Medical Tips for Bluegrass Fans
The popular image of bluegrass fans among those who know no better is that we are a pack of banjo-picking, sister-marrying, toothless idiots with absolutely no taste or decorum.
Of course nothing could be further from the truth. Not all of us play the banjo. But anyway, the world of bluegrass, especially the really really really neat world of bluegrass festivals, brings with it a unique blend of medical and survival hazards that civilians might not be prepared to deal with. To avoid head, back, and heart-aches---which are all well and good in bluegrass songs but not so hot when it is you yourself that has them---I offer the following list of tips, the result of 30 years of mis-spent youth (or “Utes!”, as my New York friends would say).
Never Trust a Can. Sure, it looks like a delicious, frosty cold can of Neiweilers. But more than once I have seen it turn out to be somebodies spit-can. You don't want to know what a chug of Skoal tastes like (although the spearmint has piquant aftertaste much like, ummmmm...nuclear spearmint, I guess)
Find South! There is nothing more awesome than arriving at a campground in the cool of a summer's eve, pitching your tent, icing down the beer (see page 138 of the novel for more of this stuff), then picking all night. The goodness of that scene pales next to the pain of awaking at 9 am after picking until 5am, baked alive in a tent which is about 128 degrees, with your head pounding and your mouth tasting like a nasty combination of rancid peanut butter, moonshine, deershit and English Leather. So do yourself a huge favor; figure out which way is south and then camp near a tree so you can't see that way. Morning shade is worth a million bluegrass bucks on a miserably hot summer's day, which is one of the three possibities for bluegrass festivals, the other two being freezing cold and driving rain.
Keep That Med Pack Stocked!
No veteran bluegrasser would set foot in a campground without the following meds: 1. Advil (the 100 pack at least). Useful for headaches, sore backs and legs from standing for 20 hours picking, carpal tunnel from same, twisted ankles because only a pansy would use a flashlight at night to get from one jam to the next, and other physical maladies brought on by the rigors of camp life.
2. Bromoseltzer. Now you can bravely accept a taste of the world's hottest chili or some home-made dandelion wine, which incidentally tastes like, ummmmm....nuclear dandelions.
3. Sunscreen,because when it's sunny out, it's really really sunny.
4. Preparation H. For when you're all set up and a bunch of bad pickers set up next to you. Or for the chili and wine in #2 above.
5. Rogaine, in case some country-western hat singer like Barth or Darth or whatever his name is sets up next to them. That bald shit is catching, and don't let no doctor tell you otherwise.
6. Ointment. hehe. I don't know what for--I just think that word is funny.
Never Sit for Long in a Campfire Despite the illusion engendered by eating nuclear cherries laced with shine, your butt is not made of asbestos, and your pants won't be improved much by the fire (or "Far", as some of us say.)
Finally,
Don't Drink and Drive....Golfcarts
They may look cute and all, but you can still do a world of hurt on some unsuspecting camper when you run 'em over with one. Best thing to do is to get a caddy to drive one around behind you, so you can use your 5 iron or your banjo on any particular song.
Coming soon: Festival Sports and the sports that love to play. The sports.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Howdie, Campers!
The net is a strange--sometimes a hyperstrange-- environment for a guy that grew up on Dick Tracey, Mr. Wizard and Gunsmoke, but I've met wonderful folks on-line, and of course love the freedom and randominity of the whole idea. I hope those of you who have already purchased Bluegrass have enjoyed the read. It was my humble hope to capture some of the "Wild-Wild West" realities that make up the unterverld* of the bluegrass subculture, which tends to be an amazing amalgam of computer geeks, deisel mechanics, doctors, truck drivers, cleaning ladies, all melded together by the music, oh, and especially by the musicians of this most excellent genre.
I was at an old-time C&W concert last month, playing,working sound, drinking beer and talking with the pedal steel and guitar players that were kind of my idols, or at least idoletes, back in the 70's. These guys still play, and they play pretty damn well, considering they have to jockey all that gear. (I carried one guy's amp up three flights of stairs. Them things is seriously heavy. One of my arms is still longer than the other, which is fine as long as I am walking sideways to the left on a hill.) Anyway, I dug that they were still playing, still into the whole band dynamics thing, which is in itself a sort of study in randomosity. Then, when they were on break, I asked the guitar player if he wanted to join us on a tune or two.
That's common courtesy in bluegrass circles, at least in circles of good breeding, you might say.
He said, " Awww, thanks so much. I always loved bluegrass songs!"
"Great!" I said. "So you'll play?"
And he said, "Hell, no! We'd play that if we could, believe me! But we can't, so just get back up there and rip one out for us."
