tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84324842024-03-07T16:33:09.698-08:00Radio Free ArizonaAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-87660837522454305502018-12-08T11:12:00.001-08:002018-12-08T11:14:16.140-08:00Can Scottsdale Arts CEO Wuestemann make the Center for the Arts hip again?<b>By Douglas McDaniel</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">After his first six months as the CEO for Scottsdale Arts, Gerd Wuestemann is revealing plans to initiate improvements for performance arts venues at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts and areas on the Civic Center mall.</span><br />
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Will he be an instrument of renewal?<br />
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"I certainly love building things, I'm not much of a status quo person," says Wuestemann, who took the Scottsdale Arts CEO position in March, replacing Neale Perl.<br />
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One other thing is clear: The guy wants to rock.<br />
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"I just saw Pearl Jam at Wrigley Field," he says, suggesting there may be more mainstream shows to come for Scottsdale Stadium. "I've seen what you can do with a concert on a baseball field."<br />
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A consensus builder who knows how to put projects together, with a keen awareness of the changing demographics of Scottsdale, as well as how far people will come to attend events in town, Wuestemann comes to the local cultural scene with significant plans in tow. He says the task before him is finding a way to renew the Scottsdale Arts campus and restore the one-of-a-kind jewel it once was before a mass of competitors followed their example in a Valley.<br />
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Considering how the organization has wide responsibilities for a single arts entity, maintaining a robust schedule of touring performing arts groups, arts fairs during the tourist season and technically challenging contemporary arts shows, just keeping things in working order is a big enough task. He took over an organization with 71 full-time and more than a hundred part-time members, overseeing the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary, myriad activities on the Scottsdale Civic Center Mall,and community outreach projects such as the arts for education program.<br />
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In addition to managing an organization that has had a lot of turnover in recent years, he's also launched into a five-year plan to improve the overall performance facilities for the non-profit entity. That includes changing the facade for the Center that hasn't changed much visually since 1987, and making better use of space available for performances.<br />
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"We haven't built anything new in 20 years," Wuestemann says. "Over the last decade there have been some struggles with leadership and financial issues. But it's a very large organization that's now poised for a very bright future."<br />
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Before he became an arts administrator, he had a successful career as a a performer. Born in Germany, he was a phenomenal classical guitarist and sort of child prodigy, to the point he was performing in Europe at the age of 12. He got a master's of music from Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt, Germany. and came to New York to continue his studies and performances. Wuestemann continued enhancing his educational background in music from then on, getting a master's of musical arts from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and another similar degree from the University of Arizona.<br />
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"This is my second stint in the desert, which I love," he says, adding there's similarity between the swamplands of Louisiana, with its mix of Canjun and Creole culture, and the Southwest, with its latino and Native American influences.<br />
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If it wasn't for a couple of actual accidents, he might have never entered the business side of the arts world. He says "bad accidents, a bad slip and fall and a bike accident" limited his ability to play at the guitar at level he was accustomed to. So he did the next best thing available to him, joining a business venture to build carbon fiber guitars in Mississippi, then joining the University of Louisiana as a professor of music, where he built a guitar program for students.<br />
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From there he became the director of a fledgling arts council in Lafayette, La., eventually becoming executive director of the Acadiana Center for the Arts -- the center itself being built during his watch at the position. The experience of building a flexible "modular" performance arts facility in Lafayette now has Wuestemann looking at how innovative thinking in venues might work in Scottsdale.<br />
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"Scottsdale deserves to move forward to improve its assets," he says. "I think change is needed but managing change is key. You can't throw everything but the kitchen sink in at once. Otherwise, you create chaos."<br />
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Since opening more than 30 years ago, the Center for the Arts has been facing a increasingly competitive market from other cities in the Valley. There are newer venues in Mesa, Tempe, Chandler and "Peoria just opened a wonderful facility that should really give us pause for thought," he says.<br />
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He has a five-year plan. It starts with improving what already exists. Followed by getting funding for bigger ticket items.<br />
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The main theater itself, which seats more than 825, is fine, he says. You can make improvements to the acoustics, but not much more. He's really targeting the second theater in the center, which seats 130, for the kind of modular versatility that made the theater in Lafayette so utilitarian. In fact he's invited acoustic and theater systems experts from the project at the Acadiana facility to help come up with plans with the Scottsdale's secondary indoor venue. Another change for the long-term is redesigning the front of the building on side of the main building facing Second Street, creating more of a gateway entry feel for the center, he says,<br />
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They will also be looking at what can be done to improve the site on the east of the Cevic Center Mall used for musical performances, with hopes of creating an amphitheater setting, he says. A<br />
bond election is planned for next year to raise capital for such improvements, Wuestemann says. But considering the recent history of Scottsdale for bond votes, that will take a lot of convincing, but the new CEO for Scottsdale Arts is hopeful.<br />
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"If you can convince people you have a vision for the place, the more you can convince them to support you."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-24540049241793686902018-12-08T11:06:00.000-08:002018-12-08T11:06:07.045-08:00How Trampled By Turtles got to trampling again<b>By Douglas McDaniel</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Keeping it in the simple vernacular of the Midwesterner, there's one good word to describe the return of Trampled By Turtles to recording and touring form: "sweet," according to a member of the band who is now serving as the main interviewee and spokesman for their renewal. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Prior to departing for an extended hiatus, such albums as "Wild Animals" brought an essentially updated bluegrass gone public with a breakneck rock energy thing. One result of that, most certainly a double-edged sword, was more than a small degree of fame.</span><br />
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Caught by phone during a new leg of the band's currrent tour after recording their latest effort, "Life Is Good on the Open Road," Trampled By Turtles mandolinist Erik Berry confirmed that life is, indeed, good on the road, especially when you get to play the Grand Ol Opry, in this case a radio show, "which is a treat."<br />
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The down side to fame is if a successful band plays together long enough, after eight full-length albums, three of which went number one on the U.S. Billboard charts, somebody in the group might get it in their minds that they might like to try to perform out of that circle for a while. And so it was with Trampled By Turtles, whose lead singer and songwriter Dave Simonett broke the circle for a bit, telling the rest of the band he needed to perform with a side project, Dead Man Winter, a band he had been with before Trampled By Turtles.<br />
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"I wasn't happy about it," Berry says, given the band had been docked for nearly two years, but in hindsight, he says, it kinda fits. "One of the long-running jokes in the band is Trampled by Turtles is a side project until our original bands come through."<br />
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That "side project" formed in Duluth, Minnesota in 2004, when five friends who had played in every small corner of the region they could find allowed when to play with a quirky combination of bluegrass with and folk-rock feel. Simonett's songwriting and a world weary singing voice was accessible to the fans of indie rock, but they were also a natural at say, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. But after touring all 50 states and the world, loads of success on the Billboard charts, he became band weary.<br />
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According to reports, he found himself to be burned out and struck creatively, and when he did write, it didn't sound like Trampled by Turtles songs. He had gone through the breakup of a 10-year marriage and attempted to get all of the angst out with Dead Man Winter's album, "Furnace," and much of that experience also informs the new album. But after he had sown those oats, all of the members had arranged to get back together after 20 months to see if they still had any of the magic anymore.<br />
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"I did a lot of solo mandolin gigs and kind of just threw myself back into my own music, and after a while I felt like what I call my own musical monologue changing," Berry says. "One of the things that helped when he got back together was we were all playing different kinds of music."<br />
While Simonett, bassist Tim Saxhaug and fiddle player Ryan Young played with Dead Man Winter, cellist Eamonn McLain fronted a group called The Fiddle Heirs and collaborated with another, Pert Near Sandstone. Meanwhile, "I just played anywhere I could," Berry says.<br />
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For his part, Berry returned to his love of Celtic music, which he says is a direction he always tends to push Trampled by Turtles toward, and also formed a Grateful Dead cover band.<br />
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He grew up listening to "hair bands, which immediately became uncool after Nirvana came out," he says, adding that he played piano at an early age but didn't like it, so he moved onto the guitar, eventually finding that mandolin was his favorite instrument. But music wasn't his first career choice. After studying English at Luther College in northeastern Iowa, he became the editor of a small town newspaper, covering school boards and city councils. That became a grind and he eventually met the members of what would beome Trampled by Turtles in Duluth.<br />
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One of the things that was an advantage to the band as a touring act, Berry says, was being centrally located in the U.S. They could go east or west without being too far from home.<br />
"From a very practical sense, with us being based very close to the middle of the country, it kept us from going crazy early on where long tours might have impacted other bands," he says. "There is a real lack of effort in terms of being able to make really sweet music with these guys. Nobody pisses each other off. It works on a number of levels."<br />
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They put out their own record, "Songs from a Ghost Town," in 2004 and a year later upped the ante on BanjoDad Records with "Blue Sky and the Devil." Things really began to take off with the release of "Duluth," with Trampled by Turtles becoming regulars on the Billboard charts from then on, a kind of crossover act as comfortable in a rock bar as a bluegrass festival. They made their national television debut in 2012, playing the Late Show with David Letterman.<br />
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From that point on they were, well, famous. But by the end of a wild 12-year ride, the future of the group was in question, sort of. The needs of the music business and doing what they were best known for pulled them right back in.<br />
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"One of the funny things of us getting back together was the (band manager) scheduled us to get together," he says. "One of the two steps to that was us just getting in the same room together and seeing how it went."<br />
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Berry says in October 2017 they all met at banjo player Dave Carroll's vacation home near Grand Rapids, Michigan.<br />
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But they didn't start out playing music. Or at least, that wasn't the focus.<br />
"We just did what the place was made for, hanging out," he says. "We just got together and went, 'If anybody had anything to say, now is the time.' "<br />
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The occassion was relaxing, as they found themselves refreshed, refocused and, more than anything else, glad to be in each other's company again. By the end of that gettaway, they were working on new material. Another thing that happened during that time was the Las Vegas shooting at a country music festival and immediately after, the accidental death due to a drug overdose of Tom Petty. This put everything in a new light, the fragility of life apparent to everyone in the group, as well as the need to get back to what was most important to them.<br />
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"During that time, the news of Tom Petty's death, which I heard about on the radio while I was driving (to the retreat)," he says. "It did seem like a couple of crappy days for the music world, but it was something was something we all experienced together."<br />
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The next step, another retreat, this one creative: getting into a studio, in this case Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, where they recorded "Life Is Good on the Road" in five days. The experience was idyllic and hassle free. They would record during the day, and then walk 200 or so feet to the studio's living spaces to have what Berry called "listening parties."<br />
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"We were focused and relaxed," Berry says. "We fouind the feeling never went away. That's what I remember about it now, the sense of it being just pleasant, focused. It just felt normal. It just felt right."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-33489927104422697862018-12-08T11:01:00.001-08:002018-12-08T11:01:15.350-08:00The Mimicking Birds are poised for more success with more new music and a lot of talk about science<b>By Douglas McDaniel</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Mimicking Birds are well named, since the Portland, Oregon based band's music has a lush natural sound whose vocalist Nate Lacy has a free flowing melodic sensibility floating above a thicket of understated tinkling guitars, thorny, textured layers of it, and pattering drums. He sings like a bird, or maybe a wayward choirboy, his vocals taking surprising turns in the air, finding the light in the dense murk of sounds.</span><br />
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Brought along in the music world by Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, the indie rock of the Mimicking Birds got the big lift when they recorded tracks at his house in Portland, where both bands are based, and then signed onto Glacial Pace Recordings.<br />
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"I’d gotten connected with Isaac Brock through Glacial Pace Recordings after a friend of mine sent them an email with a link to my songs -- unbeknownst to me,." Lacy says. "Then one day I’d received a message from Glacial Pace -- a couple months later Isaac called me late one morning and discussed the possibility of recording some tracks at his house in Portland. I was going to community college in Eugene at the time. A few months later I was at Isaac’s house recording songs in his attic with him and (Modest Mouse engineer) Clay Jones.<br />
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"Isaac is a huge influence lyrically and instrumentally, " Lacy wrote by e-mail while on the road for the current tour, "particularly his project Ugly Casanova really excited me to start creating songs and recording them." Asked for a list of his favorite bands, he lists "Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Elliot Smith, Neil Young, Dave Matthews, Radiohead, Beck, Moody Blues, Bruce Cockburn, Crash Test Dummies, The Jingle Cats, and the majority of '90s alternative mega hits." There is something of a writer in Lacy as well, as he also listed such literary and scientific influences as Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, Einstein, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. <br />
"I love me some Dr. Seuss," he states, placing the first year of the band as "2008ish."<br />
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Soemthing of a rarity for many bands, Mimicking Birds make a special feature of their lyrics on the band page. As Lacy says, "I have always been into the words." And he's not kidding, with many songs going on into lengthy meditations on climate change, tsunamis and inner space. Is this connection to nature intentional or accidental? You could probably pass a physics test by simply memorizing the vocabulary of Lacy's lyrical palette.<br />
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"Seems like the big question ...," he writes. "Is nature itself accidental or intentional? I’d say both. Have been obsessed with it since I can remember. I still get just as excited by finding an insect, or by a powerful weather event as I did when I was a child. This seems to be instinctively inherent in children and I definitely don’t feel like an adult yet (maybe old sometimes but not a grown up). Which I’m certainly not alone on that front, but it does seem to fade as people grow older. I think it’s important for our evolution’s potential to maintain that connection."<br />
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Where the album "Eons" launched the band with rave reviews due to the eerily atmospheric quality of the song with Lacy's airy vocals, the percolating drums and the ringy wash of guitar sounds, the new album is a departure in the sense it uses more synth-drumming and more keyboard sounds.<br />
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"I’ve always liked the sound of subtle synth blending into the acoustic recordings," he states. "I think it grew more with `Eons,` and recording with producer/engineer Jeremy Sherrer who brought a lot of that to the table. Especially percussion-wise. Adam Trachsel (bassist in the band) is a synth freak as well. I like the dark analog stuff like you’d here in '80s or early '90s action movies like 'The Terminator' films (Brad Fiedel)."<br />
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The new album, "Layers of Us," includes on track perhaps intended as a show-stopper, especially with the extended breakout instrumentals at the end, "Great Waves."<br />
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As Lacy writes, "There’s been a bunch of sensationalization the last few years on the West Coast about the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a big quake and impending tsunami being long overdue. I surf often on the northern Oregon coast and would inevitably think about that while in the water or even just being at the beach. This probably heightened after the Japan quake/wave. I was trying to paint that ominous picture. Hard to comprehend the scale of such a thing."<br />
He got his interest in the physical universe from his father.<br />
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"I think it’s a good tool for conjuring up imagery and I’m infinitely fascinated with the patterns and precise geometry of such chaos," he says. "I think it can lend insight into perception of time and scale as well, and establish a mood/backdrop for the other details."<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Originally published by <a href="http:////www.flgalive.com">Flagstaff Live</a></span></i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-83718379421071639982018-04-13T17:22:00.002-07:002018-04-13T17:22:34.291-07:00Flagstaff's historic downtown district hosts a happening music scene<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">If anybody was watching me, they must have wondered what I was doing. There I was, tearing posters for local band shows off of one of the many areas in Flagstaff where the posting of band flyers is permitted. In the post-internet age this is a lost art. Hodgepodge notices with found art images, all kind of retro looking, with amazing amounts of creativity involved, wild in typefaces of all kinds, including kidnapper style, cut from magazines and newspapers, as if the articles were art forms in themselves. They are all over the place. Sometimes in sedentary layers at a kiosk. Tons of ten by 15 inch notices, usually for shows with not one but three bands listed with names you have never heard of, and probably never will again.</span></div>
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But I started collecting them. I'd go around, ripping them off. Not because I'd been recruited by the leader of the No-Fun Patrol, but because they were beautiful signs of life. What kind of life? Of an emergent music phenomena otherwise described as a "scene." One features some kind of Wright Brothers era flying machine for a show at the Hotel Monte Vista for Rose's Pawn Shop and Gravity Well, while another has a cartoon image of the Route 66 frontage of the Fire Creek Coffee Company as a promo for four bands, Sol Drop, Tiny Bird, Good Ol Joel, and a sister act from Phoenix, Fairy Bones. Still another has a picture of a nice lady in black and white from the Ozzie and Harriet era with pearls on, inviting you to see Four Cornered Room, ABC Sports and Nice Trip! The point here is that out of just three sheets of paper worthy of an exhibition at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts, nine bands have been named. Nine! Eight of them <a href="http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/10-flagstaff-bands-phoenix-music-fans-should-be-listening-to-8839851">Flagstaffian</a>.</div>
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And on any given day of the week at these old-tech portals for your attention, on the bulletin boards off coffee houses and in shop and restaurant windows all over town, dozens of these primitivesquely decorated sheets are signs of the emergence of three or four times as many bands. Which means, by the laws of power trio or drum, bass, guitar and lead singer multiplication, there could be 100 musicians in town, probably a lot more, who have somehow managed to pick up a musical instrument and became suitably proficient on stage and play for at least a little money.</div>
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Who are these people? How does this happen? And what, exactly does it mean?</div>
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Cultural anthropology such as this reminds one of another time and place. In era now regarded as "legendary." In this case, Tempe, Arizona during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Before Mill Avenue was Hooterized into a collection of slick establishments, turning the area into what Bruce Cockburn once sang of as "Fascist Architecture," such haunts as Long Wong's, Chuy's, the Sail Inn, and, off the beaten path, the grungy Sun Club ... these places were all supportive of a vibrant music scene. What was necessary for the growth of a period that served as incubators for such bands as Dead Hot Workshop, the Meat Puppets, the Refreshments and the Gin Blossoms was two things. One, mom and pop clubs that prioritized and believed in creating a local music scene, and, two, vast numbers of college students spilling out of the dorms from the east onto the main drag of Mill.</div>
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Also, places were far more permissive of band flyers. But Tempe now has been Urban Outfitted to death over the decades. And what was once a haven for guitar-toting bands is now a glittering hub of pulsating lights for the electronic dance music crowd. </div>
