Stanley Kunitz wrote,'Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?'
In thirty years of playing I've been in only three bands. My first group, a top-forty collective from Bizzaro World, lived in the same log farm house in Middletown Md. The members of Pacific Orchestra, an original reggae-rock band, lived and played on the beatific isle of Key West, FL. Fifteen years ago Mama Jama was born, but the members are 'scattered' all over the greater Washington area.
That brings me to the point of this post.

We all have Yahoo accounts and recently have used the Yahoo briefcase to share mp3's for rehearsals, and the calendar friends' option to post our conflicting dates.
Although my tribe is scattered, a smattering of technology can form a virtual bond.

music yahoo reggae

It's a given that dancers will complain about their feet. Go to any
Bolshoi cocktail party and hear the laments from every corner; broken toes, bruised arches, sore ankles. Every story more lurid than the last. Each injury stoicly ignored for the sake of the art.

Musicians play their own version of body-part obsession. For them, its all about ears. When did they first notice that high frequency loss? What gig caused the most damage? How long does the ringing last and what mind game can convince them the cricket chirps are real, not just inside their head.
Some wizened younger players, perhaps growing weary of writing memos to a deaf musician dad over the dinner table, will compare and contrast the latest features of high-tech ear plugs.

dancer music

It's Saturday night.
At Triple Creek Cafe the pick-ups and Harleys pull into the lot as locals get ready to cut loose. The menu is mostly Country with a smidgen of Queen thrown in to keep folks on their toes.
Good ol' boys and girls toss down some long necks and forget about that damn work week.
We're talkin' family here, down-home affection and good-hearted fun.

Toastmaster / Johnny G

Danny, AKA Pineapple Head

Click zap on the right and easedrop...

karaoke music country

Click the Zap button on the right to hear what I'm talking about! If UB40 floats your boat you would have loved these guys from Birmingham. I saw the English Beat a million years ago in Jersey at a mammoth club called Emerald City. I couldn't stop dancing. This was my first experience with the joyful noise of ska.

The multi-racial band carved a distinct sound through the use of alternating lead vocals by guitarist Dave Wakeling and punk-toaster/rapper Ranking Roger, supported by a tight band consisting of Andy Cox (guitar), Dave Steel (bass), and Everett Moreton (drums). The addition of 50-year-old saxophonist Saxa, who originally played with Prince Buster and Desmond Dekker, gave the band credibility and fleshed out its sound.
Four albums and a never-ending tour from Hell later, the Beat imploded and mutated into platinum pop as the "Fine Young Cannibals" and "General Public".

The boys from Birmingham

from "Stand Down Margaret" - a tribute to the hawkish Prime Minister:
i said i see no joy
i see only sorry
i see no chance of your bright new tomorrow

so stand down Margaret
stand down please
stand down Margaret

Learn more about ska's Jamaican roots here.

music ska englishbeat dancehall reggae

Click "ZAP" on the radio blog to get the aural flavor of this one:

The batucada is like a sonic war with rules. The deep, unflinching beats of the surdos are attacked from all sides by the Caixas (snare), cuica, agogo, tamborins, and reco-reco. The rhythms swarm over the bandas, take control of their garishly costumed or barely clad bodies and push them in swirls of color and controlled chaos down the passarela. The pre-Lenten parade at Rio´s Sambodrome is the Superbowl of Samba. Only fourteen of the one hundred neighborhood escolas make the cut to the "big show". Each group builds a half-dozen elaborate floats and stitch costumes for thousands of performers. From the humblest of beginnings in the barrios, this festival has gone world class and over the top. How has it managed to grow to these proportions and yet stay guileless? Is it the indefatigable effort of these folks of modest means? Can many hands make light work of such a grandiose effort?

Well, yes and no... as the following excerpt from Gambling Magazine illustrates.

"The jogo do bicho or animal lottery is an underground industry with a reputation for reliability and an estimated 80,000 employees in Rio alone. It has typically Brazilian dimensions, generating an estimated 10 million bets a day nationwide. Lately, though, the game has run into bad luck that accentuates its dark side..."

"The illicit lottery's big-time gambling bosses, the old-school gangsters known as bicheiros, have been prosecuted or slain or have succumbed to old age. Investigators have linked them to drug trafficking, gunrunning and institutionalized bribery..."

"The bosses of the animal game are still admired community leaders because of their longtime role as patrons of Rio's samba schools, the training ground for performers of Carnaval. The creation of an official Samba Schools League to organize Carnaval in the mid-1980s distanced the jogo do bicho from the yearly extravaganza, according to league officials. But samba schools are still linked to gambling bosses. Luiz Pacheco Drumond, the president of the Samba Schools League, is considered a top boss. He was convicted of gambling-related crimes last year..."

I like glitter and body paint as much as the next guy, but the real carnival in Rio began and continues in the backstreets.
Just watch out for the pick-pockets.

rio carnival samba lottery

In fond remembrance Do not dispair

Hold fast to his vision

We can save the world

With Love

Protect the innocent

nourish the downtrodden

share what you can

The Bob Marley Foundation

bobmarley marley reggae

I should have known better. I thought the browser incompatibility wars were over and done with once Content Management Systems (like Moveable Type) took control of display. I am so naive.
When I checked the look of this blog in IE (which you should never use yourself, dear reader) the banner was missing and the newly defined Radio Blog was all out of whack.
The look is mostly uniform now and the tunes are crankin'.
But maybe this lot is just not enough for your eclectic tastes. Check this:



A desktop player that avoids annoying timeouts from the lastfm server. More importantly if you're like me you can't resist clicking on the profile icons of online lastfm users. It's an addiction. I am weak. MyLastFM doesn't make me stronger but it puts the cork back in the bottle.

lastfm mylastfm radioblog radio blog

This morning I was listening/reminiscing to Jaco Pastorius.
For those who missed his bright light this time around here is his discography with Joni Mitchell, Weather Report, Pat Methany, etc.:

I heard him with Weather Report in Miami - 1976. Oh he was so beautiful, at the top of his game. This was the first time I heard a bass sing.
A decade later I met him backstage at the Lonestar in NYC.

My band Pacific Orchestra was about to go on when he stopped backstage. Cocaine and alcohol had kicked his ass. He looked so haggard and worn, smelled of booze and sleepless nights.
Jaco grabbed our bass players ax, played the Star Spangled Banner like Hendrix effortlessly, and popped the cap off a bottle of beer with his teeth. We had heard that he was living on the street, playing a lot of basketball in the park, and had become a pariah in the club circuit for crashing performances. The man was sick and no one, not his fans, not his lovers, could help him.

He moved back to Fort Lauderdale in hopes of stitching the shreds of his life together but he was killed by a bouncer at a local club.

You can read excerpts from an interview with his wife, Ingrid, below:

Most importantly - listen.
These are phrases of passion and intelligence. Try these

Continue reading "Jaco "