words from the belowgosphere

Roger Ebert attends film festival - Yahoo! News

2007-04-25T22:56:00.000-05:00

Roger Ebert attends film festival - Yahoo! News

How wonderful to see Roger Ebert appearing in public with verve & confidence, after recent surgeries to his salivary glands & right jaw left him unable to speak. I consider him one of our smartest, greatest film critics, & a person who lives life with optimism & joi de vivre. Few writers have taken movies more seriously, or held them to higher standards, than Mr. Ebert.

His Overlooked Film Festival was held at the Virginia Theater in Champagne, Illinois, near his hometown of Urbana. The AP story (written by David Mercer) posted on Yahoo! News reports:

Ebert walked slowly through the 86-year-old movie house, where he said through his wife that he had watched "Gone with the Wind" and his father saw Marx Brothers films.
In an e-mailed note to reporters and a column in the Chicago Sun-Times earlier this week, Ebert spoke frankly about his appearance, saying he had been warned by friends that showing up would invite both unflattering photos and unkind coverage.
"So what?" Ebert wrote. "I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks."
He wrote that he now awaits another operation that he hopes will restore his speech....

Festival organizers set up a recliner at the back of the theater for Ebert. He wrote in his column that he needed it for back pain but said through his wife Wednesday it served another purpose.
She read from a statement, to laughter and applause: "I will fulfill a lifelong dream to have my own La-Z-Boy chair in a movie theater."

i wonder if these are good...Ultra Premium Coil Natural Ottoman Futon Mattress - Futon Mattresses

2007-04-05T01:14:00.000-05:00

i want to sleep like a goblin

Ultra Premium Coil Natural Ottoman Futon Mattress - Futon Mattresses

rumblin' 'n' bumblin'

IKEA :: Product Display

2007-04-05T00:18:00.000-05:00

IKEA :: Product Display
Hey i want one or two of these for my new home i've gotta get ';>+
--g.

YouTube - Praise You - Fatboy Slim

2007-03-20T23:23:00.000-05:00

YouTube - Praise You - Fatboy Slim

This 1999 video for Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" by director Spike Jonze is still hilarious & fun. Jonze appears as dance leader & "choreographer" "Richard Koufey", while a bald Fatboy Slim (aka Norman Cook) can be seen briefly, walking up behind the troupe & laughing. Enjoy. Feel the love.

"Pink Elephants on Parade" video played by Sun Ra Arkestra

2007-03-09T18:09:00.000-06:00

I have always loved this psychedelic segment of Disney's great film, Dumbo. Here is the clip, from YouTube, sync'ed with a wonderful performance of the song by the jazz visionary Sun Ra & his Arkestra, from 1989. The track originally appeared on Stay Awake (A&M Records, 1989), a compilation album created by Hal Wilner, for which he invited various artists to perform tunes from Disney shows. Shortly afterwards, Sun Ra recorded an entire album of Disney numbers, titled Second Star to the Right.

(This sync was created by one "Enjin" at either www.livejournal.com or http://yeahoksure.com/elbert, but the links to those URL's seem to be gone. )

The original Dumbo segment can be seen on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdwVqGGbXno.

New Order - "True Faith" (Morning Sun)

2007-02-13T00:52:00.000-06:00

I really love this track; the lyrics pull me in, the music sweeps me off my feet. This entire album of theirs is wonderful--Substance, from 1987, collecting to CD a number of 12" singles, along with this new song, titled "True Faith":

True Faith

I feel so extraordinary
Something's got a hold on me
I get this feeling I'm in motion
A sudden sense of liberty
I don't care 'cos I'm not there
And I don't care if I'm here tomorrow
Again and again I've taken too much
Of the thing that costs you too much

I used to think that the day would never come
I'd see the light in the shade of the morning sun
My morning sun is the drug that brings me near
To the childhood I lost replaced by fear
I used to think that the day would never come
That my life would depend on the morning sun

When I was a very small boy
Very small boys talked to me
Now that we've grown up together
They're afraid of what they see
That's the price that we all pay
Value destiny comes to nothing
I can't tell you where we're going
I guess there's just no way of knowing

I used to think that the day would never come
I'd see the light in the shade of the morning sun
My morning sun is the drug that brings me near
To the childhood I lost replaced by fear
I used to think that the day would never come
That my life would depend on the morning sun

I feel so extraordinary
Something's got a hold on me
I get this feeling I'm in motion
A sudden sense of liberty
The chances are we've gone too far
You took my time and you took my money
Now I feel you've left me standing
In a world that's so demanding

I used to think that the day would never come
I'd see the light in the shade of the morning sun
My morning sun is the drug that brings me near
To the childhood I lost replaced by fear
I used to think that the day would never come
That my life would depend on the morning sun

Kt Tunstall's "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree"

2007-02-02T01:26:00.000-06:00

KT Tunstall is a terrific singer-songwriter from Scotland, of Scots-Irish-Chinese parentage. I first heard Tunstall's name last year on American Idol, when Katherine McPhee sang her song, "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree", very well, barefoot & accompanied by two men playing box drums (cajones). It was one of McPhee's--or anyone's--best performances of that Idol season, & it gave KT's career a well-deserved boost in the USA.
You can find Tunstall on the Web at www.kttunstall.com, www.myspace.com/kttunstall, & www.virginrecords.com/kttunstall/.

This is a live acoustic version of that song:

This is the radio single version:

These are the lyrics, pleasingly mysterious & contradictory, with a wonderful opening sentence:

Black Horse & The Cherry Tree (KT Tunstall)

(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
Well my heart knows me better than I know myself
So I'm gonna let it do all the talking.
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
I came across a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree.
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
I felt a little fear upon my back
I said don't look back, just keep on walking.
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
When the big black horse that looked this way,
Said hey lady, will you marry me?
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
But I said no, no, no,no-no-no
I said no, no, you're not the one for me
No, no, no,no-no-no
I said no, no, you're not the one for me
(ooooo,woo-hoo)
And my heart had a problem, in the early hours,
So I stopped it dead for a beat or two.
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
But I cut some cord, and I shouldn't have done that,
And it won't forgive me after all these years
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
So I sent her to a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree.
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
Now it won't come back , cause it's oh so happy
And now I've got a hole for the world to see
(woo-hoo,woo-hoo)
And it said no, no, no,no-no-no
It said no, no, you're not the one for me
No, no, no,no-no-no
Said no, no, you're not the one for me
(ooooo,woo-hoo) (not the one for me, yeah)
(ooooo,woo-hoo)
Said no,no, no,no, no, no, no
You're not the one for me
Said no,no, no,no, no, no, no
You're not the one for me
Big black horse and a cherry tree
I can't quite get there 'cause my heart's forsaken me
Big black horse and a cherry tree
I can't quite get there 'cause my heart's forsaken me

My Beginnings of Brian Eno

2007-02-01T00:49:00.000-06:00

In 1977, while I was a junior at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, three of my new friends introduced me to the music of Brian Eno, on the LP's Here Come the Warm Jets & Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, from 1973 & 1974. What I heard changed my musical life that day, & I have never ceased to consider Eno one of the very special wizard-geniuses of song & music. Listen to these two ridiculously amazing pieces: "Baby's on Fire" from his first solo album, Warm Jets, recorded shortly after he parted company with Brian Ferry & Roxy Music; "Golden Hours" from his third solo effort, 1975's Another Green World. (The guitar solos on both are played by Robert Fripp.)

Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here"

2007-01-31T01:11:00.000-06:00

Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" for my son Miles.

Reggae masterpiece POLICE AND THIEVES

2007-01-25T00:34:00.000-06:00

This is one amazing piece of creation by Lee "Scratch" Perry, with Junior Murvin singing from Scratch's Black Ark circa 1976. I nearly lost my ever-lovin' mind the first time I heard it, about a year ago!
I hope you can dig it half so much.

POLICE & THIEVES
(Junior Murvin-Lee Perry)

Police and thieves in the street (oh yeah)
Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition
Police and thieves in the street (oh yeah)
Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition
From Genesis to Revelation yeah
And next generation will be hear me
All the crimes committed day by day
No one try to stop it in any way
All the peacemakers turn war officers
Hear what I say
Hehehehehehehey
Police and thieves in the street (oh yeah)
Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition
Police and thieves in the street (oh yeah)
Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition
Oh yeah
All the crimes committed day by day
No one try to stop it in any way
All the peacemakers turn war officers
Hear what I say
He-he-he-he-he-he-hey
Police and thieves in the street (oh yeah)
Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition
Police and thieves in the street (oh yeah)
Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition
Police and thieves
Police...

Bright Eyes' "At the Bottom of Everything"

2007-01-18T04:40:00.000-06:00

This standalone flash player is called radio.blog. It comes from a music file sharing site I discovered this week, www.radioblogclub.com. I don't know much about it, but I like it.

"Lose This Skin" by Tymon Dogg with The Clash

2007-01-18T03:44:00.000-06:00

This wild Irish rose of a song has been one of my favorite pieces of popular music since I first heard it in 1980 or so, on The Clash's Sandinista! LP. Tymon Dogg was a musician & busker from Liverpool who gave his young friend Joe Strummer some of his early lessons on guitar & ukelele. Mr. Dogg wrote this mysteriously wonderful song & sings it with a commitment & abandon that have never ceased to charm & touch me.

LOSE THIS SKIN
(Tymon Dogg)

Come with me, I won't hide
We're going on a ride
We meet each day, use time to see
While we're young and almost free
I've got to lose this skin I'm imprisoned in
Got to lose this skin I'm imprisoned in
Do not turn or hate to see
All the things you think we've got
Do not turn or hate to see
What happened to the wife of Lot
We're alone or so they say
We're not on our own in that way
When we're alone it's real tough going
We tend to take a part in someone else's play
Come with me, I thought he said
But that's not him anymore, he's dead
What's it like to be so free
So free it looks like lost to me
I've got to lose this skin I'm imprisoned in
Got to lose this skin I'm imprisoned in

Tymon Dogg is alive & well & still making music. Visit him on the web at www.tymondogg.net, www.tymondogg.com, & www.myspace.com/thequikening.

George Michael's Guilty Feet

2007-01-17T01:11:00.000-06:00

Like it or not, here's a great chorus of songwriting by George Michael (plus a couple of lines of verse, also well-expressed):

I'm never gonna dance again

Guilty feet have got no rhythm

Though it's easy to pretend

I know you're not a fool

I should have known better than to cheat a friend

And waste a chance that I'd been given

So I'm never gonna dance again

The way I danced with you

Time can never mend

The careless whisper of a good friend

"Guilty feet have got no rhythm" Wow. I have read on the 'Net that Mr. Michael was 17 when he wrote "Careless Whisper".

"Rounders" Is a Great Movie

2006-10-23T02:27:00.000-05:00

Matt Damon is one my favorite actors in a generation or two. (He was born in 1970.) Two of my favorite roles for Damon have been in two of my favorite films of recent years. First is Matt's turn as the title character in Good Will Hunting (1997), directed by the remarkable Gus Van Zandt, from a touching script written by Damon & his childhood Boston pal, co-star Ben Affleck, which richly deserved its Oscar for original screenplay. Second is John Dahl's fascinating card-shark tale Rounders from 1998. The brilliant script by David Levien and Brian Koppelman is set at a quizzical tone by Damon's high-stakes, all-gravy turn as card pro/law student Mike McDermott, well-matched by Edward Norton, & also by John Turturro, Famke Janssen, Michael Rispoli (as Grama), & the wild John Malkovich (as Teddy KGB). Please add to these two movies, then, if you're still with me, two more Damonisms: Francis Coppolla's 1997 Rainmaker (as John Grisham's idealistic young lawyer Rudy Baylor), & Anthony Minghella's 1999 The Talented Mr. Ripley (as an astonishing chameleon named Tom Ripley). That's at least four amazing film performances by Matt Damon in three years or so. But I mustn't forget Spielberg's heart-boggling Saving Private Ryan (also 1998). Before any of these, Matt played beautifully in Courage Under Fire for Edward Zwick (1996). There were also a couple of strange Ocean movies (2001 & 2004) that looked like they were a lot of fun to make, & three portraits of Bourne (between 2002 & 2007). What's more, I haven't even yet seen the recent Syriana or The Departed.

Hurricane Katrina Survival Celebration Verse in Honor of the Biloxi Vietnamese Boat People

2006-10-01T01:38:00.000-05:00

(As my father often said, "...like unto that.")

Boat People: Haiku & Song
Dignified & Surviving Hurricane Katrina

--written at Biloxi, Mississippi, Vietnamese Boat People's
Community Celebration on September 30, 2006--

Dragon Men dancing
like fans on fire
waving to the people

Balloons float away
Will float down later
Balloons all over--
O Say Can You See

Ask the Dragon Drumming Boys
To tell you the
Name of their Drum
They say "It is a Drum."
(They said it was a Drum)
Said a Big Drum
Yeah!

gtm10/01/06

Susan Enan song on "Bones" tv show

2006-09-14T02:12:00.000-05:00

It seems I am one of many web-ones/we-Bones who discovered singer-songwriter Susan Enan by way of the excellent Fox tv show BONES Wednesday night. The ending of the episode quite fittingly featured Enan's sad-lovely song, "Bring on the Wonder". Like many others, I Googled the lyrics of the chorus & got only one return--the interesting blog of Susan Enan's friend, one Bananie, titled associated in random thought (www.bananie.com). There I found a quickly growing set of comments from the many people who had also Googled as I did & found only the one result. Obliging Bananie promptly posted a second comment about the song, directing the curious to Enan's myspace page, www.myspace.com/susanenan where an embedded player offers both that song & another. I ardently recommend a visit thereto.