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Many of the musicians from that alternative era heyday now appear as their grizzled selves in dowtown Scottsdale, at such places as the Old Town Tavern, and the Rock Bar. But they are not really places for college kids. The Old Town Scottsdale haunts are really for people who are too old for rock'n'roll (but they don't know it yet), too young to die.</div>
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There is still a lot of music to be heard in Phoenix, but it's scattered round town. There is no centralized "scene."</div>
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But in dowtown Flagstaff, the music soup is ready. There are at least a half-dozen places where local bands can play and be loud. The growth of the student population at Northern Arizona University has reached a critical mass to the point there is an audience ready and willing to drift into the Victorian mining era architecture zone of historic downtown Flagstaff to hear live music. It says a lot when one of the biggest retailers downtown is a music store, as well as the fact there are custom guitar shops nearby.</div>
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Music is a priorty in a place where pedestrianization puts the pedal to the post-punk metal. You know you have a great music scene when each First Friday you can stroll down the street and peer into the windows of the building fronts and pick and choose from a variety of music styles. So the soup is ready. Get it while it's hot.</div>
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What will kill this kind of cultural percolation? The inevitable invasion of corporate chain stores, bars and restaurants, something the real politic of Flagstaff has been able to, for the most part, avoid in the downtown sector. And watch out for the No Fun Patrol. Those folks who fail to see the beauty of graffiti, or, don't provide ample spaces for those crazy quilt spots for the placement of those flyers for the band shows. That will be apparent when there isn't some friendly business owner available on site to say, sure, you can put that sign in my window, with the Scotch tape ready to roll.</div>
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<i>This column originally appeared in<a href="http://www.flaglive.com/"> Flagstaff Live</a>.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-49177663002314122018-04-03T12:04:00.003-07:002018-04-03T12:04:35.570-07:00Casper and the Mighty 602 Band: A pioneer for raising reggae on the reservation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Considering the odds, how Hopi reservation born Casper Lomayesva became a professional musician is a pretty unlikely story. Here is how it starts, or, let's just say here are the big three: first, as a young boy in Kykotsmovi he can remember his grandfather singing all of the time in the cornfields and encouraging him to sing along; second, the invasion of the Bob Marley generation of Jamaican musicians, from an island to the high desert; and third, he moved to the city.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">This leads to a fourth thing. After moving to Mesa he connected to a enormous number of musicians, who then formed Casper and the Mighty 602 Band, a group that established itself as one of the first reggae acts of the 1990s to build an audience of fans on the Navajo and Hopi reservations. He won't put it in so many words, but the fact is now, at the age of 51, on the brink of a new venture and stage of life when he gets his engineering degree from Arizona State University this year, he can look back and say, yeah, he was one of the leading lights to bring reggae to the reservation, and then Flagstaff, in all of Northern Arizona.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">"I had left because there is more opportunity in the city," Lomayesva says. "I came to Phoenix and all of the recording facilities were here, with lots of access to studios in the Valley. But I knew the inspiration was within me. I knew I had a calling ... Radical Mix ... the Rastafarmers, they were the guys that helped us to get our scene together."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">After his 20 year-old band 602 played one of the many music festivals in the metropolitan Phoenix area this spring, including a Caribbean festival in the West Valley, and a Native American event for the Scottsdale craft arts show crowd, he says at the same time while he's been keeping his heels relatively cool on the music side of things, he's still accepting as many invitations to perform as he is turning them down, and it would be quite easy to feel like the "calling" has been answered. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">"I don't perform as much music because I am a senior at ASU," he says on the phone from the middle of the desert surveying as part of his day gig. "But the music has always been there, and you have to go on. I am not going to spend a lot of time lingering. I am land surveying in the middle of the desert near the South Mountains a lot of the time near the Gila River Reservation, part of a $2.1 billion freeway project .... It's still 100 percent pristine. The way I look at it is I am doing something to help set the boundary beside the Gila River, which helps them out on the Gila River Reservation. Since 2012, this is part of a bigger calling. Doing something else, with a good job, a good trade. I didn't know I was going to live this long. So I needed to use it, if you know what I mean."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">Now, looking back, he says, "602 was at least partially responsible for inspiring bands that did pretty well," adding his own band had been previously inspired by the wave of reggae bands who came to the Four Corners area to play in the 1990s. "It was above and beyond just being Hopi, when Bob Marley and Ziggy Marley and Dennis Brown, the crown prince of reggae, come, it's like Haile Selassie had come from Jamaica. They were coming to sing to us. It was more of an invitation."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">One particularly important organization had a lot to do with bringing these artists to the community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">"Cultural Connection in the early 1990s not only inspired me, it was part of something brand new," he says. "Cultural Connection was a group of our friends from the Hopi res, and there was one guy who we called the bwana from LA, Jerry Gordon. He was the outside but it was also the glue who brought it all together. But reggae music, for all Indian native people, is Jamaican gospel. It keeps evolving but the message never changes."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">Just the remoteness of where the spirit of the movement took hold, it's daunting to think about, at least in terms of distances covered. During a period when conflicts in all manner of life with the Peabody Coal Mine issues, when social activism and reggae fused to the very heartbeat of the Hopi and Navajo view of their own place in history, Casper and 602 played 53 shows a year, eventually doing national tours and then international engagements. Tons of fundraisers, special events, part of the social activism, in the far-flung Native American communities scattered across the Southwest. A lot of toting expensive musical equipment around. Ten years ago,<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="color: #333333;">he was invited by folk artist </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pete Seeger</span><span style="color: #333333;"> to play Seeger's 90th birthday party at Madison Square Garden, sharing the stage with </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dave Matthews</span><span style="color: #333333;">, </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">John Mellencamp</span><span style="color: #333333;">, and </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bruce Springsteen</span><span style="color: #333333;">. He also headlined the Native Music Rocks tour at Hard Rock Cafes all around the country, and rocked such venues as the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">"It was a calling and a burden all at once," he says. "One of the most painful times I had to go through was doing 53 shows from the communities, all kinds of shows for the homeless, for protesting the Peabody Coal Mine, doing all of the booking and the promotion. That was before I had management." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">With the new security from an engineering profession, Lomayesva has also moved into new terrain musically, expecting to start booking shows for an entirely different style of music.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: medium;">"Highest Conspiracy is a different band with a horn section for that newer audience," he says. "The concept has changed, but its still real life music for real life issues."</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-60101519638564394072018-02-02T06:31:00.001-08:002018-02-02T06:31:17.166-08:00A Dangerous Business: from Terpander to Tom Petty, the hazards of falling off the rock'n'roll stage<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">They say it comes in threes. The death chime. That's what they say. When three celebrities die in a row, in terms of the news cycle, they say, that's an omen. So they say. But if you were in the insurance business, well then, let's just look at the law of averages. Getting the facts, using, for example, math, one realizes the omen was missing a digit. If you simply ask "starting when?" in discussing the law of threes, one actually actuaries it out to an endless string of celebrity deaths. In fact, death et large is always booming. Yet as the calculation narrows into evermore focus, you have to admit, in fact it's almost, just almost, beyond logic. When it comes to musicians, why do the good die so young?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The first "starting when" takes us back to ancient Greece, to a story of a famed lyre player by the name of Terpander, who was essentially the Mozart of his age. What made him unusual was his popularity. He had become a true super star in the emergent stadiums-made-of-stone industry, kept things hummable, simple, yet breaking out all kinds of new chord patterns and arrangements, making him also one of the great musical innovators of his time. Greek society had developed to the point where folks had time for songs, as opposed to fighting off natural disasters, the hordes, or, famine, and the performance venues were drawing crowds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">During his concerts for large numbers of drunk people in what can only be imagined as a new kind of bacchanlian fest among the masses, Terpander was, in addition to being the so-called "father of greek music," especially lyric poetry on the lyre, which he had basically Jack White-ed his four-string lyre into a seven-string ... Terpander was a public spectacle, introducing songs influenced by other lands, known far and wide for his drinking tunes. Summoned to play by the Delphic Oracle, he gained the big Grammy at a festival in Carneia, held in Sparta in honor of Apollo Carneus. However, as that old saying goes, then comes the drugs and alcohol and the trappings of fame. According to Wikipedia.org: "Terpander is said to have died, around Skiades ("shady place"of the Carneia), by choking on a fig when the fruit was thrown in appreciation of one of his performances."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So now let's flash forward 2,700 years, and you are now back safely from a Marilyn Manson concert. Chances are you likely know the original date in September was delayed. After an accident last fall, when, during a show in London, a stage sculpture featuring two crossing giant pistols, collapsed on him after he had tried to climb it, sending him to the hospital, lights out, on a stretcher. Then, of course, there's the news of old Tom Petty. Just what is it that made that one so sad? It's more than him simply the kid that got to hang out with the grizzled Wilburys. There was a teenager in healthy rebellion with Petty that will always live on with his music, if not even his own fate, overdosing on pain killer fentanol after taking his space ship out one last time like a Ulysses who knew perfectly well what the price might be for heading out to the sea again at age 65 for one more victorious Heartbreakers tour, knowing fully well he could return home in just what kind of shape, exactly, who knew?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Looking at these two starting whens, we must ask: What is this tendancy for rock stars to have so many deaths, mishaps and other generally woeful endings?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A performer who goes by the name of Ray, a Sedona resident who leads a crack Jethro Tull cover band, Living With the Past, to the point of being good enough to gaining the attention of Ian Anderson, and after having many years of those kinds of contacts in the music industry, sums it up right down to pure physics: "Electricity."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Over the last few years alone, how many musicians have died," he says. "And why are they always dying so young?" It's the stress of the "lifestyle," he says, "and always being around this electrical field while you are on stage. It screws their system up, which is one of the things of why weird things happen and how dangerous it is."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Certainly fits the early 1970s, when a rash of deaths to Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and the godfather of electrification, Jimi Hendrix, found a new generation of performers unable to contain the energies they unleashed, the spirit of lifting off the stage for some higher purpose, driving wild engines with ancient drums into the space age with supercharged guitars and the never-ending need to feed off heavy fuels to answer the bell, to get the Mojo runnin'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Life on the road can be loaded with mishaps due to mere chaos theory. Bad food. Strange stages, steps, lighting situations, lack of sleep, complete lack of orientation in a city you can only make a bad guess at the name.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As Brandon Decker says, "I did have a rollover accident on tour once. Band member ejected from vehicle, broke a bone in her neck, airlifted etc. In terms of on stage never anything too crazy other than the occassional electric shock."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mama told you not to go to the bars with guns in tow for a reason. The underworld of the rock'n'roller also makes it a dangerous business. Says another Flagstaff musician, Donivan Berube, "I've never been injured or experienced a stage collapse, but have been robbed twice on the road. Once was in Washington, D.C., when someone broke into our tour van while we were inside the venue playing the show. You can always count on losing your voice and getting sick on the road as well, traveling all day, every day, meeting new people, sleeping in strange places and exhausting your body. Once I stayed with a friend-of-a-friend who ended up being a drug dealer, and asked me to sell ecstasy at my own show. In the morning I snuck my gear down the fire escape so as to avoid talking to him."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">However, these are acts of wisdom. Good suvival skills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Besides the regular old rickety stages and sketchy electrical systems," says Andrew Baker of Summit Dub Squad and Tha 'Yoties, "We love playing outdoor shows, festivals, etc., and more times than I can remember, as soon as we bust out the Native American flute, the clouds gather ... We've played many a set amongst monsoon rains ... technically terribly hazardous, but spiritually uplifting and rejuvenating, especially when the crowd keeps dancing in the rain!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Also, playing anything but country music at country bars could prove dangerous, but we have been able to blast 'em with the SDS funky dub hop and Tha 'Yoties Irie-Zona Reggae Rock without incident so far!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The sheer violence of rock, explains a lot. Not just rock, though, but revolutionary music. Since Beethoven caused riots with his early symphonies, amped up, as they were, in those orchestral days.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Tull sold out a show at Red Rocks and people were trying to to get in and got into a riot at the gates," Ray says. "It got to the point police had to tear gas a crowd. He was singing during a show in New York when some idiot threw a rose at Ian right in the eye and ripped it open. He had to immediately go to the hospital and they had to do minor surgery." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Here's another Ian Anderson story related by Ray, who met him in Denver at a hotel while Jethro Tull was on tour: "We are in a room and he says,'Ray, do you see how I'm standing here? With my back to the wall. I've been told by security people to do that. So you always know what's around you, and no one can come back from behind you.' "</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Musicians who lead insanely clean lives, under the circumstances, are most assuredly among those who endure, including Tull's Anderson. Ray says the classic rock icon, as well as someone like Frank Zappa (who nonetheless died of cancer), "were two of the craziest musicians in the world but they were straight as an arrow."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There you have it, a 50-50 split. Guess the good insurance agent would put it all down to how Roger Daltrey started singing in the Who's "Quadrophenia": "Do you see the real me, Doctor?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>This article appeared previously in <a href="http://www.flaglive.com/">Flagstaff Live</a>.</i></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-18705700847863187292018-01-30T08:33:00.004-08:002018-01-30T09:23:18.666-08:00Blighty of the Grand Canyon: Has Disneylandification Peaked in Northern Arizona?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span><span style="font-size: large;">hen Walt Disney first walked the rocks of Sedona, although Wikipedia.org says the origins of Mickey Mouse are "unclear," the inspiration for that iconic figure for the biggest media empire in the 21st century is, in fact, quite clear. It's a cactus, plain and simple. Explains the big ears. And in the time since he launched his animated film juggernaut, an entire chain of events has been unleashed, perhaps described as the dance of a sidewinder snake in and out of the dreamscape of the American imagination.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is no small thing to look at a cactus and envision a mouse. It's positively anthropomorphic. Heat stroke will do that. Altitude, too, if you are not careful. The Diz was an ambulance driver in Europe by Armistice Day during World War I, and there are legends of morphine use. He was a drinker and a heavy smoker. But that could hardly explain what he did in the making of Disneyland, thinking of it as a kind of futuristic embodiment of what is now a global meme for the implied perfect experience of getting away from it all. By absorbing the entire American experience and bringing it right back home to you. On a zillion or so acres of electro-kinetic fun with moving parts, plus plenty of room for parking. You get the trains moving through Victorian age architecture, old gold and silver mining cars gone wild, the log flumes, the daring exploits of gravitational overload, ducks and dogs that talk, bears that jamboree, dinosaurs that blink, the biz!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Can we just set aside the overculture of Disney now as a symbol of American imperialism? Let's just let the French think that for the time being.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Few things, however, can be more dizzying than simply standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Which is more to the point: Disneynification was at first, to the very naval core of the idea, northern Arizona-ified. The theme park that truly exists is natural. The Disney crossover from dream into reality essentially morphed the experiential history of the Western United States onto the vast acres of Anaheim, California. But in recent years the mind set of the Diz is bouncing out</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> into the boonies again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">One can only guess what hallucinogens were in play to even consider putting an escalator from some isolated high desert plateau down thousands of feet to an even now cold and ravaging river. It was a remarkable idea, to say the least. But the public debate got it right, for once. It was a very Disney thing to imagine. No small thing, most assuredly. Considering they had the funds and backers to build it: Wow, do people have money to burn. And it was a very practical thing to dismiss </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">by resounding no vote.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But before Walt Disney wrought all of that which the tide is now turning on, there were already things like the Verde Canyon Railroad. By the time Disney was a teen that world was well beyond mere imagining and almost passe as the 20th century became the century of the automobile. Snaking back into the Verde Canyon, there is only one railroad there for a reason. Lowell Observatory, on the other hand, was most certainly the seed of Disney's futurism, at least in the broad swathe of his times. The tram up the slopes of Snow Bowl are yet again an example. The rush of rafting through the canyons, another.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There comes a point the number of amenities available on these delicate landscapes, fragile ecosystems, such as they are, to human intrusion, are now sufficient. No more are needed. Hard enough, in fact, to keep the ones available up and running (see ski industry). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nothing less than great fabled Flinstoneland of "Bedrock City," which has been out there where the streets have no name to the left of the San Francisco Peaks since 1972, stands as a monument and testament to the American idea of building it and they will come. Just 30 miles from the Grand Canyon's South Rim, the 6-acre tourist attraction, including concrete houses suitable for Fred Flinstone and Barney Rubble from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series from the 1960s, a giant brontosaurus slide and statues of the shows characters. The owner Linda Speckles put the place up for sale at $2 million, but so far no takers. With the owners intent on preserving the roadside attraction, still doing brisk business as of last weekend, remain a hold out for the right buyer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The fact is, northern Arizona is pretty Disneylanded out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">President Theodore Roosevelt, on the importance of the national park for preservation, stated in using executive power to preserve it, "I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, or hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. you cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Obviously, that advice wasn't followed. But it's time to print it again. In case the current Administration reads it. As the late Edward Abbey wrote, "Growth for it's own sake is the psychology of the cancer cell." Maybe mother nature is theme park enough, with those bells and whistles just whispers in the much bigger winds of change.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>This article originally appeared in <a href="http://www.flaglive.com/">Flagstaff Live</a>, the arts and entertainment weekly for the Arizona Daily Sun.</i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-10989346547836052342017-12-29T16:25:00.001-08:002017-12-29T16:25:16.477-08:00I am Flobot: By the time you get this message, the zombie apocalypse will be a little less real<div style="background-color: white;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv-4pGaEUTdb5MrISQdcNtR3X3_WrmD57JzSykqUvU-lxs8ZU4QDUPnrShe2Gnjl_guoxDPGuo6i7RKrVpCHslEymf2YrN-45ldoSrm0Ih5gSwa0kRK0oU5VfSFY-v5qp9L4cWqg/s1600/flobots_noenemies_album_art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="736" data-original-width="736" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv-4pGaEUTdb5MrISQdcNtR3X3_WrmD57JzSykqUvU-lxs8ZU4QDUPnrShe2Gnjl_guoxDPGuo6i7RKrVpCHslEymf2YrN-45ldoSrm0Ih5gSwa0kRK0oU5VfSFY-v5qp9L4cWqg/s400/flobots_noenemies_album_art.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span><span style="font-size: large;">anger! Danger Will and Wilma Robinsons! Danger! This warning is being sent to you in order to maintain truth in advertising since the system is so unforgiving. Should you receive this message just know, fair readers, spinning on the planet known as Earth, currently moving through space at 75,000 miles per hour, Johny5 of the Flobots was there, is there, will be there, moving for all eternity. In fact, current conditions indicate the situation at hand is, in some small, perhaps even large part, his fault.</span></div>
