Obvious things you never knew

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Read that subtitle. That’s right, Peter Green “founder of Fleetwood Mac.” Lots of people don’t know about this guy. I didn’t know about him for years. Sure, I’d heard about every single cut off of “Rumors.” I’d heard “Black Magic Woman,” and “Oh Well,” but I’d never heard about this guy. Funny how things go in the world. This is the guy who started it all, and this is the guy who B.B. King said, was the only guy “who ever made me sweat.” He was good. He was damn good. He was a colossus, and comparatively few people have heard of him.

Fleetwood Mac started out as a stone blues band, and they were outstanding. There are plenty of recordings of the original lineup. You can Youtube them, read this book, buy one of the first four CDs, whatever. It’s out there, though, and it’s fantastic. Green was outstanding on “Man of the World, Lazy Poker Blues, Stop Messin’ Round,” and “Jumpin’ at Shadows,” aside from the previously mentioned tracks that actually receive radio airplay on occasion. (No, Carlos Santana did not write “Black Magic Woman,” though that is a great take on the tune.) This is not so much a plea or campaign for converts, but if that sort of thing interests you, check into it. It could be an introduction to some incredible music.

March Madness

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My city hosted the final four this year. I was playing a gig downtown on Saturday night of the big weekend just blocks from the arena. The gig started at 11pm, but parking and traffic was such a mess that it was strongly recommended that I go down there at 3:30 in the afternoon(!!!) simply to unload my gear! You can’t tell so much in this photo, but it was indeed pretty crazy. There were people everywhere (peek into the right and left corners of the photo), and traffic was kind of nuts. It was kind of cool, kind of “ugh.” I did get my stuff unloaded, though the whole thing was a little dicey. I basically called the bar from my cell and said, “I’m at the light right now in front of your bar. All the parking is blocked off, and I need to get my crap loaded in. Help!” They had someone open a side door for me, and I put my hazards on, literally ran into the bar (as well as you can run through drunken knots of people with fifty pounds of equipment), worried the entire time that they were already ticketing and towing my vehicle (it was said that the city was mercilessly towing everyone), threw my stuff on stage, and then ran back out to the car, jumped in, and sped off. It felt like a bank heist! I escaped with my own vehicle! Woohoo!

Portrait of Gloom

Luxury.

Luxury.

Friday night the band played a place we haven’t played in probably ten years. Bossman told me, “I think they’ve cleaned the place up a little since then.” The creepy thing about that statement is that it implies that the place, in fact, needed cleaning up. Once I got there, I pretty much decided that “cleaning up” meant replacing the broken glass in the front door and moving the stage to another side of the room. I’m not that picky, though. We got paid, and the sound on stage was actually really good. I was a bit troubled by the bottle of Listerine I saw in the milk crate that held all the microphones. This antiseptic implies that the mics, in fact, needed cleaning up. I tried to keep my mouth away from mine. Fortunately, I’ve been at this a few years, and I handled it with grace and aplomb and still sounded like a million bucks.

Like the photo of the back room? It was either the band’s back room, or a storage closet for the Listerined sound equipment. Busted and completely filthy mirror in front of me, something resembling a busted paper towel rack on the right wall, and on the left wall there were a bunch of handprints made with what was either blood or red paint. I didn’t investigate further. The floor was special as well, but I was so exhausted after the second set break that I fell asleep on it anyway, keeping my head propped up with some of the drummers soft cases.

I live the life. I do, I do.