Entirely without permission, I quote the entire song:

Bring on the Wonder (written by Susan Enan) (I presume)
I can't see the stars anymore living here
Let's go to the hills where the outlines are clear
Bring on the wonder, bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

I fell through cracks at the end of our street
Let's go to the beach, get the sand through our feet
Bring on the wonder, bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

Bring on the wonder, we got it all wrong
We pushed you down deep in our souls for too long

I dont have the time for a drink from the cup
Let's rest for awhile till our souls catch us up
Bring on the wonder, bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

Bring on the wonder, we got it all wrong
We pushed you down deep in our souls, so hang on
Bring on the wonder, bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

Don Vappie, "American Creole" New Orleans Musician

2006-09-08T01:06:00.000-05:00

This link will take you to the Louisiana Public Broadcasting web page about a wonderful documentary I watched on PBS last night, American Creole: New Orleans Reunion, about the efforts of Don Vappie, N'Awlins banjo specialist & all-around musician (from a family boasting professional musicians for the past century!) to regroup his Creole Dixieland jazz band, The Creole Jazz Serenaders, as well as his life, after Hurricane Katrina. (I know the feeling.)

The film contains feel-good music, sobering & uplifting emotions, & fascinating glimpses into the cultural & racial fabric of America's unique city. The comments of Vappie's family & friends regarding their mixed ethnicities should inspire all us Americans to think long & hard before we spout off any supposed certainties on race & color. To quote the above-mentioned web page:

While Don was displaced by Katrina for only a month, more than half of his eight sidemen saw their houses destroyed. All were forced to evacuate to distant cities. Don scrambles to keep his band alive by taking what gigs he can. On the road, Don wonders if he would be better off living somewhere else, like New York. But can he really leave New Orleans, his home? Don’s questions lead him to friends, mentors, and fellow musicians, each affected by Katrina in his or her own way. They offer views on what it means to be from New Orleans and what it means to be a Creole of Color, a racial and cultural mix of African-American, French, Spanish, and Native American ancestry, with a rich history in Louisiana. With even his family members unable to agree, the answers he finds are as varied as the cultures that make up his heritage.

As a musician, my own favorite moment from the documentary has to be the joke-riddle that Don tells about his instrument:

Q.--What's the difference between an Uzi & a banjo?
A.--An Uzi only repeats 40 times.

Triage has busy weekend

2006-08-08T13:30:00.000-05:00

TRIAGE had a busy Saturday, August 5th, in Ocean Springs--we played for the pre-opening-opening of the Ocean Springs Fresh Market in the morning under dark clouds (but no rain), & then to a packed house at Coffee Fusion Bubbletea that evening. Both gigs were lots of fun, & we felt very appreciated all day.

At Coffee Fusion, we were blessed to have in attendance the mother of rhythm guitarist/vocalist Robert Weathersby; she turned 89 years young last week, & her daughter & son-in-law graciously brought her out to hear us. (My own mother made her 82nd B-day last week, but she lives in California with my brother & his wife, so that's a looong drive.) [These photos were taken at Coffee Fusion that night.]

The next scheduled dates for Triage are: a return to Darwell's in Long Beach on Saturday, August 29th, 6:30-9:30pm; & by special invitation, a benefit performance at Pelican Landing in Moss Point for a Hurricane Katrina one-year observance dinner on Tuesday, August 29th (more details on this soon).

Charles Mingus quote on musicians playing

2006-07-15T13:06:00.000-05:00

In the documentary film, Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog, about the life & career of the great jazz composer & bassist, an interviewer asks Mingus & his longtime drummer, Danny Richmond, what they are saying to each other in the "musical conversations" they appear to be having when they play together, "talking to each other on your instruments." Mingus' answer is one for the ages, a truth for musicians & everyone else: "Uh, Fuck you, you dirty motherfucker. You son of a bitch. Sometimes I love you truly. Sometimes Mary had a little lamb." (I must say that this fits well my relationships with most of my former & current bandmates.)

Here's a link to the official Mingus website: http://www.mingusmingusmingus.com/

###NEWSFLASH!!!###TRIAGE GIGS for June+July+Beyond***###

2006-06-18T00:50:00.000-05:00

The above link takes you to the Triage website, designed by our Margie, & it's worth a click or two; but I think I am scooping her with this breaking info about our latest confirmed dates to triage folks via our soulful brand (if I do say so) of folk-n-rock.

We played a very fun & well-received (if I may say so) gig in Long Beach last Saturday at DARWELL'S, a terrific restaurant in old downtown, a couple of blocks up from the beach. (Lovely Long Beach, Mississippi, was the birthplace & hometown of my late father, Tommy Meek, just a short 50 miles or so from my present home in Jackson County, at the eastern edge of Mississippi's re-arising Gulf Coast.)

Darwell's friendly Front-of-the-House man, Papa D., not only expertly aided us in fine-tuning our soundcheck when we arrived; at night's end he invited us to come back for a standing gig every other Saturday night, to play from 7:00 to 9:45 or so (vis LBCity regs for noise!). We said YES, natch; so we'll see you there if you drive on down for some good good food food (NOTE: Alcohol not served--BRING YOUR OWN BOTTLES if you like) at Darwell's palace--or, er, place--I'm sorry, I lost my concentration remembering the award-winning & mouth-watering shrimp creole prepared by the chef of the house, Papa D.'s own son, Dale. The smoke-barbecued pork tenderloin chopped up in guitar-god Kelly's sandwich was equally delicious. [I'll supply last names & Darwell's exact location & phone number next draft; I believe they are on East 1st Street.]

However, this next week only, we are not playing there Saturday, but Friday night the 23rd, & we can't wait. We might even start before 7:00--by the time we're all set up & tuned, Robert & Kelly are ready to "do it to it". The very next night, Saturday the 24th, we will be at Coffee Fusion Bubble Tea in Ocean Springs, on Bienville Blvd. (aka Hwy 90), a lively, 'Net-wired spot we always enjoy visiting. After that, we return biweekly to Darwell's, beginning Saturday, July 8th, & we'd love to see YOU at both venues. Thanks for reading.

on MSNBC.com - Entertainment Weekly's List of 25 Most Controversial films - #1: Gibson's "Passion of the Christ"

2006-06-10T04:22:00.000-05:00

The link above should go to the MSNBC.com story on EW's new list of 25 most controversial films (MSNBC's is the only online story I've found yet, & lists only about half the flicks.-?- It was not on EW's current display yet-?!- I did find mention of the top 10 from this list on a Detroit News weblog page.) Anyway, I don't know anything about the selection processes used to make this list, yet, but it seems to me a pretty good set of choices. (The full list appears in the June 16, 2006 issue of Entertainment Weekly.)