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The year is 2008. Barrack Obama is not yet president of the nation at the time known as the United States of America ... blink. We have transported you to Denver, Colorado, where the band is based, in order to show you some reasons to be thankful during the holidays. Do not adjust your set. We have assumed control.</div>
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Denver. A half-year, perhaps, before the Democratic National Convention. Up and down Colfax Street, the longest and straightest street on American soil, all of the good people are a-hub-bub about the new Flobots album, "Fight with Tools," which offers the track, "Handlebars," currently on the classic rock playlist all of the way to Star Date 2223. The circular play device called a CD could be purchased in indoor spaces Earthlings called record stores. Words sung from that title track for the album were as follows:</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">"Echo, echo, one-nine</span><br />
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Hear the call through fault lines<br />
Smoke signals, old rhymes<br />
Shorted lights in store signs<br />
Spelled in a broken code<br />
Find that it is time to<br />
Breathe, build, bend, and refine you<br />
We sky tenants<br />
Give it all but won't give up<br />
Radio soul antennas<br />
Radio to lift spirits<br />
Call sign commando<br />
M.O. is independence<br />
Scream 'til the walls fall<br />
Dissolve all the limits"</div>
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And then, the chorus:</div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">"We need heroes</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Build them</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Don't put your fist up</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Fill them</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Fight with our hopes and our hearts and our hands</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">We're the architects of our last stand"</span></div>
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And dissolve they did, indeed. In the cafes and bars and restaurants along that main long row heading east or west on Denver's compromised plain at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, there were all kinds of forms, or lack thereof, of authority. In fact, "Question authority" was the biggest bumper sticker of the age. It was time to Re-Recreate '68, as one of that town's main grass roots advocacy groups called themselves. </div>
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The album cover features artwork of the members of the band wearing red, white and blue bandanas covering their faces, very much like the revolutionaries of southern Mexico. Now, as Oscar Wilde once said, "If a man puts on a mask he will tell you the truth." And so, this Flobots album is visceral and intense in its truthiness. Definitely not the kind of music you wanna play on a date.</div>
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"There is a war going on for your mind," Johny5 sings, and that's not the kind of thing you want to say if you want a kiss. That's the kind of thing you say when you are trying to ignite a revolution. The music starts with the crackles of an old analog record player, the plaintive violin brandishing swords of anger, insurgency, and most of all, a tragic sensibility. Then the hip hop of it all is throwing words at the listener, as the form is now taking on a kind of symphonic complexity, much in the same way that Camper Van Beethoven turned the three-minute college radio ditty into a sprouting organic lotus flower 20 years before.<br />
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In the time since then, well, truth has become an adjective instead of a noun. And the tools for fighting seem to be running the show.<br />
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Just one example is the song "By the Time You Get This Message," where he sings:<br />
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"The stars I see aren't even there.<br />
It's only light in the air."<br />
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The track has a muscular bass line as the band rips through a rumination about the passage of time when using those tools providing communication across great distances in real time. Johny5 says the song is about how the message he had just sent might be received by a woman he was seeing at the time, but was about to leave the country, and he was trying to convince her not to do so.<br />
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"That's from a moment when I was in college and there was this wonderful woman I had a brief connection with," he says. "I was at the airport during a six-hour layover and I was considering how far it was to where she was going. The first verse is imaginary, and has her actual voice on the song explaining why this isn't going to work. And then there's this delayed response, with me saying, 'I don't know when you will get this.'"<br />
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Another example of this trouble with tools, "technical difficulties" at the Flobot station made the first shot at a telephone interview.<br />
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"Technology and the internet ... we are being driven mad by them," says Johny5 from Laramie, Wyoming at 9 a.m. while on tour. "We are actually training ourselves to not be able to focus or think in depth."<br />
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To correct that imbalance, the new Flobots album, "Noenemies" is a prescription for bringing the people of dissent into clearer focus. Released earlier this year, it encourages "community singing, collective singing." Indeed, many of the new songs have an anthemic quality. Stuff to be sung together, in least in the choruses, by those within listening distance.<br />
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"'Noenemies' has the feeling of a lot of group singing, but it takes a different form whenever it appears," he says.<br />
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This style of performance brings Johny5 back to his roots as the son of a Presbyterian minister in Denver.<br />
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"The First Presbyterian Church, that was part of my upbringing," he says. "A whole lot of songs we did came from hip hop worship services. We wrote songs for church services that embraced our own art to express lamentation, a sense of vision."<br />
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It's a question of balance. He says there is a difference between the outrage of the band's musical style, and how he is the rest of the day. The Flobot is merely the mask.<br />
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"It's something you can see on stage, the urgency, but then there's daily life," he says. "We have tried to look at ourselves as a part of a social movement and there's a kind of spectrum of emotions you go through. You are expecting to change everything one day, and then it seems like at that point it's going to change, but then it doesn't change that day. We try to deal with all of those things on the new album. It's about the full spectrum of these kinds of emotions."<br />
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Because dammit Jim, he may be a Flobot, but the man is not a robot.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-22101694539899627232017-11-20T12:53:00.003-08:002017-11-20T12:53:49.312-08:00Money for something, kittens for free: Austin-based Free Kittens and Bread serve up DIY ethics and a bracing sound<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Y</span><span style="font-size: large;">ou have to admire the utilitarian nature of Chase Sprueill of Free Kittens and Bread. This is an Austin-based post-punk band patched together for a purpose, hard as it might be to grasp. As their latest straightforward single and video "Brainless" so faithfully expresses, it's pretty hard to see meaning in a universe amidst the fog of war called "life." Are women and alcohol to blame? Well of course they are!</span></div>
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Sprueill is a found art guy. He collects random things. And the interesting fact about their randomness is that, if that found thing catches on, you really have to wonder just how random everything is. For example, he says he found the name of the band from a sign alongside the road: It stated "Free Kittens and Bread." He appropriated it, kept it for a few years, and then he and his mates (Mark Hawley, guitar; Gabe Garca, drums and backing vocals; Kaci Taylor, bass and backing vocals) thought that would be a good name for the band. So as the years roll on, you might go, 'Wow, that sounds so like Free Kittens and Bread,' when the fact is the moniker had absolutely nothing to do with anything.<br />
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"You know how it goes: One person's trash is another person's treasure," Sprueill says. "I've done my fair share of dumpster diving ... About eight or nine years ago I was in a really shitty punk band. Mark and I were driving around in my hometown (Denton, Texas), and I saw this sign, 'Free Kittens and Bread.' They had kittens all around and loads of free bread on a table. I stole one of the signs and I still have it."<br />
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The song "Brainless" doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel. It's loud and penetrating once the guitars and voices kick in. It's about a drinking binge, very college radio. But it's undeniably catchy, true to form, especially if you want to blow out your eardrums and lose all sense of what's going on around you.<br />
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What's going on around Sprueill these days is Austin, a music capitol of the world. A place so ubiquitous with musicians and all the rest, one might think Stevie Ray Vaughan was merely describing overpopulation with the song, "Texas Flood."<br />
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As Sprueill puts it: "There's a saying here that goes something like: 'If you toss a nickel, you're bound to hit a great musician.' Something like that. Another good example: I've been on roughly nine or ten tours so far, and every single time I'm on the road, I always meet someone who asks me about a band that they know from Austin. I've been around here for a bit, and I know a lot of bands here, but every single time, I have never heard of the band that they know. The kicker is that the band is always a popular band that seems to be doing well (when I look them up later). That happens on the road a lot. Also, with food in Austin ... The music thing has gone on here pretty much the way I imagined it would. I would go to all of the open mics, go to the shows and there would be maybe 34 people in the audience. I would go, 'Okay, that's the level of talent I'm up against. I will work toward that.'"<br />
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If you see a tall person, don't ever ask them if they played basketball. But, if you must, ask Sprueill, of German and Irish descent, so he's got that razor wit and engineer's capacity for getting the broken spaceship back into working order. He's six-foot-seven and was a large point-guard in high school in Denton, eventually getting a scholarship at Southern Arkansas University, where he studied film and "didn't really take music all that seriously."<br />
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His music endeavors began in a "half-built" shack in his father's back yard. Sprueill became interested in the DIY music movement, studied the subject all that he could, and bought a guitar, amp and microphone, hooking it all up into his laptop. He started recording using Garageband.com.<br />
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The new Free Kittens and Bread album, "American Miserablist (<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://freekittensandbread.bandcamp.com/&source=gmail&ust=1509564382624000&usg=AFQjCNFv3kMqDHofNo2tZGZ69R0HqPcYng" href="https://freekittensandbread.bandcamp.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://freekittensandbread.<wbr></wbr>bandcamp.com/</a>)," was shaped by a breakup, as well as a kind of sadness about the world situation at large. "It was a little bit of two things: Working my way out of a relationship; I was drinking a ton and was trying to figure out how to deal with it."</div>
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If it's all so miserable, why even pursue it? Where and when does it all make perfect sense?</div>
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"Pursuing a career as a band doesn't really make sense at all, if you want to live comfortably, anyway," he says."But I would say touring. Touring tests you as a person and as a band. It makes sense to honestly challenge yourself in whatever you choose to pursue in life. It's the only way to find out if you truly want to pursue it."</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-58130044944213453882017-11-08T13:24:00.000-08:002017-11-08T23:49:07.618-08:00Impact Church musical all-stars: If they aren't the best unheard of band in Arizona, you are unforgiven<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqKRGeKcuT1Xoa5jzuLVYYCR1k7ztpfDGUlCQxSwQEBn7RenWp8SMsbjrxBOFvgvjRbxG4VtL65qV7vi9UKPvZW4b8UqY6oUqG8CcXAR-LXXwWjxb6XbDr9B8IIXS8lNUeCs5vw/s1600/21617475_1262538677185318_7075520001395038275_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="328" data-original-width="430" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqKRGeKcuT1Xoa5jzuLVYYCR1k7ztpfDGUlCQxSwQEBn7RenWp8SMsbjrxBOFvgvjRbxG4VtL65qV7vi9UKPvZW4b8UqY6oUqG8CcXAR-LXXwWjxb6XbDr9B8IIXS8lNUeCs5vw/s400/21617475_1262538677185318_7075520001395038275_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span><span style="font-size: large;">aybe 100 yards from the Impact Church complex, you can hear the music. It's in the wind. But then another jet goes by, zoom! When that din dies again the audio broadcasted through speakers placed outside get more and more audible as you get closer. It sounds like more than one track is being played at once. Then you go by greeters, people handing out the flyer for the day, and then, after maybe coffee of many kinds from a machine, more donuts available than recommended safe by the FDA, you enter the main auditorium and are led to a seat, like you have just arrived just a tad late for the opera.</span><br />
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Sure, the vanilla cappucino is gone. Tapped. Kaput. So are the men who were all quite here the weekend before. But the Arizona Cardinals are playing on the road right now. That means the crowd this weekend, mainly female, is hardcore present. Which is good for that messianic, not-part-of-this-world vibe. There's fruit too to pick from this tree. Apples, bananas ... as well as Scottsdale Police officers in full body gear, hanging out ... but the main thing at the beginning of this last set of four shows is the 10-piece band, drums. two keyboards, bass, three guitars and three background singers. Then pastor Travis Hearn moves in for the kill with some vry basic, tree-stump humorist-slash-preacher rael sang for the common man.<br />
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But the band is tearing it up right now. It barely matters what the lyrics are since all rock'n'soul comes from gospel and the blues, anyway, all going back to Africa. But the visuals, oh, it's all so overwhelming. Two large video screens on either side of the stage, blasting the message of this medium: That God rocks. Jesus loves the Beatles. You rock for being here. Please broadcast that to the rest of the world, via social media. The images and messages keep coming as the lyrics sung go by on the screen, then more prompts "Instagram your #Impact Church" or "Culture Shock," or watch this at "ImpactchurchTV@impactchurchaz.com." And then, there's the red star, as opposed to a cross with Jesus on it, to focus the mind's eye on. Yeah, Impact Church is well named. This is some kind of new set of sensory overload commandments. Enter, and try to resist its power and glory.<br />
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"It's all very missional," says band leader Jordan Coleman. "We are aimed at people who are unchurched, or people who were burned by the church. We are trying to help people who haven't been there for a while."<br />
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Kept very simple, it is. People only have some much time, so much bandwidth left, by Sunday each week in America. It's just good communications theory. Story old as ... let's face it, the Christians took over the Mediterranean region due to one important fact, superior marketing and the kind of motivational ethos causing one to go out and conquer the world, burn down libraries, fight lions, vanquish evil doers, with swords or words, even go out and live on some desert island, making a prisoner of thou-out-of-this-world self, eating only locusts, hummock bread, and pouring water on oneself to keep cool and refreshed so you can scribe historically inspired texts now treated as prophecy since it's all so poetic and timeless ... Jeesh, maybe just the explanation of what inspired the star logo on the stage and in the media material will suffice, from Phillipians 2:15: "...so that you may become blameless and pure, 'children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.'Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky."<br />
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This is heady stuff for any generation, but for one raised on everything from Hal Lindsey's doomsday prophecies to the millenials hatched by "American Idol," you put the good news in front of someone with music played by puritan angels -- for example, Coleman has never had a sip of alcohol in his life ("I have never tasted alcohol. At communion we only did grape juice") -- and what you've go is an army of all kinds of people in the Valley with bumper stickers that say "Impact Church" in white lettering and black backgrounds.<br />
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"We are not trying to have church," Coleman says. "We are trying to be the Church."<br />
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At the age of 31, Coleman was born in Page, up in the stark expanse of broad waters, sand-carved stone and incredible cultural isolation, the son of an Assemblies of God pastor. "We were raised Pentecostal, but I was only there as a baby," he says. "We kept moving every two years, spent seven years in Ohio, a couple of years in Tennessee, then we moved to Austin, Texas." And so, his path followed the soul train of the heartland sound, and therefore, in terms of being a musician, he says, "I never really had any choice."<br />
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So when the lights go down at noon in the stagey cathedral, the musicians come out first. Coleman wears a blue shirt, baggy plack pants, white sheakers with black straps. These are clothes for aerobics. And rock stars. After a straightforward Christian rock song, most likely an original from some member of the band built on collaboration, they play a truncated version of the Beatles' "Got to Get You Into My Life," and it works. He sings in a high tenor and his comment on what can best be described as a Van Morrison-like channeling leaves one to be amazed at how self-critical artists can be: "I joke that I have the voice of a woman," Coleman says.<br />
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Naturally, the woman singer follows next with what takes on a lioness power reminding one of Florence and the Machine. Especially when she raises her hand in the air, a real Bonoism, and that hopping on her feet as if she could get airborne right along with the Lear Jets unheard outside. That is his wife, Manuela Coleman, up there, and anyone can see how married they are, emotionally and musically. One happy couple, yes they are. And the band, with four shows like some Las Vegas act, is tight.<br />
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"We collaborate with the arrangement of the songs," and then he pauses when asked about his management style, "I have the final say. I try to encourage the musicians to do their own songs. They are all better at their instruments than I am. They are so gifted. And we have a rotation of (maybe 30 people). The crazy thing about Arizona is its the most musician-connected place I've ever witnessed."<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>~ A shorter version of this article can be found in the October 2017 edition of The Scottsdale Airpark News.</i></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-46148304848425032172017-11-03T01:06:00.002-07:002017-11-03T01:08:43.341-07:00The loneliest number: New Donivan Berube single represents one man living to tell love's hellish tale, then moving on<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span><span style="font-size: large;">lessed Feathers, a popular band in town, has fallen apart, but its passing should not be mourned. Here's why: The past is a trickster heavy with karma anyone can fix, given the right frame of mind, as well as perseverance and the will to endure. And the future? Loaded with both good and evil in ample supply. Fish in the sea, so to speak. Some are loaded with Mercury to the gills while others can really swim. And in the present moment, there is just this ... Donivan Berube.</span></div>
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Far as he's concerned, the worst has already happened. Several times over, in his case. As someone who has seen a lot of success locally and internationally with Blessed Feathers, and with so many musicians in Flagstaff, what would he share with folks to know if they want to do the same thing?</div>
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"Just write better songs," says Berube, the pain warrior, having already lost his family, and then, more recently, the love of his life and creative partner. "That's the best thing you can do for yourself. All else is distraction."</div>
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So, for the living in the moment thang, let us not dwell on what's her name (Jacquelyn Beaupre, who according to her Facebook account, is living in Wisconsin now).</div>
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After all, most of the compositions are sung and performed by Berube. Even those Beaupre once sang. Has he considered just having someone else perform the old partner's parts on the Blessed Feathers?</div>
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"We wrote songs independently, but collaborated in their recording and performance," he says. "So, yes. Many of the Blessed Feathers recordings feature me singing and playing all of the instruments, even on some of the songs that she wrote. I have a live band now, though (Flagstaff locals Eric Dovigi and Jasper Komassa). I play drums while singing and sampling, and they're playing the guitar parts."</div>
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Now Berube is the last man standing.</div>
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"It's just me now," he says. "In addition to writing and performing the songs, I also acted as our booking agent and touring manager, getting shows and record deals and handling all of the business aspects that come along with making records and touring on them. So in a way, nothing's changed there. I've lost a partner, but I'll still be performing several of those old songs and handling the business on my own accord."</div>
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The new single has a full album's worth of ideas behind it. Indeed, Berube took all of that torment of loss and threw it up there on the screen, all of the way to the drop-dead, I'm-still-alive video of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXggKq3koOE">"Love is a Dog From Hell/Who Do I Turn To?"</a> First of all, his sound is updated candy chrome, with the guitar sounding like sonar bells and ambient arrangements scuffing it all up. He sings with a world-weary plea. It's catchy, with his voice launching into the song from different directions as the instrumentals are harshed-out, but of light, as opposed to gloom, like it's coming from some crystal cave beneath the sea.</div>
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"I really don't know who is looking out for me," he sings, in ache. And then the song ends with him coming to the conclusion, in that classic Bob Dylan sense of things, telling the lonely one, "Trust yourself." In the video the music ends and he sits on his musician's stool for a while, staring at the screen, and you know it's no act. You can see the car lights going by through the window in the background. Wide is the world, and cold. This is a forlorn look for one person, and one person only. </div>
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This is as authentic as authentic gets, in any art form. The muse, be it for a man or for a woman, is the same. Old as Robert Johnson singing blues about "Love in Vain" or just about anything put out by Ryan Adams, with the words "love" and "pain" a cry out to the lost lover or the entire universe. It's all so interchangeable.</div>
