Tag Archives: Music

First We Take Manhattan

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.”

― Leonard Cohen

A bit back, I was checking on the sales of Lana Del Rey’s album – in a sort of morbid curiosity on the outcome of a pop culture bloodfeud that I cared nothing about, but was guiltily interested in. Her album busted out on the charts, hovering around the top non-Adel spot, battling with another album by Leonard Cohen. That interested me… I knew who Leonard Cohen was, but I didn’t know who Leonard Cohen was.

Of course, I was familiar with Hallelujah. For a long time, I assumed that old chestnut was a personal cry of lusty woe from Jeff Buckley. But it was written by Cohen… and covered by everybody in the world.

It was made famous for the unwashed masses by Rufus Wainwright version in Shrek. I have always liked the fact that a very successful Dreamworks Children’s movie had a song with the subversive lines, “I remember when I moved in you, the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was Hallelujah.” Yeah kiddos, figure that one out.

 Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.

—-Leonard Cohen

I knew that he was a titan of music, but somehow his genius had slipped by me. So I set about cruising youtube and wikipedia and the library’s collection of music and text and immerse myself and learn something.

 “Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .”

― Leonard Cohen

I learned I had been a huge fan all along.

The first song that leaped out at me was “Everybody Knows.”

“a kite is a victim you are sure of.
you love it because it pulls.”

― Leonard Cohen

It reminded me of something, something amazing, and it didn’t take me long to remember the song on the soundtrack of Exotica – one of the great films by Atom Egoyan (it wasn’t up to the quality of the shattering “The Sweet Hereafter” – but what is?) and played during a strange, erotic, and disturbing semi-strip scene at a semi-strip club. The sound and images are searing.

Then there is Leonard himself singing the song… a real heartache.

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”

― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

Then I came across the song “First We Take Manhattan.” This is probably my favorite Cohen song. I actually remember it best from an REM recording. An excellent version is by the female singer Jennifer Warnes. The eighties video features eighties dancers running down a street for no reason at all, Cohen himself looking mysterious, and, best of all, Stevie Ray Vaughan playing guitar on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Jennifer Warnes is best known for film music (Dirty Dancing, Officer and a Gentleman, Norma Ray) but had a long working relationship with Cohen and did an entire crackerjack album of his stuff – Famous Blue Raincoat.

“It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender”

― Leonard Cohen

I found that Leonard Cohen was a poet first, songwriter second, and performer third. I have copy of his novel, Beautiful Losers, but can’t seem to get any traction with it. I’m going to buy his new album and get to know, learn, and love the songs on it.

 “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

― Leonard Cohen

So, I’m sure a lot of y’all are going to think, “You mean he didn’t know about Leonard Cohen ’til now? Way to be four decades or so behind the time.” More will simply think, “Wha? Who cares? Glee is on.”

 “I have often prayed for you
like this
Let me have her”

― Leonard Cohen

I do the best I can.

“Now suzanne takes you hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.”

― Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs

What I learned this week, March 9, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

Never Number One: A Whole Bunch of Great CCR Songs

5. “Travelin’ Band”/”Who’ll Stop the Rain” (1969) was denied by Simon and Garfunkel‘s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” No reason for complaint there, really.

4. “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”/”Long as I Can See the Light” (1970) was held off by Diana Ross and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” No shame in that, either.

3. “Green River” (1969) could not overcome the Archies and “Sugar Sugar.” We like “Sugar Sugar” more than most people do, but c’mon, that’s crazy.

2. “Bad Moon Rising” (1969) stalled at #2 behind “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet” by Henry Mancini, which is pretty close to the exact opposite of “Bad Moon Rising.”

1. “Proud Mary” (1969) was blocked for a week by Sly and the Family Stone‘s “Everyday People,” which is a great record and a worthy rival. But the next week, Tommy Roe‘s “Dizzy” jumped over both of them to #1. And that is a crime not merely against rock, but against art itself.