1. Passion of the Christ (2004) dir. Mel Gibson
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971) dir. Stanley Kubrick
3. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) dir. Michael Moore
4. Deep Throat (1972) dir. Gerard Damiano
5. JFK (1991) dir. Oliver Stone
6. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) dir. Martin Scorsese
7. Birth of a Nation (1915) dir. D. W. Griffith
8. Natural Born Killers (1994) dir. Oliver Stone
9. Last Tango in Paris (1973) dir. Bernardo Bertolucci
10. Baby Doll (1956) dir. Elia Kazan
13. DaVinci Code (2006) dir. Ron Howard
16. United 93 (2006) dir. Paul Greengrass

Also in top 25 , in unknown order(giving us 16 of 25 for now):

The Deer Hunter (1978) dir. Michael Cimino
Basic Instinct (1992) dir. Paul Verhoeven
Do the Right Thing (1989) dir. Spike Lee
Kids (1995) dir. Larry Clark

As I said, a pretty good list. In fact, the first two would have been my first choices, as well. I believe Bertolucci's (& Brando's) Last Tango in Paris, which was still quite a hot topic when I first saw it, in a commercial theater in 1977 in Jackson, Mississippi, must go up there near them; evidently, the same is true for Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo' (1975)--of which I have read & been told by friends, but have seen only scenes. I would immediately also think of Natural Born Killers, Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppolla), & The Deer Hunter. Also tough to watch were Sam Peckinpah's extreme Straw Dogs (1971) & David Cronenberg's crazy Crash (1996). I suppose Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979, Terry Jones), Birth of a Nation, Da Vinci Code, & Basic Instinct are controversial to somebody. But in 1932 Tod Browning's Freaks was fairly freaky, as it remains today. & any number of offerings by John Waters (especially early on, with Divine &co.) have been definitely freaky over many years.

Two final notes to Never Forget on this subject of controversial movies:

The truly original--& hugely originary--power of the great King Kong of 1932, by Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, more mysterious & amazing than ever, after 74 years!, superior to what any outright remake, by the definition of remake, could ever intend to be, or actually be. I mean, how would it be possible to conjure in today's film audiences the same frisson, the same stunned delight, that Kong's first fans must have experienced in their local movie houses, staring up at the screens in amazement at the noisy spectacle unreeling overhead, still unaccustomed as they were to talking pictures, & all blissfully unaware of the astonishing cinematographic developments that lay in store for audiences 70 years thence?
The unprecedented effect of terror on a segment of the population caused in 1938 by a radio broadcast: Orson Welles' Mercury Theater production of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. The unforeseen panic was provoked by the broadcast's detailed verisimilitude, its seeming credibility as an urgent, realistic news program, clearly creating, as an entertainment event, a superior structure of suspense, & drawing greater controversy & audience response, than either filmed version.

a coolfriendly blog on blogger

2006-05-28T22:30:00.000-05:00

With thanks to NeoN D. SuRFeR for these swipes from his blog, blog'n at san onofre:
I love the marquee sign:
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

& check out the reference to the recent surprising medical study results suggesting that long-term marijuana smoking does not lead to lung cancer! He links to a report at http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org.

To top it all off, he even posts for all our edification Mr Ben Franklin's 12 Rules, beginning with this marvelous trio of gems:

Finish better than your beginnings.
All education is self-education.
Seek first to manage yourself, then to manage others.

David Bowie's HUNKY DORY

2006-05-26T03:00:00.000-05:00

Hunky Dory
If this works, this link will play the entire fascinating early album by David.

couple of cool trax thanx to napster.com

2006-05-17T15:29:00.000-05:00

(I should probably point out that in order to hear these, one must "register for free Napster.com service" by giving Napster one's email address & a little more, but it is free, & it's not requiring an intrusive level of info, to me. The offer for which I signed up gives me 5 free online, full-length plays--that is, streaming audio, not to be saved--of every track Napster.com has to offer, advertised at many millions of songs. The actual pay versions of Napster, which do include permanent files to download & save to any media, seem like good deals to me, too, but I have not taken them up on any; & no, I am not being compensated for anything I say here by any sponsors of the advertising sort. Of course these tracks may be found at many other fine music services available online, & one should check out a variety to see what suits.)

Without further ado, here are one old favorite that still shines strangely, & one slightly strange new discovery that shone for an American Idol finalist as well as for its originator:

Buddy Holly by Weezer, from the album Weezer: Still crazymazingly weird after all these years.
What's with these homies dissin' my girl? / Why do they gotta front? / What did we ever do to these guys / That made them so violent?

Black Horse And The Cherry Tree (Radio Version) by K.T. Tunstall, from the album Eye to the Telescope: This singer & her song were new to me when I enjoyed seeing Katharine McPhee belting out something about a black horse & a cherry tree, if I heard her right, on American Idol 2 or 3 weeks ago. I listened to a few other Tunstall tracks on Napster, & read her All Music Guide bio there--very interesting: as a young girl in the 1980's, KT listened to Ella Fitzgerald for singing lessons; & an early favorite album was David Bowie's Hunky Dory! I say, she had better make some music worth a listen! My favorite line is the singer's self-empowering reply to the horse's proposal, "You're not the one for me."

Downed live oaks will live on at Mystic Seaport

2006-05-16T02:46:00.000-05:00

I realize this news story from 2 months ago is fairly ancient by web time, but I love the idea that truly ancient Mississippi coast oak trees felled by Katrina (many probably closer to 200 years old than the 100 quoted in the story) are being used to help restore this whaling ship for educational purposes, & wanted to share it with whomsoever may be reading my blog. This entire story is very interesting, but my favorite aspect is how much satisfaction, or, indeed, healing, was experienced by the property owners in having the opportunity to give their trees to this worthwhile cause. (I have edited, rearranged, & omitted parts of this CNN story, without altering any material facts, to suit my focus.)

Downed live oaks will live on at Mystic Seaport, By Marsha Walton, CNN

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 Posted: 2156 GMT (0556 HKT)

MYSTIC, Connecticut (CNN) -- Live oak trees, many more than 100 years old, are connecting residents of storm-ravaged Mississippi and experts at Mystic Seaport, a Connecticut maritime museum.
Hurricane Katrina uprooted hundreds of live oaks, but the trees will not go to waste. They'll be used in the restoration of the Charles W. Morgan, one of the last wooden whaling ships in the world. The Morgan was built in 1841 and made 37 voyages before retiring in 1921 ...

"Live oak in the age of wooden ships was the best available ship timber; it is strong and dense and more importantly it grows in gentle curves that are almost analogous to the frames in a ship's structure. So it's really excellent material for shipbuilding," said Quentin Snediker, shipyard director at Mystic Seaport. "The fact that we are able to salvage the material from the storm brings a little bit of good in light of the terrible human tragedy," he said. "It's a small compensation, but many of the landowners feel some reward in the fact that the trees that are so beloved and so much a part of the cultural heritage of the region will find new life in our ships," he said.

