Rock show of the year (so far):::::::Elvis Costello & The Impostors with Allen Toussaint

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint rocked the winery last night in Woodinville, Wash. You can read the story elsewhere--like http://elviscostello.com/ --but the collaboration was brought about by Hurricane Katrina.

Allen Toussaint, the New Orleans legend, has written tunes like "Working in the Coalmine", "Brickyard Blues", "Get Out My Life Woman" and "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky". He's been covered and recorded by hundreds of people, including Devo, Jerry Garcia, Otis Redding, The Meters, and others, including dozens of samples snagged in various hip-hop songs.

The show included members of Toussaint's horn and rhythm section, along with Elvis's Impostors. The band opened with a thundering version of Nick Lowe's What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding? It included Toussaint tunes (my favorites Workin' In The Coal Mine, and his tune for the Pointer Sisters, Yes, We Can Can), collaborations from the just released Toussaint-Costello album, The River in Reverse, and lots of Costello chestnuts. Toussaint arranged nine songs from the Costello catalog, and they played many of them as well. The new arrangements of Clown Strike, Pump It Up, Clubland, Watching The Detectives, High Fidelity, and I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down were thoughtful, new, and they were sparkling and wonderful.

There were some crooners, but this was mainly a rock fest. Right before the show, I was trying to explain to my cousin Sean (whom I bumped into, along with his wife, Lori Mason Curran, a clerk I know at Tower Records, a sister- and brother-in- law, co-workers, Keelin's yoga instructor, and a Posies show buddy I've met at various venues) the difference between an Elvis crooning show and an Elvis electric show, and how I tended to avoid the croonfests. I knew this show would kick out the jams.

See them when they come to your town:

6/28/2006
O'Shaughnessy Theater
SAINT PAUL, Minnesota

6/29/2006 - 8:30 PM
Summerfest
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin

6/30/2006
Promowest Pavilion
COLUMBUS, Ohio

7/5/2006
Cape Cod Melody
HYANNIS, Massachusetts

7/10/2006 - 7/11/2006
Beacon Theater
NEW YORK, New York
(212) 496-7070

7/12/2006
Fleet Center
BOSTON, Massachusetts
(617) 624-1050

7/14/2006
Blossom Music Center
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio

7/17/2006
Chastain Park
ATLANTA, Georgia

7/18/2006
House of Blues
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana

This was probably my favorite Elvis Costello show ever. I go into some of the others here: http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2005/09/favorite-rock-and-jazz-shows-1966-last.html

and here: http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2005/09/more-shows-ive-seen-over-years.html

My one beef with a lot of rock concerts I attend these days: 1) everyone is practically clean and sober (somewhat mitigated in this instance by many bottles of very good Ste. Michelle wines. Some blanket encampments seem to have purchased actual cases), and 2) everyone is seated. Since I came up in the rock festival world, and attended numerous Grateful Dead and CBGB shows, it just doesn't seem right to sit down! You need to be able to move to enjoy a show. I don't remember ever being seated at a Posies show, or any of the great Seattle Center shows I've seen over the years, and especially at a Dead show.

Fortunately, with Elvis's well-known half hour+ encores, we got the chance to stand up and shake our bones! Finally the audience got up, or, at least moved! And it was good. In that half hour encore (they returned three times), the band performed a cover of Fortune Teller, that you may know from The Rolling Stones' or The Who's covers. Wow! As it turns out, the tune was written by Naomi Neville (mom, sister? of the Nevilles, and The Meters) along with none other than Allen Toussaint)...
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Poem (and drawing): Scarred for life