50 new fairy tales are discovered in Germany

Read one of them here:

The Turnip Princess

more:

Adult content warning: beware fairy stories. These tales of extreme violence and horror aren’t really just ‘kids’ stuff’, nor were they meant to be

Government By ‘Expert’

In one sense, the rule of the law must be consistent with at least some form of public administration. Over the centuries, governments have had to enforce the criminal law, tear down firetraps, and issue driver’s licenses. It is often not easy to decide what disabilities prevent people from driving or what qualifications must be met to operate a heavy rig. But with conscientious officials, these focused tasks can be accomplished. Today’s “administrative state,” however, goes far beyond this modest level of public administration.

Well You Don’t Say: 10 White Singers We Once Thought Were Black

Lana Del Rey On SNL, Haters, & Her Hair In First Radio Interview And On-Air Performance

Rock Flashback: Patsy Cline’s Plane Crash, 1963

The 12 Dos and Don’ts of Writing a Blog

Eva

This guy found Eva in an album of 60s and 70s polaroids at a Berlin flea market. She appears prominently throughout the album, and his curiosity about her life led to Tuesdays with Eva, which began with this post.

http://vimeo.com/37817858

In the Pines

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Black girl, black girl, don’t lie to me

Where did you stay last night?

I stayed in the pines where the sun never shines

And shivered when the cold wind blows”

Grove of Pine Trees, Avery Island Louisiana (click to enlarge)

My husband was a railroad man

killed a mile and a half from here

his head was found in a driving wheel

and his body hasn’t never been found

A Simple Song That Lives Beyond Time

Black girl, black girl where will you go?

I’m going where the cold wind blows

You called me to weep and you called me to moan

and you called me

to leave my home

Bar Belmont

Posted on by Bill Chance

When I first moved to Dallas, over thirty years ago, I lived with some friends in Kessler Park, in Oak Cliff for a while until I saved enough money to get an apartment. I was working downtown and rode the bus to work. Living in the city was a big deal for me and I remember the quiet excitement of the bus ride to work. It came across the Commerce Street Viaduct into the canyons of skyscrapers after passing through the triple underpass and Dealy Plaza. To get to Commerce, the bus would drive up Sylvan Avenue.

In 1981 this was a very distressed area. That was a real shame because this part of “The Cliff” has a lot going for it. It’s close to downtown and is really the only part of the city with any kind of hills at all. It’s an old, beautiful part of the city. But thirty years ago, looking out that bus window, it was obvious that a long walk on those sidewalks might very well be fatal.

At Sylvan and Fort Worth Avenue there was a hotel called the Belmont. It was barely visible from the street because it sat up on top of a steep little rocky hill. It had a cool-looking retro deco office and a string of bungalows snaking across the crest of the hill. I never drove up there, but it was obvious that the place would have the best view of downtown in the city. It was run down and I wasn’t sure if it was even open. At any rate, it would not be a place anyone would want to stop – the neighborhood was frightening.

I remember thinking that it was a shame that little hotel was wasting away in such a state. I would fantasize about how smart and hip a property it could be with a little updating and a strong and visible security force. I was always thinking and talking about trashed out places that I thought should be fixed up. People used to make fun of me when I would talk about stuff like that. Nobody understood the potential I saw in those run down places. I felt like an idiot.

Now as I tumble into oldfartdom I realize I was right all along (the realization comes too late to do any good, of course). Oak Cliff is now the hot place to be in Dallas, and with the impending opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge that Renaissance/development/gentrification is only going to gain speed.

At the forefront of this change is that little hotel I used to stare at out of the bus windows. The Belmont has been rebuilt into a cute little boutique hotel and everybody who is anybody stays there. An upscale bar-b-que joint that specializes in local foods, called Smoke, is attached to the hotel and has become one of the most buzzworthy eateries in the city.

I really wanted to see this place.

On Sunday, Candy and I ate lunch in the Bishop Arts District and then driving back we planned on stopping at the Belmont and checking out the Bar Belmont and its view of downtown. The Belmont did not disappoint. They have done a fantastic job of updating the property while maintaining the the Art Deco retro-cool feel about the place.

The bar has a great patio. Part of it is covered and part is outside. It would be a fantastic place to hang out on one of the three or four days of good weather that Dallas gets every year. Today it was too cold, so we went into the comfy indoor part of the bar.

There was a knot of folks in the lower part of the bar unpacking guitars and arranging chairs and benches. While we sat up by the bar the crowd slowly began to grow with more and more musicians showing up and setting up. There were a half-dozen guitars, a few dobros, a banjo, a standup bass, a couple drummers, and a fiddle player. They started playing and singing.