Snediker had collected live oaks damaged by earlier hurricanes. Wood from Hurricane Hugo in 1989 was used to build a re-creation of the schooner Amistad. Damaged trees from Hurricane Ivan in 2004 were collected for the Morgan project.

But with the vast loss of life and human suffering from Katrina, Snediker was reluctant to ask about the trees, because so many people in the region had suffered so much. Fortunately, the people came to him. Several weeks after the storm, on the same day, two individuals, one from Long Beach, Mississippi, and one from Mobile, Alabama, contacted Mystic Seaport to offer trees uprooted on their property. Snediker said he knew then that the tree owners, who felt so helpless about so many aspects of the hurricane rebuilding effort, felt a "new life" for their beloved live oaks brought something positive out of the tragedy.

On his first trip to the Gulf coast after the storm, four women stopped to talk as he was spraying the word "SAVE" in orange paint on some downed live oaks. The women all agreed to give the trees from their own demolished properties. "Despite the fact that they had lost all of their worldly possessions, their automobiles, they were just really almost giddy at the fact that we were preserving the trees that had ... defined their experience living down there for so long," Snediker said...

Some of the salvaged trees spent nearly 200 years shading Beauvoir, the Biloxi home and now the museum of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. While many of Davis' historical papers were moved to safety before the hurricane, several buildings on the Beauvoir property, built in 1852, sustained serious damage. In spite of their own reconstruction needs, the museum was quick to offer its downed trees when they learned of the Mystic Seaport project. "Non-profit entities are always looking for ways to assist one another with their special projects," said Patrick Hotard, director of Beauvoir. "This is just a wonderful use of wood from the Jeff Davis property to help preserve the old sailing vessels that are part of our national heritage," he said...

The restoration of the Morgan will begin in the fall of 2007, and is expected to take about three years. This wood will be used to rebuild parts of the frame, and the stern and stem posts... Visitors to the 75-year-old seaport museum will be able to watch the restoration process as it unfolds. And Snediker says that scraps of the trees too small to be used in the restoration will likely be turned into small mementos honoring the donations from Gulf Coast residents.

A few closing notes: The article says that 30 truckloads of coast trees have been taken to Mystic, & that over 200 of the trees have been milled there. Beauvoir is of course only a couple of miles west of where I used to live, before Katrina, along the beach in Biloxi, & yes, those trees were wonderful. A Meek ancestor of mine is buried in the Confederate cemetery there, the widow of a Civil War veteran named Meek; I have not been back there since the storm to check on it. Another note: the city of Long Beach, mentioned above, was my father's hometown; Thomas Edgar Meek was born there in the early '20's (at the very same time the whaling ship Morgan in this story was ending its seagoing career) & graduated from Long Beach High before enlisting in the Army Air Corps in 1941. (He died in 2001, in the next-door-city of Gulfport.)

21st Century Conductor

2006-04-23T23:53:00.000-05:00

21st Century Conductor is the blog of Paul MacAlindin, a professional conductor & musician in Cologne, Germany. He writes eloquently about his life as a classical musician in today's world, also focusing on many topics of an extra-musical nature.

Burning Spear Blog

2006-04-17T03:21:00.000-05:00

Wow! I have just discovered that Mr. Burning Spear himself blogs on blogger.com, from St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. Upfull good man still spreading the love & admonitions of Jah: Thank you, Sir, for your prescence. (I see after a little searching that many folks online are remarking on their happy surprise at finding Mr. Spear out here with us on the web. Wonderful!)

Back online after physical line problems repaired at home; new Triage gigs & pics

2006-04-16T18:48:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a little while because of telephone connection problems outside our house, which was only pinpointed last week when we upgraded from basic dial-up to DSL service here at Ullom Keep.

Now that's taken care of, I am able to announce the next dates my band, TRIAGE, will perform at COFFEE FUSION BUBBLE TEA CAFE on Highway 90 in Ocean Springs (Mississippi, of course): Friday, May 5, & Saturday, June 24, 2006, from 7-10pm. The photo is of Charlotte, Kelly, & me playing there in January.

Also, we hope to see some folks at the Ina Thompson Moss Point Public Library's MUSIC FAIR on Bellview Avenue, Saturday, May 6th. Between 10am & 7pm, local musicians will be performing "family friendly" music, & selling their CD's. It should be fun.

Here's an action photo of the future TRIAGE drummer: Charlotte's son, Jared, playing hard on his first drum set. Work it, boyyee!!!

From where I sit, behind the drums & percussion

2006-04-02T05:55:00.000-05:00

From where I sit, behind the drums & percussion, my band, Triage, keeps getting better & fresher every time we play for people. I take this as a good sign, as we’ve been playing the same basic set (with numerous variations) since November--for 5 months at least. This Triage-band-experiment-thing has so far remained fun & exciting for me since we started it, soon after Hurricane Katrina; it has certainly been what Kelly calls "musical triage" (meaning a finding of "where it hurts" & a beginning of inner healing) for me, & I believe, for my bandmates, as well: Robert (guitar, lead vocals), Kelly (lead guitar, vocals), & Charlotte (lead vocals, tambourine, shakers); also, Kathy, our special guest congaist/percussionist, seems to have really enjoyed the few times she has performed with us. Here’s the set-list (& some photos) from our latest performance, at the Herb & Garden Festival in Ocean Springs, Mississippi:

TRIAGE (Charlotte, Robert, Kelly, Gary, plus Kathy)
Set-List (with 2 songs written by Charlotte) March 2006
Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay (Steve Cropper-Otis Redding)
Horse with No Name (Dewey Bunnell)
Fields of Gold (Sting)
Here Comes the Sun (George Harrison)
Mississippi (Charlotte Cooper)
Country State of Mind (Roger Alan Wade, Hank Williams, Jr.)
Landslide (Stephanie Nicks)
Lonely People (Dan & Catherine Peek) [by America]
Passionate Kisses (Lucinda Gaye Williams)
Shower the People (James Taylor)
Umbrella (Charlotte Cooper)
Teach Your Children (Graham Nash)
Feelin’ Alright (Dave Mason)
You’ve Got a Friend (Carole King)
Give Me One Reason (Tracy Chapman)
Closer To Fine (Amy Ray -Emily Saliers)
Bobby McGee (Foster-Kristofferson-Mehdi)

We played straight through the list, ending with a rousing, stomping "Give Me One Reason". Our hour was gone, 15 songs, the festival day over, 5pm; we didn’t get to the last 2 numbers, or the dozen & more others we were ready to go with should the situation arise. We felt very good about it all; we’d even had a generous "sound man", who worked well with us at an indoor gig last fall, come by to give us a critical listen at our last practice; & an old friend of the band handled the sound board for us, & for other acts, there at the outdoor gazebo stage at the Herb Fest.

