NYC ’83 Debris

Posted on August 11, 2024 by admin

After returning from Europe in mid-August 1983, I spent about 10 days in New York City, a kind of coda to the longer trip. Expenses were low, since I was house sitting – apartment (co-op?) sitting in Greenwich Village – for Deb, a woman I’d met in Germany, while she was on the Jersey shore with her parents. A place New Yorkers went in August, Deb said, because their analysts were out of town. I think she was only half-joking.

If I were a different person, I would have spent late nights at the likes of CBGB, the Palladium, Danceteria, or the Peppermint Lounge (or the Village Vanguard or the Bitter End, for that matter), staggered back to Deb’s apartment, and slept most of the day. That would have been quite the time and place for that kind of activity. But no: I didn’t take a stronger interest in live music in small venues until I lived in Nashville for a few years, and I never did latch on to the alcohol or cocaine components of those kinds of nights. So any stories I’d tell about the NYC club scene 40 years ago would be necessarily made up.

I did a lot of walking. Mostly Manhattan, but one day I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and spent some time in that borough. I also made it up the Bronx.

The zoo was a little run down in those days, but nothing like the south Bronx territory I saw from the #5 IRT. The zoo guide above, looking at it now, is a model of compact information, unfolding to offer a good map of the zoo’s 265 acres on one side, and on the other side, other information about the zoo, and the various trails in the facility one could follow to see different kinds of animals: the Wild Asia Trail, Africa Trail, Reptiles and Apes, Bird Valley Trail, etc.

I see that elephant and llama rides were available for an extra fee in those days. I wonder if that’s still the case.

Back in Manhattan, there was always Art to see.

Note the adult admission price: $3. Or the equivalent of about $10 these days. And what is the adult rate as of 2024? $30. That’s just gouging, MoMA. You have no excuse.

Vistas. I don’t remember what I paid, but the ESB price now is absurd. I’m glad I’ve already been there.

I went to the top of the Empire State Building at night, and marveled at the glow of the city, but also at just how many vehicles on the street below were yellow cabs. I was at the World Trade Center observation deck during the day; a lost view.

A Lisbon Ramble

Posted on May 24, 2024 by admin

Rain and wind sometimes but sun and warmth other times this week here in northern Illinois. Had breakfast on the deck most of the days since we returned. Lisbon wasn’t quite as warm as expected, with cool evenings – a little below 20° C. – evolving into warmish days, maybe 25° C. or so, followed again by cool evenings. We were rained on only once, more about which later.

Back to posting on Tuesday, in honor of Decoration Day, even though that’s next Thursday. I’m all for three-day weekends, or four or five, but we ought to acknowledge the heart of the occasion.

We arrived tired in the early afternoon of May 14 at the smallish but popular Praça Luís de Camões, emerging from the artificial lighting of the Metro into broad sunlight on the warmest day during our near-week in southern Portugal, just shy of about 30° C as they reckon things.

At once the dulcet sounds of these three gentlemen captured our attention, and we joined the loose ring of those listening. A good thing to do while sitting around getting ready to catch your second wind.

They played their versions of jazz standards and more recent songs. Sweet versions, each of the musicians taking the tunes aloft in distinctive ways. I didn’t see their names posted, even when I got close enough to drop in one euro each, so they’ll just have to be the Musicians of Praça Luís de Camões.

They had an enthusiastic audience member. He danced around on his feet for a while, the lay on the plaza tiles and “danced” around in that position.

We’d have listened longer, but we needed to obey our thirst, to use the ad phase that’s too good just to be that. Facing the square: McDonald’s. We each had a cold drink.

That’s my idea of a good souvenir, and I took it as such.

We headed down a busy retail street, R. Garrett, a thoroughfare with the likes of Ale-Hop Rua Garrett, Stradivarius women’s clothing, Gardenia shoe store, bbnails, Happy Socks, Livraria & Cafe, a book store, and the Percassipt quilt shop. A handsome street at spots. And under development.

Basílica de Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Martyrs, also rises on the street.

Before 1755 there was a different church on this site. As a Christian site, its roots stem back before Moorish domination of the Iberian peninsula.

Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos designed the current church, and of him Portuguese Wiki says: “Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos (1731-1791). Arquiteto e engenheiro militar português, foi um dos maiores expoentes da arquitetura e do urbanismo pombalinos,” which I believe is clear enough except for that business about pombalinos, a building and design style distinctive to Lisbon after the earthquake.

Now that’s a ceiling for the ages.

At R. do Carmo, a pedestrian street, Yuriko and Ann went to examine a particular clothing and other item store, while I took a wander.

People seemed to be paying attention to something.

They were right to take pictures. Stand just off the street was Elevador de Santa Justa, a Machine Age lift connecting two parts of the city, each at a different elevation.

I’d read about it, but didn’t make a particular plan to see it. But there it was. The work of one Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard, who is known for this structure and others like it. We didn’t get around to taking a ride, since time is short and Lisbon’s destination list is long, whoever compiles it.

Spring Break Bits

Posted on April 4, 2024 by admin

It might not feel like spring out there, but no matter. Time for spring break. Back to posting around April 18.

Not long ago, an entire movie on YouTube called First Spaceship on Venus came to my attention, and I decided to watch a few minutes to see how bad it might be. Soon I realized, this isn’t that bad. For what was clearly a pre-manned spaceflight depiction of spaceflight, not bad at all. I didn’t have time to finish it, but I will at some point.

I’d never heard of it. But I have heard of Stanisław Lem. I read His Master’s Voice years ago – nearly 40 years, so I don’t remember much – and saw the 1972 movie version of Solaris, ditto, though I’ve read it’s rather different from his novel. Turns out First Spaceship on Venus is the American title of Silent Star (Der Schweigende Stern), an East German-Polish production from 1960. Lem wrote the source book, The Astronauts, a few years earlier. The American version is dubbed into English and, I understand, cut in length.

Also, if you want, you can listen to the original soundtrack of Der Schweigende Stern. YouTube’s quite the place.

More idle curiosity for the day: checking ticket prices for Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks, who are appearing the same night at Soldier Field in June. The closest ticket for sale is pretty close indeed: front section, third row. For resale, actually. There are a scattering of resale tickets available in that section, with those on the third row listed for $3,791 + fees. Oddly enough, fourth row seats list for $2,794 + fees. At least for now. So one row ahead, where you can catch a slightly better glimpse of Mr. Joel’s shiny pate, is worth about a grand more?

I expect that represents dynamic pricing of some kind, facilitated by soulless algorithms in the service of maximized shareholder value, and varies from moment to moment. But I was never one for front row seats anyway, or even third or fourth. Checking further, I found that you can bring your opera glasses and sit way back for $179. As it happens, I’ve seen both of those entertainers; separately, in 1979 and 1980. I don’t remember what I paid. A handy inflation calculator tells me that $179 now is the equivalent of $47 back then. I’m positive I didn’t pay that much, total, for both tickets.

Visiting Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago last month, I took an image of carved text that puzzled me a bit, but then I forgot to look it up.

“Ecumenical Year?” I remembered to look into that more recently, and realized that it must refer to the first year of Vatican II, which was indeed 1962. Formally in English, the meeting was the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican.

Naturally, when one hears of Vatican II, it’s time to listen to “The Vatican Rag.”

The council might have been 60 years ago, but that song never gets old.

Wendy at Cary’s

Posted on March 5, 2024 by admin

Heavy rain and thunder last night, big puddles today and cool air, though no freeze. The first crocus is out. It actually bloomed just ahead of the rain.

My goal on Sunday was to make it to Cary’s, a bar on Devon Avenue on the northwest side of Chicago. I made it. As bar neon goes, this one’s the top, put it in the Cole Porter song.

Mask décor inside. Pixar: there’s a movie in bar masks that talk while the bar is empty.

Mostly, though, it’s a Chicago bar.

The bar stands out in the area, because much of the surrounding neighborhood is South Asian in character and it isn’t. Nearby establishments include Lahore Food & Grill, Hyderabad House, Pak Sweets, New Bombay Hair & Beauty Salon, Devon Gurdwara Sahib of Chicago, Musk & Oud (gift shop), Amar Carpet, Chandni Exclusive (bridal shop), Mehrab Supermarket, and many more.

