between the end of the semester grading/administrative horse shit and trying to get this dissertation happening and will burke setting the town on fire before he left, i was so wore the fuck out yesterday. fell asleep through all of the second half of the celts/sixers game last night (what happened?) and the first half of the lakers/OKC game (fucking lakers …) and then slept for nine hours once i hit the bed.

man.

soul tired.

feeling much, much better today.

and thank god willie burke left town before someone got arrested. or someone killed willie burke.

***

so jazz fest was a few weeks ago now, but …

we went on saturday, me and murph and chicago and nunes. had a pretty normal jazz fest day.

ate some african beef in a pita with couscous and yogurt, saw some great ragtime at the economy hall tent and the carolina chocolate drops at the fais do do stage and listened to a little cee lo green (great band) and saw the great tom petty and the heartbreakers.

we had to fight the jazz fest horde to see tommy, but that band smokes. mike campbell was on fire. deep cuts all night, including one tom introduced as one he had “a particular fondness for,” which is also one of my favorites called, ‘have love, will travel’ from the album the last dj. kind of a track buried in the depth of the whole catalogue, but it’s a gem.

“how about a cheer for all those bad girls!
and all those boys that play that rock’n'roll!
they love it like you love jesus
it does the same thing to their souls”

here it is:

saturday night murph and i had a great time in the city, riding bikes around with nunes and chicago (although the nola streets killed my flying pigeon bike, a bicycle in name only, apparently), drinking in an irish bar in the quarter listening to a pretty good shitty cover band. good stuff.

sunday … bruuuuuuuuuuuuce!

so i was on a mission on sunday, and god bless murph, she was down to be on it with me.

we walk in about 2 pm, head directly to the stage area, and there’s space everywhere. seriously, the sidewalk that was a parking lot the day before for petty was empty at this moment. i say to murph, ‘this is our opportunity! if we stand right there, and don’t move for five hours, this is where we’ll see bruce springsteen.’ murph says, ‘let’s do it.’

sorted.

we had three bottles of water and we hunkered down. watched dr. john’s funky strangely weird set. then endured the horrible 45 minutes of people shoving and trampling and getting ready for bruce.

and then … bruce!

“Badlands,” Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978

i’m already crying here. seriously, they opened with badlands. 130 thousand people instantly singing, ‘you gotta live it everyday, let the broken hearts stand as the price you gotta pay!’ wow.

“We Take Care of Our Own,” Wrecking Ball, 2012

the new shit rocked. the new record is awesome. i had no idea how political bruce had gotten in the last decade. i mean, you hear the records, and it’s all there. but live … he’s testifying. he’s pissed. he’s bad fucking ass. still looks amazing. maybe not 1975 limber, but still a fucking stud. and his voice is FOR SURE better than ever. guy brings it soul power style on every word. listen up kids. this is how you do it. this set was tailored to the nola crowd, too. this one kicked it off: ‘from the shotgun shacks to the superdome!’

“Wrecking Ball,” Wrecking Ball, 2012

again, the new record is incredible. anybody pitching a tent on wall street that doesn’t know this record front and back doesn’t know which way the wind is blowing. bruce has an audience, and they don’t all agree with him (more on that in a second), but he is getting the message out there with balls and compassion and guts. this song just moved the shit out of me. again, 130 thousand people … ‘come on and take your best shot, lemme see what you got, bring on your wrecking ball!’ i’m getting chills typing this, still. one of those moments …

“Out in the Street,” The River, 1980

the e street band, man. horns. swagger. fuck …

“Death to My Hometown,” Wrecking Ball, 2012

another new political, irish tinged march. sounded like a weapon. full grown band, man …

“My City of Ruins,” The Rising, 2002

another poignant nola number. call back to the post-katrina show, a show no less that 6 people, real music fans who’ve seen a million shows, have told me was by far the greatest music experience they’ve ever seen. this might have been when bruce said something to the effect of, ‘times are hard, now’s not the time to cut services to those who need them most,’ and the rednecks in front on me almost had their heads explode. seriously, grumbling and scuffling and bitching. southerners are funny … they all profess to love jesus, but don’t like the idea of services for the poor. i tend to think that jesus wasn’t anything more than someone like bruce in his time. probably a charismatic guy standing up for the little man. nothing more, nothing less. bruce surely has a better band, though.

“How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live,” We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, 2006

the rednecks are now completely baffled, but the band is so good they’re coming around to this horns driven anthem … the power of music. man. too good to walk away, so they’re listening. cause bruce ain’t yelling at them or talking down to them. he’s saying his peace and having a great fucking time doing it. working his fucking ass off. rhetorical strategies, people … they’re important.

“Jack of All Trades,” Wrecking Ball, 2012

telling you, these new tunes hold up. another mournful nod to the working class, with just enough hope to still be the boss.

