today we're headed back to new orleans for a week or so to work on the house and attend my nephew's wedding. as bad as it may be there still, we're really looking forward to gettin' back home. it's really hard to deal with rebuilding when you're 1200 miles from the scene, but apparently things are rolling along on the house in metry. as soon as it is up and running we are headed back for good. so guess we'll just see how it is all going, the city and the wreckhouse, when we get there...
but it looks as though it is really hard to deal with the whole situation down there right now for quite a few people who decided to chuck it in and of course king george is hedging on his promise to 'do what it takes' to rebuild new orleans while his goose-stepping fema troops are lining their pockets.
oh well, what goes around, goes around ...
we're gonna look up some old buddies while home (maybe even find tim for a beer or three at 'the rock and bowl'), so more than likely it'll be a fun filled fortnight, as usual ...
we were hoping to find some good music while we're there but the listings are pretty flat, still, there is a chance something may pop up, and it usually does. if we woulda waited a few weeks we would be there for mardi gras, but alas, it wasn't meant to be, next year for sure ... for now we're trying like all get to be back home to stay by the jazz fest, in late april.
we'll try to sneak in some posts and pics while we're there, if we can find enuff time in between the drinks, the food, the familia and friends (oh yeah, and the work), which kinda only leaves time for sleep, which is something we can do when we get back to reno. well, we gotta go pack and catch a flight ... toodle-oo ya'll!
... and to put us in a po-boy eatin', crayfish suckin', oyster shuckin', fall-down drunk frame of mind, from the good doctor, on mp3, via yousendit:
dr john - goin' back to new orleans
dr. john - gris gris gumbo ya ya
dr. john - sweet home new orleans
dr. john - walk on guilded splinters
dr. john - mac's boogie
6 was his number, we never did find out his name ...
the prisoner was a 17 episode british series that aired on american network t.v. in the summer of 1968. it really changed ideas about what a t.v. series should be. the show was so many things at once ... a spy story, to be sure, but also a wry social commentary which sucks in the viewer with stunning visuals, clever writing and poses questions about individual freedom and thought that seem even more relevent today. it's an orwellian vision done with sixties splash and only seems dated at points now. but taken as a whole it's a dizzying experience.
veteran actor patrick mcgoohan concieved, produced, wrote and starred in this story of a secret agent that angrily resigns his post. he is gassed in his apartment as he is packing for his getaway. he later wakes, looks out the window and sees not london, but a quirky little village. and that is just the opening sequence for the series. what follows in each of the shows is nothing short of amazing. we follow 'number 6' as he constantly tries to escape the island village, which is home to other retired or resigned 'agents' apparently. the powers that be are personified by a rotating 'number 2', whose job seems to consist for the sole purpose of finding out why number 6 resigned. each week a new '2' exclaims they'll extract information 'by hook or by crook'. what appears to be a classic struggle of good vs bad, right vs wrong, gets blurred from jump and nothing is as it seems at all. but, in the end, the show leaves more questions than it answers ...
i remember watching this when it was first on. i was 12, loved anything spy-like and was duly relegated to the lesser black and white 11 inch in the back room to watch the prisoner (mom would rather watch 'big valley' or whatever not-a-spy-show that was on at that time on the giant 27 inch r.c.a. in the den). it totally freaked out me and my friends. we'd yack like hens about it all week at school, trying to figure out what we had seen and where it was going. it was kinda like a playground series. the last few episodes are just a mind-fuck that has me still pondering the meaning of the whole thing, and from that, life in general.
for a few years now s.a. and i have been discussing this show, how it has affected us over the years and there was always a threat of ownership ... then the complete dvd set just magically appeared on the doorstep recently (right around the birthday week) and we haven't stopped watching it yet. well, we saw the last one, 'fall out', last nite but need to watch the whole thing again. the dvd's are all fixed up, pristine, and the episodes look better than they should (but my memories consist of a small b&w tv) ... and with a buncha cool extras ...
i think we need to get back to the village.
and yet a lotta tunes for, about, included therein or which we feel an affiliation with the prisoner, via yousendit, of course, for a small time
... be seeing you!
theme from the prisoner
the times - i helped patrick mcgoohan escape
iron maiden - the prisoner
iron maiden - back to the village
celestial - resigned
the clash - the prisoner
alternative radio - fallout (french version)
carmel morris - another number
the beatles - all you need is love
gangster politics - dance of the dead
bang bang - the prisoner
philip glass - secrect agent
johnny rivers - secret agent man
theme for 'danger man'
theme for 'the prisoner' (from the alternate 'chimes of big ben')
it's well into winter but it just doesn't feel like it here lately. in 'the biggest little' it's been rather nippy in the morning and doesn't get much better all day, but it's alot finer than last year at this time. a year ago there were a series of storms that dropped about 7 feet of snow onto the truckee meadows, starting around christmas, and by the 12th of january reno was totally snow bound. no one could get around town at all as the sideroads were nothing but huge snow drifts. usually when it snows here it is melted away in a few days but this was an onslaught. it came down so hard for so long that it just made everything look like it was covered with a thick blanket of marshmallow. (seems the forecasters never saw it coming and we got caught, pants down. they can never figure how the weather is gonna act comin' over the high sierras. i find this amusing, coming from new orleans where ya know just where it's gonna rain, and when!).