Back when we lived in Chicago, in both the late ’80s and mid-90s, we’d seek out Indian food in the area, but I hadn’t been there recently. Not much seems different these days, despite the sizable expansion of the South Asian population here in the suburbs: on an unusually warm March evening, Devon and the nearby streets were alive, a constant churn in and out of the shops, along the sidewalks and out into the streets, where cars had a tight fit. I’d have wandered around Devon on foot more on Sunday, but I arrived only in time for the beginning of the show at Cary’s, because of the aforementioned detour en route, and the fact that parking is near impossible on Devon, and almost so on the streets around it, whose spaces are restricted mostly to residents.

I went not because I go to bars that much, but to see my old friend Wendy (even when this picture was taken in ’87, I’d already known her about five years), who was slated to play guitar and sing. On stage, she’s Jenn. I also got to see the opening act. He and his band — a bass player and a drummer — were also quite good, though Dylanesque isn’t quite how I’d describe him musically, though he’s got that the Dylan in Greenwich Village look on the poster, at least.

Wendy only plays in public occasionally, and I’d never heard her more than noodle on the guitar. I’m glad to report she plays guitar very well, and has a fine singing voice, though her lyrics were sometimes hard to hear over bar noise. Still, she was especially lilting in holding long notes seasoned by her Nashville background: that cut through the noise.

I told her these things afterward. I was glad I didn’t feel compelled to politely lie to her about her talent because, fortunately, she had some.

Years ago, in the summer of ’82 in fact, other friends and I went to a Nashville bar, I forget which one, to see a fellow one of us knew slightly, an aspiring musician, who had invited us for an open mike night. He was, I think, a waiter or bartender, but of course, every other waiter or bartender in Nashville aspires to musical success.

He must have aspired more specifically to be like Glenn Fry or Don Henley, but was a failure. Just didn’t have enough in the way of musical chops; even we could hear that. We were polite about it, though. I wonder whether that was doing him a disservice, but I expect in the fullness of time, he found out.

Pre-Thanksgiving Assortment

Posted on November 21, 2023 by admin

Regards for Thanksgiving, back to posting November 27 or so. In the meantime, eat, drink and be indolent.

I woke up this morning from some sort of dream, trying to remember these three kinds of to-dos: shindigs, hullabaloos and hootenannies. I’m pretty sure I could call Full Moon Bluegrass a hootenanny. Otherwise, my experience with them is thin. Also, I forgot about hoedowns. The unconscious is a funny place.

Gentle rain last night, and all through the early morning. I cracked the window very slightly to listen as I drifted off. Still raining when I went to the bathroom not long before dawn. Maybe that put me to mind of folk music parties.

A couple of recent flags, including one that I saw in full flutter after I entered Tennessee just north of Nashville.

A distinctive design. The three stars represent, of course, the Grand Divisions of Tennessee, a thing unique to the state. Distinct legal entities, but also acknowledging historical and cultural distinctions.

I remember when Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander joined Garrison Keillor on stage during the pre-broadcast warmup for A Prairie Home Companion when the show came to Nashville in 1985. The governor played a little on the piano – he was really good, as I recall – and bantered with Keillor.

When it came up that Alexander had grown up in East Tennessee, Keillor said, “You guys were on our side during the war, weren’t you?”

In Texas, I saw a Space Force flag on a pole. First time ever.

That arrowhead design looks suspiciously familiar. Can’t quite put my finger on it.

Heard some blatherskite on the radio recently about planning one’s “celebration of life.” There’s that absurd euphemism again, standing in for funeral. Apparently it’s caught on. I suspect that undertakers and their marketing people are behind this.

I insist that my survivors, if they want to have some kind of formal event to mark my shuffling off this mortal coil, call it a funeral. It doesn’t need to have any of the trappings of a conventional funeral here in North America, just the term.

That got me to thinking, “mortal coil”? Sure, it’s Shakespeare, Hamlet in particular, but why coil? First place to look: my copy of Onions, which I haven’t opened in entirely too long. That is, a volume called A Shakespeare Glossary by C.T. Onions. I have a revised edition published in 1986.