“Something You Got” (originally by Chris Kenner; Dr. John joined the stage for this)

this was fascinating. dr. john comes up, bruce says something like, ‘i first met this guy in the early 70s, back in his gris gris period, and he scared the shit out of me.’ dr. john says something to bruce like, ‘what you want me to play?’ he starts something, one of those slow, weird, funky dr. john piano riffs, the band slowly creeps in. obviously, this is completely off the cuff. max’s eyes are glued to dr. john the whole time watching for changes and stops. they get rolling. little steven doesn’t play a note, but he starts to walk off toward the horns and compose, on the fly, with hand signals, a horn arrangement that the horns fall right into. bruce starts doing the same to the background singers. you could see him making big, exaggerated, “oooh!’ faces to them that they start following. by the third verse, the whole band is locked in. on the fly. in front of 130K. fucking. amazing.

“O Mary Don’t You Weep,” We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, 2006

the seeger tunes just kicked ass, all of em. this is the tour he was on after katrina, so there seemed to be a little extra connection with these tunes and the crowd.

“Prove It All Night,” Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978

fucking classic.

“Johnny 99,” Nebraska, 1982

punk.

“Waitin’ on a Sunny Day,” The Rising, 2002

by this time, i’m finally realizing i’m at an e street band show. i get why everyone, since i was ten years old, has been saying, ‘you gotta fucking see this guy live!’

“The Promised Land,” Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978

more classic.

“The Rising,” The Rising, 2002

i always found this tune incredibly moving. so haunting and violent. chills, tears.

“Lonesome Day,” The Rising, 2002

at this point my eyes are rolling back in my head.

“We Are Alive,” Wrecking Ball, 2012

the boss in the audience. the boss pretty close to us. look! there’s the boss!

“Land of Hope and Dreams,” Wrecking Ball, 2012

whores and gamblers.

“Pay Me My Money Down,” We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, 2006

sing sing sing along sing sing along

“Born to Run,” Born to Run, 1975

crying like a baby, here. seriously, one of my all time favorites. arguably the greatest rock and roll song ever written.

“Dancin’ in the Dark,” Born in the U.S.A., 1984

everyone’s dancing, even the old woman behind us. when i say old, i’m saying 70s. up and rockin’ the whole show. dancing her ass off to this one.

“Rocky Ground/When the Saints Go Marching In,” Wrecking Ball, 2012

‘this one’s for you.’ beautiful tune from the new album that they took into this dark version of when the saints go marching in … bruce did this solo post katrina as his last song. this version had the band, a beautiful horn arrangement … so moving. they took it back into rocky ground and brought the house down.

“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” Born to Run, 1975

with the house in pieces, they pull this fucker out. place is going nuts. one of the coolest points of the night, though, happened after the line (‘here comes the important part!’), ‘when the change was made uptown and the BIG MAN joined the band!’

the band stops playing, and bruce was just holding this sign to his chest that said, ‘new orleans loves clarence!’ probably a good minute silent screaming session from the audience. place went fucking nuts. i’m tearing up writing this. so heavy. then … snare hit … ‘from the coastline to the cities all the little pretties raise their hands!’ fucking incredible.

check this out (not a bad youtube vid, although the clarence part is at 2:00 if you wanna just …):

we walked out stunned. murph was such a trooper. hung in there the whole time. we had a blast! it was amazing.

we grabbed beers and smoked sausage on the walk to the car. just took it all in.

i’m still blissed out, i realize.

the only thing i took from this show was that i need to see the e street band as many times as i can from here on out. they’re playing in philly around my b-day.

hmm …

***

we were close!

part I:

went down for french quarter fest a few weeks ago. french quarter fest was fun for the strolling and the chatting and the watching. but it was CROWDED and kinda hot.

the best of the best happened later in the evening in the bywater.

my dear darling buddy marley up in portland, the day before i went down to nola, sent me an almost incomprehensible email about some friend of hers and making a video and dropped the word, “dithyrambalina,” following it up with, “i’m sure you know all about that …”

i, of course, had never heard of dithyrambalina. but i looked it up. as luck would have it, they had their spring reception the evening i was to be down there. three blocks from mel and jenn’s place.

sorted.

and dithyrambalina was outstanding.

it was in a vacant lot on piety street, just in the middle of a regular old block. a fence outside, beautifully painted, obfuscated what was inside, but once you stepped in, it was like walking into a fairy tale shanty town of strange, tiny wooden structures, staircases, ramps, catwalks, towers, lights … it reminded me of the city in robert altman’s popeye film that i loved as a kid. it was like a crazy adult jungle gym with a twist …

the twist being, all the structures made SOUND. one room had floor boards that you walked on and the moved these levers on the wall that squeaked and groaned. another shack had a keyboard in it, and the sound the keyboard made was (somehow) being pumped through these water pipes which sounded freakish. there was piano strings mounted on a wall, a freak metal drum set made of ceiling fans and gas tanks tucked under a stairwell, one room had a giant white net covered with a million little jingly noisemakers you climb inside of and shake. one particularly cool thing was this tower that captured the rain using funnels and directed the water over a censor that made weird sounds. the tower was also sensitive to light (it changed pitch at dawn and dusk) and it supposedly captures the lightening and thunder in a storm as well.