It was fantastic. These people were very, very good. It was the best time – there were maybe ten musicians and about six of us listening. A free concert in an intimate setting with more performers than fans.

During a break, we found out what was going on. This was the Sunday Afternoon Charli’s Jam. Charli Alexander had founded this acoustic jam about thirty years ago. It has moved around from location to location and has now settled into the Bar at the Belmont. It is very well known and people have traveled from all over the world to play with these folks. There is a core of folks but Charli said it really varies from week to week, with different instruments, players, and styles of music. Today it was mostly traditional Texas honkey-tonk, with some folk and pop-folk thrown in (I’d love to hear some blues).

I loved listening to the jam. The core was arranged in a rough square and they would move around the square with each musician in turn choosing what they wanted to perform with the others filling in. During a part of each song they would take turns playing solos, with the original performer calling out the solo players in turn. They were very good, surprisingly tight. It was obvious that most of them were very used to each other and were able to anticipate what was coming next.

The room was filled with portraits of musicians, with David Bowie holding court over the mantle. Willie Nelson was on the opposite wall, a rough, glaring, black and white portrait. Everybody teased one singer (with an amazing bass voice) after he sang “Crazy” – telling him that it took some courage to sing that song with Willie looking on. “He’s happy as long as he gets his royalties,” was the answer.

They talked about a particularly difficult chord on the dobro. “That’s hard on the guitar, but even tougher on this,” the dobro player said. “At least Nancy doesn’t have to deal with that,” he said, referring to the fiddle player. “Yeah, but she has to worry about her own problems, like no frets,” someone else pointed out.

Candy and I had such a good time, we sat there and listened for three hours. Charli said they liked having people come out to listen, “It makes us play a lot better.” She said they are there every Sunday at three o’clock. I guarantee we will be going back.

I think we were the only fans to stay for the whole time. A few people came and went – some friends of the musicians. A few guests came to the Belmont desk to check out and stayed for a drink and a few songs. One scraggly looking guy stood by the desk for a couple of minutes. He looked familiar, but I didn’t pay much attention. When the song ended, he was gone, but the guitar player said, “Hey, that was Kinky Friedman standing there.”

So I think of that run-down old fashioned string of shabby bungalows up on that hill thirty years ago and what it has become today. I think of a young kid excited about riding a bus through a bad neighborhood in a big city. Now, it’s changed, but it’s still the same. Everybody had such a good time – the musicians in the jam, the hotel guests, even the folks working at the hotel. Sometimes it can come back.

The great Dallas bluesman, Mick Tinsley, playing his killer version of a Mark Curry number – “Raining All Over Me”. Recorded at Charli’s Sunday Jam at the Belmont Hotel in Dallas, Texas June 2010

The street entrance to the Bar Belmont

Charli's Sunday Afternoon Acoustic Jam

The front desk entrance to the Art Deco Belmont Hotel, with Smoke in the background.

Playing the Dobro

The view of Downtown Dallas from the Belmont Hotel

A Girl Walks Into a Bar: Bar Belmont

The mall is a museum

Hotel Belmont

Exploring the Boroughs

Born to Die

Posted on by Bill Chance

As I was thinking about leaving work to go home (I tend to work until I’ll too tired to do anything reliably well) I texted Candy if she needed anything from Target. She texted back that she wanted some reduced-fat graham crackers. Everything is so exciting in this – the best of all possible worlds.

I was going to stop at Target because today is when Lana Del Rey’s album dropped. I’ve been a fan for a while now and have written too much about her before. Still, I wanted the CD. I could have downloaded it from iTunes or Amazon, but… maybe I’m a bit of an old fart – but I still like to have something in my hands for my hard-earned money.

Plus, a little surfing at lunch told me that Target was selling the real, live, and solid Compact Disk for eight bucks – plus two bonus tracks. A pretty good deal. There were only two left when I got there.

So, do you want a review? How can you review music? Like always – Lana Del Rey is the kind of thing you will like if you like this kind of thing.