Coil, n.

1. Noisy disturbance, tumult. Comedy of Errors: What a coil is there, Dromio?

2. Fuss, ado. Much Ado About Nothing: yonder’s old coil at home. Hamlet: When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

So a coil’s a noisy bit of business. An Elizabethan meaning worth bringing back, but I doubt that’s going to happen. Thus your mortal coil would be the fuss of being alive, of which there’s a fair amount, including sound and fury and signifying… a different play, one that I won’t name.

Doors Open Milwaukee 2023: A Nondescript Warehouse, Home to an Enormous Theater Organ

Posted on September 24, 2023 by admin

A summerish weekend as the fall equinox came and went. That made Saturday a good day for Doors Open Milwaukee.

The main event on Sunday was planting the enormous number of tulip bulbs that Yuriko acquired at a yard sale recently for a small price. If half or a quarter or even a tenth produce blooms next spring, there will be a nice display.

How would one start, and profit from, a virtual tulip bubble? Just wondering. Sillier things have happened in our time.

This was the sixth Doors Open for me. Yuriko didn’t feel like it this year, so it was a solo shot up to Milwaukee and back for me. When I was reading about possible sights at Historic Milwaukee’s web site, I came across one for Carma Laboratories, maker of lip balm Carmex.

“The 40,000 square foot building was built by Carma Laboratories approximately thirteen years ago specifically to function as a warehouse and distribution center,” Historic Milwaukee said. “The style of the building is a generic contemporary warehouse made of concrete.”

Well, fine. Why should I go there? Next paragraph:

“Carma Laboratories, the manufacturer of Carmex Lip Balm, is home to the world’s largest theater pipe organ, [which is] housed in its distribution center. The organ contains 6,000 pipes, a concert grand Steinway Piano, numerous percussion instruments and a set of handbells all playable from the organ console.”

Really? Rarely has such a bland opening paragraph been followed by such a wowzer. I knew I had to see that. It was my first stop Saturday morning.

Ordinary exterior indeed.

It’s one building in a district of suburban offices and distribution centers in Franklin, Wisconsin, which is south of Milwaukee proper.

Inside.

The organ is the vast enthusiasm – hobby is hardly the word – of the president of the company, Paul Woelbing, who was on hand to tell visitors about the organ, which has been under construction by the Century Organ Co. for years and isn’t quite finished even now. But enough to belt out a rousing version of the main theme from Star Wars (1977), which was playing when I walked in the door.

“When Woelbing and his late father, Donald, were inspecting a vacant warehouse for the expansion of Carma Labs, the acoustics of the cavernous building gave him some inspiration,” says the American Theatre Organ Society. “Woebling, a collector of paintings, old Harleys, and self-playing musical instruments, naturally thought of a pipe organ for the space.”

Woelbing at the console, programing the instrument ready for another piece, but I forget what.

Not Toccata and Fugue in D minor, though I’m sure that played at some point during the day. Still, the piece that did play was equally rousing, seeming to fill the space from top to bottom. Theater organs aren’t an enthusiasm of mine particularly, but I know a powerful instrument when I hear one.

This recorded concert from this summer gives some idea of its power and range, but not quite like being there.

The sound is one thing, but I’d say the icing on the cake is the location. We’ve all heard organs of various sorts in various places — including a few theaters — but in an obscure warehouse in an obscure corner of the Midwest? Sweet icing indeed.

The organ’s many parts occupy only part of the warehouse. The rest is exactly that – warehouse space, which was roped off to us casual visitors on Saturday.

“The nucleus of the instrument is the 3/15 Wurlitzer organ that was originally installed in Chicago’s Nortown Theatre,” says ATOS. “Denver organ enthusiast Dr. Bruce Belshaw purchased the organ in the 1950s and installed it in his home, before it made the current move to the Franklin, Wisconsin warehouse.

“With many additions, the now 90-rank instrument has extensive tonal colors. The organ has been used for annual company holiday parties, and Woebling’s desire is to share the instrument and music with the community.”

