Thursday!
Ah, it's 9:45 a.m. and already I've been on the news with the Shoopster and L-Boogie, the section's out. (It's on the street. Go crazy! Get like 50 copies. Share with friends!) Some folks are complaing about me in Sound Off.
Life is good.
Chris Truitt, the Lord of Dagny's, has his remastered CD of The Had and Been's "We are the Ones" out. (It's snazzy.) You can get copies of it on-line at the Angry Vegan Records site, at Dagny's where he holds court on a regular basis, World Records and Downtown Records on 19th Street. (Tell Jake I said, "Hi." And while you're there stop by Gigantic Vintage next door and say, "Hi" to AJ for me.)
Chatted with mi hombre Tony O'Brien over the weekend. He's going to be hitting up PJ's Jazz and Blues club on the regular with his outfit Blacktie. I've known Tony pretty much ever since I moved to Bakersfield as he was one of the first fellow black persons I became acquainted with (Dee Slade, Cynthia Pollard and Rev. Ralph Anthony followed), but Tony and I quickly became homies, mostly because I love jazz, like to sing jazz and he is a jazz man. He plays it. He writes it. He'll even write you a poem about it. He's that sort of guy.
Tony and I were even in a band together for about two years that got to perform live, like .... hmmm ... maybe four times. (Maybe you caught our one show at The Marketplace where we were almost rained out but performed anyway because, dagnabit, we'd been practicing for weeks and Tony and I'd been working on these songs for well over a year -- someone was going to listen to this, damn it!)
Like many bands, we were besiged with problems. Our drummer went nuts on us (that mo fo still owes me $100). Folks got all out of sorts. Big-head, diva behavioral problems, (like taking 30 minutes to tune drums when Tony was footing a $100 an hour of studio time to record the album) which was crazy since besides myself and Tony's son Tyson, everyone was 40 plus and male.
But drama, all day everyday, drama. Like the one dude who couldn't get over the fact that I was black and wrote for The Californian because he was black and had tried to get a job here and would constantly ask me if I was being held down by "The Man," because he was a brilliant writer and the paper was obviously racist because they wouldn't hire him. Then he'd proceed to look at me funny. Which I did not like. So he'd ask me if I had to deal with racists all the live long day and I'd look at him like he had a hole in his forehead. Er ... I don't think so. Considering every time I see the publisher she hugs me and brings us frothy milkshakes from Dewars on days when the AC cuts out in the summer time, I'm gonna say, no.
Besides that I constantly had to deal with people in the band who wanted me to write exposes on how they felt they were getting the shaft by some car dealership or how the CHP gave them a speeding ticket and I'd be all, "Dude, no one cares." Oh, and the occassional creepy old man would hit on me. Ew.
But I still look fondly on my time in a jazz band that never got to perform. Fortunatly for Tony, Blacktie does get to perform so, that's a good thing.
As for our album, maybe we'll finish our stuff, like, someday. Until then, enjoy listening to Tony and his crew at this place.
Life is good.
Chris Truitt, the Lord of Dagny's, has his remastered CD of The Had and Been's "We are the Ones" out. (It's snazzy.) You can get copies of it on-line at the Angry Vegan Records site, at Dagny's where he holds court on a regular basis, World Records and Downtown Records on 19th Street. (Tell Jake I said, "Hi." And while you're there stop by Gigantic Vintage next door and say, "Hi" to AJ for me.)
Chatted with mi hombre Tony O'Brien over the weekend. He's going to be hitting up PJ's Jazz and Blues club on the regular with his outfit Blacktie. I've known Tony pretty much ever since I moved to Bakersfield as he was one of the first fellow black persons I became acquainted with (Dee Slade, Cynthia Pollard and Rev. Ralph Anthony followed), but Tony and I quickly became homies, mostly because I love jazz, like to sing jazz and he is a jazz man. He plays it. He writes it. He'll even write you a poem about it. He's that sort of guy.
Tony and I were even in a band together for about two years that got to perform live, like .... hmmm ... maybe four times. (Maybe you caught our one show at The Marketplace where we were almost rained out but performed anyway because, dagnabit, we'd been practicing for weeks and Tony and I'd been working on these songs for well over a year -- someone was going to listen to this, damn it!)
Like many bands, we were besiged with problems. Our drummer went nuts on us (that mo fo still owes me $100). Folks got all out of sorts. Big-head, diva behavioral problems, (like taking 30 minutes to tune drums when Tony was footing a $100 an hour of studio time to record the album) which was crazy since besides myself and Tony's son Tyson, everyone was 40 plus and male.
But drama, all day everyday, drama. Like the one dude who couldn't get over the fact that I was black and wrote for The Californian because he was black and had tried to get a job here and would constantly ask me if I was being held down by "The Man," because he was a brilliant writer and the paper was obviously racist because they wouldn't hire him. Then he'd proceed to look at me funny. Which I did not like. So he'd ask me if I had to deal with racists all the live long day and I'd look at him like he had a hole in his forehead. Er ... I don't think so. Considering every time I see the publisher she hugs me and brings us frothy milkshakes from Dewars on days when the AC cuts out in the summer time, I'm gonna say, no.
Besides that I constantly had to deal with people in the band who wanted me to write exposes on how they felt they were getting the shaft by some car dealership or how the CHP gave them a speeding ticket and I'd be all, "Dude, no one cares." Oh, and the occassional creepy old man would hit on me. Ew.
But I still look fondly on my time in a jazz band that never got to perform. Fortunatly for Tony, Blacktie does get to perform so, that's a good thing.
As for our album, maybe we'll finish our stuff, like, someday. Until then, enjoy listening to Tony and his crew at this place.
posted by Danielle Belton @ 9:38 AM
1 Comments:
At 10:46 AM,
Anonymous said…
That's funny about the gun controversy. I'm from McFarland. New Year's without guns blasting at midnight is like "cornflake without da milk" as Oran "Juice" Jones once said. At least they're reading the paper!
Peace, Matt Buru
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