M IS FOR MONDAY; MONDAY IS FOR MAMBO
I have been listening to a lot of old Cuban music recently, or maybe it's not recently at all. It's more just constant and ongoing now, having edged past being a fad and long since spilled over into fetish territory. Not that I'm obsessed with it, but one Monday a few weeks ago at the day gig, I brought in this Perez Prado CD to listen to, and my cubemate overheard it and dug it, and now we have a little collection and not that it's cool to hang out at work or nothing, but Mambo Mondays sure takes the bristles out of dragging my sorry ass into work after knocking myself out in the studio rehearsing, refining and recording my (decidedly non-Cuban) musical stuff for everywakinghour all weekend long.

Today I got to run an errand to a record store, which was both cool and dangerous, because hey, shopping. I got the required Schubert lieders for the boss [insert long, boring story involving a client here to taste], and skipped downstairs to the world music section, as much for civic duty as anything else.

See, I don't wanna walk into a record store in 2006 and have the world music section consist of, oh, Andrea Bocelli, Yanni, the Gipsy Kings and Shakira, and no one else, even if that would please the major labels to no end, for the same reason the majors like the one blockbuster movie-of-the-eon better than a series of smaller successes - if you can gross a billion dollars by pouring 150 mil into a Star Wars or a Titanic, then why sniff out niches for every little Illeana Douglas vehicle (or whoever; I don't have any one flick in mind, really) which costs 5 to 10 million and will probably gross about twice that? The home run is what makes everyone happy, now more than ever.

So I make a point of seeking out stuff I've never heard of, and making sure I do it on Soundscan's radar. I'll buy the pop-muppet of the month in one of the used joints on St. Mark's place, but Augusto Coén y su Orquesta is strictly Tower on Broadway.

And even though we've played that record three times, back to back to back, people are still coming into the office to dance and chat. It's been hard to get actual work done. And yet, and still.

THE DISH
So yeah, it took way more effort than I was hoping it would, but am I ever glad I made it to Marc and Kate's wedding yesterday.

It was a mere bus and cab ride away, door to door about three hours from midtown to downtown Albany, and golly, am I ever glad the groom kept his cell phone on that day - the only two people I knew who were going to be there were the bride and the groom, and well, you never know how they're going to be. Anyway, Marc was loose and ready to get wedded two hours before showtime, when I called him, all frantic that I had no idea where to go when I got off the bus. He gave me decent enough directions, and I got to the chapel about 45 minutes before the service, and I was the first one there. Nice cathedral, frescoes and arches with lots of detail, tres Catholic. (If Marc hadn't had his cell on, I would have missed the whole thing. I had the address of a whole nother St. Mary's Church, and I know sweet bugger-all about Albany. So it was then that the hosannas and thank-yous began, and they haven't ended yet, really.)

There was a tour going on in the main church area, and the elderly Father conducting it was soberly telling the assemblage how he could get the rebellious kids to listen to the old bible stories by "jazzing up" the stories on the walls with all sorts of little grotesue details. (Hey, it's the bible. It's all gross-out stuff if you tell it right.)

Anyway, finally some familiar faces showed up, and I had clearly forgotten how many of Kate's and Marc's friends (and family!) I've actually met already, including a few I had no idea swam in her social pool. I wound up sitting with Jesse, who I'd last met at a new year's party a year and a half ago, and whose partner was in the bridal party. He had eighty-three cameras going at the same time, and looked like some vaguely asianized cross between Magnus Pyke* and Sherlock Holmes. I could have talked with him for a week.

Damn, I wish I could upload pictures. I'd have taken some.

The service was lovely, tagteamed by two deacons who could not have been more different. Whenever Felix was following the sacred canonical progression of things, Oscar would stand behind him in his Masonic-looking robes smirking, and when they switched off, poor Felix (not their real names, do I actually have to say) would roll his eyes and you could see him wondering how he was convinced to let this onelinerhappy joker into His church.

There was no "You may kiss the bride." Instead, Oscar just shrugged and yelled, "Well, that's it! They're married!" Half the room was horrified, but it was cute (and of course the otherwise not terribly ept DJs at the reception hall rectified that one right quick).

The reception was at this amazing faux-rustic resort lodge in the middle of nowheresville Upstate. The lighting was very low, the Glenlivet was about five degrees below room temperature, the moon was reflecting off the lake, everyone was impossibly beautiful, and despite the fact that the temperature outside was unfortunately somewhere between arctic and meatlocker, not even a boot scootin' boogie and electric slide presentation by the, erm, whiter members of the party could mar this evening.

And I even got a ride back into the city thanks to Marc's aunt, who was hammered and passed out in the back seat, leaving me and her husband to keep each other awake for the three hour trip back to town. (He's buds with the drummer for the Shondells! I admit I grilled him excessively about that, but I too was a little tight, and hey, we had to stay awake. He got me as far as the Bronx, and I finally got home (Home. mmmm.) just in time to watch the sun rise, before sleeping the sleep of the very well satisfied.

GETTING MILEAGE OUT OF THE MONKEY SUIT
This just might be my last post before I go off on Saturday to celebrate my second wedding in as many weeks.