Old World Wisconsin

Posted on July 25, 2023 by admin

On Canada Day this year, we were in Wisconsin. If we’d been in Canada, our Jasper Johns moment probably wouldn’t have happened.

Back up for a little context.

I looked him up, and remarkably, Jasper Johns is still alive at 93, and doing art as of only a few years ago.

We saw the patched 48-star flag on a clothesline of a re-created farm yard at Old World Wisconsin, our main destination during our early July southern Wisconsin dash (a one-day out, one-day back trip, according to my idiosyncratic definition).

Old World is a large open-air museum near Eagle, Wisconsin and Kettle Moraine State Forest. I’ve known about the place for years, probably since camping at Kettle Moraine in the late ’80s, but had never gotten around to a visit, not even with small children in tow. My Wisconsin completist impulses kicked in during the dash, so Yuriko and I went to Old World.

A unit of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the place is large: about 480 acres, with about 60 antique buildings from across the state, and a new brewpub, which I suppose counts as a welcome revenue stream for the nonprofit. Some are town buildings, others farm structures. Many immigrant styles are represented: Danish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, and Polish, and well as in-nation New England and African-American settlers in Wisconsin.

Among the town buildings is St. Peter’s (1839), the first Catholic church building in Milwaukee.

That wouldn’t be the last prominently placed stove we’d see. These were pre-HVAC buildings, after all. Makes me glad for the luxury of central heating, as much as I complain about winter.

More town structures.

The red one is an 1880s wagon shop from Whitewater, Wisconsin.

An 1880s blacksmith shop, with a smithy re-enactor.

And the band played on.

Among the farm structures, you can find this Norwegian schoolhouse.

With a spelling bee ongoing when we dropped in.

Antidisestablishmentarianism wasn’t a word in the bee, though it really isn’t that hard, come to think of it. Scherenschnitte: now there’s a tough one. Unless you’re German.

More farm structures.

More all-important stoves for those long winters. And cooking.

There were a few farm inhabitants, such as chickens and cows. We were able to sample some wonderful ice cream made from fresh milk. Also, we encountered an animal I called Future Bacon.

Yuriko chided me for that, but I’ve seen her eat bacon.

Uncle Walt’s Band, 1982

Posted on June 12, 2022 by admin

Nearly two years ago, media distribution company Orchard Enterprises provided 21 songs to YouTube, cuts on a collection called Uncle Walt’s Band Anthology. Subtitled — and it really captures the essence of that band — “Those Boys From Carolina, They Sure Enough Could Sing…”

Sure enough. The three-man band, Walter Hyatt, Champ Hood and David Ball, all originally from Spartanburg, SC, existed for a few years in the early 1970s and again in the late ’70s and early ’80s. They produced four original albums, did solo work, and played with a good number of other musicians in Austin and Nashville over the years. Those few reviews one can find about Uncle Walt’s Band tend to characterize them as Americana, and I supposed they were — a mix of American styles by South Carolina musicians who honed their skills in Nashville and Austin both.

Though fondly remembered by a few, especially other musicians, wider fame eluded Uncle Walt’s Band. I already knew that, but the point is hammered home by looking at the view count for some of their wonderful songs on Anthology — such as the fun “Seat of Logic” (only 533 views after two years, not 533,000 as by rights it ought to be); the winsome “Ruby” (only 569 views); and the sweetly melancholic “High Hill” (only 344 views); and on and on.

Forty years ago this evening I had the exceptionally good fortune of seeing Uncle Walt’s Band live in Nashville. “Crystalline sound,” I wrote in the diary I kept at the time, along with other unhelpful scraps when it comes to remembering it now. Still, the show was some of the best live music I saw in college, or ever really. A less fanciful way to characterize the gentlemen who played for us that evening would be near-perfect three-voice close harmony, with guitar, fiddle and bass.

I had taken a month-long trip not long before that evening, returning to Nashville less than a week earlier, with plans to attend summer school, but not take it all that seriously. That is exactly what I did and I don’t regret a moment of it. While I was away, my friend Dan had obtained the records Uncle Walt’s Band (a renaming and reissue of the 1974 Blame It On The Bossanova) and An American in Texas (1980, the same year the band appeared on Austin City Limits).