fucking incredible.

some times they have all the musicians who created the structures get together and the have concerts where the whole shanty town comes to life as a unified ensemble.

i’ll be back.

nola is magic. one of those towns you can stumble upon something like dithyrambalina.

thanks for the heads up, mar …

***

our will, terrified, just like we like him

chicago at work

yours truly, excited, just like we like him

le nunes

mr. green machine

scenes of dithyrambalina

sweet froggy eat treat

maybe it’s been going on forever and i just never noticed.

or maybe i’m turning some corner psychologically and, as my aunt would say, it’s a “sign” (she’s always looking for signs from those who have gone on before telling her that they’re alright and we’re alright and that everything’s alright and that that there’s the way it is). maybe the sign is from my dead grandmother, or grandfather, or some other relative i never knew i had, long since gone but trying desperately, from the eternal blackness of death, to tell me something – in code – that, if deciphered, will allow me some newfound comfort. some peace. some answers.

i don’t know.

but i wake up lately, lefty at my side, scratching his filthy leaf and dirt crusted coat, and by the time i get to consciousness, i will find myself singing along with some song or another.

usually it’s someone else’s song. sometimes it’s my own (and when that happens i always remember ISU, the grateful dead, hooch, eyes of the world, “sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own”), and rarer even still, it’s a song of my own that i have not written yet. back when i was sixteen i would jump up out of bed at those moments and try to capture the magic (that’s the way yesterday came to sir paul!) because i thought my unconscious was acting as an antennae for some cosmic universal truth (dr, jung … paging dr. jung) and it was my fate – nay, my duty – to capture this eternal truth with acoustic guitar and shitty poetry. nowadays – on the rare occurrence when this situation arises – i lay there for awhile, listening to my new song like it was playing on the radio, and conclude, ‘that’s dog shit.’

but mostly it’s just random ass shit … the static of the fm radio of my lonely soul. it’s usually ridiculous, often annoying, and always proper fucking weird.

so i’ve been thinking that i maybe should be unpacking these things in some way. engaging with them. taking them up. talking to them. trying to see if there’s some pattern, some reason as to why my antennae is picking up what it’s picking up these days.

i’ve kept dream journals at various moments of my life. you wake up and you write down what you dream. it’s supposed to 1) help you remember your dreams and 2) make you increasingly lucid in your dreams. it worked, i remember. once. i just wanted to be able to fly in my dreams whenever i wanted. oh, and to remain blissfully asleep and dreaming and NOT WAKE UP before i fuck the hot chick in my dream (which always, always happens to me. it’s a curse. it’s proof there is no god. if i could stay asleep and not wake up when the stage is set to fuck the hot girls in my dreams i’d never leave the house. i’d stay in and drink buffalo trace and nap … a lot.) the dream journal worked. and it was interesting. but i stopped doing it. don’t ask …

so anyway, i’ve been thinking, ‘you know,’ (this is me talking to myself here btw … meta dialogue … try to keep up, things move fast) ‘you haven’t had anything to write about on the blog lately since you stopped talking to your best friend, your father, turned your nose, pried opened your heart, slammed it shut, peeked in again, moved around the corner, met the neighbors, stole time, bought a commie, watch, winked at the sun, burned your neck, back. maybe this is something. content. memory. something, still remains.’

the song i woke up to this morning was ‘we built this city on rock-n-roll’ by starship.

now, lightening round, the first brainstorming-type responses i have to this song are as follows:

1. i absolutely fucking loathe this piece of music. hate it, despise it, can’t tolerate it for one second. if i had to compose a ‘worst song to wake up to’ list, this would get honorable mention. can i stress this fact any more strongly? this song is putrid, vile, wretched dog bowl backwash.

2. ok, so i hate this song … what else? ok, it’s about san francisco. i used to live there. ok … i actually was in the studio where grace slick recorded ‘white rabbit’ once (back when she was singing in jefferson airplane, authors of VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA!, not fucking starship. starship! they took everything that was sacred about the summer of love, the haight, peace, free fucking, dope, lsd, put it on a starship, and crashed it into a bit corporate 1980s anus. fuck me with your starship …) so, yeah … what was i going on about?

3. ???

clueless.