She is criticized for being fake – and she is. Her music is a lush laconic illusion. There isn’t much there, but there is a vision, however manufactured, and the vision is unique, entertaining and fun to listen to. In this age of the music “industry” what more can you expect? The title song starts with the words, “feet don’t fail me now.” I like that.

Christ, who knows what’s good and what isn’t in these days? I have a stack of albums that once meant a lot to me; I thought that the sounds from them were genius. I turned to these for solace during difficult times and now I can’t even listen to them anymore because they take me back to those times and I can feel the panic rising. I wish I was young and listening to Lana Del Rey – she is better if you don’t have to worry about anything. Shit, why waste time writing about something you don’t like? Life is way too short.

Here, I’ll list just a few of the WordPress blogs from the last few hours with a Lana Del Rey tag. Read ’em and make up your own mind, please, while I try to get some short story scenes pounded out, ride my exercise bike for a while, and listen to Born to Die on repeat.

Don’t listen to me, I couldn’t even find the reduced-fat graham crackers.

Oh, I do have one legitimate complaint… one of my favorite Del Rey works, Kinda Outta Luck, isn’t on the CD. Well, at any rate, here it is. For your pleasure.

 

Brave Combo at the Art Museum

Posted on by Bill Chance

I first saw Brave Combo in 1982 or so… a good thirty years ago. I had an evening out with a friend and I drove past Nick’s Uptown. Nick’s was a live music venue, long gone now, near where I lived on lower Greenville. It was the location of the famous Ice Machine in the Desert. The marquee promised “Brave Combo with Beto y los Fairlanes.”

That looked irresistible, though I had never heard of either band. With names like that, though, they had to be great.

Beto y los Fairlanes was good – a sort of big band latin salsa fusion group… but Brave Combo was a revelation.

They were/are a “Nuclear Polka Band.” Their music defies any kind of category.

Here’s what they say on their website:

Trying to describe Brave Combo’s music requires a pretty extensive vocabulary – at least when it comes to musical styles. For the past three decades the Denton, Texas based quintet has perfected a world music mix that includes salsa, meringue, rock, cumbia, conjunto, polka, zydeco, classical, cha cha, the blues and more. They are America’s Premier Dance band and a rollicking, rocking, rhythmic global journey — offering what one critic recently wrote, “Even if you come for the party, you’ll leave with something of a musical education.”

That’s pretty good – a better description than I can come up with.

From Wikipedia:

Brave Combo is a polka/rock band based in Denton, Texas. Founded in 1979 by guitarist/keyboardist/accordionist Carl Finch, they have been a prominent fixture in the Texas music scene for more than twenty-five years. Their music, both originals and covers, incorporates a number of dance styles, mostly polka, but also rumba, cha-cha-cha, choro, samba, two-step, cumbia, charanga, merengue, etc.

As part of their perceived artistic mission to expand the musical tastes of their listeners, they have often played and recorded covers of well-known songs in a style radically different from the original versions. Examples include polka versions of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and The Doors’ “People are Strange”, The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” as a cha-cha, and “Sixteen Tons” as a cumbia. While their records may have a sense of humor, they are played straight and not usually considered joke or novelty records.

I still remember from 1982 the band playing Lady of Spain or some other dreary old chestnut on the accordion; then, all of a sudden, breaking into a series of odd, distinctive chords. It was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, the old Iron Butterfly tune, the distinctive music of my early youth, the one song every Junior High Sock Hop Local Garage Band had to play, the one where you had to get a good girl to dance with because it was so long. I had heard it at so many youth rec center dances, those chords will always bring back memories of the smell of hundreds of teenage sweaty sock feet.

I had heard that song a thousand times, it took up half of an entire eight track tape, but I had never heard it played on an accordion.

What is so important and impressive about Brave Combo is that they are so very skilled, practiced, and skilled musicians. They have won two Grammy Awards. They were David Byrne’s wedding band. They have been on The Simpsons. When they play the Hokey Pokey… they are serious about it. They work very hard to play the best damn Hokey Pokey you have ever heard.

So, like many folks around, I became a big fan of Brave Combo and saw them as many times as I could. The only problem was that they became very popular and it began to get to be difficult to see them because of the big crowds they drew.

One enjoyable concert was at Fair Park in 2000. Candy and I were at an art festival when I heard from a long way away someone shout, “It’s Salsa Time!” into a PA system. I knew it was Brave Combo.