Everyone told me I sounded good & played well; Robert, especially, told me that was the best I had ever played with them, as he has on the last 2 or 3 gigs–but I think he says it because it’s true, & I agree: we are certainly improving as a live band, as we get to know each other better as musicians. Charlotte sounded great, & she really cut loose toward the end, it seemed. I also know it was the very best that Kathy & I have played together as a "percussion section" with Triage. Kathy played her congas, tambourine, triangle, shakers, claves. I played drumset, woodblock, shakers, a little chime. My drumset is an Apollo (an inexpensive Japanese brand from the 60's & 70's) 5-piece, red sparkle finish, but I am using a djembe in place of the snare. The djembe has a synthetic shell & a good, humidity-resistant, rawhide head, with bright finger & brush sounds, & a deep bass tone. Since Triage plays only acoustic guitars & percussion (so far), I usually employ brushes, or very small wooden strikers & mallets, much more than I use drumsticks.
Our audience seemed to be having a really good time listening to us, dancing or swaying, or moving just a little--to my beat! my band! Pretty cool, really. There’s no doubt Charlotte can get folks to moving their feet & their hips, & Kathy gets into the crowd & gets the crowd into the music. Steady & ready, Kelly & Robert keep on keeping on, playing & singing so fine. We even had extra shaker players in Tom & Dan, bystanders extraordinaires. We felt this was a very good gig, one of our best. (I recorded most of it on my little audio cassette voice recorder; not much audio quality, but enough to hear how we sound; I must listen to it before I can report on it.)

11 of my favorite movies with 1 extra

2006-03-26T02:13:00.000-06:00

11 + 1 OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES:
12 films completely committed to their premises

Since our BLOGGER profile & other such handy services are always asking about our favorite this & that, I'm posting this list of films I have loved watching, for several years or decades. It is not a for-sure "Gary Meek's 10 favorite" or "10-best" list; it is not claiming to be balanced & perfected, but it is great stuff!

(Listed chronologically, followed by country of origin, director, & top-billed leads.)

King Kong 1932 (U.S.) Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack. Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong. How amazing this must have been when it was new! Yet its power is evidently undiminished today, over 70 years later!
Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein 1932, 1935 (U.S.) James Whale. Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Elsa Lanchester. Talk about undiminished power! James Whale's 2 immortal Frankenstein films may never cease to draw adherents to their warped fervor, & to conquer all comers.

Top Hat 1935 (U.S.) Mark Sandrich. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers. The word sublime resides in the Astaire-Rogers section of Hollywood history, in at least 4 films.
Citizen Kane 1941 (U.S.) Orson Welles. Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten. I cannot watch it without learning, without thinking, without smiling.
To Have and Have Not 1944 (U.S.) Howard Hawks. Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Lauren Bacall. William Faulkner & Jules Furthman contribute one of the greatest scripts of the 40's, in one of the slyest, funniest movies I know.
8 ½ 1963 (It.) Federico Fellini. Marcello Mastroiani, Claudia Cardinale. The post-modern cinema ars poetica.
Last Tango in Paris 1973 (Fr.-It.) Bernardo Bertolucci. Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider. The post-modern cinema ars poetica. Oh, um, Breakthrough experimental masterpiece that proved shattering to many viewers, & opened (eventually) a way into so much (good & bad, of course) that has followed.

Chinatown 1974 (U.S.) Roman Polanski. Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway. One of the greatest scripts ever, richly deserving the Original Screenplay Oscar for Robert Towne.
That Obscure Object of Desire 1977 (Sp.-Fr.) Luis Bunuel. Alejandro Rey, Carole Bouquet, Angela Molina. Neither descriptions nor conceptions can impart the experience of surrendering one's will to Bunuel. Do it now & be wise. Be wise & do it now.

Naked Lunch 1991 (Can.-Brit.) David Cronenberg. Peter Weller, Judy Davis. If you still possess, dear reader, a mind or a will of your own, after living Bunuel's dreams, you may yet be too weak to resist giving them over to the tender care of the keeper of the Black Meat & the drinker of the Mugwump juice.
Barton Fink 1991 (U.S.) Joel Cohen. John Turturro, John Goodman. None of these titles lend themselves to easy abstracting. Here the Coen Brothers' alchemy transforms Bunuel, Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, & Arthur Miller, with Bogart, John Huston, Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder, as well as Kong, Frankenstein, Kane, Fellini, & Polanski, into a still-point of flaming perfection & weirdness.

photo details of grandpa (me) & Morgan

2006-03-25T02:58:00.000-06:00

Here is another photo of my precious angel-fairy grandbaby, Morgan, standing in front of me at our local mall in the city of Gautier, Mississippi, this past Halloween. (Generally speaking, Gautier, in Jackson County, was mine & my 2 sons' hometown, B.K. [Before Katrina].)

Being a grandfather is the best, greatest thing I've ever known. I love Morgee so much I can't talk or write about her without going out of my head, so I'll stop now...Soon...I should say that Morgan is not my grandbaby anymore, she's 28 months old.

At Halloween she was 23 months; she had a wonderful time going from store to store collecting goodies & seeing other children & adults in costumes & decorations. We met quite a few darling angels, fairies &/or Tinker-Belles, winged cherubim all.

Below is a cropped image of my face taken with a cool Minolta Vectis Weathermatic underwater camera, using 24mm 400-speed APS Fujifilm. (I'm just saying, for the record; I know diddly tech-specs about photography.) I wanted to see what it would look like if I took a picture of my face at arm's length with the panoramic view & the zoom both turned on. Looks akilter.

My post-Katrina benefactor/roommate/landlord, Mark, found that camera in a debris field he was cleaning up on the beachfront, buried in muck. He brought it home & cleaned it up, got a new battery, I got some film, & it has taken every picture I've posted here at BLOGGER so far, except my profile with glasses (it comes from www.triagemusicgroup.com, my band's webpage). I've used it to document Triage's performances, my 2 drumsets I've found since the storm, my grandchild's & children's rapidly changing lives, my household life here in Moss Point (same Gulf Coast, same county) with Mark & his 2 girls. A camera well worth its ~$175 list price.

my first song, Laughin' Blues

2006-03-24T04:57:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I wrote my first song– quite by surprise to myself, I must say–a blues song, a real song which I can imagine my band giving a try; & then I immediately recorded myself "singing" it (I really cannot sing) while quietly tapping on my djembe (It was 4AM; I wasn't alone in the house). Then I listened to it & laughed my ass off the entire time (only a minute & a half or so, I guess).

Laughin' Blues (Zen Blues)

(G. T. Meek, 2006)

(1) I got the blues but I’m laughin’

I got the blues but I’m laughin’

I’m laughin’ but I got the blues

(2) My woman done told me...

–You laughin’ at me?

My woman done told me...