???

i think i need to get out more.

drink in these sacred louisiana spring nights.

spend the time.

buy the drinks.

watch the hands in the front of the blouses.

watch the wind.

work for the magic.

wait for it.

one step up.

two steps back.

so we went west to mamou.

my first yankee moment of the day happened on the way to mamou at a gas station. the girl behind the counter asks me, ‘where are you from?’ sensing right away i ain’t no local. i tell her b.r., and she asks, ‘where are you going?’

i say, ‘we’re going to mamou,’ (pronouncing the ‘a’ like it is in ‘mat’ or ‘mast’) and point to the left.

she responds, ‘oh! mamou,” (pronouncing the ‘a’ like it is in ‘ah!’) and points to the right.

‘exactly,’ i say.

the second yankee moment in a minute …

mamou is a cute little town in the middle of the cajun prairie.

there’s a big long street running down the middle of town called ’6th street.’

one one end of 6th street there’s a zydeco band set up and people dancing. geno delafose and french rockin’ boogie.

on the other end of the street is another zydeco band playing and people dancing.

at one point i’m talking to this old cajun guy and he says, ‘you notice on one end of the street, almost everybody is black, and on the other end of the street, almost everybody is white?’ i said, ‘huh. i didn’t really notice it, but now that you mention it …’

kinda weird, i guess. but all was groovy.

fred’s is an old pub in the middle of town. they had a cajun band inside. fred’s was hopping.

we basically hung around all day waiting for these drunk guys on horseback to return from their trail rides.

evidently, they all meet up early in the morning in town and then head out through the country on horseback, stopping at houses along the way to do little dances and tricks and what not for people. the people are coaxed into giving them chickens and other fixens that are then brought back to town and used to make a big gumbo.

there are two sets of riders for each end of town, the north side riders and the south side riders. most likely, the riders for each side of town probably line up with the dancers for each side of town, color wise, but we only saw the south side riders, so my theory isn’t fully tested.

when they came, they were late, dirty, shit faced, and carrying lots of dead chickens.

pretty wild, mamout. it hit the spot …

we stopped for dinner at D.I’s cajun restaurant in basile on the way home for crawfish, etc. really, really, really hungry … really, really, really good.

these guys came running through the restaraunt, making a racket, climbing up in the rafters, pounding on tables, and generally going ape shit for about an hour. if you didn’t know what was going on (and even when you did) it was a tinge terrifying, but ultimately just a lot of rowdiness and drunken celebration, cajun style.

after dinner, i told emily that i had a plan to get her car (parked in by a huge truck) out of the parking lot by driving behind a shed. second yankee moment. maybe more of a city moment, but definitely a non-local moment.

‘don’t worry, emily,’ i said, ‘i will not get your car stuck in the mud. trust me.’

less than a minute later, emily’s car was stuck in the mud.

it wasn’t totally my fault. first off, i failed to realize that there is a pretty significant difference between my subaru and a regular volkswagon station wagon with regards to stuff like mud. and second, there was a drain pipe i didn’t see upon my first inspection that impeded out progress.

so, i had to get five extremely drunk cajun guys (probably five of the guys who were running through the restaurant earlier) to push us out. the guy i first asked was so bleary eyed and wobbly that it took him about ten seconds to respond to my initial request. but right before i was about to say, ‘don’t worry about it, man,’ something in him snapped into action and he yelled out, ‘brian! brian! come on, man! we gotta push a car!’

on the way to the car, he commandeered several more guys and we had a posse to push emily’s blue dolphin out of the mud. one guy says, ‘you tried to drive that thing through here?’

something deep in country DNA just comes alive at moments like that, though. helping out. it’s what you do.

feels good to see.

good folks.

happy mardi gras.

young lefty:

home:

musha … my favorite restaurant in the world. wilshire at 5th in santa monica, right around the corner from the shotokan dojo.

we call this spicy tuna tartar … a top five favorite thing to eat on planet earth for me. that fish and the nutty, crunchyness of the rice cracker … whew.

murph’s favorite … pepper seared tuna with ponzu, seaweed, and some kind of radish.

“mfc” aka … musha fried chicken. ginger batter. more radish. savory dip. lemon.

shumai – scallop filled dumplings with ponzu, hot mustard sauce. rich and weird.

char han – a spicy fried rice with sausage and pickled ginger. always served last. i could never figure out why, but it always comes last.

green tea ice cream.

the day after musha, i went out walking toward nader’s house. ran into this guy on alvadaro street …

playing a bach piece on bassoon through two guitar amps, pedals, the works. the guy called himself …

and he was “dressed” as bach in a tux and white wig. pretty awesome stumble upon.

but white couldn’t make lunch which meant i was miles from an in-n-out and on foot, so … i thought fast, hopped a bus, and was rewarded with a double-double animal style, fries, and a dr. pepper.

i also saw the jim henson studios, which bore a striking resemblance to the muppet studios that fell into disrepair in the latest installment of the muppets movie. pretty cool. kermit …