I met Kate at Rose's Turn when Adam Brodsky & I were sharing a bill, and she was the only one who showed up. We went to the Waverly Diner for an after-midnight snack, and we've been buds ever since. She's the one who got me started writing the novel I keep going on about, and (and!) she's helped me move twice (twice!) in the last three months, and it's not only because she's taller and stronger than I am, but because (call this a hunch, but) she's got more class and goodwill in her little finger than damn near anyone I've met's got in their whole entire everything, certainly of most of the human zoo I've tried to duck through since I moved to this town.

And on Saturday, she's finally getting off the fence with this equally decent bloke she's been on and off with for something like ten years, and leaving the nestlike comforts of South Jersey for the harsh outside-worldness of the Bronx, and later, upstate New York, (and maybe, just maybe, Singapore!). It's a sweet deal, and everyone concerned is over the proverbial moon with glee, as am I.

(Although you know... this does mean that tomorrow's the bride-to-be's last chance to have one night of pure, unadulterated passion with Yours Truly. As I've told her many times*, before the wedding, it's considered blowing off the last of your premarital ya-yas, and afterward, it's a whole nother mess.) (I am so dead when she reads this. Hee.)

Anyway. Ahem. Let me say publicly what I've said a hundred times in person, and what I hope to say a thousand times more: Congratulations, Marc and Kate. I wish for you all the happiness you can imagine for yourselves.

* For the record, I have never actually said such a thing to her. Thought it? Well, sure. But I'm a different kind of cad than all that. See, believe this or don't, but on the internet, nobody knows you're a gentleman.

CHANGE OF PLAN? WHAT CHANGE OF PLAN?
Just left a productive session with the engineers for the record, where we did no actual laying down of noise for a change, instead plotting the endgame for recording. The plan is, inside of eight weeks (tops) we'll have the tracks done (and, yes, mixed) for this songwritery record that I'm hoping is going to lie somewhere between Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen. Details, as always, to follow. I'll be contacting hot chick singers and accordionists and didgeridoo players and some bongoistas and perhaps a maracan or two in short order.

Oh. I'm kidding about the didgeridoo.

So there it is. Hello mom, hello dad, I'm making an antifolk record after all. I figure that oughta make someone happy. (The problem is, I got all these rock and roll songs that aren't going to fit on this thing, and okay, sure I've got enough material for both a fokie record and a rocker, I mean A Single Angry Word came out in '99 fergawdsake, and so -- no, wait, actually there's no problem there. Never mind. I keep forgetting, Neil Young did stuff like this for thirty years at a pop, so I'm good to go. And, um, no, this is no time for humility. Humility got me this far into what should have been a way easier life and I'm still temping and typing in a pay joint at quarter to midnight because I can't afford to fix my home terminal. Fuck humility.

Now if you'll excuse me, I got some work to do.)

'ALWAYS' IS AN AWFUL LOT OF TIME, YA KNOW
I laughed the laugh of the damned when I saw this, but you know, it's the kind of thing the people who should be discussing that closer-walk stuff with us tend to gloss over. When the kids say "He's with you always," they-all aren't sometimes clear what always means. And you don't have to have seen Last Temptation to guess that at times Mister Christ might have been a bit ornery at times.
[from unknownnews.net]

THE DRAMA BUMS
So there's some kind of something going down here at the pay terminal place I'm at. (Until I get around to fixing my computer and figuring out what the hell I'm doing for home hookup, I'm ducking in here two or three times a week. It's a block from my place, and it's $10 a month for unlimited use, which you can't beat with a 44-ounce bat.)

So tonight I've been here about an hour, catching up on the news of the rest of the world and reading blogs and basically getting a bit of a fix, and then I figured I could use a cup of soup or something, and with the next-to-nothing prices they charge for web access I can certainly afford to pick up a little something to keep me occupied, anyway I have no idea how I missed this but when I stand up there's almost no one else in the place, and a half dozen cops at the door, with a large crowd of people milling about behind some barricades that were definitely not there before.

I would bet that your reaction to such a situation would be pretty much the same as mine. So it turns out I can't reach the counter to get coffee or soup, and I was about to get a little whiny about it, but I shut up pretty quick. The commotion is continuing as we speak, and I'm wondering if there's something more than merely an underage curfew going on up there. I feel safe and all, but I get the feeling it's a decent idea to maybe just wait until things disperse a little bit before I make my way out and grab a quart of hot & sour soup on the way home.

I'm currently looking pretty scruffy (think Belker from Hill Street Blues, and you'll be close) which can't hurt my chances of slouching my way out if things get all freaky. But worried I ain't. Actually, I feel alright. I can see how this is panning out, and it's all safe and cool, even with the cops all bored and looking for an excuse to bust some hoodlum heads, the biggest complainers are the tourists, which is funny more than scary.

And I've got a few songs in me, which is all I need. I'm going to go home now and scratch a couple of them out and fall asleep humming them. Yesss. Another perfect night in Gotham.

(Reading back this post, I can feel the influence of Pedro Juan Gutierrez' Dirty Havana Trilogy, which I just devoured in about two hours. It's an excellent read, and if you've read this much then you'll have no trouble with the book. My review? Mouthy and funny, with lots and lots of rutting.)