–You laughin’ at me?

My woman done told me

She settin’ me free

(3) I got the blues ‘cause I’m laughin’

I’m laughin’ ‘cause I got the blues

You give me a glass of water, now baby,

I’ll throw it all over you

–& me too

(4) Laughin’ blues, laughin’ blues

Laughin’ blues, laughin’ blues

Blue laughin, laughin blues

As I reread & re-listen to it, I realize I may have written (or transcribed, because that's what it felt like I was doing) a fairly deep & cohesive & cogent lyric. Obviously, the notion of laughing at suffering & suffering through laughing would represent a Zen-like contradiction; or could be seen as a contemporary koan, as, certainly, could many blues verses before mine. Also, later, I say I have the blues because I’m laughing, & I’m laughing because I have the blues, which kind of twists it a little. Then, I start to say the old line "My woman done told me...", 2 times, each time interrupting myself with a sudden question seemingly addressed to my listener: "You laughin’ at me? This paranoid scene of encounter with the singer’s audience or interlocutor performs or enacts some extensive & somewhat ambiguous playing (playing music, playing with words, playing with rhetoric, with relation). Is the laughter real, is an Other there present and speaking? & if so, is the laughter prompted by the listener’s prior knowledge of what the woman’s "done told him"; or is it prompted by the listener’s knowledge that "my woman done told me" is a long-used formulaic blues line that "you can’t do anything new with"? It is indeed that very fact, of that particular line as a formulaic cliche or set-piece that it would seem to be impossible to make new, that I believe I have made some headway toward overcoming in this lyric, as follows. By anticipating & calling forth the question, by raising the objection himself, like Socrates, like a Zen master, &, as well, because he’s already laughing, the singer is able to bring the listener into the dialogue first, so to speak, by laughing at himself for his own use of such on old saw before the other gets the chance to, & thus being the one who deflates his own self-seriousness in this poking of fun at one’s own writing. By being the one who first addresses the other, who initiates communication, & who then uses it to simultaneously deprecate himself & invite the Other into the song, to respond to the song, to speak, even, the singer of the lyric achieves at least a partial reversal of the author’s own belatedness, my latecoming to the tradition of the blues, by thus participating in the earliness & firstness of the (mostly unknown) originators of such lines. (This is the same temporal overcoming which my "favorite" critic Harold Bloom speaks of as central to the Jewish myth of existence, a return to the scene of Creation itself, & so to origins.) (This is, of course, not to even mention the question of whether my lily-white, middle-class, "Liberal-guilty" Southern ass has any ^%$#@+= business writing any blues songs, Zen-clever or not.)

The concluding lines, "My woman done told me/She settin’ me free", put a new spin on things, because in Zen terms, the freedom I receive could be a positive experience & value, an opening & lifting up rather than a betrayal or a harmful or painful experience, not a severing but a joining at a higher level, a different, or differently seen, relation, such as a relation of muse to artist, or of guru to devotee (that is, the relation of shaktipat, in Hindu or Kundalini terms).

The glass of water that ends up getting the singer & his "baby" wet may be said to introduce a sexual &/or mystical element (to flow a pun). Water has often been seen as representing feminine or hidden or unconscious or subconscious or religious or creative themes, & it surely calls up imagery of a sexual nature in this context, with the singer, the man, casting the woman as the cause of his "glass of water", "giving" it to him, & making him spill it "all over you/–& me too". I added the "& me too" because I didn’t want it to be too straightforwardly conventional & literal about the sexuality, I wanted it to be able to really be a glass of water, as well. At the outro, I don’t know whether "Blue laughin’" means anything. I guess it could be read as someone’s name, either the singer or his woman or the listener. I just like it.

Musically, I think I didn’t follow a very regular form. Are the last 3 lines of verse (3) the "change" part? Or is verse (2) the bridge? Is every verse a refrain? I don’t know. I’ll have to count the measures & so forth, & get my band mate Kelly to help me work on the music of this some more. Fun!

Oxford English Dictionary online, & a good quote from Sartre

2006-03-22T04:38:00.000-06:00

The Oxford University Press, publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), has a useful website (www.askoxford.com) which offers free access to the contents of the OED & other databases, allowing one to get the definitive definitions to words, & answers to various types of questions about words, languages, & more. Also available is a "word-a-day" email service, worthwhile for building one's vocabulary.

On that site, I found an interesting line by Jean-Paul Sartre, a writer & thinker who had a great influence on me in my college days, an influence still at work in me. His famous early novel, Nausea, was one of the 2 or 3 most powerful novels I had read by the time I reached the age of 21. His later book, The Words, is one of his shortest, simplest statements, a small book, large with meaning & value. I do not know the source of this quote on the OED site, but it certainly expresses one of the chief notions Sartre deals with in Nausea, that habitual actions must, by definition & by the nature of humans, lose much of their power over time, lose much of their meaning & value, to the person who practices them. (I'm not sure I completely agree with that now, having lived an additional quarter-century, & thus, having practiced a number of habits that have probably helped me to make it this far.)

Good habits: they are never good, because they are habits. --Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

I'm a writer, so of course I can't write...

2006-03-22T03:44:00.000-06:00

I’m a writer, so of course I can’t write; of course I’m having trouble getting started.... Eldest rhethorical rhoutine in the hbhookh....Uh. Sorry. I only mean that I don’t yet know quite what tone to take, where to pitch it, as I always insist on saying at the outset & ever repeatedly return to, when I write about writing, or when I write at all, it would seem. For here I am, again, talking tone, taking a tone, which is indeed the problem of where to pitch it, of receiver, audience, lecteur, doppelganger, interlocutor, an other.

Writing a blog, or attempting to, about one’s life or one’s views or one’s self, to be read by an unknown number of unknown readers–at least at first, as now for me–is a little like trying to write a love letter to a complete stranger–or a complete strangler, for that matter. I say "I’m a writer" like I am one, like it means something about my specialness or my history or something (& maybe it does, but that does not necessarily negate the point I’m about to get to); to say "I’m a writer" only claims that one writes, is writing, has written. Has struggled with writing. Has sailed through writing. Has flown, fallen, written.

I’m a writer. So, of course, I can’t write. I can’t write for preparing to write. I can’t write for figuring out how to write. I can’t write for meaning to write. / Write to meaning for write can’t I. If I can mean what I write, can’t I write what I mean? I know what it means to write. Do I know what I mean to write? Is it mean to write? Is it right to mean? Mean to mean? Right to write? What am I? Who is it? Where is You?