being quite the homebody i found it all rather romantic and serene, but then again i didn't have to venture out and about to do that thing most people do. apparently it was not a lot of fun for the rest of the normals that must do that daily do. i know s.a. was slipping , sliding and falling every time she walked out the door (with a few nice bruises to prove it), and i would be just another statistic at the e.r. with a broken something or other if i jouneyed too far from the wreckroom.
the local paper says that we're gonna get a nice weekend blizzard of sorts. guess it's just a matter of time. but knowing the weather forecasters here it'll just be rainy and real windy ... then cold as all get. we really don't ever wanna deal with that much snow ever again, tho' it was mighty purdee!
right now the weather radar shows snow on the otherside of the mountains pushing it's way into reno. one never knows around here just how bad it'll be until it's too late. so today we're just gonna hunker down, light a fire, have some cocktails, watch cartoons with the sound turned down and listen to summer-like warm music ... a few of which are ripped to mp3 and submitted here for a little while via yousendit:
the brian jonestown massacre - let's pretend it's summer
sly and the family stone - hot fun in the summertime
xtc - summer's cauldren
mungo jerry - in the summertime
elvis costello - the other side of summer
seals and croft - summer breeze
the loving spoonful - summer in the city
the who - heatwave
jimi hendrix - long hot summer night
a little bonus ... (this is kinda for ms. laurie, if she's got the bandwidth, i never knew she was quite the 'freak')
a viddy of jimi at woodstock doin' 'fire' (33.7 k mpg file)
and for all those that were brutal enuff to do the first bit, here is part two of the three part radio program, the jimi hendrix story (as summited to the w'room by a.g., and god knows where he found it ... it's a hefty 1 hr 33 min mp3 file)
well, it was m.a.'s birthday week, hence the lack of postings. sorry 'bout that, but all in all it's been a very satisfying holiday indeed around here. the time off has been spent writing new tunes, listening to new stuff, playing a bunch of new star wars games and enjoying a shitload of dvd's ... one of which is 'jimi hendrix at woodstock'. now to be honest we just love jimi and have been dying to get this and waiting for the 2 disc set was oh-so worth it!
the 1st disc in the set is the concert proper, and all the available footage that was taken is restored and used to give a very stark reminder of what a powerful artist jimi was at that point in time. it begins with all the guilty parties reminising on the event and setting the stage for one of the single most important sets in rock-n-roll history ...
and just a bit'o history, at the time jimi was looking for a new direction, being tired of feeling like a circus side-show, playing to crowds only wanting the flamboyant, outrageous stunts he preformed at monterey. to jimi only the music mattered. and he was now wanting to broaden his horizons. he had fired the experience's bassist, noel redding, after noel hedeged about jimi's want to expand the band and explore new sounds and dimensions (in the film, noel professes a distaste for the way the band was headed, but he knew all along it was jimi, soon after noel split he started a band called 'fat matress' ... fat chance!) ... we're sure he was glad to lose the crybaby.
anyways, jimi got one of his old friends, a paratrooper buddy, billy cox, to play bass in his new incarnation. he kept mitch mitchell from the experience, who was a very good drummer that jimi could rely on, even if he was a silly white british kid, and went to woodstock before the festival to spend a week or two working up the new line-up. he called another ex-vietnam vet friend to come and join the band ...and larry lee was one of the few unknowns who could keep up with jimi on guitar at the time ... just listen to his solo during 'jam back at the house', he and jimi have one of the coolest guitar duels ever captured on tape!
okay, enuff, we need to spread this out as there is a few weeks worth of great jimi shit to share with the world from the old w'room's archives ...
so, here is a radio show given to the w'room by a.g. (maybe he could say where it is from, we have no idea), but it is very long, cool and entertaining, and in a very huge file, via yousendit:
the jimi hendrix story (part one of three)
1 hr 23 min
today we're headed back to new orleans for a week or so to work on the house and attend my nephew's wedding. as bad as it may be there still, we're really looking forward to gettin' back home. it's really hard to deal with rebuilding when you're 1200 miles from the scene, but apparently things are rolling along on the house in metry. as soon as it is up and running we are headed back for good. so guess we'll just see how it is all going, the city and the wreckhouse, when we get there...
