06/28/2018

This missive is intended to address the myth and the mystery of three great albums of late ‘60s/early ‘70s rock n’ roll that have, to various degrees, disappeared from public circulation and from the collective sub- or un-conscious. None of them is completely gone—the original albums exist on the margins of the marketplace, on eBay and in the rarities bins of collector vinyl emporiums (emporia?) and some have been reborn in modern guise—but they remain largely obscure relics of special interest only to pathetic dorks such as Your Humble Narrator. Each one of these albums was important to me as a wee lad back home in New Orleans and I listened to each one of them countless times on my plastic close-and-carry record player back in the days before digital anything and Oranguntans-in-Chief. Ahhhh, thems was the days.   The recordings in question are ‘Live Yardbirds, featuring Jimmy Page’ by the Yardbirds, ‘Coast to Coast, Live: Overture and Beginners’ by Rod Stewart & Faces, and ‘Time Fades Away’ by Neil Young. All three of these recordings disappeared from the record stores not long after they were issued, largely due to the artists’ subsequent dissatisfaction with their quality. They languished in cut-out bins for a while, available for $1.99 or thereabouts before eventually vanishing altogether. In two of these three cases, those of the Yardbirds and Neil Young, only recently has the material been rehabilitated and reissued, nearly 50 years after the fact. As for Sir Roderick of Stewart, I suggest not bothering to hold your breath in anticipation of his following suit.
06/03/2018

Welcome, Gentle Reader(s), to yet another installment of Ye Olde Matador Playliste, this one clocking in only scant weeks after the last! Extraordinary, you say? Unprecedented? Trend setting, what? Not at all, actually, but it certainly bucks the trend of the last six months. Despite the calendar tally of Thursdays only three playlistes have been generated as Your Humble Narrator has been resident once again in the town of his origin, down pon the Big Muddy in Louisiana. The Mississippi River actually shares that nickname with the Missouri River and while the Missouri is some 20 miles longer than the Mississippi, I can hardly imagine that it could be any muddier and still manage to flow. Anyway, the Missouri flows into the Mississippi while the Mississippi flows into the sea, or the Gulf of Mexico at least, and that, in MHO gives the Mississippi the upper hand. So there.
04/21/2018

Where do I begin? I have no idea where to begin, how to begin, what to begin... So I'll just begin.   I am returned, Gentle Reader(s), to the virtual pages of this site after an unprecedented absence of, what... six months? Hard to believe but true nonetheless. Affairs of the heart, mind, body and soul have taken the fore and my muse has been elusive, if not entirely absent as of lately late. On top of that,  a fairly epic slump at Ye Olde Matador Lounge resulted in numerous abbreviated evenings and uninspired playlists that didn't seem worthy of the effort of publication and the resultant temporal demands upon yourself and Your Humble Narrator alike. Should forgiveness be required for these lapses, I beg that of you and, for what it's worth, hereby resolve to do better in future. But don't hold your breath.
10/11/2017

Welcome back, Gentle Reader(s), to the third report from New Orleans for 2017, with the added bonus of Ye Olde Matador Playliste. It has been nearly two months since my last posting and in the intervening days I have been traveling back and forth betwixt and between Ink North and Ink South whilst doing my best to keep body and soul in a relatively sound state of repair (the mind being another matter altogether). Central to the satisfactory pursuit of this goal is regularly climbing aboard the varied fleet of Inkcycles resident in my far flung locales to take to the streets and trails to observe and consider life’s rich pageant. Riding the bicycle is an undertaking of quasi-religious import for Your Humble Narrator, providing exercise, pleasure, excitement, contemplation, and a much-needed respite from the woes and cares of life in these trying times. I am resolute in my conviction that the bicycle is not only the finest mode of transportation ever devised, but also one of mankind’s greatest inventions overall. Regardless of whom one credits the origination of human-powered two-wheeled transport with (the various claims are well laid out here, through the good graces of Wikipedia), the bicycle makes the world a better place. This I truly believe.
08/15/2017

This post is dedicated to the memory of Heather Danielle Heyer, a martyr to the cause of standing up to racism, injustice and intolerance in our society. This young woman, a paralegal working and living in Charlottesville, VA, died on Friday, August 12, run down by a deranged racist coward while peacefully protesting in her hometown.
08/11/2017