click drawing to enlarge


It could be watching
Your family being slowly diced up

By a madman with a machete
Or the time your brother let you down

A trauma from a car wreck
Or when you were wrongfully accused

Finding out your wife is sleeping
With your best friend

Or when your parents let you
Cry yourself to sleep 30 years ago

It could be your motorcycle accident
Or the time you saw your Uncle naked

Under a bad moon
It could leave you scarred for life.
---o0o---

Index of Jack Brummet poems on All This Is That

The Red Flag
Don't look backThe Tenth Planet (Or An Incredible Facsimile?)
The Armies Of The NightAnger management is a slippery slope
Dream Of The Grey
Torches & Pitchforks
the vault
The Moon's In Tune
The Way We Were Scarred for life The Red Flag
Don't look back
The Tenth Planet (Or An Incredible Facsimile?)
The Armies Of The Night
Anger management is a slippery slope
Dream Of The Grey
Torches & Pitchforks
the vault
The Moon's In Tune
The Way We Were
Scarred for life
Changes 13/Fellowship
Changes twelve/standing still
Changes Ten/treading
Changes Eleven/Peace
Another politician resigns in disrace
Changes Nine/The taming power of the small
Rub-a-dub
Tendrils
The Candidate
Reds
Making Room
Changes Eight/Holding Together
Changes Seven/The Army
Changes Six/Conflict
Changes Five/The waiting
Changes Four/The Young Shoot
Changes Three/Trouble Ahead
Changes Two/The Receptive
Changes One/Action
The revolt in heaven
Found Poem: The Richmond Hill Oracle
Poem (and painting): The Robot Wars
I don't believe
I'm here
Ten ways of looking at lies
The Broken Chord
With our heads in the sand during the transit and eclipse
the sun plays its red song
Litany
Poem: The Developers
A raindrop's life
The mystery of the first amendment to the Ten Commandments
The Bay Of Delusion
Mad Song
Reasons To Keep On
Conspiracy Theory
The Moon Race
Mr. Flue's Grave In Hillcrest Cemetary, Kent, Wash.
The World Seems Especially Calming And Verisimilitudinous Today
Kent, Washington
Rollover
[It's the Lee Harvey Oswald smile]
Zombie Breakdown
Heaven
The Variations
You Rehearse Dying
Sonnet For Hari
Defensive Daydreaming
The Dream
Dogpaddling
The Prostethic Head & The Absence Of Blood
Tetuan - "No Paranoia, My Friend"
The Grey Visitors & Painting: The Grey Ambassador
The Bad Movie
The Bucket
The Man In The Mirror
Liftoff
Optimism Perspective
A Flight Of Swallows
Audioblog - The Prevaricator
Weather Report
Your Wooden Leg
The Revelations
Sermon At The First Church Of The Mojo Apocalypse
Dosvidaniya, Ivan Ivanovitch
The Late Excavation (Text And Audio)
Jack Kerouac, Meet John Barleycorn
The Gideon Bible In My Nightstand
At The Acropolis
When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King
The sous-chef is a sociopath]
James Wright
Falling
[Life Is Not A Hardy Novel]
Seven
Coyote Comes Home Like A Salmon
Shorts For Jerry Melin ca. about 1988
Bird
Monism
The Golden Rule
The Countdown
When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King
AT HILLCREST CEMETARY IN KENT, WASHINGTON, I WALK BY THE GRAVE OF SAM THE GRASSEATER
Notes On Flying
Daybreak
Explosions
Not Past Tense Yet
the glass is not half-full
It's Getting Crowded Here
Li Po In Disgrace
The Clock
A Love Song
Bad Timing
The Killer
The Absence of Footprints
Growing Up
Gone Fishing
The M.D.s A Poem -
Acrylic
The Marriage
Driving Home To Seattle, We Watch Deer Drinking from the Skookumchuck River

Our allies at war on the soccer fields

I don't really think of myself as all that jingoistic, but it does get old after a while, hearing our allies, the British, French, and Germans talk about what a bunch of fat, rude, ignorant rednecks Americans are. At no time does it ever seem more ridiculous that when the Limeys, Frogs, and Krauts are fighting each other (up to and including killing each other) over a soccer match, as they are right now, during the world cup. . .
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Laura Bush's imaginary friend

click to enlarge...
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Apocalypse Now?

". . .mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades. . ."

Click here to read the Los Angeles Times story. . .
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Poem: Changes 13/Fellowship

1.
Fellowship--a mingling
Of individuals or things is chaos

The danger of factions
Is they're not for anything

They're just against
Other factions

2.
Weapons are cached in a thicket
He climbs the high hill in front of it

And for three years
Does not rise up

He climbs the wall
But cannot attack

The difficulties are too great
And bring him to his senses

3.
Men bound in the fellowship of war
Weep and lament

But afterwards
Over steins and tankards

They laugh at the perished
They've created

4.
The perished come back
To haunt them

The spooks they made
Return

And attach themselves
Like a conjoined twin
---o0o---

Drawing: scarred for life

click drawing to enlarge (and right click to save)
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Dean Ericksen's Metro Melodrama

My brother-in-law and friend, Dean Ericksen, sent me this vignette. Wow.
______________________________________

I know these facts:

So this guy comes up to the bus stop on Leary and 15th. He’s a gulf war vet. He is carrying a guitar. He asks me if the tree above is an apple tree. I look at the tiny fruit and confirm, yes, it is. I ask him about his guitar. He said that he’s re-learning to play after 16 years. We talk for a while. He said he’s a songwriter. He shuffles through his large backpack and pulls out a CD player and headphones. The CD player is actively playing (it wasn’t turned off). He slaps the phones on my head. It’s a slow, R&B jam. Smooth, but lo-fi. It’s him alright. He’s singing, “I need a girl, to whet my appetite...” Whet it for what? Anyway I swayed and smiled approvingly, and then a woman comes up and pushes a bunch of Jehovah’s Witness literature into his hand. He thinks she’s cute, and pretends to show interest in the magazines as he sizes her up. She twirls her hair with a finger and acts coy. The bus rolls up, and both of them look at each other like “will this be our last chance to find love?” They part; the moment is bruised.

This happens all over the world all of the time. It’s time for God to drop the love bomb.

