Now on Avatar--I haven't seen it and kind of vaguely wasn't planning to bother. Not that I am opposed to painfully stupid movies, and I like sci fi things generally, I just have few chances to see flicks and the hype was annoying me. But anyway, the New Yorker arrived and I figured I would read David Denby's review (he at least evidently having a brain) and then feel vindicated about not seeing the movie because it was overblown and just kind of a bad movie and all of that. Then, strangely, Denby didn't just like the movie, he freaking gushed about it. To the point that it was clear he is getting some kind of payola.

So clearly everyone is on the take. I want in, show me where to sign. Undismayed wants a 3-D TV.

2009-12-17T10:26:00.006-05:00

Ramon Ayala has been busted playing at a private party for drug dealers in Mexico and now they are trying to pin money laundering charges on him. This is big news because he is a freaking huge star, it is hard to think of an equivalent situation here. The only part of that that surprises me is that he was busted, which must mean that the Mexican government is trying to send a signal.

I personally would be shocked to find out that musicians deal with drug dealers and/ or launder drug money, especially in a narco states like the United States and Mexico. The only difference between the two might be that the drug money is not rinsed clean through a corporation in Mexico and the talent has to stand tall before the man in a more literal way. Although periodically the state does nab a rapper just to prove some point.

Me, I just think it is charming that drug dealers have Christmas parties. If I was a Mexican drug lord I would definitely have Ramon Ayala play at my party. All of you would be invited.

The weird detail of the Ayala story is that it was the Mexican navy (??)that got him.

What is getting less press is that two hundred sailors of the Navy then appeared in Cuernavaca the next day and assassinated a drug kingpin named Arturo Beltran Leyva, jefe de jefes after a two hour gun battle.

uh, here is where Cuernavaca is

Why the navy? I wonder if this is the last uncorrupted part of the military structure. My suspicious side thinks that maybe the Navy is evening the score out for the Sinaloa cartel, striking deep and even humiliating poor Ramon.

2009-12-05T16:21:00.006-05:00

"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!

2009-11-24T10:53:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-11-24T10:00:00.002-05:00

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?

2009-10-27T22:02:00.000-04:00

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.

2009-10-22T01:19:00.002-04:00

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?

2009-10-21T23:52:00.005-04:00

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.

2009-10-21T23:42:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-10-13T18:40:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-10-13T00:28:00.003-04:00

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

2009-10-13T00:23:00.003-04:00

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).

2009-10-12T21:58:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-10-12T21:44:00.002-04:00

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." "

2009-09-24T12:13:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-09-24T12:04:00.001-04:00

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

2009-09-18T18:44:00.004-04:00

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.

2009-09-18T15:46:00.002-04:00

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...

2009-09-18T15:42:00.000-04:00

2009-09-17T17:49:00.002-04:00

"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.

2009-09-17T17:47:00.001-04:00

Nice version of this tune

2009-09-14T03:06:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-14T02:59:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-09-14T02:36:00.003-04:00

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)

2009-08-28T00:28:00.006-04:00

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.""

2009-08-24T04:46:00.002-04:00

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.

2009-08-11T21:39:00.006-04:00

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.

2009-08-11T12:50:00.002-04:00

2009-08-10T01:12:00.002-04:00

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.

2009-08-10T01:10:00.001-04:00

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.

2009-08-10T00:24:00.004-04:00

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.

2009-08-10T00:20:00.007-04:00

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.

2009-07-12T14:37:00.002-04:00

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.

2009-06-17T22:22:00.006-04:00

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."

2009-06-17T17:07:00.005-04:00

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.)

2009-06-01T11:40:00.006-04:00

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?

2009-05-29T21:28:00.003-04:00

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."

2009-05-29T21:05:00.005-04:00

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"

2009-05-28T12:39:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-05-28T11:30:00.004-04:00

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:

2009-05-28T11:17:00.004-04:00

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:

2009-05-13T13:18:00.004-04:00

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?

2009-05-05T11:21:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-05-04T02:27:00.004-04:00

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.

2009-04-28T21:10:00.002-04:00

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.

2009-04-28T21:05:00.001-04:00

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!"

2009-04-28T21:01:00.002-04:00

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."

2009-04-25T00:22:00.004-04:00

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.

2009-04-21T12:14:00.001-04:00

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"

2009-04-21T10:17:00.002-04:00

I just heard that old time fiddler Lee Stripling died.

2009-04-15T11:27:00.004-04:00

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?

2009-04-15T00:15:00.002-04:00

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.

2009-04-09T10:14:00.003-04:00

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.