Austin Competes For A Place at the 27th Annual International Blues Competition

Last night was the first round of the International Blues Competition here in Austin.  Six bands played and plied their jumps&jives onstage at the heart of Austin’s blues scene, Antone’s.  20 minute sets were given to each band, leaving me to again marvel at all the distinctly personal types of blues there are.  And of course,  the many hats of its players…

The Stevie Ray Vaughn sideways jeffcap made an appearance as well as the rumpled Tom Waits’ fedora and a wide-brimmed black number that looked proper on Stray Dawg of Stray Dawg&the Wolves.  The judges seemed content tapping their feet at tables in front of the stage while fans and attendees sat&stood around casually drinkin’ and groovin’.

Lovely Ilsa at the door clocked 81 covers, significantly higher than the usual turn out at Antone’s for its Monday Night Blues Jam.

Ms.Julia&Her Cruzers took it.  They claimed first place and I was just completely floored by their rhythm section.  That crazy Pisan Alberto Telo on the skins brought fans to the floor for some hip grindin’ and gettin’ down.

While Ms.Julia belted out about it burnin’ down, Brother Magnum&the Razorbumps raised the dead.  Brother Magnum knows how to lead a band.  He set up his full front-line horn section within his allotted 10 minutes and represented some serious grind&bump to take the semi-finalist title.

The two winners from last night will spar with the finalist and semi-finalists from next week.  The winner, along with the winner of the solo/duet competition on October 24th, will be flown to Memphis in January to compete w/ blues bands from all over the blue world.

Stray Dawg did his funk-rockin’ Jimi thing and the Jake Levinson Band did they dirty-Nawlins Tom Waits’ thing but there could only be two winners.  That is, until next week.

I’ll be on the panel next week, representing the local Austin Bluesbat  Contingent and drinking bourbon.  I’m sure I’ll be just as astounded at the many interpretations of this most pure blueprint of our rock and roll.  Each band knows it, just like they know how very personal the blues is and should be.

We all know the blues is better incanted than imitated and about as fun to imitate as it is to act like you’re feeling bad.  The blues is a long road that we all walk down feelin’ bad.  Thank God we got the blues.  See you at the judges booth next week, blues Rocker&Rockettes.

whiskey c’est mon ami!

Bat Manor, TX

Shrieks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#18

Your Neighbor
Bat Manor
Hippie Town, USA

Camilla LeBlanc
Her Court
Austin, TX 78704

End of Summer
9/6/11

Libélula-

Somebody’s a dick.  Hope you told the Gulf that Jimbo says “hello”. The blues end as trouble begins.  How will we ever survive?  Missed you at Penthouse on Saturday.  It was the usual suspects and I burned both my knees sitting on top of the steps of the pool, smoking and talking with Billy.

Fuck those other pools and those other fools.  How can a 22-year-old girl say she loves Steve Miller’s “Midnight Cowboy” and be singing along some 30 years after its insipid release?  There are buckets of money to be made if you pen&publish a song that lodges itself in mass consciousness and stays in circulation long after the song means nothing if it ever did.  The vested interests of Power&Privilege condone this most watered down tripe and they call it rock and roll but we know, B.  We’re survivors, and Champions besides.  Survival was easy but the rub is living with what’s left and suffering these fools on a 3-day weekend in America w/o you.

“Wouldn’t it be great to be back in college?” this Oakley wearing, tribal-tattooed choad asked me Saturday.
“I wouldn’t know,” I told him.  “I was never there.”  I had my haterblockers on and I was expressionless.
He must’ve thought he offended me b/c he offered me a Bud Lite.
“No thanks.”  I said.  “You shouldn’t either.  That shit shrinks yr testicles.”
I left him back there with the giggling Bevos.  I was sunburned and sullen.  Fucking amateurs.

I was raised in the country, I been working in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down.
-Bob Dylan

71 and Poor White are under a hazy sheet of grey&white.  The Texas sky is clogged with smoke and death.  I thought we were safe here, in the Pearl of the South, from this recent rash of global catastrophe, but-I was wrong.  This changes everything.  Maybe Michelle Bachman was right.  If God is punishing us I’m afraid that things will only get ugly and Much Worse.