I tell all of you this story for many reasons. First, because I can, and because it was suuuuuuuuch a relief to get this lil book out there that I have written not at all the last three months. AH! ALso, I'd like to try and remind America that we are suffering death by 'burbicide, and all this local loveliness is being scrubbed out by some guys that might be called, oh, I don't know, Maurey or Howard or maybe even John Madden.
I always admired that turkey he had, though.
Anyway, I thought that the absolute best thing any able-bodied and right thinking American can do is go out and hire, study, talk to, walk with, skate, bike, sleep with or adopt a bluegrass musician.
Here's ten reasons why this is a good idea:
(We're going in order and hoping to reach ten. If Letterman wants it, he can retype it hisself. I'm tired of his s*#t!)
1. They sleep on the ground voluntarily.
2. They eat sparingly and consume a wide array of animal and vegetable products and bi-products.
3. They often give you the whole bed, the bathroom, the entire kitchen, the whole....everything! Every weekend in the summer!
4. Two words: SHine!
5. They are very good with their hands.
6. Bluegrassers never steal. **
7. When they have jobs, they work hard.
8. They are extremely low maintainance. BLuegrassers have been know to survive days with only rancid slim-jims and skunky beer, long as "them strangs hold!".
9. They are known for their fanatic devotion to hospitality, even if it kills you, like when you have been peacefully sawing logs after being on your feet for thirty hours, all snug like a bug in a rug asleep and buried under twelve feet of comforter on a night that's freakin' twenty degrees, and they bravely find you and wake you up and dig you out and then say that, seeing as how you're already awake and grumpy and pissed, you might as well sing that sad song you just learned about being cold and grumpy and pissed. The really fast one.
10. They songs about real people with real care and real heart and soul. And they always have a cold beer.^***
* Fake German spoken by Madeline Kahn in "Young Frankin----STEEEN!", it means "under, ummmmmm...verld". hhe.
**They will not keep a $40,000 instrument you left in their campsite after drinking number 4 above, even if you have no idea where it is, and they know you know. They will, however, give an old lady 40 bucks for the same instrument, even if she is eating catfood, thinking, no doubt, that they may soon be able to enjoy that same experience.
^Yeah yeah--that's eleven things. So what? There's three kinds of people in this world--the ones that can count and those who can't. He. (Con't in *** below)****
***Unless it's that bunch up there in 8 above. But warm Piels ain't that bad.
If you have Zantac.
****Beats me. I never put footnotes on footnotes before. But I expect that is what people have come to expect from a scholar such as I. Am.
Tune in next week for Bluegrass Medical tips from a dad-blamed expert!
I was at an old-time C&W concert last month, playing,working sound, drinking beer and talking with the pedal steel and guitar players that were kind of my idols, or at least idoletes, back in the 70's. These guys still play, and they play pretty damn well, considering they have to jockey all that gear. (I carried one guy's amp up three flights of stairs. Them things is seriously heavy. One of my arms is still longer than the other, which is fine as long as I am walking sideways to the left on a hill.) Anyway, I dug that they were still playing, still into the whole band dynamics thing, which is in itself a sort of study in randomosity. Then, when they were on break, I asked the guitar player if he wanted to join us on a tune or two.
That's common courtesy in bluegrass circles, at least in circles of good breeding, you might say.
He said, " Awww, thanks so much. I always loved bluegrass songs!"
"Great!" I said. "So you'll play?"
And he said, "Hell, no! We'd play that if we could, believe me! But we can't, so just get back up there and rip one out for us."
I tell all of you this story for many reasons. First, because I can, and because it was suuuuuuuuch a relief to get this lil book out there that I have written not at all the last three months. AH! ALso, I'd like to try and remind America that we are suffering death by 'burbicide, and all this local loveliness is being scrubbed out by some guys that might be called, oh, I don't know, Maurey or Howard or maybe even John Madden.
I always admired that turkey he had, though.
Anyway, I thought that the absolute best thing any able-bodied and right thinking American can do is go out and hire, study, talk to, walk with, skate, bike, sleep with or adopt a bluegrass musician.
Here's ten reasons why this is a good idea:
(We're going in order and hoping to reach ten. If Letterman wants it, he can retype it hisself. I'm tired of his s*#t!)
1. They sleep on the ground voluntarily.
2. They eat sparingly and consume a wide array of animal and vegetable products and bi-products.
3. They often give you the whole bed, the bathroom, the entire kitchen, the whole....everything! Every weekend in the summer!
4. Two words: SHine!
5. They are very good with their hands.
6. Bluegrassers never steal. **
7. When they have jobs, they work hard.
8. They are extremely low maintainance. BLuegrassers have been know to survive days with only rancid slim-jims and skunky beer, long as "them strangs hold!".