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On his <a href="https://soundcloud.com/donivanberube">Soundcloud.com</a> feed, the Blessed Feathers tracks are still there. They are Berube tracks now. Part of a pretty darn impressive catalog. Why not, he put so much into the "brand." But Berube sees a need to clear the deck, so to speak, from his former musical landscape.</div>
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"I spent five years building that up, yes, so it's discouraging for it to have ended," he says. "But most people thought Blessed Feathers was a Christian thing, so the name unfortunately turned people away who assumed some sort of religious context. We also literally pulled that name out of a hat, so it felt kind of meaningless. How can you stand behind something if it doesn't mean anything to you? Moving forward under my own name means that no one can take it from me. Except myself."</div>
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What has yet to be mentioned is his background, an adventure both romantic and, in hindsight, a melancholy paradise lost. It's so well written in the standard press release form offered on his web pages, there's no reason to change it: "A month after turning 17, Donivan Berube left home and disassociated himself from the church of Jehovah’s Witnesses, thus saying goodbye to his entire family and all of his friends, forever. Then he met his dream girl, Jacquelyn Beaupré, and together they took off to travel the continent and live out of a tent. In the time since, he’s worked as an English teacher in Peru, a librarian in Big Sur, California, and ridden his single-speed bicycle across the country, aside from touring the continent while releasing records on small labels."</div>
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Next thing, for Berube, is to figure out the rest of what-the-hell.</div>
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"I'm not necessarily too stoked about this city," he says. "Not only did my love partner split, but I'm twice removed from anyone I used to know."</div>
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He says half of the first full album is recorded, but he's letting the single fly to test the waters.</div>
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"I just started putting singles out on the Internet," he says, "Like the Beatles would do. Then I'll put the album together and it will all occur organically."</div>
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The bottom line, for this meditation of loss and rediscovery of his own artistic prowess, is Berube has found what it takes many of the masters of rock a lifetime to learn regarding what makes a song work for the listener.</div>
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"You either have it and it's good, or you have it but you lost it and it's bad," he says."I left my life behind to be with her. Now that she's gone, there's nothing I can go back to."</div>
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But before we go any further telling sad stories about poor lost blind Donivan, the reader should know he has a new girlfriend, all the right equipment and skills, a solid audience, and connections to such things as National Public Radio, as well as everything that was gained with Blessed Feathers.</div>
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"There's healing in the process," he says. "There really isn't any other way I can go about it. It still hurts, though. If I do a song about my family that doesn't exist that doesn't change the fact I still don't have one. That's all to be determined, I suppose."</div>
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<i>This article originally appeared in <a href="http://www.flaglive.com/">Flagstaff Live</a></i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-64669043410154637052017-10-24T14:16:00.001-07:002017-10-24T14:21:02.288-07:00Arizona's 'rugged individualism' is actually on life support due to the military industrial complex<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i style="font-size: x-large;"> (E</i>ditor's note: This one is brought back from the dead with Jeff Flake's announcement he won't be running for Senate. Methinks he's got something in mind, don't you? The governor's race? Maybe.)<i style="font-size: x-large;"> </i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i><i><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;">E</span><span style="font-size: large;">xposing a myth is easy enough to do. Just takes a little research. But to eradicate it from the state of Arizona's group-think, liberating the masses into a real-world view, well, that's really pissing in the wind. This comes to me after creeping all over the web for research on Arizona's bad ol' political argument between members of the GOP who want to be governor. It's a nasty fight. The weapons are idiotic campaign commercials, usually aired around the "news" hour, that period of the day when television viewers are dipped into the shallow waters of the local newsreaders, and then, fully prepped, sent into the slick furies of the national network news.</span></i><br />
In between, as if the actual reports aren't propaganda enough, viewers have been inundated all summer with pretty much the same campaign commercials, over and over, with little variation ... let's face it, neo-cons aren't real well known for having a lot of imagination, variety not being the spice of conservative life ... and even the GOP party boss in the state has had enough, asking the candidates to cut it out, the negatives are too amplified. Guess he was afraid the voters might be hard to deprogram after months and months of this, and the presumptive Democrat, Fred DuVal might win.<br />
The point is, one Republican candidate, <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2014/07/31/duceys-opponents-attack-cold-stone-sale/13395493/">Doug Ducey</a>, is accused of getting a government bailout due to the failure rates and financing, in general, for his Cold Stone ice cream franchises. Another candidate, Christine Jones, is on the commercial repeat mode over sending "Obama the bill" for border enforcement. And how either political advertisements jibe with the truth hardly matters in this, the age of repeat something often enough and it becomes true. This Orwellian reinvention of the past, over time, can get a little maddening. For myself it got so bad, it didn't even take a political commercial to put me over the edge (that is, to inspire an extended commentary). Nope, it was an ice cream commercial that boasted Arizonans are "fiercely independent."<br />
That's a load of crap. A common mistake about the West, in general. The American Southwest owes its very civilization to the federal government. And Arizona is completely on life support in myriad ways. For example, without water from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project">Central Arizona Project</a>, a federal project carrying water from the Colorado River to Phoenix and Tucson, such cities would have never grown to blob status. Before that was built, before Arizona was even a state, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newlands_Reclamation_Act">Newlands Reclamation Act</a> of 1902 set up the possibility of raising federal funds for irrigation projects across the West. Because the Southwest is a drought-dry desert, and anyone who lives there is essentially receiving only slightly less life support than what's needed on the moon.<br />
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But you really have to worry when the Washington Times, founded by a strange South Korean <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times">cult</a> leader, and is therefore as cranky and dilute, intellectually, as an inflatable pig, starts to pay attention to western politics. Such was the case when the online opinion editor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Crowley">Monica Crowley</a> wrote on July 16, 2014, that the American West is "a region that remained most faithful to the nation's founding principles of personal freedom, rugged individualism and economic freedom." Clearly, as she raised the ghosts of Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and their rejections of "Big Government," the opinion editor for has seen too many John Wayne movies. Arizona born, but raised in New Jersey, her vision of the West is nothing short of infantile. In addition to being legally blonde for the right-wing newspaper in Washington D.C., Crowley also is a "foreign affairs analyst" for FOX News. Analysis, off these shores, no doubt inspired by Rambo fantasies. Because the truth is, regardless of the Orwellian pipeline of the right, leans more toward the reality that politicians will pretty much kill for their piece of the federal pie.<br />
For example, in 2011 <a href="http://cronkitenewsonline.com/">Cronkitenewsonline.com</a> reported "Federal funds flowing to Arizona have doubled in the past 10 years." Citing the U.S. Census Bureau, the report states "Arizona residents, governments and businesses received $64 billion in federal money in fiscal 2010, more than double what the state received in 2001 ." (This year it was <a href="http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2014/04/arizona-ranks-10th-in-nation-when-it-comes-to-depending-on-federal-funds/">reported</a> that Arizona ranked 10th in the nation for federal funds.)<br />
That amounts to $10,080 per person in Arizona. The national average is $10,460.<br />
"The biggest increase in federal funds to Arizona over the past decade was not in salaries or welfare payments, but in federal grants to the state and to local jurisdictions, which grew from $5.4 billion in 2001 to $14.4 billion (in 2010)," the report states, a 164 percent increase that occurred while the state's population grew 20 percent, from 5.3 million people to 6.4 million. The very notion that Arizona is "fiercely independent" doesn't score very high when, according to <a href="http://ballotpedia.org/">Ballotpedia.org</a>, the state is No. 8 in the nation in terms of federal aid to state budgets, more than Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. The very notion that these staunch tax resisters live out in the boonies, far from the corporate city enclaves of Phoenix and Tucson must be dispelled when seven of 14 Arizona counties are above the national average in terms of receiving federal funds. The largest is Cochise County in southern Arizona, which receives $23,531.74 per capita.<br />
How this could be is the root of the myth of the West as somehow being some kind of island of do-it-yourself virtues, and also helps to explain why Arizona continues to breed such weird political animals. All kinds of ironies persist. State residents, consisting mainly of conservatives and so-called "independents" are unhinged from the truth by politicians playing either a pretty cynical game, or, are so dyslexic over the state's real history they have merely swallowed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool-Aid">Kool-Aid</a>. The truth is out there, somewhere far in the southwestern deserts of the state, waiting to explode like some kind of unexploded ordnance on the <a href="http://www.luke.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=5062">Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range</a>, 1.9 million acres of bomb targeted rock and dust roughly the size of Connecticut (so be forewarned Yankees). Yes, Arizona's elected are pretty strong on defense, the largest portion of the federal budget, and, a huge part of Arizona's economy.<br />
When asked about why Cochise County receives $23,531.74 per capita, the finance director for the county, according to the <a href="http://cronkitenewsonline.com/">Cronkitenewsonline.com</a> report, "attributed the disproportionately high federal purchases and salary payments in the county to the Fort Huachuca Army Base there." In addition to that southernmost point surveillance and communications post, the cities of Phoenix and Tucson are also on the life support systems offered by the military industrial complex, And it has come to the point that it's more than just doing what's right for national defense. For example, <a href="http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2014/3/senator-john-mccain-applauds-arrival-of-first-f-35-at-luke-air-force-base">Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)</a> did gymnastics to land the $1 trillion F-35 aircraft training site at Luke Air Force Base, despite once calling the program's price tag "one of the great national scandals."<br />
McCain was in <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2014/05/16/congress-wastes-more-money-on-unneeded-military-bases-than-belgium-sweden-or-switzerland-spend-on-defense/">no mood for mythmaking</a> when he told AZ Capitol Times that "potential defense spending cuts could cost thousands of jobs and $3 billion to the state's economy." Yes, it takes a little manure to make the grass green, and rainmaker McCain did all that he could to plow the field. He inserted $14.3 million in a 2003 defense bill so <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2012/02/27/20120227suncor-development-files-bankruptcy.html">Sun Cor Development</a> could get its way to buy 122 acres around <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-05-15-mccainland_N.htm">Luke Air Force Base</a>. At the time, McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers explained the senator "wanted to prevent the Pentagon from closing Luke." (That worked out okay, but Sun Cor went belly up in 2012.)<br />
Indeed, pork knows best. According to Forbes, as a percentage of GDP, Arizona is among the top 10 states (ranked No.8), receiving nearly three percent of all defense spending, $2,321 per resident. Tucson is among the top 10 for military spending or contracts, receiving $4.9 billion per year. The entire state accounts for 96,000 jobs, $9.1 billion in annual economic output and $401 million in state and local taxes. It's no wonder that politicians (<a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/215015-barber-touts-saving-a-10-fleet">even democrats</a>) defend this militaristic welfare system even when, for example, the brass is saying it doesn't need the aging A-10 <a href="http://breakingdefense.com/2014/07/air-force-must-focus-on-high-threat-future-if-congress-will-let-it-james-welsh/">Warthog</a> attack planes anymore, they will <a href="http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-usafs-rationale-for-retiring-the-a-10-warthog-is-bu-1562789528">lobby</a> and legislate to keep the funds coming in for another year.<br />
Yes, the myth is easy to dispel but hard to eradicate. As Phoenix Business Journal political reporter Mike Sunnucks <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/print-edition/2013/08/02/arizona-a-big-beneficiary-of-federal.html?page=all">wrote</a>, "Despite its conservative politics, Arizona has always been a huge beneficiary of federal spending."<br />
Show us a candidate who believes success in business entitles them to an elected post and I'll show you a politician who has found ways to make government work for themselves. And show us an opponent opposed to Big Government, and I'll show you a politician afraid to speak out <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/08/13/gops_one_sacred_principle_a_spending_philosophy_of_lies_and_troop_worship/">against the defense budget</a>. Yes, when the mists of myth clear, the storm still rolls on.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-24718454381663167552017-10-07T10:23:00.001-07:002017-10-11T15:20:30.479-07:00Build a Parking Lot and They Will Come<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span><span style="font-size: large;">t was with a considerable sense of amazement and outrage that I read, in the Sept. 20, 2017, edition of the <i>Scottsdale Independent</i>, an article by Terrance Thornton under the headline, "Updating the Lynchpin: Downtown spark may come from stadium upgrades," detailing the need for upgrades for Scottsdale Stadium, where the San Francisco Giants play their spring training games. At first, my reaction was shock and awe. Actually, still is. However, in doing my due diligence on this topic, despite my chagrin a single piece of front-page journalism could lack one single dissenting voice to this supposed need for a stadium upgrade, I have done a complete feedback fruit loop on the whole damn thing.</span><br />
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Now, I think Mr. Thornton is some kind of true literary genius. But that term gets tossed around even more than "love one another," "money sucks" and "mattress sale." Surely, some divine providence is at hand in this piece by the so-called "Independent." As my old high school baseball coach, Jerry Dawson at Chaparral High School used to say, "Even a blind bat catches a squirrel every now and then."<br />
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There's a lot to go through here, so bear with me.<br />
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My initial reaction was based on pure baseball logic.<br />
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Forget, for a second, how the term "lynchpin" ever became popular in America, if you can. We all know why that is, but let's move on, holding tightly to the guiding hand of what baseball has done for race relations in this country, and, with a simple prayer stating: God bless Jackie Robinson. Forty two, man. Forty two.<br />
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OK, baseball logic ... right ... My thinking was, fuck the Giants! Why should a metropolis in dire need of a winner ever want to make it so comfy for a competitor as badass rich as the San Francisco Giants, or, the Los Angeles Dodgers, for that matter? According to a recent article in <i><a href="https://www.forbes.com/teams/san-francisco-giants/">Forbes</a></i>, the Giants are one of the most financially set up franchises in not just baseball, but sports. If not for the crack in the cosmos called 2017, they would probably be in the World Series again this year. So, my gut reaction was, send them to Florida. Give them the raw time zone of the Citrus League for a couple of months, then let them try to catch up on their sleep as the season rolls on. Make them eat alligator, sprinkled with crushed mosquitoes. All baked in a hell fire of swamp-hick-con-man DNA and apocalyptic humidity. If you want to really drive the economy, let's give the Arizona Diamonbacks all the breaks, perks and, yes, here it comes, parking, <i>that</i> franchise will ever need.<br />
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I know, I know, as far as that last DNA part goes, Scottsdale, Arizona is no better. It's what my daughter likes to call "Alabama with celebrities." And as far as the Diamondbacks go ... sheeee-it ... how boosterish am I being? That it has taken me this long to get into the confessional batter's box is no small miracle itself. Because, you see, I used to work for the Independent in Scottsdale, in a building once owned by Charles Keating. Ran three newspapers at once as a managing editor and that place back then pretty much reduced me to a man laying flat on his back, unable to move, mumbling to myself like some kind of lost street mystic gone soft on french fries left on a park bench near the local McDonalds.<br />
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In hindsight, I can hardly blame the Independent. The place was simply overrun by history at the time, its poor internet server and e-mail clogged by Republican-based jamming techniques in response to the release of the Michael Moore film, "Fahrenheit 911." By the time anyone came into the office on the morning of that deadline day, I was smoking like a fool and staring into space, maybe saying something about how I had a vision of Gila monsters crawling across the desert. They were nice enough to give me the rest of the day off, and as soon as I got out of there, retreating into a nearby book store, I was fine. Better than ever. It's just the smell of books, I guess. One of the best forms of aromatherapy I know. So God bless my friends at the Independent at the time. Thank you for carrying that load for me, who simply had a bigger picture filling my mind at the time, and that picture was a flood of colors that had more paint than my gallon-can mind could contain. Pedro just couldn't pitch that day, thassall. Things are different now. It all makes perfect sense to me. Hope ya'll are equally recovered from the experience of those dark days.<br />
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Whew. I know I feel better. You?<br />
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OK, so where's the "we" in this? Please help me, O great memory of Jerry Dawson, the cyber cybernetic truth of team and the collective winning spirit needed by all great conquerors and religion-establishing mystics. Right, take a strike. Let us call on the current patron saints of independent thought: I.F. Stone, the late-great Hunter S. Thompson and Bjork (the Icelandic singer, not the former U.S. Supreme Court nominee).<br />
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Now the count is 0-1. I still have two other pitches, at least. Readers at this point? Eh? No matter. I gotta figure the Googlewhack at this point, with all of the references, is going to more than pay for itself.<br />
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The pitcher then is this story by the Independent, which states: "While downtown Scottsdale is made up of quaint shops, a robust gallery district and a vivid nightlife scene many say the true straw that stirs that economic cocktail has always been Scottsdale Stadium ... As times change, so do the desires of municipal partners as Scottsdale City Council Tuesday, Sept. 12 voted to allow up to $900,000 stadium facilities capital improvement fund to reconstruct portions of Scottsdale Stadium including: ... Reconstruction of the stadium's outfield parking lot ..."<br />
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There are other things, but let's just pull the car in right there.<br />
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Is there anything going on in this town that isn't all to the service of the automobile?<br />
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Sure, there's the Green Belt for flood control, but that's only so people can golf and cars won't wash away during a monsoon flash flood. And they don't. It's a beautiful world the mad architects of Scottsdale have created, with nooks and crannies only a pedestrian with a sense for accident and adventure will notice. But this isn't a new parking lot. It's a reconstructed parking place.<br />
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Let me reveal, Oh here's the secret: I have a "source." This person knows more about baseball than anyone possibly can. In fact, this person is the actual straw who stirs the mystical drink of the game, which is why he's always knows where to be when that 500th home gets hit, or, when the earthquake ruins the World Series. This is only a slight exaggeration. Anyway, what he says is the drift in new spring training parks is out along the freeways because, let's face it, that's where the cars go ... and there's more room for parking.<br />
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Let me bow to this wizard of the game. Let me not waste his baseball research. I will just be the first base coach or something. So yeah, if that's what Old Town needs to compete before it is left nothing but a tomb of empty retail spaces, get some more parking in there.<br />
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As Chuckles says, "Build a parking lot and they will come."<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Douglas McDaniel is the former managing editor of The Diamond (the Official Magazine of Major League Baseball), a former contributor to USA Today Baseball Weekly, the former editor of Harnett's Sports Arizona, and the publisher of baseball poems in numerous sport-based literary journals, including Spitball, which may in fact still be around. As a junior in baseball at Chaparral High School, he hit .420 as a member of the so-called "Jerry's Kids." But then, like an idiot, played football his senior year, and wrecked his knee ... a limb that isn't getting any better as the years roll on. He can walk okay, though, most days. As long as he keeps moving. He bats right. Throws right. But as anyone can see, he's a natural lefty.</span></i><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-71800627921223593822017-09-21T06:08:00.001-07:002017-10-29T16:33:01.644-07:00Is Arizona Immune from the Apocalypse? Don' Think So<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span><span style="font-size: large;"> may not be a rocket scientist, but the word on the street is people here in Scottsdale, Arizona don't need to worry about other disasters spreading like contagion across the globe. On the day of the earthquake in Mexico, however, I did some low-tech scientific readings. Based on these readings, the ground was rolling. Later that day, I sat at the bus stop, not even playing my harmonica to mock the honking vehicles like I often do at Scottsdale and Shea. I just sat there, staring, taking it in, in a kind of simple-minded bliss, thinking to myself: "Hmm. This stuff all around me all looks pretty damn solid to me."</span></div>