It’s the never-ending cycle, Gentle Reader(s): New Orleans, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, New Orleans—it keeps me on my toes and it helps keep Southwest Airlines in the black. It’s all routine by now but Southwest does throw me the occasional curveball, just for yuks. The routing on my last trip to see Inky Mum was from Albuturkey to Milwaukee by way of Baltimore—a slight 800-mile diversion—and the return trip was to Albuturkey by way of Phoenix. But who am I to second guess Southwest? My most recent trip was back to New Orleans, where I was last on an extended driving trip in late April/early May. The balmy spring weather was a distant memory as late July was hammering down with the full-court press of mid-summer heat and humidity but I did not let it dissuade me from my duly appointed rounds upon the InkCycle. I took to two wheels once again, meandering through Uptown and then north and west on the levee trail as far as my stamina would take me. As in my last bit of reportage, I have indulged in a bit of informal architortural documentation, the fruits of which labors are below offered.
08/02/2017

As you may well have ascertained by now, Gentle Reader(s), while spending the majority of his time in La Ciudad Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis Your Humble Narrator regularly travels to Ink South in New Orleans and, alternatively, to Ink North in Wisconsin to see Inky Mum and to commune with nature of the northern woodlands variety. Ink North is located just outside of the lovely town of Sheboygan, which is about 50 miles north of Milwaukee on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The paleface history of Sheboygan dates back to the 1780s and the town was incorporated in 1846, probably to the chagrin of the Potawatomi, Menominee, Chippewa and other native tribes that originally called the region home. It currently has a population of about 50,000 souls and just south of the city limits is the town of Wilson wherein there is to be found a lovely, densely wooded neighborhood known as Black River.
07/01/2017

I am returned, Gentle Reader(s), from a self-imposed late spring/early summer hiatus from this page. Why, whence and wherefore you might well wonder. Well you might, although I’m quite sure that no one actually is wondering. I certainly wasn’t. Wondering, that is. The whys, whences and wherefores are simply that I found myself lacking sufficient motivation to slave over a hot MacBook day in and day out with little to report other than another Thursday evening’s inventory of Matador toonage. But do not be deceived into thinking that the lack of posts upon this page are indicative of a general lack of industry upon my part. In actuality I have been applying myself with a fair amount of diligence to other undertakings, variously of verbal, musical and visual natures, both hither and yon and betwixt and between. I don't have anything much (other than some additions to the Digital and Analog photo pages) to show for it just yet. You'll just have to take my word for it.
05/15/2017

Your Humble Narrator is returned, Gentle Reader(s), from a prolonged visitation to the town of his birth, New Orleans. It was a generally productive and quite enjoyable foray as it encompassed (largely coincidentally) both weekends of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, referred to locally as ‘JazzFest,’ or simply ‘the Fest.’ The weather at this time of year can be highly variable in the Crescent City and I was treated to deluges of biblical proportions (accompanied by the inevitable minor flooding) as well as sunny, cool weather with minimal humidity. In New Orleans days such as the latter are to be savored and having such weather fall on the second weekend of JazzFest was a blessing in the double. Either way, I tried to make certain that my time was put to good use, indoor or out. Some of my outdoor time was spent reading the complete short stories of Truman Capote in the back yard of Inky South, next to the lovely elephant ear arrangement pictured above. A friendly lizard was resident amidst and amongst the foliage and he would watch me read and occasionally sing a lovely chirping lizardly song in the late afternoons. Quite blissful it was indeed.
04/02/2017

I can't recall when I first saw Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, but it was certainly on television in New Orleans sometime in the early or mid-1970s. Back in those pre-cable days the few broadcast stations that there were (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, and a couple of UHF channels) either went off the air after a certain hour or they showed movies with minimal commercial interruption, particularly on the weekends. I was utterly transfixed by European art cinema as a kid, thanks to my parents (who took me regularly to see films by Fellini, Buñuel and others) and the remarkably adventurous late-night presentations on local television. Considering what a ruckus Blow-Up created in the cinemas back in 1966, the version of the film that I saw on television must have been edited quite extensively, but despite the censors' snipping it still made a huge impression.