To put it in music biz terms, those records were in heavy rotation around the house where Dan and Rich lived, and where Mike, Steve and I were constant visitors that summer. As soon as I returned to Nashville, I heard it too. Then we got wind of the fact that Uncle Walt’s Band was playing live on Saturday the 12th at a place called The Sutler. We couldn’t believe our luck, and we weren’t about to miss that.

At time I called The Sutler “a tavern next to a bowling alley, a bakery and a restaurant,” which it was, though I didn’t record its address on 8th Ave. South in the Melrose neighborhood. That was further than we usually went, though (I know now), not that far from campus. Dive might not quite have been the word for the place, but it certainly wasn’t posh, and while I’m pretty sure I went there a few times in later years, I only remember seeing UWB there, and the joint’s last iteration closed only this year. It was standing room only for a while, but eventually we got a table. We stayed for the whole show. My mind’s eye can visualize it even now, and my mind’s ear can hear a crystalline echo of their sound.

UWB broke up for the last time the year after we saw them, but their musical presence that summer made an impression on me. Enough that in the late ’80s, when I was visiting Austin, I noticed a small poster somewhere advertising a show by Walter Hyatt at the famed Waterloo Ice House on on Congress Ave. We have to go to that, I told Tom Jones, whom I was visiting, and so we did.

During one of the breaks in that show, I asked Hyatt where I could buy copies of the two records that I remembered so fondly from the summer of ’82 — I think I even mentioned the show at The Sutler — since finding obscure music was more of a chore in those days. He gave me an address to send a check to, and soon after I did, I received an audio cassette of Uncle Walt’s Band and An American in Texas, which I listened to periodically over the years and own to this day.

Forty years is a long time, and time has taken its toll. Walter Hyatt died in the ValuJet Flight 592 crash in 1996 and Champ Hood died of cancer in 2001. David Ball has had a successful career as a country musician and is now pushing 70.

One more thing: I didn’t realize until the other day that the subtitle, “Those Boys From Carolina…” was no random pick. Lyle Lovett, Texan of distinct hair and winning ways with song, mentioned UWB in a song he recorded long after the band was gone, but before Walter Hyatt died, the amusing “That’s Right, You’re Not From Texas.”

Those boys from Carolina,
They sure enough could sing.
But when they came on down to Texas,
We all showed them how to swing.

Not This Year

Posted on March 15, 2020 by admin

We’d planned to see The Pirates of Penzance this year in Hyde Park on Saturday, by the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Co. We’ve been seeing their shows most years for a while now, since Yeoman of the Guard in 2015.

As you’d expect, the show was cancelled. As recently as a week ago, I didn’t think that was going to happen, but the country is going into no-frills mode faster than expected. In an age besotted with video and other impersonal entertainment, it’s interesting how many diversions still involve numbers of human beings coming together at the same place at the same time.

A pretty minor inconvenience for us, though I expect the cast and crew were upset all their work came to nothing. Much more than diversions have been disrupted. Ann’s school is out this week, ahead of its scheduled spring break next week, so that makes two weeks off — at least. After that, “remote learning.” Maybe. Down at UIUC, no more physical classes for Lilly till further notice. I’ll bet there will be no graduation ceremony in May, which would be too bad.

For me, I’m going to work at home. Wait, I’ve been doing that for almost 15 years now. In the early days, I remember telling people on the phone, usually someone I needed to interview, that they might hear noise in the background without warning. The noise of a young child. I can’t remember the last time I warned anyone about that. These days, occasionally the dog makes noise, but even that’s a rarity, since her idea of a good time is lounging quietly on a flat surface.

So I’m amused by the current flood of articles about working from home — it’s great, it’s terrible, How To Do It, What Equipment Do I Need? Sheesh. Ours is a time of overthinking. My expert opinion? It’s OK. Mostly tolerable. Helps not to mind hours and hours by yourself, which seems to unnerve some people. Can’t say I feel isolated, since my job — and the adverb is correct — is literally to find out things from other people, which often enough means talking to them. I suppose not everyone could say that about their at-home jobs, however.

