It's Time to Bust a Move

The Daily Growler Goes a'Marchin'
A bunch of Growlers are heading toward New York City to join the peace march going on there tomorrow morning at Madison Square Park (yep, the original old Madison Square Garden faced this park; that's the Garden that Sanford White built and on whose roof he was shot over a hot little trollop by Harry Frick (Doctorow did a book on it)). So, yep, we're gathering there tomorrow (Saturday, April 29th, at 24th and Fifth Avenue) to get pumped up by Cindy Sheehan, Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al, Susan Saranwrap, Randy Randi Rhodes, and then march around the huge mulberry bush that is midtown Manhattan. It's futile, you say. It may be, but it's awfully fun to find yourself among a million or so people who agree with you. It gives you hope, at least for a day. Plus, it's gonna be a beautiful morning and oh, what a beautiful day, and we've got a wonderful feelin', everything's going our way. Fists in the air, and thegrowlingwolf will be there doing his disruptive growling--"Gimme an F...gimme a U...gimme a C..." Mimicking Country Joe--where are you now, Joe? Doing has-been shows out in Minneapolis or somewhere midwest like that? thegrowlingwolf is a good mimick and he has a voice that you can hear for at least 20 square blocks. "Gimme me a K."

No sleep tonight for The Growlers. We'll have video cameras and point-and-shoot digitals with us, so we hope to party hearty all tomorrow night in revelry over a successful peace march--and we'll watch the videos we make and look at the digital shots all while the men smoke La Rosa cigars (the official Daily Growler cigar), while the women smoke their medical Mexicans, and we all pontificate over several cases of Tecate (the unofficial Daily Growler beer). We are packing up, so we're packing out of the blogosphere until we meet again. I'm sure we'll have a laptop there and we'll get The Daily Growler out to post manana. Viva Mexicanos! (and that's another march coming up this Monday all over the Americas). The Mexican illegals are already Americans, if you think about it, just as much Americans as us (the US of A).
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Poeta nascitur non fit
From The Daily Growler poet laureate--
How 'bout I give you a little diddy by Blake:

Song

How sweet I roam'd from field to field
And tasted all the summer's pride,
'Til I the prince of love beheld
Who in the sunny beams did glide!

He shew'd me lilies for my hair,
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair,
Where all his golden pleasures grow.

With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
And Poebus fir'd my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.

He loves to sit and hear me sing,
Then laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.


--Bill Blake, from The Portable Romantic Poets: Blake to Poe, put together by W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson (a very poetic man's name) for the Viking Press in 1950, and reprinted by Peguin Books in 1977, an edition that was reprinted thrice more times, in 1978 (twice) and 1980.
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My Encantadas

Must be heaven; not a soul in sight;
Only the lumbering and lascivious steps of Nature
leaving its tail-dragged tracks in its heat-breathing soil.
The iguanas and their secret nights;
The Galapagos, at their slowest age,
Its deadly determination made dumb by living.

And in their second coming will arrive
rats, cats, dogs, pigs,
All signs that soon its holiness will be fouled,
And on will tumble a hellwagon full of souls.


--Anonymous; found wadded up in The Daily Growler waste basket, April 28, 2006.
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A List of Tracks to Listen to, If You Are Into Jazz, America's Own Truly Classical Music, Though It Can't Be Learned in Schools--Did You Know That?
These are old tracks picked out by The Daily Growler's Ancient Bopper, a 60-year veteran of the many jazz pleasurable wars that occurred from 1941 to NOW--a student of his 3 Bs: Blues, Boogie, and Be-Bop.
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If you can find these, they are essential to elementary jazz studies--these cuts are the basis for an evolution that may have been given a mutating blow by the f-ing Brit "little boys" called The Beatles, Brit "little boys" so taken by this classical American music, their first album covered all their favorite American swinging tunes. Like Larry Williams's "Slow Down." Wow, the way the Beatles recorded it, it slowed down so much my drawers drooped and I fell totally dead asleep. When I woke up I went back and played Larry's (a Houston, Texas, bandleader and pianist) version and got my energy back again. Larry's "Slow Down" is the most driving blues/r&b/rock tune written until Larry Graham gave us "Release Yourself"--Hell that whole Release Yourself album struck me blind and shouting Brother Graham's praises to the highest of heavens, up there where Larry Williams conducts the Big Daddy Fab Band.

