The Information Super-Frog

I dreamed I was doing a show at the radio station. It had a different new studio in some sort of transition or rebuilding. There were 8 turntables laid out in an "L" shape on big long desks, and all the music was played from LPs. (In real life the station does still have 3 turntables - probably quite rare for radio stations now, but we have a number of record collector programmers. However it is not the dominant medium, and was never the exclusive medium for the station; even in the early '80s before CDs became common much programming from on reel-to-reel and cassette audio tape.) Anyways, the situation was frustratingly awkward, as I was doing a live show, while at the same time 2 other people were making a prerecorded show (what were they recording on? I guess digital, as no tape machine in my dream, which seemed to be intended to be current rather than '80s.) in the same studio. They were alternating using some of the same turntables, with different microphones sitting on the opposite side of the desks. There were also disordered stacks of LPs all around. I thought this was a sub-optimal way to try to do radio shows, but I plowed on doing my best.

The "Not Dead Yet" celebrations are heating up.

"come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed." -- Lucille Clifton

Lots of Carnival events packed in from this evening on through Mardi Gras Day. Alas, a cold front. (I suspect the neighborhood party with the theme "Brassire to Eternity" tomorrow night will not be as interesting as it might have been with warmer weather.)

Like Christmas nationally, we have lots of holiday season specific music. On WWOZ, we've not just had shows of New Orleans Mardi Gras music, we've had specific shows of R&B New Orleans Mardi Gras music, trad jazz New Orleans Mardi Gras music, New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians music, brass band New Orleans Mardi Gras music, etc. Not to mention the Cajun shows. There are the classics, and new recordings come out each year. Some, of course, undistinguished and quickly forgotten, but I'm amazed at how many good ones there are. I enjoyed Billy Delle's "Records From the Crypt" show last night that had a number of fun records I'd never heard before.

Wearing my over-the-counter magnifying glasses while using the internet until I get my new perscription, I realized that there was a typo in Dr. Seuss's alphabet. Girl, Goat, Goo-Goo Goggles? Clearly, "Google Goggles" was meant, but the proof reader had no way to know that 40 + years ago (unlike the clarvoiant good Doctor.)

Edit: I'm clearly quite late with awareness of this phrase. Googling shows 656 hits for "Google goggles". These include multiple contraditory definitions of the neologism, some of the obscene. Um.

While I've lost my minor superpower of microscopic vision up close, I have gained a power hitherto lacking-- being able to enjoy being at the beach without glasses. Indeed, this opens up more opportunities for beach enjoyment-- since my childhood more than a short walk along the oceanfront was problematic as my glasses would cloud up with salt.

Boca has two good NPR stations, helping make it hospitable for resting eyes. (I mentioned to my dad my fondness for the show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", and he revealed that one of the fairly regular panelists is a cousin. There's even a photo of me and Kyrie O'Conner on the family wall-- along with about 50 other people at a family reunion in the late 1970s.) Other listening has included some of the boxed set of the new complete cd release of Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress interviews which I picked up before leaving New Orleans.

Happy Birthday to mshollie, who was wondering if my lemon tree survived the storm. Yes, it did, and still has some lemons on it. I can leave them on it 'til the first freeze.

Still no sign of freezing weather here, fortunately (so many people without utilities working or major holes in their homes still). But I'm bumed out about canceling my planned trip to Austin after the weekend, as my friend there says ice storms are expected. I have stuff there I need to get; I'm having my friend FedEx the more important of it. I'd been hoping to get back to Austin before, but I was pretty much occupied the whole time trying to get roofers then finally getting my roof fixed. As I have no experience driving in ice or snow, and don't wish to have my first try at it at the end of an all day drive, I ponder with displeasure that I may not make it back 'til spring.