The best part of working at home is the commute. The office as a work environment was invented by smug morning people. A one-or-so-minute commute (there’s always a bathroom stop first) is a way to ameliorate the tyranny of office hours. Working times are roughly the same, but there’s no back and forth.

In lieu of The Pirates of Penzance on stage, here are some YouTube clips of everyone’s favorite scene. Mine anyway. Impersonal entertainment will have to do for a while.

Recorded at the Stratford Festival in 1985. Many of its shows were cancelled just Friday.

From the 1983 movie version.

At the English National Opera more recently, in 2015.

The tune with other words. Couldn’t very well leave this out.

Tom Lehrer is still with us, last I heard. Next month he will be what I hope is a hale 92 years old.

The Hot Sardines

Posted on November 19, 2019 by admin

Usually one visit to the city per weekend is enough. On Saturday, the trip to see The Merchant of Venice involved a drive to a part of town where parking is easy and an El stop is nearby, so we could ride the rest of the way to a neighborhood with far more difficult parking.

Not long ago, I found out that the Hot Sardines were going to be in town the same weekend — but on Sunday — so I decided that I wanted to see them, too. At least driving all the way was an option, since the band was playing at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln Square. We parked a half a block away.

The only reason I know about the Hot Sardines is YouTube. To be more exact, YouTube algorithms that suggest one thing and another. When it comes to music, that’s almost always very little outside a narrow range, but occasionally something unusual gets through. Probably listening to electroswing a few years ago made the bots suggest the Hot Sardines’ to-the-ceiling-lively version of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.”

They’re just as lively in person. Hot is fitting. Hot jazz and lots of it, in a roughly two-hour show with no intermission and two encores, with frontwoman Elizabeth Bougerol and bandleader Evan Palazzo each hopping their jive — peppy vocals and animated piano, respectively. Other band members jammed on trombone, trumpet, bass, tenor saxophone, clarinet and drums, sometimes including conga. Often enough each of them had solos in which to shine, and shine they did, every jack jazzman of them.

There was also a fellow on stage with no instruments. Sitting in a chair in his fancy duds and fine hat. (Of course, they all wore fancy duds — Bougerol in gold lame and Palazzo in powder blue.) As soon as the first number started, his feet started tapping, and you noticed the taps on his shoes. He was the band tap dancer. Did he ever move, sometimes just sitting down, but often on his feet, moving all over the stage, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap with arms and legs moving every which way, adding his distinctive rhythm to the band. Who thought of adding him? (A.C. Lincoln by name.) What an inspiration.

Some tunes were more familiar, some less, all good. Among others, the Hot Sardines played “Some of These Days,” a Sophie Tucker number, “Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home,” “Lulu’s Back in Town” and “Caravan” (take note of A.C. Lincoln doing his thing in that last video). “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” was the first encore.

As we entered the theater, I noticed a few small signs here and there explaining that the show was partly sponsored by the European Union. Odd, I thought, then forgot about it.

About mid-way through, Bougerol, who had a pretty good between-song patter, mentioned it. “Seems like one of our sponsors is the European Union,” she said, making a gesture that told us, How strange.

“Must be because I’m a French national,” she said.

Listening to her speak or sing in perfectly idiomatic and unaccented English, you’d have no clue. Apparently she was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris, but spent time in Ivory Coast and Canada while growing up — as well she might, since her grandfather was a Canadian jazzman named Bobby Gimby, who wrote a song I might have sung as a six-year-old had I lived in Ontario instead of Texas.

Bougerol did four or five of songs in French — just as jazzy as anything in English — but the only one whose title I know was “I Wanna Be Like You,” or whatever the French equivalent is. She said she knew it from watching the French version of Disney’s Jungle Book as a child.

The band lineup is a little different in this video, but the tune and lyrics are the same.

She also told the amusing story of how the band formed. Namely, the beginning of the musical collaboration between her and Palazzo, who met by answering the same Craigslist ad for a jazz jam. They discovered they both knew a relatively obscure Fats Waller song, “Feet’s Too Big,” and played it at the jam.

Then they played it for us in the audience.

Now that’s a fun song. Fats Waller’s recording of it is here.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: live music