Here are a couple of articles from the Telegraph that relate to yesterday’s post about the demise of the music industry; “Radiohead generation believes music is free” and “Embrace digital or die”.
I have written a few things about Spencer Tunick in the past. He is the guy that wanders the world taking photographs of large groups of naked people. He is in Miami now to do another one of his “installations” involving 600 volunteers. I really don’t know why I’m so intrigued. Originally, my curiosity centered around these questions; Is it art? Is Tunick sincere or, just a huckster? Why are so many people so willing to get naked in front of this guys camera?
Here are a couple of Tunick quotes from nbc6.net.
“I’m going to have 100 to 200 women in pink rafts,” he said. “We’re going to have people on the balcony posing very much like the Tower of Babel meets Logan’s Run. We’re going to buy some champagne, 500 bottles, and were going to make a giant explosion for the climax of the installation from the balcony.”
“We have a Dade County cop posing,” he said. “Isn’t that great? We have flight attendants posing, doctors, lawyers.”
I guess I’m an introvert. I have no desire to get naked in public. The idea of being around 600 people who do want to get naked in public is creepy. Being around 600 naked, drunk, Miami cops, flight attendants, doctors and lawyers…frightful.
Speaking of creativity and drunkenness, here is a Breitbart piece about a woman in Texas who has been cleared of manslaughter charges. It seems that Tammy Jean Warner was in the habit of administering alcoholic enemas to her husband Michael. The husband died of alcohol poisoning during one of the sessions. There is something a little odd about this story. Reportedly, the beverage that was used in the deadly enema was sherry, of all things. I’m thinking that it takes a good bit of sherry to get a buzz on. To reach a fatal level would require an enormous amount of sherry. If you were just trying to get a good solid drunk on, with your enema, you would use something like Congress vodka; something in a lower price range. So, I guess Mr. Warner was a connoissuer.
I’m listening to the Derek Trucks Band record “Songlines” as I’m writing. Most people talk about Derek’s slide playing but, I realize as I’m listening, that he’s a great player without the slide as well. He does a lot of cool diminished and whole tone runs.
Sonny Landreth is another slide player who is underestimated like that. I saw him with John Hiatt once. He played slide stuff all night except for one song. I think it was “Paper Thin”; I don’t know for sure. Anyway, he played one solo sans slide and it just parted my hair.
It’s sandbagging really. A guy that plays all this stuff and you think,wow that guy is good, then he whips out some other thing; some lick that you don’t think he has in the trick bag and knocks your hat in the creek.
Keith Richards is a sandbagger. I thought I knew Keef’s playing inside and out then, I saw him on some T.V. thing where he picked up an acoustic guitar and played this ragtime thing. Fingerpicking and keeping the bass line pumping; sounded like Leo Koettke.
Willie Nelson is a sandbagger. You always see him with that beat-to-hell gut string guitar. I saw him one time playing great jazz stuff on a sea foam green Stratocaster. Who knew?
Mark O’Conner, the guy Steve Morse called “the greatest fiddle player in the world”. Have you ever heard Mark O’Conner play guitar? Sandbagger; I saw him way back, playing guitar with Doug Grisman. O’Conner is a tough guitar player.
The best single example of the sandbagging technique I’ve ever seen was at a show by a band called the Caribbean All Stars. It was in Monterey some time in the 80’s. I don’t know anything about the band but they were a great live act. They had maybe a three piece horn section. They would do these long sections, like 256 measures, where the horns would lay out and then, all of a sudden go, dah dah daht, just tight as hell and then lay out again.
Anyway, they had this grey haired guitar player, don’t know who he was, that played a Telecaster. This guy was doing the chinka chink reggae, rhythm guitar thing all night and, doing it superbly. It’s really an art form all of it’s own. Well, let me say this, almost every guitar player in the world can ape a piss poor version of a reggae rhythm guitar figure but, very few can do it well. So, this guy is going along playing the chinka better than anyone I’ve ever heard. I figured that was all he did. If it was, believe me, it would be more than enough. Late in the show, this guy plays a 16 bar solo; real jazzy, nice. Then, he plays the whole thing again in harmony; impressive. Then; he play’s the whole thing again in three parts; slick. Then he plays the whole thing in four parts and it sounds like Joe Pass on mescaline. After that he just went back to chinka chink and grinned. Sandbagger extraordinaire. If anybody out there has a clue as to who this mystery guitar player is, please let me know.
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Tags: alcohol enema, Derek Trucks, sandbaggers, Spencer Tunick
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
Pardon me, did you say:
uhh… you dreamed it, all of it.
Pat Darnell and Friends’s last blog post..Heath Ledger Love Child and Pribek.net
Link | May 20th, 2008 at 8:37 am