no movie tonight

The geniuses at Edwards Theater would rather have a paying customer wait in a long line instead of having the decency of posting a paper sign on the ticket window advising: sold out. Then they tell the customer...be damned! Which means we'll wait for the video later.

Bad mood tonight, but not as bad as our viewing partner.

saying no to a 1995 Volvo

So, we went to the place formerly known as Carson Mobil where "Rick" was selling the 95 Volvo, supposedly driven by his big brother or dad, Jordan, who must have used a ton of aftershave and smoked even more, because the interior reeked of that. Reminded me of the Seinfeld episode in which he couldn't get his stinky car stolen, even when he left it parked with the keys in the ignitiion, which reminds me of Koklich, but that's another story.

And the driver's seat sorta sank. Drove okay. Russell, our Volvo mechanic, sealed the deal, said it was overpriced ($5,500) and had defective doors! Pass, in a big way.

At midnight, Alin Paper, the former Albertson's at Carson & Woodruff burned. Suspicious, Alin ain't talking.

In the past, I've published r&b interviews on various pages which I'll begin printing here.

My friend, the Wagmanblues.com, is meeting resistence to his backyard blues concerts/parties, neighbors don't like live amplified music, imagine that.

Tonight, we'll be seeing Moore's Farenheit 911, and I'll publish a review tomorrow. Hope it's funny, elsewise, it would be too depressing.

Web Page Counter

backtracking

In mid June, we finally got DSL, first me, then Sylvia thru a router, been wasting beaucoup time listening to Internet Radio since then – favorite stations: WPMD, my own show, Rock 50 & Garagemania; WFMU (New Jersey): Fool’s Paradise & Downtown Soulville.

Listening to WFMU, was back in touch with Rex Doane, with whom I’ll be talking with next week. Thanks to my writing partner, Jim Dawson, I was back in touch with Sammy Yates, aka Count Yates, who’ll be on my WPMD show in 2 weeks (taking July 4) off. Will be helping Wagmanblues with his backyard blues parties in July.

This AM on Sunday Morning, a fawning reviewer talking about a new CD: Night Train To Nashville, made the following observation about that city: (paraphrasing) "there wasn't a large r&b label there, so most of these songs are on one-off labels." Oh yeah, ever hear of Excello/Nashboro/Nasco, the home of Slim Harpo, Lightning Slim, the Gladiolas, Marigolds, and dozens of great gospel groups; the first home (Galatin) of Dot, Bullet (B.B. King's first label), Republic and others?

And, if that’s not enough, well, it probably is - we intended to see Fahrenheit 911 this weekend. Dave Grudt wanted to go to see it today at the Edwards Towne Center, but the crowds are just too, how to say it? Too crowded.

I took our half lab, half terrier, Dorothy, on an every other day walk, which she loves. She's now shaved, looks, and probably feels, a whole lot better.

Dealing with Dorothy a lot, who’s terrified of fireworks as she should be, so she crashes against the chain link gate, scarring her face in a wild attempt to escape, before we can help her, by bringing her in.

We had a new kitchen light and garage door, DSL, and a whole lot more installed, thanks to Rick, Shea’s boyfriend. What else to do? Cleaning out the garage? Too hot.

Ray Charles in Lakewood CA

In the Beachcomber, published today, is the following story...thought there'd be some interest in the subject.

Ray Charles in Lakewood
by: Steve Propes

Ray Charles passed away on June 10, 2004 at age 73, but during his almost seven decades of popularity, Charles performed at venues throughout the world.

Dubbed “The Genius of Soul” or simply “The Genius,” Ray Charles was slated to appear twice at the Long Beach Blues Festival, originally in 2003, and for a short while, he was promoted to appear for the 2004 concert. However, he cancelled both dates because of poor health.

But it was an unscheduled Ray Charles concert at the Lakewood location of Wallich’s Music City, which appears in no Charles biographies, that sticks in the mind of just a handful of lucky customers and employees.

At one time, there were a half-dozen Wallich’s Music City outlets in Southern California. The Lakewood store opened in early July 1957 with great fanfare and an actual on-site concert with the likes of Nat King Cole Peggy Lee, Fess Parker and Julie London.

But that event pales to when Ray Charles visited the store, according to East Long Beach resident Jim Vincent. “It was probably 1961. I was working as the night manager of Wallich’s Music City in Lakewood. I was scheduled to take time off to go to a dinner with a friend, at 6:30 or 7 in the evening.

As I was going out, two men were walking in, one with big, dark glasses, and another man in a driver’s uniform. The man in dark glasses was Ray Charles and I recognized him right away. I introduced myself and they asked where the musical instrument department was.

It was an Al Kalie Music store inside our store, the place where people came for accordion lessons, that sort of thing. I took them back to one of their salesmen and I introduced them,” Vincent recalled.

“Then the concert began. It occurred to me, ‘Ray Charles is here, do you think I’m going to dinner?’ He tested about a half dozen organs. He just noodled to different things on a few of the organs, a few little rock things, his music flow was just astounding, just to be standing there, watching
him perform.

There were half a dozen people in the store while he was there, but no crowd gathered, because, as manager, I decided to keep it quiet. I don’t know if he bought anything that night, but he did try out at least a half dozen organs.”