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But that is falsehood. Everything is porous. Everything. It's all atoms and molecules, brothers and sisters, and the world we see is a mere illusion based on our limited censors perceiving it as stable.</div>
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The late Edward Abbey once wrote he lived in Arizona for, among many other reasons, this one: Nothing bad ever happens here. It's solid as a rock. Wrong, Everything is in flux.</div>
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Things change. Perhaps because of this: Experts in the field will tell you there are no natural disasters, only human errors. Build by the sea, pay the price. Build on the desert, make sure you have enough water. And in the heat, in Arizona? C'mon man, just look at what happened to this place in June, with temps going over 120 and records going out the window. Live on a mountaintop, look out for lightning. You get the picture. But let's set that aside, for now.</div>
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Nuclear war is a kind of cheap answer to this question of immunity from the apocalypse. Mostly because of its unthinkability. There is no rational reason for their use, since mutually assured self-destruction is always going to be the posture. But a nuclear accident? Yeah, that's out there. So are acts of terrorism with nuclear materials. Worrying about that, though, is the job of highly paid paranoids in the fear-is-security-industrial-military complex, and I'm just going to let those folks stew in their own sweat, hatred and self-loathing of all of the mosquitoes out there looking to bite us, hitting America where it ain't.</div>
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Arizona is, nevertheless, about as safe as it gets in terms of all thing militaristic. The economy depends on the military. War is Arizona's lifeline, courtesy of the U.S. government. I won't bore you with the stats (<a href="https://radiofreearizona.blogspot.com/2017/10/arizonas-rugged-individualism-is.html">So here they are</a>). But from end to end, this state is armed to the teeth, with everything but a navy. Air assets. Ground assets. Space assets. Probably even men-who-stare-at-goats assets. If war comes, the Southwest is bank.</div>
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In addition to that, for example, just Scottsdale alone is loaded with human shields. The international elite mutton here like locusts. They drive drunk, do their coke, bring their slave women here. It's party, party, party in Scottsdale for the uber rich. Which is what inspires this little sermon, I suppose. Watching their dance of indifference on these days when earthquakes, hurricanes and all the rest are turning the planet inside out, I ask myself, what do these people know that I don't? They are building a new Egypt in Scottsdale, and the architecture is state of all arts. The masters of the universe, as Tom Wolfe called them in "Bonfire of the Vanities," have big plans for Arizona. They have access to all the data. The ears of the governments and the corporations. The run the big money seas as they swell and burn. Why?</div>
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Well, that one thing not being considered is this: Human error. And arrogance. Incredible arrogance. See the greed? Yep, arrogance.</div>
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So I know this couple. Two of the smartest, hardest working, motivated, tuned-in people you can possibly ever know, and they are ready to book, as in flee Phoenix because they are completely convinced the gig is up ... in a matter of days. They are getting survival gear. They are dialing up both mobility and wireless techno. They are thinking about food and water and where is the best air to breathe when the shit goes down. Their conviction is infectious. And I look at this and go, well, where do you run, really, when you don't really know what's going to happen from moment to moment, much less tomorrow or the next day or month or years to come. I think about such films as "Mosquito Coast," with Harrison Ford taking his family to some far off place in South America, all geared up to build their new Jerusalem. All I can think is, you wanna take all of that off-the-grid American know-how and take it where, to make what part of your lives and the world better? With that kind of approach, aren't you just bringing the Beast with you?</div>
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But like Roland Emmerich, who did all of those disaster films like "2012," "San Andreas" and "Independence Day," I will now consider several Arizona-based scenarios because hey, it's fun to think about.</div>
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Numero Uno: Did you know the San Francisco Peaks, mainly Sunset Crater to the northeast of Flagstaff, are still active volcanoes?</div>
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Numero Dos: Public officials in Flagstaff live in fear of what might happen to the downtown area if a 100 to 500 year flood were to come, since even during the monsoons right now the amount of water running through there is unreal.</div>
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Numero Tres: The Grand Canyon. Period. One big gash in the earth capable of doing anything, at any time, it wants. Floods. Earthquakes. Dinosaurs or new races crawling out from beneath the Earth. Anything.</div>
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Numero Quatro: Native American legends tell of biblical floods. It is glued to their beliefs, and even if some of it was morphed into by the Spaniards and the Jesuits "civilizing" the Southwest. They say the white band on top of Superstition Mountain is from that flood. They say the Apache Mother landed in a little hollowed out log after the great flood in Boynton Canyon, outside Sedona, Arizona.</div>
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Numero Cinco: Dinosaurs. All over the place. Bones. Tracks. Dead. Quite Suddenly, it seems.</div>
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Numero Six Six Six: Trump.</div>
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Numero Seven: Solar storms. Let's just say the same kind of solar storm that hit America in 1859 struck again. Lights out. Electronics bursting into flames. Even paper caught on fire. Imagine the Valley of the Sun with known of its wonder-tech in working order. Fountains running on electricity, done. Traffic lights, dull, leading to panic and gridlock. Looting. Shooting because the place is loaded with both guns and economic disparity. The polarities of social and political angst are just as on edge in the Valley as it is in Los Angeles or New York. A powder keg. Take away that one thing holding it all together, electricity and communications, and, well, could get pretty wild around here.</div>
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Numero Eight: Water. This is a fucking desert. When is this place going to get serious about its usage, now that yet another huge influx of refugees are headed here after the torments on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico?</div>
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Numero Nine: Aliens</div>
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Ten: The Great Wall. Interesting thing about walls. While in Mexico, heading north, they are mere impediments to be gone around. However, in Arizona, going south, We the Sheeple aren't so well-trained in getting through them, if, for any reason the need to go southbound were required, en mass.</div>
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Yep, This One Goes to Eleven: Boy, Arizona is really becoming such a diverse place. People from all over the world come here. In fact, I think I caught a cold from one of those people who came from someplace else. Good thing it wasn't anything worse. Like some zombie plague or anything. Whew!</div>
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OK, that's all for now. Personally, I like what the Buddhist monks once told me. There is no need for an end-of-the-world myth or story or fable or prophecy. As long as we are at one with the Creator, all else is irrelevant.</div>
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Happy dancing, Scottsdale.</div>
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Namaste.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=adk&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&param2=f099c244-be84-4e94-ace2-39de18919664&param3=radio_6.0~US~appfocus1&param4=d~Chrome~Mythville&param1=20170913&p=Mythville&type=ra_appfocus1_cr">Douglas McDaniel is a graduate from the University of Arizona, where for one fall semester he majored in creative writing, mostly writing poetry. In fact, the only "A" grade he got at that school, other than for flag football class after breaking his wrist, was in poetry. A grade given by poetry teacher John Anderson, who said, "Every poem you write should be in the shape of a mushroom cloud. Now shut up."</a></span></i></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-45624685595428744812017-09-08T08:32:00.002-07:002017-09-08T08:32:53.814-07:00Sol Drop: Flagstaff Trio Leads Vibrant Crop of Groups Forming in a Vibrant Music Scene in Northern Arizona<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span><span style="font-size: large;">are we say it? </span><span style="font-size: large;">Flagstaff, Arizona. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Senior Class. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Northern Arizona University. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Great band, </span><span style="font-size: large;">Sol Drop is. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Could probably beat ASU's </span><span style="font-size: large;">best senior class band. </span><span style="font-size: large;">That's a wild guess. But it's possible. Need to do more research on this. Yet Flagstaff is a separate cultural being from the megalopolis of Phoenix and Tucson. That breeds originality. A real "music scene" in northern Arizona? </span><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe. Maybe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The high-tech interview on Facebook Messenger with two of the three members of Sol Drop is growing dark and difficult to see as the two stand at the Conoco Station at San Francisco and Butler. First they are backlit in the sunset, then it goes all grainy blue, then, nothing but black and it's time to go. These are busy people. They have to go to class, among other things, since they are seniors at NAU.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">"It has almost been a year since we released an album," Sean says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Says Kathryn, "Since we've been together now we are a lot more solid."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">In the past year the band has played SWSX for its spring break vacation, and they currently have the goal of releasing another album in May as a graduation present for themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Just how prepared can three seniors at Northern Arizona University be? While the new college semester began with the annual arrival of daily parties and all the young dudes shouting over the din of giant stereo speakers, as well as the rivers of people running in and out of the bars downtown, the members of Sol Drop, a band that’s three years old, has been carefully hatching a plan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">A year ago they released their first CD, "It’s Alright," at an album release party at the Firecreek Coffee Co, where they just played another successful show on First Friday this month. In a carefully thought out marketing strategy, receipt of the new work was included in the cost of attending the event and now according to the members of the band agree other groups from the area are doing the same thing, After U2 rankled the world of Apple users by automatically depositing their last record, "Songs of Innocence," into their music player files, the incident, even if it did tee-off some music fans who simply didn’t like (hated) the band, did highlight the crisis of the ongoing search for some kind of new distribution paradigm in the age of the Internet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">In response to these kinds of issues, Sol Drop’s lead singer, guitarist and NAU honors student Kathryn Meyers, who is “leaning” toward marketing in her studies at NAU, decided to draw from the past.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">“We are forcing people to buy the CDs by including it in the cost of admission,” she laughed exactly one year ago during a person-to-person interview at Fire Creek. “I know Prince would do it back in the day. He’d give his new CD to people at his shows, and then by doing that he’d make it No. 1 on Billboard."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Sol Drop is a power-trio described by its members—Meyers, Sean Buechel (bass) and Brian Dorsey (drums)—as fast-blues. Meyers’ vocals are drawn from a kind of ’80s female punk weirdness, with snarls and yelps and extended phrasing reminiscent of anyone from David Byrne, Wendy O. Williams or to her several years of listening to the “Riot grrrl” genre of music of Sleater Kinney and Bikini Kill. But her playing is inspired by Jimi Hendrix. Meyers says she started listening to Hendrix as a young teen growing up in the Arcadia district of Phoenix/Scottsdale. From there she moved on to learning to play guitar by listening to blues standards by B.B. King and other blues masters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">“I was into Joan Jett and all of those women who came out,” she says. “That interested me, those women inspired me that way. A lot of people tell us that I sound like the singer for the B-52s, but I’ve hardly ever listened to them other than hearing the song “Rock Lobster.” I certainly don’t try to sound like the B-52s.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">As far as the “how-we-got-together” story goes for Sol Drop, it’s one of the better stories you could ever hear.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Meyers, who clearly came to NAU with the idea of starting a band in mind, had noticed Dorsey walking in a dorm hallway with a drum key on a carabiner. Then she asked if he was a drummer. He was, having played in various bands in Santa Rosa, Calif. She got his number with the idea they would later jam, then sent him a text message several months later. He didn’t realize who it was at first, but then remembered the connection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The problem was, even if they wanted to play music together, they had nowhere to practice. It was pretty impossible in the dorms they were living in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">But then one day Meyers found a power outlet on the top floor of a parking garage on campus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">As Buechel describes it, “We took our stuff on the top of the parking garage and found a common place where we could play. We did it just loud enough with the drum set to where we could hear each other playing,” says Dorsey. “From just doing that we got some fans who came by to listen, and many of them have been coming to our shows ever since. Nobody told us to stop, for some reason. People really enjoyed it, which was cool.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Meyers says that within a week of playing on the parking garage, they had their first gig at Firecreek.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">This summer they went on a DIY tour up and down the West Coast, first starting in Phoenix, then going from Southern to Northern California, finally ending up in Las Vegas, where they played at a deli.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">“We did 10 shows in nine days,” Meyers says. “We did one in a party room in a bowling alley. That was an interesting story. The owner cut the power on the band playing after us because they were too loud.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">During the band’s short time together, they have played at least 60 shows, many of them in Tempe, Phoenix and Scottsdale. Their new CD was recorded in Chandler, at an independent studio called Clamsville and run by John Herrera, who Meyers says has given the group “a lot of good tips.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Standout tracks on the new seven-track CD include the opener, “Fake,” which starts out with striking punk guitar then leads into a very Hendrix-like section. Her vocals are bratty in the punk form. Another good song is “Rewinder,” in which Meyers’ pursues a bluesy chord progression, then sings in a snarling melody laced with sarcasm. Indeed, the seven-song release is a showcase for Meyers’ brilliance as a new young talent in Flagstaff.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Working the social media, especially using Facebook and Snapchat to keep in touch with their emerging following of say, 100 people, the band is trying to do all of the right things. For Sol Drop, there is a plan: To graduate, and then survive, as a band.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-90690919550427902532017-08-28T16:06:00.000-07:002017-08-30T09:01:31.474-07:00Sea Monsters Out There: Revisiting a Life in Exile in the Flatlands<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><span style="font-size: large;">he train leaves Flagstaff, Arizona, in the dark, and you are in Albuquerque by mid-morning, and by the time you get through the slow-moving pass in the Southern Sangre De Cristo range, the mind is set to wandering as you enter the first of the plains, confronting the memories of several years before. By the next day you wake up in Kansas City, the early morning lights of the tall buildings seem to be the color of barbecue sauce. At 7:30 a.m. as you step off the train after more than 24 hours after Flagstaff, Arizona, on the Southwest Chief, you scribble into the notebook like Dorothy in the opposite of Oz that his does look like Kansas after all. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Why write this? All of the keeping track. Over the years the notebooks have piled up. All of it rarely rendered into anything suitable for publishing. P</span><span style="font-size: medium;">oetry for me is a lot like irritable bowel syndrome: You have to take paper everywhere because you never know when you will have to go, scribbling all over the place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">But you are, and the performance is on again, with the pen-to-paper, journoizing very light to your touch, which must be more fragile than even you are willing to admit. But hey, you are the connoisseur of chaos, and this doesn't feel like disaster. This feels like a re-awakening. Got just enough caffeine and nicotine in the pre-dawn light on the Kansas City train to this point to get you to firing up the old computer and getting back to the words, the words, the words ... You have a sense that stream of consciousness isn't in style anymore. Political hacks keep it simple for the masses. You are no man for the masses ... crossing the Mississippi now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">You are a solitary figure. Things you say to strangers must seem odd to them, since you can't get much of a response. Like when you got off the train in the early morning light and said, with a bearded Mennonite man in front of you, facing his back, "Hmmm, Kansas City, must be, since everything looks like barbecue sauce." He doesn't laugh. Maybe he got scared of hearing something so odd so early in his day. Definitely not your target market, Mennonites. But he's your people, your ancestors, who worshiped lightning or some shit in colonial Pennsylvania. Someone not of this world, separate. But you feel fully in this world, and the light of rebirth is no trick. Just can't be overwhelmed by it, the rush.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The first half of the trip has been a visitation of ghosts. Triggers you did not expect. In New Mexico, as the train moved slowly through the mountains between Albuquerque and Las Vegas, New Mexico, and then northward to Raton Pass, into Colorado to Trinidad, all of the memories of the last time you had covered that ground sent me into moodiness, despair, sadness. Not sure how to explain it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Six years before the recession had just begun and she and you were flying across the arid lands of creosotes and buttes and hobbled sorta adobe homesteads, in both directions over the course of what might have been more than a year, optimistic one way and desperate going back, finally breaking down in Las Vegas, what seemed like a quiet little hippie-fied ranching town, as J. decided she needed to be institutionalized. I remember her slumped in the seat of the moving van. We, enlisted in the U-haul Army crisscrossing America in those days of desolation and economic depression, came to a sad halt on the rolling brown plains of northwestern New Mexico, on the flatland side of the nation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">She slumped in her seat. Shapely but shaken. Almost unable to speak anymore, she muttered that she needed to go in for an immediate psych evaluation. So we pulled into Las Vegas, New Mexico, like it might be our final destination, and had her in the state mental institution there by late afternoon. I stayed in a motel, trying to keep the expenses in check as the meter ran by the day for the van, for what nest egg we had left from her mother's inheritance after she had committed suicide earlier that year, as the winds blew hard and once a sign blew off the motel signage up front and I ducked before it took my head off. Trying negotiate an escape for J., who decided she didn't like being institutionalized, while at the same time going around Las Vegas, which was in itself in the midst of a re-birth or a decline in uneven distributions, going buy on granola and sell on beef, I suppose, and me going around collecting business cards and meeting with a local radical I'd met on Facebook, who gave me an earful about the social and political battles going on there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The liberal insurgency in the age of Obama and me going around the world, wondering where everybody went, as if my industry, journalism, had been hit by a neutron bomb, with the buildings all still there but the people vaporized.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The trip had really begun in Las Vegas, where many more than 150 years ago had crossed at a significant passage into the mountains. Then you head over the range into Raton, New Mexico and then Trinidad, and that's where we came off the mountains and began to cross the great plains sea of America like two cast-out devils falling from grace into the void.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Pretty soon, the hills turn into great big washes, big bowls on the rolling plains, containers for lakes, empty now, until it rains ... and strange colonels, retired spotters maybe, popping out from nowhere, like jack-in-the-boxes ... watching your every move ... I remembered the blocked turnoff ... might put you out about where the strange summer cloud veil was landing ... sweeping up now to meet the southern edge of the Rockies, moving in on Pueblo, Colorado Springs ... as we flew further out, nothing out there ... especially not gas ... It seemed we would never make it ... I knew ... so we had to turn the moving van, a unit in the U-Haul Army, around, on a tricky hill near a cell phone tower ... She got out of a truck, since the space was so tight, to give directions ... and out from nowhere pops another one of these retired hawk-faced men, in not so beat up green truck, obviously mystified with our presence, as he lingered like a vulture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">I had been on that road before. But she, not. I knew better. She, not. It goes forever into eastern Colorado, out to places they now say there are secret military industrial parties, MIBs, black helicopters, all swooping around ... your tax dollars at work ... and what was that mystical veil of cloud sweeping up from the southeast? ... No, nothing looked natural ... especially not that ... but hell, once you make it out for a sail into the Midwestern U.S. ... does anyone know what they are looking at anymore?