But-what’re ya gonna do?  That’s what everybody says in my hometown of Philly but they’re not asking, really.  If you’re like me, you remember the good times to such an extreme you end up not giving a fuck about good times, bad times or rock and roll.
20 years on the day shift and all I got are bitter memories&a bad smoking cough, a guitar and a 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe.  I’ll never suffer these fools gladly or any other way if I can help it.  Even when I was their age I hated them.

I don’t mind the Dog Pond at 5am but you’ll never find me sitting around Losers Tub even if everybody is at work and the Terrible Summer is over.
I value whatever it is we have, Dragonfly.  Your interest in my writing is invaluable to me.  It’s just that I’ve been burned and I’ve seen too much.  I’ve learned the hard lesson that sharing yr feelings is a weakness and it will only be capitalized on by the Small&the Hungry.  It’s sunset on the Empire and the sight of you reading Ham on Rye with RayBans on at Penthouse is a salve to this old Soldier’s Heart.

Could’ve been a ladybug on a windchime,
but she was born a dragonfly.
–The Dragonfly, Clutch

Momento mori.

Your Neighbor,
Jim

Monday in America

My boss needed a ride to Oklahoma.    It was a big weekend for Texas sports and I hated Texas sports.  I knew that the Riverwind Casino was up there in Norman, out on OK-9 on the Chickasaw Indian Reservation.  I thought I'd get out-of-town and out-of-pocket, play a little blackjack and put Austin down for a little while.  We loaded up the Brown Hornet and hit the road.

The Riverwind Casino is a very bad place.  It’s cheap gaudy neon belches up on you off 35 in the Heartland like some doomtown megaplex.  There’s a sign on every door.  It reads:

Greetings from the great unconquered and unconquerable Chickasaw Nation.

Inside the cursed white man sits, dying a fat old death at the nickel slots w/a pack of Gold 125s.   Women with whorehair and in stretchpants stretching in unintended and undesirable ways  are beside them.  The air is filled w/ still life and the ringing of major triads from the slot machines and shitty countrified classic rock.  The non-playing public gets cordoned off and the only exit is the River Theatre or the gambling floor.  Everybody walked so slow and spoke w/ such thick mid-Western accents it was best to act as if you understood and walk on.  At the end of the line the buffet is $50 a head and they serve nothing but crab legs and cow fat and call it prime rib.

The staff looked like they had a hard life and didn’t mind dying.  The brightest among them were the little black haired&blonde-betty cocktail waitresses with fake tits in plastic dresses.
I blew $50 at the Blackjack table and made out with a cocktail waitress named Misty in the bathroom.  Jimbo’s big Saturday Night in Oklahoma.

That’s all I really care to recount about our sojourn in Sodom.  This post is more about gambling than any legal fleecing of doomed fools living in the midwest by the unconquerable Chickasaw Nation.  What’s most important  in situations like these is the escape.  I was $50 down and terrified.  After the sun had set there was  a howling wind out on the prairie that was haunting&surreal.
Things could only get better the farther and faster we drove from Norman, OK.

I was $15o up and in Clover by the time we left the Interurban Bar&Rest Area.  The Longhorns had a bye week, the Saints beat Houston
thanks to Mark Ingram’s 13 yard run and a two point coversion by special teams,
the Eagles got smacked down to last place in the NFC East by the New York Giants and even though I did not know it then, the Detroit Lions were paving the road to Victory and carving a very special place in my heart w/their win in overtime against the Minnesota Vikings.

When we pulled off the highway on Monday I was salty&hung over but certainly feeling better than that sad cowboy back at the Interurban.  He bet with his heart and he lost it all.

We pulled into the parking lot of Bombay Express off 35N at Rundberg.  We were watching the Cowboys game over plates full of Tandoori Chicken and Lamb Roganjosh.  We made it home in good time but now this…

The Cowboys were down by a point with two minutes on the clock and my temporary crown had come off.  There were bones in every bite of Mutton Korma, but in my fatigue&rage and  hate&disgust I just crunched down on them in pain.  I lost it all to some Indian in a pro-Wrestling tee shirt.  You should never bet with your heart.  My boss felt for me.  She paid our tab and we left.

Before the turn off at Lamar some drug addled freak was dancing on the corner.  He looked like some mutant hybrid of Michael Jordan and Flavor Flav during his crack years.

 He was going for the full workout and for full attention.  His candied cocaine dancemoves had me transfixed in disgust&horror.  The best ethnic restaurants are always in the ghetto.
There is trouble in the ghetto but it was Monday in America and there was trouble everywhere.