Brave Combo in 2000

Jeffrey Barnes in 2000

I loved watching this couple dance while Brave Combo played. The reflecting pools were dry and the Art Deco sculptures looked down on them.

That was eighteen years after I had first heard them. Now it is twelve years later and they are still going strong. This time at the Dallas Museum of Art for their Late Night Friday celebration. The place was really crowded, though by eleven the huddled masses was beginning to thin a tiny bit. I was able to fight my way into the venue and work into a small spot next to the dance floor.

All night I had been looking at the high fashion walking around and thinking that this was not a Brave Combo crowd. I was wrong. The minute the band started playing the dance floor filled with a wildly diverse group of people all thrashing around like crazy people with ants in their pants.

That’s really the key to Brave Combo’s popularity… with these folks working so hard at their polka and other world dances, how can you be embarrassed to leap around no matter how unskilled, untrained, or uncoordinated you are.

It was pretty cool to be hanging out late at night at a major art museum, in the middle of the Picasso, Degas, and Matisse and listen to a cluster of aging musicians hammer out The Chicken Dance and seeing everybody flapping their arms.

So when you find Brave Combo coming to your neighborhood, go out and give them a try. Don’t forget your dancing shoes.

Brave Combo at the Dallas Museum of Art

Conga Line

Dancing like crazy people

The Machine’s Pump (Carl Finch’s Blog)

Bob Dylan plays Brave Combo

Brave Combo at the Dallas Observer

Cook and Son Bat’s Blog

Lana Del Rey on Saturday Night Live

Posted on by Bill Chance

I first stumbled across a link to Lana Del Rey’s Video Games video in… I guess June of last year. That’s only a little more than six months – an eon on the hyped up internet world of mass entertainment. I was immediately hooked by the quirky vocals and grungy video. I really couldn’t say it was good… but it was different – and I liked it. I liked it enough to waste a blog entry on it (and now I’m doing it again).

Back then, very few folks had heard of her. I posted a link to my blog on her facebook page, she commented a thank you. But there was an undercurrent building on the internet. My blog entry was getting a steady stream of search engine hits.

A bunch of Nick’s friends were at the house with a laptop hooked up to the 65 inch screen in Club Lee so I had them scoot to YouTube, watch and listen. They hated it. It was way too slow and lugubrious for their youthful taste.

Over the last month, several of them have told me that Lana Del Rey was going to be on Saturday Night Live. The funny thing is, they deny telling me they didn’t like the song.

So for the last few months I’ve watched while Lana Del Rey blew up. She became big in Europe, then signed a record deal with Interscope, and now she has passed the hurdles, was on SNL last night, and will be on the cover of every major music rag/mag as one of the hottest things for 2012.

What I have been enjoying the most has been the (inevitable?) backlash against her apparent inevitable success (I think she is the first artist to appear on SNL without even having a record out). I can understand someone not liking her music (it’s odd and she’s not a very good singer) but that is not even mentioned. It seems the reason that the blogs can’t stand her is:

A – her real name is not Lana Del Rey, and

B – her father is very wealthy, and

C – her looks – she looks good but her lips are too big (injections?)

I’m sorry, but none of these things means much to me. I don’t care about her “street cred” or anything like that. I don’t even care about her looks. Lana Del Rey is obviously a creation of somebody, maybe Elizabeth Grant, maybe a team of highly-paid publicists… probably both.

What in popular music is not something totally artificial? If she is a little more plastic, a little more out-front with the image, a bit more calculated… so what. I like the songs. They are different. That’s enough for me.

So?

The question is… how did she do on SNL? The answer is terrible. She doesn’t look like she is used to performing in front of a live audience and her two songs were strange and awkward. Actually I knew she would be bad.  Her act is not one that is suited to the SNL format – she is not active and out there enough. Even the Huffington Post thought she bombed.

Of course, if you look through the negative reviews… they keep referring to the same people. I like stuff that is different. I like stuff that isn’t so polished. I like someone that acts as if she just realized she is on live TV in front of millions of people singing songs that they are simply not prepared for. I like something that isn’t Autotuned to death. I like to see someone that is out there knowing that the long knives are all out.