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">So we decided to turn right at the first opportunity we got, which sent us straight out into the great prairie of America. From that point on, the comedy had ended, and a real shit storm immediately began to get noticed ... while the watchers watched us, you, everyone, for ridiculous and dangerous reasons ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">There is no other way to put it: These are the corners of the killing fields, with this end being up, that end being down, and the compass pointing ... and we end up bouncing all over the great rolling sea of the Midwest, with sea monsters out there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Symmetry comes to your mind, but it’s hardly late enough in the hour to consider it fully, completely. More like, it’s this: Listening to a long sad aphorism by Mark Twain, once of Hannibal, Missouri, thus misquoted: The hardest thing in life, the thing that really wears you out, the rub, as they say is having to spend most of your life trying to convince completely ignorant, stupid, ill-mannered, superstitious or otherwise plain retarded people that there’s such a thing as being smart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Not to get too prideful on the subject. To think too much of your own education is no humble way to go on living. In fact, information can really get in the way. Too much information, poison. If you have too many beeping crickets in your head, if you haven’t gone completely Luddite (and therefore mad), then you are simply pushing the envelope on what the mind can actually contain. There are just too many things that if you did know, you’d wish you didn’t. If you are like one of those poor folks who are suckerfish for data, well, condolences, bothered brothers, sorry sisters. And if you wield it all like a sword, using the word (lowercase, though solemnly used) like a shield instead of a sword, well, we regretfully inform you that your apologies are not accepted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">On that opposite side of that coin, sometimes, yes, you just need the effing noise. Say you are resting on the journey along the mad boulevard of St. Charles, outside of Chicago … and it’s a Saturday morning and the motors are roaring in front of you, camped at the Starbucks, sucking down your caffeine, getting your first cig with coffee for the day. A glorious morning, with motors a roarin’. Down America’s snaky trail they go: The rented cars, the newly bought golden bows, all funded by the cash for cars program, making the whole roadway look like a new car lot running like blood from the old century into the new; the cattle trucks, the dump trucks, the pickups carrying horses to their polo games, the motorcycles, the morons and their motors, there they all go … in camper cans and brightly colored vehicles designed in the late 20th century and made to all look like aerodynamic Clorox bottles, the Porches for the Plutocrats, the Lincoln Continentals for the Republicans, the Democrats, seeking prestige, in their Priusi (hybrids of dinos, still, sucking the vampire blood from the earth, but only half as often), the independents in their silvery gleaming galaxies of wheels, the Redcoats in their redcoats, the Blues in their bluesmobiles, sex and death and terror and awestruck to the bottom of the gully in front of the Starbucks, down the red brick canyon, carting coal or gasoline or ethanol, corn oil and hydrogen and eternal air in the morning’s last pure light. Lawyers dressed as gangsta bikers. Gangsta bikers dressed as lawyers. All of the dogs and cats and lesbians in their convertibles, their hair glaze getting Beatled down by the sun and blazing classic rock radio, their stereos boom boxing their personal music, their power, their Powaqua, piped in by satellites now right into their husks, into their chests, and the latter, their long blonde hair flying wild in the evil, weaponized breeze … a wind, tainted by the Fox River, on this day overflowing and reeking of kerosene … Holy Ronald Reagan! … if you are downwind today it will make you dizzy …</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And there you are in front of Starbucks, with your notebooks and designer coffee, your pack of smokes, American Spirits, expensive as a vote in these Chicago gangland parts, with the strange wise guy in a T-shirt staring down at you from his second-floor window right across the street, above the pizza parlor. There you are, with your pride, your conceit. O, you have so much information flowing in your head, faster, faster, faster … esters and ketones and raging hormones, from sex denied from living in the burbs for just one week, for living among the so-called (as Tom Wolfe put it), the “Masters of the Universe.” Little do you know that, even as you think all of these wonderful beautiful mind thoughts, he is plotting against you: the Dr. Cyclops, master of all the fatherlands you can currently survey.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And he won’t pick up the phone today. He, who lured you into this state of placated freedom after a full week of endless horrors. He who knows much more than he lets on, some effing one-eyed grandmaster, He! So you thought you had one grand Peter Pan fantasy in yer head … lazy post-literate you, without a so-called “pot to piss in,” as you have heard frequently during the week. Every time you heard it you looked into your Navajo-made sacred earn for your cig smoke ash. You with you shaman pretenses, your rael as blood pink sunglass lenses … He, with his plan, working against, and yet, despite his best efforts failing … because she is basic, gorgeous, a queen, true to her times as a bee in some mysterious hive, commanding the spirits of the earth, the underworlds and over worlds, her sex divine, her Joan of Arc in full arc, her animal magnetism, fully magnetized, all sharpened by the wickedly severe engine of grief.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">O yeah, it’s real. The day you two arrived in this plastic castle fantasyland Dr. Cyclops was hatching his plot against this fairyland queen and long away from home Ulysses, both barely unable to even gauge which way was north or south or east or west, save for the unfamiliar sunlight and the direction of the foul winds, blown up this north by the British Petroleum-launched war to re-take America, an undeclared war that now, not even the U.S. military quite gets yet … from the moment the divide and conquer game was on as you are carefully guided into his road raging castle on the hills of the Shire. The whole neighborhood is a military base in the meadows of the Plutocracy, homes for colonels retired but still having their use, for KGB queens, but hell, they aren’t near half as dangerous to this sacred soil as the real estate mavens in their pink Cadillacs and their busy blood for time-is-money ways and means, all meeting the endless ends, the service to the great digitized seas of that false god: The caches of electronified cash, the stolen formulas for beers, the Kentucky fried generals on their furloughs, watching it all go down in deep bunkers beneath their homes … O yeah, trust this, if nothing else: It is so effing so! In God you can trust. In Ta’Iowa east to Chicago you can trust the things you wished you didn’t know.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">So that all blows us back into the sea for safety, and we escape and then: We are in Winfield, Iowa and everyone seems to be staring at us. Must be the dollar store shades, since the future is so bright (here in Hades ... let us not pray), and you are in that peculiar "you are not from around here" look of yours. Especially with what may seem to the locals as an odd manner of bobbing and weaving in the bush, as well as the downright Martian vocabulary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Winfield, in the southeastern corner of the state, is far less bombed-out, bummed-out looking than nearby Morning Sun, Iowa, but that's not saying much. The people of Winfield appear, at least on this sunny day brighter, happier, perhaps even prettier. But that's only on this day. A sunny day. A Big Little Wagon Grain machine goes by and the driver waves; because, well, he's getting stared at by you, marveling at such a large and marvelous device, because you can't get over your "am I a real boy" Tonka Trucks wonder years.</span></div>
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</span>
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There are several cars in the front of the favorite and only restaurant, Pork's, where the food is cheap, tasty as hell, and served with an easy going smile and sense of merriment. People stroll out of the place with leftovers in styrofoam containers, big Buddha bellies, and on the way to their cars, taking up all of the parking spaces on the road out front, each and every one have one last fine thing to say to each other.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That, after nearly breaking their necks to look at you. Since you are still in that "Am I real real boy, Tonka trucks" phasey haze.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
It's mid-October and the leaves are just starting to turn. Funny thing is: It was supposed to rain today.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The local historical museum, with fine bright-eyed seniors working in there, fully prepared with their centuries of knowing, to assist you in your not-so-private investigation. One lady gives you a tour. She is spry. Quite wise. Eager for this attention. She tells you, for example, that in 1907 the whole town, except for the hat shop, burned down. Another year an entire brick-made church was completely dismantled after two of the church elders had gotten into a fight fight after failing to come to an agreement over how to spend the money donations attained, one would suppose, after many Sundays of passing the plate. Stuff like that, she tells you, as you gave at the black and white photos of what this church once looked like, as well as the bombed-out, post World War II firebombing look of what the town looked like after the fire of 1907, of bleak and figures silhouetted, of dazed survivors looking around, trying to figure out, "now what," after the disaster.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Now what? Indeed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But such worries on this sunny neo-Depression era day are replaced by your notices of the reddish Winfield Wolves "welcome" flags posted high on the utility line posts. The noon siren on top of one of these streetlight-included posts shouts to workers and residents that it's noon ... time to eat, or leave, or just hang out at Pork's ... and so on ... as a thresher rolls by, a big Jolly green giant of a monster UFO kind. The driver waves. A king of the new Martian technology that is what really amazes you about the people and technologies of the area. The leaves keep turning into reds, oranges ... fall is coming (going by?) way too fast.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Yeah, it's one fine sunny day in this place. A day to remember. With everyone nearly breaking their necks to get a look at you in your dollar store shades.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Why? Because, because, because ... because of the wonderful things you do? Hell, no!</div>
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">You are just lost in the amazement of that fabled "Am I a real boy" Tonka Truck haze and you just can't even catch up to not being in Kansas anymore ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Somehow we got through all of that, but on the road back to Arizona she came apart. The grief was just too much.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And so now the train is passing through all that, and I'm seeing things all over again. Knowing now it was real, no dream. Finally, as the Southwest Chief heads into Chicago, not even a year ago, the train stops for a few passengers in Naperville, Illinois, where I still, far as I know, have a storage space full of my life's belongings up to that point seven years ago. I want it back. I want it all back. But then again, I don't. The train just keeps moving on.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-86122529781710163002017-08-06T23:10:00.000-07:002017-12-30T22:15:14.661-08:00And the best karaoke bar in Arizona is ... a bit bitchy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrXmXAG3LApnczRx1weG36MH8i4O3-pfMvEbt7sF0DcI6C5tTgctGEuojy6kE7amyf7MmdAqx5mFOGVTTbe4hLOA3sY93QD41Krzh1M3gwftCXXum0QjU96u6WweskzxhtSjGWzg/s1600/th+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="282" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrXmXAG3LApnczRx1weG36MH8i4O3-pfMvEbt7sF0DcI6C5tTgctGEuojy6kE7amyf7MmdAqx5mFOGVTTbe4hLOA3sY93QD41Krzh1M3gwftCXXum0QjU96u6WweskzxhtSjGWzg/s640/th+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">If I hadn't of been thrown out of yet another karaoke bar, two, count them, two, in Scottsdale, Arizona, for only wanting water, in the past month, perhaps a more equitable peace could have been made with this paradigm bummer when it comes to what's been going on in music for the past twenty years. In fact, in considering this story about the best karaoke bar in at least Scottsdale, I had an extended relationship with the place for about three months, offering to write a <a href="http://reverbnation.com/radiofreearizona.com">RFA</a> column right away, once I got a drift of what kind of singers were there, but decided not to declare it the best karaoke bar in Arizona because, you know, call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But over the past few weeks, as the bone-burning summer in Phoenix drives people more frequently to the hospital than to the golf course, the snake of jaw-dropping loss in income in the local nightlife has has curled into a coil, shaking a death rattle, an empty cup, to the hungry hearts out there, yearning to sing to be happy as hell. Without fear. Without desperation. Holding back the Sahara of America from choking off all hope, kindness, or normal human interaction. And it's not just the bars, but the hate-filled scream of society being liquified by the heat and pounding, pressurized humidity in general. The wild bestial sexual pulse of downtown high-end glitter? What's that all about? Basically, the summer is trying to kill everyone. So why not party like it's 2999?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And, since they really did throw me out permanently for ordering water, I am going to do the place a favor now, since I love the people there, and the amazing talent that gathers there so very, very much. And the prescient deejays who know how to pick songs for me, rather than what I asked for. The place so-long-not-mentioned-in-a-praising rock journo's review, with it's warm studio setting, big sound, and amazing affability draws singers as good as anything on "American Idol," in many cases better. Many of whom are gifted musicians with their own many projects and amazing professional backgrounds. Many of those choosing more improvisational bends to the originals, thus, perhaps, hopefully signifying the end has begun for this big bad feedback loop of brain-dead repeating of rote "Caroline" Idolotry.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Better than going to church? Perhaps. Indeed, there is no place happier than a room full of singing hobbits, bouncing off the tables, and rolling on the floor. And one more, no, two, no, three things ..,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">1) It's OK if you do your own own words</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">2) It's OK if you want to channel Bono</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">3) "Caroline" no bueno ...</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And so, here it is, the best karaoke bar in Costdale, no, Scottsdale, Arizona, my home, my land, and yours, truly, too ...</span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The GRAPEVINE</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA</span></blockquote>
You <a href="http://radiofreearizona.blogspot.com/">RFA</a> welcome.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi022PJjTsQfshcN_OLBg-pnvtX-9PLDkocIrDi_hR_3-AiUpRftLnyZM1oudgr4URPGFw8QywDSZrXHxxj8WRu5vw7iWRwyzH7-a3YosQXoNq8xHsfS0Zkp-c49MZ1hPygs7BCAg/s1600/mic-drop.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="1200" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi022PJjTsQfshcN_OLBg-pnvtX-9PLDkocIrDi_hR_3-AiUpRftLnyZM1oudgr4URPGFw8QywDSZrXHxxj8WRu5vw7iWRwyzH7-a3YosQXoNq8xHsfS0Zkp-c49MZ1hPygs7BCAg/s320/mic-drop.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And hey man, what's with this dropping the mic? Don't do it. Just don't. I never did.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">This all began</span><span style="font-size: large;"> with one simple statement about two months ago. There I was, nothing to do on a <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Saturday night, and I needed some healing, bad. So I said to myself, "There are times in a life when karoake necessary, and this is one of them."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This led to a series of efforts re-training myself to sing. Starting with a Japanese karaoke bar in Tempe, during which I choked and sputtered to nothing less than U2's "Vertigo." Right then, a bunch of Japanese Americans, probably, started peaking their heads out of their rooms, seeing who, exactly, was dying up on the center main room stage ... Any way, this all go to the point to this, again about Tempe ... Posted as thus on Radio Free Arizona's Facebook Group page:<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "<span style="background-color: white;">I truly believe an energized music scene is bubbling in the cauldron of Scottsdale, Arizona this summer. The musicians are out, and if maybe the audiences aren'</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline;">t (since it's summer, a bad one, this season), people playing original music are out all over the place. Reminds me a little of Tempe in the late '80s, early 1990s. Went to Tempe to check that out, see if it's the same, monsoon strikes willing. They were, Did a rendition of "Mexican Radio" adding the words, "Vivi Libre O Muertes," So loud it penetrated walls. Now the woman working in the sandwich shop next door kinda likes me, but thinks I'm strange, and I am. By the way, just as we driving up to the place, Tempe cops were wrestling a black man to the ground, kicking him in the head as he resisted. He kept shouting he had done nothing. A local run over Santa just watched and stared. Just asked why? You could see it in his street zoned-in body language. "Vivi Libre O Muertes," indeed.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline;">But now, with the current developments, I would clearly have to say, for myself, "There are times when karaoke is necessary, but this is not one of them." </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Walked by a day later, and they were still talking through the bars about the previous night's stuff of legend. Perhaps I wasn't the only one thrown out. Maybe for dropping the mic. That's what's the dude said he was going to do, so maybe the's a graduate, too. For myself, all I could think to say was, channeling Neil Young, "That's better than winning a Grammy!" Oh, well, I guess the question isn't how well you play within the circle, but what you do once you break on through to the other side ...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Douglas McDaniel has been living in the Valley of the Sun since 1960 and is pretty darn sure he's spent $1,000 at the Grapevine, lifetime. He is currently a producer, publisher, author, editor, journo, rock crit, web cat, web dog, poet, songwriter, singer, open mic poet organizer, bandleader, band loser, then band finder again, then who knows ... for, here goes, whew ... breathe ... <a href="http://reverbnation.com/bardsofmythville">The Bards of Mythville</a> ... <a href="http://reverbnation.com/radiofreearizona">Radio Free Arizona (the Band)</a> ... <a href="http://reverbnation.com/shiprect">Shiprect</a> ... <a href="http://reverbnation.com/sonmythville">Son Mythville</a> ... with a poet tree at ... <a href="http://mythville.blogspot.com/">Mythville</a> ... as well as his long-time gonzo feature ... <a href="http://radiofreearizona.blogspot.com/">Radio Free Arizona</a> ... He throws right (and left) ... kills at ping pong ... Rights write. Writes wrong. Right on ... Sorry, <a href="http://mythville.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-lifetime-of-walking-down-edward.html">EA</a>, had to say that part ... Namaste ...</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-23409373030150851722017-07-13T23:03:00.000-07:002017-07-13T23:10:22.180-07:00Enormodome and the muse of the 1990s now retro (Director's Cut)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEYeE966crUm8SZBfCpdyapEAu4TzSnbxfkAFug4gZjfjYkA4BTC0UnhRxm9cFAH9ZRYjGeA8mRm4slDSWoEaYTh-Fu17K3hBQRyTO7wLpkNH5g2_uKk_NHeFinjDQ0kp_H9I7gw/s1600/download+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEYeE966crUm8SZBfCpdyapEAu4TzSnbxfkAFug4gZjfjYkA4BTC0UnhRxm9cFAH9ZRYjGeA8mRm4slDSWoEaYTh-Fu17K3hBQRyTO7wLpkNH5g2_uKk_NHeFinjDQ0kp_H9I7gw/s640/download+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Enormodome with P.H. Naffah of Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Gothic Theatre, Denver. <i>Enormodome.net photo</i></td></tr>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span><span style="font-size: large;">ver the crystal clear connection of a Facebook Messenger video chat, the two members of Enormodome are live and over the airwaves. And brothers and sisters, let this be known: Though it's tragically uncool for any rock merchants to reveal their ages, Flagstaff's dynamic duo were in fact alive during the 1990s. And since they were in high school, when the music of their time was breaking their hearts and carving a permanent meme into their memory banks, they have found a way to express all that in a completely retro, maybe even holistic way.</span><br />
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That is with a 1990s night on first night each month in Flagstaff at the Monte Vista Hotel bar. According to Enormodome members Jeff Lusby-Breault and Mike Seitz, their monthly '90s nights are cultural phenomenons in town. With so many people out at night, a packed house is virtually guaranteed.<br />
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What do they remember about the 1990s? Among the things mentioned during the Messenger interview, for two tight guys who are always finishing each other's sentences, were "stylistic things," according to Seitz. "Everyone trying to find a place after the '80s, and being pretty went to being ugly." According to Lusby-Brealt: "The anti-'80s. Double shoelace era. The bright lime green, dayglow."<br />
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They go on, leaning into the screen.<br />
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Seitz: "The culture and branding explosion. Nike versus Rebok. Everything versus brand was right. Brand became culture and vice versa."<br />
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Lusby-Breault: "We were in (Flagstaff) high school in the 1990s. Everything that happened in the '90s has caused me to dedicate myself to the 1990s ... freaking Third Eye Blind. The 'Black' album for Metallica, although that's when people say they sold out," and then later, via Facebook chat, "None of our content is specifically '90s reflective."<br />
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Or is it?<br />
<br />
As Seitz says, "You grow up with your parents music a little bit, and then you are really shaped by the music when you have crushes on the opposite sex. You have all of these raging hormones. So your parents open you up to it a bit and it just solidifies when you just go crazy with your first crush on the girl ... I remember crying to 'Color Blind' by the Counting Crows."<br />
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Such formative years then move forward to create a current Enormodome song called "22 Guns," performed this year and available on Youtube.com for the Tiny Desk outlet, with the line: "High school sweat hearts make bad grown ups."<br />
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Since both were in high school and two young for bars in Flagstaff, Lusby-Breault says he doesn't have much of an idea about how the alternative scene expressed itself in northern Arizona. Most likely, with so many new bands on tour, the Museum Club was a major hot spot with such bands as the Meat Puppets playing there.<br />
<br />
In Phoenix, the alternative scene was more amply available for the purposes of observed memory. That all starts KUKQ on the AM band out of Apache Junction. Such hits as "Dad, Have You Ever Been Arrested?." Bands like Pop Eats Itself and tons of B52s and David Bowie as filler. The deejays were Jonathan L. and the Bone Mama. The peak of all that was came out of KUKQ culture in the Valley was a show at Big Surf in Tempe. People hanging off the palm trees to get a view. The bands were the Gin Blossoms, the Sidewinders (one of the best bands ever out of Tucson), Camper Van Beethoven and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And then there was the Sun Club in Tempe, where the Meat Puppets, Giant Sand (another Tucson fave) and Dead Hot Workshop ruled. Nirvana and Public Enemy. Peter Murphy and the Levellers and Crowded House and Janes Addiction. People all dressed in black at the Mesa Amphitheatre for Love and Rockets and New Order. Morrissey out at that dust pit south of Phoenix called Compton Terrace. When KUKQ went FM it codified the whole thing. They went corporate and that pretty much summed it up for quote "alternative" in Phoenix.<br />
<br />
That's the pop process in a nutshell.<br />