Jazz Classics per the Ancient Bopper:
1) "Hollywood Shuffle" by Chu Berry, from the RCA Victor album Hot Mallets released by Victor in the early fifties. On this same album is the tune "Hot Mallets," which features Dizzy Gillespie's first solo ever recorded.

2) "Wheatleigh Hall" --this may be on a Giants of Jazz volume (thanks to www.languagehat.com it's The Giant from 1963); I first heard it when I lived in Mexico City in the sixties. Features Dizzy, Sonny Rollins, Ray Bryant, et al.

3) "Jacky-ing" on a Monk Riverside album from the late fifties featuring Thad Jones, and Monk's regular back-up dudes--Orr and Dunlop, I think, though I'm not sure of any f-ing thing anymore. I am ancient, you dig?

4) Any of those tracks that Hawk cut in Paris in 1937 with Benny Carter and Django Rhinehart, especially "Sweet Georgia Brown." They swing so hard on these tracks, Django at one point hollers "Yeah" just to release the tension that has soared these geniuses to atmospheric swinging heights. One of the swingingest jazz jams ever recorded.

5) "Django" from the Modern Jazz Quartet album on the Atlantic label of the same name. This is one hell of a classic piece of jazz composition; written by John Lewis from Albuquerque, New Mexico, with Percy Heath, Milt Jackson, John Lewis, and Connie Kay.

6) "Land's End" a Stan Getz album on Verve put together by Norman Granz and first issued on an album sold through Playboy Magazine. It features Stan with the greatest HUGE trio ever to mount a jazz stage: Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, and Ray Brown, the Oscar Peterson Trio.

7) Krupa-Rich on Verve. Holy shit! What an album. Old, almost dragass Gene Krupa and fiery pre-heart attacks Traps the Wonder Boy, Buddy Rich, in a drum-battle album put out by Norman Granz (this drum battle started on Norman's Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts) in the late fifties. Features Buddy/Gene, Flip Phillips, Illinois Jacquet, Little Jazz, Dizzy, with the Oscar "by God" Peterson Trio, yep, Herb Ellis and Ray Brown. What a m-f-ing wonderful totally massive jazz album.

8) Tangents in Jazz. Stan Kenton got the A&R job at Capitol Records--they had plenty of bucks due to Frank Sinatra signing with them. Kenton had held jazz workshops at North Texas State College/University thanks in part to Jimmy Guiffre's being a graduate of NT. As a reward, Jimmy got to do this album. Features Jimmy playing the hell out of that low-register breathy clarinet with one of my heroes, Jack Sheldon on trumpet. Sweet tangential jazz; brilliant composing, which all North Texas graduates had to thoroughly know thinks to guys like Ed Summerlin, who taught composition there.

9) "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" from the Duke Ellington at Newport, 1956, on Columbia, which got into jazz in the late fifties, the beginning of stereo, thanks to Mitch Miller, who loved jazz but couldn't play it worth a shit. Mitch is also responsible for the Charles Parker Jr. with strings albums on Emarcy (which stands for Mercury Recording Company). If you don't know this album and "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," then, shit, you ain't no jazz aficianado. This is ultimate jazz; jazz in its purest form. Paul Gonsalves, a stone alcoholic, plays for what seems like way over 100 choruses on this titan of musical accomplishments. Duke forced Paul to take long solos on purpose, to punish him for coming to the gigs drunk out of his skull. By the end of this solo, Paul is sober as the most sober judge to ever judge.

10) Duke gets two on my first TEN here; this one is Suite Africaine. On Columbia. Whewwww. What a hell of a magnificent piece of music. Dig the use of those drums--Sam Woodyard! Wow, right back to the heart of the jungle and Madame Zzaj's recording studio.

For Jazz lovers only,
the Ancient Bopper
for The Daily Growler
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See ya at the Peace March in New York City tomorrow. Or with the Mexican Laborers Monday, also in New York. And don't forget, don't spend any money Monday. F 'em all.

"Gimme an F...gimme a U...gimme a C...gimme a K!" You know what that spells, right Georgie Porgie (our "president")? What's that, Georgie? A saying they have in Tennessee...er-ah, well, you know they have it in Texas..."You can fool me once, you can fool me twice, and you can but you can't or you can't F me twice...huh?"

PEACE!