Did you watch it and think she sucked? Good for you.

Video Games was her first song and I still really like it, but it doesn’t come across live like it does on the video. I thought the second song, Blue Jeans went a little better, I thought – it has more life than the monotone mood of Video Games and gave her a bit more to do.

So am I disappointed? Hell no. I thought it was enjoyable… if it wasn’t what everyone expected… so much the better. It was different, and that counts for a lot, in my book.

I remember the first time I saw Saturday Night Live. It was October 25, 1975, the third show, with host Rob Reiner. The new show wasn’t getting any promotion and really, nobody knew anything about it. This was my sophomore year at Kansas University. Back then, a large group of us would get together on Saturday nights, pile onto a friend’s waterbed and watch Monty Python on a tiny black and white television (none of us had any money to go out or do anything more interesting). There were two episodes back to back on two different PBS stations (from Topeka and Kansas City). After Python was done, someone started flipping channels to find something else to watch and I remember yelling, “Hey there’s Joe Cocker… lets watch this,” so we did.

It didn’t take long to realize that this wasn’t Joe Cocker… it was Belushi doing Joe Cocker, and before long he was thrashing around on the floor in an epileptic fit. It was fantastic. So, from then on, we would all pile onto the waterbed and watch Monty Python and Saturday Night Live.

Everyone is familiar with the ups and downs of the show over the decades. I have slowly lost interest… last night was the first time I’ve watched SNL in at least three years.

Even if Lana Del Rey’s performance wasn’t the most polished and dynamic I’ve ever seen, she was better than that weird British teenager that was the host.

WordPress Blogs on her performance:

Takedown of the Day

Lana Del Rey’s SNL Performance Painful To Watch

In defense of Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey on Jools Holland (where she did really well live)

Sunday Ramblings

Bu kızın adını çok duyacağız…

Lana Del Rey Comes To ‘Saturday Night Live’ And Leaves Controversies Behind

A Few Artists to Watch For

Let’s Talk About Last Night’s SNL

Musical Ladies of 2012

3 Female Buzzbands I Don’t “Get”

For the Love of the Genre

Fabulous Cover: Lana del Rey, Intervention Russia

Quote of the day, 1/15

Eight Female Singers Who Caught My Imagination In 2011

Unsilent Night

Posted on by Bill Chance

I was looking for something to do on a Saturday night – and through the power of this interweb-thingy here I discovered that there were going to be Food Trucks in the Arts District… and then there was going to be something called Unsilent Night.

The idea was to get a group of people all carrying boomboxes – each with one of four MP3 files boomboxing away. These were selections of electronic music – bell sounds and such. This group of people making music would march through downtown Dallas at night with the sounds bouncing off skyscrapers and such.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

But first, I had to get a boombox. I dug around and found a small white soundthrower that used to belong to Candy’s mother. It was portable enough and put out a bit of sound, but I needed batteries – plus, it didn’t play MP3 files.

So off I drove to the local everything store and bought a small pack of blank CDs (no blanks at home, only DVDs). My idea was to burn the 44 minutes MP3 I had downloaded from the Unsilent Night web page onto a CD that would play in the boombox. The thing takes six C batteries. At the store I discovered that they don’t sell six C batteries – only packages of 4, eight, or ten. The pack of ten costs less than the pack of eight – so I have four C cells left over.

At any rate I sat in my car at the DART station and burned the CD, loaded it into the boombox along with six of my ten C batteries… and I was ready to rock and roll. Well, maybe not rock and roll, but at least ring the bells a little.

When I climbed out of the train at the Pearl station I walked into a huge crowd of Santas milling around, working their way to the Arts District. I found out later that this was something called the “Santa Rampage” – a combination flash mob and pub crawl. There were about five hundred people in various versions of Santa Costumes – and I kept running into them all night. It looked like fun.

I manged to get a brisket and grilled cheese sandwich from Ruthies while the Santas were all having a pillow fight up by the Opera House. I’m glad I bought mine early because five hundred hungry Santas make for long lines at a handful of food trucks. I walked around the Arts District looking at Santas until it was time to hoof it over to the Akard DART station to meet up with the other folks for Unsilent Night.