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Now the important thing to remember, obvious as it may sound, is there was no Facebook in the 1990s. But the root of it is there, in 1996, when (as the joke goes) Vice President Al Gore "invented the internet." And it can be argued here that the 1990s are hard to remember, perhaps due to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which essentially unleashed the internet onto the free world. It can be further argued that the 1990s actually ended then. Because the world was never the same. The 21st century had begun. Not in the year 2000 with Y2K and the kind of outrageous fear and dystopian blah blah blah that is the ethos of the 21st century. But in 1996 when the erasure of all that had come before had begun. Which is why some voters were led to believe in the 2016 presidential election that former President Bill Clinton started a child pornography ring while in office. Since 1996 the truth of history is slowly being turned into vaporware. To bring this point to the well, point, is this: Napster.<br />
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Enormodome members Jeff Lusby-Breault and Mike Seitz remember the disturbance in the force created by the controversial first music sharing web site.<br />
<br />
"I remember going to my friend's house and he says 'I'm getting free songs on Napster," Lusby-Breault says. "I felt a dark pit in my stomach. It just seemed weird. I remember a very weird, bad feeling ... It was the end of the record industry. Napster killed it. Metallica took all of this s...t for taking a stand against it to protect the value of the art." Followed by Seitz, "Intellectual property is property. (What Napster created) was like stealing groceries at a stand on the roadside."<br />
<br />
And then Seitz responds to the call further, the deep thinker leaning harder into the Messenger video screen, "The media shifted immediately, too. There was an immediate departure from record to video." In terms of the art of full-length albums or CDs, "How did that not kill everything?" Then Lusby-Breault, "We are excited vinyl is making a huge comeback. It inspired listening to music as an event. The song order on the album meant something. The new generation hasn't experienced that much. It's an art in itself to make an album flow."<br />
<br />
As far as the 90s night goes, with Enormodome playing covers from that period, the two believe the event, which started slow but has picked up steam, is reminiscent of the '90s in the sense of the way people at the show behave.<br />
<br />
"People believe they are at a rock show again," Seitz says. "They lose themselves a bit. A lot of people stumble on it from out on the street and room becomes a really cool place. It's a lot more kinetic, with people bumping into each other. It's really a different feeling."<br />
<br />
Finally, Lusby-Breault, summing it up: "It's a miniature phenomenon downtown."<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Article appeared previously in <a href="http://flaglive.com/">Flagstaff Live</a>, Arizona Daily Sun.</span></i><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-34447677830403032382017-07-04T09:00:00.001-07:002017-07-05T00:22:18.982-07:00The way back machine when 'alternative' was colored lime green<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I've been thinking about the '90s for an upcoming story and the only thing I can remember about those years was writers were actually paid for a living. That, and Pearl Jam and lime green as the ubiquitous signifier of alternative chic. Better bone up. The 1990s. 1990s. Wasn't Bill Clinton president running a child kiddie porn ring or something?</span><br />
<br />
The heat here is sapping my memory.<br />
<br />
Oh. I was there. KUKQ on the AM out of Apache Junction. Such hits as "Dad, Have You Ever Been Arrested?." Bands like Pop Eats Itself and tons of B52s and David Bowie as filler. The deejay was Jonathan L. and the Bone Mama. The peak of all that was came out of KUKQ culture in the Valley was a show at Big Surf in Tempe. People hanging off the palm trees to get a view. The bands were the Gin Blossoms, the Sidewinders (one of the best bands ever out of Tucson), Camper Van Beethoven and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And then there was the Sun Club in Tempe, where the Meat Puppets, Giant Sand (another Tucson fave) and Dead Hot Workshop ruled. Nirvana and Public Enemy. Peter Murphy and the Levellers and Crowded House and Janes Addiction. People all dressed in black at the Mesa Amphitheatre for Love and Rockets and New Order. Morrissey out at that dust pit south of Phoenix called Compton Terrace. When KUKQ went FM it codified the whole thing. They were sold to a corporation and that pretty much sums it up for quote "alternative" in Phoenix. That's the pop process in a nutshell.<br />
<br />
I had my column Radio Free Arizona in <i>Scottsdale Life</i>, the arts and entertainment weekly for the Scottsdale Progress, an early prototype of what <i>Flagstaff Live</i> does now, especially with the free distribution in addition to the subscriber delivery. Then I took a big risk and went to work for a local rock publication called <i>Where It's Hot</i>. I took the Radio Free Arizona column there with me. People thought I was crazy, even though it paid more, because they used to have all of these scantily clad women on the cover. It was basically a hair band rag at that point. But I took over right as alternative was hitting and we put all of the new bands on the cover. I think the first one was Live. Also U2 for the "Achtung Baby" tour. I put the Gin Blossoms on the cover and the hard rock oriented owners of the mag hated that. Within a few weeks the Gin Blossoms were on Letterman. Anyway, the publication became much more professional and I became known to all of my mainstream journo friends at the time as the guy who "got the bimbos off the cover" at <i>Where It's Hot</i>. But all that only lasted a year or a little more. There was too much conflict between me, the straight journalist, and the hair band owners there who thought the whole thing had lost what they called "cool." I call it my year of living dangerously.<br />
<br />
I went to Catalina Island to write a book when that all fizzled ...<br />
<br />
But I still wrote for them after that, even though I had moved on to sports magazines like <i>The Diamond (the official history magazine for Major League Baseball)</i> and <i>Harnett's Sports Arizona</i>. But my future x-wife at the time didn't like me writing about music at all. Was threatened by it. So I wrote under the name RFA for <i>Where It's Hot</i>. But it wasn't much of a cover. The guy who owned Zia Records, Brad Singer, figured it out and called me, which I thought was cool. Especially since he's dead now.<br />
<br />
And so are the 1990s. And so is "alternative," which is in the dustbin of history just like "classic rock." But hey, dad still rocks ... dad rock.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-24008814777655861902017-06-26T15:31:00.001-07:002017-06-26T16:08:21.467-07:00Confessions of a liberal hobgoblin as a young man<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span><span style="font-size: large;">ell all hail Trump and the breathless gonzo he inspires: Having absorbed numerous presidential campaign conventions, with the media in the mainstream, as well as on the fringes as a roving-then-writing observer of the times, and having taken the pulse on my own social media now sanitized of those fuckheads who like to write in caps, I have started to assess where exactly I was coming from when planning to vote for Hillary Clinton, against every disaster, personal, professional and political, that came before during my life.</span><br />
<br />
Because due to the Electoral College, my vote didn't count.<br />
<br />
Some quick memories.<br />
<br />
Pink Floyd's "The Wall," seen in Los Angeles, with its thundering cynicism about the world at large as it spins headlong toward fascism. The counter-Woodstock pilgrimage of my college days.<br />
<br />
Sitting amid a bunch of political science professors as I was a student reporter trying to get reaction to Ronald Reagan's presidential victory in 1980. They kept popping their heads in the room expressing anguish and astonishment in the social sciences building at the University of Arizona.<br />
<br />
Then, after graduating and getting a newspaper job in Prescott, Arizona, interviewing homeless people living in the forest on the fringes of town. They were like peasants kept outside the castle wall in medieval times.<br />
<br />
Then, same newspaper, doing a series of stories on some very sick people who had run across a new term in insurance policies, "pre-existing conditions," and were literally left to die without any care at all.<br />
<br />
Then, during these days of deregulation, covering something called the rural tariff, which required rural residents to pay the full price of getting a phone line out to their cabins, little houses on the prairie, and so on. An Arizona Corporation Commissioner later quit after those controversial days to start her own cell phone company.<br />
<br />
Boy was she smart.<br />
<br />
Finally, religious nuts in Prescott Valley, burning record albums in a big pit at moonlight. It was as if the Dark Ages had returned.<br />
<br />
That boils the Reagan era down for me.<br />
<br />
Why more people don't claim he was the Anti-Christ, considering his moral majority support, as well as tendency of political hypocrisy, breakout military inclinations, the scandals that never went anywhere, and the greed, the stupid endless greed, is beyond me. Guess I was never much of a gauge on the looming apocalypse, after all.<br />
<br />
Because here I am. The sky has not fallen.<br />
<br />
I owe my liberalism to rock music, especially British prog-rock, and Kurt Vonnegut, and then, Edward Abbey (who may not have been a liberal at all). As well to watching how religio-political fanatics behaved in my personal life throughout the 1980s. Authoritarianism and raging persecution, for poor me, the rock critic, was local as all politics, as Tip O'Neill might have said. 'Bout had my eyes scratched out by a bunch of increasingly intolerant Christian activistas.<br />
<br />
Fast forward to the speed and emotional integrity of a U2 song, and heck, that brings me right up to the late 1990s. Because here I am. Hello, is this the political PTSD support group? There now, is this so painful?<br />
<br />
I mean, what could go wrong? Did I vote for Al Gore in 2000? Hell no. The Clinton administration's periodic bombing of Iraq to distract the nation from the Monica Lewinsky scandal led me to vote for Ralph Nader. But Massachusetts, where I was living at the time, was going to go for Gore and I had the idea it was a good time to join those wishing to express dissent about the two-party system. Then came Florida's failure to count all the votes, the dimpled chads, all the rest as the right-leaning Supreme Court decided the game ,,, and then, and then, and then I completely lost any hope for a political solution.<br />
<br />
I'm not joking. Lost it. Everything I'd every learned since I was a kid, which I took really seriously, all that patriotic stuff, was proven to be wrong.<br />
<br />
I could bring you right up to date in the current century. The Dot-Com bust. 9/11. The Great Recession. But it's all too heart-breaking. For myself and many of my close friends and lovers. Many of whom are no longer with us because of the seismic shifts in society. And now, the New Cruelty, Republican retrogression in healthcare.<br />
<br />
I only have the strength to post this about a previously cruel century during the days of the industrial revolution from Wikipedia.org to provide what I think about the latter: "The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws being codified in 1587–98. The Poor Law system was in existence until the emergence of the modern welfare state after the Second World War ... In 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed by Parliament. This was designed to reduce the cost of looking after the poor as it stopped money going to poor people except in exceptional circumstances. Now if people wanted help they had to go into a workhouse to get it."<br />
<br />
So, yes, it's all too much. But ego death is a good thing.<br />
<br />
That I lost my civic bearings because George Bush II took over has been well-rewarded, or, at least, justified by history. Now comes Trump and truth is disposable and we are all at the mercy of the pharaohs more than ever. But what didn't kill me made me stronger. I should get an honorary degree for this. A doctorate in survival and resiliency. And I know how hard it is to get centered and balanced in times like these. Music helps. I recommend King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man," then call me in the morning.<br />
<br />
Just want to let you know where I came from. I'm not a shaman. I'm not a columnist. I'm not even a real journalist anymore. We all belong in the same museum as coal miners. I'm just a fool fallen down off the hill with some tunes in my head. Poetry pouring out. Wish I had a nickel for everyone who told me they were a medicine man. I'm not a medicine man. But a wise one once gave me a riddle. "What does a shaman want to be? A human being."<br />
<br />
So that's it. That's me. Hopefully. My political views have been sculpted by my experience. Other than that I don't know crap. Your mileage may vary. And I don't weed out the conservatives on my social media anymore. Because we need to have a chat. Maybe we can both learn something. Just don't use CAPS!<br />
<br />
P.S. Maybe all the moon-beams and wingnuts can comment on these words from the Crimson King:<br />
<br />
<i>The wall on which the prophets wrote<br />Is cracking at the seams<br />Upon the instruments of death<br />The sunlight brightly gleams<br />When every man is torn apart<br />With nightmares and with dreams,<br />Will no one lay the laurel wreath<br />As silence drowns the screams<br /><br />Between the iron gates of fate,<br />The seeds of time were sown,<br />And watered by the deeds of those <br />Who know and who are known;<br />Knowledge is a deadly friend<br />When no one sets the rules<br />The fate of all mankind I see<br />Is in the hands of fools<br /><br />Confusion will be my epitaph<br />As I crawl a cracked and broken path<br />If we make it we can all sit back and laugh,<br />But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying,<br />Yes I fear tomorrow I'll be crying</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
~ "Epitaph," by King Crimson<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Written by Greg Lake, Ian Mcdonald, Michael Rex Giles, Peter John Sinfield, Robert Fripp • Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-54964797742199424112017-06-23T07:00:00.001-07:002017-06-23T07:00:48.087-07:00Burning Man Band: The 'Magnificent Beast' that is Marchfourth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Chaos theory works in a magical way. Like in a typical disaster movie, when the earth-shaking event begins out in the boonies. The moon shakes. Bubbles start coming out from the bottom of the sea. The lone hero scientist-researcher begins to detect disturbing readings from some ice-weary cubicle in Antarctica. Before you know it, all hell is breaking loose, snowballing toward an apocalyptic conclusion. But what if that out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere cosmic event, the trouble in River City, began with the birth of a singular moment of pure joy? As some insurgent agent invisible to the catastrophe, violence and hatred already amply available in broad society? Before you know it, before the pharoahs can do anything about it, the whole world is dancing in the streets in global Mardi Gras ecstasy. Such may one day be the case for what was first big-banged as the Marchfourth Marching Band, now known more simply as Marchfourth. Of course, that should all be toned down quite a bit.</span><br />
<br />
Marchfourth isn't a four-piece Beatles or U2 taking the world by storm. The Portland-based troupe-group, with its founding members inspired by the Burning Man events out in the Nevada desert, is maybe 18-20 people up on stage, with burning horn players, burning drummers, burning bassists and guitarists, burning dancers, burning men and women on stilts. All elaborately dressed in chaotic costumes beaming in the glories of the individual as a kind brash, booming, brassy and quite mad high-flying circus.<br />
<br />
The group doesn't really operate like other performing acts do, especially considering they have had more than a taste of big-time glory, such as doing theme songs for the "Monsters Inc." kid-movie franchise and getting recruited by the U.S. State Department to tour in China to create a disturbance in the force there. To set up an interview there's no highly efficient intermediary big-label publicist to arrange a time to speak at a specific time. It's more like, hey, here's the number, just call, send an e-mail and we'll get back eventually. When they take to the road, they more often than not stay at the homes of friends and fans and members of their network across the country or in a customized bus full of thoughtful bozos. It's a very communal approach, with group members always coming and going, all managed furiously by lead organizer John Averill, who views the whole thing as a baseball team that's constantly evolving as the season wears on.<br />
<br />
Fourteen years ago Averill and co-founder Dan Stauffer decided to channel all of the creative desires inspired by attending Burning Man festivals and a love for New Orleans second-line ensembles into a kind of social club in Portland. Averill had been organizing "hybrid theme parties," creating "one-off" bands inspired by Burning Man, once unofficially described as the "special Olympics of art." Usually held around Labor Day in the desert 90 miles northeast of Reno, the big moment of the event is the torching of a large wooden man. The internationally attended even is officially described as "an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance."<br />
<br />
How that combination of off-the-grid gumption was interpreted by Stauffer and Averill was as a marching band combining Mardi Gras and the Chinese New Year. They performed for the first time on Fat Tuesday, March 4, 2003, and two weeks later really set the thing on fire amidst the collective oxygenated angst of a downtown Portland protest against the war in Iraq.<br />
<br />
The musicians drew from the institutional brass bands of New Orleans, klezmer, samba and other strong Latin influences, especially since most of the drummers were already members of Brazilian batucada, which is also draws from an Afro-precussive style usually performed by an ensemble, known as a bateria.<br />
<br />
Via e-mail, Stauffer described the first igniting of the group this way: "We started going to Burning Man in '98 and got turned on to some large roaming bands like Extra Action and the Infernal Noise Brigade and thought that it would be fun to have an outfit like that here in Portland. You know, something fun, energetic, danceable, and larger than your typical four-piece. John was throwing a big party called Chow Yun Fat Tuesday and we decided to make this party our debut. We teamed up with Faith and Nayana Jennings (a former member now retired now serving as the road manager), and stiltwalker Nathan Wallway to have a crazy dance and costumed circus kind of vibe, learned five or six songs from Rebirth (Brass Band), Fanfare Ciacarlo, Fela Kuti, and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Four cases of PBR and four practices later we went and played the party, which was a blast but we perhaps had too many drummer and dancers and not enough horn players (now there are more horns than any other section). The next day we went out and did a peace march against the Gulf War, and that was magic, both the protestors and the counter-protestors dropped the anger, fear and bad vibes as we marched through the streets of downtown Portland playing our fun Mardi Gras set. It was like a little ripple of joy in an ugly little sea. We were all pretty blown away getting to contribute something like that at that moment in history, and thought, well, we might want to keep doing this. So we did! And that's just the beginning of this magnificent beast."<br />
<br />
One of the things marching bands don't have, in addition to the Burning-Man-slash-stiltwater icon, is a bass player, which Averill brought to the evolving stew.<br />
<br />
"Music was always a hobby until about 15 years ago when I decided to chase a musical career," he says, again via e-mail. "I guess I wanted to figure out what it was like to be broke all the time (haha)! I made more money doing visual art-related work, but I love the immediate connectivity of playing music. You play music in real time and people dance, so the joy is instantaneous. With other jobs, like stop-motion animation (my prior occupation), you work behind a curtain for 50 hours a week and then wonder if anyone is going to enjoy what you created."<br />
<br />
The current incarnation of Marchfourth consists of bass, guitar, two trumpets, three saxes, two trombones, and four percussionists. Add this to three dancer-acrobats, including one of the last stiltwalkers around -- since it's such a physical job to be a pro that retirements far outweigh the number of available new recruits -- as well as four people as support staff, the whole ethic of roving self-reliant creative outburst becomes a real practical problem. They are now on their third tour bus, modified to sleep more than 20 people.<br />
<br />
"We have a full kitchen so we don’t have to stop for food all the time," Averill says. "The vibe on the bus is pretty chill, and very family-oriented. There really isn't any room for drama. There also isn’t any room for guests. So we just kind of pass the time reading, playing games, working on laptops. Whatever pent up energy we have gets released on stage. It’s kind of like we live on a 45 box on wheels, and then we get to a town and just explode on the stage. In a good way. It’s a happy explosion."<br />
<br />
As far as getting to be known nationally went, the iconoclastic counter-culture vibe and burn-down-the-big-box unorthodoxy were always the prime directives. For example, "America's Got Talent" asked them to perform on the show (who knew it wasn't all volunteer?) but the group couldn't get their heads inside the request.<br />
<br />
"They hounded us, and we made a promo video, but when it came time to sign a contract we decided not to do it," Averill says. "Most of us felt, as a legitimate band, that we didn’t want to become reality TV show fodder, and the contract basically signed away any kind of control of whatever they decided to film us doing."<br />
<br />
They put out an album called "Rise Up," and somehow (Averill has no idea how) it ended up in the hands of the producers of the "Monsters Inc." franchise, and they used one of Marchfourth's pieces despite anything Randy Newman could do about it.<br />
"They just picked one of our songs," Averill says. "Randy Newman did all the other songs, and he apparently tried to write one that would replace our song, but I guess it didn’t work. As a compromise, our song (although featured twice in the movie) was left off the official 'soundtrack written by Randy Newman,' which was kind of a bummer."<br />
<br />
Last year they put out another album called "Magic Number," which required a slimmed-down tribe of musicians-only to hit the road from Portland to record in New Orleans, where they cut 11 songs in 11 days: thus accomplishing a numerological feat matching the sacred mathematics of both ancient Hebrew, Islam, as well as Christianity. Adding two elevens together, making 22, is the last chapter, the Book of Revelation, in the bible and is generally supposed to mean, getting back to the point of the chaos theory of Marchfourth, a "concentation of disorganization," according to Biblestudy.org. And there is a trumpets-at-the-gates-of-Jericho feeling when the ensemble really gets rocking hard, in a frenetic swing-era way gone post-modern hip-hop, like this were a music set on fire by the devil for the purposes of entertainment in some den of iniquity.<br />
<br />
The members, in a crazed energy for a week-and-a-half, would record 10 to 12 hours a day and then form up again on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans like they belonged there, really owned the place. With their crazy outfits, again fitting the anarchic sensibilities, a video of their performance in the Big Easy makes one wonder if they dressed like that all of the time since, based on Averill's description of the time spent in the studio, with free time to rest, eat and dress being so unavailable? There's no organizing principle at work with the outfits, Averill says. But it is an art unto itself, combing Sgt. Pepper, Kiss, Batman and Rocky Balboa when the Stanford Band takes a day off to attend clown school, only to get lost in the desert at, yes, the fringes of Burning Man.<br />
<br />
"Everyone pretty much is on their own as far as outfitting themselves," Averill says. "Some people are excellent designers who know how to sew. Others have to get help blinging out their wardrobe. We try to go for a mis-matched 'marching band' aesthetic, but it’s really kind of open. Even though marching band jackets look amazing, the reality is that they are hotter than hell to wear. And those ridiculous hats are actually plastic buckets with no ventilation. So out of necessity people end up chopping off the sleeves and cutting off the tops of the hats."<br />