Not long after that, Charles’ best-selling “Genius+Soul=Jazz” organ-based LP was released, reaching number four on the pop charts where it remained for an impressive 48 weeks. It was one of his most successful record releases, and it all began at the Lakewood location Wallich’s Music City on an otherwise slow night in 1961.

tossin' & turnin'

Crisis point in my existence. After years of unecessary waiting, I finally got DSL, now have to figure out how to stop Earthlink and at the same time, not lose my email inbox. Oh well, whatta problem!

I find myself listening to Internet Radio more than the average consumer, right now listening to a European doo wop station, pretty good music.

I downloaded a couple of dozen vintage 78 sounds, would like to homecraft a CD, but technically, I'm still at the stylus and vinyl stage of technology.

Aw shucks, go clean the garage and learn all this later. Later.

Stuck At Police HQ

I trekked downtown to the police station this morning to hang wid'de chief and generally learn about we're getting less safe on a day to day basis, and how a taser gun works, which it does.

So with that as a start to my day, I came home exhausted. Took a nap and thought about what I needed to do for the remainder of the day, like clean out the garage. No go on that one, so I came in here and began typing, and here we are.

Later today, I plan to wind down...

Moron Vinyl

So, I get this call from my dealer friend, who knows that this lump of vinyl (5000 records in all) has been through cherry-picking processes, originating out of Drum City in Hollywood. Lucky to have gotten a few dozen 45s out of it, but the fun is in the search, isn't it? Well, is it?

Today, while on my sweat-inducing walk, I stopped by the local Salvation Army Thrift Shop where about seven cardboard boxes of alphabetized LPs had been plunked on the floor, and already, one collector was riffling his way through. Only LP I saw he had was Narvel Felts.

I scanned a few boxes - Aerosmith, Eagles, Jethro Tull, that sort of thing. Went home, few hours later, returned. Two guys were grabbing Tull and like stuff like that like it was Xmas, another guy was more in a Nat Cole frame; so, like monkey see monkey do, I joined in, found 2 LPs by Hank Snow, one by Freddy Fender, an Ace Cannon (great instrumental bed for 45 after 45 on wpmd, about which I'll comment later) & one on a Russian label - $1 apiece, good deal, I guess. As I was leaving, a young punkish girl settled in, began grabbing a Pat Benatar, so I guess vinyl is alive.

Dog, Dorothy got her yearly trim, wash and caging, while the wash guy got nipped as he tried to pull her out of a very confining cage, so I had to go up and supervise the trim and generally calm her down. Then I bought 8 gallons of gas for a 20 spot, too much.

Our handyguy, Shea's guy, Rick, installed a new kitchen lite, bitchen kitchen lite I must say. Tomorrow, 8:30 a.m., meet with police chief with possibility of taser training, not me, Lone Ranger.

Over and out...

This Is Where It All Began

Long Beach, California. The first full day of summer, 2004 and I'm sitting in my lonely room, crying into a bucket of spit...no, that's not right.

Actually, I'm a happy family man with a fine-as-wine spouse, in fact my spouse and I just had some of that very fine wine in our not so spacious backyard among the verdant greenery that is our back yard...with two grown daughters, one in the Belmont Shore section of our town and another, married, in Denmark, where she lives with her math prof. spouse and our only grandchild (son), who, oddly enough, prefers to speak Danish.

My own life consists of being a reporter for a small paper (www.longbeachcomber.com) that even some in Long Beach haven't heard of, collecting old 45 rpm records, that even some long-time veterano collectors haven't heard of (and that's the goal), a Saturday morning Internet radio show (www.wpmd.org) on which I spend some of these discs - also heard on Rock-It Radio (www.rockitradio.net) and have published a few books, too...on old records and the like, natch.

Favorites? Movies, records? Those sorts of thing? Let me get back to you on that.

Recent adventures. I've been working a record deal since last year when my good friend, Don Haley from the Gold Country (Placerville) who sells records and other goodies on Ebay (haleymac) visited this sort of demented guy a few blocks away from where I live. He had some 45s that we wanted, but he couldn't make up his mind and we couldn't make a deal, very frustrating. So we let it go. About a week ago, my neighbor Dennis, who collects 78s and LPs, came to me. The deal is heating up again, and he was looking for an investor.

Another collector/dealer got involved, and he bought the deal, LPs, 78s and those 5,000 45s. When I came home from my internet radio show, Dennis had left a message about "a shitload of records," so conflicting with a family reunion at a nearby park (that's because he was under orders to get rid of the records by day's end), I settled down to riffle through 5g in 45s, selecting out a mere couple'a hundred in this dusty bin of mainly junk. And out of that, maybe 20 goodies. But the price was right - since Dennis got paid to take them away, they were free!

Then I wandered over to the reunion, about a block away, great fun indeed. Family - my wife's side - ages from under one year to 88 - her mother's birthday after all. What a day! 45s, eats, family, fun, wine and a couple of greyhounds later, I was ready to snooze!

I've been auditioning 45s ever since. Ever hear of Saft on Laurie (garage), Tommy Mosley on Moonglow (soul) or Maxmillan on Twirl (Del Shannon's organ player)? Most rock & roll fans haven't either, but these 45s are killer!

More later...