At first I was disappointed because there were only a handful of people standing there with a half handful of boomboxes. The Cowboys were on TV, maybe people stayed home for holiday football. But as seven o’clock neared, a good number of latecomers appeared and we became a healthy little group of close to a hundred people.

We all synchronized our boom boxes, waited for the music to build a little, and then off we went. I have to admit, it was cooler than I had expected. The music was mesmerizing. It’s is interesting how it changes – both as the four different pieces of music cycle through their various peaks, valleys, and changes in instrumentation (the one I had – #1 – was mostly bells, but others sounded like voices, or drums, or other stuff) and the way the music bounced off the buildings and blended with the background noise of the city.

You could vary the sound a lot by moving back and forth in the line of people walking along the sidewalk. Not only were we playing different pieces of music, started at slightly different times (I jostled mine too much and had to start over – it didn’t matter) but everybody had different players. Most used iPhones with hand-held speakers – but some folks were prepared with more hefty weapons. On guy pulled a cart with a computer UPS – this gave him power for not only some serious speakers but flashing lights that he wired himself up with.

We walked down Main Street which was really hopping. I need to visit this area again – it wasn’t as dead as when I worked down there. The restaurants were open late, the bars were filling up, the street was full of cars slowly working their way through. We looped around Neiman Marcus – the Christmas Displays were awesome, past the Joule Hotel then back through some narrow alleys. These were especially cool – the music would bounce around in the enclosed spaces until it was almost deafening.

I really liked it.

We made it back to the Akard DART station after about an hour of walking and then took a break. While we were there, the five hundred Santas – most of which had been drinking quite a bit – showed up and crammed aboard a Green Line Train – off to their next stop. They seemed happy and full of… well, they were full of Christmas Spirit – along with other stuff. The Santa thing looked like fun. I’ll have to check it out next year.

Then we did a second Unsilent Night walk – this time back through the Arts District. This walk was more out in the open and the sound wasn’t as impressive – except when we paused for a while under the canopy next to the Trammel Crow Museum of Asian Art. It was shaped like a giant reflector facing down and we all stood along the stairs with the fountain bubbling in the center – that was magical.

By the way, we did walk past the Wyly Theater and the Transcendence art installation. The ice is now, of course, completely melted, and the remaining stones sit there in the gravel. There are still some white squares of gravel left where the original blocks were. Nobody payed attention – or even noticed that the raked gravel was there – it was very dark.

We walked back to the station and I was getting tired – a lot of walking. The organizer talked of next year and trying to increase the participation (the New York Unsilent Night walk has been going on for decades and has thousands of participants).

I’ll definitely do this again. It was fun to walk through downtown on a holiday evening, looking at the lights, the buildings, and the five hundred drunken Santa Clauses. The music was almost an added bonus – though it is the reason for being there.

Lots of fun. See you next year.

A few Santas check out Three Men and a Taco gourmet food truck.

Ruthie's before the Santas show up.

The organizer of Unsilent Night gave us some instructions before we set out with our boomboxes.

The usual crowd at the Akard Street train station on a Saturday Night

A train full of Santas

What I learned this week, December 16, 2011 (short film and video edition)

Posted on by Bill Chance

I knew these two brothers, Lance and Dan Hubp, in high school, in Panama

While I’m posting short films… most of y’all have seen this one before – it’s a little film a friend of Nick and Lee did a few years ago. That’s Lee driving, and the kids’ Mustang. Of course the key to the whole thing is the subtle acting ability of the “Gas Station Attendant.”

When you are camping indoors, be careful about the bears.

Yes, of course, this is from Ghost World

I have been a fan of Lana del Rey for a long time. Here’s her new video.

Fiddling in Jackson Square

Posted on by Bill Chance

It’s hard to take pictures in Jackson Square – the walls are all covered in Artworks for sale with signs asking for no photographs. You have to angle yourself so they don’t appear. I took these two photos at the same time I shot the photo shoot in Pirate Alley – I’d turn one way to get the guy playing the fiddle, then turn and take a picture of the photo shoot.

In the background, you can see a Lucky Dog hot dog vendor cart. These always remind me of Ignatius J. Reilly, who had a (fictitious) terrible time as a hot dog vendor in New Orleans.

(Click to Enlarge)