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A shorter version of this story original appeared in <a href="http://www.flaglive.com/">Flagstaff Live</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-15756764856423014542017-06-16T13:00:00.003-07:002017-06-16T13:00:49.063-07:00And the least hip coffee house in Scottsdale, Arizona is ...<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7zKjAkW7Lef8tPD9h0DKVYUoXmfQgG6Z7EB8DnXd2ed5ouqwcuiClLoMH-3HLrSgAgZmyncqeq9xmT8gMAzKmRA6Fd95blWEqyuZBnGi7cO8TUNeSjf8pmPSXOPlonk9suys8IA/s1600/missay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="660" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7zKjAkW7Lef8tPD9h0DKVYUoXmfQgG6Z7EB8DnXd2ed5ouqwcuiClLoMH-3HLrSgAgZmyncqeq9xmT8gMAzKmRA6Fd95blWEqyuZBnGi7cO8TUNeSjf8pmPSXOPlonk9suys8IA/s400/missay.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You won't see this woman at the place in Scottsdale, Arizona, that I'm talking about.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><span style="font-size: large;">he most un-hip coffeehouse in America, after years and years and years of research, since I've been to them from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Lincoln City, Oregon, writing poetry furiously as I put myself on display at these places, is located in Scottsdale, Arizona. You will not be able to post a "Yelp," which is uberese for hip hot spot, though. I will not permit it. Scottsdale apparently leads the world in Yelping, which is putting a lot of professional journalism-school-trained restaurant critics out of work ... so fuck even trying to explain what a "Yelp" is.</span><br />
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And it's not un-hip because the Scottsdale Police Department is right around the corner. Because the police are always at this painfully cheerful little coffee hut chatting with each other to work-group their benefits packages, as well to tell tales of harrowing heroism. God knows these people need to take a break in this town. With so much trouble in the world. With wrong-way drivers and right-mad drunks and the occasional gun over-enthusiast. With so much chaos, even in a streamlined, bolted down, cemented-to-perfection place like Scottsdale. Let them rest, with little distraction. Let them breathe, sip, chat in peace. Peace officers need peace. Let it be. Let it be.<br />
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Not going to tell you where it is. Nope. Nope. Nope. Because if you call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye (insert Don Henley/Eagles copyright dinky here).<br />
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For the purposes of comparison and contrast, I must explain that the best coffeehouse I ever lived at was Mama Java's, in Phoenix in the Arcadia district. It's not there anymore. But in it's heyday Mama Java's was a community hub for musicians and writers and strip club dancers and street people and joggers and people with nose rings and tattoos. At night, it was a constant live entertainment hub. After it was bought, I went back in there expecting more of the same. I asked the barrista woman when they had their poetry readings. She responded they didn't do that anymore. Changes had been made by the new owner. I wonder how many new owners there are in the world who had killed the successful business paradigms they had acquired. Mama Java's is one nasty example. The Coffee Plantation is, too. You can get arrested at those places now for simply strumming an unauthorized guitar note.<br />
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But the least hip coffee house in Scottsdale will never even attempt such endeavors in community Woodstock. The least hip coffee house does have all of the attendant nick-knacks, the fake burlap bean bags zonked in like wallpaper, the display cabinets with the $20-dollar coffee cups, the try-the-new-diabetes drink signs, the ecstatic barrista pitching for the up-sell. The least hip coffee house in America doesn't play any unnerving music. The only truly distracting elements are the cars, sirens and the beep beep beep of the nearby traffic light if you sit out on the smoker's porch, which is perhaps one of the worst places to be on earth if you want to get any poetry done. Unless you want your poem to go beep, beep, beep, too.<br />
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The people who go there are different than the Woodstock-turned-Lollapalooza-turned-Coachella stock. These people aren't there for their kicks. These people are there to work. To interview each other. To convince one another about the superiority of their sales gigs. To train them to sell their sales gigs. This is their office. They have no office. They are busy keeping office spaces empty. They are busy Mary Kay Cosmeticisizing. They are focused. They are dialed in.<br />
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At first, maybe it was my personal unicorn, I found it really awful. But now I'm getting warmed up the idea. Maybe I have realized, after all of these years with still no tattoos, I am not a very hip person. I'm simply a fallen yuppie angel, which is why I keep coming to the least hip coffee house in America in the first place. Because success breeds success. And if I know one thing it's this, with so many cops taking a break, it's the least likely place in the world to get arrested.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-65644721740984778262017-06-05T10:30:00.002-07:002017-06-05T16:38:39.141-07:00Old Town Scottsdale and the future shock of too much progress<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwrJ0vFajAL08KjrIJBZQoxcuW5gZz2KG6eDy_mZ50OcLb-Aqv-TyUu_cIDcoQpSAnWUbmyP6Pr6-KQLdR8X0zelhRq4dNKphYQCB3ABonRn1qL7cYqNzJ71XiDMjhmq6CvS-ZgQ/s1600/pnipublicsafety1004main+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1600" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwrJ0vFajAL08KjrIJBZQoxcuW5gZz2KG6eDy_mZ50OcLb-Aqv-TyUu_cIDcoQpSAnWUbmyP6Pr6-KQLdR8X0zelhRq4dNKphYQCB3ABonRn1qL7cYqNzJ71XiDMjhmq6CvS-ZgQ/s640/pnipublicsafety1004main+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> PNI photo</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span><span style="font-size: large;">fter being away from Scottsdale, Arizona for at least a decade, the place has changed a lot and right now I'm a little in future shock from all of the designer gloss. Clearly, I do not fit in. An argument could be made that I don't fit in anywhere, but at least my fly-on-the-wall status in life is an opportunity to provide a little counterpoint.</span><br />
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And I probably would not have gone through the trouble of writing this if not for a recent article about a dress code sign in a Chicago uber-pizza place called The Bottled Blonde, which is owned by Evening Entertainment Group, which based in Scottsdale, and has already conquered the Old Town Scottsdale area with about nine different kind of theme venues for the Mercedes-Benz set.<br />
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The sign at Bottled Blonde in Chicago, before it was removed due to a wave of Twitter activism for being racist, stated the following: “No Excessively Baggie, Sagging, Ripped, Dirty, Frayed, Overly Flashy, or Bright clothing. No hawaiian, tie dye, floral, skull prints, or anything else obnoxious. No gang attire (leather cuts, colors, or insignias) and no camouflage. No Embellishments or Statement [attire]. No plain white tees, long tees, denim, flannel … or zippers on shirts. … Tank tops before 6 PM only. … No Jordans, Nike Air Max, or Air Force Ones. … Hats must be worn forward at all times.”<br />
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There is also a Bottled Blonde in Old Town Scottsdale, so there's the hook, the line, and the sinker. However, while there's a lot more diversity in Scottsdale than there was when I was trying to buy drinks as an underage kid at disco bars, I've also noticed there's very little chance of gang attire being worn anywhere around Old Town, even by white kids.</div>
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This is about conformity. There is a certain look so entrenched in Old Town one can hardly imagine "obnoxious" ever existed, even if it could be defined. Men have crew cuts or are bald-shaved. Women wear cleavage. Not sure what else, but I'm sure whatever it is to display it with was bought at an overpriced fashion mall. But the only purpose for whatever is worn is cleavage. That's it. Battleship cleavage propped up for display on incredibly high heels.</div>
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These are people who pay retail. You have a bum's eye for clothes? Go to Tempe. Or Flagstaff. Or better yet, France.</div>
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Hats must be worn backwards. Eyes must be on two things: either your cell phones or the ubiquitous televisions hanging high up from the ceilings of these places. You could argue every patron gets their own TV, but that's overstating it a bit. But there is a lot of distraction going on in many of these slickly themed youth traps, maybe so you won't notice you are paying six dollars for a PBR or some ridiculous yacht-price for a pizza. </div>
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Oh, and no original live music. People need to be comforted, dancing not too wildly, and most certainly not inspired into any kind of youth rebellion or nuanced emotional complexity.</div>
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It begins with the architecture, which is very modern and angled with considerable sharpness. Clearly the people who have had the most fun in Scottsdale are the architects.</div>
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The counter-culture may be over, certainly never existed in Scottsdale to begin with, but there are subtle notices of its passing, as well as signs of its legacy in the mainstream. While exploring, I saw a hookah bar and two smoke shops.</div>
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Since this is a high-end consumer's oasis, and I'm a low-end guy, I feel pretty invisible during my forays into downtown Scottsdale. The place makes me feel downright Lutheran. I seem to get away with being actual human camouflage.</div>
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The vast size of these designer places, blinking in laser bounce and video screens through the windows, reminds me that this is just celebrity longing in full bloom. My post-apocalyptic dystopian eyes always view these things wondering what it will look like when it all dries up and the original dusts of the desert returns. Like tumbleweeds blowing through Disneyland, the un-sustainability of so much progress will eventually get the last good snort.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-25473616854382722332017-05-26T10:46:00.001-07:002017-05-26T11:38:01.696-07:00Viola, We Never Knew Ya<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQhxMBTepWqb8HQ6Cqfw9Q0IpmRcfQfKVHUEhBUp5ldEO7wyOOrS05uPWggcekXurnlkwVlOq4WWBrp41wGOF5ym0OONyNRkKEDH_zKKs74Mkr0AWkTbua-b3UpgQHeFp6T2AP-w/s1600/590a59edf4171.image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQhxMBTepWqb8HQ6Cqfw9Q0IpmRcfQfKVHUEhBUp5ldEO7wyOOrS05uPWggcekXurnlkwVlOq4WWBrp41wGOF5ym0OONyNRkKEDH_zKKs74Mkr0AWkTbua-b3UpgQHeFp6T2AP-w/s400/590a59edf4171.image.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Photo by Eric Hays, Flagstaff Live</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Flagstaff's Viola & the Brakemen</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">began as a legend written on a local mural</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There may be a rational explanation but it’s nowhere near as accurate as the mythic one. And after numerous interviews with the members of Flagstaff country-folk-rock-something-but-definitely-not-bluegrass band Viola and the Brakemen, the only conclusion is the truth is murky at best. Just who the hell is Viola? It must be asked. There is nobody in the band named Viola, just as there was nobody actually named Jethro Tull. Well, actually there was. So Viola is even less so.</span><br />
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Is she a chimera, a mystery girl, a waif-like ghost skipping in the alleys of downtown just before dawn? We may never know. Did we ever know Viola? Of course not. Whatever the idea of Viola has morphed into, it’s now also a heat-stroked desert sound coming from the songwriting heart of singer-songwriter Brian White, a phantom that is only cool water cupped in our hands at Oak Creek—where White has written many songs—or from the high-altitude, non-manufactured melting snows where the Kachinas roam. Such a person cannot exist but can only be imagined when you close your eyes and listen to White’s style of musical breeze. He makes up the words for his songs for a band that “only make sense” when expert acoustic music is attached for the safety of the consumer.<br />
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“Viola is before my time, and now is legend,” says the band’s drummer, Matthew Tress.<br />
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White explains it this way: “Her name was Nora and she played the viola. I thought about calling [the band] Nora and the Brakemen, but instead used Viola to infer both definitions of the word. I like the contrast of a flower and the steel that makes up the railroad and in conjunction with the Southern Pacific Railroad position title ‘brakemen.’ We are asked all the time if (band members Kristin Straka or Jessica Ludwig) are Viola. They always respond by pointing at me!”<br />
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In fact, the band’s name has proved to be so evocative and anthropologically local that “Viola & the Brakemen” is now memorialized on the Route 66 mural on the back wall of downtown’s Lumberyard Brewing Co.<br />
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“The band name stuck when the Mural Mice (R.E. Wall and Maggie Dewar) added our name as a bumper sticker in the mural on Phoenix Street at Lumberyard Brewery,” White says. “At that point I took Viola and the Brakemen on officially.”<br />
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So the evolution of the band was a kind of collective happening, a stream-of-consciousness thing ignited by one fact, codified by local muralists, and now a part of the Flagstaff historic district landscape. The mural image is a kind of faded, half-shadow that’s tilted, naturally, almost upside down, as a barely stapled old band flyer seemingly petrified to the brick wall. At this point, even if there are still band show notices stapled on Flagstaff telephone poles that are older, it appears Viola and the Brakemen will be almost as permanent as the hot dog stand on Route 66 that inspired Jackson Browne to write “Take it Easy.” Especially as brick murals in the great cow towns and mining hubs in the American West prove to endure as the decades roll on.<br />
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In any case, that brick-of-an-idea Viola and the Brakemen is the brainchild of White, who among other things is a kind of cyberspace marketing and communications wiz, working on a Master’s in Education Psychology, and really knows a lot about trains.<br />
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“The inspiration for the name came directly from my father and his position as brakemen for Southern Pacific Railroad,” he says. “The brakeman was a position on the caboose. They assisted the train when stopping, but in the mid-’80s the caboose went away because they would add more engines for power [longer freight trains] and stopping. But if you were a brakeman at the time you would keep your title per union by-laws. New hires would come in as ‘trainsmen’ while anyone before the caboose was omitted remained a brakeman due to the difference in pay.”<br />
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Of the music, a key turn of phrase stands out, “flowers” and “steel.” The new music found in the various digital formats, including on Bandcamp, the real good fortune for White is the quality of the backing band, which among other things, features an experienced player on bass, Keith Gomora, who, with the train beats, keeps each song swinging into some funky places in unexpected ways. As a group they are impressive, with Straka on the violin and Ludwig on vocals and percussion, as well as the work of drummer Tress, whose family has a recording background in the early days of Christian rock in Florida.<br />
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The off-the-grid melodies of country-porch, hippies out in the woods playing Marshall Tucker songs, and yes, all of those references to Oak Creek and mid-Western farm life, it comes at you in surprising ways. White says he’s influenced by the Byrds, Wilco and even shoegaze, a more recent critic’s word for guitar-playing frontmen with so much focus on the pedals for guitar effects on the floor they are therefore staring at their shoes. And indeed, there is a very rich palette to the songs, which are steeped in a very Arizona twang and rich harmonies—especially considering White’s background growing up as a kid, the son of an original brakeman who was also a country musician, spending a lot of time at San Xavier del Bac church southwest of Tucson.<br />
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“I am an Arizona native and I was born very close to the border of Arizona and Mexico,” he explains. “My ‘playground’ was the San Xavier Mission and I believe this upbringing lends a hand to my Southwestern musical roots. I grew up roaming miles and miles of desert lands in flip-flops, flipping rocks over to check out the weird creatures of the desert in my youth and later taking motorcycle journeys through the Tohono O’odham Nation as I got into my teen years. I had 20 years in Tucson and 21 years in Flagstaff, and I have never lived anywhere else.”<br />
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In the final analysis, as far as the legend of Viola goes, in terms of the wake she left, there’s a warm comfort in knowing that somewhere out there is a band whose idea of “going to church” is playing long Sunday afternoons at the porch at Flagstaff Brewing Co. Shows no doubt muted with great frequency by the turbulatin’ of the engines and sirens along Route 66 and the river of trains running by.<br />
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~ Originally published in <a href="http://azdailysun.com/flaglive/cover_story/viola-we-never-knew-ya-flag-s-viola-and-the/article_5676221b-2960-5380-ba17-8bec873ed126.html">Flagstaff Live, Arizona Daily Sun</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17709941464730435476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432484.post-78426885015270178682016-12-06T16:29:00.002-08:002016-12-06T16:29:37.627-08:00Asleep at the Wheel keeps it rolling along Route 66 for Museum Club show<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Talk about one of the great band names in music history, Asleep at the Wheel is a national institution. The country music group from Paw Paw, West Virginia has been in perpetual motion since 1970, right as country rock was taking off for the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Even though they were a part of the hippie counter-culture at the time, touring as an opener for Alice Cooper and Hot Tuna and earning the praise of Van Morrison, they kept to the retro side of the country scene, doing authentic songs with an eccentric audacity, respecting a tradition that, at the time, didn't know it was an endangered species.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But now after 50 years they are one of the holdouts of the country traditions, recently releasing an album decided to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, a legendary group from the 1960s known for pioneering western swing and conjuring images of raucous nights playing music behind chicken fence wire in dusty pool halls and small town honky tonks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">However, in recent decades, Asleep at the Wheel, since it is a national cultural institution, is more likely to play the swankier fine arts venues, such as the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale, or, the Dell E. Webb Center for Performing Arts in Wickenburg, the Heritage Hall in Paris, Texas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Band leader Ray Benson says even though the band has frequently been to Flagstaff, it's been a long time since they played at the Museum Club. The Route 66 connection and the history of Flagstaff's roadhouse venue is enormously important to the band, Benson says during a telephone interview from his home in Austin, Texas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"The reason we are playing at the Museum Club is it's a nostalgic show," he says. "We haven't played there in 30 years ... With eight players it will be amazing if we all fit on the stage."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There is something ubiquitous about Asleep at the Wheel. They have been around for so long, doing shows year-round, they always seem to be a permanent marker on the upcoming concert horizon, and if you miss them now there's no doubt they'll be back again soon. In the imagination, they are that travelling troupe pouring out of the tour bus to have a bite to eat somewhere around Route 66. And this week, they will be driving several days from Decatur, Illinois, generally taking the direction of Route 66 from the Midwest to the Southwest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"We will be doing sections of Route 66," he says. "This trip is going to take us a long way in the few days."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The group is racking up remarkable numbers. Benson says they are currently on their seventh tour bus, and even though the current model is equipped with internet, GPS and satellite TV, "They still break down from time to time." In addition to that, he says 90 different players have been in the band over the years, and with the exception of Benson, all of the current players are 30 years old or younger.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The band has won nine Grammy Awards and placed 20 singles on the Billboard country charts, including their highest-charting single, including "The Letter That Johnny Walker Read," which went to number 10 in 1975. It's a tune that needs to be heard on an old juke box.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The band went through a lot of challenges in its second decade, but emerged late in the 1980s even stronger after Benson took over as the band's leader. The albums "10" and "Western Standard Time" started a comeback for the group.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"That was the third incarnation of Asleep at the Wheel," he says of those years. "We had three female singers but I decided to take over as lead singer, since I was developing as a songwriter and producer. We had a hot band and a great idea and we put it together with 'House of Blue Lights.' "</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The song sounds like a kind of mission statement, as Benson sings:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Lace up your boots and we'll broom on down</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To a knocked out shack on the edge of town</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There's an eight beat combo that just won't quit</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Keep walkin' 'til you see a blue light lit</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Fall in there and we'll see some sights</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">At the house of blue lights</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There's fryers and broilers and Detroit barbecue ribs</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But the treat of the treats </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Is when they serve you all those fine eight beats</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">By the 1990s they had found a groove and had become permanently recognized as traditionalist mainstays of country swing. In 20 years Asleep at the Wheel had gone from irreverent upstarts to being the keepers of the flame. That reputation was consolidated when, in honor of the 66th anniversary of Route 66, did a tour all along the remaining elements of the Mother Road, and their tributes to the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys won them two more Grammys. They kept touring in support of a second Bob Wills tribute album, "Ride with Bob." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A play based on the life of Wills, with Benson, playing himself and meeting the spirit of the legendary country swing icon, was performed around the country, including the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet another Wills tribute, "Still the King," continues to cement Asleep at the Wheel to the very ground floor of the country swing tradition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Its been an amazing ride," Benson stated recently. "From Paw Paw to San Francisco to Austin, we've seen it all. But, rest assured, there's still many exciting projects in the works. The Wheel keeps rolling!"</span></div>
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