-Dean
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Digital painting: President Lyndon Johnson

click to enlarge...
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Photograph: LBJ and MLK meet up

Click to enlarge

I love this photograph. It well illustrates the multi-layered, tenuous, fruitful and often strained relationship those two men had. Neither of them looks particularly happy to be there...
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Cruising the Renton loop with a keg of nails

This must have happened in about 1969. On weekends, you drove to Renton, Wash., and cruised the loop. It was a scene straight from American Graffiti with beer, Vietnam, protests, drugs, and birth control and the "SEXUAL REVOLUTION" thrown into the mix--not that we were often able to avail ourselves of the opportunities birth control might afford.

As we often did on weekends, when we didn't go into Seattle to eat at the Outrageous Burrito Company or wander around Seattle Center, we went to Renton to cruise the loop, a/k/a drag the gut, along with hundreds of other kids in cars. You drove around and around a two mile loop, and pulled in various parking lots to meet various people, preferably girls.

This particular weekend our vehicle was an aqua 1968 Dodge 3/4 ton pickup, piloted by Les Teichert. The truck had OTTO'S ROOFING emblazoned on the side. Three of us sat in the cab, and three more sat in the bed of the pickup, amidst the roofing felt, blocks of tar, and tools. The Beatles' White Album or Chicago Transit Authority or Led Zeppelin played on the 8 track stereo. . .probably with another tune in the background (if the azimuth of the head became mis-adjusted, there was a faint audio bleed of adjacent tracks into the currently playing track).

We drove around a few times, stopped at Herfy's for burgers and got back on The Loop. In the pickup bed we discovered, among the tools and tarpaper, a 100 pound keg of 1 1/2 inch roofing nails.

Three of us began merrily flinging double-handfuls over the tailgate as we tooled along the loop. We even brazenly began to huck out pounds of nails in front of the cars right behind us.

As we approached the point we first began deploying the nails, someone thought we should tell Les. "You gotta get off the loop. . .we've been tossing the nails."

"The roofing nails! What am I going to say--someone stole them!?'

Why not? Indeed. By the time we decided to warn Les about trouble ahead, we had tossed the entire 100 pounds of nails out in a continuous circle, all along the loop. It was time to get out of Renton.
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North Korea dares U.S. to supply them Shock & Awe

North Korea is on the precipice of test-firing a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States. The White House warned that a test firing would trigger "an appropriate response, " like Shock And Awe II.

North Korea vowed to bolster its "military deterrent" in a bellicose stream of invective carried by its state news agency.

A test launch of a Taepodong-2 missile-- or whatever new missile they've come up with lately--would inflame a region already in a snit over the North's nuclear weapons program. Our sometime good friends, Japan, in particular, are extremely nervous.

"There are signs" of an imminent missile launch, Jung Tae-ho, a spokesman at the South Korean president's office, told The Associated Press. He said they were "closely watching the situation."



North Korea conducted a test launch in August 1998, but then imposed a moratorium on testing long-range missiles in 1999. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Sunday the United States expect them keep the freeze on. "We do not want to have a missile test out of North Korea," Snow told Fox News Sunday. "The North Koreans themselves decided in 1999 that they would place a moratorium on this kind of testing, and we expect them to maintain the moratorium."

"If they go ahead with a test, then we will have to respond properly and appropriately at the time," Snow told CNN's "Late Edition." When asked to explain exactly what that meant, Snow replied, "No."
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Happy Father's Day

click photo to enlarge...

Jack and John Brummet Sr. at Cougar Flat on the Bumping River, near Natches. We were "fishing." It's been forty-two years, one month and two days since I last saw him.
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Thirty-four years ago today, The Watergate burglars were arrested. . .

Click the collage to zoom in.

Thirty-four years ago today, The Watergate burglars were arrested. . .triggering the events that lead to the indictments, prosecutions, and backstabbing that toppled President Richard M. Nixon a couple of years later and led to his resignation.

In the early morning of June 17, 1972, five men--Bernard Barker, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez, James W. McCord, Jr., and Frank Sturgis were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, an office-hotel-apartment complex in Washington, D.C. They'd come with burglary tools, cameras, and pen-size tear gas guns.

Eventually, a lot of people did time for this little burglary. . .from the burglars up to and including White House Staffers.

What a litany of names! Woodward and Bernstein, Jeb Magruder, Butterfield, Jaworski, Rose Mary Woods, Herb Kalmbach, John Mitchell, Erlichman, Haldeman, Dean, McCord, Liddy, Colson, H.L. Hunt, Al Haig, Jaworski, Agnew, Father John McLaughlin, Congressman (soon to be President) Gerald Ford, Judge "Maximum John" Sirica, and The Watergate committee-- Senators Sam Ervin, Joseph Montoya, Herman Talmadge, Edward Gurney, Lowell Weicker, Howard Baker, and Daniel Inouye. The Committee's evidence led to the indictment of forty administration officials and the conviction of several of Nixon's aides for obstruction of justice and other crimes. The committee's findings prompted the articles of impeachment against the President in the House of Representatives, which led to Nixon's resignation.

On September 8, 1974, Nixon's successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon from any future criminal charges.
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