In the good news, WWOZ is finally back in New Orleans, in French Quarter studios in a French Market Corporation building-- I dunno how long this situation will last. I did my first shift there today, the 2nd day of broadcasting from back in town. We have 2 cd players, a cassette deck, and a microphone; about a hundred cds-- djs are encouraged to bring their own stuff. No phone in the studio yet. Hey, but I remember the early days of the station in the early '80s, and in a number of ways it's already better than what we had then. Perhaps the strangest part is no phone; no listener feedback at all. I ran into someone in the Quarter right afterwards who knew me and complimented the show.

Well, after the radio show I went over to the Jazz Park where Lars Edegran led an absolutely great band doing Christmas music in traditional New Orleans jazz style. The playing was just splendid.

Lots of places in the Quarter still aren't open, and many that are look like they're struggling. Though more folks were shopping today, as we have a 3 day "tax holiday", everything is 4% less the state sales tax through Sunday. Many people are taking advantage of it.

A heavy rain storm yesterday night wound up re-flooding a number of streets including key intersections.

New Orleans has long had a "third world" aspect (an artist friend long ago said that the city was the capital of a small Carribean nation that somehow never came into being), but moreso recently. It also now is a curious combination of a sophisticated world-class city abandoned by 2/3 of its population, a wild frontier town, and a devastated ruin. Sometimes combined. In a few places, one can see all those aspects by turning around at a single intersection.

A bit earlier I was listening to "The Golden Era of Radio", a weekly show on WTIX, which is station owner George Buck playing selections of decades old radio transcriptions.

One of today's shows was a 1952 episode of "Tom Corbit, Space Cadet!" which must have had more presumably unintended humor from camp value than any of the shows I've heard.

Gratuitous addition of the word "Space" (the capitalization is implied from the delivery) as an adjective results in such prime dialogue as:

"Aw, you're full of Space Gas!"

"To catch a Space Rat, you have to think like a Space Rat!"

The episode also included a grizzled old Space Miner who talked like a bargin Gabby Hayes, and characters strolling on the surface of Jupiter, where, we learn, walking around is awkward due to the "double gravity".

I marveled that the generation raised on that was able to make any actual useful contributions to the space race.

Any interested out-of-town friends and aquaintances will have a chance to hear me Monday morning playing with my latest group, "The Riverbend Radio Ramblers", similcast live on the web via the WWOZ 90.7 FM website, 10am -10:30 US Central Time this Monday the 21st.

We're playing for the radio beg-a-thon fund drive. It's a trad jazz band, consisting of a group of friends who happen to be able to make it to the station on a weekday morning. Some of us have played together in different contexts, but this specific group has met and rehearsed twice. With a couple of pros, some good amateurs and some good-time irregulars, to my pleasant suprise we have a full band: Two trumpets, trombone, tenor sax, alto sax, soprano sax, clarinet, guitar, banjo, piano, sousaphone, and drums.

With luck we'll be able to sound as good for our first public performance Monday morning as on our last runthroughs last night, and I won't regret mentioning this. Triumph, train-wreck, or in between, I'll be playing trombone and doing some singing and probably a whistling solo.

Sunday the WWOZ party was a Chez Voudoun on Rampart Street, a fairly new club with an interesting rich Voodoo and Buddhist decor. I don't think I've ever seen a really upscale Voodoo temple before.

I had even more fun, however, at the New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra dance at Cafe Brasil. It's always a kick when the band plays tunes that are a cakewalk or one-step, and some of the crowd actually knows how to do those vintage dances (and the rest of us just have fun dancing).

A scholarly aquaintance mentioned she's started playing a 1915 vintage Albert-system clarinet, and we came up with the idea of starting a jazz "period music ensemble" using original instruments pre-1930. Hey, it seems to work in the Baroque music world. Forget about the conflicts between musicians who want to play more modern stuff in trad, go retro all the way. Hmmm. Suddenly I feel my 1925 silver Conn trombone is just barely sufficiently aged.

Monday morning there were notices up at the radio station prohibiting anyone from saying "anything denegrating to the President or to the war" on the air.

Since we're a music station. Okay.

Praising Bush and war is aparently copacetic.