No, Gentle Reader(s)—DJ Inky has not hung up his headphones… not just yet, anyway. This hiatus from posting of Matador Playlists—those vaunted bellwethers of musical innovation and rock & roll history, that pounding pulse of the subterranean Galisteo Street subconscious, the fruits of that crepuscular gig so intensely groovy that no one except for your very own selves has any notion of its continued questionable existence—was temporarily suspended for another extended sojourn in New Orleans to attend to pressing matters of family and bizniz. Those matters having been successfully concluded, Your Humble Narrator has returned once again to the alto desierto and reclaimed the DJ hidey hole at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge. A grateful nation breathes a collective sigh of relief.

Time for the second installment of The Road Crew, Gentle Reader(s). This section puts the gear wonkery behind us for the moment (but only for the moment, as gear wonkery is eternal) and sets the stage, as it were, for the Cretins' tour through Mid-America in support of the Tom Kindler Band. Enjoy and stay tuned for another section before the end of the month—a Thanksgiving gift, from me to you.

Okay, Gentle Reader(s), we're going to try out something a bit different here at InkyInkInc. As you may well have gleaned from anything more than a cursory examination of these pages over the years, Your Humble Narrator is an alleged musician as well as an alleged writer. Way way back in the day I became friends with a fellow musician by the name of Steve LaRue, whom I typically refer to in these pages as the Goof, or Goofa. The Goof was my closest friend and we saw and/or talked to one another every single day of every single week for many years. We were bandmates, roommates, artistic collaborators and we even toured America together back in the early '80s. The Goof left us back in 2017 and even before he checked out I had started working on a sort of hopped-up memoir of our time on the road. Steve never got to read any of it but after he died I applied myself to the project with sporadic vigor and finally came to what I considered to be a finishing point about a year and a half ago. Since then, it has been edited and re-edited again, and that process could potentially go on forever. With a bit of gentle prodding from a friend or two, I have decided to share a bit of the manuscript with you. Love it or hate it, you can let me know what you think—that's what the CONTACT page is for. The full manuscript is quite long, so this is just a very small sampling. New installments will be posted on an approximately monthly basis. Here goes nothing...

I’m not sure how many of you out there, Gentle Reader(s), might be acquainted with the life and legacy of Theodore Isidore Gottlieb, otherwise known as Brother Theodore. I became a big fan of Brother Theodore’s unique brand of philosophically-minded mania through his guest spots with David Letterman on Late Night in the 1980s. Over the course of 16 appearances Letterman obligingly played the straight man for Brother Theodore’s unhinged ‘stand-up tragedy’ routines. Letterman loved to needle Gottlieb by referring to him as ‘Ted’ and by bursting the bubble of his bug-eyed bluster with mundane comments and questions.

Here I am once again, tucked into the dim corner that serves as the DJ booth of Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge. It is September 11–a date that remains laden with the weight of events that unfolded 24 years ago in New York, Washington DC, and rural Pennsylvania. I remember the day all too well. By the time I woke up that Tuesday morning the tragedy was already underway and it took me several groggy minutes to try and make some sense of what the radio was telling me. By the time I staggered downstairs and turned on the television United Airlines 175 had slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. In that moment I realized that the world had changed. Forever changed and much for the worse. I don’t mean to get all grim about this—not my signature jam, Gentle Reader(s)—but there just ain’t no way around it: We live in difficult and precarious times and it doesn’t take much imagination to draw a line directly from the global cataclysm spawned by 9/11 to where we find ourselves today.

Yes—I know: You can scarcely believe your luck, Gentle Reader(s), for here it is once again, that much beloved (if largely ignored) Mass of the Opiates, that Musical Balm in Gilead, the Cure for What Ails Thee—Ye Olde Matador Playlist. Yes indeed, it is that time once again and we—'we' being pretty much the same thing as 'I'—have a real doozy for you this week. Not that the preceding playlists were in any manner lacking for dooziness in their own right(s), but please allow me to pump myself up, to toot me own horn a bit, as it were. I feel as though I have earned it... sort of.

I don’t expect to be back in New Orleans for several weeks yet, but I can scarcely restrain myself, Gentle Reader(s), from weighing in on the latest developments in the long-running saga of Her Honoress, Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans of Louisiana. Over the past few years I have occasionally documented in these pages the travails of LaToya as she squandered her once considerable political capital in a succession of unseemly controversies and scandals. The mayor’s dealings with sketchy local business persons have been extensively documented, as has her fast and loose manner with the civic coin and civic property, and, most notably, her barely-concealed extramarital dalliance with a police officer (Jeffrey Vappie) assigned to her security detail. Cantrell’s attempts to bully, intimidate and obfuscate her way out of these assorted trespasses have also not gone unnoticed. The prosecutorial birds of prey began circling in earnest a couple of years ago and they have finally made their long-anticipated move.

How time flies. It flies when one is having fun, when one is not having fun, and it flies in the interim portions as well. The older one gets the faster it flies and one must flap pretty hard to try and keep up. I just flew in from Austin, and boy my arms are tired. From Austin to Milwaukee, to be precise, and I am residing in America’s Dairyland for a bit to tend to familial matters. This week’s riposte will be brief, but I wanted to share with you this lovely vintage promotional device extolling the virtues of fresh, ice cold Goblin Orangeade. America has drunk deeply of the Orange Goblin elixir as of late and for some it is refreshing and invigorating. For others it is horrifying and nauseous. As quoth Romeo, ‘There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls.’ Cogitate on that for a bit and we shall compare notes at a future date.

Another Thursday evening come and gone, Gentle Reader(s), another Matador Playlist for the ages. This week’s installment makes no uncertain recognition of the momentous passing of John Michael Osbourne—heavy metal founding father and reality teevee pioneer known popularly as ‘Ozzy.’ I will admit, I was never much of a Black Sabbath fan or a fan of the metal genre in general, but if there was one outfit I could claim some abiding affection for it was Ozzy, Tommy, Geezer and Bill. My brother had a couple of early Sabbath records when we was kids and those thick, sludgy Iommi riffs became embedded deep in my adolescent psyche. I can definitely say that I prefer Black Sabbath to much/most of what followed their in their trailblazing footsteps: Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Metallica, Judas Priest, Slayer, the Crüe, etc, etc—sure, there are some great songs here and there but for the most part, I got no use for ‘em, thank you very much. These artistes do indeed reside in the DJ Inky music library and I’ll play them at Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge without a moment’s hesitation, but the likes of it will enjoy scant air time in the sacred confines of my own home. As a fan of America’s Pastime (aka, the Beisbol), and of the Chicago Cubs in particular, it is with pleasure that I will steer you to Ozzy’s rather, uhh, idiosyncratic rendition of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ as guest conductor for the 7th inning stretch at Wrigley Field back on August 17, 2003. Appearing a bit unsteady on his feet and uncertain of the song’s lyrics, Ozzy improvised some shambolic scat singing of a sort to make it a highly memorable occasion. In the final reckoning, as the toll of 76 years of the rock & roll lifestyle finally caught up with him, Ozzy held on just long enough to make it through the all-star tribute/Sabbath farewell concert extravaganza on July 5th before shuffling along off this mortal coil just over two weeks later. Now that's impeccable timing.