My first link to another's blog, with reference to drums

2006-03-17T02:00:00.000-06:00

These days I am searching the Web for references to serial numbers of Slingerland brand drums from the 60's or earlier, because I recovered a 4-piece Slingerland set from a Hurricane Katrina refuse pile here in Moss Point a few months ago. This drumset (a bass drum, 2 ride toms, & a floor tom) was sitting by the roadside not a mile from my post-Katrina adopted home, outside a very small church building under restoration. They were sort of on top of a small pile of debris pulled from the building, very clearly meant to be taken by the cleanup trucks, so I figured, Who am I to refuse this gift from the Universe? If I left them for someone else, they might get rained on, etc.... When I stopped the car to look, I was amazed to discover that they were being thrown out, for, lo and behold, they were vintage Slingerlands, older & heavier (that is, better-made, of higher quality) than my old 2-piece Slingerland starter set my parents bought me new around1970, when I was in the 8th grade. They appeared to be sound, uncracked, if slightly dusty. In fact, the evenness of the dust on the insides of the drums proved they had not been exposed to water in the storm, or on the side of the road! The finish of each drum is a white metal wrap I've read about (it looks as if they have since been painted white again, by an owner, poorly). The shells look to be the 3-ply type with the wooden reinforcing ring I've read about. The hoops are StickSavers; the badges, black & (fading) gold Niles, Illinois; the serial numbers on the badges are 5 (five) digits long--in the 78-80,000 range, which I have not yet read anything about (I've seen a good bit about Slingerlands from the 50's & 60's with numbers above 100,000).

So if anyone who reads this knows anything about these Slingerland drum serial numbers, I would appreciate a heads-up.

Well, while surfing-searching for this, I came across this website by a young, working drummer, www.billyrhythm.com. He has a blog, Time Requires an Argument, which I will now make my first link to a blog: http://www.billyrhythm/com/traa.html. I like his sense of humor so far, he owns some nice drums, he knows more than I do (which is nearly nothing) about blogging & web design (my brother's field, also), & he has a few cool quotes scattered around, such as:

"I love defenseless animals, especially in a good gravy."--Stephen Wright

Check him out.

picture of my granddaughter Morgan & my mother

2006-03-12T17:00:00.000-06:00

At left is Morgan eating,

age 20 months,

with my mother, Bobbye, age 80,

looking on, last July, in Gautier,

about 7 weeks before Hurricane Katrina.

Below is a photo of my

beautiful grandbaby

Morgan Ann Michelle Meek,

at her baptism last November,

shortly before her 2nd birthday

(November 23; her birthday will be

Thanksgiving Day this year).

This is the first poem I wrote after Hurricane Katrina changed my life.

2006-02-25T14:39:00.000-06:00

The Next Day? (A Storm Poem)

FOR ALL MY TRUE TEACHERS

By yielding overcome

By bending remain straight

By emptying be filled

By breaking become whole

By losing gain…

…Therefore

Choose emptiness to find fullness

Embrace the formless to master form

Practice humility to attain greatness

Claim nothing to receive the bounty of the world

--Lao Tzu, from Tao Te Ching, #22 (traditional numbering)--

for Madame Katrina & for Gertrude Stein

What did I lose?

What?

Did I lose?

Did I loose.

What did I loose?

What did.

I lose.

What did I?

Lose loose.

What did I loose lose?

What did I lose?

Loose

I did

what

Did I lose.

for Michael Stipe/R.E.M. & Adrian Belew/King Crimson

A way not to look at it

& a way to look at it.

A way not to think about it

& a way to think about it.

A way not to talk about it

& a way to talk about it.

for Liz Waldner & Dylan Thomas

Did I gain? Could

I have gained?

Would I do it? Who

could do it? Pained

did it.

Did what? Painted

what picture of hell?

Descent into water?

Fall into what well?

Did I

swell.

Lucky. Lucky? Was

who lucky now storm

is over. Past blows

are over. That form-/

-er

flowed.

… Flowered? Not yet; soon,

I think. I swooned yes, yes-/

-terday. Who is someone

(within, without, with none), yes

no one no

wonder?

for Emily Dickinson

A something happened. It

happened to me. I saw

it, felt it enlarge my

horizon. My eyes &

ears filled to brimming of

a monumental size.

for Miles & Tiffany & Robert

The next day, the next day,

The next day, the next day;

The next day, the next day,

The next day. The next day

The next day I awoke

to amazement on the

faces looking into

mine. The funny thing was

I was looking at them

with the same amazement.

for John Berryman & Liz Waldner

“Huffy Henry hid….”

From me. From him. –From Hen-

ry. My writing is rife

with quest(ion)ings, on(i-

on)/r/ings, goings on, on-

going abstractionisms.

–Keep it up; see what hap-

pens. See what hap ends; how.

--gtmeek--

Moss Point, Mississippi

days 9-10 a.k. (after Katrina)

(September 7-8, 2005)

Note: Lao Tzu lines adapted from Ray Grigg, page 89, The New Lao Tzu:

A Contemporary Tao Te Ching, 1995, Charles E. Tuttle, Boston.

2nd entry, short on time

2006-02-22T16:05:00.000-06:00

Here I am extemporizing again. You see, the problem is that I do not own a computer, have never owned one, but I have been fortunate enough to have frequent access to one or another Internet-connected PC over the last decade or two. Only, not right now, so that I find myself a fortunate citizen of a fortunate nation who is able to avail himself of public access to the Internet at my local library, the Ina Thompson Moss Point Library (www.jgrl.lib.ms.us). Only, that access is limited to one-hour sessions, which drastically reduces my capacity to blog at much length, inexperienced as I am in this particular realm. Plus, without even word-processing capability at my post-Katrina home, I must pre-write my blog entries longhand--oh my god! It's a pure wonder I can scratch up & peck out some few letters & symbols that may have a chance to cohere into a semblance of thought.

Let me see whether I can scratch up a link to my band, Triage, in which I play percussion & drums. Our website is www.triagemusicgroup.com. I am afraid the links to our music may not be working now, but if you are on the Mississippi coast, please give us a listen if you get the opportunity. We play & sing acoustic versions of a variety of "baby-boomer" music & some original songs of our own. Our name describes our desire to use music to help heal ourselves & our community of fellow Katrina Survivors.

Here's a photo of me from the Triage website:

One more note for today: I don't like "meek of the week" for the name of my blog. I'm thinking of changing it to "belowgorising" or "words from the belowgosphere".

my debut on the blogosphere?

2006-02-18T13:43:00.000-06:00

In the oft-repeated words of the late Bill Hicks, "Who'd'a thunk it?" Here am I, a good modern boy, typing my ass--I mean my mind--onto the world wide wonder web thingy, out there...somewhere.

Where Am I Exactly? Where am I on the Web, & what does that mean? Also, what does it mean that I am alive doing this now, with both my sons & both my granddaughters & my mother & aunt all alive & well after The Storm, Hurricane Katrina, when I could have so easily died rather than lived when my apartment came apart around me just north of the beach in Biloxi, Mississippi on that August morning?

These & other Great Questions about my Great Life past & future will be the beginning content of my 'blog, this 'blog, this writing I'll be doing. We shall see what we see.