Category Archives: moldies but moodies

Black Wa-Da-Da

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Well today is Saturday, a nice day to sleep in on so that’s how I started my day. Last night was spent with Bill in front of the TV. Actually he had choir practice and didn’t come home until 10:00. I watched the usual. When the elections are done will I go back to watching shows I used to watch, like Ugly Betty, or My Name is Earl?

I’ve been watching the Daily Show and The Colbert Report as well as Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. Not exactly escapist fare. Haven’t been to the movies in quite a while either. Totally missed the Dark Knight. It’s still playing out there so maybe I could get it together, but then again I don’t like going to the movies by myself.

Bill Maher was pretty good last night with Alec Baldwin, Christiane Amanpour and Gary Shandling. According to the reports, McCain is slipping in the polls which is good and that people are pretty much over Palin which is a good thing. I do look forward to how the debate is parodied by Saturday Night Live tonight.

This afternoon i watched a documentary on the club Wetlands. It used to be in Tribeca and closed in 2001. 9/11 closed it. They were going out of business anyway after being open for 13 years. The last gig was supposed to be Bob Weir and Ratdog, on 9/14, but everything in the city was canceled at that time. I was supposed to see Cachito from the Buena Vista Social Club that week at BB King’s Nightclub.

I had gone to Wetlands, mainly to see various reggae and ska bands. They mentioned in the documentary that the club had terrible sight lines which was true. One time I remember going with my friend Miriam and her friend Andre to see Burning Spear. We got there at just the right time and were 3 feet away from the stage right in front of where the legendary Winston Rodney would be singing.

Miriam and I were definitely smoking up a storm and even though she said Andre could hang, homeboy couldn’t hang. Apparently we smoked him out and we wound up walking him out of the club into some fresh air outside, giving up our prime spot and missing the show totally. Andre felt bad about this but all Miriam and myself could do was laugh at him. That was probably the last time I had gone to Wetlands.

Andre did help me get a job as a doorman at a building on the Upper East Side. That lasted for a few weeks. My friends had warned me that it wasn’t the job for me, I’m not the subservient type and they were right. My co-workers thought I was a spy for management since there were talks going on with their union, and management seemed to be grooming me to be a scab in case the doormen went on strike.

One night I had to work a double shift and that’s when I realized that I wasn’t cut out for the job. Andre did have it right though, they only wanted me because I was white. After the Wetlands documentary I watched Perseopolis. That was very good. It’s about a girl growing up in Iran and the Vienna during the revolution and the war with Iraq.

Very good animation, so good that I wished they could do the same with Love and Rockets which like Perseopolis started out as a comic book/graphic novel. I could easily see Maggie and Hopey or a story about Luba in Palomar done in the same manner.

Perseopolis was in French with subtitles and they could do the Palomar story in Spanish. I think it’s a good idea. I wonder if Los Bros Hernandez thought of it. I don’t think it’s too late.

Today my mother would have been 80 years old. Hope she’s having a good time out there in the universe.

late night addition: 11:21PM I guess my brother Brian reads this blog from time to time as he just informed me via email that my mother would have been 82 since she was born in 1926 and Brian also guessed that I got my info from wikipedia.

Everyday

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Lately I’ve been listening to Grace Jones quite a bit. Don’t know why, but I do love the albums she recorded with the Compass Point All Stars who included Sly and Robbie among others. Really a crackerjack team of musicians behind her, better than the disco team that recorded her first three albums.

My friend Jet resembled Grace Jones a little bit. He was black and had a fade much like hers. It was the look he was going after and succeeded at least to me after a few drinks. I think the first time I actually heard Grace was when I was visiting my friend Stan in Wallington NJ. We were probably going to a show or something and Stan played the Nightclubbing album which is my favorite Grace Jones record.

Through the years a subconscious gauge on how much someone loved music meant they had to have at least one grace Jones album, preferably one with the Compass Point team. It seemed that a lot of people that I met did. Jimmy Lee, an ex-roommate was infatuated with the song, Living My Life.

A favorite memory of mine, is when I was a bar back at McSwells on Friday nights with Declan and Martha and Slave to the Rhythm was on the jukebox. Slave to the Rhythm is one of my favorite songs of all time, but while bar backing I would invariably play a different version of Slave to the Rhythm on the b-side, called GI Blues.

I called it Heavy Rhythm for a long time. A harder version which is perfect for walking through the streets of midtown Manhattan. I hear it and I am back behind the bar washing glasses, stocking the beer and telling customers that I wasn’t a bartender. After downloading a version of the song I finally bought the album last night through iTunes, which doesn’t make it an album, but rather a download. I have a cassette somewhere.

Today I checked out some YouTube videos and found something that I hadn’t looked for before to my surprise. It was Lambert Hendricks and Ross singing Everyday. I remember in 1988 coming home from McSwells in an altered state one Monday morning and too wired to sleep, I turned on the tv and watched a show with David Sanborn and Jools Holland called Sunday Night.

Either Jools or David introduced a clip from the 1950s and it just grabbed me right from the start. I was captivated, just watching them swinging and singing. Totally captivated. I told my brother Frank about it and of course, he had some info and gossip about Lambert Hendricks and Ross.

It must have been before the holidays because for Xmas that year Frank got me a copy of Lambert Hendricks and Ross’ Greatest Hits. I loved it and played it quite a bit. A few years after that, I’m working at Right Track Recording and I forget who the client was, but a phone call came in for them.

I picked up the call and asked who it was and the caller said, Jon Hendricks. I sort of bent the rules and asked if he was the same Jon Hendricks from Lambert Hendricks and Ross. He said yes, that he was. I told him about seeing the clip from the 1950s on TV and it was amazing, I gushed.

I could tell that he was impressed that the music he made 40 years earlier was being appreciated by a younger generation. It was a small thrill just chatting with him for a minute. He did visit the Manhattan Transfer, that’s who he was calling for and made it a point to see me and shake my hand, thanking me for knowing his music.

A few years ago, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross were performing together for what promised to be the last time. Dave Lambert died in a car accident in 1966. Annie was upset that Jon had mentioned that Annie was a junkie back in the day. She honored the engagements that were booked, but after that, never again.

I took Bill for an Xmas present to see them at the Blue Note. Cramped and crowded it wasn’t the best venue to see them but at least I had an opportunity to see the two of them for perhaps the last time.

Here’s the clip that I originally saw twenty years or at least I think it is. I still love it!
2.17.2020: Here’s the studio version, I hope you like it, let me know what you think!

https://youtu.be/ruztzNc8nn4