Smash-mouth Bluegrass

Well, once again I've nailed a nice title. Let's see if I can walk the talk. The Ramblers played the Deer Head last night, that quintessential jazz club we've been sneaking into on account of the previous owner decided that we really play crackerjazz.

Of course it's all true.

When the father of us all invented the music, he took the idea of breaks, not from rock and roll so much as from jazz, where the player has more latitude in his improvisations. Think about it. When someone is playing air guitar and pretending that he is Jimi Hendrix playing "Purple Haze", does he ever vary the notes he makes with those annoying "Nar nar nar nar, nar nar nar nar~!" sounds?

Of course not.

Incidentally, despite the fact that women are genetically superior to males in dancing, face-making and interior design, you will never see one playing air guitar with their lips curled in a feral snarl and slinging their hips around like Elvis with a bad itch.

Guys---maybe you better ought to stop. And of course you will never ever ever see a bluegrass player do that stuff either.*

It's not because we're girls. Although some of us are, I guess. No, it's just that we have too much dignity for that. Oh, sure, some yupped up middle aged chicks with their slinky black dresses and that too-red lipstick that brands them as being "urban" chic might gag on their crudettes when they hear that, the idea that a bunch of crackers like us have gravitas. But we got that in spades, that gravitas stuff. Hell, people have been known to start orbiting around James King, he's got so much of it!

Tonight was a perfect example of why the rest of the world needs to tune into some bluegrass once in awhile. I was at a lovely dinner where my son and namesake was performing with a troupe of singers and actors that put on cheery plays like "Les Mis" and "Into the Woods" and other real artsy works like that were everybody dies in the end.

Now, you'd think I'd be all up for that--it sounds just like a good bluegrass song, right? Things start off bad and then you gotta plug your wife because she runned oft with some Rambling man. But, well, they didn't all look like they were having real fun. First of all, they were all decked out in dresses so tight I bet if they ate an olive they'd pop a gussett someplace. I mean, at least the women were. The guys had on tuxes, and I have to admit they do make you look good even if your body parts don't quit match up. You can always tell when you are looking at real perfoming artistes. They don't know that you're supposed to spackle or paint or something constructive while you wait to become famous, and so consequently they tend to walk around looking a bit pale and wan because they don't eat right.

And they are inordinately fond of rich folks, because the rich folks become their patrons, which is a nice way of saying that they're doing what some women have been doing since Mary Magdeline was plying her trade.

Man, those rich folks spend money like drunken sailors on stuff a bluegrasser could slap together in an afternoon. I saw a table they called a "star" table because the top was shaped like a star, and it went for 300 bucks. Hell, the thing wasn't even big enough to eat a TV dinner off of, and it had cut legs and not turned ones, so I bet I could pop that puppy out in a day or two, and my table would actually twinkle or something cool, or maybe transform into a small bed for kids, dogs or small bluegrass drunks.

Anyway, these folks got up there and they sang a bunch of Italian songs, like Faniculi and Oh solo mio and stuff like that, and that was fun. My kid and all his friends had us peeing our pants, they were so funny and they sang so well.

Makes a dad proud, I can tell you, when your kid doesn't grow up to be just exactly like you hehe. Anyhow, after they got done and all the rich folks were bidding silently on baskets and pottery and other stuff they were prolly just buying to spite the other guy, the serious professional actors came out and they started singing opera, of all things.

Man, and here I was trying to digest a second helping of meatballs and they were hitting notes that made that little piece of cartiladge in my nose start to rattle around in there, they was so high up. It reminded me of what Twain said about Wagner.

"It's better than it sounds," is what he said.

Now that Sam Clemens was one smart feller, all right. I was laughing to myself because I was wondering what would have happened if last night's Ramblers had busted in there and started playing the way we played last night. That snooty chick that managed to work into the conversation in the first thirty seconds that her outfit was straight from Kenya where she spent the last three years would have been looking aghast or askance or maybe akimbo at us, being so authentic and all, and us singing in English, of all things.

Don't get me wrong. Culture is great, and I've been meaning to get me some, soon as I can determine that I can afford it. In the meantime, we had a great time watching all these folks posing. I felt like Diane Fossa with those grillers in the mist. And there were some really beautiful harmonies in a few of the pieces (that would be "aireahs" to you, thank you very much!) that would have even made the bluegrass cut.

But. Four bucks for a glass of beer? Hell, if you get what you pay for I shoulda come home stumbling drunk. Instead I had to raid the wine cellar and break out a nice bottle of shiraz, 2001, and have some of that to calm me down from all that culture.

That stuff really got my dander up, I can tell you. Made me want to get one of them sparkly dresses and a hat with horns onto it and belt out a few show tunes hehe.

Anyway, bluejeans and a t-shirt, a bottle of rosemont and a cheap cigar go a long way to washing the stink of haut couture off a guy. And I can dream of smash-mouth bluegrass songs about plugging the bejabbers out of your girl and the guy that done you wrong and then dumping their bodies in the river, and singing that we will all meet in the great bye-and-bye, where hopefully there is some kind of quota system on that culture stuff.

It is sweet to have something to compare yourself to. *hehe*

* Unless he's been at some shine. Then he might be liable to do most anything, but whatever it is he decides to do it generally ends with one of several options: he burns down his trailer, he loses his car or he wrecks his truck. Come to think of it, you don't generally see too many girls juiced up on shine doing any of those things. THat would be another place they have it over us.