9. They are known for their fanatic devotion to hospitality, even if it kills you, like when you have been peacefully sawing logs after being on your feet for thirty hours, all snug like a bug in a rug asleep and buried under twelve feet of comforter on a night that's freakin' twenty degrees, and they bravely find you and wake you up and dig you out and then say that, seeing as how you're already awake and grumpy and pissed, you might as well sing that sad song you just learned about being cold and grumpy and pissed. The really fast one.
10. They songs about real people with real care and real heart and soul. And they always have a cold beer.^***
* Fake German spoken by Madeline Kahn in "Young Frankin----STEEEN!", it means "under, ummmmmm...verld". hhe.
**They will not keep a $40,000 instrument you left in their campsite after drinking number 4 above, even if you have no idea where it is, and they know you know. They will, however, give an old lady 40 bucks for the same instrument, even if she is eating catfood, thinking, no doubt, that they may soon be able to enjoy that same experience.
^Yeah yeah--that's eleven things. So what? There's three kinds of people in this world--the ones that can count and those who can't. He. (Con't in *** below)****
***Unless it's that bunch up there in 8 above. But warm Piels ain't that bad.
If you have Zantac.
****Beats me. I never put footnotes on footnotes before. But I expect that is what people have come to expect from a scholar such as I. Am.
Tune in next week for Bluegrass Medical tips from a dad-blamed expert!
Saturday, December 03, 2005
A Sneek Peek into 'Bluegrass'
From the time he was two, Sterling Schiffler loved to read aloud. It came as naturally to him as birdsong, as smooth as a cool, mysterious, foggy fall morning, as definite as cedars burdened by shawls of snow, reeling ahead like ranks of defeated soldiers in the winter sun.
By the time he was five, he was a rapacious reader, big news in his hometown of Crisfield, Maryland, where most everybody either ran, repaired, built, stored, crewed, painted or stored boats or hauled oyster shells for fill or number one jimmies up to Baltimore for the pittance they gave you for risking your life.
Naturally the town was proud when he graduated at sixteen, the youngest ever in the history of the high school. They were equally proud when he was accepted at the same age to Yale, and pleased as pie when he graduated in three years with a soc degree and married a rich girl from Towsend.
His grandmother was mostly Lenape, and she was not so sanguine. She called his wife, not so secretly, “the trickster,” and said that there was something about her heart that was not right. Sterling tried his best to ignore his grandmother’s advice, but eventually there were two truths even he could not overlook.
First, he was unable to support her in the style to which she was accustomed. Even though she worked a bit organizing parties and functions¾at which she was particularly apt—she was always broke, even when Sterling started commuting to Baltimore to earn more money.
Equally unfortunate was her discovery that she preferred her own sex over the opposite. They divorced, but she refused to leave Crisfield, leaving Sterling with nothing to do but move. He could not bear it to see them everywhere, and at all the best functions, too. So he answered the first ad he found, for a job as a program specialist serving mentally retarded adults. The job was in a place called Pigeon Forge, Pennsylvania, just on the fringe of the coal region, from what he could make of the map.
He was scared and upset, but determined to make the best of it. He was determined that she would not see him hang his head.
Want to read more?...buy or borrow 'Bluegrass' today!
By the time he was five, he was a rapacious reader, big news in his hometown of Crisfield, Maryland, where most everybody either ran, repaired, built, stored, crewed, painted or stored boats or hauled oyster shells for fill or number one jimmies up to Baltimore for the pittance they gave you for risking your life.
Naturally the town was proud when he graduated at sixteen, the youngest ever in the history of the high school. They were equally proud when he was accepted at the same age to Yale, and pleased as pie when he graduated in three years with a soc degree and married a rich girl from Towsend.
His grandmother was mostly Lenape, and she was not so sanguine. She called his wife, not so secretly, “the trickster,” and said that there was something about her heart that was not right. Sterling tried his best to ignore his grandmother’s advice, but eventually there were two truths even he could not overlook.
First, he was unable to support her in the style to which she was accustomed. Even though she worked a bit organizing parties and functions¾at which she was particularly apt—she was always broke, even when Sterling started commuting to Baltimore to earn more money.
Equally unfortunate was her discovery that she preferred her own sex over the opposite. They divorced, but she refused to leave Crisfield, leaving Sterling with nothing to do but move. He could not bear it to see them everywhere, and at all the best functions, too. So he answered the first ad he found, for a job as a program specialist serving mentally retarded adults. The job was in a place called Pigeon Forge, Pennsylvania, just on the fringe of the coal region, from what he could make of the map.
He was scared and upset, but determined to make the best of it. He was determined that she would not see him hang his head.
Want to read more?...buy or borrow 'Bluegrass' today!
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